Internet Of Things – Fueling Marketing Revolution With Connected Life

In our everyday life, we come across various technological revolutions that impact everything we do. However, how many of us have actually been impacted with a new gigantic wave which has completely changed the entire technological realm. Today’s topic of discussion revolves around one such gigantic advancement that has provided marketers with countless opportunities to create a WOW experience for customers.

Internet of Things (IoT) is driving every marketer to bring some smart revolutionary changes in the technological sphere. According to recent research, IoT ranked as the second most important area in 2015 in many countries and would have the biggest effect on marketers by 2020. The installation base of IoT devices worldwide would rise from 4.88 billion to nearly 25.01 billion between 2015 and 2020. The UK Government announced that they will spend an additional £45m on developing Internet of Things enabled technology. Not only in technology, but IoT has successfully influenced other sectors such as insurance marketers for better engagement of consumers.

Internet Of Things (IoT)

IoT is the network of dedicated physical objects that comprises of embedded technology to sense and interact with external environment or their internal state. IoT contains an ecosystem that consists of applications, data analysis, things and communication.

What Can Be Currently Achieved With IoT, From Marketing Perspective?

The buzz is that every device will soon get connected to the internet, which will boost productivity and reduce energy needs.

Easy Availability Of Customer’s Data And Feedback

When every device can be programmed and tracked, it becomes easier for the marketers to collect and analyse the ever-increasing varieties of behavioural statistics of the consumers. The cross-correlation of data helps in revolutionising the targeted marketing of products and services. Marketers can now find the doors to any machine-to-machine derived information. They have enough opportunities to interact with consumers in new and exciting ways. The wealth of data can be utilised to deepen customer insights and optimise customer performance.

With new IoT devices being invented every other day, it represents opportunities to market new products and services. Marketers can deliver more personalised and engaging information to customers in the most relevant channels. Also with customer’s instant feedback, especially when a product isn’t living up to the expectation, retailers are able to cut their losses much sooner than later.

Smart Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

IoT when used in conjunction with CRM tool helps in gathering and organising client data. The technology embedded devices can streamline the buyer’s chain of command and decisions and help retailers understand where the prospects are in their buying journey. This enables marketers serve the right information and nurture the clients to close a deal.

It Is Not Just Banner Ads Or Pop-Ups Anymore

No longer will marketers have to rely on banner ads and pop-ups to let the world know about their products and services. The increasing numbers of connected devices fitted with sensors and constant network accessibility has entirely changed the face of advertising. With IoT advertisements, no prospects will be served with an advertisement that does not align perfectly with their interests, behaviours and past purchase. Not only will the consumers save time by being served with relevant ads but also the marketers save thousands of pounds after irrelevant advertisements.

The Smart IoT Devices And Marketing

With smart glasses such as Google Glass, marketers can display ads when users look at a particular item or take its picture. They can also deliver the right information at the right place and time especially when consumers use the device to check prices and research products while shopping.

Similarly, smart lighting system has enabled retailers to interact directly with visitors’ smartphones. For instance, it allows retailers to give shoppers directions to specific store items. Some of the LED system can also be connected with a mobile app that can be used to send targeted messages and coupons when customers are at a particular location within the store.

Most interestingly, if marketers can use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, it can present a number of potential opportunities for them. RFID serves as a tool to customise and enhance customer experience. Some retailers are using RFID smart tags to play tunes to the clothes that shoppers are trying on. They’re using the tunes or songs of celebrities that best match the style of the apparel. The aim is to put customers in the right purchasing mindset and help them imagine themselves wearing the perfect clothes. Undoubtedly, this creates an overall pleasant shopping experience.

A mass-market application of IoT in UK is the use of Hive. Hive is an app from British Gas that allows householders to control their central heating process via their smartphones. This innovation has substantially improved people’s everyday lives. The users can get hot water only when they need to, thereby reducing energy waste and saving money.

With data collected from the adopters of wearable tech, brands can better understand where and when shoppers might take action on a trigger. This is where the marketers can provide value and convenience to people using such devices.

