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How To Calculate ROI Of A Mobile App

Posted on April 16, 2019November 6, 2019 by admin

You must have the estimation of the return on investment (ROI) when launching a mobile app development and, the end product aims at adding to revenue of your business. Estimating ROI becomes more important when yours is a free app. And will serve a completely unfamiliar domain where not many successful examples exist.

In fact, the future success of a mobile app entirely depends on its ROI. There are many examples showing that apps are rolled back even before their first anniversary. One of the key reasons leading such decision is no or insufficient ROI generated by apps.

A smart approach to mobile app development is one that first includes the estimation of ROI clearly exhibiting whether the app would be able to generate enough revenue or not. Experts say that close to 65% of developers or app owners miss on hitting the right approach. And miserably fail with reaching the right revenue generation plan.

Experts also say that if developers or app owners calculate their mobile app development projects’ ROI by following 5 steps as a base.

Creating a Measurement Plan

The first thing that developers would need for creating an effective measurement plan is to consider implementing the app analytics. The key things to do include the planning to measure ROI, establishing performance and conversion trackers for different communication, and the app’s vending points. Also, start forming and implementing your ROI plans as early as possible because this provides a long stretch across all phases enabling to compare with performance and trends in better ways. Follow metrics to measure performance more accurately. In an e-commerce app, for example, create a measurement plan grounded on successful checkouts.

Google too has recommended steps for creating a measurement plan:
• Document business objectives.
• Recognize the strategies and tactics supporting objectives.
• Choose metrics basing KPIs.
• Decide how the data segment is needed.
• Choose targets for KPIs.

Calculating CLV

Measuring revenue of an app accurately also involves quantifying Customers Lifetime Value (CLV). It shows what you can expect to earn from users until they keep an app on their devices and use them. So, it’s based on how long a customer associated with an app contributes to increasing its ROI. To calculate this, the total amount of purchases made by customers on the app is added up.

The other way for calculating the total customer value is adding up the total sales attained from beginning to a specific date and dividing the amount by the total number of users the app currently has. In result, you will have an averages CLV value of all your users. Businesses already owning a website can estimate earning based on CLV for their mobile apps. It will help them effectively evaluate the role and impact of the planned app on increasing the lifetime value.

Make sure you measure some of your KPIs in dollars to make the task of CLV calculation simpler. Metrics used to track CLV are quite handier. It can also be used by subscription business for a long term forecasting. CLV will also help in concentrating on the efficiency of your business as you would be able to get more value per user.

Knowing the overall cost

When you are able to estimate the complete cost of your mobile app before you launch the development, you would be able to deal with various factors and propositions affecting the cost-benefits of an app. It also involves how much do you spend and will continue to spend to generate particular revenue. The spending calculated will vary from the needs of a business to others.

Analyzing cost also involves the primary cost of building an app and the operation & maintenance cost spent to curate, feed, update, and promote the app.

To calculate the cost, gauging and attribution tools can be used to reach more detailed and refined results. It’s a popular method among others available. It will help you make more effective ROI generation plan.

Understanding different users

To come up with the more reliable ROI calculation on your mobile application development, it’s essential that you segregate users on the basis of different incoming sources and varying consumptions patterns. Customers with previous purchasing history in your app visiting directly are more valuable than those being driven through Ads or social media platforms.

Customers, who have been using your website until recently, downloading your app are more promising than those who have connected you via the app just now. Mark these visitors separately to have a clearer estimation of ROI.

Putting matrix in action

Once you have metrics set to measure performance, they should be put into action now. Of course, you will soon feel the need for refinements, and you should do all changes to get those refinements and then gauge results out of metrics put in the action.

If you have multiple metrics in hand, keep tabs on how they perform relatively and then club results from all sources to reach a single, best decision. Apply A/B testing if you have one single metric to ensure that you are getting the maximum of it.

Latest Gutenberg’s WordPress Guide On How To Use Block Editor

Posted on April 10, 2019November 6, 2019 by admin

Planning on updating your WordPress with the latest Gutenberg block editor? Before you go about doing that the best course of action would be for you to know everything about the Gutenberg editor. Now the good news is our Gutenberg WordPress guide will not just tell the difference between the old & new version, but also how to use the block editor.

The Gutenberg block editor brings with it fully styled method content creation in the form of blocks. And we are going to tell you exactly how you’re going to use blocks along with some of the new editor’s other features, to curate content at your WordPress site.

What makes the Gutenberg block editor better than the classic version?

The latest block editor offers an easy way to add a variety of content to the posts and pages of your website. For instance, previously if you wished to add a table in your content, then it required a separate table plugin.

With the Gutenberg block editor, you can simply add a table block, select the columns and rows, and start adding your content in the webpage. You can even shuffle content elements and edit them as individual blocks easily to create media-rich content.

And most importantly, the new block editor is very easy to use and learn. This gives a huge advantage to all WordPress newbies who have just started working on their first blog or building a DIY website.

What are the “Blocks” in Block editor?

The Gutenberg block editor is all set to replace the single edit field mode of the classic WordPress TinyMCE editor using a variety of “blocks”. These blocks will enable you to build more complex and creative designs than those allowed in the old classic WordPress editor.

And the great news is that you will be able to create your very own third-party blocks that can be accessed via plugins for extra flexibility. Each block on its own is a separate entity that you can modify an individual basis.

Not only that, the Gutenberg block editor is geared up to eliminate the need for page builders for most of the “standard” content, and create a singular unified method for creating more-complex layouts in WordPress.

Let’s have a look at the interface

We have highlighted some of the key aspects of the editor. So let’s Jump down below the image for more details on each individual section.

The Gutenberg interface is comprised of three main areas:

1.EDITING TOOLBAR: TOPMOST OF SCREEN

2.CONTENT AREA: LARGE SECTION ON THE LEFT SIDE

3.ADVANCED SETTINGS SECTION: RIGHT SIDEBAR

These sections of the Guttenberg block editor allows you to do the following:

Add a new block within the content area
Undo/Redo changes
Review the content’s structure (no. of words, blocks, paragraphs, headings, and tables)
Save your changes that have been auto-saved with confirmation
Preview pages & posts
Modify settings, such as post visibility & publish time & date
Additional settings include:
- Switching between & code & visual editors
- Copying all content

How to add new blocks?

