Author: Reginald Chan

  • How branding can help a company to grow

    How branding can help a company to grow

    Having a strong online presence is essential for any business if you are looking to have long-term success. With so many companies moving online nowadays, it would be foolish to risk anything without at least putting some kind of focus on creating some kind of online following. It could be essential to the growth of any business.

    How does branding work

    Branding has so many benefits when it comes to marketing and trying to increase business, but one of the most important roles it has is establishing a connection with customers to understand what any given product is about. If the brand is instantly recognizable, either by a logo or even by brand name, it is vital to make sure that people understand precisely what your company is all about. This can help people to make an emotional connection to your company and maybe help to build a strong relationship as a result.

    Tips for building a brand

    To build a successful brand, there are some important factors that do need to be considered.

    • Target audience
    • Know the competition
    • Be consistent
    • Create a recognizable logo
    • Use that logo across multiple marketing platforms

    By keeping these ideas in mind, you might be able to create a strong brand. For example, if you had an instantly recognizable logo, customers will immediately go from A to B with too much persuasion. Strong logos can help foster brand loyalty while it can also help generate particular feelings from customers, with the reactions relating to prior experiences with the brand. This can often make or break a brand as people will pass on their experiences to others. Word of mouth is so powerful in regards to marketing, so keeping positive memories is essential.

    Online casinos need to be immediately recognizable, as, with so many different brands in the industry, it is essential to be able to stand out and separate the wheat from the chaff. Companies like lucky nugget like to use their brands to attract their customers’ eye and stand out where other brands might fall. With so many different games available, they cater to the needs of almost any customer and keep people interested with a wide variety of games available.

    Be consistent

    As far as branding goes, it is important to be consistent with whatever message you are trying to convey. It is pointless sending out mixed messages as customers will switch off and are less likely to buy-in. Consistency helps to build trust, and if it is the same across all platforms, it is more likely to attract customers. The intended message is also likely to carry across if you are consistent, meaning people are more likely to understand where you are coming from, whereas if you start sending mixed messages, it would be harder to understand what the brand is about. This could cause people to switch off, and as a result, your brand is likely to suffer in the long run.

  • Three Identity Theft Schemes and Ways to Prevent Them

    Three Identity Theft Schemes and Ways to Prevent Them

    In 2019, 14.4 million Americans were victims of identity theft. That’s around one in every fifteen people. So, it’s no wonder that many are becoming increasingly concerned about criminals stealing their personal information. Identity theft involves thieves stealing personally identifiable information like your name, address, date of birth, Social Security Number, and bank account number. They use the information without your permission for financial gain. There are many different types of identity theft schemes that criminals use, both online and offline. Here’s a look at three common schemes and how you can prevent them from happening. 

    Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-with-binary-code-projected-on-his-face-5474031/

    Phishing 

    There are lots of different types of phishing schemes, but all of them trick you into giving your personal identifying information. Phishing schemes are the most common type of online identity thefts. The thefts could come via a number of different methods, such as email, cell phone voice messages, text messages, and online social networks. Two of the most-used phishing schemes are:

    • Pharming, in which you visit a spoof website generated by a hacker and enter personal details like your name, address, and credit card number, without realizing you are on a fake site.
    • Malware-based phishing, in which a cybercriminal attaches a harmful malware program to an email or website. When you click on it, the thief has access to your online movements and can record your keyboard strokes.

    To protect yourself from pharming, check the padlock symbol in the right-hand corner of the website URL to check that it’s secure. If you need further assurance, contact the website administrator via phone or email. As for malware-based phishing, you can protect yourself by using caution before downloading or installing anything from the internet. Always make sure an item is from a trusted source and has security certification. For further protection against phishing and other identity theft methods, it’s a good idea to use identity theft protection software that monitors your online behavior and checks for any suspicious activity. With identity theft protection, you can make it more difficult for hackers to steal your personal information, and if identity theft should occur, the situation can be resolved quickly. 

    Dumpster Diving

    With so much focus on internet security these days, it can be easy to forget identity thieves also operate offline. One of the most common ways thieves gain access to your personal information in the non-digital world is by simply going through your garbage. This identity theft scheme is known as dumpster diving. In people’s trash, thieves can find things like credit card bills, bank statements, utility bills, and medical insurance statements; all of which contain personal data. 

    Thankfully, it’s easy to protect yourself against dumpster diving. Make sure you shred any documents that contain sensitive information before you dispose of them. You could also stop using paper statements altogether and instead complete all of your transactions online. 

