Trends, trends and trends. Trends are just predictions of what might be! How are trends born? Digital marketing trends are born of foresight by subject-matter-experts like you and me, technology upgrades, and disruptions. Talking about digital marketing, it has come a long way in the last two decades, primarily because of the evolution of technology and the ideas to leverage it.
Given the challenges that we as marketers face, biweekly or monthly online marketing trends are more useful considering that disruptions rule the roost every other day. For any business, being competitive is the mother of being innovative. The faster we adopt innovative technologies, or ideate and put technology disruptions to best use, the quicker we grow.
Being in this unusually innovative, every-changing, crowded landscape called online marketing or web marketing space for 18 years and practicing with passion, I am putting forward my best 22 trends and disruptions which will give you an idea where digital marketing is headed from this Christmas to the next. For us, the rising trend of psychology marketing is quite interesting and disrupting, however, we will not speak about it in this piece.
We will look at detailed digital marketing trends in each of the primary marketing functions across the year.
Brand creation is a marketing exercise that helps consumers identify your business, recognize it, and experience it. It is the psycho-visual effect that your business creates using omni-design concepts across all aspects and departments of the business, an aesthetic, consistent and continuous omni-channel presence. Trends for branding in 2002 will be huge.
Trend #1 – Minimalist branding
Less is more and that, my friends, is minimalism. Using simple text, basic shapes, lots of white space and limited color palettes to create perfect and uncluttered aesthetics is the new digital marketing trend in graphic and website design.
The minimalist design concept is going to trend because there is way too much clutter across the web sphere. To create a minimalist brand, one needs to get back to basics and convey a simple personality and let their products and services speak for them.
Simplicity is the in-thing and the concept of minimalistic branding design is making its way into a lot of branding elements, like the logo, font, white space, and typography for many brands and startups.
Actionable: Check your brand analytics juice in relation to your past strategy and the future one. If you see that your market share has dropped or not growing, it is time to rebrand, and minimalist is the way to go since it is a long term online marketing trend.
Brand activism is where your brand takes a stand to help resolve immediate social problems by driving a positive change across all channels and following it up with results. We base this activism on the brand’s purpose, beliefs, and values.
Nike is a prominent brand that engages in brand activism, a marketing approach wherein it brands itself as socially progressive by adopting public stances on controversial social issues. Because Nike lives at the intersection of lifestyle and sports, both of which are gender-biased domains, Nike uses it to construct and integrate gender into its commercials. This makes brand ‘Nike’ showcase the authenticity of its brand activism and progressive politics.
There are many activist brands that are driving societal change across the globe. While wearing the heart on the sleeve works for many brands, what needs to be seen is how a consumer relates to such activism, and the viability and scope of business resulting from it. This is a critical digital marketing trend going into the future.
When the values, purpose and beliefs of an activist brand align with the customer’s belief [make that most customers’ beliefs], the brand is on its way to unprecedented growth. Sales and repeat sales will distinctly drive it besides the word-of-mouth and sustainability. Nike brand rightly illustrates the phenomenon.
Actionable: If you feel your brand addresses a social issue or fills a gap in the society, it is time you used activism in your branding campaigns. If it does not, it is time to brainstorm ideas that can help align your brand’s products and services to an urgent social need because brand activism drives fierce customer loyalty and is a futuristic online marketing trend.
Trend #3 – Be quirky
Chaos rules. Brand designs that include overlapping elements, asymmetry, handmade illustrations, collages, funny typographies, bright colors, and bizarre imagery result in chaotic or quirky design. Many brands, even major ones, are using quirky designs in their branding to bring a sense of individuality of being unique or simply fun.
Many marketers believe that a quirky branding exercise helps showcase the personal side of a brand, though I differ, being the more orthodox marketer. For me, my brand’s personal side is not quirky at all. I mean, how can I be asymmetric, colorful, unappealing and a brand, at the same time? Probably this would work in certain domains where the brand sells toys or fun products to the young.
Me aside, I can see that this is going to be an upward trend in 2022, given that 35% of the world population are gamers and 42% are under 25. This is the population that prefers such quirkiness and catering to them is catering to half the world and more. So, you could actually inject some punk into your brand as you deem fit as quirky branding depends on the target audience.
Actionable: If I were you, I would ride both the boats, the traditional and the quirky one. You can actually segregate products and services you offer into segments and brand some of them quirky (those that cater to the population I mentioned). Or, better still, create sub-brands that are quirky and ride them on short digital marketing campaigns. This is more dependent on products and services you offer, and therefore, your call.
Search engine optimization or SEO is getting your webpages ranked at the top of search engines. This is real hard work, involves a lot of knowledge, discipline, and a long-term marketing commitment. We as marketers face challenges executing SEO strategies as search engines evolve month after month. For example, 2021’s search landscape, depicted by Oncrawl beautifully. SEO in 2022 will become leaner and more challenging.
Trend #4 – Voice Search
Though Google’s voice search algorithm launched on May 20, 2012, it did not see many takers in the initial years. Exactly 4 years after the rollout, only 20% of all searches on mobile devices were coming from voice.
Today, rechristened Google Assistant, it caters to 75+ languages and dialects with over 123 million searches worldwide, which is 58% of consumers. With 7 languages added in 2020 alone. Today Google Assistant voice search caters to almost all devices [over 30,000] it supports through all 75+ languages.
Google Assistant’s 1 million actionable commands and Alexa’s 100,000 skills together form a huge chunk of the search market. With voice searches nearing 1 billion a day, it is critical that your search engine optimization process should optimize for voice search and integrate it in your marketing strategy.
This is a fast-growing digital marketing trend and your competition must hit up the market with audio content, which means voice search is trending for you. The marketing grapevine has it that Alexa will answer your question while mentioning a “word from her sponsor”. So be there, be a sponsor.
Actionable: Voice search is certainly not for the sales process. It is a form of interactive marketing and will lead to turning into a connected brand experience because voice search saves time. Of course, appearing on voice search is as important for SEO. I am seriously considering including audio content hereon on various channels where audio becomes an omni-channel experience.
Trend #5 – The latest in digital marketing trends – Ground “0” SERP
The rise of the featured snippet is a story that we need to understand getting to ground “0”. The last two years have seen a dramatic rise in featured snippet’s appearance in Google search results, especially for DIY and ‘how to’ search queries. Since it is at top of the search results page and more often than not occupies the top fold, we also called it the result “0” in SERP.
A featured snippet offers a small description of the page like a morning shows the day. This is very helpful and shortens the time of clicking in, checking and coming back, if the result is not suitable besides aiding voice search on mobile devices.
Google says – “We display featured snippets when our systems determine this format will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking, both from the description about the page and when they click on the link to read the page itself. They’re especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.”
Coming to the SEO perspective of results, ground “0” is where you should be. You will get most clicks (?) and it occupies the entire “first fold” of search results. This is an enormous challenge. The downside is that if you get there, you may lose out on traffic as the featured snippet resolves the query with no click.
By the way, there is no way to SEO a webpage to be showcased as a featured snippet. And Google says – “Google’s automated systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet to highlight for a specific search request. Your feedback helps us improve our search algorithms and the quality of your search results.”
Now, there is an opportunity to get there. Read out blog on Google’s helpful content update and make merry.
Actionable: Before making the effort, I would check if the keyword has a featured snippet, apart from the other considerations. And, if I get there, I will ensure that I don’t put the entire information there for all to read. I need the click, don’t I? Remember, you cannot optimize for 0 SERP.
Trend #6 – Alternate search engines
For many of us, when someone says “search engine”, we type in Google into a browser. For all the 2 trillion searches in a year Google gets, we don’t know how many search terms were “Google”. Reminds you of ‘direct traffic’, eh!
And, that fact is not without a reason, Google gets over 92% of all search traffic across the globe, and the percentile has fallen by 1% over the last 2 years. All other search engines have grown. This digital marketing trend is going to stay on.
Today’s alternative search engine in focus, apart from Bing and Baidu, is DuckDuckGo, and there is a good reason for it. With security concerns overwhelming the internet, DuckDuckGo offers privacy-focussed search. Founded in 2008, DuckDuckGo’s tagline says “the search engine that doesn’t track you” because “search engines don’t need to track users to make money.”
No one knows how much money DuckDuckGo makes, being a privately held company, however they are doing well with them hitting 92 billion searches in 2021, a growth of over 29 billion in the same year [46%].
Jack Dorsey, ex-CEO of Twitter, also uses DuckDuckGo according to information published elsewhere.
Actionable: I am a big fan of Jack Dorsey, however, he is not a digital marketer, so I would stick to Google. Since most of your audience comes from Google, probably you should stick to it too. But, alternate search engines are here to stay in the digital marketing trends for long, so no harm in considering their optimization algorithms and catering to them.
Social media marketing has taken off in a major way and it has a reason. Social media helps brands get one on one with customers and vendors. It is a medium of support and branding for businesses and leveraging it, makes great sense to marketers and brands alike. Read on to understand which way is SMM headed in 2022,
Trend #7 – Social messages
Many of us look at social messaging as a pastime and having fun. Apart from talking to friends and family, social messaging apps like WeChat, WhatsApp and FB Messenger comprise of about 5 billion users, which is more than YouTube or Facebook.
Social messaging is on the rise, and, believe it or not, about 60% of users use these apps to message brands for more information during their buying or service journey. Social messaging apps are a part of the conversational messaging strategy. And, having conversations with customers is always a positive. Your customers expect you on these apps, since it is easy for them to interact with you.
In fact, Android messaging has introduced branded SMS and today, inbound messaging comes with a lot of detailed brand information. No wonder, it is an ongoing online marketing trend.
Actionable: I would consider being on social messaging apps to cultivate customer contacts, regain potential leads, involve customers, provide support, deliver important information in real time and boost sales. This is a big digital marketing trend going into 2022, give it a fair thought.
Trend #8 – Image or visual search
Image search is the new kid on the block, as far as marketing evolution goes. Although Google Lens launched on 4th October 2017, it did not take off initially. Image or visual search involves searching for an item using an image or the camera.
