Month: March 2020

9 Branding Trends to Focus on in 2020

Posted on by admin

Branding is a concept that is adopted by most of the businesses today to increase sales. Wherever we go, we come across different brands. It represents what the company is all about. So, to get people to notice your brand, planning a good branding strategy is vital. 

Initially, when we talk about branding, it used to be all about the visual differentiation. But these days, with intense competition, branding has changed significantly. Branding in 2020 is no cakewalk. It takes time and struggles to adopt different techniques to sustain.

Here are the nine most important trends to keep in mind while planning your branding strategy this year.

1. Brand story

Telling a story about how the brand came so far from scratch can build human connections. People love listening to great stories and news. The emotional information, when told in the form of a story, will have a higher brand recall. 

Customers relate to these personalized stories which are connected to people. A great story can make your customers feel you are genuine and also increase the reach of your brand easily. Another way of storytelling is by sharing employee stories on the brand’s social media! 

2. Chatbots and other technologies

Technologies like chatbots help companies to interact with their customers instantly. The tool has proved to be of great use to many brands. It helps brands to interact with their customers quickly and to engage them on the website. It also helps in guiding the users in their customer journey.

Getting humans to perform every function will require a big team that would cost a lot. So, you can assign your chatbots to make the interactions with your brand and to get relevant messages in their inboxes.

3. Observe and serve online communities

These days branded communities are a growing trend to keep a watch. These forums provide users with a platform to share topics and experiences which are brand-related. It helps brands to talk about the products and get a rough understanding of the customers’ requirements without trying to sell. 

Many brands are trying to make use of their communities for insights on the launch of the latest products and services.

4. Increase brand loyalty with creative customer experience

Source

Make use of creative ways to keep your customers in a loop all the time. They should be able to contact your brand anytime they feel like and track their orders online and more. An integrated messaging system for them to upload instructions and post information is essential for boosting customer experience.

For creating customer loyalty, you must be able to provide an excellent customer experience in the first place. More than just giving away promotional gifts, brands must focus more on how well they can differentiate themselves from their competitors.

5. Optimize for mobiles 

People are using their mobiles for almost everything today. Mobile users’ interactions are rising significantly. Those who don’t intend on including this will go down the competition. So, make sure your brand is well optimized for mobile users. Having an optimum sized CTA button and short subject lines with small paragraphs is recommended to make your brand look neat on mobile screens.

Email marketing is going to take over on mobiles by becoming more targeted and providing curated content to the prospects, rather than lengthy content!

6. Consider Native display advertising 

Source

Display adverts are not enough in 2020. The average adverts CTR is pretty low. Having a well-targeted promotional content to match the real-time queries will make sure the readers are getting more advertising content. 

Native adverts are based on the content, and so they can make up a large percentage of the total display ad revenue in the coming days. Natives can Blend with the surrounding content efficiently.

7. Brand Influencers

Brand Influencers

Source

This trend is nothing new to us, but in 2020 this trend has great importance. If we look at any renowned brand, they make use of influencers to promote their brand in some way. Many people look forward to recommendations made by influencers while they purchase. Companies, on the other hand, depend on these influencers to market their products.

So, if you can find an influencer who can well relate to your brand, then nothing like it! Make sure the partnership is transparent to the customers.

8. Always have a social conscience 

A few branding trends fade away as fast as they appear. Ever wondered why? Having self-conscience of the things happening around us is crucial. Consumers are looking for companies to whom they can relate their views on social things happening around them. 

Modern brands ought to demonstrate their concern towards the environment and the people. Many believe multinationals can ease social problems and wants them to do more!

9. Broad Marketing Strategy 

A good strategy requires combined planning. You got to understand where to do what! A representative from each department should all sit together to plan and scheme a strategy. Every idea and suggestions got to be considered while coming up with an excellent strategy!

Producing this kind of content can be pretty tough if you are not much familiar with the digital marketing opportunities available out there. It is always advisable to hire digital marketing experts to get the process done!

10. Produce quality content 

A customer associating with your brand will want to explore things before they even think of buying anything. So, if you can provide them with educational and interesting content, they can stick around your site for a while and subsequently purchase your products or services.

It is better if you can create valuable content less often rather than producing poor content frequently. People appreciate the comprehensive analysis of topics that are interesting and informative. 

