Marketing

Influencer Marketing

August 22, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

Do you know how many influencers there are in your niche? Do you know who they are? Do you even care?

Influencer marketing is the new way to get attention and build relationships with potential customers. In fact, most marketers are already using influencer marketing because it works. But not everyone knows how to do it correctly.

This post will teach you everything you need to know about influencer marketing including:

• What influencer marketing is

• Who the biggest influencers are in your niche

• Why influencer marketing works

• How to find the right influencers for your product

• And much more!

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing where a brand works directly with someone it believes is influential over a particular audience to promote its product or service. This person could be an athlete, blogger, social media personality, journalist, or even just a random YouTuber. Brands pay influencers to use their influence over people within their target audience to help spread word about a product or service.

In exchange for promoting a brand, influencers receive free stuff like clothing, shoes, electronics, travel, and food. They often also gain access to exclusive events where they can meet customers, fans, and potential future partners.

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Influencer marketing is one of the most promising ways to reach customers, especially millennials. In fact, according to Forbes, it’s now the second largest digital advertising channel behind paid ads. But while influencer marketing is growing rapidly, there are still many questions about how best to use it to promote brands. So what does it take to make influencer marketing successful? Here are some tips to help you out.

#1. Choose an Influencer Who Matches Your Audience

Before you decide to launch an influencer campaign, you first need to determine whether or not your audience matches the demographic of the influencer you plan to partner with.

For example, if you run a fitness blog, you may want to partner with a celebrity trainer who specializes in working with athletes. If you run a fashion blog, you may want a model who specializes in runway shows.

This helps ensure that your influencer will be able to connect with your target audience.

#2. Find Out What They Want

After determining the right influencer for your brand, you need to find out what they want. This means asking questions such as:

• How often do you update your content?

• Do you accept sponsored posts?

• Will you feature our product/service in your videos?

• Can I send you a sample of our product/service?

• Do you have any special requirements?

#3. Build Relationships With Them

Building relationships with influencers is key to success. Once you’ve determined what they want, you should ask them to share your content on their social media accounts.

They should also agree to answer questions from their followers.

When you build these types of connections, you’ll be able to leverage their influence to grow your brand.

#4. Make Sure That Their Content Resonates With Your Brand

Make sure that your influencer’s content resonates with your brand. For example, if you run an online store, you don’t want to partner with a blogger whose content doesn’t resonate with your brand.

Instead, choose an influencer who shares similar values and interests with your brand.

#5. Measure Results

Once you launch your influencer marketing campaign, measure results.

How did your influencer perform? Did they deliver on their promises?

Did they generate sales?

Was your influencer successful in driving traffic to your site?

Measurement is critical to understanding how well your influencer performed.

#6. Repeat As Needed

Repeat campaigns as needed.

Sometimes influencers fail to deliver on their promises.

If this happens, you may need to repeat your influencer marketing campaign until you’re satisfied with the results.

#7. Be Patient

Be patient with your influencer marketing campaign.

It takes time to build trust between you and your influencer.

Asking influencers to share your content on social media is a two-way street.

You need to give them something back.

Doing this builds trust and makes them feel appreciated.

#8. Don’t Forget About Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement is another aspect of influencer marketing that you shouldn’t overlook.

Ask influencers to engage with your brand on social media.

Share their content on your social media pages.

Give them shoutouts.

Offer them incentives.

All of these things show your influencer that you appreciate their efforts.

#9. Offer A Freebie Or Discount

A freebie or discount is another incentive you can offer influencers to entice them to participate in your influencer marketing campaign.

Where to find Influencers?

There are three main types of influencers used in influencer marketing campaigns: celebrities, bloggers, and YouTube stars. Each has its pros and cons. Let’s discuss each of them below.

Celebrities

Celebrities are often sought after for their fame and popularity. They have a huge following among fans. Celebrities are usually paid to endorse products or services.

They are generally considered to be influential because of their status and reputation. For example, Beyonce is known to influence her fans to purchase certain products.

However, celebrity endorsements aren’t always positive. Some celebs may be paid too much for endorsing a product. Others may receive poor quality products for endorsement deals.

Bloggers

Blogs are another popular type of influencer. Bloggers write articles about topics related to their niche. Their blogs are read by thousands of readers every month.

Some bloggers are paid to write blog posts. However, others write content for free. Either way, they are still considered influential because of the number of followers they have.

For example, Gwyneth Paltrow writes a blog called Goop. She has over 12 million followers on Instagram alone. This means she influences millions of people daily.

YouTube Stars

Youtubers are becoming increasingly popular. There are over 1 billion views per week on YouTube. That’s a lot of potential customers!

A YouTuber is similar to a blogger. He or she creates videos about his or her interests. These videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Because of the amount of views he or she gets, a YouTuber is considered influential. Many brands choose to partner with YouTubers to reach their target audience.

What Are the 4 Types of Influencers?

Nano-influencers

10,000 followers are fewer. Starting out to be an influencer. Has a very focused niche area.

ShuFel is a good example of someone in Bangalore focusing on nature, plants, and gardening.

Micro-influencers

10,000 to 100,000 followers. Has started to build a loyal following. Niche experts.

Pooja Patel is a good example in the yoga niche in Bangalore.

Macro-influencers

100,000 to 1,000,000 followers. Most accessible with the biggest audiences. B or C grade celebrities or people who have worked hard to build a massive following.

Vani Murthy in Bangalore is a perfect example of someone who can influence her followers on sustainability, vegan food, waste management, composting, gardening, and ecology.

Mega-influencers

1 million+ followers. A grade celebrities and super influential social media personality with a mass following.

Gaurav Taneja is a pilot and the top Youtuber in India who actually runs three different YouTube channels all having more than 1 million subscribers.

How Much Should You Pay An Influencer?

When choosing an influencer, you first need to decide whether you want to hire an influencer or an affiliate.

An influencer is someone who promotes your brand. He or she doesn’t necessarily have to buy anything from you.

Affiliates are individuals who promote your brand without receiving any compensation. Affiliates don’t have to buy anything from your company.

Hiring an influencer is expensive. If you’re hiring an influencer, you’ll need to spend money upfront to pay him or her.

On average, influencers charge anywhere between $100-$500 for a single sponsored video.

This price varies depending on the size of the influencer’s social media presence.

As mentioned above, influencers are paid based on the number of likes, comments, shares, etc. that their posts generate.

To calculate how much you should pay an influencer, multiply the total number of impressions generated by the influencer’s posts by the cost per impression.

Let’s say you hired an influencer whose posts received 10,000 impressions. To calculate the cost per impression, divide the cost of a single advertisement by the number of impressions.

Cost Per Impression Cost Of Advertise / Impressions

For example, let’s say you spent $50 to advertise on Facebook. Then, you would multiply 10,000 impressions by $0.05. The result is $500.

That means you’d need to pay the influencer $500 to generate 10,000 impressions.

Of course, there are different factors that affect the cost per impression. One factor is the size of the influencers’ social media accounts.

Smaller influencers typically get paid less than larger ones. Another factor is the type of influencer.

For example, bloggers tend to get paid more than YouTubers.

Finally, the location where the influencer lives affects the cost per impression. A U.S. influencer living in New York City will probably get paid more than an influencer living in India.

Finding the Right Influencer

Now that you know what types of influencers are available, you can begin looking for the perfect fit.

First, consider your budget. Do you want to hire an individual influencer or an agency?

Individuals can range from $10-$200 per post. Agencies can charge up to $1000 per post.

Next, think about your goals. Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Or do you want to sell products?

Once you’ve decided on your goal, you can narrow down your search.

Start by searching for influencers in your industry. Searching for influencers in your niche will yield better results.

After finding some influencers, contact them directly. Ask them if they accept sponsorships.

If they do, ask them if they’re interested in working with your brand.

Ask them to send you examples of their previous work.

Look for influencers who have a large social media following.

The more followers they have, the higher chance they have of getting accepted into your campaign.

Also, look for influencers who live close to your target market.

If you’re selling lifestyle products, then you’ll want to find an influencer who lives near a major city such as Mumbai or Bangalore.

This will ensure that your influencer has a good connection to your target market. It will also increase the chances of your influencer promoting your products.

What Influencer Marketing is Not?

First off, influencer marketing isn’t a form of paid advertising. This means that you don’t pay a social media influencer to promote your product or service.

Instead, you partner with an influencer to reach your target audience.

This partnership usually takes place after you’ve identified your ideal customer.

Then, you find an influencer who shares similar values and interests with your customers.

After you identify your influencer, you send him/her information about your product or service. Then, he/she promotes your product or service on his/her social media accounts.

Why Influencer Marketing Works?

Influencer marketing works because your influencer targets your ideal customer.

He/she knows exactly who your ideal customer is and what they care about.

So, he/she posts content related to your product or service on social media.

This helps you connect with your ideal customer.

When your influencer posts something about your product or service, it reaches your ideal customer.

They see it on their newsfeed and click on it.

That leads them to your website, where they learn more about your product or service and decide whether to purchase it.

The Pros & Cons of Influencer Marketing

Pros:

It’s cost-effective
It’s highly targeted
You only need one person to get started
They are popular and come with a loyal set of followers
You save money on advertising
Influencers can help with brand awareness
You can easily start with a few social media posts

Cons:

It’s difficult to measure results
It’s hard to control quality
It’s hard for influencers to monetize their efforts
There’s no guarantee that your influencer will actually promote your product or service
It’s hard to find an influencer that fits your brand
They may not be interested in working with you
Some may charge too much for their services

What doesn’t work in Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing isn’t without its challenges. Here are three things that don’t work.

#1. Buying Influence

Buying influence is common among marketers. Sometimes influencers are paid to promote certain products.

In these cases, the influencer is paid to endorse a specific product. However, buying influence is unethical.

Why? Because influencers aren’t endorsing anything. Instead, they’re simply promoting a brand.

Brands shouldn’t pay influencers to promote their products. If a brand wants to advertise, they should find another way to reach potential customers.

#2. Paying People to Promote Products

Some companies pay influencers to promote a product. For example, a makeup artist may receive payment to review a lipstick.

While paying influencers to promote products may seem like a good idea, it’s actually bad for consumers.

When influencers are paid to recommend products, they’re biased towards those products. Consumers see influencers’ endorsements as unbiased recommendations.

They believe that influencers are impartial experts. But they’re not.

Instead, influencers are paid to push products. And since they’re paid to promote products, they won’t give honest reviews.

Consumers will be misled. They’ll think that influencers are unbiased experts. But they’re really paid shills.

#3. Using Fake Reviews

Fake reviews are another thing that don’t work in Influencer marketing.

A fake review is when an influencer writes something positive about a product. Then, he or she posts a picture of the product next to the written review.

For example, an influencer may write a glowing review of a lipstick. He then shares a photo of himself wearing the lipstick.

This is called a sponsored review.

Sponsored reviews are misleading. They trick consumers into thinking that influencers are unbiased.

But they’re not.

These influencers are paid to write positive reviews. They’re not writing genuine opinions.

So, if you’re using influencer marketing, avoid fake reviews. Make sure your content is authentic.

Otherwise, you may mislead consumers.

How to track influencer marketing campaigns?

There are several ways to measure the success of your campaign:

Track your social media metrics, such as likes, comments, retweets, shares, etc.
Check your email inboxes for mentions of your campaign
Look for mentions of your campaign on blogs and forums
Monitor your referral traffic

What’s the Difference Between Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the practice of leveraging social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc., to attract attention and promote brands. In essence, it involves getting someone famous to talk about your brand — often for free — via social media channels. This type of advertising typically generates buzz around a product or service and builds awareness.

Word-of-mouth marketing, on the other hand, is much less formalized. People are talking about products and services because they want to share experiences, good or bad, with others. They do this without being paid to do so. This is where influencers come into play. By encouraging conversations about a brand, influencers help generate interest and ultimately lead to sales.

While both influencer marketing and word-of-mouth promotion involve generating conversation around a brand, there is a big difference between the two approaches.

Is Advocate Marketing the Same as Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate buzz around your brand. But it doesn’t mean that advocate marketing is dead—far from it. In fact, the opposite is true. Advocacy marketing is growing in popularity because it works better than influencer marketing. And while both types of marketing rely heavily on social media, there are key differences between the two.

Advocate marketing relies mostly on word of mouth and referrals from existing loyal customers. It encourages those people to talk about your brand and products on their social networks. This helps build trust and credibility among potential customers, making advocacy marketing much more effective than influencer marketing.

Why is influencer marketing important?

Influencer marketing has become one of the most popular forms of marketing today. A recent survey conducted by Brightcove found that nearly three quarters (72%) of marketers say they use influencer marketing, up from just over half (56%) in 2017. And while the growth in adoption is encouraging, there are still many challenges facing the industry. For example, according to a study published by the Content Marketing Institute, less than 10% of marketers are fully leveraging influencer marketing.

The influence economy has changed the world of commerce forever. Influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses to connect directly with consumers. In fact, the consumer has become the influencer. As a result, the influence economy has shifted power away from traditional marketers and into the hands of everyday people. This shift has given consumers unprecedented access to information about products and services, ultimately changing how companies interact with customers.

What is an influencer marketing platform?

An influencer marketing platform helps businesses find and engage with influential individuals who can help spread their message. The platform provides tools for marketers to create campaigns and share them across multiple channels. Influencers can be bloggers, vloggers, YouTube stars, Instagrammers, etc.

Influencer Marketing Agency vs. Influencer Marketing Platform

There’s no doubt that influencer marketing platforms have revolutionized the way brands market to consumers. However, not all influencer marketing agencies are created equal. Some offer only basic features, while others provide advanced capabilities such as data analytics, content creation, and campaign management.

When choosing an influencer marketing agency, make sure you understand what kind of service you need before signing on the dotted line. Here are some things to consider:

1. What form of influencer marketing do you need?

Do you want to promote a product or service? Do you want to increase sales? Are you looking for new leads? If so, then you’ll probably need a lead generation campaign. On the other hand, if you’re trying to improve customer satisfaction, then you’ll likely need a customer retention program.

2. How will you measure success?

You may think that measuring success is easy when it comes to influencer marketing strategies. After all, everyone knows which posts got the best engagement. But the truth is that it’s hard to tell whether influencer marketing was successful without tracking metrics. That means you’ll need to invest time and money in order to see results.

3. Who will manage your campaign?

If you hire an influencer marketing agency to run your campaign, you’ll need to trust that person to execute your strategy properly. Make sure that whoever manages your campaign understands your business goals and objectives. They should also be able to communicate effectively with influencers and work well under pressure.

4. Will you pay for performance?

Some influencer marketing agencies charge clients based on the number of followers or likes generated. Others require a set fee per post. Either way, make sure you know exactly how much you’ll spend before you sign on the dotted line. Can you find an agency that will get paid based on successful influencer marketing campaigns?

5. Does the influencer marketing agency have experience working with your industry?

It’s important to choose an influencer marketing agency that works with similar industries to yours. Otherwise, they won’t be able to identify the right influencers for your brand.

6. Can the influencer marketing agency scale up quickly?

As your business grows, you’ll need to add more staff members to handle your growing list of influencers with millions of followers. You don’t want to end up paying for additional resources once your company starts generating revenue.

7. Is there any guarantee?

The last thing you want is to get involved in an influencer marketing campaign only to realize that you didn’t receive the results you were promised. So make sure that the influencer marketing agency you select has a solid reputation and guarantees its services.

