Mittelstand lässt Daten-Gold liegen - Small and medium-sized companies leave data gold

Mittelstand lässt Daten-Gold liegen - Small and medium-sized companies leave data gold

   April 18, 2018       prabhakardalvi

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Note : Any blog OR content suggestion you have , please mail me on prabhakara.dalvi@gmail.com

Daten sind das Gold des 21. Jahrhunderts. Deutsche Mittelständler allerdings lassen dieses Gold größtenteils liegen. Das zeigt eine in Frankfurt veröffentlichte neue Studie.

Großkonzerne wie Google, Amazon, Facebook und Co. können ein einstimmiges Lied singen. Es trägt den Titel: Daten sind das Gold des 21. Jahrhunderts. Deutschen Mittelständlern dagegen fällt es bislang schwer, in den Chor einzustimmen. Das zeigt eine Studie, die die Commerzbank unter Schirmherrschaft des Bundesverbandes Groß- und Außenhandel durchgeführt hat.

Banker: Mittelstand könnte Anschluss verlieren

Zum einen nämlich stellen fast alle befragten Unternehmen fest, dass das Thema Big Data, also das massenhafte Sammeln und Auswerten von Daten, immens wichtig ist - und in Zukunft noch an Bedeutung gewinnen wird. Auf der anderen Seite ist es aber nur ein Bruchteil von unter zehn Prozent der Unternehmen, die Daten systematisch erfassen, analysieren und Nutzen daraus ziehen.

Das Potenzial macht der Präsident des Bundesverbandes Groß- und Außenhandel, Holger Bingmann, an einem Beispiel deutlich: "Amazon hatte beispielsweise Gelb als Modefarbe ausrufen können. Dazu hat der Online-Händler einfach sein Wissen über die Kaufgewohnheiten und Vorlieben seiner Kunden genutzt und konnte dann zu einer solchen Schlussfolgerung kommen."

Demgegenüber scheuen sich deutsche mittelständische Unternehmen offenbar, Daten systematisch in ihre Geschäftsprozesse einzubinden. Die Zurückhaltung hat mehrere Gründe: Datenschutzprobleme, Fachkräftemangel oder auch eine zu geringe Bereitschaft von Führungskräften im Unternehmen, sich auf die neuen digitalen Datenabenteuer einzulassen. "Viele Unternehmen haben kein Erkenntnisproblem, sondern insbesondere auf Grund von internen Strukturen sind sie noch nicht bereit für das riesige Potenzial von Big Data", kommentierte Michael Reuther die Studie. Er ist im Vorstand der Commerzbank zuständig für das Firmenkundengeschäft. Es brauche einen Weckruf, damit der Mittelstand international beim Thema Datennutzung nicht den Anschluss verliere.

Fachkräftemange als Hindernis

Befragt hat die Commerzbank für die Studie gut 2.000 Unternehmen aus dem deutschen Mittelstand ab einer Größe von 2,5 Millionen Euro Umsatz pro Jahr. Mehr als die Hälfte der Manager in den Unternehmen gab an, mit Besorgnis auf die Monopolstellung der großen US-Technologieriesen zu schauen. Ein Drittel sagte, von den Vorreitern der digitalen Welt Anregungen und Impulse zu kriegen. Ein Beispiel für einen solchen Impuls: Wenn ein Markisenhersteller beispielsweise Daten über die elektronische Steuerung des Sonnenschutzes sammelt, verfügt er über eine ganze Menge Daten. In diesem Fall sehr präzise regionale Daten über den Stand der Sonneneinstrahlung. Er muss sie nur erheben, sichern - und dann zu nutzen wissen.

Ideen in die Tat umzusetzen allerdings - das könnte an einem weiteren Knackpunkt scheitern, den die Studie offen gelegt hat: Dem Fachkräftemangel. Um das Daten-Gold in unternehmerischen Erfolg umzumünzen, braucht es gut ausgebildete Daten-Analysten und IT-Spezialisten. "Dazu fehlen uns in Deutschland in ausreichender Zahl Fachleute und entsprechende Ausbildungs- und Studiengänge", meint Holger Bingmann. 40 Prozent der befragten Unternehmen geben an, wegen Mangel an qualifiziertem Personal sich dem Thema Big Data nur zögerlich anzunehmen.

Unternehmen können Nischen besetzen

Eine weitere Hürde in den Unternehmen ist die Angst vor Cyberangriffen. Fast 40 Prozent der Unternehmen geben an, schon mindestens einmal Opfer von Betrugsversuchen in der digitalen Welt geworden zu sein. Dazu zählen direkte Hackerangriffe ebenso, wie Schaden in der Firmeneigenen IT durch eingeschleuste Viren oder Trojaner. Die Sorge aber vor Hackerangriffen - bei denen meist die wertvollen Daten das Ziel der Angreifer sind - ist mit fast 80 Prozent am weitesten verbreitet.

Barrieren abbauen und sich dem Thema annehmen, um nicht den Anschluss zu verlieren, lautet einer der Folgerungen aus den Ergebnissen der Studie. "Natürlich haben Unternehmen wie Amazon einen uneinholbaren Vorsprung", sagt Bingmann. "Aber es gibt viele Nischen, die deutsche Unternehmen erfolgreich besetzen könnten. Dazu brauchen wir etwas Mut und Phantasie."

xing-news.com

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Twitter Has Become A Major Source Of Information Affect Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Twitter Has Become A Major Source Of Information Affect Your Digital Marketing Strategy

   May 21, 2015       Unknown

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The newly announced partnership between Google and Twitter will see social media marketing come of age as Google will now include real time Tweets in their search results pages. The partnership will replicate the real time placement of tweets on Bing searches that already takes place – the major difference being that Google is the world’s top search engine.

