Rid the world of its laws, and you’ll realise what true chaos is. Alternatively, you can talk to a lawyer.

Now that we’ve got the swanky opening line out of the way, it’s time to address the cut-throat competition that dictates a typical day in the legal world.

Law has always been a highly competitive field. But, ever since the emergence of the internet, the legal world has become even more of a madhouse.

After all, finding legal representation is just a matter of a few clicks these days.

A consumer survey by Google states that 96% of people leverage a search engine when they’re on the lookout for legal advice.

Therefore, an entity that provides any kind of legal services needs to inculcate search engine optimisation into its marketing strategy.

But, we’re not telling you to take us at our word, and realign your marketing practices just because we said so.

Instead, we’ll list two prominent reasons why law firms can benefit by investing in effective SEO practices.

So, here goes:

SEO blows traditional marketing practices out of the water

Back in the day, traditional marketing practices like cold-calling, print ads, televisions ads, billboard promos, direct mail etc. were the top-tier tools at a marketer’s disposal.

However, the internet has changed that for the better.

In fact, the shift from traditional to digital is arguably the most pivotal change that the advertising world has undergone in this decade.

SEO is a big part of digital marketing and its results speak for itself. Well, they literally do!

Unlike traditional marketing practices, SEO offers concrete avenues for the quantification of its efficacy.

Moreover, with Big Data and Analytics becoming bigger and bigger with each passing day, the quantification avenues inherent to SEO are only expected to improve in the future.

Yet another aspect in which SEO is superior to traditional marketing is in terms of its cost-effectiveness.

If you have the requisite understanding of SEO principles and the adaptability to optimise for rapidly changing trends, you can reap the rewards of SEO without spending even a single penny.

After all, the only real cost linked with SEO is that of hiring a competent agency or an analyst.

On the contrary, when you advertise your legal services using traditional marketing channels, you can’t even hope to see any results without spending a sizeable portion of your marketing budget.

However, the biggest advantage that SEO has over traditional marketing endeavours is that of the tenure of its impact.

It is true that classic advertising tools yield somewhat instant results. But, it is also true that these immediate results are short-lived.

Conversely, SEO efforts take a longer commitment to generate success. But, once they do, the accumulated success tends to have a long lifespan.

SEO makes clients reach you on their own

In today’s day-and-age, consumers from all sorts of different verticals exercise the power that they have.

They look for information to guide their decisions.

Thanks to the virtually boundless wish-granting factory that the internet has become, consumers often find what they are looking for.

Legal consumers are no different in this regard. According to a study, 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.

This means that if you can make your law firm’s website as enticing to legal consumers as possible, they’ll contact you on their own.

Furthermore, search engine traffic is highly relevant traffic. Only those people who have searched for keywords that relate to the content on your website will end up opening it.

But, the caveat here is that they’ll never even find your website if its SEO is not on point.

So, it is important for your law firm’s website to rank as high as possible if you want to stumble upon clients that are looking for your services.

Here are some of the things that you can do to make that happen:-

• Analyse your competition and take cues from their successful SEO practices. If you are not familiar with who your competitors are, simply search a keyword that you plan to target, and go through the SERPs.
• Make sure that you pay enough attention to local SEO. A survey by FindLaw U.S. states that 78% of those looking for legal services prefer to have a local attorney. Properly setting up a Google My Business for your firm is a crucial step here.
• To optimize for local SEO even further, target local keywords and try to generate backlinks from influential local websites.
• Lastly, get as many online reviews for your firm as you can. Client reviews have a huge impact on Google’s perception of your website.

The Take-Away

Given the internet-driven digital skeleton of the world that we currently live in, it is impossible to succeed in any people-faced venture without leveraging the power of digital marketing.

As stated before, SEO is among the most powerful digital marketing channels out there.

So, if you want to out-shark the rest of the legal sharks that you’re competing with, nailing the SEO strategy for your website isn’t an option, it is a necessity!

The post How Can Attorneys and Law Firms Benefit from SEO? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Investing time and energy in social media marketing without tying your efforts to a strategy is like participating in an archery contest with a blindfold on.

But, merely having a social media strategy is not the cure to all your marketing woes.

You need to ensure that your strategy is driven by data and not by whims. In sophisticated terms, you need to narrow down a social media strategy that is results-driven.

Several questions naturally stem from the above statement.

For instance,

• What does results-driven even mean?
• Which results are we talking about?
• How are they measured?
• To what extent should the said results be measured?

And so on …

The answers to these questions will help us in uncovering what a results-driven digital marketing strategy looks like, and how you can build one.

So, without further ado, let’s begin!

What does results-driven even mean?

Within the purview of our discussion, think of a results-driven strategy as one that engenders measurable progress by leveraging the insights provided by quantifiable metrics.

To make the most out of your results-driven action-plan, you should navigate your marketing efforts by:-

• Setting S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Based) goals.
• Delineating sensible metrics to track your progress on those goals.
• Being open to experimental ideas.
• Using your failures to discover room for improvement.
• Taking action based upon your learnings.

Brainstorm S.M.A.R.T. Goals

The full form of this acronym is not nearly as important as its essence. So, we’ll not entangle you with a letter-by-letter analysis of what S.M.A.R.T. goals are.

(However, here’s a brilliant resource if you want to want to approach the rest of this sub-heading with an increased sense of familiarity)

Instead, we’ll focus on the practical implications inherent to this goal-setting framework, as well as the data that you should leverage.

By thinking within the box of S.M.A.R.T. goals, you no longer have the option to swim in the waters of vagueness.

As per the S.M.A.R.T. framework, it isn’t enough to strive for more sales than before.

• You need to give a number to your ambition.
• You need a number that you can track.
• You need a number that you can realistically achieve.
• You need a number that justifies its pursuit.
• You need to tie that number to a well-defined timeline.