8. What does the influencer marketing agency do after the campaign ends?

Make sure that the influencer advertising agency you choose takes care of your account after the campaign ends. This includes providing regular reports about the status of your campaign. It also helps if they can help you find new influencers who fit your target audience.

9. How long will it take to start seeing results?

Most influencer marketing campaigns take anywhere from six months to one year to generate results. The longer you wait, the less effective your efforts will be.

Top Influencer Marketing Platforms

Grin.co

IMAI

Refersion

#Paid

Creator.co

Upfluence

Aspire

Storyclash

Find Your Influence

Neoreach

Influencity

Conclusion

In conclusion, influencer marketing has become one of the hottest trends in digital advertising. With over 1 billion active users on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter alone, influencers have the power to reach millions of potential customers.

But if you want to use influencer marketing effectively, you need to know exactly who your audience is. That means understanding their interests, habits, and preferences. Once you do that, you can create content that speaks directly to them. This helps build trust between you and your followers, which ultimately leads to increased engagement and sales.

Have you tried it yet?

What is your experience?

Share your experience here in the comments below.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.

What is Digital Marketing?

August 21, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

Digital marketing is the use of digital technologies such as search engines, social media platforms, mobile devices, online video, email, etc., to promote products or services. It uses various channels and techniques to connect businesses and consumers.

However, digital marketing can be overwhelming for small business owners who are not familiar with the terminology and concepts involved. This guide will help you understand what digital marketing is and how it works.

Types of Digital Marketing

The term “digital” refers to any form of electronic communication that involves computers.

The most common forms of digital marketing include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Improving the visibility of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO includes things like keyword research, link building, content creation, and more.

Social Media Advertising

Using social media sites to advertise your brand. Social media advertising includes posting links to your site on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing (SMM) is an effective way to reach potential customers through social networks. SMM includes activities include posting links to your site, sharing articles about your niche, creating and managing groups related to your niche, sharing interesting posts such as quotes and educational materials, commenting on other people’s posts, liking others’ posts, and so on.

Email Marketing

Sending emails to people in order to promote your brand. Email marketing includes sending promotional messages via email. You may also send out newsletters, announcements, special offers, etc.

Mobile Marketing

Promoting your brand by creating apps, games, videos, and other types of mobile-optimized content. Mobile marketing includes promoting your app/game on Google Play, Apple App Store, Windows Phone Marketplace, Amazon Appstore, and others.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Managing negative reviews and comments about your company on review websites. ORM includes things like responding to negative reviews, removing bad reviews from review sites, and more.

Content Marketing

Producing high quality content that promotes your brand. Content marketing includes writing blog posts, creating infographics, publishing eBooks, creating white papers, etc.

Affiliate marketing

In affiliate marketing, you make money when someone buys something after clicking on a link you have provided.

Are you confused about digital marketing? Do you feel overwhelmed with all the information available online?

In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about digital marketing. We will go over the basics, such as how to choose a domain name, build a website, and create content. But most importantly, we will talk about why you should do these things and how they fit into your overall strategy.

We will also explain the difference between traditional advertising and digital marketing.

I hope you enjoy this article and find it useful.

How digital marketing is different from traditional marketing?

Digital marketing has become an integral part of our lives. We use smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers every single day.

We watch videos online, read articles, play games, listen to music, and much more. All these things were once considered “luxuries”. Nowadays, everyone uses technology to connect with each other.

This means that digital marketing is no longer limited to big companies. Smaller businesses can benefit from digital marketing too.

In this article, we’ll discuss the differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing.

#1. Digital Marketing is Cost Effective

Traditional marketing involves spending thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns. This is expensive, especially for small businesses.

However, digital marketing doesn’t cost even 10% of traditional marketing. In many cases, digital marketing is free. You pay fees to advertise your products or services. But, you spend your time and efforts to promote yourself through digital media for free.

#2. Traditional Marketing Requires Lots of Time

With traditional marketing, you have to plan everything ahead of time. You have to write ads, send emails, and schedule events.

It takes hours of planning and preparation. And if you fail to execute properly, you won’t achieve the desired results.

On the contrary, digital marketing allows you to test various strategies without investing a lot of time. If one strategy isn’t working, you can easily change it.

#3. Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work Well Online

Traditional marketing works better offline than online. People still prefer to go to stores rather than search for information online.

They prefer to talk face-to-face with salespeople instead of reading reviews online. They prefer to see pictures of products first before buying them.

All these factors mean that traditional marketing doesn’t work well online. However, digital marketing does.

#4. Traditional Marketing Fails to Reach Target Audience

Traditional marketing focuses on reaching as many customers as possible. But most of those customers aren’t interested in your products or services.

Instead, they’re searching for something else. For example, they may be looking for a job. Or maybe they’re trying to find a place to live.

So, traditional marketing fails to reach target audience. On the contrary, digital marketing reaches targeted audiences.

#5. Traditional Marketing Has a Risk of Low ROI

Traditional marketing has the risk of low return on investment. You invest money upfront, but you sometimes don’t receive much benefits in return.

For instance, you buy advertisements on TV or print media. Then, you wait for potential customers to come to you.

When they finally do, you hope that they purchase your products or services. But chances are, they didn’t come to you because they wanted to buy your products or services. They came to you because they heard about your company somewhere else.

Therefore, traditional marketing ROI has started diminishing. On the contrary, digital marketing provides immediate returns on investments.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., allow you to share content with your followers.

As a result, your posts appear on their feeds. As they scroll down, they click on your links. And then, they visit your website.

This means that digital media marketing generates leads and conversions. Therefore, it has a positive impact on your bottom line.

Digital marketing is becoming increasingly popular among businesses. Because of its effectiveness, it helps businesses grow.

But there are still some misconceptions regarding digital marketing. Some people think that it’s similar to traditional marketing.

While they are correct in saying that digital marketing is similar to traditional marketing, they neglect to mention several key differences.

These differences include:

Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing.
It requires less time compared to traditional marketing.
Digital marketing reaches targeted audiences. Traditional marketing cannot do so.
Digital marketing has a higher chance of generating ROI. Traditional marketing has low chances.
Digital marketing is easier to implement than traditional marketing.

Why digital marketing is important?

Digital marketing has become an integral part of our lives. We spend most of our time online, whether it’s browsing the internet, watching videos, listening to music, shopping, or playing games.

It seems like everyone uses the internet these days. And with the rise of mobile devices, the internet has become even more accessible.

So why is digital marketing important? Let’s find out.

#1: Digital Marketing Helps Build Brand Awareness

In order to grow your business, you need to first establish yourself as a reputable brand. This means building awareness among potential customers.

By using digital marketing tools such as search engine optimization, email marketing, content marketing, and social media advertising, you can reach a wider audience and promote your brand.

#2: Digital Marketing Provides Better Customer Service

Customers expect fast service and excellent customer support. If you don’t offer it, you may miss out on sales opportunities.

With digital marketing, you can provide exceptional customer service 24/7. You can respond quickly to questions and comments, resolve issues, and improve your products and services.

This helps you retain existing customers and attract new ones.

#3: Digital Marketing Makes Sales Easier

As mentioned above, digital marketing allows you to provide better customer service. But it also makes it easier to sell your products and services. For example, if you run a website, you can easily add links to your products and services. This makes it much easier for visitors to purchase your products.

#4: Digital Marketing Increases Traffic

Traffic refers to the number of visitors to your site. With digital marketing, you can drive traffic to your site.

For example, if you run an ecommerce store, you can advertise your products on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This will allow you to reach a larger audience than would otherwise be possible.

#5: Digital Marketing Creates Loyal Customers

When you provide outstanding customer service, your customers will come back for more. They will tell others about your company and refer them to your website.

This creates loyal customers who will buy again and again.

These five reasons alone show why digital marketing is important.

Benefits of Digital Marketing Tools

Now let’s talk about the benefits of each tool.

#1: SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies available. By optimizing your website, you can rank higher in Google searches and appear near the top of search results.

This gives you greater exposure and leads to increased traffic.

#2: Email Marketing

Email marketing is another powerful digital marketing strategy. You can send emails to your current customers and prospects, letting them know about special offers, discounts, events, and promotions.

This builds trust and loyalty between you and your customers.

#3: Content Marketing

Content marketing is a type of digital marketing where you write articles, blog posts, and other types of content. These pieces of content include text, images, video, audio, and interactive elements.

They’re usually shared across multiple platforms, including websites, blogs, social media, and apps.

#4: Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is another form of digital marketing. Through paid ads, you can target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and location.

This helps you reach people who are interested in what you have to say.

#5: Paid Search Ads

Paid search ads are similar to organic search results. However, they are paid advertisements.

Some businesses use paid search ads to generate qualified leads. Others use them to raise awareness about their brands.

Regardless of your goals, paid search ads give you access to a large audience.

Why digital marketing is important for small business?

Digital marketing is important for any size of business. It’s especially useful for smaller companies that don’t have the budget or staff to do traditional marketing.

It helps us reach our target audience easily and effectively. And it makes our life easier too. We don’t have to spend hours searching for information online anymore.

We just need to open an account and start using it. That’s why it’s important for every business owner to learn how to use it properly.

#1: Digital Marketing Helps Small Business Grow

Small businesses often struggle with getting noticed by potential clients. However, digital marketing can help.

It allows you to connect with new customers through social media, email, and online ads. You can also create a strong brand identity and increase sales.

#2: Digital Marketing Makes Your Company More Competitive

If you want to compete against bigger companies, you need to get creative. That means doing things like creating unique landing pages, offering free shipping, and providing exceptional customer service.

In addition, you’ll need to invest in digital marketing tools such as SEO, PPC, and email marketing. By investing in these tools, you can improve your company’s visibility and attract more customers.

#3:Increase Sales

As mentioned earlier, Digital Marketing allows us to reach our target audience easily. This means that we can reach potential customers faster and more efficiently.

This leads to increased sales. If we are able to reach our target audience quickly, we can convert them into paying clients.

#4: Improve Customer Service

With Digital Marketing, we can provide customer service 24/7. Our clients won’t have to wait until office hours to contact us. They can email us anytime and ask questions whenever they want.

Our team will respond immediately and solve their problems. This improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.

#5: Save Time & Money

Using Digital Marketing saves us a lot of time and money. We no longer need to search for information online. All we need to do is log in and start working.

We can save a lot of time and effort since we don’t need to go to libraries or bookstores to find information.

We can also save money since we don’t need expensive advertising campaigns.

#6: Grow Brand Awareness

When we use Digital Marketing, we can grow our brand awareness. We can promote ourselves and our products better than ever before.

We can share our content across various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others.

These platforms allow us to connect with our target audiences easily.

#7: Build Loyal Customers

Customers who trust us are more likely to purchase our products. With Digital Marketing, we can build loyal customers.

They will come back to us again and again. This builds our reputation among our customers.

#8: Get Paid Faster

Businesses that use Digital Marketing usually receive payments within days instead of weeks.

This is because Digital Marketing allows us to deliver our products and services faster.

We can send emails, update websites, and upload files instantly.

This gives us a competitive edge over other companies.

#9: Create Better Content

Content plays a huge role in Digital Marketing. Without quality content, we cannot attract visitors to our site.

We need to create content that people love reading. Then, we can drive traffic to our site.

Once we have attracted visitors, we can convince them to buy our products and services.

#10: Stay Connected

Social Media Sites are very useful for connecting with our target audiences.

We can communicate with our followers and fans directly. This allows us to build relationships with them.

We can also interact with them and answer their questions. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Why digital marketing is important for branding?

Here are 3 reasons why every business needs to invest in building a brand online:

#1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is one of the key elements of successful marketing. If customers don’t recognize your brand name, they won’t buy anything from you.

It is imperative that you establish a presence on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., so that your target audience knows about your brand.

This helps you reach out to potential customers and drive sales.

#2. Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty refers to the number of repeat purchases made by existing customers. This is a direct reflection of customer satisfaction.

Customers who are satisfied with your products and services tend to return to you again and again.

So, it is essential that you provide excellent service and quality products to retain your loyal customers.

#3. Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management refers to managing the information available about a company online.

When people search for your name on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others, they see what other people say about you.

These reviews are often negative. However, if you manage your online reputation properly, you can change these bad reviews into positive ones.

For example, if you receive a complaint about your business, contact the person who made the complaint.

Ask him/her to write a review about your business instead. Make sure to thank the person for writing such a nice review.

Then, respond to the review. Thank the reviewer for his/her feedback and ask him/her to leave a better review next time.

Doing this will improve your online reputation and prevent future complaints.

So, whether you run a small business or a giant corporation, investing in digital marketing is vital.

Investing in digital marketing will allow you to connect with millions of customers worldwide.

It will also enable you to maintain a positive image online.

FAQ on Digital Marketing

Will digital marketing replace traditional marketing?

Yes! Digital marketing has become one of the most effective ways to reach customers today. The internet provides a platform for businesses to connect directly with consumers, which gives them access to information about what they want at any given moment. This allows marketers to provide relevant offers and messages based on customer interests, rather than relying on generic advertisements.

How digital marketing affects consumer behavior?

Digital marketing has changed the way consumers interact with brands. Consumers now research products and services online, compare prices, read reviews, and share information about products and services. The rise of mobile technology means customers can access information at any time and from anywhere, which makes them less likely to be loyal to one particular company. This shift in consumer behavior has made it difficult for businesses to reach out to potential customers.

Will digital marketing be automated?

Yes, digital marketing will become automated. The main reason for this is that technology has made it easier to automate tasks such as email marketing, lead generation, and customer service. As a result, marketers will spend less time managing these processes and more time focusing on other aspects of their business.

Will digital marketing die?

Digital marketing has been around for decades, but it was only recently that marketers started using digital channels like search engines, social networks, mobile apps, etc. to reach customers. The internet has become such a powerful channel that it’s now impossible to ignore.

Is your business into digital marketing? How successful are you in it? Which areas are successful? Where are you struggling?

Let us know in the comments below. We will be happy to learn together.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.

What is SEO? Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide to SEO

August 18, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO), sometimes called “search engine marketing,” is the practice of optimizing webpages to improve their rankings in search results. While SEO used to mean just getting your site listed on major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL, today there are many different types of SEO techniques to help boost organic search traffic, leads, and sales.

The goal of SEO is to make sure that when someone searches for something online, your website appears near the top of the list. There are many ways to do this, including writing high-quality content, having a well-optimized domain name, and building link profiles.

How does SEO work?

Search engines are powerful tools used to answer questions, solve problems, and make life easier. They do it by crawling the Web, reading billions of pages, analyzing the data they collect, and then returning relevant results to people around the world. This process happens quickly and efficiently, because search engines rely heavily on automated systems called “bots.” These bots follow rules set forth by the search engine companies themselves, which dictate how the software crawls the Internet and analyzes the data collected.

The good news is that there are many ways to optimize your site for search engines, and the best way depends on the type of question you want answered. For example, if you’re trying to rank highly for a broad term like “best mattress,” you’ll need to focus on providing high-quality content across different types of content. If you’re trying to rank for a specific product name, you’ll want to optimize for that keyword phrase. But even within broad terms, you still need to know which keywords to target.

In addition to optimizing for the words people actually enter into search boxes, you can also consider targeting longtail keywords that don’t necessarily mean much to most people, but are often searched more frequently than shorttail keywords. Longtail keywords tend to have lower competition, which makes them easier to rank for. You can also create content specifically targeted at longtail keywords, which helps improve your rankings.

