Author: Reginald Chan

  • How to Plan a Digital Marketing Campaign for Your Business

    How to Plan a Digital Marketing Campaign for Your Business

    Marketing professionals know that they are likely to find more potential customers in the digital space than on any other platform. Digital marketing opens your brand to a huge marketplace where you can promote your brand. The aim of marketing is to connect with potential clients at the right time and place. With more people spending their time on the internet, a digital marketing strategy will help you target specific audiences and thus enable you to achieve your brand objectives.

    Digital Marketing Campaign, What Is It?

    A digital marketing campaign can be understood as a calculated plan of action to use digital platforms to achieve marketing objectives. The strategy views users in the digital space as a marketplace that brings potential customers together. Various digital channels such as emails, websites, and search engines are used to target a vast audience.

    A sound digital marketing campaign can unlock endless opportunities for brands. This marketing strategy helps marketers design campaigns that are tailor-made for the specific needs of potential clients. If you are feeling that your traditional marketing campaign has not yielded desirable results, perhaps it is time to try digital marketing.

    Establish your online presence with the help of agencies such as Creatitive, an Arizona digital marketing agency.

    Why Use a Digital Marketing Campaign?

    • A digital marketing campaign is cost-effective and helps brands to save money. For instance, don’t have to struggle to pay huge amounts for expensive TV ads.
    • You will reach a vast audience at once, compared to the traditional marketing techniques.
    • Boost your conversion rates and increase your revenue using a digital marketing campaign.
    • Strategies in a digital marketing campaign are easy to measure and adjust.

    If you are planning a digital marketing campaign, consider the following steps:

    Set Your Budget

    You will need to set a precise and realistic budget for your campaign. The budget can be influenced by the strategy to be used and the assets to be deployed. Advertising on social media, for instance, can be very low for brands that have their own accounts. However, to reach a much larger audience, brands using paid adverts on social media platforms will expect to have a higher budget. Other digital platforms such as YouTube or Spotify also have different charges depending on brand needs. Organizations that engage influencers on digital platforms to promote their brands could end up paying more. 

    If you decide to hire a digital marketing agency, you can expect additional charges.

    Create Personas

    Marketing is aimed at connecting audiences with brands. Your focus is on the people and how to target them. When designing your digital marketing campaign, you will need to know who exactly your audience is. A buyer persona describes in detail the person you will be targeting with your campaign. This means that you will have to gather as much information as possible about them.

    In designing buyer personas, you can conduct research, interviews, and surveys to get real data about your target audience. You may also decide to go to their website to gather demographic data such as their age, income, job title, and location. Qualitative information such as their likes and dislikes, hobbies, and interests will equally help you design a correct buyer persona.

    Buyer personas help you to craft precise messages to your target audience based on their needs.

    Set Out Your Goals

    What do you want your digital marketing campaign to achieve? From the onset, it is important to ask and answer this question. The success of the campaign will be measured by the achievements at the end of the engagement. The goals for each digital marketing campaign will be influenced by the nature of the product. If the campaign involves other people, ensure that they are fully aware of the goals right from the start.

    Define your goals such as conversions, brand awareness, higher ranking on search engines, or increased web traffic. Brand awareness is a common target for most brands. The reason is before clients pay for the brand, they need to know it first. Brand awareness should therefore be among the main goals for your digital marketing campaign.

    Identify Marketing Channels

    The channels you use for the digital marketing campaign play a crucial role in achieving the set goals. The beauty of digital marketing is that there are numerous platforms ready to take your brand out there. Some platforms have larger audiences than others and therefore, channel strategy can give your brand a competitive edge.

    Using social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram can expose your brand to millions of users of these sites. Similarly, your brand can enjoy enhanced prominence using Google Ads. Email marketing and SEO can help to boost traffic to your website.

    If you are looking to maximize on digital platforms, you can carefully design your campaign to run on multiple platforms.

    Analyze Competitors

    What are you doing to remain ahead of the pack? What are your competitors doing to have that competitive edge? Every brand wants to be the best in the market. It is important to understand where your competitors are succeeding and what their failures are. You definitely don’t want to recycle the same old ideas in digital marketing. Fresh and brilliant ideas you get from competitor analysis can help you avoid major pitfalls.