Here’s an example of a smart goal to eliminate any confusion: Since traffic originating from Instagram generates the most conversions for my website, I strive to cumulatively increase my followers every month till the end of this quarter. I will strive for 100 more followers in the first month, 110 more followers for the second month, 120 for the third month, and 140 for the last month

Note: For the sake of creating a results-driven digital marketing strategy, it is generally better to base your S.M.A.R.T. goals on conversions rather than impressions. However, we provided a contrasting example above to assert yet another important lesson. There is no universal approach to goal setting. You just need to know what the rules are so that you also know when to break them.

Some additional considerations:-

Industry Trends:- Don’t forget to account for industry trends like seasonality (how certain industries flourish during specific parts of the year and experience a slump in other months) while focusing on conversions. This will help you in keeping your S.M.A.R.T. goals relevant as well as realistic. Use tools like Statista and SimilarWeb to gather useful insights.

Historical Data:- Use Google Analytics to get an idea of your past performance so that you have some idea about what works and what doesn’t. Identify the correlations between website traffic and marketing channels. As exhibited in the S.M.A.R.T. goals example used above, insights gained from analytical data can help you in identifying channels that yield the best ROI.

Monitor the right KPIs

A pleasant after-effect of sticking with the S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal setting is that you automatically end up with the right key performance indicators.

However, given the myriad of insights provided by modern-day digital analytics tools, it is easy to get suckered into tracking unnecessary metrics.

For instance, tracking your unsubscribe rate isn’t always a fruitful endeavour. If you are meeting your conversion goals irrespective of a somewhat displeasing unsubscribe rate, you perhaps don’t need to lose sleep over it.

Now, we’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to know your customers/potential customers as much as you can.

All we’re saying is that make sure you don’t waste time tracking metrics that don’t offer any practical benefits.

Consider saving that time and spending it on gathering valuable information instead.

Don’t overlook small details while focusing on the bigger picture

Tracking your big-picture goals is imperative to growing your business in the digital age.

However, it is also pertinent to ensure smooth functioning of the internal machinery that ensures the propagation of your digital marketing efforts.

For instance, if you’re trying to increase the organic traffic on your website, thinking from an advertising-oriented standpoint isn’t enough.

You also need to ensure that the internal processes that increase the face-value of your website are all nicely oiled-up.

This includes optimising for SEO-centric aspects like keyword-research, site-speed, UX-design, backlinks, and more.

Simply put, don’t get so engrossed in tracking your progress that you forget to keep a check on the building blocks on your business’ digital presence.

Embrace experimentation

At its core, marketing itself is nothing more than an experiment.

After all, it is a dynamic endeavour that caters to the shapeshifting yet ever-existing gap between consumers and products.

Thus, you sometimes need to be able to step away from time-tested pathways and take the road less travelled.

For instance, you can endlessly tweak your copy to check all the right boxes and end up with a grand total of zero conversions.

However, under the same circumstance, something as simple as changing the colour of the ‘call-to-action’ button on your website can yield the intended results.

Eloquently put, you need to strike a balance between staying within the box of S.M.A.R.T. goals and thinking outside of it.

Follow the Deming Wheel

In the 1950s, Dr. William Edwards Deming, a well-known management consultant, came up with something called the Deming Wheel or the PDCA cycle to help businesses continuously improve their products and services.

The acronym, PDCA, stands for Plan, Do, Check, Act. This model can also be leveraged by digital marketing professionals to continuously improve their strategies.

• Plan:- As we’ve discussed above, start with creating S.M.A.R.T. goals to ground your progress in quantifiable terms.
• Do:- Execute your plan in multiple stages to ensure that you don’t get stuck with a strategy that isn’t doing you any good. In other words, design goals for quarters instead of for the entire year.
• Check:- Keep a track of the right KPIs to get reliable measurements of your progress. Periodically identify improvement avenues, and keep making relevant adjustments in your S.M.A.R.T. goals.
• Act:- Now, once you perform the first three steps for a good number of times, you’ll most likely identify glaring errors in your digital marketing strategy, and stumble upon long-term solutions. Implement those solutions, and return to step one.

Well, the Deming Wheel is exactly like the circle of life. It never ends. But, just like the circle of life, it affords you many opportunities to make the right changes.

The Take-Away

With data science and other novel developments in business analytics fostering large-scale customer research in a manner hitherto unimaginable, metrics have become an inseparable part of marketing strategies.

Thus, being results-driven is inarguably the sane choice for marketers in the digital era. However, it is also wise to address metrics with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Well, we’re not telling you to be sceptical of the figures themselves, but of the implications that they come with.

In a nutshell, be mindful of how you use data, and leverage it to improve your strategies.

However, at the same time, don’t stop listening to your gut, and dare to be experimental from time-to-time.

The post How to implement a results-driven digital marketing strategy? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

This projected growth only means one thing. To survive and thrive, businesses will need to move with the times and increase and diversify their DM spending.

However, choosing the right type of DM to invest in can be tricky. To help you start off 2020 on the right foot, here is a breakdown of six key trends that will shape the market next year.

1.  Chatbots

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning, chatbots are becoming better at communicating with consumers by the day. Many even consider them superior to human customer support for the following reasons:

• Chatbots are cheaper than humans. No further explanation needed here.
• Chatbots are also more efficient. They need no time to rest and can answer questions in real-time 24/7. That is particularly important in a global market with customers based in different time zones.
• Chatbots save time. They don’t need as much time to think, formulate their answers, or consult with colleagues as humans do. They don’t forget and they provide quicker responses, thereby helping customers make decisions faster.
• Chatbots are always in a good mood or, rather, appear to be in one. They always treat customers with respect and are to the point, informative, and unbiased.

All of the above leads to more personalized service, improved customer satisfaction, better ratings, and, eventually, higher profits. And with chatbot communication becoming more natural and sophisticated with every passing minute, it’s no wonder that companies will continue to embed chat windows or verbal interaction options on their websites.