Why is SEO important for marketing?

Where do you bury a dead body safely? In the second page of google search results.

The majority of search engine users click one of the top five search results.

SEO helps you to get higher rankings in search engine results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fundamental part of online marketing because people conduct trillions upon trillions of searches every year. Often, those searches are conducted with commercial intent – searching for products and services – and search is often the primary source for digital traffic.

Google’s ranking algorithm changes regularly to ensure that it delivers relevant results to searchers. These algorithmic changes are designed to deliver better results for users, while also ensuring that companies don’t unfairly manipulate the system.

A key component of Google’s algorithm is PageRank – a measure of how well a site ranks organically based on authority and quality factors. This authority factor includes things such as the number of incoming links a site receives, whether or not a site is indexed by Google, and the age of the domain name. Quality factors include things like the amount of original content a site provides, the type of content a site provides, and the reputation of the publisher.

The goal of SEO is to rank highly in search engines for keywords related to the product or service you offer. A high ranking allows you to attract more visitors to your website and convert those visitors into customers.

How can I learn SEO?

The best way to learn about SEO is to do it yourself. You don’t have to be a developer or webmaster to understand how to implement SEO strategies. But there are some basic things you must know before jumping headfirst into the world of SEO. Here are five tips to help you get started.

1. Understand the basics

Before diving into the weeds, it helps to start with the big picture. What exactly does SEO stand for? And what does it mean to rank well? To answer those questions, we’ll begin with a definition of SEO.

According to Search Engine Land, SEO stands for “search engine optimisation.” Simply put, it refers to the process of making sure that your site appears high up in the list of search results returned by major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

2. Know where to find good information

You can read tons of articles online, but most of them won’t teach you anything useful. Instead, you want to focus on finding quality resources that provide actionable advice. This could include books, blogs, eBooks or even YouTube videos.

3. Don’t just follow trends

While it’s tempting to jump on the latest trend when it comes to SEO, this isn’t always the right approach. Trends come and go quickly, so if you’re following one today, you may be missing out on opportunities tomorrow.

4. Focus on building relationships

One of the biggest mistakes newbies make is trying to build their own network from scratch. Instead, they try to work alone, which doesn’t allow them to tap into the expertise of others. Instead, look for ways to connect with other professionals who share your interests.

5. Be patient

It takes time to see any kind of results from an SEO campaign. If you’ve been working on improving your rankings for months without seeing progress, it might be time to consider hiring someone else to take over the project.

Having said these, let us walk you through a comprehensive guide to SEO.

Periodic Table of SEO Factors

Search engine algorithms use a wide range of ranking signals. You can find a Cheat Sheet to Google’s 200 (Known) Ranking Factors by HubSpot.

The following periodic table of SEO Factors from Search Engine Land acts as the foundation of SEO.

Comprehensive Guide to SEO

I would like to organize this SEO Course with SEO lessons in nine categories. They are:

Types of Search Engine Success Factors
Content & Search Engine Success Factors
Site Architecture & Search Engine Success Factors
HTML Code & Search Engine Success Factors
Trust, Authority, Expertise & Search Rankings
Link Building & Ranking In Search Engines
Personalization & Search Engine Rankings
Toxins & Search Engine Spam Penalties
Emerging Verticals in Search

Let us learn each step.

1. Types of Search Engine Success Factors

There are four major elements that form the basis for SEO ranking. They are:

On-page SEO: Content, Architecture, HTML
Off-page SEO: Reputation, Links, User
Toxins
Niche SEO

These four factors work in tandem to rank content. They are work in silos.

On-page SEO: Content, Architecture, HTML

There are many types of success factors that affect the performance of a website in search engines. These are classified under three categories: Content, Site Architecture and HTML code.

On-Page SEO includes all the elements of a website that affect its visibility in search engines. The primary purpose of on-page optimization is to ensure that the content on your website is relevant to the search terms being searched. On-page SEO refers to the work done on your website before visitors arrive. You want to make sure that your site loads quickly, is easy to navigate, and that it displays information clearly. You should use keywords throughout your content and ensure that there is no spelling or grammatical errors. If you do not take care of this aspect of your business, then you may lose traffic to your competitors who do.

Off-page SEO: Reputation, Links, User

Off-Page SEO refers to the work done outside the website itself. It includes things like building backlinks (high-quality backlinks) to your site, submitting articles or press releases about your business, and using social media sites to share information about your business. Off-page optimization helps search engines understand what content should rank higher in search results.

Toxins

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s ranking in search engines like Google. However, there are certain things that can negatively affect your site’s rankings. Some of these are called “seo toxins” or “black hat seo.” They are techniques used to manipulate search results. Here are a few examples of common SEO toxins:

Using too many keywords in a page title or meta description
Placing links to websites with low quality content
Adding hidden text to pages
Creating duplicate content
Improper use of HTML tags
Buying links from blackhat seo companies
Having a poor user experience
Failing to update your website regularly
Poorly written content
Poorly optimized images
Using spammy anchor texts
Using illegal software

White hat SEO is a legitimate way to improve your site’s ranking. There are many ways to achieve white hat SEO. One of them is by following the guidelines set out by the search engines themselves. Another way is by hiring an expert to perform the necessary tasks for you.

SEO Niches

Search engines, particularly, Google, has begun to favor niche websites over generic websites. Define your niche and write content around the niche topics. More focused you are about the content around the niche, more easily you will start ranking on top of search engine results.

2. Content & Search Engine Success Factors

Content is king. Remember that you are writing for human readers. In the long run, writing for search engines will fail. Writing for humans is much easier than writing for search engines. Valuable content is the most important factor for any successful website. Whether it is blog article, news article, product review or anything else, the content must be valuable to the reader. If you have solid content, people will come back to read your posts again and again. Content is the foundation of all your SEO efforts.

Quality of Content

In order to get high ranks in search engines, you need to create good quality content. Quality content means that your content is unique, informative, helpful, interesting, well researched, etc. Good content attracts visitors and keeps them coming back. Poor content does the opposite. So, if you want to succeed in SEO, you need to focus on creating great content.

What constitutes high quality content?

Well, it depends on your industry. But generally speaking, it is content that answers questions, solves problems, provides solutions, educates, entertains, informs, inspires, motivates, etc. Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines says the following.

Quality content should be:

informative
accurate
comprehensive
clear
original
professionally presented
unique
in-depth
well-cited

E-A-T Signals

Google wants to see relevant, useful, timely, original content. The E-A-T signals are as follows:

Expertise – Is this person an expert in his/her field? Does he/she know everything about the topic?

Authority – How authoritative is this author? Has he/she published books, papers, etc.?

Trustworthiness – Is this person trustworthy?

Content is the cornerstone of every online business. It is the lifeblood of your website. Without quality content, no one would visit your website. You cannot expect to rank highly in search engines without having quality content.

Research keywords

Researching keywords is another way to improve your rankings. Researching keywords can be done by using keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, etc. These tools allow you to discover which keywords are already being searched by your target audience. Once you have discovered these keywords, you can then optimize your content around those keywords.

Keywords are extremely important when optimizing your website. They are the building blocks of your content. When you use keywords correctly, you increase the chances of getting found by potential customers.

Keyword research gives you insights into how many people are searching for certain terms, which helps you determine whether or not you should include those words in your content. For example, if you sell organic food, you might decide to include “natural food” in your content since there are thousands of searches per month. However, if you sell healthy snacks, you may decide against including “sugarless biscuits” in your content because only a few hundred people are searching for that term each month.

Keyword research shows pain points of your audience. If you notice that most of your traffic comes from a particular region, you can write online content specifically for that area. Or, if you notice that most of the traffic comes from mobile searches, you can write content that is optimized for mobile viewing.

Search volumes

Search volume refers to the number of times a given keyword has been searched for over time. It tells you how much interest there is in a given keyword. A higher volume indicates that there is greater demand for a product or service than for other products or services. Many keyword research tools provide the number of searches per month for your keywords. Keyword planner in Google adwords is by far the best tool.

Select keywords that have a decent volume per month. If your keyword has low search volume, I suggest you go for new phrases or topics.

Having selected keywords with decent volume, how would you know if you can succeed with your keywords?

Search difficulty

I rely upon Ubersuggest to provide me with search difficulty. I like to go for search difficulty of less than 35. Higher the number more the difficulty is to rank on first page of search results.

Search Difficulty by UberSuggest

Search intent

Search Intent is the reason why someone visits your website. Search intent is the reason why someone clicks on your link in Google. There are four types of search intents:

Navigational – A navigational search is when someone is looking for information related to a product or service. For example, if someone were looking for a new car, they would type something like “new cars” into Google.

Informational – An informational search is when someone is seeking general information. For example, if a user wanted to learn more about the history of the United States, they would type something along the lines of “history of the US” into Google. In this case, the searcher is looking for general information.

Transactional – A transactional search is when someone is trying to buy something. For example, if an individual was looking to purchase a new laptop, they would type something into Google such as “laptop” or “buy laptop”.

Local – A local search is when someone is searching for a business nearby. For example, if one were looking for a restaurant near them, they would type something such as “restaurant near me” into Google. Local searches are becoming increasingly popular, especially among consumers who want to save money.

You need to understand the difference between these four types of search intents. If you want to get better at SEO, you need to know the difference between them. The easiest way to find the search intent is to visit Google.com and search for the keyword and study the results. Google will tell you the search intent of the person who most often search for the keyword. Google keyword tool will also help you understand the search intent as it groups related search key terms.

If you do not understand the search intent, you cannot create relevant content. It is very easy to make content that appeals to everyone. But, if you want to rank well for a specific search intent, you must focus on

You need to make sure that your content answers the questions that your audience has. If you don’t answer their questions, they will leave your site and never return.

Keyword Density

Another thing that you need to do is make sure that your content contains enough keywords. There is nothing worse than having a piece of content that has too many words but not enough keywords. That makes your content look unprofessional and spammy. Make sure that you include at least 3-5 semantic keywords per 100 words.

Semantic keywords

When writing your content, try to think about how people will actually type your keywords. For example, if you were searching for “best healthy food for diabetics”, you wouldn’t type “diabetics food best”. Instead, you would type “best diabetic food”. If you write your content in such a way that it sounds natural, it will be easier for readers to understand. Search engines are getting better at understanding natural language. They can even read human speech! So, by using natural language, you can increase your chances of being found by search engines.

Freshness of Content

Search engines love fresh content. When you publish new content, it gives search engines an opportunity to crawl your website. You can use social media sites to share your content. Social sharing helps search engines see your content as fresh.

It is important to keep your content fresh. You may have a library of old content. You should always be updating them with fresh, new content. Even if you only post once every few days, it still counts towards your overall freshness score.

Query Deserved Freshness (QDF)

This is a metric that tells you how long ago a particular page was last updated. QDF is calculated based on the time since the last update and the number of times the page has been crawled.

A higher QDF means that the page has been recently updated. Pages with high QDF scores tend to have more recent content. Supposing there is a new variant of novel corona virus discovered. Google will immediately apply QDF scores to the results. It will give priority to content about the new variant of the virus.

Supposing you wish to sell new set of meals for a local festival, say, Onam. If your product title is ‘Onam Sadhya September 8, 2022’, you have a very high chance of ranking No.1 in Google search engine.

Look for popular trends. Subscribe to Google Trends. Refresh or create fresh content based on popular search terms.

Answers

Answer questions that your audience asks. People who ask questions are looking for solutions. The more questions you answer, the more likely you are to get traffic from search engines. A simple website that I love using for questions research is Answer The Public. I love it because it allows me to enter a phrase into their tool and instantly receive suggestions from Google that contain similar phrases. The best part of the website is it gives me a visual map of the search terms.

Answer the Public Keyword Visualization

Answer as Featured Snippets

Optimize your content for featured snippets. These are snippets of information that appear when someone searches for something related to your content. They are usually displayed above the organic search results.

You can optimize your content for featured snippets by including relevant links and images. Include these in your content and link back to your website.

Google Featured Snippet

User’s intent is to find answers to their queries. Make sure that your content addresses those queries.

Keep your questions as H2 or H3 and answers as normal paragraphs. Google shows up to 3 featured snippets as answers to popular questions from any article. Add a FAQ section at the end of every article of yours.

You can also include user generated content like Quora.com or Yahoo Answers.

Include videos for ‘How to’ questions

Video content is one of the most effective ways to engage your visitors. Videos add value to your content. They make it easy for your visitors to digest your content.

Videos are great for answering common questions. They allow you to explain complex topics in a way that is easy to understand.

Videos are also great for providing tips and advice. They allow you to demonstrate skills and expertise.

There are many tools available online to create video content. I recommend that you use Youtube. It is the second largest search engine on the internet and it is free.

Depth of Content

Google wants to show people the most relevant content first. So if you want to rank well for a particular keyword, then you need to write quality content. You don’t need to publish 1000 words articles everyday. But do try to post well researched, deep content that is even only 500 words per day.

Quality over Quantity

Make sure that your content is unique. Don’t copy paste other websites content. Instead, take time to write original content that will benefit your readers.

Write for your reader. Ask yourself: What would my ideal customer/reader think? How could this article improve his life?

Make sure that your content is useful. Provide value to your readers. Give them something worth reading. Let you content be deep enough to provide substantial, unique and valuable information to your readers.

How do you provide valuable content?

Search engine algorithms have evolved. Google has officially announced that it has deploy AI capability in their search engine. So, the key to your success in organic traffic is Competition Research. Find the top 20 results of Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for your keyword. Build a list of sematic longtail keywords from the top 20 results of SERPs. I love to use an AI tool. Frase is my favorite. You could also try Jasper. Frase builds a map of relevant keywords of blog posts for the search query.

Consider the following when deciding the depth content:

Audience Search Intent
Competition mapping
Content Research

I also love Backlinko’s Skyscraper technique. You would love Brian Dean’s writing if you enjoy reading my articles. I first heard about the technique from his article on How Google Search Engine Works. I follow his example of writing longer than the longest content ranking on the first page of Google. It requires patience, persistence, and hard work.

A SERP visualizer like the one provided by Frase would be an invaluable tool for a content writer.

SERP Visualizer by Frase

Multimedia content

You can also include multimedia content such as images, videos, audio files etc. into your content. These types of content are very engaging for your readers.

Images

Images are great for adding credibility to your content. Images give your content a professional look and feel.

Images are also great for improving readability. If you’re using a lot of text, consider including an image instead.

Videos

Video content is another way to add credibility to your content. Videos are easy to share and get noticed. They are also great for increasing engagement.

Audio

Audio content is great for providing context to your content. Audio helps increase the overall experience of your website.

Content Delivery Network

Multimedia content has hog a huge amount of internet traffic and thus have a toll on your server performance. A (Content Delivery Network) CDN service allows you to store your media assets on a remote server which is closer to your visitors. The CDN service caches your content and delivers it faster to your visitors. If your website is on wordpress then I recommend hosting it on wordpress.com server itself as it comes with Jetpack CDN. If you are running an ecommerce website then Shopify automatically hosts their server using a word-class CDN system that optimizes delivery of content from a server nearest to the end user.

3. Site Architecture & Search Engine Success Factors

I would like to recommend six elements in site architecture that optimizes your content for search engines.

Easy Crawl

Search engines are crawling machines. Call it a spider if you want but it does exactly what its name says. It crawls through websites looking for information. When it finds something interesting, it saves it in a database.