How IoT Can Benefit An Organisation’s Business Goal?

As IoT can afford new opportunities in the next few years, it can drastically

Enhance customer satisfaction and engagement
Increase productivity operation and infrastructure
Improve product design and build new products
Reduce maintenance cost and system downtime.

Connected products provide brands with a direct, real time interface and interaction point with consumers. Marketers are looking forward to more limitless opportunities enabled by IoT. And with billions of new things becoming smarter with Internet Of Things, marketers will surely not let their marketing strategy remain ineffective.

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10 Killer B2B Lead Generation Tips

In the first part of this two-part series, I described some of the key challenges facing those in tech tasked with generating B2B leads. This article outlines some ideas to consider to help generate leads for your business. Read Part One, ‘Generating Leads In An Increasingly Difficult Environment‘. Read on for our 10 Killer B2B lead generation tips.

1. Nail The Product

Before you start, don’t ‘pass go’ unless your core offering is beautifully designed, easy to use, solves a real pain and offers significant value to a particular user group.

Today’s buyer is very sophisticated with high expectations as to the utility they require. Most undertake significant research online before engaging and will want the best solution for their needs. If your solution requires user training, or the need to read a training manual before starting, you need to talk to product development again. For the vast majority of applications the modern user simply does not have time to be trained on your solution (I am talking about general business/productivity apps here). This point is simply not negotiable.

Think Nest, Transferwise, Uber, Dropbox, Xero, and Workable.

2. Build A Personal Social Profile

Having an active LinkedIn and Twitter profile is vital for B2B lead generation. Take Twitter. Most people simply do not ‘get it’, using it largely as a broadcast mechanism, and bemoaning its inefficacy without realising how powerful it can be.

Build a personal Twitter account, follow those you can help and engage with them. Most Twitter users simply do not engage with business accounts (despite Twitter’s best efforts) but do engage with real people.

Publishing compelling content via LinkedIn Pulse can also get your name and offering in front of your target market (particularly when published in relevant LinkedIn groups). This content can be repurposed and republished elsewhere. Again the trick here is to engage and participate rather than just push content as a broadcaster. People buy from people, and personal accounts are a lot more effective than business accounts.

“Big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand”. (Tom Peters)

Think The Brand Called You (Tom Peters).

3. Test A Small Direct Mail Campaign

Personalised letters targeting a small segment can be very effective. I am not talking about an automatic printed label mass mail exercise here. Hand-written envelopes, plus tailored content that demonstrates a clear understanding of the prospect’s pain, can be very well received. Follow up with an email a few days later to try and secure a call or meeting. Targeting prospects in London? Why not include a £10 Starbucks card? While it pushes the cost of acquisition (CAC) up slightly, it is likely to help ensure your follow up receives a positive reaction. And assuming your Lifetime Value (LTV) exceeds the associated costs by some margin it is a valuable technique to test.

Think Personalisation.

4. Invest In Modern Low-Cost SaaS Tools

There are an increasing number of tools available that help source and manage leads through a sales funnel. These range from tools like Rapportive (a Chrome plug-in that sucks in details of people you are emailing including LinkedIn connections and Twitter handles) through to Mailtester (which is a great tool to use to guess someone’s email address). The range of CRM applications available for every budget continues to grow at pace, and newsletter applications like MailChimp and SensorPro offer a range of functionality as well as APIs into most CRM systems.

If you are driving traffic to a bespoke landing page, tools like Unbounce and CrazyEgg can help optimize conversions. Finally, a useful hack when assessing competitors is to take a look at their technology stack using Built With. The ‘analytics and tracking’ section is particularly interesting in terms of identifying what apps they are using to support their marketing efforts.

Be the ‘early adopter’ you want your targets to be.

5. Create Remarkable Content (Inbound Marketing)

Modern B2B marketing techniques rely heavily on the creation of remarkable content. The word remarkable is the key here. It is all too easy to produce low-brow content of little educational value (I hope the fact you are still reading at this point indicates some appreciation of remarkability). Remarkable content is content good enough that you want to share it.