As discussed above, you’ll have to combine multiple individual “blocks” to build your layouts with the editor.

To add a new block, all you need to do is simply click the +Plus icon and select the content type you want to add:

Gutenberg block editor actually includes a ton of different blocks, divided into many sections as per the use such as Common Blocks, Formatting, Layout Elements, Widgets, and Embeds:

You will also see sections for

Inline Elements – only contains a single block for the inline-image.
Common Blocks – Basic building blocks like images, paragraphs (regular text), quotes, etc.
Formatting – Used for adding formatted content like pull tables, quotes, or even the classic WordPress text editor
Layout Elements– Enables splitting of text into two columns, including buttons, separators, or tags
Widgets – Used for adding shortcodes, latest posts, or categories.
Reusable- Use the templates that you have applied previously again (this option only becomes active once you have used a couple of templates)

Customizing individual blocks

Since the Gutenberg block editor includes tons of different blocks, we can’t demonstrate how to use each and every individual block. But we can show you the general framework that is applicable to all blocks.

Basically, you can control your content in the actual body of the Gutenberg block editor:

For styling and alignment of basic text, you can use the menu bar that appears while hovering over a block:

You’ll have to style the block in the Block settings tab, for more advanced styling.

In order to access that tab, select the block you need to edit and browse over to the Block tab:

Is Gutenberg block editor the future of WordPress?

While the Gutenberg has its limitation as of now. It has become an official component of the WordPress core team thanks to the release of WordPress 5.0.

For many casual users, it will bring a tremendously flexible content creation experience. After some growing pains at its initial stage.

Although it’s limited to content creation. For now, it is expected to enable the developers to build entire webpages with ease.

We hope to find our guide on the Gutenberg block editor useful and in case you have any queries regarding the editor. Simply drop us a line in the comment section and our experts will get in touch with you in no time.

How Can I Increase My Sales Leads With Email Marketing

Posted on August 29, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Introduction

First to brush up your knowledge on the meaning of sales leads. Sales lead is any sales contact, an individual or organization that shows interest in your products or services.

What is the effectiveness of email marketing? Email marketing is the leading form of communication. 77% of consumers choose email over other online channels. A well-executed email campaign has the following advantages,

● Increases sales
● Increases client loyalty
● Generates Leads
● Produces additional repeat business and
● Reduces marketing costs

Now you have known the usefulness of the email marketing campaign. Next, let me take you through ways of generating more leads through email marketing.

Gain Permission

Courtesy matters. You should get permission from your target audience to send emails to them. Gaining permission is the starting point to get leads.

For example, you can ask them to fill a form on your website. If they do it then it is a positive sign. It shows they are interested to know more about your services. So you gain leads.

Offer your Audience Something Special

Your marketing email will not be opened if there is nothing special in it. Offer something special, like discounts, early bird price or freebies. By this, you tell your target audience that you have a big deal to offer.

Send Personalized Emails Without Your Customer’s Name To Begin With

If you are going to email-market a customer first time do not use their names. Getting more personal, in the beginning, will only create a fake-familiarity approach. Instead, tailor an email around customer’s needs and interest.

Don’t Heap Offers Per Message

If you run a retail business you will have a craving temptation. That is to send a bulk list of all offers in one message. Don’t do this. People only scan contents online.

So it is enough you mention three offers per message. This gives your business a profitable scope to woo customers.

Shoot A Weekly Newsletter

Weekly newsletters are important in email marketing. Send tips and articles related to your industry in the newsletter. This has two benefits,
● You high-quality information will boost your authority. And of course, the trust your customers have on you.
● Customers will remember your brand and portfolio for a long time.

Send your Email on the Best Day and Time

Don’t follow the conventional competitive timing to shoot your emails. Statistically, everybody prefers to send the same. This actually will not work. Try sending it during unconventional timings. Maybe you will hit the target.

Short Emails are More Often Read

You are not in for an essay competition. You are just email marketing. Let your emails be short and to the point. In hurried scanning, customers just look for your message alone. Be straightforward. Provide only information.

Have Catchy Subject Lines

Subjects lines are the ones that prompt your customers to read further. Don’t slump here. Don’t be too wordy. Frame your subject line based on the customer’s present need.

Optimize Your Email For Mobile

Of course. Understood. Almost everyone has got a smartphone. You know, 60% of emails are opened/read on smartphones. To optimize your email marketing message to fit the mobile contours.

Link your Email Marketing to a Landing Page

You have to link your email marketing to a landing page. Don’t link it to your website or blog. Contents in the landing page are suitable to trigger conversions. They take the customers directly to the product or services they need.

Links to your blog or website will put your customer through more confusion. They may not find your product there. They will have a lot of distraction.

Drip Campaigns are Important in Email Marketing

Make sure you send automated emails to keep up with your loyal customers. But don’t over send triggered emails. This will displease your customers.

Gate your Content

Once your content is ready to decide if you want to place it in your email. Or you can add it in additional steps for users to access your content. Gating your content provides you with a list of better-qualified leads.

Also, Read – Top 13 Content Marketing Stats you need to know in 2018

Make your Emails Shareable

Good emails are highly shareable. How to make your emails shareable?
● You should embed pre-formatted tweets in emails.
● For quick access, add a signup link to your email.
● Add social sharing buttons. This will help people to easily share your content on social media.
● Add an icon for email formatting.

Segment your Emails

You can build unique conversations only by segmenting your audience. With segmentation, you can reach customers with specific needs and wants.

You can segment your audience based on the following actions,
● Behaviour
● Opening an Email
● Signing Up
● Click on CTAs in email
● Click-through but don’t run up on the landing page
● Not performing any action

Include CTAs (Call-To-Action) in your Email

CTAs increase customer engagement. CTA buttons or lines can be included in your email. You can place CTAs that lead the customers to your landing page.