To wrap it up!

Digital branding is changing consistently with time. Branding is getting more characterized by these trends. Brands are trying to be more straightforward, transparent and genuine with a motive to provide a human experience. Brands nowadays are striving to become more real, conscious, and responsive!

Brand positioning will need to select a different method from traditional methods. Relating to the customers as varying levels of their journey is essential. Whether it is about developing a brand from scratch or looking to improve the aesthetic you already possess, it is vital to pay close attention to your brand presence!

 Author Bio

Faiz Varghese is a social media marketer at TechWyse, an SEO agency in Canada. He is a knowledge craving techy. He loves to write quality content on the internet and has a passion for his job. While he is off work, you will find him playing football or watching his favorite shows!

How should small businesses prepare for COVID-19?

Posted on by admin

It goes without saying, this is a challenging time for everyone. The WHO (World Health Organization) has declared the coronavirus or COVID-19 as a Global epidemic. Besides the growing mortality rate, this situation is taking a heavy toll on various economies, especially businesses.

It’s an uncertain time with lots of unknowns and people are looking for answers. while we might not be able to have all the answers. We’ll try our best to guide other small businesses that may be experiencing shifts as best as we can.

We at QL Tech remain absolutely committed to doing everything we can to put the health and safety of our employees first. Some of the safety measures we have established include, arranging for the staff to work from home and for those for whom it is crucial to come over to the workplace, we have ensured enhanced sanitary practices & environment.

COVID-19

Here a few things that you can do to get your business through this COVID-19 pandemic.

Although some of the tactics can vary from business to business, most of them can be implemented by almost every business in general.

Check out your accounts

Due to the changing markets your paid search and paid social accounts might be affected, therefore it’s important to keep an eye in your overall account click and impression volumes to change costs.

The people have gone to self-preservation mode along with their search trends that have shifted from Invisalign treatment or bouquet of flowers to more health-related criteria. Look out for drops in traffic, clicks, and impressions via in Google Analytics and Google Ads and adjust accordingly. 

You should also need to keep a close eye on your post’s comments as a lot of misinformation is being spread and some of these fear-based comments can detract potential customers.

Transparent Communication

Everyone is facing this crisis together, so you should be transparent about what your business is going through. That way the Customers can empathize with brands facing a crisis but you should manage your communication with them properly.

When customers don’t get a clear picture of the work that’s being done behind the scenes to serve them, they don’t care about those services. So make sure your brand clearly communicates all the safety measures being implemented and everything your business is doing to help the community. 

Cut back on meetings and travel

Try to mitigate the risk of exposure to the virus to a minimum. Postpone any team meetings or hold them online. Forego any conferences or other planned business travel plans. 

If your employees get sick because of travel or meetings, you could have serious liability issues on your hands, or you will have to manage low workplace morale and overflowing sick leave requests.

Give your employees flexibility

With the closing of school, offices, stores and commercial centers all around, Many countries are gradually moving toward total lockdown. You will need to be flexible with your employee’s timings. 

There will be instances where some of your work staff might have to leave unexpectedly due to a personal emergency while others may have traveled somewhere and aren’t able to return. Try to be as understanding as possible and have a contingency plan in place to counter the sudden changes.

Adjust your strategy

A lot of lifestyle changes are being made as a direct or indirect result of COVID-19. People are frequently washing their hands to prevent the spread of germs, there has been a shortage of hand sanitizer, bleach and cleaning wipes, and other similar products. 

In light of these changing requirements, you need to modify your business strategy as per your product or services. For example, if you are a brick-and-mortar business then the best course of action would be limiting your in-store budgets as people are not into going out nowadays, rather invest in reaching the customers online.

Many of the SMBs have tight annual budgets, therefore reallocation of ad spend toward more effective marketing periods could be highly beneficial for them.

Keep updated

COVID-19 has unfortunately affected the lives of communities worldwide and ensuring that the communities are safe should be our no.1 priority. Most of the businesses are already feeling the effects of the virus, and the best thing you can do is to stay on top of the situation.

At QL Tech, we always put people first and we are taking every possible measure to ensure the health safety of our employees as well as making sure that our partner’s business does not get affected the least bit. We are keeping a close eye on the situation and would keep you updated in case of major changes.