From a marketing perspective, the new deal will see business’s tweets, including those sent out as part of a marketing campaign, subject to those all-important Google algorithms. This could lead to more time being spent developing effective social media strategies that will use high quality content and keywords.

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Cook with Own Hand and Enjoy Foods - HUNGER GAMES with Seema Chowdhry

Cook with Own Hand and Enjoy Foods - HUNGER GAMES with Seema Chowdhry

   October 17, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Cook with Own Hand and Enjoy Foods - HUNGER GAMES with Seema Chowdhry

In the last few years, since my 10-year- daughter and I have been cooking together, she gets to do only the things she likes—choose the recipe, measure the flour, pour the batter in the cupcake moulds. When it comes to the ‘dirty work’ (read that as breaking eggs, cleaning the batter off the whisk rod of the hand mixer), then the little madame is always on a break.

To break this habit of shying away from the real work that cooking involves, I decided to teach her how to make tomato chicken curry dish. I had learnt this dish, Tamatai Murg, about 5 years from Kulsum Begum of Hyderabad, who at the time was a consultant chef with ITC Welcomgroup. I am not sure if the relationship still exists.

Born in the royal household of Salar Jung III, the erstwhile Nawab of Hyderabad, Kulsum Begum draws on her lineage to present the delicate flavours of the Deccan.

This is one of the simplest dishes to make and Kulsum Begum had dug this one of out of her repertoire to convince me that not all Hyderabadi or Deccan cooking was necessarily time consuming and tough. Over the years, of course I have made my own minute changes to the recipe, but some things that I learnt from her still remain a part of my cooking. One that I have taught kiddo to follow—always put salt in the dish after it has been cooked, never while it is on the fire, cooking.

{Seema Chowdhry} My 10-year-old had great fun collecting all the spices—nigella sativa, fenugreek cumin, and mustard seeds—together for this recipe. She spent a good 10 minutes identifying what spice could be nigella sativa and what was fenugreek seeds. Google of course was a big help since she could see the images and then look for them on the spice rack. Even as she learnt about spices she had never used before in her cooking, the big push was yet to come.

She had to dice tomatoes and puree them, peel the ginger and grate it and the hardest of it all, cut boneless chicken breasts into small pieces.

She dealt with the tomatoes with a little murmur, washing her hands after every tomato chopped. When it came to peeling the ginger stub and then grating it, she was not very happy with the smell it left on her hands. But it was the chicken which drew maximum protest. She refused, requested for help, bargained that she should be asked to cut only one piece, negotiated that it would be faster if we all cut chicken, threatened that she would cut one piece so badly that we would not ask her to do the rest...her pleas fell on deaf ears and the only thing I kept telling her was that we would not eat lunch that day unless and until she cooked this chicken recipe, which she loves, from scratch. I was there to help with the fire, but all the chopping, cutting and collecting of ingredients had to be done by her.

The first chicken breast was held between the tip of her forefinger and thumb and plonked on the chopping board. She tried to cut the chicken with one hand using a sawing motion with the knife over the chicken and thought that it would help. But when she realised it would not, she asked for a glove so that she could wear it on the hand that would hold the chicken down while it was being cut it. We don’t have one at home and the request was denied. In all, it took her 23 minutes to cut the first chicken breast and about 6 minutes to do the last one.

Before you think it was unnecessary and cruel to put my 10-year-old through this exercise, let me just say that I was in the kitchen with her all the way and I truly believe that if she wants to learn cooking then she should be involved in all aspects—including chopping, grating, measuring etc. That is the best to learn about the ingredients and cooking.

For the rest of the recipe, she did nothing more than pour in the seeds, puree and chicken in the hot oil in the wok, and once or twice stirred the simmering wok. But for her this chopping, cutting and working with the ingredients was the first step towards actual cooking.

Below is the adapted Kulsum Begum’s Tamatai Murg recipe. For the original, please visit

Tamatai Murg (Tomato chicken)

Ingredients

• 3 pieces chicken boneless chicken
• 4-5 tomatoes (puree in a blender or grate)
• 1tsp fresh ginger, grated
• 1/2tsp coriander powder
• 1/2tsp roasted cumin powder
• 1/2tsp chilli powder
• 1/2tsp fenugreek seeds (methi)
• 1/2tsp nigella sativa seeds (kalonji)
• 1/2tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2tsp mustard seeds
• ½ cup curry leaves
• 4 red chillies
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• Salt to taste

Method

              I like to grate the tomatoes for this recipe to avoid using the tomato skin. Oil in heated in a kadhai (wok). I first add whole red chillies and when they start crackling, add the cumin, nigella sativa, fenugreek, mustard seeds. Then I add the grated ginger, and when all the ingredients crackle turns brown, add half of the curry leaves. Then I add the coriander, cumin and chilli powder. Next I add the tomato pulp and cook on high heat. I finally add the chicken pieces and keep stirring till the oil floats on top. Sometimes I add a little water if the chicken looks dry, though Kulsum Begum never does. I finally sprinkle the salt 10 seconds before switching off the flame and mix well.

This weekly series, which appears on Tuesdays, looks at what’s new with food and drink, and how we are interacting with it. - Mint

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B, Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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Support from Retargeting of CRM to Growing Sales Roi

Support from Retargeting of CRM to Growing Sales Roi

   October 03, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Next to every mid to large company now have their customer databases setup for building relationships and mining additional business. If you have not setup one in your company, its time you do it right away to stay updated. Once you’re through with this, then you will certainly want to make CRM Retargeting part of your marketing strategy. Its certainly a valued foil to your other techniques that enables you to base more effective & strategies marketing both online and offline.

What is CRM Retargeting?