    Develop Content

    You will need to craft the strategy for your digital marketing campaign to target specific segments. Content should appeal to the senses of the potential clients and help to achieve brand objectives such as awareness and conversion.

    Measure Performance

    One of the best things about digital marketing is that it is easy to measure KPIs and results. Analytics will help you to measure the results. Analysis results will tell you the aspects you need to adjust in your campaign.

    Today, marketers can use online tools such as Google Analytics, SE Ranking, and Woopra. Using these tools can give you accurate data on metrics such as the ranking on web pages, conversion rate, time spent on websites, and value per visit.

    If you are designing a digital marketing campaign, the above marketing strategies can help you unlock the immense opportunities to achieve brand objectives.

  • 6 Ways Knowledge Sharing Will Boost Your Bottom Line

    6 Ways Knowledge Sharing Will Boost Your Bottom Line

    At some point in your life, you might get the unfortunate opportunity to witness untapped talent. You yourself might possess intellect or special capabilities that could help take an organization to the next level, if only the right people engaged you in a meeting or gave you an assignment where you could showcase your skills. This can be irritating to witness, and chances are, employees won’t stick around for long. Creating a work environment that promotes the sharing of intel and unique information has many benefits in the long run, and here are just a few. 

    1. Improves the Quality of Products or Services

    The more an employee knows, the better he can execute. Formal education can provide a foundation of knowledge that the daily tasks of the job will simultaneously build onto. The experts at ecosecretariat.org/best-online-course-platforms/ can guide you through all the best online education solutions your company is looking for if you take this route. By providing your bottom line with fundamental knowledge, you can set the standard you want for your company and watch as the overall quality of your goods and services rises to meet your standards. 

    2. Stay Ahead of the Curve 

    We’re living in fast times. By the time something becomes popular, you can bet that somewhere, something is being developed that will take its place. Take the app Vine for example. This was a lovely little app where people could record videos and post them. It really added to viral culture and people were enjoying it… Until Instagram added the video feature to their already very successful app. Now since people could post photos and videos in the same place, they didn’t have a need for Vine. 

    This is why knowledge sharing is so crucial. If you can pool together all of the innovative ideas your employees might have, then you stand a better chance of staying relevant. If Vine had developed their app so that it offered something more unique that would separate it from the pack, much like Snapchat did, then they might still be up there as a major competitor in social media platforms. 

    3. Increase Company Morale

    If you’ve ever been the little guy, then you know how satisfying it feels to get the spotlight every now and then, much less get one of your ideas implemented. There are many ways to boost company morale, and maximizing the flow of information is one of these ways. Not only will it benefit the organization in the long run to have the best course of action or methods of production in place, but your employees will feel valued and respected for getting to share their ideas. This will result in a more informed staff and higher employee retention.

    4. Employee Retention = Skilled Staff

    As mentioned previously, allowing employees to throw in their two cents about ways to improve some aspect of a company betters the chances of them staying on board. What happens when employees continue to renew their contracts? They begin to grow and flourish into experts in their field and are extremely knowledgeable about the organization they’re working for. So, by creating a culture of sharing in the workplace, you will later see that your staff can grow into a group of highly skilled, loyal veteran workers. 

    5. Diversify and Expand Resources

    What is inside an employee’s head could possibly be the best resource an organization has. So many avenues of opportunity open up when you increase the flow of knowledge throughout your company. There could be a massive time or money saving method that is going to waste because the right people aren’t getting any spotlight. There are plenty of ways to practice resource management, but the one that’s disregarded the most often are the resources that each individual worker can provide. By including employees in the affairs of an organization, you diversify and expand your set of resources for employees, making an altogether happier staff. 

    6. Supportive Company Climate

    When colleagues communicate often, they tend to sympathize with each other and the challenges of each position more so than not. Increasing the sharing of knowledge within a work community, whether it’s information about a job or a client, associates will naturally learn how to provide a listening ear with no judgements. They will also get to practice solution-based thinking for both themselves and their team, resulting in a more proactive work environment that supports each other. 