Sometimes you may want to place multiple CTAs. In this case, place the much needed CTA on top. This will make your customer take the much need action. Not placing your much needed CTA on top will make you lose 70% of customers.

Let your Design be Simple

Your best email should have the simplest of designs. Use not more than two to three fonts. Use abundant whitespace. And wherever possible use images.

The human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than texts. Try to convey your message more through images.

Make Way for Engagement

Your email should technically be of two-way communication. You should start a conversation. Convey to your customers that you care about what they say. Encourage them to respond to you.

Say, you recommend some products in your email. At last, you can ask your customers to opine on the recommendations. Such conversational email is a more of humanizing your brand.

Winding Up with Stats to do Email Marketing

According to Statistica, the number of email users will increase to 4.1 billion by 2021.

The total number of consumer and business emails sent and received in 2017 per day was 269 billion. This will continue to grow at an annual rate of 4.4% in the next four years. So it will reach 319.6 billion by 2021. Statistics by Radicati Group.

You know, email has a median ROI of 122%. This is 4X higher than other marketing formats. This statistics is by DMA and Demand Metric.

86% of business professionals prefer using email for business communication. This statistics is by HubSpot.

89% of marketers say they use email as their primary channel for lead generation. This statistics is by Mailigen.

Thus your efficient use of above ways for email marketing will ensure more sales leads for you.

How Infusionsoft Can Save Your Business

Posted on August 16, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Before you even start reading this article, you must ask yourself this question.

How Customer-Centric Are You?

We ask you this since you are trying to explore the true power of Infusionsoft for your business. And this clearly shows that you wish to manage customer relationships with your brand in the best way possible, which is what Infusionsoft is all about.

One of the biggest problems any business owner faces is trying to maintain better customer relations and increase conversion rates, but failing to understand the consumer base from their perspective.

You might have even tried to enhance your lead generation processes, but have not been able to achieve the desired sales targets. Well, it is the right time to leap into the future of customer relationship management.

It’s true that Infusionsoft might not be the latest tech when it comes to CRM and there a many articles that have covered this topic, Furthermore, a lot of businesses are already using Infusionsoft as their core CRM to manage their customers.

Having said that it’s been observed that even though businesses are already using the CRM, they are failing to utilize its full potential which in turn affects their marketing capabilities. In this article, we are going to cover various functionalities of Infusionsoft that are going to streamline your customer management and skyrocket the digital marketing efforts for your brand.

So let’s get started, shall we!!

Note to Self: Do Not Forget to Strategize

As mentioned above, one of the major issues that businesses face is that even though they have a CRM in place for customer management, they are not able to truly connect with the customer or prospects where it matters the most.

Before exploring various Infusionsoft functionalities you need to map out the entire customer’s life cycle with regards to your product or services.

These are the steps that you should follow which designing your CRM strategy:

Start by creating by a buyer persona if you don’t have one already. It is basically a virtual representation of your ideal buyer who would purchase your product or services.
Now keep your buyer persona in mind and design a flowchart entailing all the steps through which your ideal buyer or prospect engages with your business. Try to be as thorough as possible and start from capturing all the lead entry points, to brand engagement, to how the purchase will be made, all the way to the WOW factors your brand uses to delight the customers after purchase. We recommend you use a flowchart making tool such as Lucidchart for designing the buyer’s journey.
Now that you have created the buyer’s journey for all your established personas, the next step would be to apply tags on each and every step of the journey. We will be discussing the tagging logic more going further but for now you should know that these tags can derive useful information based on the actions taken by them on your site.
Lastly, choose the medium which is best suited to communicate with the users and apply it through the Infusionsoft CRM

Advanced Tagging Logic

All businesses keep a track of their prospects and customers in their database for various purposes such as managing logistics, remarketing or even to improve their product or service.

Implementation of Tags simply you track the common aspects of your prospects and customers and segment the contacts into very specific lists so that targeted marketing messages can be sent. But the challenge lies in figuring out the aspects that are worth tracking.

With the help of tagging logic we can not only find out what action the users have taken on the site but also deduce who they are as per the demographic profile, what is the user’s area of interest in your business, with the help of this data, we can map out the entire buyer’s journey within the Infusionsoft.

By using tagging logic you can create personalized marketing campaigns to meet the requirements of your business or brand and personalize your communications which are by far the best way to nurture your existing and potential clientele.

The Power of API Integration

Infusionsoft can help out your business by utilizing the immense degree of API customization through which you can connect your in-house software and technologies with the CRM. With this synchronization you can bridge the database of your in-house Application and Infusionsoft then you can transfer the most up to date customer back and forth between the API & CRM.

If you are still confused let’s discuss an example shall we:

Cliniko is one of the most widely used medical assistant software used doctors around the world. It assists medical practitioners with a variety of daily tasks such as keeping track of patient’s medical history, scheduling the appointments etc.

By bridging Infusionsoft and Cliniko doctors can get new appointments, patients with Infusionsoft email marketing campaigns so that you can increase the revenue for their practice. This synchronization allows businesses to launch automated email campaigns based on patient’s behaviour, appointment time, buying habits, invoice requirement and so much more.

With Infusionsoft API integration, you can manage and control your entire sales cycle with the help of standardized REST APIs and share contacts, email lists, leads, companies, inventory and other details across all of the cloud services you use for your business.

The Better The Reporting The Better Business Efficiency

This is an undeniable fact, the more thorough and streamlined your business reporting analytics are the more efficiently you will be able to modify and adapt your business strategy as per the changing analytics. Hence steering your brand towards success.

However, Most of the online reporting and analytics tools lack flexibility. Analyzing and tailoring of those static data tend to consume a good amount of productive time. Well, this won’t be the case anymore if you can implement with the Infusionsoft marketing automation to create your own reporting parameters as well as for analytics and reporting tools, that can be completely customized to suit the specific requirements that your business or brand might have.