2.  Private Messaging Apps

The use of private messaging (PM) apps to communicate with customers has been gaining in popularity and is expected to expand even further in 2020. Businesses now commonly use PM groups and mobile apps, such as WhatsApp, Viber, and WeChat, instead of or in addition to email. For instance, customers and businesses currently exchange a staggering 20+ billion messages via Facebook Messenger per month.

Furthermore, many brands plan to monetize PM apps and allow customers to buy products and services directly through them. The mobile app WeChat Pay has made paying online easier, and users of Venmo and PayPal can already use these apps to send or receive money.

PM apps also help businesses tap into the growing demand for personalized marketing. Their overall effect leads to:

• Direct and fast communication with clients
• Increased brand and product awareness
• Better client relationship-building
• More flexible customer support
• Boosted sales

 3.  Personalization

For quite some time now, big market players such as Amazon have relied on ever-increasing personalization to great success. Small and mid-sized businesses are catching up on the trend too, and over 90% of online advertisers will resort to some type of personalization by 2020. What’s more, we might even see an influx of entire personalized websites as soon as 2021.

Given that 70% of consumers now expect tailored content and product suggestions, personalization is not just some fad but a lasting benchmark in DM. Some ideas that you should consider incorporating into your business include:

• Address customers by their first name in all forms of communication.
• Analyze consumers’ behavior and recommend similar or related products based on their purchase history.
• Use personalized email campaigns, which have been shown to receive41% higher click-through rates compared to traditional emails. Consider using email marketing tools, such as MailChimp or Constant Contact, as well as automation engines, such as HubSpot and Pardot.
• Collect data on consumer buying habits and interests through surveys or studies.

4.  Voice-Powered Search

Voice assistants, such as Alexa, Google, and Siri, are now a standard feature of most smartphones and PCs. In fact, over a quarter of U.S. adults own a smart speaker, and 50% of all searches in 2020 will be voice-powered. Therefore, you should definitely consider using a voice search in your DM strategy.

In addition to being popular with consumers, voice assistants can add value to your SEO, speed up AI deep learning, and help build a mobile-friendly space. However, to make the most of voice-powered search, keep the following points in mind:

• Use long-tail key phrases that mimic real-life conversation (i.e., “How to make broccoli cream soup”) instead of short keywords (i.e., “broccoli cream soup”).
• Use full, grammatically correct sentences.
• A conversational tone works best.
• Think of common questions that people might have regarding your products or services and provide detailed answers.

5.  Insights-Driven Marketing

Insights- or data-driven marketing uses consumer analytics to boost performance. Companies that use analytics are 23 times more likely to both attract new and keep old customers.

While there are many analytics tools on the market, Voice of the Consumer (VoC) techniques is a particularly exciting development. These include building online customer communities and platforms that can deliver key insight into consumer preferences and behavior. A great example is Red Bull’s use of the insight platform Vision Critical.

6.  Smart Bidding in Google Ads

Automation has long been a staple in digital marketing. However, the Google Ads updates that were officially announced at the 2019 Google Marketing Live event suggest that automation and smart bidding will continue to grow even further.

While Google Ads already relies on deep learning to optimize bids, the recent changes aim to maximize conversions by:

• Optimizing bids by letting you choose conversion actions at the campaign level
• Allowing you to optimize bids across multiple campaigns using a set of desired conversion actions
• Allowing you to set bids to change automatically at the beginning or end of a sale

To Conclude

Tools such as AI, next-generation SEO, hyper-targeted ads, interactive content, and consumer analytics can truly level up your business and skyrocket its performance. Companies worldwide have been quick to realize this, as the DM industry should reach more than $375 billion by 2021. That would amount to 49.6% of the total media ad spending globally. That means that digital marketing is not only not to be ignored but should also be the cornerstone of any successful marketing strategy.

The post Trends That Will Shape Digital Marketing in 2020 appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gradually unleashing a trail of revolutionary waves in business. Because of being endowed with never-before capabilities to derive efficiency, AI is steadily emerging as a potential game-changer for many business spheres.

Owing to its ability to react rationally—as if humans would do, AI has been bringing in more and more efficiency in many facets of business operations, and Digital Marketing is no exception. In fact, AI and Digital Marketing have already begun to move hand-in-hand.

Saving time and resources, AI is expected to unleash several never before attributes to efficiently and effectively conduct Digital Marketing campaigns to derive higher Returns on Investment through better decisions.

But, before proceeding further along with this blog, we find it worthwhile to make it amply clear that AI has not arrived on the business scene to replace jobs of marketers or advertisers; but it is here to unleash their true creative potential.

However, to leverage the true potential of AI, these professionals must train themselves to adapt to the AI environment.

What is AI?

It is pretty clear that no amount of discourse on the broad spectrum of benefits AI entails for Digital Marketing will be helpful if in any case, the reader is yet to know what AI itself actually is. In simple terms, AI is analogous to teaching machines how to think and react as humans would.

Similar to the imitation of how the human brain works, AI empowers machines to execute tasks rationally.  One can also think of AI as implanting into machines the abilities to think, respond and perform tasks like humans. Also, AI-powered machines can learn from experience and adjust to new input.

AI is increasingly becoming popular across industries due to:

• Increasing efficiency in business operations by bringing in higher precision and accuracy apart from fewer errors
• Generation of valuable business insights through deeper data analysis
• The capability of functioning in various devices—GPS Trackers, Voice Assistants, Home Automation Systems etc—with smart algorithms
• Adaption to new data inputs through progressive learning algorithms

With exceptional capabilities to empower businesses through the collection and human-like interpretation of data—and also learning from the data, AI is revolutionizing many aspects of businesses, enhancing efficiency and cutting time and resources. Demand for AI has been growing substantially across several industries—agriculture, automobile, healthcare, manufacturing, banking, insurance etc.

AI and Digital Marketing

Not long ago, marketers were afraid to incorporate AI in their digital marketing strategies.  But, the situation has been reversing gradually with the subtle benefits of AI coming to the fore. Of late, they have gained a lot more confidence in view of the benefits that could be derived out of AI.

