At present, having a strong presence on the WWW (World Wide Web) or internet is crucial, more than a necessity. It must be treated with greatest care, accuracy and functionality as you presence on the Web serves as the flagship of your profile, products and services and in reality, your entity as an organization, business or corporate.
Some of the goals that can be achieved by launching a website include the following:
1. Far Cheaper and Much More Flexible Than Print Advertising :
The Internet is extremely different from print advertising in that space is cheap, your advertisement is accessible for a longer period of time, the content can be changed without having to ask someone to do it for you (if you use a content management system) and you can potentially reach a wider audience.
This is not to say that you should not use other forms of advertising at all You can use it to entice people to visit your website and find out about your company and potentially open two-way communication between the potential customer and a sales person.
2. Market Expansion: The Internet has allowed businesses to break through the geographical barriers and become accessible, virtually, from any country in the world by a potential customer that has Internet access.
3. Diversify Revenue Streams: A website is not just a medium for representation of your company, it is a form of media from which everybody can acquire information. You can use this media to sell advertising space to other businesses. A recent trend has risen where businesses feature their very own directory of complimentary services, where the visitor can search for information on a business that will enhance the use of your service. The business sells complimentary businesses a listing in their directory. A good example is a catering company featuring a directory with businesses such as event co-coordinators, electronic equipment rental companies, etc. No more turning customers away when its time to close shop, putting up a note saying closed for public holiday , or leaving an irritating message on your answering service specifying your trading hours tell them to visit your website for information they are looking for.
4. Offer Convenience: It is far more convenient for a person to research a product on the Internet than it is to get in a car, drive somewhere and look for or ask someone for information on a product. Also, a potential customer won t have to judge a call centre agent to determine whether he/she has their best interests in mind, or just wants to make a sale. The potential customer can visit your website whenever they like in their own privacy and comfort, without the stresses and distractions that exist in the real world . Your website is a self-service medium for example, instead of having to wait in a long cue to pay your TV License, you can now do it electronically through the TV License website.
5. Add Value and Satisfaction: By offering convenience, a point of reference and that touch of individualized customer service, you ultimately add value to your offering and your customers experience a higher level of satisfaction. Your website can add value in other ways too, by featuring tips, advice and general interest content you can entertain your customers. This will also help them remember you better.
6. Standardize Sales Performance By looking at which approached / pitches have worked in the past and those which have not, you can produce the ultimate pitch and use it with your website, so that you use it on every customer. No more training of sales people and waiting for them to get a feel for your line of trade.
7. Improve credibility: A website gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers what you are about and why you deserve their trust and confidence. In fact, many people use the internet for pre-purchase research so that they can determine for themselves whether a particular supplier or brand is worthy of their patronage, and won t take them for a ride. The Internet also allows for Viral Marketing where your website visitors spread positive word-of-mouth about your business - your customers do your marketing!
8. Promote your Brick n Mortar Presence: Getting lost trying to find a place can be frustrating for a potential customer. You can publish what they call a dummy map on your website, which shows directions and landmarks graphically, and the potential customer can print it out when looking for your Brick n Mortar premises. You might advertise a promotion on your website encouraging the visitor to visit your Brick n Mortar premises (e.g.. At a branch near you! ). Also, if you recently moved to a new location, you will have to wait for the next 'phone directory to come out before people figure out where you currently are. Because a website is flexible you can change the content as you like you can change you contact details instantly and lower the risk of losing customers when moving to a new location.
9. Growth Opportunity: A website serves as a great place to refer potential investors to, to show them what your company is about, what it has achieved and what it can achieve in future.
10. Two-Way Communicative Marketing: Customers can quickly and easily give feedback on your product and/or marketing approach.
11. Cheap Market Research: You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business. Website statistics show you how much traffic your website receives, how the visitor got to your website and where, geographically, the visitor is from.
Mobile applications have comforted and simplified human lives to symbolic level. We now find mobile applications for almost all the amenities we cross over our daily lives. Mobile applications were possible only by the introduction of common integrated operating systems such as Symbian, Blackberry, Android, iOS and Windows Mobile.
Android is Google’s mobile operating system based on Linux Kernel which is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices like smart phones and tablets. Android started out with the pre-commercial release of its first versions, Android alpha and Android beta, in the early 2007-2008. The first commercial version, Android 1.0 with API level 1, was released in September 2008 and the first publicly available Smartphone running Android, the HTC Dream, was released on October 22, 2008. Since April 2009 Android has been releasing its further versions in an alphabetic order with increasing level of its API as Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and Kit Kat.