JUST A FEW FINAL WORDS…

There you go, folks! We hope you got quite a few insight on what Infusionsoft CRM can you for your business however as you might have guessed by now that implementing the above-mentioned element with respect to your business is a difficult task.

It is highly recommended you hire an Infusionsoft consultant with expertise on the CRM, such as QL Tech who is a certified Infusionsoft partner and can help you Automate and scale your repetitive marketing tasks. Our Marketing Automation services especially focused on planning, execution, automation, and measurement of digital campaigns including entire setup and implementation of the user journey within the CRM.

In case you have any questions or doubts, please feel free to contact us or book a free consultation online.

Mobile SERP Survival Tips: Any Technical SEO Checklist Must Have

Posted on June 27, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Although technical SEO is a topic that only a few of us make use of it is an integral part of life. Tell me this, which part of SEO is non-technical if we have a closer look?

Any SEO technical checklist must contain parameters such as issues, mistakes, tips and recommendations. And the good thing is we are going to cover it all, in the most efficient way possible, all of the above-mentioned elements are crucial in making any website user-friendly, organized, detectable in SERP and easily understandable. Therefore, collect all the data you might have on your site and start optimizing.

It sure has taken a while, but Google’s mobile-first indexing is here at last.

The Search Console messages have started appearing and sites are gradually switching over to the mobile-first indexing methodology.

You’ll find a lot of content being written about mobile-first indexing, however, most of them have only elaborated on the basic elements of mobile search engine optimization. In this article, we are going to analyze some of the more technical components of mobile search engine optimization (SEO) and show you what actions are required to make sure your website is all set and is going to survive the mobile-first indexing era.

Mobile-First Indexing:

What does Google intend to do with “mobile-first indexing? Regardless of most of the SEOs might be believing, Google has not developed a separate index for mobile search. Whether any site applies the mobile-first indexing approach or not, Google will still serve the search results from the common index of the Internet.

Now you might be asking then what the difference is. Well intrinsically, only there is one factor that has really changed: Instead of crawling websites with a desktop user-agent, Google will be crawling the websites with a mobile user-agent.

Previously, Google crawled the websites from a desktop perspective, with a user-agent string that indicates desktop devices:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

With mobile-first indexing, this has changed to a user-agent indicating a mobile device:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2272.96 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

This above mentioned user-agent string shows that it’s originating to be an Android device, so it requires your website’s content optimized for mobile viewing.

Delivering Mobile-Optimized Experiences:

With this mobile user-agent, what Google bot sees is greatly dependent on how your website is configured to handle mobile usage. Delivering mobile-optimized experiences tends to take place in one of three ways:

1. Responsive Design:

With this method, nothing really changes. Your website’s uniform resource locators (URLs) remain as they are, and the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) code implemented is identical as well. This type of website’s design will adapt to the size of the screen it is being viewed on, delivering a mobile experience catering to the device’s specific screen resolution. Google recommends responsive design as its preferred design pattern, as it requires the least effort from their end; there is no extra code to index and no additional URLs for crawling.

2. Dynamic Service:

A lot of times websites detect the user-agent when a page is being loaded and provide a different HTML code on the same URL with respect to the type of device that’s being used. This is called dynamic serving. It is the same URL, different HTML code, one for desktop users and another one for the mobile users.

3. Unique Mobile URL:

In this approach, a website will provide different code to mobile users as well and will also use different URLs for its mobile site. Often a website serves its mobile content from a separate subdomain, like m.website.com, or from a different subfolder like www.website.com/mobile/.

Each of these mobile design methodologies has its own strengths and weaknesses. But for SEO purposes, having a responsive design tend to present the least hassle, whereas in dynamic serving and separate mobile URLs can cause many problems for the technical SEO of your website.

But by just having a fully responsive site doesn’t mean your work is complete. Even if your responsive site gets a green mark on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, this doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to fear from mobile-first indexing.

There are still some elements of technical SEO and general optimization you need to know in order to fix your site. If your site uses the dynamic serving or separates mobile URLs, there might be quite a lot of work cut out for you in ensuring that your website continues to perform consistently.

Consistent On-Page SEO:

Firstly, you will need to make sure your on-page SEO is up to the mark on your mobile site. In a responsive design, this is not an issue, as mobile and desktop pages are basically the same.

However, if your site is using dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs, it’s crucial to double-check your on-page SEO, here are few must-have for on page:

• Whether you have optimized title tags and meta-descriptions?
• Does your page have a strong headline?
• Is your content the matching with your desktop version?

Once your website is switched to mobile-first indexing, Google will check the mobile site for indexing and ranking. If your mobile site is not on the same level in on-page SEO as your desktop site, you can expect your site ranking going down.

Importance of Structured Data:

Along with basic on-page SEO elements, you will also need to keep structured data in mind as well. Your website might have structured data embedded in your desktop pages that can result in rich snippets in Google’s search results. If this structured data isn’t there on your mobile site, you could be losing those rich snippets and the click-through rates.

You must ensure that any structured data markup that’s there on your desktop site is also present on your mobile site. Use Google’s structured data testing tool to verify the markup. And keep a special lookout for structured data report in Google Search Console for potential errors and warnings.

Must have Pagination:

A lot of times, for smooth mobile user experience, websites might not paginate content the same way for mobile users as it does for desktop. Instead of links to deeper pages, your mobile site may be using infinite scrolling or does not bother with pagination at all and just display limited content.

In this case, you must fix this before the website is to be switched to mobile-first indexing. Lacking pagination or the wrong implementation means that the Googlebot won’t index beyond the first page of paginated content. And what the Googlebot can’t see, it cannot crawl and this could eminently lead to your site dropping out of the Google’s index entirely.

So make sure your pagination is done properly on mobile site, with completely crawlable pagination URLs.

On top of that, your website might be using pagination Meta tags to indicate paginated content. With rel=prev and rel=next, you can signpost that, like lists of products or an article spread out over multiple pages.

When using dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs. You need to ensure your pagination Meta tags are present on mobile as well as on desktop.