This means that if your website is not crawlable, you won’t rank well in search engines. There are many reasons why your website might not be crawlable. Some common ones are:

Your website uses Flash technology.
Your website is built using tables rather than div tags.
Your website doesn’t use HTTP protocol.
Your website is too heavy.
It is infected with virus.
Some server scripts blocking the search engines.
Uses Java or server side scripting that do not render the website properly.

If any of these issues apply to your website, you need to fix them before you start optimizing your content.

If your website is not crawlable by search engines then you will never rank well in search engines. In order to make sure that your website is crawlable by search engines you need to ensure that your website follows web standards. Web standards are set by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

One way to tell the search engine crawler is to provide a map of your content on your website.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists out all the webpages on your website. You can create one yourself or you can hire someone to do it for you. Google provides a free tool called Google Sitemaps that you can use to generate a sitemap for your website. You can submit this sitemap to Google and other search engines to let them know that there’s new content available on your website.

Amit Agarwal maintains a host of simple to use google tools. His sitemap generator tool is easy to use.

Blogger XML sitemaps

Mobile Optimized

Mobile Optimization

Google now ranks mobile sites higher than desktop sites. So if you don’t optimize your website for mobile devices, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic.

Majority of search originates from mobile phones. Mobile optimization is important because most people access the Internet via their smartphones.

You can check how mobile friendly your website is by visiting Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool.

Common mistakes in mobile responsive sites are:

Using images instead of CSS background image property.
Not having enough alt attributes.
Having excessive JavaScript code.
Incorrectly coded links.
Unoptimized images.
Redirecting to another URL when clicking on a link.
No meta description tag.
Keywords stuffing.
Use of frames.
Broken links.

Google has a detailed note on how to Avoid common mistakes when designing for mobile.

Duplicate Content

Content duplication is a major SEO issue. If you have duplicate content on your website, it will affect your rankings negatively.

Duplicate content occurs when two different versions of the same webpage exist on your website. For example, if you have an About Us page, you may have a separate About Us page on each section of your website like Home, Services, Contact us etc.

Canonicalization is the process of creating unique content for every single page of your website. It helps you avoid duplicate content issues. Eventually, though, Google will figure it out for you. Make it easy for search engine by use of canonicals, pagination, and redirects. Avoid duplicate content at least within your own website.

Superfast Speed

Google rolled out website speed as a ranking factor in 2018. The faster your website loads, the better it performs in search results.

There are many ways to improve the performance of your website. Here are some tips:

Minify JavaScript files.
Minify CSS files.
Optimize images.
Remove unused CSS styles.
Make sure your server is configured correctly.
Avoid using Flash.
Keep your website clean and clutter-free.

Google has a page speed test tool. Use it.. You will get your test results along with recommendations on how to improve the speed of your website. Ideally, your website should load in less than 3 seconds.

Security

On August 7, 2014, Google announced that https security protocol as a ranking factor. In June 2015, Google announced that HTTPS would become a ranking signal on its own. If you want to secure your website against hackers, then make sure you follow these steps:

Install SSL certificate on your domain name. Head over to Let’s Encrypt – A nonprofit Certificate Authority providing FREE TLS (https) certificates to 260 million websites.

Keywords in URL

URLs are very important for SEO purposes. URLs are visible to search engines and humans alike. They tell visitors and search engines which parts of your website are relevant.

A good URL should include keywords related to your business.

If you are interested in ranking for a long-tail keyword, make sure that the exact keyword is in the beginning of the URL rather than at the end of it. Use hyphens to separate words.

For example, supposing you are writing an article on ‘How Native Plants Help The Environment?’. Make sure that your URL of the published page is something like:

https://yourwebsite.com/how-native-plants-help-the-environment

A bad example of the URL without the keyword would be:

https://yourwebsite.com/blog/2022-august-08/native-ecofriendly-greens/

Avoid using repetitive keywords.

Good example:

https://yourwebsite.com/healthy-food-service-in-bangalore

Bad example:

https://yourwebsite.com/food-service-tiffin-service-tiffin-box-tiffin-meals-in-bangalore

Use logical directory structure in the URL to help readers understand how to navigate the pages in your website.

Google recommends a simple URL structure. Read more from their recommendation.

4. HTML Code & Search Engine Success Factors

Search engine understand Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML Code).So, if you have a well-coded website, it can easily rank higher in search results.

Here are four tips to create a great looking website:

Write clear, concise and error free code. Or simply use a content management system like wordpress that eliminates the need for you to learn HTML coding.
Use valid HTML5 codes. Keep your WordPress updated to the latest version. Ensure that all plugins are compatible with the latest version of wordpress. You will be fine.
Use descriptive alt attributes for images.

HTML Titles

Title tags are one of the most important elements of any webpage.

Example of a Title tag:

<title>What is SEO? A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide</title>

It helps search engines index your webpages. Titles inform the search engine about the contents of each page.

You must write unique titles for every page of your website.

It is recommended to keep the length of the title tag between 60-70 characters.

Title tag should contain keywords related to your article.

There are a bunch of tools available for generating titles. Frase has a Title generator AI tool. Here’s a sample output for the keyword SEO from Frase.

Frase Title Generator

SEMRush also a FREE title generator tool. Here’s a sample output from it.

Title Generator by SEMRush

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are snippets of information that appear below the title tag in search results. They’re typically 160 characters or less. Meta descriptions are very useful because they give Google additional context about the page. Meta descriptions are not visible to visitors. But, they do play an important role in increasing CTR.

They tell Google exactly what the page is about. So, when someone searches for “which is a healthy lunch to eat”, meta description of the page tells Google that this page is about the healthy lunch to eat.

Google Meta Description

Google offers some help on how to write quality meta description. As you can see, the focus is on quality meta description.

Structured Data & Schema

Google Search tries its best to understand the content of each web page. If you want to help Google improve your ranking, please include structured data on the page so they can understand its content better. Structured data is an organized way to provide information about a web page and classify its contents. For example, on a recipe site, structured data describes the ingredients, cooking time and temperature, calories, etc. Structured data tells search engines about your data in machine understandable language.

Google has a detailed guide on how you can use structured data in your article.

Google understands structured data in the following formats:

JSON-LD (Recommended), A JavaScript notation embedded in a <script> tag in the page head or body.
Microdata, An open-community HTML specification used to nest structured data within HTML content.
RDFa, An HTML5 extension that supports linked data by introducing HTML tag attributes that correspond to the user-visible content that you want to describe for search engines.

To learn more about structured data, I recommend that you read beginner’s guide to structured data, and Full hierarchy of Structured Data.

Remember Google has a tool to test Structured Data.

Headings

Heading tags are used to describe the main topic of your page. H1, H2, H3 etc. are the different types of heading tags.

H1 is the largest heading tag. It is usually placed at the top of the page. There must only be one H1 heading tag in a web page. Too many H1 tags will send confusing signals to the search engines.

H2 is the second largest heading tag. It comes after the H1 tag. You can have multiple H2s per page.

H3 is the smallest heading tag. It is used to describe sub topics. It is a good practice to have a few H3s under each H2.

I also sometimes use H4 tags as key bullet points under H3 heading. It is not mandatory to have H4s.

Here’s an example of heading tags from H1 to H4 in a single web page.

Headings H1 to H4 Example

As you can see, headings make it easy for users and search engines to navigate your content easily.

Content Shift

A cumulative layout shift occurs when there is a significant change in the structure of a website. The more the layout shifts, the worse the user experience will be. As you browse a website, sometimes, have you noticed that the content changes? That means the layout of the website has shifted. When this happens, the visitor may get confused and leave the website.

When the layout shifts, Googlebot will flag it as inappropriate and mark your webpage to be weak on core web vitals. It will eventually lower your search ranking. Google is emphasizing in many ways that we must put the reader in mind when we develop content.

For the best user experience, we recommend a CLS score of 0.1 or less. You can read more about CLS score. You can test your web page for CLS Score.

Image ALT Text

ALT attribute helps to identify images. It provides alternative text for image alt attribute. Alt text is very important because it gives additional information about the image.

Alt text should contain the same keywords as the image. But don’t overstuff them. Keep it simple.

Here’s an image with no alt text and with an alt text.

Image with Alt Text and Without Alt Text

5. Trust, Authority, Expertise & Search Rankings

You trust search engines. In order to gain your trust, search engines must learn to trust your published content. How will search engines build trust, authority and expertise for the world wide content and rank them appropriate for the search users?

Search engines need to know who you are and how trustworthy you are. They need to know if you’re an expert in your field. If you’re an expert, then you’ll probably have a lot of high quality links pointing back to your website. These links will help search engines understand that you’re an expert in the subject matter.

If you’re an expert, people will link to you naturally. So, you won’t need to do anything special to get these links.

If you’re not an expert, you’ll need to work hard to get those links. You’ll need to write articles, guest post, comment on blogs and forums, etc.

Authority

Google wants to show authoritative websites first in its results. To become authoritative, you need to earn the trust of other experts in your niche.

To earn the trust of other professionals, you need to publish high quality content. You need to share your knowledge by writing blog posts, guest blogging, commenting on forums, answering questions on Quora, etc.

Google assesses authority on a page by page basis. It looks at things like:

• Page load time

• Content freshness

• Links from other websites

• Backlinks from other sites

• Domain age

• Number of indexed pages

• Quality of the content

• User engagement

• Social signals

• Reputation

Expertise

Experts are usually recognized by their reputation. People trust experts because they’ve seen their work before.

Experts are usually recognized by their name. For example, if you’re an SEO specialist, you might use “SEO Specialist” as your company name.

People trust experts because they’ve heard good reviews about them. People look for authoritative content that received good review star ratings.

Experts are usually recognizable by their credentials. For example, if I’m an SEO consultant, I’d include my certifications (e.g., SEMPO) on my profile.

In addition to earning the trust of other experts, you need to prove that you’re an expert yourself. You need to publish high quality original content.

In order to publish high quality content, you need to invest time and effort into researching topics related to your business. You need to create unique content that solves problems for your readers.

Reputation

Google uses reputation to determine which websites are most relevant to a given query. The higher your reputation, the better chance you have of appearing in Google’s top results.

Google has been known to penalize websites that are too spammy. That means that if you try to game Google by using black hat techniques, you could lose rankings.

Quality Content

There are two types of content:

1. Original content

2. Repurposed content

Original content is written from scratch. It includes new ideas, fresh insights, and original perspectives.

Repurposed content comes from another source. It usually contains some kind of value added. For example, repurposing an infographic would include adding relevant data points and statistics.

It’s better to use original content than repurposed content. Because repurposed content doesn’t add any value. And it may even hurt your SEO efforts.

Trust

You can build trust through social media. But you can only do so much. If you want to really build trust, you need to produce great content.

Google wants to see websites that are easy to read and use. So, don’t design your site with tiny fonts and lots of images. Make sure that your website loads quickly.

If your site isn’t user friendly, people will leave. They’ll go somewhere else.

And when they do, Google won’t rank your site highly anymore.

User Engagement

Users engage with websites that are useful. Users click on links that lead to information that helps solve their problem.

So make sure that your website provides real value to its visitors.

Remember that Google also contracts human evaluators to rank search results.

Social Signals

Social signals are important because they show how popular your website is.

For example, Facebook likes and Twitter followers tell Google that your website is popular.

So, make sure that you’re actively engaging with your target audience.

Citation

A citation is a reference to something outside of your own website. For example, if someone cites Wikipedia, they’re saying that they got their information from there.

When you cite sources, you’re showing that you’re trustworthy.

That’s why citations are important.

Tools like Citation Machine help to build and maintain citations.

Citation Machine

6. Link building & ranking in search engines

Link building is one of the most effective ways to improve your organic traffic.

But before we get started, let me explain what link building is.

Links are simply connections between different webpages. Links are created when someone shares a webpage on their blog or social media account. The more times a webpage gets shared, the more likely it is to appear in search results.

This is called backlink building.

Backlinks are essential for improving your SEO.They help Google understand that your website is valuable.And this makes it easier for Google to rank your site.

Now, here’s how to actually build links. First, you need to identify potential linking opportunities. Then, you need to create compelling content. Finally, you need to share your content on other sites.

Value of Links

Not all backlinks are equal. Some backlinks have more weight than others.

Here’s how to determine which ones are worth pursuing:

1. Backlinks from high authority domains carry more weight than those from low authority domains.

2. Backlinks from trusted websites carry more weight than those coming from untrustworthy sites.

3. Backlinks from older posts carry more weight than newer posts.

4. Backlinks from websites that focus on similar topics carry more weight than those that cover unrelated topics.

5. Backlinks from authoritative websites carry more weight than non-authoritative websites.

6. Backlinks from websites with higher PageRank carry more weight than those with lower PageRanks.

7. Backlinks from websites owned by large companies carry more weight than those owned by small businesses.

8. Backlinks from websites located in countries with high English proficiency carry more weight than those located in countries with low English proficiency.

9. Backlinks from websites whose owners have been active participants in the same industry as yours carry more weight than those who haven’t participated.

10. Backlinks from websites in your niche carry more weight than those not in your niche.

11. Backlinks from websites related to your business carry more weight than those unrelated to your business.

12. Backlinks from reputed news publications carry more weight than comments in a public blog.

13. Backlinks from educational websites (.edu, .edu.in etc) carry more weight.

Let’s look at each step in Link Building in detail.

Identify Potential Linking Opportunities

There are many places where you can find potential linking opportunities.

One place is by looking at your competitors’ websites. You can learn a lot about them by analyzing their backlinks. You could use a tool like ubersuggest backlink opportunities to find websites that are linking to your competing web pages.

Backlink Opportunity

Publish valuable content

Once you’ve identified some potential linking opportunities, you’ll want to publish some relevant content.

You can do this through guest posting. Guest posting allows you to post articles on other people’s blogs. It’s an effective way to get backlinks because most bloggers will link to your content if they think it adds value.

Another option is to write a blog post yourself. If you’re comfortable writing, then you can start a blog and write about things that interest you. The beauty of blogging is that once you’ve written something interesting, you can always come back later and add new content.

Another option is to write a white paper. White papers are documents that explain a topic in greater detail than a typical blog post. They usually take longer to write but offer better SEO benefits.

Contact the backlink opportunity

After publishing content, you’ll want to write to the website owner and ask if he/she would be interested in adding a link to your website.

If the website owner agrees, you’ll need to make sure that your content is well written and optimized for search engines. Make sure that you include keywords throughout the content. Also, make sure that you don’t overuse links. Links should only be included when they’re relevant to the content. Make sure that your anchor text is relevant and appropriate.

Anchor Text

Anchors are words or phrases that point to another webpage. Anchor text helps search engines understand which page a link points to.

When creating anchor text, keep these tips in mind:

Use descriptive anchors. Don’t just use “click here” or “read more”. Use terms such as “how to”, “why”, “when”, “where”, “who”, “what”, “which” and “more information”. These types of anchors are easier for readers to click on.

Use keyword rich anchors. Keywords are important for search engines. When using keywords, try to use them naturally. For example, instead of saying “Click Here” say “How To Start a Fractal Entrepreneurship in India“.

Avoid using spammy anchor texts. Use natural language anchor text.
Avoid using keywords unnaturally in your anchor text. Use relevant terms and words.
Avoid generic anchor texts such as ‘Click Here’. Use specific underlined anchor texts that users are used to seeing.
Avoid using anchor text as click baits. Use it concisely.