    It’s astounding the changes that just a little more communicative practices within a company can cause. By sharing thoughts and ideas surrounding important topics in the workplace, you’ll soon notice the positive trickle-down effects it has on the production and office atmosphere. Implement a knowledge sharing philosophy in your company today and reap the benefits tomorrow.

  • How To Keep Your Confidential Business Documents Secure?

    How To Keep Your Confidential Business Documents Secure?

    The unprecedented rise of the internet and the role it now plays in every aspect of our lives is one of the defining factors in the shaping of our modern world. The opportunities which the internet has brought for businesses are immeasurable; international communication, customer outreach, brand growth and partnerships, would all have been impossible before we were so well-connected online.

    With these advantages, however, has come a new type of crime which businesses in the past never had to deal with; cyber crime. Hackers, virus creators and cyber criminals can all cause serious damage to your business, and if they manage to get access to your data, they can jeopardize your whole operation. With cyber criminals becoming more and more sophisticated, the requisite protective measures need to stay one step ahead of them to keep businesses safe.

    To help all the businesses out there who are worried about their online security, this article will answer some important questions about data storage and protection.

    What is Data Storage?

    These days, every business has countless numbers of important files and documents which are pivotal for the success of their companies. These include important financial records, contractual agreements, and the personal information of customers and clients. Without these documents, businesses would be operating in the dark, and so the development of software and digital storage systems have enabled businesses to keep all of their data in one place so that it is easy to access and analyze. With targeted marketing campaigns and personalized customer service, the conclusions that can be drawn from this data are vital for the success of a business.

    Why is Data Security so Important?

    Whilst digital data storage has obvious benefits, it has also made this information vulnerable to attack, and hackers have been exploiting this ever since the Internet first became popular. The experts at https://www.dsolutionsgroup.com/ explain that a major data breach can be devastating for a business, because if your business’s financial records or accounts are hacked, cyber criminals can steal all your confidential information which will leave you completely paralyzed. 

    Whilst business insurance can provide some protection in the case of a data breach, if the insurance company concludes that you did not have the correct security in place, they may argue that your losses were the result of your own mistakes. Similarly, if cyber criminals are able to gain access to your operating files, they can cause irreparable damage to your processes which will take considerable time and resources to rectify.

    Arguably even more damaging than an attack on your business’s operating or accounting files, is the theft of your customers personal information. Modern businesses store vast amounts of their customers’ financial records and a data breach can see all of this information stolen. Your customers can then have their bank accounts hacked or can become the victims of identity theft and other types of fraud.

    How Can Businesses Keep their Documents Secure?

    With such devastating potential consequences, it is vital that business do everything that they can to secure their files. There are now more options than ever which provide businesses with data protection, but some are more effective than others.

    To help you choose the right option, here are some of the most popular storage methods for businesses: 

    Private Server Storage

    When information was first going digital, businesses began storing their data on private servers. For small businesses this may be as simple as saving your information on a single computer’s hard drive, whereas big multinationals may have dedicated external servers which hold everything. These are all kept on premises so that they can be accessed easily as well as being physically protected from external breaches. 

    Despite these advantages, this method of data storage has quickly become obsolete because the amount of hardware required, and the cost of running, maintaining and replacing the servers, is just no longer feasible in this day and age. Furthermore, it is very difficult to update external servers with new cyber security, and so whilst it may appear that your data is protected, it is still very easy for sophisticated hackers to access. 

    Data Colocation Centers

    After private servers were no longer judged to be suitable for storing data on the premises, businesses started turning to data colocation centers to do the job for them. Sometimes referred to as data hotels, these centers have their own servers which companies can pay to rent out space for their data. This means that businesses do not have to have their own huge, expensive servers and can also leave the security of their data to people with more knowledge. Colocation centers, like private servers, offer businesses the opportunity to access their data whenever they need it, but at the same time offer better security.

    Cloud Storage

    Whilst private servers and data colocation centers were the best options in the past, online cloud storage has emerged as a far superior option for modern businesses. Without the need for investing in your own hardware or outsourcing your data to another company, cloud storage has enabled companies to save money whilst at the same time provides a far greater level of data security. Cloud storage providers offer various data packages so no matter how much information your business needs to store and protect, it can be done easily and with very little cost. 