Conclusion:

Mobile-first indexing is not a matter of if but a matter of when. And it will happen to your site sooner rather than later, so our advice is you should be prepared for it as much as possible.

In order to prepare for the mobile-first indexing, era means you need to double-check everything, and then check it again. Don’t be complacent; a positive Mobile-Friendly Test is only the beginning. You need to make sure that each and every element of your site’s SEO is present on mobile as well as a desktop, and your switch should be easy and without a hitch.

7 Facts that you should know about the Web Design Industry

Posted on May 16, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

To truly understand the web design process, you must look beyond just the outward visual appearance of a website a little deeper. An exciting career for a creative problem-solver like you. Turning text and images into gorgeous sites that customers love to visit and companies are proud to show off. Keep reading to discover important facts that you should know about the web design before paying for web design services.

What Web Designing is Really About?

The web design industry is a constantly progressing industry. It undergoes constant development and expansion. The players in this industry are in a constant system of changing themselves. By changing themselves, they update their website and its offerings. In doing this, they formulate goals which they nurture until fruition. Particularly in the education industry, a website undergoes a number of updates. In the education sector, a website can provide online tutorials, offer a community blogging platform, offer a blog series and cultivate forums and discussions.

The education industry has embraced online learning. Through this, it integrates technology into the learning process to offer online courses. These are either an extension of their classroom counterparts or are conducted only virtually. Courses in website development, coding, digital marketing, learning languages such as PHP, etc are all taught virtually to students who opt for them. This technological development in education has virtually created another sub-industry in education, that of online learning. This industry is slowly growing through small developments.

Web designing promoting Social Interactions

Through community blogging, websites have developed another revenue stream. Website owners have started encouraging community blogging, wherein proponents of one thought or idea come together on a particular site and discuss it. They try to support or oppose the topic being discussed. This gives rise to a debate. Such debates are making community blogging sites entertaining. This entertainment is more interesting than what we are offered in the media. Through community blogging, users communicate with others of their ilk.

Through a blog series, websites are inviting people from all walks of life to write for their website. People post their opinions, views on subjects of their interest. Some of them also write informative pieces about certain topical issues that matter to them. Such initiatives are a dime a dozen today because business owners want to engage with their customers to take their feedback on their products and services. This activity is necessary to tailor the product or service offerings as per the needs of the customer.

Through interactive forums and discussions,

business owners propagate the idea of freedom of speech. This also empowers people by helping them find their voice, among a crowd. They discuss the pros and cons (as the case may be) in the active forums and discussions and put forth their point of view. Such activity is encouraged by each business owner. He gains by this activity in that the user is communicating through his website and using its features. During this activity, the user also browses through the products and services on offer and makes a purchase.

7 Important Facts about the Web Design Industry

Here, we will discuss Seven important facts about the website industry that you should be aware of. These facts are culled from extensive research done on many websites and their offshoots. Many small businesses were also surveyed to find out this information. A lot of effort has gone into collecting data from customers and converting that into understandable data. The raw survey data was not actionable. This activity has been conducted to understand the Seven important facts about the web design industry.

1. All web browsers render differently

Different browsers render websites differently. When you look at a website using the Google Chrome browser from your office, it may not appear the same as when you look at it using Mozilla Firefox, from your residence. This is because the two different browsers give different rendering effects to the same website. This means it all depends on parsing and rendering of a website by a browser. This activity gives different results for different browsers for the same website.

2. Design dictates which part of your website users will focus on

The internet has changed the way users browse and read the content. As per a Neilson Normal Group’s report, websites, which are successful in garnering traffic, have recorded a 47% improvement in usability. Web design professionals can use heat maps and analytical tools, which tell them which buttons on their website, are popular. This can cause large ramifications for the successful updation and design of websites. Such information can help web designers.

3. A two-year-old website may be too old

In the web design industry, technology changes at breakneck speed. To keep pace with these changes, professionals must update themselves at regular intervals. Moreover, business owners should also update their websites regularly. If a website is not attended to for more than three months, it becomes too old. A website, which has been stagnating for two years, will be even older. Regular updating of websites is common in the web design industry. Merchants who do not follow this are sure to be out of business.

4. Templates will condition the navigation of your website

Templates will condition your navigation of your website

Templates may help you design an attractive website, however, when the time comes to update that, templates will not allow you to do it, the way you want it. Templates will condition your website updation. Once a template is used, the website updation has to follow the path of the template and cannot be modified the way you want. Therefore, when designing a website, avoid opting for templates. This is apparent considering templates are rigid and condition the website design in a particular format.

5. Images or videos can have a positive or negative impact on your business

When inserting images or videos into your website, try using their optimized version. Not doing this will make your website slow to navigate. Users do not have the patience to wait until a website with heavy images and videos opens. Such images and videos tend to drive away users from your website. Therefore, it is best to use images and videos that are optimized for websites.

6. A good website design costs from $500 to $5000

A pricing infographic by a popular website states that the design costs of a good website range from $500 to $5000. This range is so wide because it includes the design cost of the website, the cost of optimizing the content of the website and improving the loading time of the site on search engines. Depending upon the density of a website, the costs of website design vary so widely.

7. There is a difference between responsive and mobile web design

When you view a website on your mobile, you are viewing its mobile version while when you are viewing it on your laptop or desktop, you are looking at its responsive version. The mobile website is restrictive, while responsive design is flexible. Flexible website design allows modification of websites according to the interface through which it is viewed. Thus, it is better to view websites on your laptop or desktop.

Conclusion

Thus, we have seen above that the web design industry is a constantly evolving field. The more flexible your website is, the better it will be for you. Therefore, when you design your website, make it reactive and not a mobile one. A responsive website will allow you to make modifications in it at a later date if required. However, a mobile website will not allow that. A mobile website will only allow you to update its content and not its design.

Taking the example of the education sector, you have seen how a website changes form, in the introduction to this article. You have also seen that in order to keep updated with the latest design changes happening in the web design industry, a professional have to upgrade himself periodically. If he does not do it, he will be thrown out. Similar is the case with web design professionals and graphic designers. They have to keep themselves in the knowledge of the latest improvements on the design scene.