Inbound Links | Backlinks

Inbound links are backlinks from other websites. Inbound links are very important for search engines because they tell them how popular your website is.

There are many ways to build backlinks:

Guest Posting

This is one of the best ways to build backlinks. Guest posting lets you share your expertise with other sites. Most bloggers will gladly accept guest posts if they see it adds value to their site.

Write Articles

This is another great way to build backlinks. Write quality articles that are informative and helpful. Include keywords in your articles. You can even create a list of topics you’d like to cover and write about each one.

Social Media Marketing

Create accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Share your content and engage with others.

Link Building

Link building is an effective method of building backlinks. It’s a process of getting other websites to add a link to yours.

Directories

These directories allow businesses to submit their websites for inclusion. The directory owners then review the submissions and decide whether to approve them.

Search Engines

Search engines have their own submission forms. Submit your URL to them. They may not always respond but at least you tried.

Other Ways to Build Backlinks

You can also build backlinks by sharing your content on forums, blogs, groups and communities.

How not to build inbound links?

Avoid

comment spamming
link buying
guest posting schemes
link exchanges
content farming
spamming
black hat SEO
keyword stuffing
using hidden text
using invisible text
creating duplicate content
using too many keywords
creating lots of low quality content
writing poor quality content
sending out mass emails
using backlinking spiders and automated comment spamming tools

7. User context signals & search engine rankings

Have you noticed that search results vary from user to user and from location to location? Search engines know this and adjust their algorithms accordingly.

Context Signals

Google uses several different signals when determining which result to show first. Some of these si

1. Page Rank (PR)

2. Domain Authority (DA)

3. Trust Flow (TF)

4. Citation Flow (CF)

5. Social Count (SC)

6. Language Detection (LD)

7. Content Quality (CQ)

8. Anchor Text (AT)

9. Internal Link Structure (ILS)

10. Site Architecture (SA)

11. Authoritativeness (AU)

12. Breadth/Depth (BD)

13. Semantic Similarity (SS)

14. Keywords (KW)

15. Relevance (RE)

16. Freshness (FR)

17. Time Decay (TD)

18. External Links (EL)

19. Landing Pages (LP)

20. Mobile Friendliness (MF)

21. Geolocation (GL)

22. Open Graph Data (OGD)

23. Schema Markup (SM)

24. Structured Data (SD)

25. Video Indexing (VI)

26. Image Alt Attribute (IAA)

Country Specific Context

Google has been known to use country specific signals to rank pages. For example, if you’re planning for your honeymoon and searching for “best honeymoon hotels in bali” Google will try to find the best hotels in Bali before a listing in some other city near Bali. Google has gotten better with country specific context since it tracks your location set in your browser.

Search engines understand country specific context too. For example, if you are searching for ‘Last Night Football scores’ from your location in India, the SEPR results will show scores of soccer matches in and around or involving India. If you are searching for the same in, say, New York, it will show results of American Football (NFL) matches. Similarly, you will get country specific results in Australia.

Ensure that your content is tuned to the target audience of your country, culture and language. If you have content in multiple local languages, inform Google of the localized variants.

Local Context

If you are searching for ‘Tiffin Service Near Me’ you are likely to get tiffin service companies near your present location. Google automatically adjusts the results according to the current location settings identified by the browser. You can, of course, go to the browser settings and change your current location if you so desire.

Local Search Results Example

Google My Business

If you would like to appear in the local search results then please enter your details in Google My Business.

You may need to wait up to 72 hours for the changes to take effect. Once you’ve entered your business information into Google My Business, you’ll see an indicator next to your listing that shows whether or not your listing was found by people who searched for your business name. Add location details, capture user rankings, customer reviews, and photos to ensure that your business is up to date and showing all relevant information.

Search History as Context

When you search for something, Google remembers this query and uses it to determine relevant sites to your future searches. The more times you search for something, the more relevant your website becomes. So, when you search for “honeymoon destinations”, Google might suggest related terms such as “Bali Honeymoon Packages” or “Honeymoon Destinations In Indonesia”.

This is called Search Suggestions. It’s one of the most powerful ways to improve your SEO.

Keep this in context and build content around these queries.

Positive User Experience

The goal of search engines is to send search users to the most relevant web pages that give them a positive user experience. A good user experience means that the searcher finds the answer to their question quickly and easily. Users don’t want to spend time looking through irrelevant websites. They want to find exactly what they are looking for.

A good user experience is achieved by providing high quality content and clean, well designed sites. These things make sure that users can find what they are looking for without having to sift throughlots of irrelevant material.

User Experience Is Key

In order to achieve a good user experience, you must first create great content. Then you must design your site to be easy to use and navigate. Finally, you must optimize your site for search engines.

Optimizing your site for search engines involves ensuring that your site has a clear structure, that it loads fast, and that it contains relevant and useful content. All of these elements will contribute to creating a better user experience.

Follow the KISS principle in design your User Experience. Keep it simple, stupid! While your users are intelligent human beings, try to define your user experience levels before writing your content. If they are beginners then you may want to write content for dummies. If they are expert level users, then, you may want to consider writing advanced level content.

Search Intent

Google understands what type of search you’re performing. For example, if you search for “best dog food”, you probably have a pet at home. You’re searching for a product that will feed your dog.

Google knows this and will show you products that match your intent. If you perform a different kind of search, you’ll get a different set of results.

For example, if you were searching for “dog training tips” you would expect to see articles that teach you how to train your dog.

If you do a search like “how to train my dog”, you’ll likely receive a list of dog training videos.

Your job is to understand what types of searches your audience performs and then write content that matches those intents.

Types of Search Intents

There are three main categories of search: informational, navigational, and transactional.

Informational Searches

These are searches that require information. For example, if I’m trying to learn about a new topic, I’d search for “How To Learn About…”

Informational Searches

Navigational Searches

These searches are usually performed when someone wants to go somewhere else. For example, if someone wanted to visit place B from A, they might search for “malleswaram to koramangala”.

Navigational Searches

Transactional Searches

These are the searches that people perform when they need something done. For example, if my friend needed me to hire a gardener for setting up a home garden, she would ask me to search for “hire a gardener”.

Transactional Searches

Commercial Searches

If you are looking to buy fruits from a local store near you, then you would look for specific search for ‘vegetables and fruits delivery’.

Commercial Searches

Search engines are become smart in identifying search intent of the users. Supposing you are searching for ‘tallest buildings in bangalore’, Google will automatically list the top buildings with their heights.

Search intent of user

Avinash Kaushik walks you through how Google identifies search intent. Watch this video.

8. Toxins & search engine spam penalties

Toxins are dangerous.Toxic ideas can cause severe damage to your website’s reputation. So, it is important to avoid them.

Spammy Links

Spammy links are links which are not related to your business but appear as if they are related to your business. These links are often placed by spammers who use automated software to generate thousands of such links.

These links are called toxic links because they can harm your website’s reputation. They can even result in an instant penalty from Google.

So, it is very important to keep these links away from your website.

Here are some ways to identify and remove spammy links from your website:

Check out your backlinks.
Use link analysis tools to check for any suspicious links.
Remove any links pointing to your website.
Monitor your website’s performance over time.
Keep an eye on your competitors’ websites.
Do a manual review of your website.
Run a webmaster tool like Screaming Frog.
Get rid of any comments that contain links.
Delete any blog posts that contain links.
Report any suspicious links to Google using Webmaster.

Cloaking

Cloaking refers to showing certain parts of your website to search engines and certain parts of your website to users. It is done to make sure that only relevant results show up in search results.

You can get penalized for cloaking. You can lose traffic and rankings.

Google has recently started cracking down on cloaking. If you have been doing it, you may want to stop now. Cloaking is a deliberate act of subverting the search engine results.

Cloaking is against Google Guidelines.

Let your intent not be suspicious in the eyes of searchbots. Google webmaster guidelines are clear about what forms cloaking and what is not a violation. Sometimes, you will need to use server side scripts such as Javascripts to deliver some specific content to bots. Google has specific guidelines for Javascripts. At present, they are turning a blind eye to such server side scripting as long as they decide that your intent is not malicious.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is when you stuff too many words into a single keyword phrase or into a web page to mislead search engines to think your web page is specific to the target keyword. The idea behind keyword stuffing is to increase the number of times a particular word appears in a document.

This practice is frowned upon by search engines because it makes your pages less readable. Search engines don’t want to index pages full of irrelevant or repetitive keywords.

It is best to write natural sentences. Use synonyms whenever possible. Don’t repeat keywords unnecessarily.

Focus on user intent. Deliver quality content and add value to your readers. Let them learn something unique from your content. Let the content is unique. Let it not be available anywhere else. Let your audience be impressed with your content. Search engines will love content that are loved by their search users. Remember that the search bots have AI capability, too. Given time, they will figure out if your content is authentic and useful.

Google is quite strict about keyword stuffing.

Content Piracy

Plagiarism is illegal. Search engines frown upon this. They consider it unethical. Content piracy is when someone copies another person’s work without permission.

If you copy other people’s content, you risk getting caught. You risk losing your reputation. You risk being banned from Google.

Search engines do not allow plagiarism. They take action against sites that engage in content piracy.

They ban those who engage in content piracy. They remove pirated content from their indexes.

They report these sites to authorities.

They blacklist these sites.

They even block access to these sites.

In short, they punish those who engage in content theft.

Google and it’s sister search engine Youtube have cracked down on copyright piracy and continue to report astounding insights.

Youtube By the Numbers

On Feb 24, 2011, Google announced a big algorithm update to their search engine that they claim affected 11.8% of search queries. The update was aimed at finding more high-quality sites in search.

Link Schemes

A link scheme is an attempt to manipulate the search results of a search engine. Link schemes can include:

Buying and selling links in order to buy PageRank
Exchanging goods for creating backlinks
Sending a free product in order to buy backlinks
Link exchanges that offer to link each other’s websites
Large scale article marketing
Large scale comment spamming
Creating fake accounts to create backlinks
Building links through social media by manipulating 100’s of social media accounts

These practices are considered black hat SEO. Black hat SEO techniques are often used by unscrupulous marketers looking to game the system.

Black hat SEO tactics are often used by unscrupulous marketers looking to game the search engine systems.

Black hat SEO is not recommended. It may get you penalized.

Google frowns upon link schemes that aim to manipulate Google’s PageRank. Google also launched a series of algorithm updates over the years to reward high quality content sites. Bing also has strict guidelines on spammy links.

Hidden Texts and Links

Hidden texts are hidden words or phrases that appear in the source code of webpages. These codes are invisible to humans but visible to search engines.

Hidden links are also invisible to humans but seen by search engines.

Hiding texts and links is considered a deceptive technique by Google and will attract penalty. According to Google, there are several techniques that will attempt to camouflage texts and links:

Using white text on a white background
Locating text behind an image
Using CSS to position text off-screen
Setting the font size to 0
Hiding a link by only linking one small character—for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph

Hiding texts and links is a technique used to trick search engines into thinking that certain words or phrases are important. Hidden text is often used by spammers to try and fool search engines into giving them higher rankings.

It is best to avoid using hidden text and links.

Intrusive Content That Act as Obstacles to User Experience

Obstacle content includes anything that blocks user experience. Examples of obstacle content include:

Flash videos
Video ads
Popup windows
Image maps
JavaScript popups
Too many advertisements
Unexcepted windows misleading you to various other pages that the ones you intended to see

Other types of intrusive content such as popunders, interstitials, and modal windows are also considered obstacle content.

Obstacle content is usually avoided because it distracts from the main purpose of your users.

Intrusive Content

Page layout algorithm improvement on search algorithms announced by Google on January 19, 2012, has put emphasis on clearly laid out content structure and how much of content a user is likely to see and consume on your page.

Users need to see what they came to read. Nothing should obstruct their experience of getting straight to the content for which they searched and landed on your web page.

Consequently, Google analytics uses bounce rates as a true measure of user retention on a web page. If you are into content marketing, keep an eye out on organic search engine traffic and the bounce rates. Your long-term strategy of content marketing efforts must not only on click-through rates but also user retention rates.

Produce awesome content. Your users will love them. Complex algorithms of search engines will reward you with rich benefits of SEO. Authoritative content is a key pillar of SEO. Designing a rich user experience is considered part of key pillars of SEO, too.

Your actual content must be browsable in all sizes of browsers. You can use Browser Size tool or a Chrome Browser Resize Extension tool to test your website on various sizes. Google has rolled in Browser size testing tool as part of Google Analytics.

Google recommends publishers and business owners to focus on producing quality content instead of specific search engine algorithms.

Intrusive Mobile interstitials are a massive problem. Google have come down heavily with a mobile intrusive update with an intent to helping users easily access content on mobile.

9. Emerging verticals in search

Text based searches are here to stay. But, there are many new emerging verticals in search marketing you need to be aware of and get prepared to exploit the new opportunities. They are:

Voice search
Image search
Video search
Local search

Let us quickly look at each emerging trend in search.

Voice search

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular. It is estimated that voice search will overtake desktop search by 2030. Voice search is already being used by millions of people every day.

Voice search is basically a combination of speech recognition technology and natural language processing. The user speaks a query and gets back relevant results.

Invoca compiled detailed statistics on voice search market. Here’s a summary of their report.

In 2024, Global smart speakers, which drive the voice search market, will surpass $30 billion.
By 2022, one in two households in developed countries will own a smart speaker device.
34% of people will use a voice assistant in 2022.
In 2020, 32% of searches on the web are screen-less.
40% of ecommerce sales will come from voice assistants in 2022.

Voice-Enabled Devices

How can you exploit voice search?

I call it Answer Marketing. Build a FAQ on your website on the niche related to your products and services. Search engines will do the rest.

If you are interested in developing apps specifically with voice assistance capability, explore Google’s Dialogflow.

Image Search

Images are a huge part of our lives today. We take pictures, we share photos, we create memes, etc. Images are everywhere. And, images are getting bigger and bigger.

According to Statista, image files were 1.3 zettabytes (1.3 trillion gigabytes) in 2016. That number is expected to grow to 2.2 zettabytes by 2023.

You may have used google image search. Have you tried reverse Google image search? Reverse image search helps you find similar images to any given image. For instance, you can find details of a plant by simply scanning the plant using google search app on your phone. Amit Agarwarl of Labnol built a simple reverse image lookup tool.

Image search is still a slightly less competitive landscape. Business owners still rely heavily on text based search content marketing. You can exploit image search by ensuring that you add relevant images to your articles with appropriate alt text description to inform search engines what your images are meant for.

Bad (missing alt text): <img src=”puppy.jpg”/>

Best: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”/>

Google Images best practices offer you a detailed insight into how you can use image search marketing.

Local Search

Local search has been around since the beginning of Google search engine. Local search is when you type in a location into a search bar. For example, if I am looking for a restaurant near me, I would type “restaurant near me”.

But, local search is evolving rapidly. In fact, according to Google, over 50% of queries are now local.

If you are ranking high on local searches for your fractal business, you are likely to have customer footfall into your business. Footfall will bring revenue.

Google my business continues to evolve. Claim your business today and optimize your listing with description and images and customer reviews. Sit back and watch your local business grow on auto-pilot.

The Google Guarantee badge is available for businesses that pass a Google screening and verification process through Local Services Ads or its partners.

Video Search

Video is becoming an increasingly important form of content. According to Cisco Visual Networking Index report, video traffic grew at a rate of 40% between 2015 and 2017.