In the last two years, customers have found it more useful as Google expanded its object recognition database. Today Google Lens can recognize over a billion items.
Mostly used to recognize unknown items, the use of visual or image search is limited, unless the user is lazy enough to speak or type.
The next platform on visual search is Pinterest Lens, which can recognize over 2.5 billion items. Launched in 2017, it has seen about 600 million searches on its app. And, it is growing by about 140%, year after year.
Actionable: Visual search like voice search saves time. If you are an e-Commerce entrepreneur or sell products in the B2C category, you should be on Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. Since I have been marketing e-Commerce websites for a long time, I consider this a fast-growing digital marketing trend, going to be big in the future, and will pay off in the long run.
Trend #9 – Stories on social media are trending
Social media stories are actually social media posts that disappear after 24 hours. These stories enable businesses to connect with customers one on one, and share short-lived content or suspenseful/teaser content.
The pioneer of social media stories is Snapchat, after which Facebook and Instagram joined the bandwagon followed by Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Actionable: Stories on social media are a great tool to engage audiences for proactive marketers. Using stories to create polls, location tags, live videos and effective CTAs can help grow your brand. If you are hip and happening always, leverage this online marketing trend. We make social media stories just for you. Important trend, give it a thought.
Trend #10 – Social Commerce
E-Commerce promoted by a social media platform is social commerce. This is not about you and me hustling to sell using social media marketing. Social commerce is about the platform itself selling B2C.
The pioneer of social commerce is Instagram, which started the live shopping concept way back in 2017. Today, Instagram has over 1 billion users and they say that 90% of them follow brands. That, by god, is a huge number. Since then Instagram introduced various features that help in advertising for brands, as well as facilitating sales through secure channels.
Facebook marketplace has been at social commerce since the end of October 2016. However, for some reasons it did not take off as expected.
TikTok, with its 1+ billion users, launched TikTok Shopping on 30th September, 2021. Yes, that is quite like yesterday. They have gone ahead and smartly integrated with Shopify, one of the larger e-Commerce platforms on the planet, to pull from their product catalogs.
TikTok users can buy from within the app, without leaving it.
Actionable: Social commerce is on the rise. If you are in the retail space and looking to take your business worldwide, consider being on these social commerce platforms. With so many users, this digital marketing trend will grow leaps and bounds. Adding one more sales funnel to your business will help.
Search engine marketing PPC, Google Adwords etc. are quite known facets of online advertising and in all probability your business has already spent money advertising or doing so currently. While search engine advertising and social media advertising goes on, the secret sauce and a big digital marketing trend for businesses selling products is Amazon ads. SEM in 2022 is going to unwind and get complicated.
Trend #11 – Adverts on Amazon
Until now, most of us marketers think about AdWords, PPC, Social media ads. What is going to trend and grow is Amazon Ads.
If we put Twitter, Snap, Pinterest and Roku together, Amazon’s revenue from advertising is 2.4X and is growing 1.7X faster.
If you are an e-Commerce brand and ignore Amazon ads, you are not doing justice to your spend on other platforms. The best part is Amazon owns the data of over 200 million Prime customers and creates its own targeting options without third-party dependencies. Good news is that you can use the same data for your own advertising.
Amazon’s targeting uses purchase intent. If you are looking to buy cutlery, say ‘bone-china dinner set’, searching it on Google will give you varied results that are generic and broad. This is because they base those results on keywords, reviews, comparisons, specifications and other data and not primarily on purchase intent.
If you search for the same on Amazon, you will get intent based product results, making your buying journey easier.
No wonder then, Amazon is the second largest search engine after Google for e-Commerce or product based searches. And, Google is moving towards purchase-intent based search.
Amazon also provides a lot of advertising options that are easy to choose and get your adverts going.
Actionable: If you are looking at the e-Commerce market, there is no need to explain the importance of Amazon ads. Getting on the bandwagon is the best step ahead.
Trend #12 – Notifications
Privacy laws introduced in 2018 [GDPR et al.] have taken the sheen off email marketing in many European countries. Add to this, the newer generation is looking for lesser touch-points to deal with brands going ahead, the trend will be exponential growth in push notifications.
In recent past, push notifications have increasingly gotten personalized and AI driven. These factors make them highly clickable and convertible. Statistics say that push notifications get about 7% open rates (54% conversion at the end of the funnel) compared to 3% (15% conversion) for the generic ones.
Push notifications help customers who were interested but forgot to take action. Similar to re-marketing, but a little more sophisticated. A prime example of push notifications in action is ‘abandoned shopping cart’ notifications. Integrating CTAs and images can help improve effectiveness.
Actionable: Push notifications are short and sweet. Paid advertising is ROI based, and to get the best bang for your advertising buck, push notification can do wonders. It is not only about CTRs but also about better conversions. Wisdom is in deploying them for good use.
Trend #13 – Native Advertising
With more and more people opting for ad blockers on browsers, marketers have faced an avenue of closure to advertise and push ads. Looking at new acquisition channels became critical, which gave birth to native advertising.
Native advertising is advertising that blends seamlessly with the content of the webpage or mobile display you are looking at. It is difficult for a normal reader to distinguish the ad from the content.
Recent data shows native ads get a CTR of 1% compared to standard display ads that get about 0.1%, so they are about 10X more effective. Native advertising spend is growing at an alarming rate and is an important digital marketing trend. It will be 5X of what it is today by 2025.
Actionable: Growth of native advertising is inevitable and leveraging it as a part of your search marketing strategy makes sense. Unless some other form of more effective advertising comes up, this is the best way to go ahead, for now.
“Content is King” – We have heard this many times and leveraged it. However, most content on the internet is sadly of little use for a consumer. In time, people are losing interest in reading simple content. The latest online marketing trend is to offer interactive content which will be consumed better. Content marketing in 2022 is going to be about customer consumption.
Trend #14 – Interactive Content
Interactive content warrants input from the consumer, so that he or she can actively consume the content for better understanding and action.
This is currently the biggest digital marketing trend in content marketing and is going to bring on some revolutionary changes in publishing, purposing, and marketing in the years to come.
Integrate immersive experiences into content and they can become very rewarding in terms of data collection, analysis, repurposing, and creating new content on the schedule.
Some examples of interactive content doing the rounds are polls and quizzes on social media, embedded calculators in insurance and banking domains, augmented reality advertising, 360 degree videos, etc.
Until now, video marketing has been at the top. However, out of every 100 consumers that watch your video, only 20% listen to the content. In comparison, 29% of consumers watch 360 degree videos because they are very involved and listen to the audio, which results in 100% more conversions. That is the power of interactive content.
Brand connect increases exponentially with the use of interactive content and thus over 90% of users actually look for interaction.
Actionable: Interactive content works wonders. In terms of content marketing, doing more with less is effectively possible with interactive content. Going by the data that I am talking about here, interactive content is going to make or break your brand in the near future. Jump on it.
Trend #15 – Enter podcasts – the latest of digital marketing trends
We can classify podcasts as in-trend marketing tools because people naturally like listening when there is no video to go with it. According to data, those who listen to a podcast will listen to at least 80% of it. The reason is we are all born with the listening gene, thanks to the radio.
Today, search engines like Google are integrating podcasts into SERPs directly, since May 2019, which is another reason for them to stay trending in the coming years. Optimizing podcasts is critical to getting there.
Podcasts are making a comeback. We can relate the podcast to a voice SEO tool, and consumers interact with voice-enabled devices more often than not.
Actionable: Podcasts have been slow to come up in popularity but they are going to trend in 2022, not only because Google shows them in the SERP but also because voice-enabled interaction has grown with Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Keep focus on the market and optimize your podcasts wisely.
We as marketers, have always believed that email marketing works best. Of course, many marketers also said the email marketing is dead. With due respect to everyone, email marketing can never be dead. It brings consistent results, so keep at it. The latest digital marketing trend for emails is personalization and I firmly believe that this will change the email marketing equation forever.
Trend # 16 – Email personalization
Personalization is a very in-thing for email marketing in 2022. All aspects of marketing are seeing increasing levels of personalization, and emails more so. This requires carefully scoring marketing leads. This is because 73% of consumers take action on personalized messages which are crafted according to their interests and tastes.
According to a Salesforce survey – personalisation helps improve customer experience by 64% and improves conversion rates by 63% and engagement by 55%.
Prime examples of personalization are Amazon’s product recommendations and Netflix’s movie recommendations. Many data driven personalizations have been successful too, like
Cadbury’s video campaign (AI matching of Dairy Milk flavor with users based on data like age, interest and location from their Facebook profiles). This campaign saw a 65% CTR and a 34% conversion.
Starbucks’s gamified mobile app based on consumer location and purchase history used personalized data to offer customized drinks in tandem with a rewards system. This campaign helped them skyrocket revenue to $2.56 billion.
Actionable: Creating personalized campaigns is critical to success. Personalization depends on data and getting the right analytics out of it, is the job of artificial intelligence. Integrate AI, personalize, personalize and personalize.
Video marketing has been trending for the last 3 years and will continue to do so for the next 3, to say the least. The latest digital marketing trend in the video domain are going to bump up the demand for videos like never before. Videos are going to see a sea of change.
Trend # 17 – Video Marketing data
The present trend is video marketing, and it is going to remain so for the next 3 to 4 years. Today 60% businesses use video as a marketing tool, 53% say video marketing helps build trust, 62% of marketers see video marketing as a critical part of marketing strategy and 75% feel that video garners better ROI than images.
As perceived by most marketers, video marketing is not expensive or difficult. Also, it comes with a much better ROI. One idea could be to repurpose one of your old blog posts into a video or vice versa. Reuse the audio to turn it into a podcast or even generate more impressions by using parts of it with PPC.
Actionable: Video is the most sought after medium for consumers today. The video marketing bandwagon has certainly grown to make consumers consume more content. Leveraging this digital marketing trend to grow your business is an amazing idea. Get on the bandwagon, today.
Trend #18 – Stream live
Did you know people prefer watching a video compared to reading a blog? No wonder then, best-selling books turn into movies, increasing their reach and becoming box office hits.
More interesting statistics – Over 65% of millennials watch live streams regularly and people watch live videos 3X time more than pre-recorded videos.