The most effective content strategies start with a clear understanding of the customer and their needs (particularly the jobs they are looking to accomplish). It is designed to inform, amuse and educate, with the latter being particularly prevalent amongst B2B companies.

How do you know if your content is hitting the spot?

Measuring page views is a poor proxy. Depending on the platform used, the following represent better indicators: likes, comments left, click-throughs, retweet’s, time spent on page etc

Once the content has been published, the hard work starts as it is important to have a strategy in place to ‘get the message out’ using a range of channels (paid, owned and earned).

Think ‘Content Amplification’.

6. Capture Emails At Every Opportunity

Emails are the lifeblood of any B2B lead generation campaign. Not only do they enable you to push content directly to users, but you can schedule drip campaigns to help keep you ‘front of mind’. Email capture starts at the website with applications like Hello bars, scroll-triggered boxes and landing pages offering something of value (often white papers) in return for email addresses. The key to using these emails is to use them to provide value rather than to sell. You want to avoid a ‘one click unsubscribe’ scenario at all costs (where the newsletter recipients unsubscribes because it does not offer value).

Think Hubspot, Quicksprout and Moz.com.

7. Test A Referral Scheme

Assuming you have nailed the product as described above, and have evidence that your solution is offering real value i.e. you are gaining traction, have an improving cash flow and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 9 or 10, you should look to encourage existing users to promote to peers by incentivising them to share.

Again it is a case of considering what is likely to work well for your own industry. Applications like Friendbuy can help you set up and run the scheme at low cost. Referral schemes are particularly important with marketplaces, and it is important that the incentive is strong enough to ensure virality. Dropbox offering extra storage to both parties for additional users you signed up represents the classic best practice case study in this area.

Think Transferwise and Dropbox.

8. Engage With Influencers

Getting on the radar of ‘influencers’ helps amplify your message and brand. Identifying the key influencers in your space is a critical first step and the approach will vary from sector to sector. Some will be active on social media and follower count and engagement level on Twitter will give a sense as to their influence (the likes of Klout, PeerIndex and Kred help assess influence). Others will publish interesting blogs (you can use Feedly as an RSS manager to track new content), while more still will be prominent on LinkedIn.

Engaging with these influencers by amplifying their messages (RT tweets), commenting on their blog posts, or offering them high-quality guest posts will help get you on their radar. The next phase is to move the relationship offline – meeting them in person so you can get a clearer sense of their needs and how your solution meets them. If your budget allows, and the LTV of your offering is significant, exploring tools like InsightPool’s social engagement automation tool will help you target key influencers at scale via a sustained campaign.

Think Engagement.

9. Optimize Attendance At Industry Events

Attending industry events represent a great opportunity to build upon your online activity. However, it is not a case of simply showing up on the day as increasing numbers of events offer mixed results to exhibitors as the costs can quickly mount and it is very important to ensure you are being strategic when attending them. Leading US VC Mark Suster offers some good insight into some of the things you should think about before attending including pre-event planning and post-event networking.

Some events also provide ‘opt-in’ delegate lists which can be marketed to, and others offer speaking slots, as well as the opportunity to market to delegates via packs.

Think Event Plan.

10. Keep Abreast Of The Latest Developments

In an ever-changing landscape, increasing numbers of inside sales and fields sales staff seeking to generate demand are testing new avenues. They read compelling blog posts from the likes of Gerry Moran (Marketing Think) Hiten Shah (Hubspot), Neil Patel (QuickSprout) and even Rand Fishkin (Moz.com), outlining the latest techniques to use to generate inbound leads. As ever, the key lies in the execution. Those who marry a mix of different best of breed approaches, measuring, testing, learning and tweaking as they go, will prosper. Those not keeping up with the latest tricks will quickly get left behind.

Think Pocket.

About Alan Gleeson

Alan Gleeson is a digital marketing strategist based in London. Follow Alan on Twitter: @alangleeson

This article originally appeared here.

