Driving Traffic to Your Online Store - Brainwork Technologies

If you are a businessman, you are already aware of the different struggles every brand faces while establishing a favorable brand presence. The very first step to making profits from a business venture is to identify the audience who would be the primary target of the marketing campaign. This audience can be divided into three broad categories.

Category 1 — People who java already shopped your products before and have appreciated the company’s products and services.

Category 2 — Audience members who have not yet used your product but are looking for something similar.

Category 3 — The individuals who are most likely to use your products once they are aware of them but are yet to gain the information.

Once you have successfully identified the section of the population that would be your primary target for the marketing campaign, the next step is to implement different marketing strategies that would educate and make the three sections equally interested in using the products that your brand is selling. And for this to work effectively, every brand needs to adopt a three-way approach for maximizing the results of the marketing strategy that your brand is planning on implementing.

For Those Who Have Already Used Your Products:

When dealing with the first set of audience aka category one which includes previous customers and those who have already used your product, you have several marketing channels open. Email marketing and SMS marketing strategies can be enormously helpful in making these people interested in your brand’s latest launches. Moreover, you could also make the most of the social media platforms by ensuring that your previous buyers are included in the posts or tagged. This way they will not only be more likely to make new purchases but also feel happy and satisfied for being a part of the loop.

For Those Who Are Yet To Make A Purchase:

The second category of audience needs a boost that will convert them from prospective customers to actual consumers. This can be done through various information marketing strategies like blogs and video advertisements on leading video-sharing platforms like YouTube. Moreover, search engine optimization (SEO) and SEM marketing strategies when combined with other techniques like influencer marketing can be a very smart approach when dealing with this section of the audience. What makes SEO a very popular marketing method is that here you can basically promote your brand for free. Optimizing the content on your website to match the search results on the most trusted search engines like Google, you are essentially why your brand is better than others by securing a top-ranking position on SEPs.

For Those Who Will Use Your Product once they’re Aware:

The third category plays the most crucial role and is an important point to remember while building brand awareness. You need to ask simple questions like why they are not informed about your brand, whether they are using a product from a competing company and how you can convert them into your loyal audience. Extensive market research is the key to getting your answers!

ecommerce, Internet, Mobile App

E-commerce Technologies trends to empower your business

March 14, 2023 brainwork Leave a comment

In this era of rapid technological development all over the globe, smart phones and electrical gadgets like Laptops and PCs have become a common part of every household and work environment. And with that, there has been a surge in the number of online shoppers. So if you want your eCommerce business to thrive and grow at a consistent rate, it is time you incorporated these 3 technology trends to stay updated with the changing time and audiences.

Smartphone-Centric Commercial Approach:

Smartphone’s have become the lifeline for most people on this planet. Naturally, when they are shopping for an item, the first place they go is their mobile devices. If you truly want your brand to become a name to be reckoned with, your eCommerce page has to be Smartphone friendly. This means incorporating features that are compatible with mobile including payment options like Gpay and Apple Pay where the user can directly place an order from their cell phone could go a long way in further improving the shopping experience, which in turn can attract more traffic.

Artificial Intelligence for Personalization:

Personalization of an eCommerce page is going to be one of the biggest weapons in the arsenal of marketing online stores in the year of 2023. Since almost every company can avail the search histories and the information required to understand the needs and the requirements of the target audience through the internet, it is time they put it to good use. As per Accenture’s analysis, more than 80 % of the companies spread across different industries saw a speedy rise in the number of online shoppers once they started personalizing the shopping experience and tailored it to each individual shopper’s preferences and areas of interest. When a prospective customer opens your brand’s eCommerce page and sees that you have displayed exactly what they have been looking for, the chances of them making a purchase and thereby increasing profits rises by a significant margin!