Live stream videos are interactive content and people love interacting with the creator or narrator, making them feel they are a part of the action.
Instagram’s Live Rooms and YouTube Live are two of the biggest live streaming platforms today.
Actionable: Businesses continuously innovate marketing, and live video streaming is a preferred choice for them. If you think that your business promotes actionable products and services, then certainly live streaming videos are for you. Make them a part of your marketing strategy.
Trend # 19 –Twitch is the latest digital marketing trend
Amazon’s Twitch is an old kid on the block for video streaming. Twitch today, is growing by leaps and bounds. Founded in 2011, Twitch caters only to the gaming community. Today, Twitch is expanding its horizons to cooking, painting and music.
The pandemic has confined many of us to homes and Twitch has grown considerably in this period to expand its user base and influencers.
Twitch differs from its peers in the aspect that it does not support ads or sponsored links and it does not offer any content to its users, apart from sharing what they upload across the community. As a result, the community connections are powerful and work well for live streaming services.
Twitch users have promoted interviews, webinars, events and workshops on the platform, making it convenient for businesses to live stream a plethora of content.
Actionable: If your business is gaming, Twitch is cutout for you. For businesses looking to stream live content, Twitch can put together a more cohesive and well-knit audience. If your business is to live stream, Twitch should be an integral part of your entire digital marketing strategy.
Website design
Website design and development has existed since the advent of internet and it was seen as more of a technical domain unrelated to marketing. However, with digital marketing trends like UX, CX, color psychology etc. getting on to the scene, website design has more or less turned into the marketing domain.
Trend #20 – PWAs (Progressive Web Apps)
Progressive Web Apps are nothing more than websites that are like mobile apps in functionality and use. However, PWAs offer faster load times, offline usage, and allow push notifications. The best part is that PWAs are platform independent and are deployable on any device through a browser.
In short, a PWA can open up on a mobile phone with blazing speed, though it exists on the web. With mobile phone numbers slated to reach 7.5+ billion by 2025 and mobile page views growing almost 60% a year, PWAs are here to stay for some time to come.
Actionable: Progressive web apps mimic the mobile-centric culture. If you already deploy a mobile app, PWA may not be as useful, but if your business domain is not really mobile specific, PWA can grow your business faster. Your call, consider all pros and cons before you take the leap.
Trend #21 – Web security
As the positives grow, so do negatives, and with online businesses growing, the negatives are also growing, which makes website security more important than ever in the vast and expanding virtual space.
If your website does not offer https, the dwell time on your web page will be much lower. The consumer needs to feel secure to browse your page. And, remember dwell time increases the bounce rate, both of which are SERP ranking factors.
Google’s Core Web Vitals also make it mandatory for websites to be secure. Enabling https protocol has just become mandatory if you want to rank on search engines. I recommend, you display the seal of trust on your website always.
Actionable: Seals of trust instil trust. It is mandatory to get a https protocol as quickly as possible. Not only does it secure your website and give visitors a sense of security, it will also give your website the much needed protection by keeping the bad bots away. This is not a what you ‘can’ do, this is ‘mandatory’.
Trend #22 – First-Party Cookies
The enactment of California’s CCPA and EU’s GDPR have limited the use of customer data. As a result, big businesses have seen ‘fines’ in millions of Euros because of violations of privacy in these countries.
The implications are huge and non-use of third-party cookies is the biggest digital marketing drawback in history. The enormous gap of not using 3rd party cookies impedes marketing. Since these cookies can help with data-rich insights to create ads and marketing campaigns, marketing strategies go for a toss. Today, marketers can only use data they own and cannot use technology to further their needs.
This brings to the fore first-party cookies collected with consent. Of course, we collected them with user permission, however, this can bring monumental changes to the marketing function.
Deploy first party cookie boxes enticingly, and using the data to drive an omnichannel marketing campaign is the only road ahead.
Actionable: No one wants to be on the wrong side of the law. We may as well comply and get things going before we miss the bus.
Conclusion…
I have mentioned the broad digital marketing trends expected in 2022. Since the online marketing function is about omnichannel marketing and has a lot of integrated workflows like Branding, SEO, SEM, SMM, Content marketing, Email marketing, Video marketing and Website design, I will post detailed trends on each of these trends in the coming weeks. I hope you like this read and you will flow with the trend with some wonderful ideas posted in comments.
Meanwhile, if you feel that you need to understand a trend better, we are only a form away.
The world is moving further online, because of the 2 year long COVID-19 pandemic. It has compelled all of us who have traditionally gone out to buy goods, to buy online due to lockdowns and restrictions imposed. 2 years have passed, and buying online has become a habit. The pandemic has made us more connected, and the economy has moved to digital at an amazing pace. As a result, marketers are compelled to develop a new web marketing focus. Necessity is the mother of invention.
With ever-connected customers and the age of online buying upon us, businesses are left with no other option but to move online. Those who were already on the bandwagon did well, and those who were getting there sped up. And, businesses that weren’t there should get there as quickly as possible.
Do you want to take your business online? I fully understand that some traditional and heavy businesses like real estate, mining, steel, car-making etc do not have an option to go completely online. They can leverage digital marketing, making the best use of the ever-connected customer.
Today, online businesses offering to sell products and services have prospered irrespective of the hard times, while those who weren’t online suffered. So, isn’t it time your business shifted to or developed an internet marketing focus?
The focus of any business, new or old, is to get more customers through the door. Many businesses have great confidence in their product and are of the opinion that in time, customers will walk in. Imagine, if you were making a purchase, would you walk in to buy just on the strength of products or services?
Traditional forms of marketing, such as advertising in newspapers, print ads in magazines, coupons, hoardings, and a host of others, are not that effective anymore. How many traditional telephone sets have you come across in the last 6 weeks. I have seen none and with the traffic, I hardly get to glance at a hoarding. Newspapers, who has the time, with Google news spewing them out hourly? Similarly, traditional marketing, at the most, only brings in a small trickle of customers.
Imagine, if there is a way to bring hoards of customers through the door at a fraction of the cost! Add to it the opportunity to offer your products and services to a global audience. Is it worth the shift? Businesses, today, should not ignore the possibilities of digital marketing channels which can offer a multitude of benefits.
The advantages of focusing on internet marketing
There are multiple advantages of internet marketing that cannot be neglected if you are an entrepreneur. If you are not on the internet today, you do not exist. Simple!
All traditional web marketing channels market locally, be it in a city, state or the country. However, online marketing has a much larger potential since it addresses almost every internet user across the planet.
Do you know how many customers have seen your hoardings or read your print ads? No, traditional marketing is hardly measurable, and there is no cost of acquisition that you can put your finger on. Whereas online marketing is accurately and highly measurable, and scalable. You can track and analyze data instantly and change the marketing strategy instantly, if required. You are in complete control.
By using web marketing channels, you can enable a two-way communication with your customers and prospects. This translates to offering better customers service and creating bespoke products and services for asking customers. You are also saving time and resources by cutting down on the communication time, looking proactive.
Online marketing channels can help find the right customers at the right time, using personalization. This is possible by creating lists and following the competition, all the while, communicating with your prospects across every stage of the buying process.
Using online marketing, you can do more for less, keeping your cost per acquisition low. Once things get measurable, they get actionable, and action drives a business.
Season or no season, you can engage the audience to generate brand loyalty and enable repeat business. Using loyalty schemes and other marketing sops, it is easy to create loyal customers at a fraction of the cost.
Getting started with digital marketing
Digital marketing has endless opportunities, as you have seen above. If you are getting there for the first time, it could seem intimidating with all the jargon and tech talk. It is not rocket science, neither is it a walk in the park.
If you are a small business or a startup, you could easily assume that it will take a lot of money and time. And, you will go back to traditional channels biding your time and crossing your fingers for your business to grow to an affordable stage.
Try to imagine the possibilities, with over 5 billion users using the internet or 60% global penetration, where you can take your business. Show up and be there for the opportunity to bear fruit. Why not today?
Do you still think you should put away the digital route to the future?
It is a myth that going digital takes too much money or time. Once you decide, it will be a matter of weeks to create your presence and begin talking to customers. Find the right digital agency that can create a wonderful set of digital channels for you.
Most of your customers are online
We spoke of 5 billion internet users worldwide. What do you think one of them would do when they need a product or a service? Or, if they want to buy your brand. They will search for it online!
And, you aren’t there and neither is your product or service!
It’s a pity, isn’t it? These 5 billion users think that if your business does not have an online presence, you are from the stone-age. However good your product or service may be, if you are not online, 60% of the world’s population will not find you. In which case, what are the chances that your business will grow.
And, as you assumed, if your business isn’t growing, you cannot go online. So, it’s a vicious cycle, and putting off the game-changing ‘go digital’ exercise will only reduce your opportunities.
When people look you up online, they will find out what others think of your products and services (reviews), and for local businesses, almost 90% of viewers will not approach you if you do not have excellent reviews.
Today, the connected customer is assuming that you do not run a legitimate business if you are not online. So, your business is out of the game and they will move to your competition. And whatever opportunity exists without an online presence is miniscule. What should you do?
Assess your competition
The competition is only hotting up. Even as a traditional business, you need to monitor your competition all the time. And, such information is not easily available in a traditional business landscape. If your business needs to grow, beat the competition. It is much easier to assess your competition online, that it is accurately measurable.
Assessing strengths and weaknesses of your own business and that of your competition, you can understand what’s working and what’s not. Be it the marketing strategy or consumer perception, these insights can help change your strategies and web marketing practices.
Research your competition to find out what digital marketing channels they use, what keywords they leverage, what kind of content they publish, and which influencers do they leverage? There are a lot of tools available online to collect this information – Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, Google alerts etc are some of the well-known tools available.
Similarly, there are many customer insight tools available that can help understand consumer perception. This information is critical to build sustainable web marketing strategy.
Always be there for your customers
By spreading the word across, you should be accessible to customers and prospects through your website or on social media. It is important to resolve issues and answer queries as quickly as possible.