Till then,

Stay Safe

3 Important Growth Goals of Content marketing

Posted on by admin

Let us ask you a question first: how is your content marketing strategy working out for your business?

If your answer is a “Not very effective” or a “Not sure about that” then you are not alone. In fact, around 57% of businesses don’t analyse their content marketing strategy or unaware of how to measure its effectiveness.

The main reason for this is they have established a content marketing strategy for their brand without defining goals or objectives for their brand. You need to determine the aim of your content marketing, are you producing content for like & shares? Do you wish for it to go viral? Or do you want to amp up your search engine rankings?

In case you have any of these goals in mind then that might be a reason why your content marketing strategy is failing.

In this article, we are going to discuss how to set up real growth-related goals that will give a granular result about your content marketing performance.

Setting up growth-oriented goals for your business

The content marketing goals for your business must be growth-related and designed specifically for your entrepreneurial ambitions.

However, if you are unable to achieve them, then your approach towards those goals might be at fault. Let’s have a look at some of the content marketing goals that your brand should have.

1. SEO Rankings

Google is a great barometer to determine the success of your content. If the content that you create gets enough likes & shares and climbs in Google’s search rankings then you’re creating the right type of content

Content marketing

The Google search engine has content standards that are difficult to please. This means that only the best pieces will be able to reach in the top 10, top 5, and top 3 rankings. It depends on who is providing the most contextual information regarding a specific topic/keyword that the user is searching for.

If your content meets the above criteria 100%, then you’ll earn top rankings. The result being, That you’ll get a lot more qualified traffic to your business website. In case your content’s not ranking then your business is missing out on those leads who are most likely to bring their business to your brand.

2. Conversations & Engagement

Now that you’ve managed to attract qualified leads, it’s time to convert them to your business objective. This is achieved by nurturing the leads with highly personalised and contextual content.

Conversations & Engagement

Achieving your content marketing goals starts with great content. If you’re just pushing out content just for the sake of it, you won’t grow.

Here are A few examples of how your business can engage with the leads 

  • For people reaching out to your sales team through channels like chat, email, etc. you can start the conversation with helpful emails regarding your products or services and how the users can avail them quickly & efficiently.
  • For social media, you can interact with them by sending links to similar blogs or sending messages in their inbox.

Based on these communications you can determine the lead’s interest level and how close they are towards doing business with your brand. The important thing is how effectively you apply your content to nurture those leads from the awareness stage to the next stage of consideration

3. Sales & Revenue

Let’s get down to brass tax, the actual performance of your content marketing can be ascertained by the actual sales results from the above connections and conversations? It’s time to quantify your results. 

Sales & Revenue

You’ve attracted qualified leads with content, analytics with giving you the metrics on the traffic and audience engagement. Match that against your sales to get the crystal clear picture of your Digital marketing performance.

Discuss with your salespeople and If you see growth in this area then your content is giving huge benefits for your business.

Few tips on Generating Growth from Content

Generating awesome content is crucial and to add the cherry on top there few things you can do to make your content marketing strategy rock solid.

Consistency is the key!!

Now great content is going to boost your Google ranking, However, you need to keep delivering quality content to stay that way.

Producing great content builds trust with your audience so keep hitting that checkpoints and you’ll get them hooked. Plus your brand reputation will be through the roof!!

Link Your Content to Services

What’s the use of delivering top-notch content if it doesn’t tie back to your product & services? The whole point of any content marketing strategy is to nurture the leads along the buyer’s journey until it’s finally time to seal the deal.

That’s where CTA’s (calls-to-action) come into the picture. There should be at least one CTA in every piece of content that gets published. These are really helpful in directing the users to the next step and also gives you insights on their interest levels.

Engage with Conversational Content

Starting off conversations with interested readers based on your content is a great way to boost your ROI.  These aren’t about getting all salesey but more about building relations with the audience by providing helpful information.

Chatbots play an important role in handling a large volume of conversations during the long hours of the day. But nothing can empathetic, friendly & personable human response – having empathy to turn interests into decisions leading to a sale.

And Lastly…

We hope you’ve found our take on content marketing useful and in case you need some help in setting up growth goals for your brand than just drop us a line and we’ll get in touch with you ASAP