Mobile Wallets as Primary Payment Methods:

If an individual is comfortable with technology, they are probably adept at net banking and e-payment methods. One of the many ways of creating a better user experience for customers is by including easy mobile payment methods apart from conventional modes like credit cards, debit cards, and cash on delivery. A recent study by Statista shows that the number of mobile wallet users already covers 49% of the total population and the number is going to rise to a whipping 53% in the coming year. So if your brand is yet to incorporate this technical feature, there is no better time than now.

Voice Search:

While typing might be difficult when the person is on public transport or taking care of other chores and tasks, voice searches are a smarter alternative for online shopping. With voice search, even those who cannot type can buy exactly what they want, simply by saying it out loud. So amongst the many different technological trends that are going to be invaluable for the eCommerce channels, voice search definitely makes it to the top of the list.

Digital Marketing, ecommerce, News

How to Promote Your Online Store: Marketing Strategies to Build a Robust Ecommerce Channel

February 22, 2023 brainwork Leave a comment

With the rapid rise in the number of internet users, online stores have become a necessity for most of the population. With a simple click on the mouse, you can have a whole plethora of options in a wide variety of industries, ranging from electrical gadgets and home appliances to clothes and beauty products. However, while marketing an online store, marketers face a huge challenge starting with driving quality traffic and lead generation. Therefore to build a robust e-commerce marketing strategy that will produce actual results here are a few times that can prove to be invaluable for your endeavor.

Educate The Audience And Demonstrate The Value Of A Product:

When a new product is launched, in many cases, the target audience is not aware of the value the said product has and how it can help them on a regular basis. This is one of the major reasons why it takes time to develop a solid market that will bring in profits. Every business involves a certain degree of risk factor. But with educational marketing strategies like blogs and articles, especially those featured on the company’s official website, you can educate the audience and at the same time promote a product. This way the audience will know the worth of having the said product and the difference it can make in their life for a small investment.

Build A Strong Brand Presence Through Consistent Branding:

It’s not the amount of effort you put in for marketing a brand in the first few days that matters the most. It is consistent branding with follow-up content that draws the public’s attention toward a particular brand. That being said, always staying in the limelight is not easy and can be quite a difficult feat. What set apart brands like Coca-Cola is the concept and the quality of their advertising and marketing content. To ensure that your brand stays relevant, you must work with an emotional stimulus that is bound to strike a chord with the audience and leave a lasting impression on their heart, rather than their mind. Interesting product images or a specific picture that not only represents your brand culture and ethics but is also relatable for the audience can be a great weapon for marketing a brand.

Establish A Communication Channel With The Audience:

At the end of the day, your target demographic essentially forms the market for a brand, a specific product, or a particular service. Word of mouth is the best marketing channel. And it is time you exploited that by impressing the customers through diligent and efficient customer service so that they recommend your brands to their fellow companions. Rather than T.V. commercials, people tend to believe in the value or the performance of certain companies even without trying it out when the assurance comes from someone they know. So a key tool in the arsenal of marketing strategies is getting to know the audience and catering to their needs and requirements.

Hopefully, the above mentioned tips will contribute to the success of your company and help you reach great heights, so cheers to your journey.

Digital Marketing, ecommerce, Internet

The 5 Things Your Business Listings Must Have

November 5, 2020 brainwork Leave a comment

There are reasons why some businesses succeed and why some fail. In the online world, it is way more challenging. The ones that succeed surely are doing something distinctive and special that the others are not doing. Online businesses that are doing well have several common components and one of the top ones is that they take care of their business listing. It is not merely about listing your business online. It is about doing it in the right and the most optimized manner.

From having a website to being active on social media, you need to ensure that your listing online is done with finesse. There are hundreds of places online where your business can be listed and at each place, it requires to be done with accuracy to get better traction.

Google Business Listing is one of the first things you need to do so that the chances of your ranking in the local SEO are high. Therefore, you need to claim your Business Listing on Google and update it immediately.

There are five things that all successful businesses must ensure online for optimized Google Business Listing.

Own your business listing on Google

One of the first tasks that you need to do is to claim your listing on Google and ensure that the information here regarding your business is complete, accurate, and professionally done.