CRM Retargeting permits you to serve online display ads directly to your existing customers as they browse on the internet. It uses your existing offline data to reach your customers online at any time, not just after they visit your website, unlike regular retargeting. CRM Retargeting interprets a company’s rich offline data into anonymized online segments that can be used to create highly targeted and more effective display advertising.

Is there any difference with other Retargeting forms?

CRM Retargeting uses your offline customer data residing on your CRM to reach your customers online directly; unlike regular website retargeting where after they visit your website. There are several forms of targeting and retargeting.

Behavioral targeting is one of them; it serves your display ads to a visitor based on information collected from that visitor's behavior across the web (i.e. keyword searches, site surfing). Your audience is created through data made available from third-party providers or several other available platform's behavioral data. However, Site retargeting serves your display ads to users anywhere on the internet based on their recent action on your website. This allows you to continue engaging site visitors after they have left your site; thus building an audience based on your website traffic.

Why should you consider CRM Retargeting?

Simply because of 4 quick and reliable reasons namely: - to improve your sales, lower your CPM charges, give your client the complete 360° experience and to provide your customers with precise and pertinent info.

As per a study conducted by Oracle, only 59% of catalogue recipients ever make purchases directly from the catalogue. By using CRM Retargeting, you can complement your catalogue campaign with online display ads that resemble your catalogue’s content or customers’ purchasing history. Not to forget, CRM retargeting is also a fabulous technique to engross your buyers who make a one-time purchase or have signed up for email notifications but never really respond to your emails.

So what about Email retargeting then?

Email retargeting is an easy and efficient way to complement your email campaign with display advertising so that it helps in drastically improving your campaigns reach. According to this Teradata study, email combined with display outperforms email on its own, and contributes to a significant increase in website and landing page traffic.

So, combine your direct marketing and email strategy with CRM Retargeting and reap the benefits of retargeting in the long haul. (www.smarteinc.com)

CRM retargeting is an extremely commanding foil to both direct mailing and email marketing. If your database consists mainly physical mailing addresses, this is one of the only effective ways to take those contacts online and begin serving ads to them.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B, Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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Running Retargeting Campaign - Follow This Steps

Running Retargeting Campaign - Follow This Steps

   August 19, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Retargeting is a powerful digital marketing technique when campaigns are run correctly. We recommend the following best practices to help ensure you craft retargeting campaigns that result in the brand lift and ROI you may have heard about:

1. Frequency Caps

One or two visits to your website doesn’t mean prospects want to start seeing your ads everywhere they browse. Overexposure quickly results in decreased campaign performance, which is why it’s almost always advisable to use a frequency cap. Prospects may ignore your ads completely, a phenomenon known as banner blindness, or they may begin to have a negative association with your brand as you follow them all over the web.

A frequency cap will limit the number of times a tagged user will see your ads and will prevent potential customers from feeling overwhelmed. Be strategic with how and when you serve ads, and take into consideration that not every website visitor will be at the same point in their purchase journey. We typically recommend 17-20 ads per user per month, but you can work with your retargeting provider to determine what makes the most sense for your campaign.

2. Burn Code

Have you ever made a purchase online only to find you’re still being inundated with advertisements for that company or product? By continuing to serve ads to converted customers, companies are only serving to annoy people. Don’t make the same mistake.

Luckily, there’s a very simple solution: use a burn pixel. This snippet of code, placed in your post-transaction page, will untag any users who have made a purchase, ensuring you stop serving them ads. It’s that easy. In addition to not annoying your customer, the burn code saves you money. Why waste valuable impressions on the people who already converted?

Converted customers can still be a part of your retargeting campaign, just don’t ask them to take the same action twice. Now, you have an opportunity to retarget current customers with new ads. Instead of showing them what they have already bought, you can upsell, cross-sell, or even offer referral discounts through new ads. Essentially, burn the previous campaign and enroll them in a new one!

3. Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation allows for you to tailor ad messages to users in different stages of the purchase funnel. The process is simple: you place different retargeting pixels on different pages of your site, and then tailor creatives based on the depth of engagement of each user.

When a visitor comes to your main page, you can target them with creatives that communicate general brand awareness. If they looked at your product page, you can serve them with more specific ads around your product offerings, Regardless of user’s level of interest, audience segmentation ensures you are serving relevant and engaging ads.

4. Demographic, Geographic, & Contextual Targeting

Targeting gives you the opportunity to fine-tune your ad placements, ensuring greater relevancy and increasing ad performance. Advertisements can be targeted based on demographic information, like age or gender, contextual factors like subject matter of the website, or geographic data.

When you target your ads with consideration for demographic, geographic, and contextual variables, you don’t waste valuable impressions on people who aren’t relevant to your campaign. Targeting not only improves the relevancy of your retargeting campaign by placing the right ads in front of the right people, but it also lowers your costs. Instead of serving ads to everyone, you’re saving your money and showing ads to the people for whom your ads make the most sense.

5. Setting View-Through Conversion Windows

For brand marketers interested in increasing awareness and establishing market share, display can be a highly effective and measurable channel. A frequent complaint of the direct response crowd is that online display advertising doesn’t drive clicks at the same rate as paid search advertising, but clicks aren’t telling the whole story. Retargeted ads, even if they aren’t clicked, can provide brand lift. In one comScore study, retargeted ads led to a 1046% increase in branded search, a clear sign of heightened brand awareness and recall.