In a recent survey on 1,600 marketing professionals, 61% of them said that AI will be the most important data initiative in the coming years. In another survey by Salesforce, 51% of the marketers covered under the survey revealed that they were already using AI, and 27% of them considered incorporating AI in their strategy in the near future.

AI tools are evolving more and more and speculations are rife that a day might come when AI capabilities will be able to surpass human abilities.

With the astounding capabilities of collecting, analyzing and appropriately applying business data, AI is transforming Digital Marketing strategy in many notable ways, increasing productivity for the marketers by saving money, time and energy.

Also endowed with the distinct ability to be capable of learning from the data, AI is slowly taking over the human role of predicting future market trends through data-driven analysis—empowering marketers to react proactively to the changing market.

A glaring case in point of the recent usage of AI in Digital Marketing is by none other than Amazon, which uses AI to show only the relevant products to specific website visitors—and that is based on the history of previous purchases, searches and views.

And the spontaneous question that arises in this regard is: how personalizing user experience benefits Amazon? The answer is pretty clear: that increases the likelihood of the shopper making an initial purchase or becoming a repeat customer.

AI-based Digital Marketing strategies can transform the way in which marketers communicate with their audience.  Given the specialized capabilities of AI, its application in Digital Marketing can help in driving relevant traffic, new customer acquisition, increase sales and retain existing customers.

So, let us carefully examine the range of benefits and options offered by AI, and analyze how those can fit into Digital Marketing strategies.

Creating and Generating Content

Can a machine write? At first, it seems not. Although AI tools hitherto cannot write on their own, such as a political opinion for a newspaper or a blog post, yet there are areas in which AI can generate contents based on data and information, helping to attract visitors to your website.

In this way, you save a lot of time and resources. Globally acclaimed media companies, Associated Press and Forbes, use intelligent tools, like Wordsmith, Articoolo and Quill, to create news, which also results in enhancing clicks on their websites.

AI can create unique content, giving the impression as if a human wrote it, with the help of templates and fill-in-the-blanks, wherein you can enter keywords and data. Another classic example is the Washington Post, which publishes numerous articles written by the AI tool, Heliograf.

Content Curation

By now, the capability of AI to generate content is clear; then what is the next? It is the curation of content– or showing visitor specific personalized content, recommending options that visitors may find interesting, such as “Customers who bought this also viewed” in every product page in Amazon.

But how does it help in Digital Marketing? Simple, your website will attract more visitors, enabling you to better connect with them to sell your services. An example will make things clearer. Suppose you have a news website; if you show the visitors articles that are more relevant to them—based on the individual history of the categories of news they already read on your website– they are likely to spend more time on your website.

Email Marketing

Many brands have now started embarking upon personalized email marketing campaigns, based on preferences and user behaviours—leveraging the power of AI. Personalized email marketing involves sending out relevant emails to customers’ inboxes with subject lines, product recommendations and messaging—all customized on the basis of customer’s behaviour.

In this way, AI can enable reaching the right customers and that too in the right time, enhancing the likelihood of conversion. Implementing smart Machine Learning algorithms, AI tools can analyze millions of data about the consumer and based upon which critical information, such as the best times and days of the week to contact the user, the contents that catch their attention the most, the email subjects generating more clicks and so on.

Digital Advertising

It is well-known that AI has already transformed the Digital Advertising space. And many organizations now actively use AI to run their Digital Advertisement campaigns. AI is implemented across online platforms, such as Facebook, Google and Instagram, to analyze users’ information—such as gender, age, interests, demographics etc.—to show them the most relevant advertisements, and that apparently increases the likelihood of generating sales.

Research has shown that the global digital advertisement spends stood at USD 273.29 billion in 2018, and the expenditure is expected to increase substantially in the future. AI can help marketers to make strategic decisions about where to allocate their budget and whom to target by enabling them to spot micro-trends and predict future trends. They can thus ensure that their spends on Digital Advertising deliver the best possible results.

Online Searches

Two AI-based innovations–Voice Search and Google’s algorithm, RankBrain—have already brought in a tremendous revolution in internet searches and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Voice Search does away with the usage of the typical keywords you would type in a classical Google search and enables usage of conversational language, easing the online search.

Google has already acknowledged in its blog that around 70% of the searches Google Assistant receives are in plain, natural and conversational language, free of keywords.

While conducting online searches through voice, marketers need to orient their verbal contents in a way that a user would verbally express themselves, without the involvement of any keywords. Any brand, which can leverage the benefits of Voice Search will truly see a substantial increase in organic traffic.

RankBrain, Google’s AI-powered algorithm, delivers more relevant internet search results, interpreting user’s voice search language and context.
Chatbots

Chatbots, the typical cases of AI usage, act as virtual assistants for consumers. Adding Chatbots to your websites, emails and apps, you can communicate with your existing as well as would-be customers in better ways. Using Chatbots, you can reach many customers and prospects and respond to their queries.

Chatbots are capable of answering the most common questions your customers might have. And engaging in human-like conversations, Chatbots also improve customer experiences. Furthermore, Chatbots are making the process of automating responses for the queries of potential buyers even more easy by providing them with a way to search for the product or service they are looking for.

The functionality, of finding the correct response to user’ queries by Chatbots, is implemented by using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques.

Sephora, a French beauty product company, demonstrates a good example of using Chatbots to communicate with potential customers. Its Chatbot gives beauty advice to the users and recommends to them products in accordance to their needs.

So, Chatbots behave like some kind of sales representatives for your business. AI has amazing power, is not it?

Predictive Analysis

Pro-action rather than reaction apparently helps in marketing. And to be proactive to the imminent change, one needs to get some idea of the possible future trend. In this context, the role of Predictive Analysis comes to the fore.