The best way to keep in touch with your customers is to rank on top of search engines. Build a website (or get it built) and learn the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). Outranking competition is the first step to creating a successful business.
Use Goole Business to list your business with complete details to be found by customers and prospects easily.
Leverage time and your customers will come to you
Your website is your store, even if you have a traditional one. To be successful, ensure that your website is up to date all the time. Take care of it as though it is a traditional store.
With internet marketing, your web store reaches a global audience, and it is scalable. It is open 24 X 7 to the global population and the logistics of opening and closing a traditional store are out of the window. Does this increase the chances of your business growth?
Since your store is open even while you are sleeping, what is the first thing to do when you wake up? Address queries, fulfil orders and take care of service issues, at least communicate. This improves customer relationships and loyalty, all from your small physical space. And, we always see a proactive policy in friendly light.
More online marketing, less investment
Small businesses are always marketing on a shoe-string budget. When you look at advertising using Google AdWords or social media ads online, it is only wise to research properly and fine tune them to reach your target audience. Otherwise, you will only spray and pray while spending more money than required.
Again, choose your internet marketing channels carefully and wisely. Competition research can point you in the right direction by showing you what is working for them and what is not.
Strategize your web marketing
Do you have a website to showcase or are you looking forward to create one? Do you want to advertise online and looking for help or ways to reduce your budget?
The first step to achieving online success is to learn. And learning takes time. Learn while you earn is better, simultaneously growing your business, isn’t it?
Talk to us about anything and everything in digital marketing. The consultation is free, one time.
Hardly 5% of senior marketers make it to a CEO. Why only 5%, what is the disconnect? Most of today’s CEOs were yesterday’s CFOs or CIOs. Why? The average life of a CMO in any business is less than 3 years and by the time he leaves, there is enough water under the bridge. As a result, marketing suffers and so does business sustainability.
Bridging this gap is critical for a business to grow. To grow, a business needs a growth hacker, aka CMO. Let alone sitting on high chairs, it is imperative to understand the differences and build bridges here. Though every business is unique and has its own DNA, let us look at a few generic differences, causes and resolutions.
To underline, the disconnect between a CMO and a CEO comes from both directions.
The art and science
The challenge faced by most chief marketing officers is that they don’t plan enough [a CEO insight]. But then, it is impossible to plan all variables on a shifting battleground. I personally believe that marketing is 70% science and 30% art, which is intangible. An understanding CEO will see the light and will always drop the 30% challenge. That’s how marketing works, changing CMO’s will not change marketing, does it? This perception of changing CMO, makes the ground brittle and it is passed on to the next one, as a challenge.
A survey by Smart Insights shows that about 69% of marketers do not have an omni-channel digital marketing strategy and only about 45% have a content marketing strategy. What use is content, if not distributed and leveraged for lead generation? And the story goes on. Believe it or not, it is still the same today. Check if all your marketing channels are barking up the same tree on a given day or a week.
Lack of strategy or planning
So, if a CMO joins mid-way and there is no marketing strategy, who is to blame? The CMO who resigned and left? Ownership has to be taken by someone, and the CEO wears all the hats by default. It is for him to accommodate or delegate, but most CMO’s join to a clean and empty seat with some juniors filling in with half-baked history. Assuming that there was no strategy at all, who is to blame.
There are strategies to understand, build and execute. And, mind you, digital marketing evolves daily and a fair bit of reading keeps a marketer ahead in the game. Be it SEO, SMM, Content Marketing, Email marketing, Search engine marketing and a myriad of them, it is he, who has to keep track.
Senior executives do not consider marketing an important enough function to warrant backups?
Anyway, more often than not, the shiny, brand new CMO has to create the game and tighten it up.
Pro-active marketing
Marketers should be proactive and dynamic to take the first dive into new tactics, channels or techniques that become available. Stop, look and proceed is not a marketer’s strength. If you stop and look, evolve a strategy and optimize it to business needs, success rate will always be better. But, by the time a marketer did that, things change and the opportunity vanishes. There will be something else to plan for, that’s alright. In such a scenario, a CMO will spend all his time planning, and never executing to achieve anything. A classic CMO failure brought on by his boss.
In the past, of course CEOs are mostly old school, did not believe that the marketing process demonstrates objective and commercial thinking. 70% + CEO’s thought marketers lack the ability to generate required growth since they lack business credibility. 80% + of them never trusted marketers and over 90% trusted CFO’s and CIOs. There is a reason for this – accountability of a CIO or a CFO is transparent and data-based since everything happens in-house. For a marketer, the entire process depends on the external world and putting that on paper for accountability is impossible, if not unjust. Remember the 30%? And that’s a lot!
Thankfully, those days passed and the percentages have come down. However, senior executives are still not on the marketer’s side. Percentages came down because the customer is highly connected than ever before and there are multiple opportunities to leverage and succeed. So, unlike a CIO or a CFO, marketers need independence to take decisions and drive new strategies. A CEO should not look over his shoulder, he should just get an eagle’s eye-view. The classic ‘trust’ factor comes to the fore here. A CEO, as a rule, never trusts a CMO, even today. Remarkable, but true, because they lack ‘business credibility’.
Expectations vs Outcomes
The marketing function in any business is a highly creative function, compared to others. And, if you are a startup CEO, who wants to scale the Everest overnight overtaking established brands, God help the marketers. A marketer has his limitations and even if he thinks out of the box or a superman, time ain’t on his side. Brands are not built overnight, however, they can vanish overnight. Use caution.
CMO’s commercial angle
Most CEOs have always looked at the marketing function as an expense. Marketing is an investment that brings returns. Add to that, the thin red line between sales and marketing has always been a bother. Sales function always wins the argument because they are the rainmakers and bring in the moolah. What the senior management needs to understand is that the same moolah will not flow in, if marketing didn’t perform.
CEOs expect marketers to drive revenue growth. And, they feel that CMO’s lack the leadership skills or the business sense to achieve that. And, I always thought revenue growth was the responsibility of sales, marketing only helps generate leads for sales.
Conclusion…
Marketing has an important space in the C-club because the mission and vision of the business creates direction for marketing. The C-club should understand this and inputs from marketing should be taken seriously, in fact, rewarded. There is no one who understands the market and competition better than a CMO, and those inputs, are critical to informed decision making across all functions.
The disconnect between expectations and deliverance will always exist for any function. The percentages may be a little higher for marketing. As I mentioned, it is 30% art and a grope in the dark with the ever-changing landscape. But then, every function has its dark spaces, only it’s a little bigger for marketing.
The most important reason for the disconnect between CMO’s and CEO’s is the lack of transparency. A CEO should tell marketing what he expects out of the function, and the CMO should take responsibility and deliver to the best of the team’s ability. Of course, the deliverables have to be decided across the table after a practical and sound discussion with all stakeholders.
Entrepreneurs are great marketers and and therefore, marketers make the greatest entrepreneurs. And that, is a fact that all of us have to accept. In that truth, lies the greatest lie – ‘CMOs cannot be great CEOs’.
I believe, all functions are equally important for business growth and marketing being the growth hack, should be supported by the rest, unconditionally. Everyone should act hand in hand. Internal differences and struggle, however small, will only affect business.
It is only wise to keep the peace, right from the bottom of the heart and hit the home run.
Read time: 9minutesThe Gist: An insight into the plight of SMB entrepreneurs during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown. Please read completely, or I recommend not to waste your time.
As we pass time in the lockdown to fight the Novel Corona or the COVID-19 threat, the Indian Government has taken a plethora of steps to ensure that people are not hit drastically by streamlining the demand-supply chain for essential commodities, ensuring that the lockdown is imposed properly and isolating cases in addition to announcing some great economic measures to ensure stability and peace.
The Indian lockdown scenario:
Official (as announced) – 21 days.
Disturbance before announcement – 3 days
Assuming monthly weekends – 8 days
Other holidays in the period of lockdown – 9 days
Total – 41 days of lost productivity.
We support the government in its entirety and understand the magnanimity of the task, announcing and executing the same in so short a time, is a great challenge. The government has kept its word on every commitment made and we are sure that we will successfully thwart the COVID-19 threat. Kudos.
We thank every frontline health worker, from doctors, nurses, and paramedics to those involved in sanitary services who are risking the COVID-19 infection to ensure that we, the common people live in relative safety.
While everything looks hunky-dory at this stage, let us look at the economic ramifications from an SMB [small and medium businesses] point of view that could surface once the COVID-19 lockdown is over [the possibility of the lockdown being extended is not ruled out].
Most SMB owners in India do not come from affluent or rich families. Compared to the salaried counterparts, most SMB owners would have about 2-month revenues as liquid savings. The intelligent salaried normally would have 4 to 6 months of salary as liquid savings. And a good entrepreneur takes about 10% of the turnover home, as salary or drawings.
The Indian SMB entrepreneurs can be classified as:
The Upper Middle Class:
A family of 4 which can buy and maintain a car in the C2 segment such as a Honda city, or maybe 2 hatchbacks such as i10. Can think of buying a 2 bedroom apartment on loan in an average location in a city such as Bangalore. Or stay on rent in posh areas. Can send kids to good private schools and private engineering colleges. Can afford to watch movies in multiplex and eat in good restaurants on weekends. Go for holidays to Goa, Jaipur, Kerala once a year. And Thailand, Malaysia, etc once in 3 years. They save enough for a comfortable retirement and lavish weddings of kids. This needs an in-hand income of a minimum 1.5 lakhs a month. That is approximately 24 lakhs a year salary before tax. 1% Indians [about 1.5 crores] are in and above this class.*
How the lockdown pans out for an upper middle class entrepreneur:
Assuming a take-home margin of 10% (which is ridiculous in today’s market), he will make a turnover of INR 2.4 Crores.
A lost period of 30 days (assuming a month) converts to a loss of INR 20 lakhs in turnover.
The general ratio of gross turnover to salary is about 35%>. Therefore the salaries paid in the period of no productivity is about INR 7.0 lakhs.