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5 Restaurant Marketing Tips to Help You Spread the Word

Though food will always remain a constant demand, the rise in the number of different restaurants crowding around everywhere makes the restaurant industry no less than a battlefield with all restaurant owners vying for attention. Needless to say, not getting enough customers even if you dish out the best can be detrimental to your business. In this post we will look at 5 restaurant marketing tips that will help you spread the word.

As a restaurateur, spreading the word is as important as serving good food and providing exceptional service. And in this digital era, strutting your stuff online is the quickest way to get a word around!

So here are some tips to help you get started with promoting your restaurant online.

Get a Website

You can’t market your restaurant online without having a website! A website is crucial to any business as it helps establish credibility. Moreover, people all over the world are more likely to check out a product or service online before giving it a try. You’d certainly want people to check out your website and go crazy over your irresistible menu, drool-worthy pictures of your food and the amazing ambience of your restaurant!

Not having a website can put off potential customers, and you certainly don’t want that. People are going to think of you as a big player when they see you have a fine website. And that brings us to the all important points having a fine website!

You need to have a functioning website that is beautifully designed and user-friendly. Make sure that all details related to your restaurant are updated regularly on the website. Furthermore, ensure that your website works just as fine on mobile devices. A majority of people use their smartphones to access the web so it will do you good to design a simple website or create a mobile website.

Be Social Media Savvy

Pinterest and Instagram are great sites to share pictures of your food. Food porn will also work on Facebook and Twitter. Just be sure to time your posts around lunch or dinner time so you get the orders pouring in!

Share your menu, special deals, infographics and more on these sites. A video that highlights the best of your restaurant will also help your business. Consider creating a Facebook page for your restaurant. It is free and you’ll be marketing your restaurant on the largest social networking site!

There are several online communities with members who love food and drinks. Join the best ones and share your valuable content with the members keeping in mind the rules of the community. You can also consider forming your own online community.

Don’t forget to offer a call to action on your website and social media pages. Often, the most successful calls to action are deals and discounts. By making special deals available only for a limited time, you can be sure of getting more orders.

Post Relevant Content

Even before your website is up and running, you need to be ready with relevant content that you can share with your target customers. The relevant content would be articles and stories related to your restaurant and the food you serve.

Also, share articles related to wines, coffee, dining, and more. Establish yourself as an expert in the food industry and write intriguing articles related to food and dining. Do provide expert tips and guidelines too!

Once your website is ready, start sharing blogs on it and keep doing so regularly. Get in touch with local food bloggers and invite them to post on your site. You can also post blogs on their sites and broaden your target base this way.

Optimize Results

You want more people to be aware of your restaurant and you can do this by making sure that your brand is visible enough to everyone. Make a note of all the top directories in your city or country and claim your listings on them. Don’t forget Foursquare, Google Places, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.

You also need to adopt SEO techniques for your own website so that you rank higher in search engines. Just having a user-friendly website won’t do; you’ll need to ensure that the titles, descriptions, and tags on your website pages match your content and the information users will be searching for. Fix URL and crawling errors on your site, and make your website fast, reliable, and secure.

Do improve the internal linking structure of your website. Create a sitemap and submit it to top search engines to boost search optimization. Additionally, make sure that the content you post on your website is fresh and unique.

Hire a Consultant

Don’t look at hiring restaurant consultants as an unnecessary expense; hiring professionals for a job that you don’t know much about will definitely work in your favor.

Realize that the restaurant business is complex and that the food industry is relying heavily on the evolving trends of diners. In such a scenario, if you need to stay ahead of the competition, you need to have an insightful approach and plan strategically.

Approaching a consultant might not yield immediate results, but you can be sure of being on the right path!

Conclusion

It might be a tough journey to the top, but there’s no need to worry about the competition you’ll have to face in the restaurant industry. Just get the basics right and you’re sure to be a favorite with everyone.

With the tips mentioned here, you’re sure to market your restaurant online in the best way possible. So get started on spreading the word!