YouTube alone accounts for nearly 60% of internet traffic in North America. Video is a great way to engage customers, build trust and increase brand awareness.

Video SEO is a relatively new field. But, there are some things you need to know before starting out.

Here are some tips to get started with YouTube SEO.

Keywords

Your videos must contain keywords which are related to your business. If you don’t include them, no one will see your video.

Title tags

Use keywords in your titles as well. Titles are displayed above the video player. They are very important because they appear in search results

Description

Use keywords in your descriptions too. Descriptions are displayed below the video player. They appear in search results.

Playlists

Create playlists of your videos. Playlists allow viewers to browse your videos quickly.

Cover Image (Thumbnail)

Upload a cover image for each video. A cover image appears on the top right corner of the video player. It’s important to keep this image consistent across all your videos.

Focus on Entertaining

Focus on average time watched by your target audience. Don’t go for youtube views. Here’s why you must focus on watch time. In Mar 2012, Google announced some changes in the way they show recommended and related videos on youtube. Focus is clearly on entertaining viewers.

Content is king in video. But, if the content needs to entertain. Use images, copyright free filler videos, animated strips and most important copyright free music to deliver your content in an entertaining manner.

For further information on YouTube videos marketing, please visit Discovery and performance FAQs by Youtube.

FAQ on SEO

What is the most important factor in SEO marketing?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of websites or web pages in search engines. Generally speaking, the earlier (or higher ranked on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine users. However, SEO takes work and knowledge about both Google and your website/page. You should always use quality content on your site along with links pointing back to your site.

How do I rank faster on Google?

You need to produce high quality content using keywords that are relevant to what you sell. If you don’t know how to optimize your site, then you should hire someone who does. A professional SEO service can help you increase traffic to your site and boost sales.

Can I rank a website without SEO?

Yes, you can rank a website without SEO. However, it won’t be easy. You’ll need to do a lot of work to make sure your site ranks high in search engines like Google. If you don’t want to spend hours every week working on your website, then you should hire someone who specializes in SEO.

How much does SEO cost?

SEO is free unless you hire someone else to do it for you. You can learn how to optimize your website yourself using tools such as Screaming Frog or SEMrush.

What Are the Top Priorities for Technical SEO?

Clean HTML code, High quality content, Title, Keyword, Alt text for images, Headings from H1 to H4, Internal links, external links, mobile friendliness, and speed are the primary technical SEO considerations.

What Is Organic Traffic?

Traffic coming from organic searches through search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo is called “organic” traffic. If someone does a Google search for something like “best hotels near me,” then if your site appears high on the results page, people will click and visit your website. This is organic traffic.

What Is Direct Traffic?

Direct traffic is the number of visitors who arrive directly to your website without going through another site or page. This type of traffic is very important because it shows how effective your marketing efforts are. If you want to increase direct traffic, then you should focus on creating high quality content that people find interesting. You can do this by writing articles about topics related to your business or industry.

How to Create Good Content?

According to Neil Patel, there are 10 rules to creating good quality content

Craft a Compelling Headline.
Hook Readers With an Interesting Intro.
Write for Your Audience.
Narrow Your Article’s Focus.
Be Engaging.
Write in Your Unique Brand Voice.
Provide Knowledge That Readers Want.
Use an Outline.
Include Actionable Tips
Add Trust Factors

Is SEO easy to learn?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not something that anyone can master overnight. However, there are plenty of resources online that can teach you how to do it properly. You should start learning about SEO today.

What are SEO tools?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools help websites improve their chances of appearing at the top of search results. They provide information on links and keywords as well as insight into SEO competition online.

Do you suggest any FREE SEO Tools?

I suggest you begin with these free SEO tools:

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Monitor your website’s SEO health, see who’s linking to your website, and learn what your website is ranking for on Google

Ahrefs Keyword Generator

See the top 100 keyword ideas for any seed keyword, as well as related search data

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s keyword research tool

AlsoAsked
Find People Also Ask questions

Keyworddit
Do keyword research on Reddit

Google Trends
See search trends from all around the world

RankMath
WordPress SEO plugin for on-page and technical SEO

Google SERP Snippet Optimizer Tool
See how your page will look like on the SERPs

Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator
Create structured data markup in the JSON-LD format

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar
Multi-feature browser extension that provides SEO data about the pages and websites you visit

Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker

See the top 100 backlinks to any website or webpage

Hunter.io
Find email addresses

Google Search Console
Free tool from Google that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance on the SERPs

GTmetrix
Analyze the loading speed of your webpages

ShortPixel
Optimize your images

Robots.txt Generator
Create a properly formatted robots.txt file

Hreflang Tag Generator
Generate hreflang tags to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage

View Rendered Source
See how the browser renders a page

Ahrefs’ SERP Checker
See the top 10 ranking pages for any keyword

BrightLocal’s Local SERP Checker See search results from any location

Google Analytics
Google’s analytics tool

Google Data Studio
Create interactive dashboards and reports

Ahrefs’ SEO WordPress Plugin
Run a content audit of your website

Google Business Profile Manager
Manage how your local business appears on Google Search and Maps

Google Alerts
Monitor mentions of your name or business online

Google
World’s most used search engine

Conclusion

In conclusion, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks higher than your competitors on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. This means that when someone types in a keyword related to your product or service, their search results will show up on page one of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is where you want to be because it means that potential customers will be able to find you easily. In fact, according to Moz, 80% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses. So if you want to rank high on SERPS, you need to optimize your site properly.

The key to doing this is to ensure that your content is optimized for keywords. These keywords should relate directly to your products or services, and ideally, they should appear multiple times throughout your text.

Needless to say, if you wish to succeed on search engine optimization (SEO), focus on quality content.

This is where SEO really takes off. By optimizing your content, you can ensure that potential customers find your site easily. This leads to increased sales and ultimately greater profits. So whether you want to increase your online presence or boost your current ranking, SEO is the answer.

What is your experience with SEO?

Share your experience.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.

How Marketing Funnels Work and How to Create a Marketing Funnel For Your Fractal Business Easily Today?

August 16, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

Do you want to create a marketing funnel for your fractal business? Are you looking for a way to get started with marketing funnels?

In this article, I’m going to teach you how marketing funnels work and how to create a marketing funnel easily for your fractal business. This will help you build a solid foundation for your marketing efforts.

You’ll learn the difference between a sales funnel and a marketing funnel and why you should care. Then I’ll explain how to set up a marketing funnel for your business using Google Analytics. Finally, I’ll go over how to make sure your marketing funnel works for you.

What Are Marketing Funnels?

A marketing funnel is a visual depiction of the steps someone goes through while interacting with your brand. You might use it to show prospects how your product works, what happens next, and where to go to make a purchase.

The most popular version of a marketing funnel includes four stages: attention, interest, desire, and conversion. At each step along the way, you’ll find a different set of goals, such as increasing awareness, generating leads, or converting sales.

As you build your funnel over time, you’ll start to see patterns emerge. For example, you might notice that people are spending less time on the “interest” stage, because they’re already interested in buying your product. Or maybe you’ve found that once people reach the “conversion” stage, they tend to spend more money.

What Are the Different Types of Funnels?

Funnel types are often confused because there are many different ways to build a funnel. Some people call it “funnels,” while others refer to it as a sales process. There are three main types of funnels:

Sales funnels

These are used for selling products online. They usually begin with a customer inquiry or lead generation event like a webinar, email newsletter signup, etc. Then, there is a conversion phase where the buyer completes an action like buying a product, signing up for a free trial, subscribing to a list, requesting a quote, etc. Finally, there is a close/delivery phase where the seller sends out the product or collects payment.

Marketing funnels

Marketing funnels are used for generating leads or building relationships. They typically begin with some type of marketing activity like a paid advertising campaign, blog post or ebook publication, etc. Then, prospects are nurtured over time via content marketing, emails, phone calls, etc. Eventually, the prospect becomes aware of the offering and wants to learn more. This could mean downloading a whitepaper, watching a short demo, reading a case study, viewing a webinar, speaking with a salesperson, etc.

Webinar funnels

A webinar funnel begins with a webinar being organized. Prospects register for the webinar, watch the presentation, ask questions, and then take the next steps in the sales cycle.

Why Should I Care About Marketing Funnels?

You should care about marketing funnels because they help you understand who’s visiting your website, what they want, and how they interact with your site. If you don’t know these things, you can’t effectively market to them.

If you have a sales funnel, you can track which pages on your site are leading to conversions. That means you can optimize those pages so that they convert better.

If you have a marketing funnel, you can measure the success of your campaigns by tracking their progress from one stage to another. For example, if you run a Facebook ad campaign, you can look at the number of clicks, impressions, and conversions.

If you have both a sales and marketing funnel, you can compare the two and identify any gaps between them. You can use this information to improve your overall business strategy.

How Do I Build My Own Sales & Marketing Funnels?

There are several tools available to help you create a sales and marketing funnel. Here are some examples:

Leadpages

Leadpages makes it easy to create landing pages, squeeze pages, ebooks, and other forms of direct response marketing. It alsohas drag-and-drop functionality that allows you to easily customize your page designs.

Hubspot

HubSpot offers a suite of marketing automation features including landing page creation, email marketing, social media management, SEO, analytics, and CRM integration. Their platform includes prebuilt templates that make it easy to get started.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a software tool designed specifically forcreating sales funnels. The tool has a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to set up different types of funnels such as membership sites, optin funnels, and sales funnels.

Convertri

Convertri is a software solution that helps businesses build their own custom marketing funnels. It provides users with everything they need to launch a successful marketing campaign, including landingpages, lead magnets, email templates, and more.

What Is an Opt-In Funnel?

An opt-in funnel is a series of pages that collect names and email addresses. Once someone enters their name and email address, they’re added to a list. From there, you can send out periodic emails, follow up with automated emails, or even offer special promotions.

Opt-in funnels are usually created using a landing page. Landing pages are simple websites that exist solely to drive people to your main website. When visitors arrive at your landing page, they fill out a form asking for their name and email address.

Opt-in funnels work well for collecting contact information when you have something valuable to sell. For example, if your company sells health and fitness products,then you might start an opt-in funnel by offering a free report in exchange for their name and email.

The next step would be to send regular emails promoting your services and informing subscribers about new reports. Over time, you could offer additional value to your customers, like a monthly newsletter, webinar, or online course.

Why Use An Opt-In Funnel Instead Of A Squeeze Page?

A squeeze page is similar to an opt-in funnel except that instead of collecting names and email addresses, it collects only a single piece of information: a purchase action. This type of page is often used to promote affiliate programs or to gather leads before sending out an email blast.

Why Use An Opt-In Email List Instead Of A Mailing List?

You may think that building an email list sounds complicated. But the truth is, most companies already have lists of contacts who opted into receiving emails from them. These lists are called “opt-in” or “double opt-in” lists because people had to take two actions to sign up: They either had to confirm their email address on your site or enter their name and email address into a form.

You can use these existing lists to create an opt-in funnel. Just add a few steps to the process so that people receive more value first. For example, you can offer a free ebook in exchange for their name. Or maybe you can give away a discount coupon for signing up.

Once people enter their name and email, you’ll be able to communicate with them over time through your autoresponder service. You can also use this list to segment your audience based on interest or behavior. If you notice that some people are unsubscribing after just one email, then you know you should change the subject line or content of future messages.

What Can You Use a Marketing Funnel For?

A marketing funnel is a tool used to help businesses reach their goals. You use it to collect information about people who come to your website, such as whether they’re interested in a certain product or service, and then you send them down a path toward making a purchase or signing up for something.

The process starts with a goal, like “Sign Up,” and then you build a way for visitors to get there. This could include a lead magnet (e.g., free report), opt-in box, or even just a button on your homepage. Then, once someone lands on that page, you show them some content related to your goal. If they’re still intrigued, you might ask them to fill out a form or take a quiz. Finally, you give them one last nudge to make a decision, like sending them an e-mail asking them to confirm their interest in your offer.

You can use a funnel anywhere you’d like, but most often marketers focus on creating a funnel specifically for collecting contact information. This is called a lead generation funnel because it helps companies generate leads—people who express interest in their products or services. After all, without customers, you don’t have much of a business.

If you’ve ever been asked why you need a landing page, you know what I’m talking about. A landing page is simply a webpage designed to convert traffic into sales or leads. Landing pages are typically short, concise, and focused. They usually feature a call to action (CTA)—like a button that says “Buy Now”—and they try to get visitors to complete a transaction within a few seconds.

Landing pages are great for generating immediate responses, but they’re not always ideal for long-term relationships. In fact, many experts say that landing pages are better suited for capturing emails than turning browsers into buyers. To learn more about why landing pages are important, read How to Create a Landing Page That Works.

But if you’re looking to turn browsers into buyers, you need to think beyond landing pages. There are several different types of funnels you can use to guide visitors through your buying journey. Here are three common options:

1. Lead Generation Funnel

This type of funnel is best for building trust with new audiences. It’s also good for getting leads from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Sales Funnel

Sales funnels work well when you want to sell a single product or service. The idea here is to move potential customers through a series of steps until they eventually buy.

3. Customer Retention Funnel

Customer retention funnels help you keep existing customers coming back for more. For example, Amazon Prime memberships tend to be longer term purchases. So the customer retention funnel includes things like adding benefits to an account, offering incentives, and other ways to keep customers engaged.

Why Are Marketing Funnels Beneficial?

Marketing funnels provide access to customer data, called a marketing funnel report, which lets you see where your customers are escaping the funnel. If you’re like most businesses, you probably know what your conversion rates are, but you don’t really understand why people abandon your sales process.

Here’s an analogy: think about a leaky bucket. You put water into the bucket, and some of it goes down the drain. But the rest stays inside the bucket. Now imagine that the bucket is part of a larger system. Some of the water drains out, but the rest flows into another bucket. And another. And another. Eventually, the buckets become full, and the flow stops. At this point, there’s no way to tell how much water went into each bucket.

Funnels work similarly. They let you see how many people enter your sales process and how many of those people convert. However, they don’t show you how many people got away without converting. So, if you see that 10% of visitors convert, but 90% of visitors leave without signing up, you might assume that your conversion rate is 5%. In reality, your conversion rate could be 75%, since you never found out how many customers escaped.

The same thing happens in marketing funnels. When you ask people what happened next, they say things like “I didn’t find what I wanted.” Or “the signup form wasn’t clear enough.” These are common reasons why people exit the funnel.

In fact, marketers often use funnel reports to figure out why people aren’t buying. For example, a funnel might reveal that 20% of people who visited your product page bought, while 80% left without making a purchase. This information gives you insight into whether your offer is compelling enough to entice potential buyers.

A Real-Life Marketing Funnel Example

Let’s say you wanted to sell a book online. You could write a blog post about it, put up some ads, or run an ad campaign. But there’s another way to do it. A funnel.

You might start off with a free offer. Maybe you give away 50 books for free. Then maybe you offer 10 more books for $10 each. And finally, you make one final push to sell 20 books for $20 each. This is called a funnel.

The idea behind a funnel is that people are more likely to buy once they know how much they want to spend. So, let’s say someone wants to buy the second batch of books. They go to your site, and they find out that the price is $10. If they don’t want to pay that much, they just move along. If they love the book, though, they’re more likely to sign up for the mailing list and eventually buy the remaining books.