The view-through conversion takes into account that some ads don’t trigger immediate buying decisions, but can nonetheless influence people to make purchases later, also known as the billboard effect. In the same way a catchy billboard grabs your attention and boosts brand awareness, an online display ad can encourage a later action. View-through conversions provide advertisers with richer data around ad performance by considering conversions that occur within a certain window after a user sees an ad.There are various practices around the length of a view-through conversion window, some providers will set a 30-day window for example, but we recommend 24 hours. A 24-hour view-through conversion window will provide you with valuable data around the stickiness of your ads, the quality of your ad placements, and your audience’s shopping habits, without inflating or overstating your ads’ effectiveness.

6. Single-Provider Retargeting

Running retargeting campaigns with multiple providers has a number of serious drawbacks. If you run with multiple providers, each provider will be bidding for the same spots on the same websites, driving up media costs and decreasing the chances each has to serve ads to your users.  You may also run into difficulties effectively implementing frequency caps, as each retargeting provider will be operating independently.

If you’re new to retargeting and you want to test the waters with different providers, it’s more effective to run tests in subsequent months using one provider at a time. You’ll have a better sense of which campaign actually performed better without skewing your results.

7. Rotating Creatives + A/B Testing

Even if you launch your campaign with incredibly strong creatives, running with the same set of ads for months on end will result in a lower performing campaign.  According to a ReTargeter study, clickthrough rates decrease by almost 50% after five months of running the same set of ads. After seeing the same ads again and again, a user’s interest is no longer piqued and the ads are more likely to blend into the background. By rotating your ad creative every few months, you can easily avoid experiencing these dips in performance.

Simple A/B tests can provide the data you need to run campaigns with high-performing ads. Instead of relying on what you think will work, you can run tests for measurable and actionable results. A/B testing your creatives will help you determine the optimal combination of ad copy, calls-to-action, and graphics. Here at ReTargeter, we always run A/B tests and recommend that our clients do the same.

8. Optimized Creatives

The banner ads you use may do more to determine success than any other factor of your retargeting campaign, so it’s crucial to devote sufficient resources to making beautiful ads.  Marketers often try to cram as much information as possible into the space allotted. This method of designing banners will only distract your audience and won’t serve the purpose of the ad: to win their attention and keep it. You want to be memorable, so that even if your audience doesn’t click your ad, it stays with them. Often, creating memorable ads is best achieved by keeping copy minimal and design simple. All of your banner ads should be well-branded and recognizable.  Use bold colors, concise copy, and clear calls to action with big, clickable buttons.  For more suggestions, check out our section on banner ad best practices.

When used properly, retargeting is incredibly powerful. Follow these best practices when you run your retargeting campaigns and you’ll be sure to see high returns.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B, Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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How does Retargeting Campaign work

How does Retargeting Campaign work

   August 19, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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What is retargeting?

Generally 2% of shoppers convert on the first visit to an online store. Retargeting brings back the other 98%. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online.

How does Retargeting Campaign work - Adroll

How does retargeting work?

Technically all that is necessary is to place a JavaScript tag in the footer of your website. This code creates a list of people that visit your site by placing anonymous retargeting "cookies" in their browser. This list allows AdRoll (or other retargeting vendors) to display retargeting ads to your potential customers as they visit other sites. Since AdRoll works with the largest ad exchanges, we can retarget your customers just about anywhere they might go online.

Why is retargeting so effective

Retargeting generates greater online sales by keeping your brand front and center and bringing "window shoppers" back when they're ready to buy. Every time your customer sees your retargeting ads, your brand gains traction and more recognition. The high click-through rates and increased conversions that are typical with retargeting campaigns underscore the value of good branding and repeated exposure.

Retargeting Best Practices

Retargeting is most effective if you segment your visitors (eg, people who looked at shoes vs pants) and tailor the retargeting ads shown to each group, or not retarget them at all (eg, people who converted.)

ANSWERS TO MARKETING AUTOMATION FAQS FOR MARKETERS

WHY DO YOU NEED CONTACT DATABASES SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES?

The best performing retargeting creative has a clear call-to-action and promotes an offer.

Different products warrant different retargeting time windows. Eg, people shopping for travel should be retargeted immediately; people shopping for luxury goods should be retargeted later.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B, Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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B2B Marketer want Contact Databases Solutions from Data Providers

B2B Marketer want Contact Databases Solutions from Data Providers

   August 06, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Data Online

Are you updated enough to race with today's technology?

It's the technology driven time, and if something has to happen, it has to happen in real time. B2B Contact Databases solutions and services providers is not just keeping pace with recent technology, but is racing much ahead of it.

B2B Contact Databases solutions and services providers has its services spread over 50 industries. If you are looking at targeting any particular industry, we have it segregated for you. 

In case you are unable to spot your industry in our list, you can fill up the form here, Whether you want to just view and order data online, share data quickly and securely within a closed environment, move data offsite to maximize and free internal resources, or just need it for backup and disaster recovery purposes, B2B Contact Databases solutions and services providers online data management solutions can preserve your data, keep it safe and ensure that it is still accessible to you in a flexible and scalable manner.

Category List of B2B Contact Databases – Cleansing and Appending

• Technology Lists

• B2B Executives Lists

• Healthcare Lists

• European Lists

• Professional Lists

• International Lists

• Women Executive Lists

• Industry-wise Lists

Data Verification

Automatic Verification Method - Email messages are sent to contacts in database to verify options of 'Opt-in' to receive updates through emails as per agreed terms or 'Opt-Out' of the email campaigns if not interested in receiving updates.

Manual Verification Method - Telemarketing professionals contact each customer in the database by verifying options of 'Opt-in' and agree to receive calls in future and 'Opt-out' and join the 'Do Not Call' registry list

B2B Contact Databases solutions and services providers follows 2 methods to adhere to Data Verification process and build confidence amongst prospects, marketers and business.