    Social Engineering

    Identity thieves can use the social engineering scheme either via email, over the telephone, or even in person. In order for scammers to use this scheme, they need to already know some information about you, such as your name and address. By making you aware that they know such details, you can be fooled into thinking you’re talking to a legitimate company. The schemer will then lead you to divulge more sensitive information such as your bank account number. 

    To prevent social engineering, stay diligent every time a company contacts you; even if it’s a company you’re registered with or are expecting a call from. If you have any doubt about the genuineness of the caller, hang up and call back the company’s official number to verify the call was genuine.   

  • 6 benefits of using KPIs in marketing

    6 benefits of using KPIs in marketing

    Most marketing teams use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the success of campaigns. They provide you with a metric on which you can determine success. Without them, you might as well be feeling your way through the dark. Here are six benefits of using KPIs.

    They Let You Measure Results

    The most obvious benefit of using KPIs is that they allow you to measure results. There is a huge creative element to any marketing campaign but data is also extremely important. With analyzing data, it’s impossible to know how well your campaign is working and why it’s working. By using KPIs to measure results, you can improve campaign performance and make the most of your marketing budget.

    They Help You Set Business Goals

    Every successful business has clearly defined goals. KPIs provide a metric to measure business goals. For example, if the business has a goal of growing its social media audience, it could be measured by follower count, impression, web traffic, and conversions. This then turns a vague business goal into a highly specific goal that can be measured.

    They Offer Incentives to Your Team

    One of the best ways to motivate employees is to provide them with incentives. For example, a content creator could be tasked to get a certain number of articles to rank on Google. The incentive could then be a bonus structure based on the percentage of articles ranking. This is an excellent way of encouraging employees to work harder and perform better.

    They Help You Find Issues in Your Business Strategy

    KPIs are an excellent way to identify issues with a business strategy. A business’s strategy is a definition of where it wants to be in the future and exactly how it’s going to get there. Implementing KPIs into a strategy makes it easier to measure certain goals and objectives. Here’s an example – a business has a strategy to grow a larger social media presence to drive traffic and ultimately sales via the website. The KPIs tell you that the follower count has grown and the amount of traffic to the website has grown with it. However, the sales haven’t grown significantly. That tells you that the problem is with the website itself or the type of traffic being sent there.

    They Allow You To Measure The Success Of Competitions

    Online casinos are a great place to look for marketing inspiration. They often run competitions that allow customers to play now with free credit. All they have to do is offer up their details. However, without using KPIs to measure the success of these competitions, online casinos would have no idea if it’s worth it.

    They Align Your Marketing And Sales Efforts

    In many businesses, marketing isn’t measured in the same way as sales. When it comes to sales, it’s easy to measure the success of individual employees or teams. In marketing, this is more difficult. However, implementing a KPI strategy allows you to measure campaign success. This will help you align the efforts of your marketing and sales teams.

  • Tips and Tricks for Boosting Employee Morale

    Tips and Tricks for Boosting Employee Morale

    As a manager, you have a lot of work to do. Near the top of your to-do list should be ‘keep employee morale high’. When this is successfully done, employees perform significantly better. Plus, they stay loyal to your company – which is the dream for any manager.

    Keeping employee morale high is easier said than done, though. There are a wide range of personalities and roles to deal with. It might be easy to boost one employee’s morale – but the next employee could prove to be more difficult.

    To help you with this, here are some helpful (and fun) tips and tricks to immediately boost your employee morale.

    1. Play games

    Your team works hard every day, so they’ll appreciate any fun they can have together. One of the best ways they can do this is through playing games.

    Now, it’s probably not the best idea to play games in the office – as this can cause a commotion. Instead, you should arrange social nights where employees come together to your house to relax and unwind. Here, you can play games and forge a strong bond together.

    These days, a lot of people are getting together in groups to play online casino games. Online casino games are the ultimate source for making social nights exciting and memorable! You and your team should start by playing All Slots Casino. You never know, one of you might hit the jackpot!

    2. Allow employees to work from home

    The modern business environment is evolving fast.  Over the past year, more and more companies have started allowing their employees to work from the comfort of their homes. In addition to this, companies are also hiring remote employees.

    This is great, as it saves office space and stops employees from needing to needlessly travel to the office every day (when in reality, they can do everything from home!).

    So, providing your business model allows it, consider offering employees the chance to work from home. This doesn’t have to be every day, by the way. For example, they could do three days in the office per week and two days from home – you get the idea.