For any entrepreneur, the cost of living would be about 60% of the take-home including EMI’s. Therefore for the lockdown period where he is making no money, he would be spending:
On salaries – INR 700,000.00
Home expenses – INR 120,000.00
Gross Spend – INR 820,000.00
EMI Moratorium offset – INR 30,000
Net Spend – INR 790,000.00
Remember, the liquidity is only INR 400,000.00, so liquidity and credit cards will be stretched.
Liabilities in the next 60 days:
Opportunity loss (20% of lost turnover) – INR 800,000.00
50% opportunity loss for the next 60 days – INR 400,000.00
Business Income Tax payable (approx.) – INR 700,000.00
Personal Income tax payable (approx.) – INR 700,000.00
With business suddenly in recession and cash flow constricted, his open liabilities are INR 26,00,000.00, more than his yearly earnings.
2. Middle class:
A family of 4 which can rent a 2 bedroom apartment in an average area of the city. Buy and maintain a car such as the Hyundai i10. Watch a movie in multiplex once a month and eat out at average restaurants. Dream to own an apartment but cannot. Go for vacation once a year to Goa etc. Can buy branded clothes but not expensive electronics such as big tv or expensive cellphones. Can send kids to private schools but Cannot afford private engineering colleges in India. They manage to save for a decent retirement and kids wedding. They have an in-hand income of roughly INR 75,000 a month. That is a minimum salary of INR 12 lakhs CTC before taxes.*
For a middle-class entrepreneur, doing the same math as the upper-middle class, with business suddenly in recession and cash flow constricted, his open liabilities are INR 15,00,000.00, more than his yearly earnings.
3. Lower middle class:
A family of 4 which can afford to rent a 1 bedroom house in low-class areas of the city, buy and maintain a two-wheeler or entry-level hatchback on loan. Car such as alto and keep it for 15 to 20 years. Provide food and education to kids in a government college and cheap private schools. Any other expenses such as watching movies in a multiplex etc are unaffordable. They buy entry-level cellphones such as Moto E and go on a vacation to places like Khandala once a year. This lifestyle is possible with an in-hand income of about 40,000 a month in Indian cities such as Bangalore. An annual in-hand income of 4.8 lakhs. Hence lower-middle-class status starts at approximately 6 lakhs annual income before taxes and savings.*
For a lower-middle-class entrepreneur, doing the same math like the rest, with business suddenly in recession and cash flow constricted, his open liabilities are INR 750,000.00, more than his yearly earnings.
How’s the cash flow in the COVID-19 lockdown:
The Rich and Affluent:
Big businesses that manufacture or distribute essential products are making good money for now, but the demand will diminish and balance out in a quarter following the lifting of the lockdown.
But, for now, they are accumulating the cash and riding the cash flow due to panic buying and rolling back the same into business, so a boost for them is inevitable.
Big businesses are run by the affluent or the government, therefore they are going cash-rich, albeit temporarily. This is more so since we are all paying or getting paid salaries on time irrespective of the COVID-19 lockdown.
The Salaried:
The salaried are not much affected by the lockdown financially since the salaries are mandatorily payable and they get to spend more and buy more due to savings on eating out, clubbing and all those expendable income activities.
The Below Poverty Line:
The most affected by this crisis are the people below the poverty line and the government has done well by ensuring the PDS [Public Distribution System] remains well-oiled and distributing free food, ration, and money. This is irrespective of the fact that their income has not taken a dent and they are being paid salaries on time.
The essential COVID-19 lockdown crisis:
As small business entrepreneurs, we are all between a rock and a hard place.
We are paying salaries irrespective of work done or not.
We have to run our homes, in a crisis.
No income comes our way, at least for the 41 days.
We are not being supported in any manner by the government.
We suffer with all the above, irrespective of the following facts**:
# Number of SMBs in India – 42.5 million – 95% of industrial units in India.
# Employment by. SMB’s – 106 million – 40% of country’s workforce.
# Deals in over 6000 products.
# Contribution to GDP – 6.11% of products & 24.63% of services.
So, if SMB’s are the backbone of the Indian economy, what is its future? How is the government looking at it?
The government has announced moratoriums on all loans and come up with a few sops. These sops are temporary, it is not that we do not have to pay taxes or interest, it is just that we need to pay later. That is all right, however, these 30/40 days of lost opportunity is not coming back.
Please keep in mind that as entrepreneurs, we are not looking for doles from the government, we are only looking forward to making the most of our opportunities.
And, in my part of the country, the lockdown seems ripe for an extension.
As always, the SMB owners are staring down the barrel.
On a more personal note, I would rather risk COVID-19 than die of disgrace or hunger. What do you say?
And, web marketing has changed, post pandemic, for sure!
While reading this, please note:
This is my point of view only and I do not expect anyone to subscribe to it.
The above points are purely apolitical and pragmatist and do not cater to any manifestos.
I am sure all the SMB owners and entrepreneurs are thinking on similar lines and it is time we came up with a solution before the business turns into a financial disaster. Prevention is better than cure and the government will not wake up to this.
And, what a perfect way to spend your isolation time.
First, I hope you and yourfamily are safe and in great health in this time of the pandemic, and you are not in what we call the COVID-19 isolation. Let;’s not harp on what, when, how, why and all that information overload, overly promulgated on the telly and the newspapers.
Second, the million dollar question – What are you doing in this COID-19 isolation quarantine?
Are you using your time to do something constructive or awesome instead of lying bogged down and stressed out with news of Novel Corona and the statistics?
Are you looking at this isolation, quarantine, lockdown or curfew as wasted time or as a gifted opportunity?
I was looking at this as a paid holiday, but sadly, cannot go out anywhere. That would be an irresponsible statement, yes, kinda realised it the first day. So, let me tell you what I am doing with my gifted time.
This is not to give you a peek into my personal quarantine diary [not that I mind], but to share a few ideas to better yourself, or to pursue stuff that you have been intending to, but never found the time.
Me, I am fascinated with words and digital marketing agencies. I have been writing for a long time , probably since 2003 or 2004, wherever I can find space – internet, paper, blank walls, even on empty spaces across the columns of newspapers and magazines and of course in the recesses of my unused brain. So, the favouritism to reading and writing will be prominent in this piece, but then, each to his own poison.
No, this is not about marketing, SEO, keywords, rankings, content marketing or everything else you can think about. Let’s give Google a break.
This is just about what I am doing to overcome the Corona boredom.
I started out getting bored within the first 4 days of COVID-19 isolation and went into deep thought. I began counting the number of things I wanted to do but never could begin doing them.
Surprisingly, the count was far beyond the number of fingers I have.
I wrote them down [as I am inclined to] and prioritised them as I would – numbered them as per my passion-measure for each of them. Surprisingly, I found that, if only I had given more time and thought to them when they first occurred to my mind/heart, I would have been far better man and more successful in my profession.
And this is not even the entire list. Let me list my top fifteen:
Plan my finances to tide through the crisis (remember, I am not salaried). – priority 01
Clean up my attic, my room and my storage. – priority 02
Get back to some great health by detoxing & exercise. – priority 03
Spend a lot of quality time with family and involve kids in most of the above activities. – priority 04
Rejuvenate myself with some great reading. – priority 05
Rethink on my contribution to the society. – priority 06
Try a few new recipes to ramp up on my culinary skills. – priority 07
Write some short stories that can be converted to films. – priority 09
Catch up on my to-watch movie list. – priority 10
Up my editing skills, both the written word and the video. – priority 11
Change the way I speak or turn more articulate. – priority 12
Revamp my website with some wonderful content. – priority 13
Create an app that will simplify marketing, so much so that a startup can market itself without the help any agencies – save money and time and have a more focussed approach. – priority 14
Practice my lowly guitar skills. – priority 15
Hmm…. So, we have a 40 day lockdown (could be less officially, but I am sure it is going to take that time to come back to normal). As you may know the. Corona Virus has a 40 day life-cycle and tapers bottom to top and then top to bottom in terms of an infection cycle. As I write this, the first 10 days are gone. What have I achieved in those 10 days of COVID-19 isolation?
I was traveling the first 4 days, so just tucked myself in my OYO Room, got drunk a bit on whiskey and ate what was offered by Swiggy. Wasted health, money and time. This for me, as usual, trying to lead a normal life in abnormal times. The ‘abnormal’ or ‘threat’ did not sink in, I guess.
The 5th day, I achieved the (2) above and was tired, it took an entire day and I realised how disorganised I was. The amazing part is that I found so many books that I never thought I had, and in fact many of them were unread or partly read. Time to finish and learn. That was a treasure.
So, (5) is in process and I hope to learn and grow at an intellectual level. The (12) too is happening in the evenings, in addition to (10) that is keeping me in excellent spirits, and these are ongoing processes. By the way (3) is also in the process with my new found love for cycling and it gives me an opportunity to go out whenever allowed to, by the authorities. Not to mention that alcohol and all kind of narcotics are off the shelves 🙂 in this COVID-19 isolation.
(7) has always intrigued me, and I am cooking 2 meals a day and wife is going crazy cleaning up after me. But, I am putting a smile on my chidden’s faces and its all worth it. This in on and probably continue at least with one meal. I am done with (1), there will be jitters, I will tide over.
Yet to clean the guitar (15), probably not now, but will try.
With writing this piece, I am in the process of perfecting the (8) and (11).
With (11) I am also curating some stories for (9) and (12)
I am also giving a great deal of thought to (13) while processing the (12) loudly.
The (14) and the (15) are on the after-burner and will be starting out with them, one after another. However, I am not so sure that I Will have the time to get to (15).
My sincere apologies to the numeric references, however, I put them here with the purpose of getting more read-time. You know, things have to sink in!
Let us hear about what you have been doing during your COVID-19 isolation and we could probable grow on a few ideas, now that we have time, albeit enforced. 🙂
I have been listing a few new year AI digital marketing articles to read. I am simply awed with the sheer numbers published. After reading about 25 of them with great attention, care, interest with an intent to learn, my top three are:
This is a trend that I have observed over the past few years. Every domain gets tonnes of “new year” articles that are published across every nook and corner of the internet. All of them are written very well, no doubt, and the effort taken to create such listicles is enormous. I love to read them year on year, especially those in my domain – digital marketing.