•   Data verification method - automatic & manual
•   Data verification Process - Email & Telephonic
•   Customer Choice - opt-in mail & opt-out

Hard Bounce Management

• Email could not be delivered

• Mailbox not found-User unknown

• Mailbox user not reachable

• Domain name not recognized

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Important Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner

Important Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner

   July 16, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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The Top Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner - Max Starkov & Mariana Mechoso Safer

It's challenging to find a good digital marketing partner these days. As more and more companies join the market as 'experts in hotel website design and digital marketing,' hoteliers are faced with a difficult decision. 

1. Do you consider yourself my property's digital marketing partner or vendor?

To achieve the highest long-term success rate, the hotelier-agency relationship must be based on trust and the client's best interests must be at the heart of everything the agency does. What does it mean to be a partner vs. a vendor?

Your digital marketing agency consistently offers proactive recommendations vs. simply "taking orders." Is your agency just an "order-taking" outfit or do they come up with consistent recommendations on how to tackle your occupancy, seasonal and other business needs? If you find yourself making all the effort to communicate with your agency first, you are working with a vendor.

Your digital marketing agency is an extension of your property's sales and marketing team. Are your agency's recommendations based on what's best for your property's business needs and what will generate the highest ROAS (Return-on-ad-spend)? Or are these recommendations based on how high a commission the agency receives? You'll need to do your research to find this out.

Your agency's company values are aligned with your values. If your partner has not identified any brand values, it has not clearly positioned itself in the marketplace. A team that stands behind its values strives to provide excellent customer service and produces better results for its clients. Aligned goals build authenticity and trust between a digital marketing agency and its clients.

2. Are you utilizing any proprietary digital marketing technology?

Digital marketing is becoming increasingly complex, especially compared to what it was just over 3-4 years ago. In this day and age, there is a complete convergence between digital marketing and digital technology. Crucial revenue-generating initiatives such as Meta Search Marketing, Dynamic Rate Marketing, and Content Management Systems equipped with personalized marketing capabilities are an equal part technology and marketing.

Today, you should choose a partner that has both digital technology and digital marketing capabilities under one roof to help you keep up with the rapid development and marketing opportunities available in the industry.

In this multi-device world we live in, hoteliers must meet the needs of their guests on each device. This means investing in technology that allows for the best user experience on the three screens: desktop, mobile and tablet, which many hoteliers find hard to do due to their website's antiquated Content Management System (CMS) technology.

Your digital marketing partner should be able to develop technology in-house that you can benefit from. Examples include a CMS with functionality developed specifically for the hospitality industry, interactive marketing applications, social media applications, dynamic rate marketing technology, and meta search marketing enablement technology.

3. What percentage of your total business is dedicated to providing digital marketing and web services?

A company that has too many 'core competencies' often finds itself not excelling in any of them. Giant global companies like Sony claim to have only two core competencies. Ask your marketing firm what percentage of their business is dedicated to digital marketing and web services. If you are working with a firm where these services constitute only a small part of their overall service offerings, you are taking a risk that your business will not be as important to them. There is also the chance that the team dedicated to your account, if you do have a dedicated team and not a general 'client services department contact email/phone number,' also has other responsibilities that can take them away from providing your account the attention it deserves.

4. What percentage of your clients are in the hospitality space?

The answer to this one should be close to 100% because of the uniqueness, complexity, and fast moving dynamics of the industry. Hoteliers need customized, expert advice that is specific to their needs.

This multi-billion hospitality industry is so large and dynamic that specialization in hospitality provides a unique and competitive advantage to mixed-industry and GDS-focused companies that are late and inexperienced to the online hospitality channel.

5. Do you offer full-service digital marketing?

Managing multiple vendor relationships is a job in itself. By partnering with an agency that offers full-service digital marketing, your team can stay efficient and focused. Does you agency offer the full spectrum of digital marketing initiatives such as website design and CMS technology to SEO, SEM, online media and retargeting, dynamic rate marketing, meta search marketing, social media, mobile marketing, and email marketing?

Additionally, the more vendors involved, the higher the chance for mistakes, campaigns that do not produce, and communication struggles.

For digital marketing campaigns to generate the highest ROIs possible, goals and teams need to be fully aligned. For instance, Paid Search and SEO go hand in hand. Google updates its search algorithm 500 times each year, and the Panda and Hummingbird updates directly affected how Google indexes and values the underlying website landing pages. With Google constantly updating its algorithm, paid search professionals must treat search dynamically. SEM should align with the site's SEO in order to maintain a high Quality Index. Managing your SEO strategy should include a business analysis, comp set analysis, keyword analysis, etc., and having another company manage paid search, which includes exactly the same business analysis, comp set analysis, and keyword analysis, translates to double the work and double the cost.

6. Is multi-channel marketing part of the overall strategy for each client?

In today's multi-device, multi-touch world, digital marketing must be handled in a multi-channel campaign fashion to reach consumers at every touch point. All three screens (desktop, mobile and tablet) must be integrated in the hotel's multi-channel marketing strategy. These campaigns utilize the right combination of online channels effectively (paid search, email marketing, SEO, online media, social media, etc.) to promote one campaign theme. This strategy is the most effective way to increase reach and boost revenues for a need period.

7. Do you offer Dynamic Rate Marketing?

Today's always-connected traveler demands instantaneous hotel information with real-time pricing and resents any type of price promotion that feels like bait and switch.

The latest digital technology and marketing innovation available to hoteliers, Dynamic Rate Marketing, enables marketing campaigns featuring the property's real-time availability and rates. DRM is a next-generation direct-response marketing category, which allows real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing to be inserted in various marketing initiatives: from meta search to banner advertising, paid search to email marketing.