    For most companies, public cloud storage is sufficient, as it still offers far more in terms of protection and data storage limit than a business could ever achieve on its own. For huge corporations or businesses with especially valuable data, however, private cloud storage provides that extra level of service and protection that is required. Virtual data service centers operated by private cloud offer the most up to date security measures, maximum accessibility and unlimited storage capacity. With companies looking to maximize their data storage and analysis, private clouds are emerging as the number one choice.

    Choosing the right data storage option for your business can be difficult but the three most important factors to remember are security, access and capacity. Modern cloud storage offers the best levels of all three, and private cloud storage in particular looks to be the way of the future. Never underestimate the importance of keeping your data safe, or the negative consequences which can occur if you don’t take the appropriate measures.

  • The Importance of Social Media for Stock Traders

    The Importance of Social Media for Stock Traders

    The stock market keeps investors on their toes on a daily basis. Add to that the global pandemic and things move up a gear. Whilst some industries have been hit, others have flourished. It’s the task of traders to identify the best places to invest their money. 

    Everyone knows that the internet has brought a colossal revolution. Smartphones and social media have followed in its wake. The rise and popularity of such technology have unsurprisingly gained the interest of stock market traders. But is this justified? Let’s take a look.

    Social Media is Successful But Volatile

    Over two and a half billion people used social media in 2018. This figure is expected to exceed three billion by 2021. In 2019 the global advertising revenue for social media added up to more than $32 billion, and this year it could increase by $6 billion more. 

    Wall Street has many stories of top companies who have a sudden reversal of fortune. Any wise investor will be consistently researching the market for what to invest in, and when. According to the guys at www.thestockdork.com people want to read reviews of the stock market and to receive details of the best day trading stocks. They also want to know the best books to read on the subject, and even where to find stocks under $5.

    Facebook

    This is a highly popular platform for writing posts and publishing photos and video content. It is more of a family of apps to be honest, as it also includes WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. 

    At one stage shares were selling at $220 each, which is expensive for social media. One set of the year on year statistics said the revenue had increased by nearly a third. Another report said users had increased by over ten percent year on year. 

    Stocks can be volatile when companies are volatile. There was a lot of negative publicity about fake Covid information and equipment being featured on Facebook. The company was forced to clean up its act and even created a Covid information center. 

    Unsurprisingly, the economic downturn has reduced the amount of advertising on Facebook. As it gains almost all of its income through this, investors need to keep a close eye. 

    Twitter

    This is a platform allowing people to publish mini-blogs of up to a maximum of 280 characters. Imagine 145 million people standing in a crowd – that’s how many people are using Twitter on a daily basis. This number is still growing. 

    At one stage the stock price was $34 (much cheaper than Facebook). Each year revenue has been growing at around eight percent. In March 2020 the pandemic took its toll, and ad revenue was down by nearly one third. 

    Zoom

    This is a video conferencing app a little like Skype. In December 2019 there were around ten million users, but by the start of April 2020, this had grown twenty times larger. Four weeks later there were three hundred million!

    Investors may see a surefire value in buying shares here. Whist Zoom is going okay and will continue to do so, it did experience a blip. Some major security issues were discovered, so three months of potential product development were turned into data protection work. 

    Pinterest and Tiktok

    Pinterest is a popular picture-sharing app. Its stock values have declined, however. At one stage this was by ten cents per share. Expenses have been up and down, and this volatility has limited Pinterest’s ability to consistently make money. This will have to be dealt with in order to secure its ongoing survival. 

    TikTok has been growing in users at an exponential rate. It’s a Chinese app originally used for lip-syncing, but which now features short video clips. Businesses were looking to advertise on this platform due to its huge audience, but there has been major turbulence too. America had been debating whether to ban or remove it from the app stores due to concerns over potential data breaches. The other option was to buy it.  