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Choosing a Web Designer: 10 Things to Keep in Mind

If you want to get a website designed for your business, you must identify a web design company that has the ability to satisfy your needs and requirements. Let’s look at 10 things you must keep in mind when choosing a web designer.

1. Background of the company

It’s really important to get the details of the people who will be working for you on the website and know how they started off. Most of this information is available on the ‘About Us’ page of their site. But you could tap into other sources of information as well, for e.g. business directories, discussion forums etc. This information should be enough to get a feel of the kind of services they can provide and whether they have the expertise needed to take care of your web design project.

2. Track record of the company

A track record is built by consistently doing good work over a period of time and as such any company which has a good track record can be entrusted with the job of designing your website; you are assured that it will maintain a certain level of quality vis-à-vis its work.

So how do you get an idea about its track record? Go through its portfolio page. Take a look at the web design projects it’s handled till date. Also, ask for client references and get in touch with them. Ask them whether they were happy with the work done by the firm. The answers you get will give a clear idea about the firm’s track record.

3. Core competency

Web design is a vast field and there are plenty of different activities that are a part the web design umbrella. Aspects like user experience design (consisting of interaction design, information architecture), usability engineering, front-end development, back-end development, content strategy, and visual design are just few of the things which make up the overall web design package. As a client, you need to be well aware of the core competencies of a company and whether these are aligned with your requirements.

4. Operations knowledge

The modus operandi of the company you are considering to hire for your work should be something you must consider as well.

Will they deliver the website on time? Have they been able to submit work within deadlines? The answers will be crucial in taking a decision about hiring the company.

Also, the staff strength, the number of clients handled at a given time and overall work load they have will affect the quality of work they will deliver. This is why you need operations knowledge.

5. Use of Web Design Standards

The W3C has a handy write up explaining why design standards are important and how they can affect the overall usability and experience of the website. The company you are choosing should ensure your website adheres to all standards underlined by W3C.

So ask whether their web design process sticks to W3C standards. If the answer is yes make sure that the contract you sign with this company, underlines this fact in some detail.

6. The team

The quality of website design is a reflection of the ability of the team in charge of the project. Every work we produce has a certain element of our personality and skill sets attached to it and this gets reflected in the end result. So it is really important to meet the real people who will be working on your website’s design and get a feel of their personalities or the kind of work they have produced in the last few years.

7. The strategy behind the design

Make sure the company you are working with, has a habit of clearly defining a web design strategy that is client specific. This strategy needs to keep the following questions in mind:

• What is the goal to be achieved with the website?
• Is it only giving information about the business or also selling products/services?
• Who is the target audience of the website?
• How can the website help accomplish the organization’s objectives?

8. The fees charged by the web designing company

You must have set aside a specific budget for website design. The right web design company is somebody who can deliver on your expectations within your budget. So, if you think you have identified a company that you believe can handle your web design project, get a quote. If the quote for your project is way off your budget, you can start looking for some other company.

It is important that the discussion regarding web designing fees is held at an early stage and finalized well in advance to save any disappointments later on.

9. Updating content and support

Website design is just the beginning because a business might need to update its website frequently with new content or redesign it to be in sync with the times and latest trends. It is always better to discuss these terms earlier on to avoid any confusions or issues later with the web design firm.

Who will be responsible for the updates? Will the website design be easier to self-update later on? What are the support terms available? These aspects need to be considered before you hire a web design company.

10. Hidden or additional charge

There are always some hidden charges which are not disclosed by the “too good to be true” offers or advertising gimmicks listed on the designing company’s website. Make sure you are very clear about the bifurcation of recurring and non-recurring charges and have no doubts about the costing of your web design project; this helps avoid any shock when the time comes to pay the bill.

These are not the only things to keep in mind while finding a web designing company perfectly suited for taking care of your requirements; but keeping this checklist in mind will set you in the right direction and help you zero in on a company that will design a profitable online presence.

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Start-up Story: SqueezeIT – The Home Straight

Read part 1, part 2 and part 3.