The analysis of data, using statistical algorithms and Machine Learning techniques to predict the future scenario based on historical data is called Predictive Analysis. Used in several areas of business, including Digital Marketing, predictive models make it possible to forecast stuff, such as the possibility of a specific prospect becoming a customer, the quoted price necessary to make a conversion, or which customers are likely to make more than multiple purchases.

Ranking of Prospects or Lead Scoring is a typical example of the application of AI in Digital Marketing. The generated models can be trained to segregate prospects or leads based on pre-defined criteria as possible purchasers, which could be followed up by the sales team.

In this way, the sales team will not waste any time on chasing leads that will never convert. Implementing AI in Digital Marketing will not only result in increasing sales but also considerable saving of time and resources.

Website Design

AI has the capability of taking out the entire toll involved in website design.  For example, the AI-powered website design platform—The Grid—can design a website based on the user data and the manner in which they interact with your content.

That means, there is no need for the brands to deploy a design team, and the only thing that needs to be worked upon is the content.  There are other similar AI-powered website design platforms, such as FireDrop and Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI).

However, these AI-based website builders are still in their early years, you can expect them to gain sophistication in the coming years.  According to speculations, these website builders are the future of Digital Marketing.

Conclusion

AI can be a game-changer for digital marketers by enabling them to create personalized contents for users and at the same time, avoiding wastage of time and resources. The success of any Digital Marketing strategy lies in the creation of great customer experience, which could be attained if relevant content could be sent to the user.

When the content is tailored and appealing, the user tends to spend more time on the page. And driven by interest, they are likely to convert and also might become recurring customers.  This way, brand loyalty can also be achieved.

With the ability to collect data and decide which content is applicable for specific users, based on historical data and past behaviour, AI gives the impression that the brand was built specifically for them.

The post How is Artificial Intelligence Revolutionizing Digital Marketing? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The digital marketing world is constantly crossing newer milestones with each passing day. It is changing and growing continuously. In order to keep up the pace with the technological advancement of the latest age and enhance your business growth, you must integrate your marketing endeavours with the growing digital marketing trends in 2020.

Make your brand marketing more impactful and relevant by following these successful digital marketing trends to push newer boundaries in 2020

Digital Marketing Trends

1. Augmented Reality

The technology related to Augmented Reality (AR) is still untapped in more than one way and still in its infant stage. It offers great scope to your brand to get greater ROI with your digital marketing endeavours.

It is well-known that games like Pokémon Go that were AR-based became a major hit among the people in mid-2016. A large segment of manufacturers and developers are working to create wearable gears based on AR technology to enhance the user experience and creating value for their brand.

In the upcoming scenario, traditional advertisements will give way to AR-based 3D advertisements, allowing the users to stream 3D content directly to get an advanced experience. It enables the users to connect with your brand offering on a much deeper level emotionally.

It also enables your marketers to augment your brand awareness, leading the customers to test your products well before they move towards placing the orders.

2. Marketing Automation

The various mechanisms related to marketing are getting accelerated by data-driven technologies. Marketing automation enables marketers to establish better relationships with their customers by automating some of the repetitive tasks such as e-mail reminders, social media postings and leads generation.

It is especially beneficial for the new market entrants and small companies that are competing with the top-notch companies by saving their effort and time. Customers are attracted to the brand in a better way when they receive e-mails that cater to their particular requirements.

The process of marketing automation requires the use of software that is needed to be uploaded with the necessary data related to the user’s personalized data. It is a complex technology that can be better managed by partnering with a professional and experienced digital marketing company.

3. Artificial Intelligence

AI has been continuously making dramatic shifts in the digital marketing world for the developments of any brand. It is running parallel to any other marketing tactics and promises to offer you better marketing opportunities in the future.

It analyses the behaviour of your users by reading their search patterns on various social media platforms to enable the brands to understand the demands of their users better and offer them the services accordingly.

AI can solve the problems much more effectively than any human mind, and provides you a defined output without any definite possibility of errors.

Repetitive tasks can be better handled by AI bots that reduces the load of the employees, further enabling them to perform better. It allows your marketing team to develop a highly curated content that will be highly significant for the recipients.

4. Impactful Stories on Social Media

Social media platforms are ever-evolving and presenting the brands with unlimited opportunities to grow their business with digital marketing efforts. It enhances customer engagement in a big way.

Also, it enables marketers to keep the online audience updated with all the current developments taking place in your industry domain. It gives way to daily promotions of your brand by posting marketing content on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

5. Visual Search

Brand optimization with visual search is a great way to offer focused and defined results for your users. It allows the users to click a picture or upload a picture related to the product they are looking to find online.

It directs them to the items without any hassle. Even though it is in its nascent stage, it holds great potential to become a leading digital marketing technology to deliver perfect results.

6. Influencer Marketing

Under this marketing trend, brands use key figures to promote their brand offering among the online audience. Instagram is rapidly growing up the ladder to become a major source of becoming a platform used for influencer marketing.

As the network of social media is scaling up with every single day, there is a rapid increase in the number of influencers as well. Users tend to listen to these well-known celebrities and popular figures ardently.

With the increased use of hashtags and promotional content directed by the influencers on their social media handles, smart brands are taking the content reference from these mentioned posts, and locating the precise on-brand engagements, thereby enhancing their performance of better user engagements. It also plays as a great medium to enhance human-to-human connections and showcase your brand creativity.

7. Programmatic Advertising

An extension of AI to improve the efficiency of your marketing endeavors. Previously, ad industry was managed manually by publishers that controlled and ran the ad industry on the basis of hectic meetings with middlemen and unending negotiations.

With the multiplication of online publishers on a daily basis, it has turned out to be a challenge for the advertisers to keep up the pace with it. The solution is bringing in automation in the advertising industry to take better control over things.

It allows your brand to cut out the middleman and make the advertising procedure simply. Marketers are developing target-oriented ads that are produced by using and analyzing the personalized data of online visitors.