You would be surprised to note that not even 50% of online businesses have their information updated on Google listings.
The other important data that has come from Womply states that businesses that ensure that they are listed accurately on more sites run the chance of making more money by at least 58%.

Google My Business Listing is free. Completing it with data and information about your business is a simple task. You simply need to make sure that the information is entered in each relevant field and it is updated.

The other thing about keeping your Business Listing on Google updated is that you should keep checking the listing information once every week or twice every month. You would be surprised to know that many businesses do the task as a one-time event, later on, to realize that the information displaying on their Business Listing is redundant, or critical information is missing. As a result, potential customers are unable to reach them or emails are bouncing and the competition is benefitting.

Make sure that the Google Listing has updated images of your business, products, or services

Make it a point to include a few top-quality photographs and images in your Google Business Listing. Why? It is because people who come to your website would like to see images of the inside and the outside of your office, factory, workshop, shop, and workplace. It is considered to be one of the best practices for conducting online business.

While we all have smartphones and smart devices to capture good looking images, it is also advisable that you use the services of a professional photographer to get the most impressive pictures for your business. The focus should be on using high-resolution images.

Ensure that the images uploaded give a 360-degrees view of your business, branding, products, and services – the objective is to create a desire in the customer to visit your website or offline store.

Customer reviews should be a mandatory part of the Listing

When do Business Listings come into play? When a potential customer is looking for a business type like yours; with customer reviews a part of your basic profile, you can use the opportunity to make a positive impression on the client. Make sure that you display reviews that have good ratings. However, also do ensure that the reviews come across as honest feedback and not promotional.

Remember, the customer today is highly aware and sensitive – so display comments that respect consumerism in the right manner.

Another key feature that many online businesses miss out when they go in for Business listing is to show the potential customer an interactive dialogue between you and the customer reviewing your services. When the Google map included in your profile is clicked, new customers can drill down the different reviews featured on your listing and go through the entire conversation happening between your business and the customer. This feature shows to the customer how serious you are about your customer reviews and the extent to which your brand is involved in customer engagement.

While updating the contact details on your Listing, remember to update the description of your business too

A short description is what you are allowed on your Google Business Listing. Make use of the space smartly. You may not have to use the best of language or display your English skills, but ensure that this space is used in the most relevant manner to speak to the potential customer who does not know you. It is not your website; this is the platform that is going to be the first point of interaction between you and your customer.

Do not forget to fill up the optional fields too

This helps you in providing more information about your business to your prospective customers. Many businesses shy away from filling up these fields. This is a lost opportunity to impress and strike a chord with your would-be customer.

Remember the more detailed the information is about your business online at the Listing page, the higher the chances of the search engine finding your site and ranking it high on the search result page. Also, it gives a very professional look that most customers expect from businesses that they are keen to buy from or work with.

Conclusion

Following these five steps whole-heartedly can help your business remain at the forefront of rankings on Google SERP.

Simultaneously remember to make your business listing strong and accurate on other sites like Bing, Apple Maps, Facebook, and so on. Be everywhere, wherever your listing can help you get maximum traction from search engines.

Whatever information you put up, ensure that it is one hundred percent correct and consistent across all channels. From minute details like spellings to greater detailing like high-res pictures, do it all to leave a good taste in the minds of the customer.

Digital Marketing, ecommerce

Even in Lockdown State, We Stand by E-commerce Businesses

October 5, 2020 brainwork Leave a comment

Just after the lockdown was announced in the last week of March 2020 in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced that not only physical stores dealing in essential commodities will be allowed to open shop; for e-commerce companies too, the guideline issued mentioned that they could deal in essential goods only during the lockdown.

In a series of guidelines issued by the MHA then on, it was clarified that e-commerce companies and firms were being allowed to open their shops for the ordering of essential commodities while the non-essential commodities segment remained closed throughout.

Even though the e-commerce firms were prohibited from dealing with non-essential commodities, the fact that they were allowed to carry on with their home deliveries of essential goods throws light on the growing significance of this sector in the Indian economy.