The next thing I needed, obviously, was my own website so more research, I eventually contacted Webbiz and met with them, they seemed to have their heads pretty much screwed on so I gave them the gig – I had written most of the text for the site anyway – and after much toing and froing they came up trumps and as a result they will be helping with some minor aspects of the mobile conversions which is great and this will add another dimension to the business.

I was also looking at ways to advertise for SqueezeIT and contacted Emergo and met with them too and they have also decided they want to actually partner with SqueezeIT which is absolutely fantastic as they are also based in Germany so that could be another possible market for the business going forward.

I am also in talks at the moment with a representative from Lyoness to provide the service to them by offering it to their client merchants both here in Ireland and overseas, especially in the USA and the UK.

Currently I am looking for a “home” for SqueezeIT and should have something sorted soon, fingers crossed!

So if anyone out there would like to avail of our service just visit SqueezeIT.ie and all the details are there and as an opening offer we are prepared to waive the 100 euros deposit for the 1^st 5 businesses who sign up with us regardless of which of the three options you choose to use and we will feature your site on our site also from time to time to say thanks.

Written by Aidan Murray. As part of ‘Use SBC as a channel’ initiative, SqueezeIT has an exclusive offer for SBC members: “We will waive the 100 euro deposit for the first five companies that sign up for our service with us and will give a 50% discount for the next five businesses.”

For more information on this business visit Partner Site: emergo-online.com | Email: squeezeit@yandex.com |Phone: 087 261 7576.

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Future proof your business at #Bizpartyinspires conference

Irishbizparty conference

On 15 April I have the pleasure of speaking at the #IrishBizparty conference in Dublin. I have been an admirer of Samantha Kelly for quite a while. First time I met her was in the house of one of the dragons, when she had started Funky Goddess and got the investment.

I am a Sam fan

Since then she has gone from strength to strength. She has written a book, is on TV and has created a number of communities, including #irishbizparty. As one of the founders of Smallbusinesscan, I can assure you, that is no mean feat.

Therefore I was delighted she asked me to speak at the Dublin conference.

Future proofing your business

My topic for the day is future proofing your business. Future trends is what we do a lot with Bookbuzz. When you talk to small businesses, I am always amazed on how trend watching is not on the radar. Granted, I read too much science fiction, but to stay in business, you need to be aware. To strategise and to know where you are going, you need context. Trend watching gives you that context and a picture of the place of your business in that future.

If you don’t recognise the names below, I would argue, that you are in trouble,

Richard Watson
Ray Kurzweil
Jason Silva
Faith Popcorn
Chris Anderson
Naseem Taleb
Brian Solis
Ken Robinson
Seth Godin

Not to worry, on the day, I will walk you through some of the key concepts that these business experts talk and write about and will give you some tools to help you make sense.

Hope to see you there and hope to be as inspirational as Samantha.

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Grow your business with Jack Black

Extraordinary men and women are positive

“Extraordinary men and women are positive and they don’t do negativity. Negativity causes people to talk themselves out of opportunity.”

“The quality of your thinking directly impacts your ability to succeed”

These are some of the quotes from Jack Black. Jack has been around the block and current research in neuroscience, motivation, EQ, IQ, habit forming, leadership and management, confirm everything that Jack has been speaking about since the early 90’s.

Grow your business

If you are planning to grow your business, it starts with your mind and your mental resilience. We decided to bring him back to Ireland as an exclusive opportunity to spend a day with Jack. The benefits from the one-day event would include the following

Unshakable positive mental attitude
Increased personal energy and ‘stick with it” commitment and perseverance
Improved creativity and better problem solving
Compelling goals driving better behaviours
Positively influence and motivate others
More effective results through new tools and skills for meetings, presentations and negotiations
Improved leadership
Enhanced work life balance
Applied emotional intelligence

Half a million and more

For 25 years the his toolkits has been taught to over half a million people worldwide including top entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, world champion sports people and endless workplace and leadership teams across all sectors of business and commerce.