So, imagine that person goes to Amazon.com and searches for “funnel.” There are lots of different products offering funnels. Some are free, others cost money. One thing they all have in common is that they help you understand where visitors come from, what they do on your site, and how long they stick around.

In fact, Google Analytics lets you build a funnel just like this. Just add a goal to your funnel. For example, I’d set my goal to convert readers into buyers. When someone buys a book, they enter the conversion funnel. Now, they’ve become a customer.

If you use a tool like Google Analytics, you can actually see the path that customers take through the funnel. You can even break down conversions based on location, device type, and many other factors.

How Google Analytics Marketing Funnels Work

Google Analytics offers a lot of ways to measure marketing success. One of my favorite tools is the Google Analytics Marketing Funnel report. When you’re ready to start tracking conversions and conversion rates, there are several steps you need to follow. In this post, we’ll walk through how to set up a funnel in Google Analytics.

Step 1: Set Up Your Goals

Before you can track conversions, you first need to create goals. Click New Goal Definition.

This will open a new window with a blank template. Fill in the name of your goal (e.g., Book Buyer), select Destination URL, and choose the destination page (e.g., /book/buy).

Now, click Create Goal.

This will bring you back to the main dashboard. Click View Report.

Here’s what the report looks like.

As you can see, the report shows you traffic sources, pages viewed, and conversions. The Conversion Rate column tells you how many people converted compared to total visits.

To get started, click Add Column.

Then, scroll down until you see Traffic Sources. Select Source Type.

Then, select Website.

Next, select Landing Page.

Finally, select Conversions.

Step 2: Track Visitors

Once you’ve created your goals, you need to track them. This will open the Goals section of the interface. Click +Add Goal.

Select the goal you just created.

Click Edit.

You’ll be taken to a screen with two tabs. On the left side, you’ll see the data for your goal. On the right side, you’ll see an overview of all your goals.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Here, you’ll see a box labeled Visitor Flow.

Click it.

The next step is to define which events should trigger your goal. These are called triggers. For example, if you wanted to track when someone clicked on a link, you would check Link Clicked.

For each event, you can also specify whether or not you want to count a visitor as a bounce. A bounce happens when a user clicks on one page and then leaves immediately without visiting anyother pages.

For example, let’s say you want to know how many people visit your home page but don’t buy anything. To do this, you’d set Bounce No.

When you’re done, click Save Changes at the top of the page.

Step 3: Track Conversions

After you’ve tracked your visitors, you need to track your conversions. This will open theConversions section of the interface.

Click +Add Conversion.

Select the goal from Step 1. Then, select Event Category.

Next, select Event Action.

Finally, select the event you want to track.

Step 4: Measure Success

After you have defined your conversion funnel, you can begin measuring its success.

First, click +Add Metric.

Select the metric you want to use to measure success. You can choose between three different metrics:

Clicks – How many times did users click on links?

Bounce Rate – How often did users leave after clicking on a single page?

Pageviews – How many unique pages did users view?

If you want to compare multiple funnels, you can add more than one metric by selecting More Metrics.

If you want to compare multiple metrics across multiple funnels, you must add another metric.

In our case, we want to compare the number of book buyers versus non-buyers. So, we’ll add Clicks and Bounces.

Now that you have added both metrics, you can start comparing them.

To do so, click Compare Metrics.

A new window opens up.

On the left side, you can see the comparison between Book Buyer vs Non-Buyer.

On the right side, you can see how they stack up against each other.

Now, you can make changes to either metric.

Let’s say you want to increase the number of book buyers.

So, in the Book Buyer column, type 10.

And in the Non-Buyer column, type 5.

Save your changes.

Step 5: Analyze Results

Analyzing results is easy!

Just go back to the Overview tab.

Here, you can see how well each funnel performed.

You can also export the data into Excel.

To do so click Export Data.

Then, select the file format you want to download.

Downloading the CSV file allows you to import the data into Excel. If you prefer, you can also download the PDF version.

That’s it! Now you know how to create marketing funnels.

3 stages of the marketing funnel

The traditional marketing funnel is linear, beginning at top of the funnel and progressing down to the bottom, where customers are converted. However, marketers know that most people do not follow this path. Instead, they tend to skip steps along the way. They might start off at the top of the sales funnel, but soon move on to the middle, and eventually end up at the bottom. This is because the process isn’t linear; it’s nonlinear.

Marketers often use the term “funnel” to describe how buyers behave and buy products and services. But what does that really mean? What are the three main stages of the funnel? And how do you apply them to your brand?

1. Top of the funnel: awareness

The TOFU is where prospects become aware of your brand and engage with it for the first time. This stage focuses on content and marketing material that promotes brand awareness. Prospects might not know a lot about your product or service yet, so this stage focuses on attracting prospects, and showing them what you have to offer: creating a landing page or infographic that introduces your brand, service, or product to new visitors; sharing a post on social media that highlights your USP.

2. Middle of the funnel: consideration

The middle of the funnel (MoFu) is where it gets interesting. Here, the customer begins to show interest in your brand and consider buying what you’re selling. This is the most important part of the sales process because it determines whether you’ll close the sale.

In the MoFu, people start to think about how they might buy something from you. They begin to research products, read reviews, and compare prices. During this period, the customer is still thinking about your brand, but he or she isn’t ready to make a purchase decision.

To capture this stage of the funnel, use the following tactics:

– Create content that addresses pain points and questions that prospective buyers have about your industry.

– Provide case studies and product comparisons that demonstrate the benefits of your offerings.

– Answer common objections and concerns that prospective buyers have about making a purchase.

– Offer free trials, demos, or samples to encourage leads to take action.

3. Bottom of the funnel: conversion

The bottom of the sales funnel (BoFu) is where you make sure that each prospect converts into a paying customer. This is the final step in the buying cycle, and it’s crucial that you don’t lose anyone here.

You’ve already established rapport and credibility with prospects, and now it’s time to close the deal. In fact, research suggests that the BoFu accounts for 80% of conversions. If you want to increase your chances of closing deals, focus on improving the quality of leads and converting those leads into buyers.

3 tools to increase conversions throughout the funnel

When it comes to digital marketing, there are many ways to measure success. While some marketers prefer to focus on quantitative metrics like traffic, leads, and sales, others look to qualitative measures such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and session durations. When it comes to increasing conversions throughout the marketing funnel, however, it’s crucial to consider both quantitative and qualitative data.

Quantitative data helps us track what’s working and where we might need to make changes. Qualitative data gives us insight into why certain actions work and don’t work. For example, while heatmaps provide great insights into user behavior, they aren’t always effective at identifying issues within your site architecture. To solve this problem, you could use session recordings to see exactly how users navigate your site. Or, you could ask customers directly about their experiences via surveys.

Here are three tools to give us qualitative data that’ll help us increase conversions throughout the funnel:

Heatmap

To understand user behavior. A heatmap is a visual representation of user activity on a webpage. You can use heatmaps to identify areas of high interaction and low interaction across your site. For instance, you might notice that most visitors spend a lot of time clicking around the bottom half of your homepage, but few actually purchase anything. This tells you that you should probably invest more resources into improving the bottom half of your home page.

Session recording

To understand individual journeys. If you want to learn more about how each visitor navigated your site, you can record their sessions. You can do this manually by logging out of your browser and opening up developer tools. Alternatively, you can automate this process with third-party software like UserTesting.com. Once you’ve recorded a session, you can play it back and analyze it. For example, you might find that one visitor spent a long time scrolling down your homepage before making a decision. This tells you that your copy needs to be written in a way that makes it easy for users to quickly scan the information they need.

Survey

To get user feedback. Surveying customers allows you to gather real-time feedback about your products and services. Instead of waiting until you receive a complaint letter or email response, you can collect useful information immediately. For example, you could send out a survey asking your customers whether they found your product helpful or confusing. You could even use a tool like SurveyMonkey to build custom surveys.

Have you tried building a marketing funnel for your fractal business?

Share your experience here.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.

Why Do Most Bloggers Fail and How you Can Run a Successful Blog?

August 16, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

Many bloggers fail because they lack focus. They try to do everything, and end up failing at almost everything.

There are only two types of blogs: focused and unfocused. Focused blogs are built around a single topic while unfocused blogs cover many topics.

If you want to build a profitable blog, you must choose a niche and stick with it. This will help you achieve success faster and make sure you never lose readers.

I’ve identified 4 reasons why most bloggers fail, and how to fix each one of them.

You don’t take blogging seriously

I’ve been reading a lot about how to build a successful blog lately. I’m sure most of us know what we’re doing, but there are still some tips out there that seem to work better than others. One thing that seems to come up repeatedly is that you shouldn’t treat blogging like a hobby or a side gig. You really do have to commit to it; otherwise, it won’t work.

If you want to build a successful blog, you have to treat it like a full-time job. You have to set aside enough time each day to write and publish posts. If you’re starting a blog today, you’ll probably start off posting once every few days. But over time, you’ll find yourself publishing multiple times per week. And eventually, you’ll find yourself writing daily.

The key here is consistency. Don’t just post whenever you feel like it. Write consistently. Post regularly. Be disciplined. These are the three keys to building a successful blog.

You’re not creating engaging content

The biggest reason why many bloggers fail is because they aren’t producing engaging, outstanding quality “content.” In fact, according to HubSpot research, 72% of B2C content creators have made the production of engaging content a “top priority.” This isn’t surprising when you consider how many people are now blogging about topics like personal finance, health, parenting, food, DIY projects, etc.

With so much content being produced every day, great content is the bare minimum bet for getting in front of audiences. So what does it mean to produce engaging content? Well, here’s a quick rundown:

1. You must always keep your audience in mind.

2. Your content needs to be useful.

3. It must be original and unique.

4. It must be relevant to your niche.

5. It must be written well.

You’re not promoting yourself

According to recent data from WordStream, 76 percent of marketers stated that they planned to increase the amount of content they produced in 2016 compared to 2015. However, most of those marketers didn’t plan to spend more money on marketing materials. Instead, they claimed that they’d simply focus on creating more quality content.

But what does that mean exactly? Is it just about writing more articles, or do we really need to start thinking about how we promote our content once it’s written?

The answer is yes. If you want to stand out among the competition, you’ve got to think like a publisher and market your content effectively. You need to understand the value of every word that you write, and make sure that you’re providing compelling information to your readers.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll need to hire a writer to help you craft your content. But it does mean that you need to take some extra steps to ensure that everything you publish is well-written, engaging, and informative.

How do you promote your content?

Content marketing has become an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have a solid content marketing plan, you may find yourself struggling to generate leads and sales.

Let’s discuss how to promote your content effectively.

#1. Use Social Media

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are excellent tools for promoting your content.

These sites allow users to share information, pictures, videos, links, and articles. They also provide analytics that can help you measure the success of your campaigns.

For example, let’s say you run a blog about organic foods. You can set up a campaign on Facebook that allows users to share posts related to organic food. This will encourage potential customers to visit your website.

#2. Create Content That People Want To Share

People tend to share content that interests them. For instance, if you write about dog training, you may want to include images of cute puppies.

This will give your audience a reason to share your content.

It’s also helpful to think about what types of content would interest your target audience. For example, if you’re writing a blog about gardening, you might want to include tips on how to setup and maintain a flowering garden in your local city conditions.

#3. Promote Content Through Email Marketing

Email marketing is another effective tool for promoting your content. You can send emails to your subscribers, asking them to share your content. You can also ask them to subscribe to your email list.

#4. Include Links in Your Emails

When you send emails to your subscribers and clients, you should include links to your content. These links will lead readers directly to your site.

Links within your email messages are especially useful because they appear above the fold on mobile devices.

#5. Add Calls to Action

Calls to action are buttons or text links that prompt visitors to perform certain actions.

For example, you can add a call to action button to your blog posts. Visitors click these buttons to learn more about products or services.

A call to action button can also be added to social media profiles. Users click these buttons to follow you on social media, sign up for your newsletter, or contact you.

#6. Write Blog Posts About Related Topics

Writing blog posts about topics similar to those you cover in your main blog posts can drive traffic to your site.

For example, if you write about healthy food, you can also write about intermittent fasting and eating fruits and whole food plant-based diet.

By writing about related topics, you can attract more traffic to your site. And since you’ve written about a topic that relates to your primary blog, you can link back to your original content.

#7. Ask Influencers to Share Your Content

Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful strategies available for driving traffic to your site. By reaching out to influencers, you can ask them to share your content on their blogs, social media accounts, and websites.

You can also pay influencers to promote your content. However, this option isn’t recommended unless you have a budget to spend.

#8. Run Ads

Advertising is another popular method for promoting your content. There are several types of ads, including banner ads, video ads, display ads, and sponsored posts.

Banner ads are small graphics that appear across the top of a web page. Video ads play automatically when a user visits a webpage. Display ads show up on search results pages. Sponsored posts appear alongside organic content.

Each type of ad offers its own benefits. Banner ads are inexpensive, but they won’t reach everyone. Videos are eye-catching, but they cost money to produce. Display ads are highly targeted, but they aren’t always seen by people searching online.

#9. Offer Free Resources

Free resources can be used to promote your content. Examples include ebooks, whitepapers, guides, cheat sheets, and templates.

Offering free resources gives you the opportunity to connect with prospective customers. Plus, you can use these resources to create additional content.

#10. Host Events

Events are another way to promote your content. You can host events where attendees can interact with each other and you.

Attendees can talk about your product or service, exchange ideas, and network with others.

Ensure that you offer exclusive content for the event attendees with a special coupon code so that you can keep track of them.

#11. Participate In Online Communities

Online communities are groups of people who communicate and collaborate via the internet.

They often focus on specific topics, such as fitness, parenting, business, and technology.

Participating in online communities can help you meet new people and grow your brand. It’s also a good idea to join forums and message boards that relate to your industry.

#12. Attend Local Meetups

Local meetups are informal gatherings held in person. They usually take place once per month.

Meetup members attend these events to meet new people and build relationships. Some meetups offer food, drinks, and entertainment. Others are focused on networking and professional development.

Find a meetup near your home and participate in it regularly. You can also organize your own meetup group.

#13. Join Industry Associations

Industry associations are organizations made up of professionals working in a particular field.

Joining an association can benefit you in many ways. First, it provides access to experts in your industry. Second, it helps you build credibility among peers. Third, it can increase your visibility in your industry.

#14. Start A Podcast

Podcasts are audio recordings that are distributed over the internet. They can be hosted on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular. According to Podtrac, there were 1.5 billion podcast downloads in 2021.

Many companies now sponsor podcasts. As a result, you can get paid to record and distribute your own podcast.

#15. Get Involved With Other Brands

Another great way to promote your content is to get involved with other brands.

For example, some businesses hire bloggers to review their products. Or they partner with influencers to promote their products.

There are countless opportunities to promote your content through collaboration.

#16. Build An Email List

An email list is a collection of email addresses that you collect from various sources.

You can use these lists to send promotional emails to your contacts. When someone subscribes to your email list, they agree to receive future emails from you.

To make sure your emails are delivered correctly, you must verify your email address before sending the first email.

#17. Develop Relationships With Influential People

Relationship building is another effective way to promote your content online. You can develop relationships with influential people by following them on social media, commenting on their posts, and sharing their content.

Once you establish a relationship with a prominent blogger, you can ask her to feature your content on her website.

#18. Connect With Potential Customers On Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are great places to promote your content.

Users post comments, questions, and photos on these platforms. If you respond to these comments and questions, you’ll gain valuable insights into what your audience wants.