Does your agency utilize the technology needed to support Dynamic Rate Marketing? Dynamic Rate Marketing offers a multitude of benefits for both the travel consumer and hotelier. By combining online advertising and marketing campaigns with real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing, hoteliers can satisfy travelers' demands for instant and truthful hotel pricing information, as well as respond in real time to changing market conditions and comp set behavior. The main benefit here is that advertised rates in ad campaigns (banners, meta search, email, etc.) change automatically when the hotel changes their rates in the PMS or CRS.

The results? DRM dramatically increases campaign effectiveness, boosts conversion rates, and increases direct online bookings

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8. What percentage of the work on my account is handled in-house?

In-house services translates to total control over the quality of the work as well as the ability to offer services at more competitive prices. If your partner is outsourcing any or most of the business, you may be charged a higher commission than you realize and you will not have direct communication with the people who are handling your account. More services done in-house means less room for error, more intelligence surrounding the status of your marketing initiatives, and quicker turnaround times.

9. How many people work at your firm?

A team of 60-70 people is the absolute minimum for a digital technology+marketing firm to be able to handle all of the complexities of today's digital world: from SEO and Paid Search, online media and retargeting, social media and mobile marketing, dynamic rate marketing and meta search, website design and CMS technologies, dynamic content personalization, and more. Smaller and "one-man-team" agencies simply cannot handle today's complexities and there is a high likelihood of outsourcing or not having the resources you need available to drive the online revenues your property is capable of producing.

10. Are your employees considered industry though leaders and experts?

The management and employees of many digital marketing agencies that offer their services to the industry have no hospitality experience. They don't understand the needs of the hotelier, do not speak their language, and are incapable of providing the consulting and strategy services needed to grow the direct online channel.

Are employees published authors on hot industry topics and best practices related to online distribution and marketing? Also, ask your agency if their principals and experts are frequent guest speakers at major hospitality and digital marketing industry events and conferences. A company that employs team members who are frequently asked to share their expertise at major industry events every year is a company made up of thought leaders. The wider the variety of subjects they are asked to speak about, the better.

A company that is passionate about what it does also wants to stay ahead of the curve, creating products and services that will benefit the marketplace and its clients. In the highly competitive hospitality industry, this is a must. Hotels that fail to work with innovative digital marketing partners run the risk of losing market share, operating inefficiently and running campaigns with decreasing ROIs.

Important Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner

When choosing your digital marketing partner, look at the web as the most critical and fastest growing revenue stream for the property. You should not settle for anything less than the best, a firm that will lead your property in achieving maximum revenue from the property website/direct online channel.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B., Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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Tips For Promoting Your Business Page On Facebook - Prabhakar

Tips For Promoting Your Business Page On Facebook - Prabhakar

   July 14, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Tips For Promoting Your Business Page On Facebook – B2B Marketing And Sales Tip 

Written by Ellie Mirman, blogger at the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketer at Internet Marketing company HubSpot.

So you’ve got a Facebook Business Page… Now what? Building a Business Page is one of the best ways to increase your presence and engage more potential customers on Facebook, but it’s more than just clicking “Create Page”. As you venture out into the social media world, here are a few tips to help you promote your Page and reach more of the 100 million Facebook users.

Create a Facebook Business Page worth becoming a fan of.

To quote David Meerman Scott, nobody cares about your products and services (except you). People care about how you can help them solve their problems. To extend that thought to Facebook, don’t use your Facebook Page to talk about your products all the time. People aren’t interested. Instead, create some interesting, useful content that people want to receive. This could be blog posts, whitepapers, or simply discussions.

Take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook.

Facebook provides great opportunities for viral marketing. Facebook creates a “News Feed” of your friends’ activities on Facebook, like posting photos, changing statuses, or becoming fans of a Page. What this means is that every time someone interacts with your Page in some way, that action is published across all of their friends’ News Feeds, giving you exposure to that person’s entire network. The best way to take advantage of this is to engage your users and give them more opportunities to interact with your Page, for example, by fostering discussions, inviting them to events, allowing them to post links. Leveraging the power of the News Feed is a critical part of establishing your presence on Facebook and building a fan base for spreading your messages.

Don’t forget to draw on your network.

All promotion does not need to take place within Facebook. Feel free to email your opt-in e-mail list, blog about your Page, and post a link to your Page on your company website. The best people to help you build up your fan base for your Business Page on Facebook are those people already subscribed to your blog or engaged with you in some way.

Optimize your Page for Facebook – and public – search.

Another way to get found and build your fan base is through Facebook’s search. Facebook – like all other search engines (Facebook was noted the most used people search engine) – has an undisclosed algorithm that ranks search results in a way that aims to return relevant and useful results to the searcher. The best think you can do to show up higher in these search results is to build a large following of your existing fans, because entities with a larger network tend to show up higher in search results. Also note that Facebook Business Pages are public and indexable by search engines. This potentially gives you exposure to those searching in broader search engines like Google. To make the most of this, start lots of engaging discussion threads on your Page, so that if someone is searching in Google on that very topic, they can stumble upon your Facebook Page and discussion thread.

Get an extra push with Facebook Ads.

If you want to give your Business Page an extra push at the beginning, you can also buy some advertising slots. Note that Facebook ads are much less effective than the viral marketing options on Facebook, and the click through rate for Facebook ads is notoriously low. Facebook advertisements show up on the sidebar as users browse through their friends’ profiles, groups, and so on. When you set up your ad, be sure to include “social ads” – these draw on a users’ network to see who in their network has already engaged with your Page and shows, for example, “Jim Smith is a fan of Company ABC” next to your ad, potentially improving your click through rate. Also, make sure that you give viewers a relevant reason to click on your ad by inviting them to connect with industry peers or offering a free whitepaper, for example. Also in this vein, note that you can target your ads by age, gender, interests, geography, and other factors, to reach users who may be more interested in your Business Page.