Masterclass

Jack is coming to Dublin to do a masterclass on the 12th of June. You can book your early bird ticket here

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Four Questions to Ask When it Comes to Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion scientists are all the rage in the digital marketing world and as a client it is often easy to get lost in the myriad of questions that flood into the head when you encounter the term CRO. Even for experts within the domain, conversion remains largely a game of test and run. For more often than naught, the conversion scientist is a marketer who makes sweeping assumptions about the markets based on whatever data they have and then change a few variables. Whether the tweaking gets him the best results is all dependent on his skill.

In order to get a better understanding of conversion rate optimization, here are the four questions you should be asking to yourself.

1. How do you define CRO?

This comes right at the top for two particular kinds of people; the clients who are investing in digital marketing and for the newcomer who has just started the road of becoming a digital marketer. In any case, the question itself has multiple different answers depending upon the school of thought you are from.

The most common answer I can think of is by Chris Goward of Wider funnel who spoke of CRO as test practices and tweaking in the variables to find a viable practice. The practice here referred to a particular strategy employed by digital marketers to get more numbers on sales and traffic.

This answer may sound vague to you and that is precisely why this question needs to be asked. For the client who is getting the marketing done, it is often simply about delegating the task without knowing enough about it. That’s a wrong approach right off the bat; get to know what your service provider will be executing as a strategy. Not only does this streamline the process but helps you prioritize your own strategy as well.

2. What Ideas to look at for Testing

If we do go by the convention established for CRO that it is indeed a testing mechanism for ideas and variables to increase traffic or sales then the next logical question has to be this. The problem is that in digital marketing, the variables to play around with are far too many and they vary from industry to industry, niche to niche as you drill down the campaigns. The most common answers you find will talk about:

Lowering the bounce rate (getting people to stay)
Increasing the number of clicks on the cart or product check
Increasing the clicks on certain “read more”

The actual division happens when you find differing trends for different pages within the same website, which can be easily deduced through heat maps.

3. Always go with Data or Innovate

Surprisingly, this is one question that often tricks the best of the best in the game. Again regressively, the previous question can bring you to the point where people are getting stuck but it cannot always tell you how to overcome the obstacle. This is where certain feedback tools like survey optimizers can help you in your CRO. But even with these you cannot always expect total accuracy for removing the said obstacles. Take an example of the fact that a regular customer you see at your store is now shopping elsewhere. One day you ask them “hey why do you not come to buy from me anymore?”

In most cases, the average customer will not directly reply that they do not like your service or the product but will go around the question. The digital marketing stream works similarly, you have to rely intuitively to figure out what it is that you should be correcting in your campaign. Often however, the question matters more because you need to know if the niche outlined has produced accurate enough answers.

4. When to stop testing and re-designing

This is the dreaded question for most clients because if you get the latter as the answer then not only does your marketing halt but you also have to invest in design and development. Time and money!

Does that mean this question is any less important? No! Because often the meter points out that there is nothing more to be gotten out of the website and the page you have been working on. Often the marketing stream works by channel segmentation: it divides the website page by page and form by form then tests bounce rates and clicks on each segment before arriving at a conclusion on the efficacy of the testing. That’s one thought output that Oli Gardener from Unbounce puts out.

Again, if you go for the redesign it will depend upon the factors that will be unique to your website in many ways. Your segmentation, your output and your traffic numbers will vary across different timelines and audiences so as a client it is very important to know when the testing has hit its maxim.

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Enhance Your Business Productivity With Supply Chain Management

Implementing a supply chain within your company can set the stage for a higher level of productivity. However, it takes much more than simply setting the chain in motion. To ensure quality performance and ultimate levels of production, proper management is essential. Here are a few ways to enhance your business productivity with constructive supply chain management.

Standardize Procedures

If nothing else, you need to take the time to standardize procedures. Consistency is key and if your process varies with each order, not only will your customers be confused as to what to expect, but other factions of the supply chain will be, as well. Take into account variables that will inevitably be part of the process and minimize their effects wherever possible on the overall system.