It has enabled the brands to promote transparency in their advertisement campaigns and curtail the instances of fraud, created by the middlemen. It also makes the process of advertising quicker that leads to increased conversions, better ROI and a decrease in the cost of spending. This digital marketing trend is definitely here to stay.

8. Video Marketing

It is one of the ever-growing trends in the digital marketing world. Over the years, visible growth has been seen in user engagements led by pre-made video posts and live videos.

It channelizes the information of a particular product or service to the audience in a much clearer manner, making a direct connection between the audience and your brand.

Directly dealing with the audience via Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels with the help of personalized messages and video content enables you to improve the consistency of lead conversions, thereby leading to better opportunities of your business development.

9. Use of Chatbots

It is a mode where you engage with your customers on a real-time basis via an instant messenger and provides solutions to all their queries related to your brand offerings. Over the years, many companies have agreed to the viability of integrating chatbots in their digital marketing strategy to add value to their business.

It also allows your brand to offer high-quality services to your customers at any hour of the day, and meet the expectations of your customers at every single time. It has been observed after research that almost 80% of the businesses are planning to incorporate the technology of chatbots in their marketing planning by 2020.

10. Voice Search

Technologies of Google Voice and Apple’s Siri have already made a big name for themselves in the digital world. Voice search provides precise answers to the customers without confusion, leading to the desired outcome for them.

Most of the successful marketers create a detailed voice script matching the customers’ requirements and offering creative solutions to their concerns. In the digital marketing world, people are looking forward to creating better voice scenarios based on surveys, internal data, and communications with real customers.

Not just the target audience, it is also hitting successfully with the new and emerging digital audience as well, especially in the small cities and towns.

To emerge as a successful marketer, you can very well explore the great potential of voice search for your marketing efforts related to brand promotions.

11. User-Generated Social Media Content

It has been on the trajectory of growth in recent years in the digital marketing world. User-generated content is any type of brand-related content that is shared by the brand audience on their social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Attention is better directed towards producing and promoting more and more user-generated content, as the targeted audience looks forward to getting validations from social and digital marketing platforms.

It also enhances customer engagements with your brand. It creates a chain of customers that bring closer the potential leads with the existing customers smoothly. It is a growing trend among the millennial generation and needs to be used to its full potential to get better access to lead conversions and brand promotions.

2020 will be all about enhancing the user experience by delivering better personalized, AI-driven and automated content.

To stay ahead in the competition, you need to get a better grip on generating custom content, integrating it well with audio and video enhancements to attract the attention of the targeted audience towards your brand in a seamless manner.

The post Top Digital Marketing Trends to Follow in 2020 appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The financial services vertical is witnessing tectonic shifts because of disruptive innovations. Digital marketing is leading the charge of disruptions in the BFSI (baking, financial services and insurance vertical) like never before. TIS, the industry leading digital services consulting company brings to you the top insights on key drivers and business areas that characterize disruptions being led by digital marketing.

Drivers Affecting the Surge of Digital Marketing in Financial Services Vertical

The key drivers pushing enterprises in the BFSI vertical to leverage digital marketing are as follows:

1. The Rise of the GAFA Model

A study by the Partnership Fund reports that a rising number of Generation Y people are embracing the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) model as an alternative to legacy financial services providers. It reports that 40% of Gen Y users are willing to consider Google and Amazon for banking. Another 36% of the Gen Y people use the GAFA model for insurance products. 46% of Gen Y people use the GAFA model for investment advisory.

2. The Demographic Dividend Post 2008

The Millennial and Z generations (born between 1977 and 1995 and after 1995 respectively) are driven by distrust for legacy financial service providers in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Having picked up graduate school debt, 48% of the millennial generation users do not have an investment account and are highly likely to look up for investment advisory, post retirement savings solutions and term insurance plans on search engines like Google and interact with wealth planners on social media platforms like Facebook.

3. Financial Inclusion While Maintaining Fiscal Discipline

Emerging economies are altering policy design to achieve financial inclusion while maintaining fiscal discipline, asset quality and cost rationalization. It is pushing banks to reach out to customers on digital platforms, create new digital banking products, engage in conversations for customer support delivery and conduct market research online.

Business Functions That Are Being Reshaped by Digital Marketing

Following are the top business functions in the financial services vertical that are being reshaped by the extensive use of digital marketing:

1. Marketing of Financial Products

Banks and financial enterprises are leveraging social media marketing to market and distribute products to customers. Content marketing on Facebook and Google Plus enable segmentation, real time marketing, reduced acquisition costs and faster time to market.

2. New Business Models

BFSI enterprises are leveraging Facebook to aid design thinking for new product development by engaging in conversations with their customers. Banks are allowing customers to access their bank accounts through Facebook accounts for wire transfers, monitoring of credit card bills and sort the most voted and popular features to innovate products.

3. Recurring Billing and Invoicing for Utilities

Utilities like ISPs, telecom and energy distribution companies need to engage in recurring billing and invoicing. Banks are integrating features for recurring utility payments to mobile apps. It allows users to make payments by accessing their social media accounts.

While the deployment of digital marketing in the BFSI vertical has begun to gain traction, policy design and business regulations are still evolving. With the right momentum it should not be too difficult for financial enterprises to reimagine financial inclusion and cashless economies faster than we think.

The post How Digital Marketing is Leading the Disruptive Innovation Movement in Financial Services Vertical? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

A few years ago, people used to go to the bookshops for purchasing books. Automotive manufacturers used to sell their cars in showrooms and garments industry had clothing outlets. Today, although the number of shopping centers is increasing in Europe but at the same time, the number of online shoppers is also increasing. According to United Nations, the world population will reach 8 billion by 2025 which means that more shopping resources will be required to meet the needs of rising population.

According to Global Shopping Centers report, technology and communication has led to global shrinking. Countries with higher number of senior citizens including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and North America, may seem a little challenging in the transformed e-Commerce world.