Bonus Tip: Measure your results.

Once you’ve built up your Facebook Page it’s good to measure what you’re actually getting out of your social media program. Some metrics you may want to measure are:  number of fans, page views, and unique users. Facebook’s “Insights” provide some of these metrics, including demographic data. You’ll also want to track actions beyond your Facebook Page, namely, website traffic, leads, and sales that come from Facebook. Hopefully some of these tips will help you get your Facebook Business Page off the ground and build it into a valuable channel for reaching your potential customers.

All this said, social media, including Facebook, is by no means static. It is constantly changing and we, as marketers, are constantly learning the right way to leverage these channels for marketing. If you want to see what we at HubSpot have done, you can become a fan of our Page at http://facebook.hubspot.com. And, if you’re looking to network with other marketers on Facebook, you may be interested in the Facebook Pro Marketers group, a group for marketers passionate about marketing. Perhaps there we can continue discussing ideas for marketing on Facebook.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B., Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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Backlink Profile Monitoring with Majestic SEO

Backlink Profile Monitoring with Majestic SEO

   July 03, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Are you monitoring your back-link profile?

It is no secret Google have become very aggressive when it comes to links and link building strategies: highly optimized anchor text links have suddenly become toxic as they are unnatural. So perhaps branding is the way to go and people are thinking twice before placing questionable links on their money sites.

While link building is still an essential part of your SEO strategy, there is another aspect you need to consider as an everyday part of your optimization efforts: Monitoring your backlink profile.

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Backlink profile monitoring should be an integral part of your ongoing SEO activities. You need to know who is linking out to you, and if there are any suspicious activities, in order to react in real time and avoid a disruptive, (or devastating), penalty.

How you can use Majestic SEO to monitor your backlink profile?

Majestic SEO offers 2 different ways to monitor your backlink profile:

Via a Tracking Report. The link tracking report from Majestic SEO offers a view of Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and other link quality characteristics such as external backlinks, referring IPs, referring domains, and referring subnets: link quality characteristics of any URL or website over time, updated on a daily basis. This report is useful in 2 ways:

It allows you to follow the link quality of a URL and see if there is any correlation between a change in a URLs position and whether the change was caused by an increase in good (or bad) links. These flow metrics start calculating many link iterations away from the URL you are tracking – meaning there does not have to be a change to the pages that physically link to you, for there to be a change in the page’s fortunes on the web.

It offers an overview on the rate of growth of your Inbound Links (IBLs). The daily report offered by the tracking report offers strategic insights on a day-to-day basis which you can use to understand what is happening:

• There has been a spike in new IBLs, where are they coming from?
• Are they related in any way to a viral activity performed by the Social media Team?
• Was a link picked up and passed along on Twitter?
• Did the R&D team publish a white paper?
• Was a newsletter published offering a download?
• If the answer to any of these questions was YES, then you are safe and should be ready to bet those links are all legitimate.

But what if the answers to all these questions was NO – nobody did anything of the sort; there were no Social Media initiatives, no newsletters, none of your content went viral – then where are these links coming from?

Spikes in the IBL profile should be looked at with suspicion – they could be coming from a site which has nothing to do with us and could have dropped a run of site link in their navigation bar or footer… this deserves your immediate attention. 

In this case we can see there is a certain trend in backlink profile, then a sudden significant growth over a few days; (in this case the IBLs shot up from just under 12.000 to 24.000). These links were found to be coming all from the same site, a very big portal with thousands of pages that had placed a link in the sidebar.

In very competitive markets competitors can organize a negative link building campaign to discredit you by adding thousands of low quality links, and then by doing so, impacting your trust flow, and boosting your citation flow. The tracking report will keep you up to date and in a matter of days you will be informed of the presence of these undesired and hostile links.

Tracking reports offer top level numbers and information but not the actual links; (they can be found in the Site Explorer under the New tab):

Inbound Links Discovery with Majestic SEO

You can see the spike noted in the previous screenshot taken from the tracking report. By hovering over the dates Majestic will reveal total number of backlinks identified and date of discovery; (which is not necessarily the date of creation).

Inbound Link Analysis using Search Explorer by Majestic SEO

Clicking on the date will retrieve the links and allow a detailed analysis. If the links are legitimate you keep them, if they are not your only option is to disavow them: by doing so you are telling Google you have nothing to do with that inbound linking activity and are taking appropriate action to distance yourself from them; (and by doing so renouncing to any link equity coming from them). The disavow will feed into your link profile and these links will be removed from your link graph. In this way you are preventing any retaliation on behalf of Google when the day of reckoning will come … prevention is better than curing.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B., Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

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How to get Website Conversion Or ROI with winning landing page for Visitors

How to get Website Conversion Or ROI with winning landing page for Visitors

   June 11, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Capturing and maintaining website visitors’ attention can often feel like herding cats. Visitors will wander around on your site, clicking here and there, perhaps converting into customers, and perhaps – just as easily – going elsewhere to find what they’re looking for. Your job as a web designer is not to celebrate your SEO successes, for all you’ve done is brought potential customers to your site. The reality is that SEO is not even half the battle – the real work begins once a visitor has landed on your site and needs to be convinced to do business with you. To accomplish this difficult goal, you need to keep your visitors focused on your site and lead them down a simple path toward the ultimate goal of conversion.

This article presents ideas and examples from Kevin Gao is the founder and CEO of Comm100 that will help you capture and maintain your customers’ attention while they familiarize themselves with your products and services. We will highlight 7 specific website design concepts and offer concrete suggestions on how you can keep your visitors focused on your website.