Android uses Linux for process and memory management, networking and other operating system services. Android Software Development Kit or Android SDK with the help of Java programming language helps in Android mobile application development. Android’s user interface is based on direct manipulation using touch inputs that loosely correspond to real-world actions. Android supports applications and services designed to run invisibly in the background. The Android SDK includes a comprehensive set of tools such as debugger, handset emulator, software libraries, documentation and simple codes. The official integrated development environment is Eclipse using the Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin. The Android SDK also contains the Android Debug Bridge which is a tool that enables us to connect to a real or virtual Android device for managing or debugging the device. The Android system uses a special virtual machine i.e. the Dalvik Virtual Machine to run the java based applications.
The Android application development system is a full software stack which is typically divided into four stages viz. applications, application framework, libraries and runtime, and Linux kernel. Applications are the default applications to be installed such as the contact book, gallery, browser, camera, music, etc. The application framework is the API which provides many higher-level services to the applications in the form of Java classes. Application developers are allowed to make use of these services in their applications. The libraries contribute to various common functions such as web browsing, graphic rendering, data storage, etc of the application framework and the runtime, or the Dalvik runtime, makes use of Linux core features like memory management and multi-threading. The runtime also provides a set of core libraries which enable application developers to write Android applications using standard Java programming language. The Linux kernel is the communication layer for the underlying hardware. It provides the basic system functionality like process management, memory management and device management.
Android mobile application development is not a very complicated process. It only takes the couple of tools mentioned above to make it happen. Android is a powerful and intuitive development platform that lets developers who have never programmed for mobile devices create useful android mobile applications quickly and easily. It is easy to see how innovative Android mobile applications could create demand for the devices necessary to run them, particularly if developers write applications for Android because they cannot write for other platforms.
There exist some features that set Android application development apart from other mobile application development platforms. Once developed, Android applications can be packages easily and sold out either through store such as the Google Play or the Amazon Appstore. Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries in the world. It is the largest installed base of any mobile platform and growing fast. Every day more than 1 million new Android devices are activated worldwide.
Communication is the sole channel through which human beings manage to relate and remain connected to each other. There exist various mediums of communication- from making sign languages, talking in person, writing letter to making communications using technology and gadgets like mobile phones and computers. With the arrival of technological advances like internet we stopped writing letters to people at distant places but send emails from computers instead. Email, or Electronic mail, was one of the greatest inventions in the communication technology. We were able to send mails across continents at an instant with just a click from the computer. Later, mobile technology arrived and dominated the power of email which featured not only making phone calls but sending SMS, or Short Message Service, facilities also. It didn’t have to have internet connection for sending SMS which made its edge in getting ahead of email services. Plus, it was mobile i.e. we can send message from anywhere we travelled and at any time. So, who needs a computer and internet connection when we can just reach down our pockets and make calls or send texts right away?
In the world today, there is literally no person who doesn’t own a mobile phone. Mobile phones have become an essential part our lives now. The development in mobile technologies with the combination of internet has made its way to the sky. When Smart phones were introduced there was technically no way beating it down. Smart phones are mobile phones but with integrated operating system which supported multiple advanced features which are not limited to making calls and sending messages but browsing internet, file and photo transfers, making video calls, and much more. All of these wonderful encounters of technology today are made possible only by the development of mobile applications.
Mobile application development has brought the whole communication medium to a significant higher level. It is a process of developing application software for hand-held devices such PDA, EDA and mobile phones. Its early days date back to the end of twentieth century. Initially, mobile applications were just small applications such as simple calculator, calendar, stop-watch, ringtone editors, unit and currency converters and arcade games. Contents and applications of mobile have changed significantly with the beginning of the new millennium. They relied on JavaScript and Flash for improving the graphic user interface experience. Later, arrived Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, which was a stripped down version of the World Wide Web (WWW). These WAP sites were mostly extensions of branded websites such as CNN.com and ESPN.com so users accessed news, stock market updates and sport scores right in their phones. But WAP fell short of commercial expectations as it fail to overcome its slow loading speed and the lack of self customization facilities. Mobile application developers kept on working to meet the needs of the users and hence a few years later integrated operation such as Symbian OS was developed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. In 2007, the Apple iPhone’s iOS was developed and in the following one year, Google came up with its Android OS.