On the other hand, small and medium-sized businesses prefer e-Commerce for immediate online presence overseas and instant ROI.

As the competition is increasing and more people are moving to e-stores, there is a dire need to review your online marketing strategies for making more business. The smoothest way to dive into the ocean of online marketing is to find out the most resourceful and business making digital channels for marketing your business.

Here are 5 channels to add more to your business growth.

Social Multimedia Marketing

SMM or social media marketing is the engine of online business machine today. It fulfills the primary purposes of attracting more customers, converting visitors into leads, online advertising, improving sales, introducing new products and finding prospect businesses.

Content is the fuel of social media engine. With changing trends, people want less time-consuming, more informative and more attractive content. Google also optimizes the web pages which deliver quality and quantity both.

Social multimedia marketing refers to using different type of media to compose your business promotional content. Images, stock photos, graphical illustrations, infographics, graphical images, 3D pictures, videos, audios, text content, webinars and all other content types are mixed to attract maximum types of visitors on one post.

Popular social networks for social media marketing include Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, and popular blogging websites.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a business which brings profit at both ends. Globalization has shrunk communication and world but for choice makers i.e. customers. For businesses, it has increased local and global competition.

Affiliate marketing is a successful technique to improve your local or region-specific business. For example, following the Global Centers Shopping Report, China is one of the fastest-growing e-markets in the world which means that competition is tough in China.

An affiliate marketing campaign in a country like China will come up with mass coverage and without additional costs. Once your business is promoted locally, you can start working with affiliates on Pay per Click, Pay per Sale or Pay per Lead basis.

Referral traffic is also a form of affiliate marketing. Google algorithms have matured against backlinking therefore the safest strategies for referral traffic are BrandMentions and content sharing. In latter type, you share the content of other websites on your website and in return, they share your content on their websites.

BrandMentions is a term introduced by Google. In BrandMentions, Google records and optimizes the brands searched in its search bar or brand websites which are individually typed. It does not include the brands mentioned in comments or which are hyperlinked for Click-to-Redirect function.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is one of the top most contributors among all digital marketing channels. Modern organic search engine marketing not only helps you promote your business but also improves your online sales and conversions by making your website securer for visitors and increasing SERPs.

Blog is one of the key tools to communicate with the customers and add value to your business. When it comes to devising a digital marketing strategy, content is always the king. Blogging is a source of inbound marketing tactics and according to Hubspot, inbound tactics produce 54% more leads than paid marketing.

For promoting your business on search engines with the help of blogging, here are the tips.

• Increase word count of text content to at least 1000 words.
• Provide qualitative and research based information to the visitors.
• Improve site security by choosing a secure web server. Hire technical web experts to improve off-site security of your web pages against hacker attack.
• For e-shops, make sure to integrate safest shopping carts only.
• Include different types of media in content including image, video, audio and others.
• Use composite keywords or long-tail keywords so that Google may relate the content with your desired niche. For example, pink is a color and Pink is music album as well.

Another way is to promote your blog on social networking sites.

Online and Mobile Display Advertising

The modern concept of online display advertising refers to targeting local or niche-specific audience with the help of graphical images, banner ads, video ads and rich media ads.

Social Network Advertising

There are a variety of channels available for display advertising.

For example, Facebook has introduced Multi-Product Ads in which one brand purchases slot and space on the Newsfeed page where their company ad runs in the form of gallery. You may put various products in the gallery or different images of one product only.

Another way is to integrate different social networking sites for attracting more audiences with one ad only. You can integrate Instagram with Facebook to share countless images of Instagram in the form of your Facebook ad.

Search Engine Advertising

Search engines are also used to advertise your content. Google and Yahoo are the largest advertising forums. You may also advertise on popular websites like Forbes and Reddit.

For launching an advertising campaign on search engines, here is a step-by-step guide.

1. Set up your business goals.
2. Choose payment mode which will also indicate the rate of your success. These include Cost-per-Click, Click-Through-Rate, Cost-per-Impression, Cost-per-Conversion and others on your choice.
3. Define your target audience.
4. Define the networks or forums popular among your target audience.
5. Go to your desired search engine or advertising forum and search ‘paid advertising’, ‘display advertising’, ‘online advertising’ or related keywords. Contact the authorities and start advertising.
6. Keep tracking the success rate of your campaign and make necessary changes when needed.

Mobile Advertising

Out of 3 billion active internet users, there are 1.7 billion active mobile social accounts with a penetration rate of 23%. The increasing number of mobile users is adding value to mobile marketing. Contrary to the common concept, it is not essential to have a mobile app for marketing or promoting your business. There are more creative and cost-effective ways to improve your business promotion through mobile marketing.

Responsive Website

Instead of developing an extra website for mobile phone customers and visitors, you can simply make your existing website responsive for all screen sizes. It is an investment forever.

Mobile Display Ads

Here we are not talking about short service messages. Mobile display ads are web banner and text link ads posted on mobile websites or website which are responsive to all screen sizes.

In-App Mobile Display Ads

There are three types of mobile app-specific ads.

• Branded Apps – A brand creates its personalized app which also promotes the business by redirecting app visitors to the business website.
• Sponsored Apps – These are joint apps owned by the brand and sponsor. These apps promote sponsor’s business as well as your business.
• In-app Ad Unit – The promoter business can purchase a subscription of a mobile app development company and place ads on app in the form of a banner, small but rich media ad (for example image gallery), integrated ads placed in games) or interstitial ad which appears only when the application is loading. In-app ad units may also be placed on websites.

After selecting your desired digital marketing channels, start slowly and track the success rate of your business promotion. Testing the results and making necessary adjustments helps in boosting your ROI.

Although globalization has made online sales competition tough but it has also introduced countless ways to approach your target audience. Mobile and social media are becoming primary platforms of mass communications and online business. Adapting them today will save you tomorrow!