1. Get clear on your goal. This is perhaps the most important factor in capturing and maintaining your visitors’ focus. You must at all times understand and have clarity of the goal of the overall website, as well as each individual page.

Be warned that your can easily lose sight of your goal, because you’ll often be tempted to implement fancy animation or eye-catching graphics simply for the aesthetic beauty and nothing else. This is not to say that you shouldn’t implement crafty artwork or fancy animations or cool videos; you simply need to review such additions in light of your website’s true goal.

You should break down your website goal into the following three sub-categories:

Who is your target audience? Understand the type of customers you’re targeting. Are they engineers? Accountants? Once you’re clear on this demographic, you’ll have an easier time structuring your content and graphics. 

Engineers, for example, appreciate endless lists of features, whereas car enthusiasts want lots of cool pictures of sports cars.

What is the desired action? This question breaks down in different ways, depending on the specific page being designed. For example, one page may consider the subscription to an email newsletter to be a conversion, whereas another page considers a click on a shopping cart button a conversion. In all cases, you must identify a desired action on each page.

What’s in it for the viewer? Never lose sight of the value proposition to your customer. Each page must provide some sort of take-away for the customer, whether it’s an informative list of suggestions or an instructional video that helps customers understand your products or services.

2. Don’t make your visitors search for your message

This is perhaps the #1 problem with most business websites. How often have you landed on a website only to search endlessly for information on what the company does? If you spend more than 10 seconds searching for the answer, consider yourself in the minority. Most people are not so patient. Your website should instantly convey what it does and make the journey for your visitor simple and fast.

Take a look at the website for F5 Networks below. Is it immediately obvious what they do? The only hint you get is “Applications Without Constraints.” Though this is a compelling statement, it could be argued that visitors won’t “get it” and leave. Imagine wandering into a store, and the first thing a salesman says is, “Applications without constraints.” Immediately you know he’s not going to be of much use, and you’re probably going to turn and leave.

3. Walk your visitors through the website. 

Though it may seem silly, big buttons and an obvious path through your site will yield success. Keep in mind that your visitors simply want a solution to their problem, and if they believe you have what they need, they will follow you. Think about it: isn’t it easier to follow a leader than to forge your own path through the jungle?

As a good example, scan your eyes down the QuickBooks landing page as shown below. You’ll quickly see a placard that says, “Run your entire business with QuickBooks. Track your sales and expenses, get paid faster, and even run payroll with it.” This message gets right to the point, and as your eyes scan down from that message, you see a big button for “Shop and Save Now.” 

This button leads you directly to a price sheet, where you can immediately compare features and the associated prices. But if you want to learn more before purchasing anything, you simply click on the “Learn More” link. You are then taken to a page that breaks out the main features of QuickBooks. And on that page, there is yet another “Learn More” link, which takes you onto the next step in your journey to eventual conversion.

4. Keep It Simple (KIS). 

Keep in mind that visitors don’t come to your site because they enjoy clicking on links. They are looking for information, and your site design – clever as you may think it is – can only get in the way. Be conscious of the clutter on the screen. How many messages are you sending to your visitors? Does each of these messages reflect your website’s goal? Also, understand the simple beauty of white space. Important information will not stand out if flashing banners, clashing colors and inconsistent font styles surrounds it. Surround your most important messages in a “quiet” buffer zone of white space. It will reduce the cognitive load on the human brain and help it focus on the message.

The example below may be a bit extreme, but notice how this clever landing page for cameron.io gets you to focus on a message that’s minimal in size but significant in magnitude.

5. Use concise writing. Get to the point. Quickly.

Keep in mind that website writing is different than print writing. When people want to read a book, they’ll make time for it in their schedule. But they rarely come to your site with the same attitude. They will refuse to read long passages of promotional writing. If you can’t keep your writing short, then break it up with images and highlight the important text with bold letters. Break out multiple concepts into bulleted lists.

Additionally, avoid using company-specific language except where absolutely necessary. Use standard terms to refer to standard concepts. For example, use a button labeled “Learn More” when referring to more text, rather than something like, “Explore.” Use the standard buttons for RSS feeds, Facebook Likes, Twitter, and so on.

Notice how Sugar CRM breaks up different features into small bite-size chunks, each with its own graphic. They use the “Learn More” links to provide more information about each specific feature, so if you want to read more, you can. But if you stay on this page, you can quickly scan the features without spending a lot of time digging through text.

6. Communicate with a clean visual design. 

Suzanne Martin compiled an excellent write-up on this concept. In general, you need to be aware of how the human brain visually perceives information. The main concepts are visual organization and standardization. The graphic below is a sample taken from the Martin’s page. It clearly demonstrates how a chaotic layout can adversely affect visual communication.

7. Maintain an objective perspective.

 It is well understood that creative people lose their objectivity when working on the same project day after day. Web designers in particular can get so enamored with their code that they lose sight of the usability factor. It is therefore imperative that the website get evaluated by stakeholders on a periodic basis, so that a set of objective eyes can provide guidance.

Objective reviewers must not only look at the design with a fresh set of eyes, but they must keep the overall goals in mind as they review each page. This can be difficult, especially when the reviewer has a sense of pride in the company. For example, the reviewer might say something like, “Let’s feature our industry awards on the front page where everyone can see them!” This desire is most likely counterproductive, for the reviewer has forgotten that the web page is for the potential customer, not for employees who are enamored with the company.

in the end, Capturing traffic on your website is indeed a good SEO challenge, but captured traffic does not equal conversion. SEO is only the beginning of the long battle for customer business. To keep potential customers on the site, you need to structure the site to maintain the visitor’s focus and interest. This often involves leading her through a simple path toward conversion. This article highlights some of the challenges in sustaining that interest level and offers specific suggestions to convert visitors into long-term customers.

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