    3. Hold regular performance meetings

    Performance meetings are an excellent way to let your employees know what they’re doing right. Basically, you can give them a pat on the back and tell them to keep doing what they’re doing. Of course, you should also provide constructive criticism – but the main aim is to keep your employee’s morale levels high by letting them know they’re appreciated!

    4. Create a relaxation space in the office

    If you have a busy work office, it’s recommended that you create a relaxation space where employees can go to have a drink, kick their feet up, and relax for 20 minutes or so. This will ensure that they don’t overwork themselves while keeping their minds fresh.

    5. Invest in the best equipment

    As the famous saying goes, ‘a workman is only as good as his tools’, which is still relevant today.

    For example, if you are the customer service department manager in an office, your employees should have comfortable office chairs and desks, plus excellent headsets. This will maximize their performance levels and keep them happy!

  • Top 5 Side Hustles You Should Try in 2021

    Top 5 Side Hustles You Should Try in 2021

    Nowadays, having a side job has become more of a necessity rather than just another way of earning extra bucks. As the global economy tries to rebound from the ill effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still people who are struggling to make ends meet.

    Enter side jobs. While the term suggests that you do them alongside your full-time work, some people have turned them into their main bread and butter, allowing them to earn as much as they can.

    In a recent study conducted by Upwork, it was revealed that 32% percent of first-time freelancers started freelancing right after finishing college, while 22% got into it after losing or being laid off from their job because of the pandemic in 2020.

    This only goes to show that freelancing or getting a side job isn’t just for skilled individuals who already have full-time jobs but also for those who are starting or restarting their careers. 

    Let’s go over some profitable side hustles that you might want to consider.

    Online Tutor 

    Tutoring has long been a popular side hustle for a lot of college students and professors. In fact, online tutoring has been around longer than the recent shift to online classes. There are already a number of platforms where people can sign up and find a tutoring gig.

    A great example of a tutoring job is teaching language online. If you apply to work for Preply.com, all you really need is knowledge and expertise in a specific language. Apart from English, they have teachers offering Spanish, French, German, and Italian language classes. 

    Content Writer

    If you have experience or skills in writing, or if you’re a fresh graduate who is used to churning out papers on a weekly basis, then content writing might be the perfect side hustle for you. As a content writer, you’ll do a variety of web content for companies spanning different industries.

    To launch your writing career, it may be a great time to put together your previous works that can reflect your skills, as some companies do look for a portfolio in order to apply.

    Graphic Designer

    If you have a keen eye for the arts and are passionate about creating graphics, there are a lot of websites and platforms out there to help you monetize graphic design skills. Who knows you could be designing website banners or infomercials for multinational corporations!

    Just like content writing, putting together a portfolio would be your first step if you want to enter this kind of side hustle.

    Ride-share Driver

    Now, not all the best side hustles out there are online or internet-related. There are still some that you can do outside your home, more so on your way home, or to work or anywhere really. 

    Ride-share applications have been godsent for people who want to economize on their transportation costs.

    Earnings from ride-sharing depend on the application that you will sign up for and the type of service and vehicle you can offer. On estimate, if a driver works 15 hours a week then they will earn somewhere near 17$ an hour. Not bad if you’re just sitting at home, or on your way back home and not in a hurry!

    Virtual Assistant 

    As baffling as it may sound for those who have worked all their life inside an office, yes, a virtual assistant is a real job. With a lot of people shifting to a work-from-home setup, the line between work and home has been a blur, and most desk job workers who are now at home might need an extra hand. 

    Virtual assistants are no different from your “normal” assistants in the office. Being a “VA” entails doing a lot of tasks, from answering emails and entertaining clients to booking hotels and flights and even ordering groceries. You’re essentially being your boss’ assistant from the comforts of your own home or workspace.

    Overall, if you’re looking into getting a side job or joining the hustle culture, all you need is a huge trove of skills up your sleeve, as there are a lot of companies just waiting for you to lend your hand. Go and try these side jobs out!

  • 6 Common Functions Businesses Farm-Out To Outside Pros

    6 Common Functions Businesses Farm-Out To Outside Pros

    When it comes to running a successful business, enthusiastic business owners tend to prefer the approach of taking care of everything themselves. However, with the growth of a business, it can become difficult for an existing workforce to manage the increasing workload.