The post 5 Important Digital Marketing Channels For Your Business Growth appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

It is always challenging for the businesses to get proficient with the revolving digital trends and advancements. This case is applicable especially for the businesses, which have been part of the industries with lengthy histories of ensconced work practices or methods. For some of the businesses, these challenges might prove beneficial by improving their revenue significantly, while for others it represents something to be frightful and rejected or a potential risk to their already established status and revenue.

Is your business struggling to achieve optimized digital marketing results but failed to accomplish so far? Have you checked your techniques used for branding your business through the digital marketing techniques? Is your promotional emails optimized for Smartphones? Or you have not yet adept your business with the digital trends at all? I am not sure whether you have implemented the latest digital techniques for improving your business branding or not but instead of celebrating its silver jubilee in 2014, most of the business still lacks the digital marketing changes, which are required to be integrated with their websites to procure best results.

 Reports of Struggling Businesses- Does It Make Any Sense?

The free research report of Managing Digital Marketing reveals some astonishing figures. These reports evidently represented the number of business who are struggling to achieve optimized results through digital marketing process:

From the above shown chart, we can see that the percentage of integration of digital marketing strategies with traditional strategies is significantly high but the percentage of limited integration also holds the second place. There are several reasons for the limited integration, but if the businesses are really interested in achieving immense success in the world of internet, then they must have to know the skills and planning required for accomplishing optimized results through effective digital marketing techniques implementation. The complicated modifications required in any organization are also responsible for  limited integration with latest digital trends since it involves modification not only in the techniques but also in the marketing team as well so that you can get more experienced digital marketing specialists for communicating your business goals with your customers.

Digital Transformation- Necessary for Better Productivity

Increasing digitization provides tremendous opportunities to the businesses for refining their business models and also prioritizes their investments in the world of digital technologies. Before formulating the solutions for digital transformation needed by the struggling business, we must know what challenges the digital marketers face when planning for perfect digital marketing strategies.

The vital challenges faced by them are listed as follows:

• Adequate segregation between the services, products and touch-points
• Developing a compelling and impressive customer experience
• Making best use of customer interactions and relationships
• Delivering customized client experiences, which are reliable, consistent, valuable and accessible
• Selecting from various complex technologies for enabling digital transformation

Reasons for digital transformation are listed as follows:

Before understanding the important solutions, which are needed to transform the digital transformation techniques followed by struggling businesses, it is important to know the major difference between the mindset of a successful and a struggling business.

Successful businesses when required to take decision regarding their expenditure concentrate on their Return of Investment (ROI). They always try to think and see the big picture as they have a clear understanding of the risks involved while executing business processes, but they know when to take risks to improve their sales and productivity.

On the other hand, struggling businesses always thinks of “cost” and always struggles with the question, “What will this cost to me?” They are not risk takers and they only want to take that much dough, which is forked out right now while keeping their fingers crossed for better results.

Simple Steps for Efficient Digital Transformation

With the realization of most of the struggling businesses that their execution of digital marketing strategies have failed to lure the customer, there are five simple steps that helps in focusing on implementing latest digital trends with better precision to avoid to avoid superfluous results.

The five steps which are needed to start your digital transformation initiative are listed as follows:

1)      Designing new experiences and business models

2)      Developing a culture of digital DNA

3)      Applying new technologies to existing infrastructure

4)      Moving from gut to data driven decisions

5)      Co-creating and co-innovating with new partners

1) Designing new experiences and business models

You can easily design new experiences by efficient use of digitization. The clients look for experiences and results while the companies continue to see their services and products over internet. This gap in anticipations between the customers and the businesses intensify the digital marketing processes. In fact, well-established digital marketing models emphasize brand promise and endorse the brand mythology.  Enormous personalization at a given scale and huge data models offer a beginning point to craft a new digital experience.

2) Develop a culture of digital DNA

Success always starts at the top and development of a culture of digital DNA needs strong leaders who are successful risk takers and has the ability to cannibalize the present markets by recognizing new approaches. The struggling organizations should evaluate their innate ability to sustain in this competitive digital environment and they should also nurture digital artisans. These skills will definitely help those struggling bees to win the race of digital proficiency. If there are too many thinkers in your organization, you should devise the digital DNA imprint with only those teams who can execute your newer digital marketing imprint successfully over the internet.

3) Applying new technologies to existing infrastructure

Digitization does not signify the complete removal of existing technologies. It also does not mean just placing a mobile front end or integrating a social collaboration element to the processes. The overall convergence of social media optimization, mobile email optimization, analytics (big data), and combined communications offer the beginning point for implementing digital transformation of your current digital marketing techniques. Mobilizing the mainframe data for utilizing in Google Analytics provides new experiences and offers insight with latest opportunities. You can then use this opportunity to rethink over your new technological strategy to line up with your business goals of digital transformation.

4) Moving from gut to data driven decisions

Data is the core of digital transformation process because every click, touch point, interaction offers a digital exhaust rich in content. Your aim should be to move from the real time information overload to the real time contextual relevancy. All struggling businesses require relevancy in their real time deliveries to their customers. You must calculate how much content and what type of content should be shared across different platforms. Data driven decisions will not only help in enhancing the leads to your website but will eventually generate sales and revenue for your online business.

5) Co-creating and innovating with new partners

This is again very important if you are thinking to transform your digital marketing strategies because no company can succeed on their own and an ecosystem of co-innovations and co-creation is required for developing your brand value among your patrons. All businesses must participate in industrial consortiums and should build their own ecosystems lining up with the organization’s goals.

Overall, for successful planning and execution of digital marketing strategies, all aspects of digital marketing should be considered while performing digital transformation. It includes all the top level strategies such as managing vital techniques like Content marketing, SEO, SMO, and email marketing. Not only these strategies will help in reviewing your current approach but will also tell you the locations of the actual gaps along with the solutions to plug those gaps efficaciously. You can then easily execute your new digital marketing plans to achieve prioritized road map of success.

The post Is Your Business Struggling to Achieve Optimized Digital Marketing? appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.