I read through each of those 25 with deep concentration and deepening concern. The end result is that I am really, really tired of them. Do you know why?
Many of these articles are recycled, the old one from 2018 is recycled and published in 2019 and then recycled again and published in 2020..! I mean how glorious does that sound?
As a result, they have the same information, most times and little more added to it. Has originality gone out of the window?
The best part is that all of us want to get indexed on the search engines and all that bots understand is text and a little more, a little variation here and there would get us through. What about the consumers, the visitors, the readers, mates? What about them?
Search engines are not paying us, visitors, consumers, readers are! Have we forgotten that, and what will you achieve putting stale food on the table? The table is what search engine props up, but the food needs to be fresh and different.
I will not go into any domains apart from mine and with all due respect to all those authors, AI digital marketing gurus and consumers and visitors out there, I write this with no malice towards anyone or an intent to criticize. And, this is what I found.
a. Let’s take a peek at the article a, listed out on top – “10 DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR 2020”. First, the capitalization of the heading puts me off, tells me that someone is shouting at me. Micheal Brenner’s perspective is very good and the quality of writing is just awesome. The article lists out 10 trends, where CX [Customer Experience], Employee Engagement, Visualization, Personalization, Tracking SERP positions, Voice Search, Customer retention and loyalty and live video which are all old concepts rewritten as new.
For example CX, employee engagement, visualization, SERP tracking, and customer retention and loyalty have been in practice for over 4 years now. Personalization, voice search, and live video are the stuff that we marketers have been practicing for the last three years or so.
We are left with Strategic marketing transformation that has been the underlying rule for all marketing practices and too generic, prevalent at all times. The only new trend is AI-based automation which is just entering the deployment phase and is not perfect.
Inference – I, as a marketer has learned nothing new, from the piece after spending 15 to 20 minutes of reading. Of course, budding or aspiring marketers could learn something, only if they are not on their toes practicing and learning every day.
b. In the article b listed above – “42 Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2020”, Nidhi Dave has put across 42 beautiful marketing techniques that are not only old but also work. Of these, apart from Artificial Intelligence, Augmented reality and Neuro Marketing, the rest are all old concepts that we marketers always follow.
All those three are not perfected yet, so the options we have are all limited as of now. The beauty of this piece is that each of the 42 points is very well explained with illustrations and links to other resources. A very good piece all in all for marketers who are just entering the fray and not so much for the more seasoned ones.
A let down for me since I have been there and done that. Imagine, this took me more than an hour to read and at the end of it, I learned too little to write home about.
c. The article c listed above – “Marketing Trends for 2020: Here’s What Will Happen That Nobody is Talking About” by Neil Patel is expectedly the best of the lot since it speaks about AI digital marketing trends in 2020 and not so much about what and how to pursue the trends.
However, it does form a foundation to build upon our strategies after due diligence and research depending on the domain that we work in. However, it is a much shorter insight than expected. Where I come from, I am seeing personalization going off the marketing horizon by 2024 where AI takes on the mantle.
Interesting articles all of them. More interesting is that only article a, has the date of publication as 25th November 2019. Rest have no production dates or expiry dates.
They have been published a tad too soon, I guess since no one mentions Google’s January 2020 Core update or the crumbling of cookies or new methods on monetization that are in vogue.
I think we are all basking in the shade of old memories and writing memoirs. Being proactive is an essential quality of marketers, no need to write diaries but there is no harm in sharing experiences, that’s how the marketing community grows, harmoniously where everyone makes a worthy buck.
As for me, at efficaci, we have come up with some highly revolutionary ideas in content marketing and the application of artificial intelligence in AI digital marketing practices. In fact, we are already working hard on a few cloud-based apps that will bring about a change to the entire marketing landscape.
The online advertising world or the SEM industry is very compact yet a complex one. Search advertising or search engine marketing as some would prefer to call it, are being mainstreamed in myriad ways with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms. And these changes have a significant, if not a critical influence on how you approach your search advertising or AI SEM.
Without a contention, Google AdWords and Facebook Ads take the major chunk of the search engine marketing market. In this post, we will look at how AI has influenced both these platforms, where they are headed, and how you can make the most of your campaigns, given that every business likes to get more out of the advertising buck.
Google AdWords – Getting more value
Google has been slowly incorporating AI into its AdWords framework as a result of which there is a greater scope of opportunities. They could be getting one up on the competition, or saving time for strategic thinking by automating low-level tasks. Let us look at a few ways in which you can make more from your AdWords campaigns.
Weeding out poor performing ads
The first scenario, clicks rolling in but no sales or conversions is a disastrous scenario for any campaign. This means you are leaking money without any ROI.
The second scenario, getting bids on an advert but not clicks, your quality score [QS] goes for a toss. End of the day, your ROI takes the fall.
Imagine the time taken to filter out these ads, analyze them and pausing them. If you are running a campaign for your business, it is easy, but in a scenario where you are handling multiple accounts, you will be spending all your time here without any time to create strategy.
How about using a machine learning [ML] algorithm to weed out these ads and pause them automatically? This will help in keeping your ROI intact as well as take care of QS.
Getting into the finer detail, your ML algorithm should be able to:
Abandon or pause the ad before it affects the ROI. Based on previous performance factors, it should be able to estimate potential gains and losses using statistical inference.
Analyze at a molecular level. The ML algorithm should be able to factor in other individual segments like mobile traffic, non-revenue producing browsers, times and days that see a poor performance and ad variations before it pauses the entire ad outright. With this analysis, it can close or fine-tune the non-performing factors one after another with realtime analysis.
“Automation and machine learning are a big emphasis on Google currently and our industry as a whole. The more we as practitioners can leverage these tools, the more time we can dedicate to higher-level strategy and other account growth opportunities.” – Josh Brisco, Sr. Manager, Retail Search Operations @ CPC Strategy
Using dynamic ads as a part of your AI SEM strategy
Dynamic search ads are a part of AI SEM and an ML-based tool offered by Google AdWords as a part of the platform. These ads generate automatic headlines that can capture the attention of the searcher. All you need to do, is to create and upload the list of landing pages that you want to generate dynamic ads for. The tool will identify searches that it deems fit for your landing pages and generate ad content using the phrases from your landing pages. Sounds easy, but imagine doing it manually, if you are running multiple campaigns.
Using ML, AdWords also generates ad suggestions. Ignore them at your peril because these are generated using prior performance data. Incorporating them after due diligence will boost your results.
Dynamic ads can also be created using a custom ML algorithm that should incorporate:
External factors such as days and times.
Mix and match the audience, imagery and copy with multivariate testing using self-learning or evolutionary algorithms.
If you are not looking at a custom dynamic ad ML algorithm, there are a few tools in the market that can be useful – Zalster, Sentient, Ascend, Refuel4, and IBM Watson.
Used with due diligence, they could save your ROI and time.
Using automated bidding for best results
Using machine learning algorithms to cap your bidding, is becoming popular today. Bidding is a very important mechanism in search engine marketing – keeping your bids low means losing out on opportunities, and keeping them high means an ROI sacrifice.
Google Adwords comes with an automated bidding interface, however, it lacks the intelligence of maximizing your ROI. Maximizing ROI would require the input of certain external factors like seasonality, consumer trends, demographics, purchase behavior, and customer lifetime value amongst others.
A good ML algorithm for automated bidding must:
Be able to estimate the price range of each ad based on previous bids.
Calculate and factor in the click value from each click depending on the previous click data. For this, it should factor in the website data and this is a challenge. If you have multiple landing pages and keep removing or adding new ones, previous data that is fed to the algorithm could be bad or zero. Therefore, use the algorithm for aged landing pages only.
Identify the bidding landscape changes and results and adapt quickly to them instead of assuming that past performance guarantees future performance. This could be a big challenge for want of niche data.
Make use of existing platforms
What we discussed above could lead to an assumption that a custom ML algorithm is a necessity. However, we are speaking about AI SEM and hiring data scientists would be a waste of money and time when there are a platforms that could be leveraged to do the needful. Let us look at some:
Trapica: The best part of this tool is that it can scale your campaigns by identifying the right audiences and matching them to creatives thus optimizing bidding.
Acquisio: Built for Bing, AdWords, and Facebook ads, this ML platform helps you cut CPC and CPA while raising clicks and conversions.
Frank: Works with Facebook ads and AdWords and connects to millions of publishers. Frank is automated to launch campaigns and optimizes them by channel, creative and target audience.
Cognitiv: This tool uses deep learning and predicts the best spends using customization based on historic data for each brand, based on historical data.
Google has already announced its “AI-first” future when Sundar Pichai highlighted their efforts of expanding and integrating AI and ML capabilities across their products, 2 years ago.
Apart from the Google AdWords platform, choosing an alternative to create and control spending could be a challenge, however, knowing your requirements well and comparing it with the features of your chosen platform, will be a wise way to go about it.
Facebook ads – Improving campaign performance
Unlike Google, Facebook has a lot more relevant data about users. The recent scandals, albeit negative, are evidence to this fact. Concerns over private and personal data are not misplaced. Commerzbank and Mozilla have taken a negative stand over these security concerns.
However, this goldmine of data that Facebook has, used with security and in a proper manner can result in much better insights about user preferences, tastes, and behavior. This will also help run relevant and personalized AI SEM campaigns that can get better results, additionally, users can breathe easy without the generic ad bombardment every time they log in.
This filtered data is used by Facebook to help marketers create ad campaigns and the platform churns out a host of automated optimization options, helping marketers run effective ad campaigns.
Let us look at Facebook’s ML capabilities that can help you achieve this.
The importance of campaign objectives
The best part of the Facebook ad manager is that it wants you to specify a campaign objective, unlike any other platforms. Most other platforms give you objectives that are not specific to a simple goal. For example, one ad campaign cannot raise brand awareness, get you more reach or traffic and still get you a good ROI. One campaign for one objective is what works.
First up, while creating a campaign, you must understand what is to be achieved. The ad manager gives you thirteen options to choose from. Remember, campaign objective is not a cosmetic attribute. It will define the reach and placement of your ad. For example, if you choose “video views, Facebook’s AI algorithm will place the ad in front of people where there is a better chance of viewing, derived from user behavior.