The lockdown during COVID did come with its share of chaos where initially not much clarity was there amongst the public about how essential items like grocery, dairy products, drinking water, etc. would be supplied to their homes. When the e-commerce firms came into the picture, things got much smoother and easier because the entire purpose of the lockdown now looked like it could be realized successfully.

Purpose of the lockdown

The objective of the lockdown was to keep people home so that the spread of the disease could be kept under check. What the lockdown necessarily meant was that the common man should not be stepping out of their homes except in case of buying essential items. The more people stayed inside; the better could the purpose be solved.

Role of e-commerce companies during the lockdown

While the neighbourhood and the local kirana or grocery store were open, going out of home for people to buy the daily essential was about putting their health at risk. With children and elderly parents part of many households in India, it also meant risking the life of the family member. The best thing was to stay put at home and order online.

This is where e-commerce stores like Flipkart and Amazon came to the rescue of the common man. This seemed to be the safest way to stay indoors and yet ensure that the household requirements were addressed in the right manner.

Even though the grocery, pharmaceutical, and healthcare products sold accounted for a very minuscule percentage of online sales for big e-commerce platforms, most of them were happy to open their stores online during the lockdown.

It is important to note here that while in Lockdown 1 & 2, only essential commodities were allowed movement even for e-commerce companies, in Lockdown 3 from May 4th till 17th, these companies were allowed to sell and deliver all items in the orange and the green zones. Only in the red zones, the prohibitions continued as per the earlier two lockdown phases.

The immediate effect that was noticed in the orange and green zones was that people, though reluctant initially, went ahead and bought non-essential items like smartphones, makeup and cosmetics, grooming-related products, and apparel. Certain companies reported as much as a 50% surge in orders and sales in grooming and hair-related products like trimmers, shavers, dryers, and styling products from Tier 2 and 3 cities in May, compared to March.

It has been now felt that the digital medium and platform has played a crucial role in the way it has eased off some of the challenges that were being faced by the common man.

Opening of the lockdown and resumption of full services of e-commerce activities in India

In the days where the Unlockdown was announced, there was a feeling that the digital platform is going to play a significant role in the way the disease would be fought in the country. This is especially true in a situation where the government and health departments are focussing on social distancing. It is e-commerce that is going to be at the forefront of most commercial activities, in the B2C domain as well as the overall economy of the country.

When the fourth phase of Lockdown was announced in mid-may, many top e-commerce companies like Amazon, Firstcry, and Nykaa opened their full-services in orange and green zones. Some, however, were more cautious about opening all their services and products category.

State of affairs for e-commerce platforms that do not deal in essential commodities

The Lockdown caused some big areas of concern for e-commerce businesses that had nothing to do with the essential sector. Many big, medium, and small-scale firms working solely in the digital platform had no sales to register in the period from end-March to May 2020. For lakhs of online sellers (as per estimates approximately 5,00,000), the Lockdown meant an abrupt stop to sales and revenues. Without sales and revenues, another thing that hit most of the online sellers was the concern that their shipment on the way to the warehouse, or in the warehouse, could get damaged, and hence payments from clients could get further delayed or disrupted. To maintain an effective supply chain, the sellers had to pay their suppliers against raw materials and semi-finished products, which meant that suppliers had to be paid, on one hand; on the other, the payments against consignments that were shipped just before the lockdown were still not received from the clients.

Now, as the lockdown opens, things do not look hunky-dory for these sellers. With many of the stuck shipments returned to them, they do not expect to receive very many orders shortly from the customers – as a result, a financial meltdown seems inevitable. The future of many such businesses, especially those that are not in essential products, or deal in products that are not required for sustenance, things looks quite bleak at the moment.

Conclusion

It would not be unfair to say that the presence of top e-commerce companies helped most people who were following the lockdown guidelines, and was working from home. It also proved to be a boon because e-commerce facilitated people to sit or work at home, a study from home, make essential payments from home, and also entertain themselves through the digital medium, from home.