Use these insights to improve your content and optimize your strategy.

#19. Use Visual Content

Visual content includes things like infographics, videos, presentations, and slide decks.

These formats allow you to present information quickly and effectively.

In addition, visual content is easier to read than long blocks of text. This makes it ideal for busy audiences.

#20. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

Mobile users account for nearly 50% of all internet usage. Therefore, it’s critical that your website is optimized for mobile devices.

If your website doesn’t load properly on smartphones and tablets, potential customers may leave without reading any of your content.

This could hurt your SEO rankings and cause you to lose traffic. To avoid this problem, test your site using different browsers and devices.

#21. Create Infographics

Infographics are graphic representations of data. They’re easy to understand and digest.

People love infographics because they provide interesting visuals. They’re also visually appealing.

As a result, infographics are perfect for promoting your content.

You’re just like everyone else

The idea behind great content creation isn’t necessarily about coming up with something amazing. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received came from David Meerman Scott. He writes that “the goal is to come up with something that your audience wants.” If you look at the most successful blogs out there, they tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. They provide value to readers.

2. They entertain readers.

3. They educate readers.

– If you focus on providing real value to your readers, you’ll find success.

– If you write entertaining content, you’ll find success too.

– And if you write educationally sound articles, you’ll find success even further.

Conclusion

A lot goes into running a successful blog. But once you’ve got everything set up, there are plenty of ways to monetize your efforts. Whether you’re looking to build a passive income stream or grow a thriving online business, blogging is one of the most effective tools around.

In conclusion, blogging is a great way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. However, like anything else, it takes hard work and dedication to succeed. So if you want to become a successful blogger, here are a few tips to help you along the way:

First, write regularly. Blogging doesn’t happen overnight; it requires consistent effort over time. Don’t expect to post three times a week and suddenly have thousands of readers show up each day. Instead, aim to produce quality content consistently, and eventually you’ll build up a following.

Second, focus on building relationships. This means interacting with other bloggers and sharing their posts. By doing so, you’ll gain valuable insight into how to improve your own writing style and attract more followers.

Third, keep learning. There are plenty of resources available online that can teach you how to blog effectively. From free courses to paid training programs, there’s never been a better time to jumpstart your career as a writer.

Finally, be patient. Building a large audience takes time, especially if you’re just beginning. But don’t worry too much about it. Just keep posting high-quality content, and eventually you’ll reach your goal.

Is your blog succeeding or failing? Write your experience to us. Let us discuss.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.

The 4 Ps of Marketing

August 15, 2022 by Fractal Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing?

The four Ps are the key components of successful marketing. They include: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. These four P’s form the basis of most advertising campaigns.

Product – What does the target audience want? How do you know?

Price – Is the offer too high or low?

Place – Where will the customer find you?

Promotion – How will you make sure they hear about you?

Four Ps- How to Make Your Brand Stand Out From the Crowd

In 1954, Neil Borden published his seminal article, “The Concept Of The Marketing Mix.” In it, he introduced the idea of the marketing mix, which became one of the most influential pieces of communication theory ever written.

The concept itself is simple: a marketing mix consists of four elements: product, price, place, and promotion. These four Ps represent the core components of every marketing strategy.

While the original publication focused on how businesses could better communicate with customers, the four Ps have become a common shorthand for describing any type of marketing activity.

Today, the four Ps are widely accepted as the basic building blocks of marketing strategies.

Four Basic Principles ofMarketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns are often built around one of four basic principles: product, price, place, or promotion. In fact, each P stands for something important to the success of a marketing strategy. They’re not mutually exclusive, though, and you might find yourself mixing and matching the different Ps depending on what works best for your particular situation. Here’s how they work together to build a successful marketing campaign.

1. Product

A product is anything that satisfies a consumer’s need or desire. Think about it like this: If you wanted to buy a car, you’d probably start looking at cars first because most people don’t know much about boats or trucks. You wouldn’t look at boats or trucks first unless you needed a boat or truck. So think about what your customers want and make sure you provide it to them.

2. Price

Price is the amount that consumers are willing to pay for a given product. This includes both the actual cost of purchasing the item and the perceived value of the product.

Marketers must link the price to both the product’s real and apparent value. Real value refers to what the product actually does. Perceived value is how much people believe the product is worth. For example, if you sell a $1000 laptop, you might say that it has a high real value because it delivers great performance. But if you’re selling a $100 notebook that looks like a MacBook Pro, your perception of its value could be very different. You might think it’s cheap, even though it performs just fine.

In addition to determining real and perceived values, marketers must consider supply costs, seasonal discounts and retail markup. Supply costs include things such as manufacturing, shipping and warehousing. Seasonal discounts occur during certain times of the year when retailers offer deep discounts to attract shoppers. Retail markups refer to the difference between wholesale and retail prices. When products go on sale, retailers often cut their wholesale prices to increase sales volume. However, they don’t always pass those savings onto buyers. Instead, they pocket the money for themselves.

The final factor affecting price is whether a product is considered “luxury,” “premium” or “value.” Luxury items are generally expensive, premium items are moderately priced, and value items are inexpensive. If you want to charge more for a product, you’ll probably need to make up for the fact that it’s not as luxurious or exclusive as other options.

Place – Places are physical locations where customers go to shop or eat. Some businesses focus exclusively on online sales while others rely heavily on brick-and-mortar stores. There are plenty of ways to reach potential clients, including social media, email, mobile apps, and TV advertising. Each place offers unique benefits and disadvantages, so consider all options carefully.

Premium pricing

The luxury car market is dominated by brands such as BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Jaguar, Porsche, etc. They offer a wide range of products, including cars, SUVs, trucks, vans, motorcycles, scooters, boats, snowmobiles, ATV’s, etc. These companies make money by selling expensive vehicles. However, some people want something different. They don’t necessarily want a big vehicle; they just want a reliable one. If you could provide them with a better quality vehicle, you would have a much easier time charging a premium price. This is what Lexus does. They offer a very well built vehicle at a higher price than most others. They do it because they know that customers appreciate good design and build quality.

Penetration pricing

A brand uses low prices to penetrate market share.

The strategy works because consumers aren’t willing to pay high prices for mediocre products. And it doesn’t matter if you’re selling toothbrushes or razors, the basic idea applies. If you want to enter a market, undercut competitors and offer a product that is priced just as well as theirs, but better. You might even consider offering free shipping or discounts on certain items.

This is what Dollar Shave Club did. They launched in 2013 and offered a subscription model where customers could buy one razor per month for $1.95 each. In addition to being cheap, the razors were good enough to make up for the fact that they weren’t the best.

A lot of people thought that Dollar Shave Club had no chance in hell of succeeding, but they really surprised everyone by growing quickly. By 2017, DSC was pulling in $500 million in annual revenue and had over 2 million members.

Differential pricing

A differential pricing model is one where customers pay different prices based on the level of functionality or feature set offered. For example, a software company might sell a basic version of its CRM system for $1,500 per month and a premium version for $5,000 per month. Both versions include some core functionality, but the premium version offers additional capabilities like mobile access, online collaboration, data analytics, etc.

The idea behind differential pricing is that it allows customers to choose the best option for their specific situation. If someone wants to save money, they can opt for the basic package; if they are willing to spend more, they can upgrade to the premium version. Differential pricing is commonly used by SaaS companies because it helps them reach different types of customers at different price points.

3. Place

Placement is about advertising the product in the correct medium to attract the attention of consumers. In the 1990s, a company called Interbrand developed a guide that helped companies decide where to place their brands. It included three factors:

1. Consumer demand

2. Brand equity

3. Market potential

Consumer demand refers to how many people already have an interest in a brand. Brand equity means how well known a brand is among consumers. Market potential refers to how big the market is for a particular type of product. The goal is to find a balance between these three factors.

Direct to Consumer (DTC)

The term “direct to consumer” refers to selling products or services directly to consumers without using any intermediaries such as retailers, wholesalers, agents, etc. DTC companies are usually smaller businesses, startups, or individuals trying to generate revenue. They often do not have access to traditional advertising channels like TV or radio ads. Instead, they rely on word of mouth, referrals, and social media to gain visibility.

A few examples of DTC include:

– Amazon – sells everything from electronics to books to clothing to groceries.

– Airbnb – allows people to rent out rooms or entire homes to travelers around the world.

– Dollar Shave Club – provides men with razor blades and razors.

– Groupon – offers deals on restaurants, hotels, activities, and local goods.

– Lyft – provides ridesharing services.

Indirect to Consumer (I2C)

The term indirect to consumer (I2C) refers to selling goods or services through intermediaries, rather than directly to consumers. When you sell something to someone else, it’s called wholesale. If you sell to retailers, it’s retail. But what about those cases where you sell to a third party like a distributor or wholesaler? In those instances, you are selling indirectly to customers. Companies use I2C channels because they want to reach a wider audience. They don’t necessarily have to pay extra fees to do so.

Direct to Business (D2B)

If you’ve ever sold anything online, chances are you’ve heard about direct to consumer (DTC). DTC sales are typically used by small businesses selling physical goods like clothing, jewelry, tools, etc. In contrast, direct to business (D2B), also known as wholesale, refers to selling products or services to businesses.

There are several ways to go about doing this, including:

1. Direct mail – A list of potential customers is compiled based on criteria like industry, location, demographics, etc. Then, the list is sent via snail mail.

2. Telemarketing – Potential customers are called directly.

3. Trade shows – Companies display their wares at shows where attendees buy directly from the exhibitors.

4. Content marketing – Websites and blogs are written to attract prospects’ attention.

5. Email campaigns – Prospects receive emails inviting them to view the site.

4. Promotion

Promotion is everything from direct mail campaigns to radio ads to television commercials. These days, there are also many digital marketing strategies available, such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing.

The word “promotion” can conjure up images of billboards, TV commercials, and radio spots. But marketing professionals use the term to describe how a company communicates about a specific product or service. Marketing includes advertising, public relations, branding, and the overall strategy behind promoting a particular product or service. Promotional activities include everything from advertising to PR to social media campaigns.

Promotions can take place across multiple channels, including print, broadcast, outdoor signage, and even in-store displays. They can happen in real life or online.

Digital marketers often view “promotion” and “placement” as synonymous terms. However, according to the Association of National Advertisers, there is a difference between the two. A promotional ad might be seen in a magazine or newspaper while a placement ad could be found online. Placements can also be interactive, such as sponsored Facebook posts.

For instance, a car dealership might advertise on a local billboard, whereas a consumer electronics store might promote products on a retailer’s ecommerce site. Both are examples of promotion.

A good way to think about promotions is to consider what happens when you buy something. You go into a store and purchase a shirt or pair of shoes. As soon as you walk out of the store, you’re reminded of the product you just purchased. This is promotion.

How to Use the 4 Ps of Marketing in Your Marketing Strategy

The Four P’s are one of the most effective frameworks for building a successful marketing plan. They’re simple, easy to understand, and they work. But what do they actually mean? Let’s take a look.

Product – This refers to the actual item being marketed. For example, if you sell software, you might call it “the best accounting system.” If you’re selling books, you could say something like “the definitive guide to bookkeeping.” In some cases, the product is tangible; in others, it’s intangible.

Price – How much does it cost? Is there a free version? Can customers buy additional features? Does it come with a warranty? These questions aren’t just about price. They’re about value.

Place – Where is the product sold? Will people see it advertised online? On billboards? At retail stores? You’ll want to consider whether you want to target local consumers or reach out globally.

Promotion – How is the product promoted? Do you advertise it via social media? Do you send emails to potential buyers? Do you use paid advertising? All of those things count.

As you think through each of these points, keep in mind that they’re not mutually exclusive. A product can be both expensive and cheap, depending on how many people choose to purchase it. An expensive product doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good quality. Likewise, a low-cost product doesn’t always mean poor quality. Instead, consider the following:

A high-quality product that costs less than competitors’ products isn’t necessarily better because it’s cheaper. A low-priced product that provides great customer support is still worth buying.

Where do the 4 Ps of marketing fall short?

The four Ps of marketing—product, price, place, and promotion—are widely regarded as the foundation of effective marketing. The 4 Ps don’t hold up against the demands of today’s savvy consumers. In fact, it turns out that the 4 Ps of marketing undermine themselves in three key areas:

1. Product Technology and Quality

Marketers often spend far too much time focusing on the technical aspects of products, rather than making sure that they understand what customers really want. As a result, many companies end up producing solutions that aren’t very good, or even worse, solutions that are completely irrelevant to the problems that customers are trying to solve.

2. Building a Case for Value

Most companies fail to make a compelling argument about how their products provide real value. Instead, they tend to focus on selling features and benefits without explaining why those things matter. This approach doesn’t work because most people don’t care about the features and benefits of a product. They’d much rather hear from someone who understands their needs and challenges, and can help them overcome them.

3. Leveraging Advantage as a Trusted Source of Problem Solving

Many companies treat their brand as a commodity that they sell like everything else. But brands are unique assets that require special attention to build and maintain. When you think of your brand as something that provides tangible value to customers, you’ll find yourself spending less time worrying about whether you’re meeting the competition, and more time thinking about how you can differentiate yourself.

When Did the 4 Ps Become the 7 Ps?

The four P’s have always been part of the marketing mix. But now there are three additional Ps: people, process, and physical evidence. These Ps form what we call today’s seven Ps. They provide marketers with a framework for understanding how to connect with consumers in a way that makes sense in our digital age.

People

In the early days of marketing, companies focused on products, prices, and promotions. Then came the concept of brand identity. Brands became personified by celebrities, logos, slogans, and advertising. Marketing evolved into something that could be measured quantitatively, like retail stores or TV ratings. Now it’s about emotions.

Marketers began focusing on the people behind brands. This led to the rise of celebrity endorsements and brand ambassadors. Today, the most powerful marketing messages come from the voices of real customers themselves, via social media. And the best way to reach those customers is through the power of word of mouth.

Process

Today’s consumer demands speed, convenience, and efficiency. Companies must deliver quickly and efficiently, whether it’s ordering online or receiving a package. Consumers want everything delivered in one easy step. So companies have to rethink the entire supply chain. Instead of just thinking about the physical production of goods, they must think about the whole life cycle of a product, from creation to consumption.

A big shift occurred in the 1990s, when the Internet changed the rules for commerce. The World Wide Web opened up vast amounts of information about products and services, making it easier for consumers to compare prices, find reviews, and research features. As a result, the emphasis shifted from selling products directly to consumers to providing them with the information they needed to make smart buying decisions.

This change required businesses to stop thinking about the traditional model of distribution channels. Rather than being limited to brick-and-mortar retailers, companies had to consider alternative ways to distribute their products and services.

Physical Evidence

Physical evidence is the final piece of the puzzle. It includes things like packaging, shipping materials, and even the appearance of a store. In the past, physical evidence was considered an afterthought. But today, it’s essential to creating a positive first impression.

In conclusion, marketing is a very broad term that covers almost anything related to advertising. However, there are four main areas that marketers focus their efforts on: product development, promotion, pricing, and placement. These four Ps form the basis of any successful marketing campaign.

Product Development: This involves creating a product that customers want to buy. Promoting your products means finding ways to reach potential buyers. Pricing refers to setting the right price for your products. Placement deals with where your products end up. In short, these four Ps are the foundation of any successful marketing strategy.

How is your experience of 4 Ps of Marketing?

Share your experience in the comments below.

Be Blessed by the Divine!
Krish Murali Eswar.