Mobile application development had taken a giant leap by then yet every mobile application still suffered few pros and cons. Mobile application developers are still emerging out daily with various mobile applications in order to meet every user expectations and make it as customizable as possible. Mobile applications have indeed simplified our business and personal lives, the way how we conduct our daily tasks and how we keep ourselves intact and updated with the events taking place around the world today.
Social media’, by itself, is the catch-all term for sites that provide various social actions. For instance, Twitter is a site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast, is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, events and a variety of other activities.
While you think through the options for getting involved in social media, let’s get to understand its broad categories.
Social Networks
Facebook and LinkedIn are classic examples of social networks. These siteshelp you connect with peoplehaving similar interests and background. To use them, you may have to create a profile, setup groups or participate in the existing ones and utilize the available features to communicate with others.
Bookmarking Sites
Sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon that allow you to save, organize and manage ‘links’ to various websites fall under this category. They allow you to “tag” your links to make them easy to search and share.
Media Sharing
Services that allow you to upload and share various media such as pictures and video. These sites may have additional social features such as profiles, commenting, etc. YouTube and Flickr are the most common ones.
Social News
These sites that allow people to post various news items or links to outside articles and then allows its users to “vote” on them. The voting is the core social aspect as the items that get the most votes are the ones that are displayed prominently and it’s the community that decides which news items get seen by more people. The most popular are Digg and Reddit.
Microblogging
Theservices focus on short updates that are pushed out to anyone subscribed to receive the updates. Twitter is the most popular example.
Blog Forums
Online forums allow members to hold conversations by posting messages. These can be termed similar to Social news sites, except that the discussion centers around the topic of the blog posts. But they may overlap each other, like for instance, Facebook has microblogging features with their “status update”, whileFlickr and YouTube have comment systems similar to that of blogs. Most of these platforms can be effectively used to elevate your audience and customer base in a dynamic way. But it’s vital that you understand the fundamentals. Here are some of the rules which you can’t afford to ignore while venturing into Social Media Marketing –
Listening:
To succeed with social media you are requiredto listen and understand your target audiences, joining discussions and learning what’s important to them. By doing this you’ll be able to spark conversations that add value to them.
Focus:
You need a highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy. An approach that attempts to be all things to all people may not always work.
uality Trumps Quantity:
If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like to find your site in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.
Spotting the Influencers:
You may have to conduct some research to find the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.If you get them on radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience. These directives may perhaps be quite useful if you wish to use Social Media to build a strong brand online. You might fumble your way to get it right but that shouldn’t be a deterrent to give it a shot. if you need a professional support.
A lot has been said about how Internet can be a great platform to promote your business. While it’s rare to find anyone who disagrees with this, it is surprisingly uncommon to meet someone who actually knows how to use the online space for brand promotion – the right way. One reason maybe that those who know are busy minting money for themselves and their clients.
This article could be that humble effort to demystify the awe surrounding Online Marketing. So, let’s get to it.
What comes first is a Plan
If you want to achieve your business goals, you first need to learn how to create an online marketing plan. Sounds simple? Let’s put things in perspective. Here, you aren’t just creating a simple plan, you ought to make a smart plan that works and works big. For this you need to do two things
Your plan of action then leads you to ask yourself a set of questions on your most important goals
So, what’s your Goal?
Whatever your goal is, it has to be specific, actionable, realistic and time-bound. Example -
Every goal has to be created with your business growth in mind. But make sure you refrain from having too many of them at one time.
The action-plan that you’ve created has the answers. First of all, you need to determinethe online presence you need to achieve your goals. For this you need to get a decent SEO friendly website,or add a blog, or a social networking site.
Whichever paths you choose, just make sure that your potential and existing customers can find you easily. For this you need to answer the question -Where are my customers most likely to look for me?
The ultimate aim is to point customers in the right direction. There are a number of different ways you can promote your online presence to your customers. For example, you can -
That’s the biggest dilemma of all. In order to determine how much you want to spend you need to ask yourself how much your new referrals/online leads are worth to you. Also factor any cost that is associated with your action steps such as cost of hosting your website, listing your deals, running ads online. Just make sure that you set the budget that works for you. You can always modify the budget for many components of your digital plan at a later stage – for example the campaign budget for online ads.
Online marketing is about finding your voice in the online space, reaching your most relevant target audience through relevant platforms and also being very clear on your marketing objectives. You may hit a few road bumps before you get it right. You can always approach professionals who have the required expertise in this domain to make life easier for you. Have any specific question regarding your online marketing plan – drop us a line at
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