    This is where businesses tend to focus on either increasing their workforce to manage the increasing workload or outsource the relatively expensive wings of the company to maintain finances. Since increasing the workload can be a burden on the wallet for most businesses, the option of outsourcing is like help from the Heavens.

    Therefore, we have created a list of common business functions outsourced to experienced professionals by the majority of businesses to relax their workload and manage things smoothly.

    Role of Outsourcing Services

    Outsourcing services provide the company with external resources to perform business activities usually performed by internal resources. Generally, companies appoint the services of an outsourcing team when they plan to cut on their in-house resource costs or when an organization plans to scale its growth.

    This allows the recipient company to improve its focus on the core activities and utilize the services of talented individuals at lower costs.

    6 Common Functions that are Outsourced by Companies

    The concept of outsourcing services has gained great importance in recent years. For this reason, it is essential for emerging businesses to identify the operations and departments that can be outsourced without denting the company’s core operations.

    1. Customer Support

    With everything going digital and accessible online, the expectations for effective customer support have risen dramatically. Furthermore, customers now judge companies based on their quality of customer support to ensure that they do not go through the horrors of contacting ghosting customer care helplines that are of no use in the case of a faulty product.

    1. Event Management

    Although the global pandemic has dismantled the concept of physical events and mass gatherings, event management is a department that is easily outsourced by the majority of businesses. It allows the companies to only pay for the decorations and be pleasantly surprised by the genius professional event management services.

    1. Human Resource Management

    The Human Resource department of an organization is one of the busiest departments. With decisions related to managing your team, hiring and onboarding new members, and taking care of existing employees, this department is an integral part of a company. However, considering the nature of work in an HR department, it can easily be outsourced to yield better results.

    1. Shipping and Logistics

    Companies that deal in physical goods can outsource the shipping and logistics department to relieve themselves from the long-lasting tensions of warehousing. The majority of e-commerce sellers choose to opt for this option to channel their focus on the business logic for their company.

    1. Research

    A company is nothing without a research wing that brings in new dimensions to be explored to increase the radius of the company’s domain. However, an in-house research department can become expensive for emerging companies. This is why they should choose to outsource their research department to decrease costs while receiving proper research services.

    1. Social Media Marketing

    Many companies like to keep their marketing in-house to restrict the spillage of trade secrets. However, with the increased popularity of social media marketing (SMM) and modern techniques to lure customers online, it is important to outsource your SMM team to obtain the required results from your marketing team.

    With the increase in the existing workload, businesses tend to delegate their work to outsourcing services to manage the increase in work. These outsourcing services provide professional services like excellent IT support, financing and bookkeeping expertise, and great customer support. It allows the businesses to plan their strategy of managing the existing workforce while controlling workforce management to manage the consistent increase in its scale.

    Benefits of Outsourcing For Businesses

    Outsourcing is an essential facility for most growing companies as they witness growth in their scale. However, to understand the scale of importance, we need to take a look at some of the most common benefits.

    • Focus on Core Activities

    With an effective outsourcing team in place, the company’s core activities are safe, and the company can focus on them with full control. This is advantageous for most companies as the process of business expansion demands premium support from the business’s core team.

    • Maintain Operational Control

    When you are expanding your business, departments with the most costs are considered for outsourcing to maintain the finances while meeting the rising work demands. In this situation, an outsourcing company helps you with your management needs with their professional skills. Furthermore, this option will be effective cost control as increasing the workforce in the said department will only disturb the finances.

    • Promotes Growth

    As the scale of operations increases, the overhead costs start to witness a noticeable increase. At this point, businesses are forced to choose between satisfying their customers or maintaining their financial conditions. This is where outsourcing is always a good option as it allows you to delegate difficult and expensive to handle tasks.

    • Reach out to Skilled Resources

    The greatest advantage of outsourcing your high-cost tasks is that it provides you with skilled resources in cheaper or almost similar price ranges. However, the availability of skilled resources is what entices the businesses to continue working with them as they provide remarkable work performances for the same prices.

    • Staffing Flexibility

    Outsourcing allows the company to temporarily delegate the tasks that can disturb the finances as the company strategizes its plan to scale its growth. This helps the company to temporarily manage its need for an extra workforce with decreased costs.

    It is an undoubted reality that the option of outsourcing your business functions is a clear advantage for many businesses willing to maintain their finances while expanding. With the increase in workload, businesses are required to increase their workforce to manage the increased work. However, the lack of feasibility to accommodate an increased number of employees forces the businesses to outsource some of the work to manage the new workload with ease.