Once chosen, the campaign objective cannot be changed post-launch. If I was doing it for my business, I would choose “conversions” and choose the sub-objective higher up as a CTA. This will help me keep my AI SEM campaign, unique amongst all those ads looking for clicks.
Criticality of placement using AI SEM
Facebook looks at making money and this is the reason why most campaigns have placements offered this way. The more the ad serve, the more money Facebook makes, however, for marketers, choosing all placements will result in placement optimization through Facebooks’s AI algorithm. It is a win-win situation.
When chosen, the algorithm will decide where to place your ads considering the lowest CPM (Cost per thousand impressions). Placement optimization can save up to 20% costs when “Facebook newsfeed” and right-hand column are selected manually.
There are strategies that you can create using add-ons like Instant Articles, In-Stream and FAN, but brand safety becomes a concern there. Though there are AI SEM filters available to categorize the placement, the newsfeed is a better choice considering the brand. A small price to pay, but worth it.
Optimizing ad delivery
If using campaign objectives was one part of the delivery mechanism, you still have options to further customize “Optimize for ad delivery”
Here, you will see options depending on the campaign objective you chose, and you can further focus on building a user persona to deliver those ads. “Value” is the latest addition to the list of choices.
AI Marketing is the future and has already turned into a mainstream feature in the search engine marketing or the PPC space. Micromanaging keywords and bids is no more a marketer’s job, it can be taken care of by simple algorithms, while strategy takes the centre-stage for marketing success. Many industries are yet to include automation into their marketing and the first players to adopt AI/ML technology will see a quick boost.
Over 2.4 billion people across the globe and about 70% Americans use social media and it is critical that businesses leverage this channel with best marketing practices to shore up their bottom-lines. Be it marketing, support or sales, social media has become a big weapon in the marketing arsenal. It is an invaluable asset in terms of customers interacting with the brand and vice-versa. With millions of tweets, likes, and interactions being generated by the minute, it is impossible for big brands to keep up with the data flow. Human intervention in the form of employees takes the front seat, however, even the biggest of brands have at best, “tiny” social media teams. This is where AI SMM or Artificial intelligence-based social media marketing comes in. The situation today is – a business that ignores the capabilities of AI SMM loses out on a multitude of opportunities.
Automation is the only answer to the deluge of data that is growing by the day. But automation has its limitations and so does a human brain. Crunching huge amounts of data is not a human specialty and talking and interacting with humans is not a strong point of automation, at least not yet. Humans have to prioritize on data crunched by automation software (AI SMM) to create engagement opportunities, so the entire situation becomes symbiotic, where one part is human intellect and the other is artificial intelligence. Let us look at some areas in which AI can transform social media marketing for magical results. This is what we term as AI SMM.
The complement of human intelligence and AI SMM
AI applications and human beings form a complementary team in a social media marketing or SMM process. AI is growing leaps and bounds through extensive research in terms of natural language processing. However, real-time and targeted engagement remains a challenge. Whereas, human beings, on the other hand, are adept at engagement while they fail at crunching massive amounts of data that AI can achieve in seconds. This complementary relationship between AI and the human brain can be put to use effectively when deployed with a well-thought out strategy. AI SMM, fine-tuned, is also capable of removing noise and deliver useful data to an SMM marketer, so that he can be effective and quick in his approach to engage and convert.
Chatbots
Chatbots are not only used on website frontends but have also found use in the social media marketing niche. Chatbots are evolving quickly and today they are used to handle smaller customer issues while the bigger ones are delegated to human intervention. This translates to effective use of human potential. Chatbots are equipped to create and handle multiple conversations at the same time and are available 24/7.
The fact that over 60% of customers expect an answer to their complaints in 60 minutes or less is a reality. By deploying chatbots on customer support platforms, they can help keep customers happy and improve retention rates. Not that chatbots will resolve all queries, but they can keep a customer engaged while flagging humans for faster resolution of issues. Chatbots can also prioritize complaints and help boost social media engagement by better customer interaction.
Post intelligence
Artificial intelligence is capable of identifying engagement opportunities on social media. A business called post intelligence has developed an application called PI that can track social trends in a given niche. The tracking data is then matched to the user’s recent posts and level of engagements thus creating an opportunity to fine-tune or recommend content that can be posted. It also has the capability of generating social media posts. As a social media marketer, you can imagine the possibilities here.
Pinterest has acquired a business called Kosei to add to its AI capabilities and predict personalized recommendations for users depending on their interests and search data. Deploying AI SMM, Kosei uses a recommendation modeling algorithm to help Pinterest churn out relevant results.
Bright is a job search business acquired by LinkedIn in 2014. Bright used machine learning to match employment opportunities with candidates. The bright algorithm helps LinkedIn to assess hiring patterns, work experience, locational preferences, and other myriad data to score candidates for a given employer. LinkedIn adds a new dimension to its job opportunities section by integrating Bright in addition to its data making it a more focussed hiring portal.
Slack bots
Slack bots throw guesswork out of the window for social media marketers. This AI SMM tool helps them to develop effective posts to promote their brands more effectively while suggesting content. Slack bots are seeing deployment in content marketing too since they are adept at analyzing niche content and suggesting the next steps. In the case of SMM, they analyze the posts on specific social media platforms based on the suggested niche. Slack bots can also predict engagement success rates by comparing your posts to others, especially the promoted ones. In short, they help create effective and focussed social media campaigns by taking out the guesswork.
One of the best AI SMM technologies have been deployed by Facebook to engage and enhance customer interaction. Facial recognition saves time on tagging on the Facebook platform. It is still in the early times, but with facial recognition history, Facebook may use the data to deploy the algorithm to suggest products, offers, and places.
Marketing Automation using text mining
AI’s machine learning technology is enabling text mining and it will be very helpful for marketing automation techniques. Text mining algorithms are meant to analyze both, structured as well as unstructured data, analyze, and predict customer behaviour trends. In turn, this will help marketing automation in terms of hyper-personalization which is lacking in today’s marketing strategies. AI SMM can also predict the correct times for social media posting, and will help reach a diverse audience to create maximum impact of social media marketing campaigns.
There are many tools like Buffer, HootSuite, and Co-schedule that can help you automate social media marketing by scheduling posts for a month or more, depending on your SMM strategy. So, what will take weeks can be achieved in a coupled of hours. However, they will not help with interactions or engagements, and human interaction is necessary.
Conclusion
There are many AI solutions out there, but there is no holistic solution that can serve the purpose. It is necessary to choose wisely and ensure that your choices add value to business. They should be deployed to extract holistic, actionable intelligence for the business and not as a solution to a subset of a marketing process. In the case of social media, they should be capable of uncovering insights and should help build customer-centric social media marketing strategy. Using social media automation tools creatively is the secret sauce that CMO’s need to figure out.
For more help on creating an effective AI-based social media strategy, get in touch with us today.
Google updated its search engine algorithm on 6th of June 2019. And, now there is a chatter about an unconfirmed update on July 11/12th 2019. Result – the whole SEO community is shaken and stirred. Some lost traffic, while some gained and as an SEO professional, you must be running pillar to post to find out more and rectify, especially if your or client’s traffic dived southwards. Is AI SEO, the answer to your woes?
Let’s look at it at a deeper level. With all due respect to every professional’s knowledge and skills, there is every reason bother about search engine updates. Taken that, you have been honest, built a technically fantastic website (as per technical SEO recommendations) and marketed it organically without using or focussing on bad links or using copyrighted content. Only the market or consumer trends will effect your traffic and nothing else.
I have been following the updates just for the sake of
profession and never made unnecessary changes to any of mine or client’s
websites, apart from making them customer centric and none of them have been
hit, over the last 15 years. There is a secret to it, of course. September
2013, the Hummingbird update was what got me going.
You, me and SEO
Following AI SEO techniques to create an SEO strategy is a good idea, once and for all. I can understand that everyone is in a hurry to promote keywords and get to the top of Google’s organic results. What I do not understand is, if you you are not better than the one on the top, how do you expect to get there.
Following success and getting one-up is the game here, and
not gaming the search engines. If you are trying to game them, surely, you need
to think about damage control with every update. Search engine updates are here
to create a level playing field and playing by the rules is the only way to get
there.
AI or artificial intelligence “was” for the nerds. Today, it is effecting every facet of your digital life – Alexa, Siri, AdWords, FB ads, Amazon or Netflix recommendations, you name it and it’s there. So, it’s already made headways into digital marketing, so, what’s wrong with applying it to SEO.
AI SEO – The impact
and the relationship
What do you think the search engine algorithms are? They
understand more than we can perceive including irrelevant backlinks, keyword
stuffing, bad content etc. They rank your webpages depending on these and many
other factors and, are created to learn using machine learning which is an
integral part of AI.
Understanding AI and playing by the rules is critical to
success. This can help you create cohesive strategies and bring more bang for
the buck. Let us see, in this post, how you can leverage AI SEO for better ROI.
Today, the impact of AI is very strong. For example, the
search results on Google that you see, take into account a number of
considerations like favorite websites, geographical location, search history
and similar customers who searched the same query. This means that the impact
of AI on page rankings will be strong and can vary very quickly due to customer
behavior. Your SEO strategy has to consider this impact with a critical eye.
Role of Machine
Learning in search engine rankings
SEO or search engine optimization is an organic marketing
processes executed to tame search engines and get to the top of organic
rankings. Of course, marketing is ever-evolving (which keeps me interested in
the first place), and search engines also evolve at the same pace, especially
in the area of SERP or page rankings where they exercise utmost influence.
As SEO professionals, we have been meeting the algorithm requirements through keyword optimization, metadata, acquiring inbound links and adding new website content frequently. Did we forget something? Will get to it in a minute.
The leader of search engines, Google continuously improves
search results based on search trends and not by what you and me do. Google is
consumer specific and analyzes search trends over time using machine learning
and applies the same to its algorithms. How many of us SEO professionals have
tuned the search to consumers? We have always ranted ranking and ranking and
ranking.