Communication

What works for one arm of your supply chain may wreak havoc for another. Take care not to set one against the other. Keep lines of communication open to see which processes can best benefit everyone involved to keep the line running smoothly. Create a collaborative effort so everyone understands methods and problems faced. Be clear in your communication of expectations for productivity and performance goals. Allow open dialogue to encourage problem solving as a unit and not as separate divisions.

Hierarchy of Importance

While some issues clearly need to be resolved for one branch of your supply chain, they may be mere inconveniences in another and placed on the back burner. Take the time to create a hierarchy of importance so everyone is on the same page when it comes to taking care of problems and understands why certain issues are taking precedence over others. Take note of issues that impair the chain as a whole and can impair efficiency and productivity. Outline the purpose and desired outcomes of your supply chain then make sure attention is spent working in areas that best accomplish those goals. Do not dismiss the elements that are considered highly significant to shareholders and factor those in accordingly.

Workforce Focus

Each section of the chain will have specific strengths and places where they can provide the highest amount of productivity. Grasp a full understanding of the core skills of your workforce to ensure each person is working within the branch where they can best perform and produce. Create an alignment with each link of the supply chain so employees can be moved into areas where their set of skills can be best utilized. Be concise in your descriptions of each sector as well as the expectations and goals so there is no confusion as to the element of focus that will be given with any particular job.

Incentives

You can have the most skilled employees available but even the highest performers can often benefit from incentive plans. However, the first step in creating a worthwhile plan is to outline your goals for cost reductions, productivity and quality as well as customer service and then build a performance based plan to achieve these goals. Offer employees a baseline of strong training to ensure confidence and investment into their roles within the chain.

Improving the management of your supply chain can result in higher performance, happier customers and a better bottom line. Create the culture you want for your company by ensuring your supply chain works in a positive and streamlined manner.

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4 Key Business Startup Pitfalls

Nobody ever said that starting up a new company should be easy but there are common business startup pitfalls that can easily scupper a fledgling operation and leave ambitious new businesses facing uncertain futures.

Here are four such pitfalls to look out for and avoid if you’re in charge of a start-up operation in any sector:

1. Borrowing too much

Securing finance can often be the difference between being able to incorporate a new business and seeing your enterprise ideas stalled at the planning stage. But there are real pitfalls to look out for in this context even when a new company is able to attract and secure the funding they need. In particularly, business bosses should be wary when they are able to borrow large sums of money and lofty assumptions are being made at an early stage about future revenue and earnings prospects. To put it simply, a new business ought only to borrow what money it needs to develop and not whatever amounts it can borrow later down the line.

2. Lacking preparation

With so much information, content and detail available on every conceivable enterprise issue online these days, there is really no excuse for not doing your homework before launching a new venture. Knowing who your target customers are, who your competitors will be and how the key trends in your markets are developing should be high on the list of priority areas to study up on and no stone should be left unturned.

However, even doing all the research in the world is no guarantee of success when it comes to establishing a start-up but failing to prepare as fully as possible is very likely to limit your company’s chances of achieving sustainability. The reality is that a lack of preparation is among the most common causes of start-up failure and of seeing a promising business finding its way into financial difficulty.

3. Starting too soon

Ambition, enthusiasm and a certain confidence in your abilities and your ideas will always be valuable when it comes to starting up a business but a degree of caution can also be a key ingredient in success. Balancing optimism with prudent restraint is vital and never more so than when it comes to the question of precisely when to get started and when to launch your new business in earnest. In some cases, unfortunately, starting your start-up too soon can be a disaster. Consider a soft launch in your spare time to get the wheels in motion, rather than giving up your old job and jumping in at the deep end.

4. Expanding too fast or too slow

Starting up a new business often requires a good deal of personal effort on the part of a few key individuals but not knowing when to accept help and support is a common fault that can bring down a new company. The problem is that sustainable growth can be a difficult trick to pull off and taking on too many or too few staff members can each have equally damaging effects on the finances and, ultimately, viability of new companies.

Keith Tully from Real Business Rescue is a leading corporate insolvency specialist. He has over 25 years’ experience in advising company directors in times of financial uncertainty.

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