In the above piece, you have seen how dynamic the web design industry is and how you should design dynamic websites, which can be modified later, if, required, in order to counter your competition. In this industry, your competition is twofold. One it is with the other designers and on another front it is will constantly evolving the technology. If they do not upgrade themselves at regular intervals, they will be outdated and will not be able to offer their services. There is a lot of material online, which will help web designers, and graphic designers upgrade their skills to remain in the game.

Why Should Brands Invest In behavioural Research for Effective Marketing

Posted on May 1, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

This post is by guest author, Junaid Ali Qureshi. This article has been edited and published with the author’s permission.

The term behavioural research might be relatively unknown to many people in the advertising sector but what if I told you it has the ability to improve the outcome of your marketing strategies, sometimes by even tenfold, if executed to precision.

As the name implies, behavioural research is a research section that focuses on finding what variables can have a direct or indirect effect on an individual’s habits.

These can help a marketing campaign better communicate their message to the consumers. For those still unconvinced on the benefits of behavioural research, read on as we list a number of benefits.

You Can Make Your Company Seem More Trustworthy

People are more in favour of conducting business with a company they deem to be trustable and are familiar with. By understanding the behavioural patterns and habits, you can market your company or your product in a manner that pulls at the consumer’s emotional strings.

An emotional connection will ensure that consumers keep coming back to your company after the first time around. According to a study done by analysts, a marketing campaign that had a more emotional tone to it always outperformed generic campaigns that were not emotional. This was true in all aspects of marketing.

Allows Your Marketing Campaigns To Stand Out From Other Campaigns And Competitors

Humans stay on autopilot mode for large amounts of time. Whether it is in the bus on your way to work or driving for long periods of time, we generally do not pay attention to a familiar environment that we have become accustomed to, unless we come across something that is unfamiliar.

Things are no different when it comes to the general public. If you have a generic marketing campaign, then chances are that your consumers are not going to regard it either. In order to get them to notice you, you need to step out from the usual boring campaigns and come up with something powerful enough to draw their attention. This does not mean changing just the also message but can include things like changing where your campaign will be seen or how it will be made use of. All these aspects will be significantly easier when one has access to information about the consumer and their behavioural patterns.

It Helps You Center Your Company Around Your Consumers

To start with, extensive research into the consumer’s behavior and habits will allow you to centre the firm around the consumers. The majority, if not all, companies tend to get embroiled in internal issues, politics, focus more on other ventures and projects and so on.

When this happens, it is easy for a company to lose its way, head in a different direction and most importantly, lose touch with their customer base. Behavioural research allows you to stay on course and make serving your clients a priority.

The importance of meeting the expectations of consumers, understanding what is it that they want. And how exactly they want it cannot be stressed enough. For instance, if you wish to open an e-commerce site, it would be great if you can find behavioural patterns in your consumers. That can assist you in developing the site in a manner that fits their behaviour before you hire magneto developer. Or invest in a magneto development company.

You Can Project the Impression of A Popular Company

Crowds are always wary of a new or relatively unknown product in the market. If they feel that the company or product is new, they will think twice before buying it as opposed to buying a product from a long-standing company. If they are given the idea that the product is popular and often used, they are more likely to be interested in using it. This is again something that can not be done without extensive research into consumers’ behaviours.

Impression-of-a-popular-company-effective-marketing

Keeps You Future-Oriented and Ready for Sudden Changes

An age-old saying is that those who fail to change tend to be left behind in the cold, and in today’s competitive and rapidly evolving market, that is gospel. Behavioral research also allows you to better predict the future of the market.

It can give you an idea of where the market is heading and what trends are coming up. This is important because if a company fails to get on a trend or new market direction, they can quickly go obsolete, such is the industry today.

A fine case in point is Nokia. With adequate research by your side, you can even anticipate sudden changes and act accordingly. Most importantly, the research data allows you to see the bigger picture and focus on long term results rather than short term results that can quickly make your company irrelevant and stunt the longevity of the business.

You Can Have More Detailed Marketing Campaigns

When you are armed with data on what consumers want and what they do not, you can put that in your marketing campaign and deliver something that is filled with details and information that show your customers that you understand them and perhaps most importantly, understand what they want and how they want it.

This can make a massive difference and will always stand out over a vague campaign that does not seem to know the customer’s needs. These details even have the potential to change behaviour and similar to the previous point above, helps you stand out apart from the crowd which generates more interest and attention in your product or company which is exactly what your campaign wants. The increased attention is invariably going to generate higher profits.

Greatly Enhances Your Decision Making Skills and Reduces the Level Of Risks

Knowing more about your customers and their habits will help you vastly when it comes to making important decisions. Behavioural research will give you a lot of meaningful information into your industry, your products and competition to name a few.

Having this wealth of information at your fingertips will make it easier for you to make important decisions with assurance and clarity. When you know how your consumers are likely to act towards your methods, it gives you more confidence to act out your strategies.

Talking about marketing strategies, this extra information makes it easier to brainstorm and develop better strategies that can directly target the consumer as well reduce the amount of risk that is associated with new ventures and plans.

Allows You to Pursue Better Opportunities

Furthermore, knowing what your consumers like and what they do not allows you to separate lucrative opportunities from other opportunities that are not doing as well. When operating a business, it is usual to get confused when deciding which path will deliver the best profits. Armed with information on your consumers, you can decipher this much easier than doing it without any information.

Not only is it easier, but it will also ensure that the task is more accurate. You can figure out what type of marketing campaign you should follow, which product you should market to which demographic and most importantly prioritize important tasks ahead of the others.

Anyone in the marketing field knows that the ability to multitask is of immense importance. At any given moment, a marketer could be juggling multiple tasks or multiple projects. When this happens, there is always the chance that one can miss the bigger picture or prioritize less important tasks over important ones. This problem can be avoided if one has the information that allows them to easily figure out where to focus their attention on.