    Snap, Tencent and Weibo

    Snap includes the better known Snapchat which features quickly disappearing posts. 210 million people use this each day and it has recently been improved for Android users. Whilst shares at one stage tripled in value from $5.74 to $19, the company has battled to make profits. Analysts say Snap should be well-positioned to have a stable future, however, as growth is steadily increasing. 

    Tencent features WeChat, which is the top social media platform in China.  This has 1.15 billion users! Tencent actually has several arms. Their music and video businesses are flourishing. When it comes to video game publishers, they are the biggest globally. Because of the spread of investment, they are a stable company and their shares are doing well. They are in a good position to face the future. 

    Weibo is another Chinese application, having 486 million users every month. Whilst there has been a high market share in advertising, stocks have declined. This makes it an insecure route for investors. 

    Social Media Advertising

    Sadly, there has been a lot of advertising which has lured inexperienced people into the world of stocks and shares. Driven by financial desperation, some people have believed offers of fun and quick financial gains through using trading apps. Some brokerages have underplayed the risk element, and not warned that losses can be big and quick with market trading. 

    Whilst stock trading is a valid past time or full-time job for the experienced, it can be dangerous for the ill-advised. Some apps are designed for ease of use, but they can easily become a place for unwise people to gamble away their money and become addicted to the process. Newcomers need to research well and practice on simulated apps first. Conservative trading is more appropriate at the beginning. 

    Another advertising misunderstanding occurred when people jumped to buy shares in Zoom. Many folks bought shares in Zoom Technologies instead of Zoom Video Communications.

    As we have seen, stock markets can widely vary. The popularity of social media seems set to continue, whilst some platforms struggle to make profits. Interested investors can watch their progress daily in order to make the right decisions. Social media companies need to provide clear advertising in response.

  • How SEO Can Turn The Tide For Your Business

    How SEO Can Turn The Tide For Your Business

    If your business is currently struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, you are not alone. Around the world, the fallout from this pandemic has been devastating, particularly for small  businesses who are vulnerable to collapse in their first years. Your business’ next steps are crucial to its survival; this crisis is far from over, and unfortunately, many more companies will suffer at the hands of it. 

    So what does this have to do with SEO? SEO, standing for Search Engine Optimisation, is a helpful set of tools which increases your website’s chance of being at the top of the search list. Search engines like Google present hundreds of thousands of results for popular searches, and as a small or new business, it can be very difficult to be noticed at all. If your website is fully functioning, well designed and perfect for users, all that is missing is a boost in visibility. SEO helps attach more meaning, definition and importance to your website in the search engine’s algorithm, helping to promote your site to the top of the page. So how can you get started with SEO?

    Get Started With SEO

    If you have never used SEO or even heard of it, there are many different ways to get started. Basic SEO tools include using the right keywords and backlinks on your website to help Google’s algorithm associate it with more categories, thereby listing your site on more searches. Here are a few different avenues to get you started with SEO.

    • Using an SEO Agency

    SEO Agencies are run by professionals who understand the ins and outs of search engine algorithms, and use this knowledge to help your website improve its standing on search engine results. They might connect you with bloggers who use their expertise to write readable content with the right keywords and links integrated seamlessly into the text. Using an SEO Agency is an affordable way to increase traffic to your site, without paying advertisers to do so.

    • Learning SEO in your free time

    If you want to get to grips with SEO on your own, there are ways to cultivate the skills used to achieve SEO. You can use free YouTube tutorials and guidance articles like this one to understand how SEO works and teach yourself the skills needed to implement it on your site. This is time consuming work, but with patience, it is achievable. 

    • Understanding Keywords

    In order to use SEO service successfully, you will need to understand and research how keywords function on your site. The more useful keywords you use, the better Google’s algorithm will understand what your site is for and why it is important, and the more you can drive footfall on your site.

    Times have been hard for businesses this year, but with an SEO strategy in place, your website could be the turning of the tide your business needs. Start today by learning about SEO and how it can be a game changer for your site.

  • What Everyone Should Know About MoneyFarm

    What Everyone Should Know About MoneyFarm

    The advancements in modern technology paved the way for several processes to become more convenient because they are already made available in digital channels. For instance, in the retail industry, customers can now order any product they need online and have it delivered right in front of their doorstep. They also have the option of paying for these products through online channels as well. Likewise, investing is already made more seamless through digital avenues and the emergence of various robo-advisors like Moneyfarm.