So if traffic falls for some websites and rises for some
after an algorithm update as a result of an organic fall, don’t fret, you just
need to adjust your sails to the search engine winds. If you had the consumer
in mind, the adjustment will be small, but if you had rankings in sight, it
could still be your best fall ever.
Google estimates that 50% of search volumes will come
through voice in an interactive language, by 2020. And, Google is ready with
its voice assistant, image search and maps locations, bettering it by the day
to interpret natural language and provide relevant results. Are you working
towards it? Is your SEO working towards
using natural language keywords?
Applying AI is the only way to understand and tame the
search engines. There are many tools out there, like Moz, Yoast etc. that can
help you with keyword usage, optimize content and page optimizations. However, tuning your website to rank for
voice search is the the key to success.
Content is critical to SEO and we are not talking content marketing here. We are talking about shape, size and tone of content that needs to change effectively. AI can help you create opportunities to reach wider audience. However, it is for you to intertwine these opportunities and create a proper and sustainable search engine optimization strategy.
You could, but how? Every secret lies in the data. Check
your content, blog posts and other publications for traffic data and analyze
why some did well and some did not. How many of them appeared in voice search
and what did you get out of them? An AI
empowered digital marketing agency could help you do well here.
AI helps you leverage consumer insights and create
strategies around it. Kia Motors did this successfully by partnering with an
influencer marketplace to find the right influencers. And, do you know how the
marketplace found them? Using AI. Kia’s 2016 Super Bowl commercial is a perfect
example of attracting relevant consumer groups for their Optima model, using
branded content.
AI used in content can provide insights and ideas about:
Landing pages – performance of old ones and
suggest new ones.
Personalized content – dynamic content depending
on user preferences.
Experiences – Unique to customers according to
their preferences.
Additionally, tools like BuzzSumo or Hubspot are able to pin
point customer preferences in real time enabling you to act in time to win
business. There are many other AI tools out there that can help you leverage
your content for best use. As an SEO professional, you can well understand the criticality
of having those above in your arsenal.
The best way to attract or captivate a visitor to convert is
through hyper personalization. IF the messaging is fine tuned to the language
used by the visitor, messaging at times he/she prefers and using names is the
best way to further your interests. I
mean, wear the visitor’s shoes and you will understand what I am talking about.
Standing out amidst the impersonal content that rules the
internet is the only way to get to to the visitor’s heart. In fact, data says
that about 80% businesses achieved revenue targets and more using a proper
personalization strategy. AI based personalization that is customer intent
based can actually raise potential profits by about 15%. Personalization
engines created using AI will see a rise and obviously adding personalization
to your website, content and SEO will see hyper results.
Another great example of personalization success is
Starbucks, which offers loyalty cards by leveraging mobile app data. This
enables the business to provided menu recommendations on mobiles to customers
approaching the store. Their secret to customer success, despite having 90+
million transactions a week along with a lot of data. That’s what leveraging
data using AI for hyper personalization, can do for your business.
The future of AI in
marketing
Search engines like Google evolve continuously and as SEO’s
we cannot expect ourselves to know what’s on the inside of a search engine
algorithm. It’s only when the updates are deployed, we measure the results,
happily or unhappily. Sad, but true.
However, realising that all those changes are
customer-centric and keeping the customer in mind is of utmost importance. If search engines are leveraging AI to meet
consumer needs, why can’t you do the same to cater to search engine needs.
AI based tools are adept at measuring how your blog post or content will
perform in search. Isn’t it a great starting point to better your marketing,
with AI SEO?
Conclusion…
In short, AI has matured from a data collection and an analytics
tool to become an integral part of digital marketing. The sooner your business
realizes the impact of AI SEO to your marketing bottom-line, the better. The
bottomline is that your SEO has to evolve alongwith AI and that you will nomt
be able to do without the use of AI. Deploy and see results.
Get in touch with us for a more detailed discussion.
Cloud computing is no simple term, but it is neither as complicated as you may think. This post gives you the simplest definition of what cloud computing offers and its potential in the coming years. Once you read this completely, you should be completely convinced that you should move your website to the cloud immediately.
Why cloud computing?
Everyone is connected to the internet these days, at least everyone I know is. So, it does make sense to keep all your data and apps over the internet instead of your hard disks, USB drives and other storage devices, isn’t it? Simple, has the internet instilled enough confidence about the security of your data or apps to make use of it it on a regular basis, professionally? For example, whenever you use Google Drive or tune into iTunes you are using cloud services. So, it did, isn’t it?
In this article, we will see the
advantages of keeping your data on the internet a.k.a, the cloud.
Before I come to that, I remember it was 2013 when I was backing up my data on to Dropbox since I was quitting my job. Though I understand software, it seemed that I did that quite well and viola, I got home and never could access the data again, not even today, it’s just vanished. Dropbox has been there since 2008, the problem was that I was not an early adopter and never could figure out where I went wrong. What did you think I did? Of course, swore, never to use cloud storage again. I am sure many of us have gone through such harrowing experiences, some, more than once.
‘You’re pretty new to cloud storage aren’t you?’
But then, somewhere along the line, I got used to using the Google Drive [probably found it much simpler to use] and today I use many other cloud spaces including Dropbox. Along the learning curve, I found the cloud storage helped me to:
Be flexible with my data
Yes, I can access my data anywhere, anytime I need to including on the mobile phone. Dealing with AI databases, I do store huge volumes of data out there and believe me, it is so simple to use. And, since I run a small business, it also opened my eyes to using it as PaaS [Platform as a Service], SaaS [Software as a Service] or IaaS [Infrastructure as a Service]. Nothing to be confused about, it is just about how you want to go about using the cloud to suit your business needs.
A little more explanation – PaaS is used to host a customised application for your business so that your employees, vendors etc. can use it to fasten your business processes. SaaS deals with applications that are already on the cloud or your own application built on the cloud to offer subscription for business to use Example – Google Drive or AWS.
In a nutshell, we can say that PaaS allows companies to come up with customised applications suited to their needs, while SaaS requires them to choose an application to subscribe to. So for SaaS, the service is provided by a host that also manages the application itself. IaaS is about using the resources on the cloud to get your work done. [Example – Hosting your website]. Again, all these can be used in tandem, as required for your business.
Why I use cloud computing?
Available all times: Resources on any cloud computing platform are available all the time or you could say it is on-demand. You don’t need all that paperwork and the IT department to do the job for you.
Device independent: You can call and use any resources you need using your mobile phone, laptop, home computer or even a tablet, all you need is a consistent internet connectivity which is not a challenge anymore.
Shared resources: Cloud computing or storage is a multi-tenant model which means that the same resources can be shared at the same time by various users without any security risks since privacy is controlled through multi-layered security protocols and passwords. This kind of resource pooling is like living in a gated community but sharing the resources provided without any security risks. You still have to lock your house though!
Scaled resources: If you are running a business, you can well understand that you will need excess resources, probably for a short period of time and those requirements will be needed ‘yesterday’. Cloud computing is equipped to take care of such needs at a second’s notice. You can scale your requirements as needed, for as much time as needed and billed for it, as used, no more, no less. And, remember, in most cases, this is automated with detailed reporting.
Pay per use: Yes, cloud computing is based on a pay-per-use model, with detailed reporting of what you have used over a period, you are billed accordingly, so no extra money wasted or extra resources lying idle somewhere.
Why I moved to the cloud?
I am a very orthodox businessperson and believe in cost-cutting but not by cutting corners or at the cost of customer satisfaction. I look for value for money and cloud ensures that I get it. How?
Reliability: Assuming that your cloud provider is down due to some reason, which doesn’t normally happen, your data is automatically backed up on a parallel cloud where you can access it easily. So, the cloud is highly reliable. Cloud technology works on a distributed data management system [OMG, another acronym DDMS].
Flexibility: You could have employees or providers across the globe and yet get the best out of them using the cloud. Since it is omnipresent, the flexibility of scaling, costing and accessibility that a cloud can provide is enormous.
Recovery: Since your data is on the cloud, for example your WhatsApp chat data is backed up on Google Drive, it is very easy to get that data recovered in a matter of minutes even if your phone is bricked and you get a new one and login with the same credentials. In a business scenario, this becomes highly important once a local server or a laptop go bad suddenly.
Environment friendly: As a result of using cloud computing, your cost of maintaining IT infrastructure reduces drastically. You are not only cutting costs but also running a business that does not contribute to global warming.
Security: Believe it or not, cloud computing is the most secure way to store your data. Since most cloud providers use Linux servers, they are not prone to virus or malware attacks. Also, since clouds are simpler to configure, access level securities are quite possible offering no chance to the hacker community to test their skills.
Instant monitoring: Since the cloud is always at your disposal, it is very easy to figure out your reporting in a jiffy. It is easy to check how many tissue rolls you have sold in Indonesia and what is the inventory left sitting at your plush corner office in Chicago. You don’t need to send emails to-and-fro and find out inventory or sales requirements.
Implementation: Many still think that cloud implementation is a complicated process. Yes, it is, depends on the purpose of implementation, But, again the advantages it brings are enormous and implementation is only a one-time process.
Investment: Cloud computing is an investment, yes, but look at what it is going to save you over the next two years in terms of resources and time, and how it can bring efficiency into your business and elevate the opportunity costs. Not to mention, having that ever heavy-headed IT department around. Compare costs, you will see that the investment in cloud computing initially will only be a fraction of benefits it will bring.
Competition: Last but not the least, adopting cloud computing is going to shoot you up through your competition. Take for example, hosting your website on the cloud – your website becomes faster than most of your competitors and speed, as you may know is one of the marketing factors that matters most to your customers as well as your search engine optimization strategies..
Conclusion…
Cloud computing has been there for a decade now and it has improved leaps and bounds to create ripples in the business and technology arenas. In fact, most businesses are making it a priority to shift to the cloud because of the advantages it offers. More and more cloud services are taking birth every day, so it caters to more needs of your business than you may think. I can well understand that following the cloud industry is not your forte for you as a businessperson, but giving it an hour of your valuable time in terms of research and your competition can give you important insights that could boost your business.
If you are looking forward to migrating your website to the cloud and need some expert help, we are always here to help you make the transition.
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