6 Ways Workflow Automation Will Improve Your Lead Nurturing ROI

Posted on April 24, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Staying competitive in today’s dynamic world is becoming increasingly challenging, especially for small to medium businesses. The number of possible lead nurturing touchpoints (where consumers can interact with the brand) has increased beyond imagination.

For instance,

consumers can call the helpline,
interact with automated chatbots,
contact business support teams,
Lead nurturing over social platforms, and
possibly fill up some inquiry or feedback forms

It is with this context, the idea of lead capturing and lead nurturing can be well understood. The process of engaging with the leads in a personalized (or targeted) way by providing highly relevant and contextual information at each touchpoint of the consumer buyer’s journey can be termed as lead nurturing. The intention is to provide enough value so that the lead can make a purchasing decision in the end possibly in favour of our business.

Marketers have to make sure they treat each prospect with due consideration irrespective of their source. To overcome the challenge of keeping a track of all leads and engaging with them in a personalized manner, organizations invest in CRM and marketing automation tools like Infusionsoft, HubSpot or others.

These Marketing Automation tools play an integral role in managing leads and enhancing the engagement abilities of the marketers with the leads.

What is the most effective lead nurturing method?

Now, let’s look into several automated lead nurturing strategies that can possibly boost your ROI.

1. The Art of Segmentation

The first step and more importantly the most effective lead nurturing strategy for maximizing ROI is to segment the prospect in a meaningful manner. Segmentation will help classify the prospect as per the personas which will determine the method through which the client needs to be pursued. Although it’s not always possible to segment in an automated manner, you can deploy some of the below lead nurturing techniques for automation:

In tools like Infusionsoft, you can TAG a prospect based on his website behaviour. For example, if the visitor has spent considerable time and action on a particular service page, it might indicate a preferred interest area
For web-forms, we can add an extra field to segment the visitor based on their interest.

Expected Outcome – A prospect list which is segmented based on their interests, behaviour or geographies.

2. Timely Follow-Ups

The second important step is to ensure the prospects are followed-up in a highly personalized and timely fashion. This is where marketing automation yields the best results for lead nurturing. The idea is to create an automated machine (as Ryan Deiss call it) so that you can focus on other value-added activities. The medium of follow-up can be any, email, SMS, or push notification. Some of the examples of timely automated follow-ups

A sequence of three nurture emails (Download – Gain-Logic-Fear template) to request the user to purchase your initial offer
Abandonment Cart Email Sequence say within three hours after the user abandoning the cart
Drip series on a successful sign-up to educate the user about your product

The best part about marketing automation tools is that you can structure your follow-ups based on IF-ELSE logic. If X happens, then send Y email/SMS, or if Z happens, then send T Email/SMS. Expected Outcome – A highly targeted lead nurturing email campaign set-up in your own marketing automation tool.

3. Automating the Consumer Journey

Lucid Chart - Consumer Journey lead nurturing

Consumer journey refers to step-by-step activities (or touchpoints) a consumer goes through in the entire lifetime with the brand. Through automation, you can stay ahead of the curve and literally chart out the funnel (or steps) through which you want the consumers to move, before or after their purchase. For example,

Customer is driven to a landing page from a Facebook Ad -> Prompted to download the e-book -> the ones who have downloaded are requested to attend a webinar -> Ones who have attended a webinar are nurtured to undergo a free trial of your product -> Nurture to purchase paid version of software ->nurture the lead to purchase any top-ups (upsell) for the product -> Request feedback, and if feedback is positive, request to refer friends, provide reviews and ratings.

Having a well – constructed representation of the consumer journey (also known as a funnel) which is specific to your business is helpful in optimizing your marketing strategy.

4. Lead Scoring

The next strategy is to assign scores based on user behaviour and engagement. The idea is to devise a meaningful point-based system (or lead scoring) that can be useful for prioritizing the follow-up with your prospects. You should think through your own lead scoring formula and then implement in preferred marketing automation tool. An activity indicating a higher level of interest in your products or services should get more points. Also note, it is also important to keep analyzing the formula and not be afraid of refining it as you go.

This procedure is effective in prioritizing the leads that need to be targeted first. For instance, if the lead is marked as cold, then they would need more engagement with your lead nurturing team. On the other hand, if the lead is marked as hot then they are ready to close the deal and should be approached by the sales team immediately. Expected Outcome – Your prospects are assigned leads cores which in turn will help you segment them as Hot, Warm or Cold.

5. Loyalty through delight

It is an indomitable fact that the most powerful form of marketing is from the word of mouth. And this only comes through loyal customers who have been extremely satisfied with your product or services. With the help of CRM, businesses can collect personalized information of their client and use that to create personalized WOW lead nurturing sequence for their customers.

Now, who doesn’t love personalized experiences designed just for them? Off course this goes without saying that delighted customers turn into a loyal customer and customer loyalty goes a long way into increasing the ROI for your business

6. Analysis and Optimization

Any marketer knows that analysis plays an integral role in the framework of any marketing strategy’s success. Analytical marketing automation tools help marketers quantify the success and failure of their marketing techniques.

As you all know that there is no certainty of success while implementing a marketing strategy. However, with continuous analysis of any marketing strategy, marketers can determine the parts of the strategy which are succeeding or failing.

Once the above-mentioned points are ascertained then strategy needs to be optimized accordingly, thus increasing the probability of its success.

To sum things up it has been made extremely clear how crucial a role marketing automation tools play in the success of a business. From automating client communication to optimizing your marketing funnel, Marketers need to embrace lead nurturing for their business wholly and solely.

GDPR: Determining the future of digital marketing

Posted on April 18, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

The arrival of General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) has been in the horizons for a while but now as the start date for this upcoming regulation has been set for May 25^th 2018; it has become crucial for businesses engaging in digital marketing to be well prepared for this eminent change.

In this article, we have planned to take an in-depth approach while explaining GDPR, for those of you who are seeking clarity on the nitty-gritty details. Having said that the interpretation and perspective built around this regulation can be quiet variable.