    What Is Moneyfarm?

    There are now low-cost automated investment platforms that allow you to yield an optimized long-term portfolio. One platform is Moneyfarm, which is based on an algorithm that can provide you with a personalized investment plan that you can readily put into action, much like a human, a financial advisor would. The beauty of this platform is that you will be able to implement your course of action in terms of your investment anywhere you are, even in the comfort of your home, as long as you have a stable and reliable internet connection.

    How Does Moneyfarm Work?

    Generally, investing in stocks and shares yields far better revenue than what your money can earn when you leave it in your savings accounts or even when you go for bonds. However, you need to keep in mind that, along with a greater return, comes greater risk. In parallel to this, to ensure that you will be able to earn a decent sum from your investment, you also need to have patience because growing your money through the stock market can take years. To use the service of online investment platforms, you need to sign up and answer questions through the form that they provide. Your answers to these questions will help the platform determine your investment risk appetite, which is essential in creating your portfolio. Some of the questions that you will need to answer include your reason for investing, the amount that you are willing to invest, the amount that you can add to your investment regularly, as well as your main source of income. 

    From there, the platform will assign you to one of the six risk profiles available. After this, you can already open an account in the platform and fund it accordingly, either through a bank transfer or a credit card transaction.

    Services Offered by Moneyfarm

    Accounts That Can Be Opened

    The online investment platform offers three types of accounts that you can open, which includes the ISA, pension, and general investment account. Each of these accounts has its specific features and advantages.

    • ISA

    One of the types of accounts that you can open through the platform is an Individual Savings Account (ISA), which is a tax-free form of saving and investing. However, you need to be at least 16 years of age before you can open an ISA. Just keep in mind that with ISA, there is a cap on how much you can invest in stocks and shares, but you have the liberty of transferring your existing ISAs into it.

    • Pension Account

    If you are preparing for your retirement, then you should open a pension account through the platform. With this account, all your investments are managed by an investment team to fund your retirement. Rest assured that their investment decisions are based on your portfolio that is a culmination of your savings goals, risk appetite, planned retirement date, as well as the amount that you can invest.

    • General Investment Account

    A general investment account is very much similar to an ISA, only that all your earnings are taxable. Nonetheless, you will be able to use this account for all your investment needs, regardless of whether your goal is to save up for the down payment of your new home or start a business.

    Customer Support and Advice Center

    While Moneyfarm is regarded as a robo-advisor, it is still backed up by real human support. This means that you get the best advice because of the team of people who will be able to provide answers to your queries as necessary. Rest assured that the team of portfolio experts are seasoned and knowledgeable investors who spend their time monitoring the performance of various portfolios. In this case, they can modify the portfolios accordingly to ensure that these reap the maximum returns.

    Advantages of Using Moneyfarm

    Aside from the convenience that this online investment platform can give you, below are some other advantages of using this robo-advisor.

    • Low Fees

    Compared to other investment platforms currently in the market today, Moneyfarm collects a much lower operating and maintenance cost. Aside from low fees, they also impose a low minimum requirement, allowing you to start investing for as low as a pound. However, you may find other investment platforms impose a no minimum deposit. The platform is also tax efficient, for as long as you go with an ISA account instead of a general investment account.

    • Ease of Use

    Another notable benefit of using an online investment platform is the simplicity of doing so. You have the option of using the platform through a web browser on your computer or installing an app on your smartphone or mobile devices. No, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to navigate through the site or through the app to find your way because of the intuitive interface that they have integrated it with. Because of this, you will be able to grasp how to use the features of the platform immediately. The great part is that you can easily get in touch with their customer service or human support in case you need to.

    The Bottomline

    In this modern-day and age, there is no stopping you in leveraging online investment platforms to grow your money. However, you need to consider that, like any investment vehicle, these platforms have their benefits that you can take advantage of, as well as drawbacks that you need to work with, such as limited investment opportunities. The key is in identifying your purpose for investing to ensure that using these types of platforms will suit your needs.