Any marketer knows that user info is the currency that determines the success and failure of any marketing campaign. The main intent behind GDPR is to protect the data privacy of the users so that the information provided by them is used responsibly by digital marketers. This implies that everything from an email address, to a name, IP address, photo and more are included when it comes to customer information.

Essentially the main reason behind the implementation of GDPR is to empower the individual rights for web users to control the personal information shared with companies.

How Would GDPR affect digital marketing & Sale?

1. Permission to opt-in or opt-out

Under GDPR, permission has to be explicit. Companies have to have the ability to supply evidence that an individual has chosen to opt-in into communications and did not only fall onto the record by default such as assessing the unchecked ‘opt-in’ box on a form. ‘Double opt-in’ are also best practice; in which opt-in is followed up with a ‘click to validate’ email.

But for corporate or company information, ‘implied consent’ means marketers can email somebody, provided that individual had the choice to opt-in for the emails at the time of purchase.

Unless you are confident that your database doesn’t have any private data e.g. email, telephone number, our recommendation is that you stay as compliant as possible.

2. The cookie Rule

Cookies fall under the GDPR range, provided that they may identify people through device monitoring, mixing information along with different information or by treating folks as unique.

Will cookies require permission? Yes, and so, clear opt-in. As an instance, if a visitor lands on your own website for the very first time. You need to keep cookies blocked or ignored before the person requires any permission activity. Much like email marketing, permission is subject-specific or purpose-specific and, even if the website uses cookies for various purposes, it must find explicit approval for every one of these.

Website managers need to ensure a smooth user experience when surfing and, at precisely the exact same time, supply top selection for permission in a manner that is friendly and also the least intrusive.

3. Third-Party Conformity

For most marketers, third-party tools and marketing technology providers (i.e. advertising automation platforms, CRM etc) form a majority of their digital database. In cases like this, it’s significant that marketers check that their tech suppliers are prepared and ready for GDPR compliance. With steps in place to store and process, and incorporate information appropriately. Ahead of the May 2018 deadline, it is wise for entrepreneurs to:

Ask providers to detail how they are going to store/process information to ensure GDPR compliance.
Ensure there is a point of contact from each side, plus a procedure in place to handle any information breaches. Both sides must Have the Ability to respond fast to manage, react and respond in accordance with ‘Data breach notification’ legislation.
Be sure to simply collect information that that’s necessary, or falls under a ‘legitimate interest’.
Make sure it is possible to delete information if the user stops the service, also they should be able to download their own data when asked.

4. GDPR Scale

Now that we have made it clear how crucial user data security will become once GDPR is fully applied. Now let’s move on to how much of the user information be allowed to be used by businesses.

As most of you are aware that platforms like Google or Facebook.com have certain functionalities. Asking users to provide their personal info for a variety of reasons, now the question is where does GDPR come into all this?

Well, the answer is clear, GDPR will create levels on the basis of which the type of information. That is being been collected will be determined. And platforms need clearly communicate to the user on the details of how their provided info will be used by the businesses.

Let’s call it the GDPR scale shall we, this scale applies the principle of “purpose limitation”. Under which personal data must only be “collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes”

5. Rise of the Inbound Techniques

With all the upcoming restrictions regarding customer privacy and data protection, the increase in the application of inbound techniques by the marketers is bound to happen. As Inbound marketing implicitly dictates that the consumer should come to the business, rather than the other way around. Inbound marketing also knows as content marketing aiming to provide the users with a more personalized experience. Hence resulting in improvement in customer service.

Gated content, organic and paid social media, website registration pop-ups, webinars, event subscriptions, etc. Can generate leads, enrich our clients’ adventures or drive sales or conversion. What we must do today is to make our audiences aware of exactly. What we will do with the data we gather and where we store/use it.

Disclosure:

Although the above-mentioned points are the product of the extensive research done by us, however as we have mentioned above as well the interpretation of the regulation can vary from business to business. It is strongly advisable for businesses to consult an advocate beforehand in order to ensure 100 % compliance.

Few final words!

Now it may appear from the above-mentioned points the arrival of GDPR might paint a bleak picture for the future of digital marketing, however, if business to adhering inbound principals the quality of customer service will amplify through leaps & bounds without having to worry about GDPR restrictions.

Now hate to state the obvious but better customer service means a happy customer. Which results in customer loyalty and so on and so forth, we’re sure you get the gist.

Well, that’s our uptake on this, will keep you posted!!

How to Build Backlinks for a Brand New Site and with No Money

Posted on April 3, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Have you just launched a brand new website? Are you struggling to build backlinks due to restricted budgets? Well, then you have landed upon the right web page. This post is completely tailored to you. As you would know, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and backlinks are as good as twin sisters. In fact, generating backlinks from authoritative websites are one of the most and foremost activities of SEO. And, here you cannot have 100% control. Further, it plays an important role in rankings because it walks hand in hand with organic traffic.

When search engine website crawlers visit your websites to build a search engine index, they particularly look for backlinks. In case you have good rankings on SERPs but your site lacks backlinks, search engines may assume that your website content quality is low!

A backlink is a web link which on clicking returns to your website. Building a backlink is indeed tough. It requires skills, patience and efforts. But, in this post, we have tried our best to help you out. You will be able to build backlinks to your brand new site without investing your money.

Tips to Build Backlinks When You Have a Brand New Site and No Money

1. Content contribution on other’s sites

In traditional language, it used to be addressed as guest posting where a newbie website writes a blog post for another site and earn backlinks from either author bio or body content. However, things have changed drastically, especially post Panda and Penguin updates. Now it is not about what you write on guest sites. It is all about how your content will help the users of that particular guest site.

To summarise, yes, guest posting is still alive – but only if it is relevant to that website and their readers.

Also, nowadays, a variety of content is being produced since the users have various ways to consume the content. And among all, guests-graphic is the most popular content to contribute and earn authority contextual backlinks. The reason behind it is such content can be easily shared on social networks.

So, research on the most trending topic via tools like Right relevance, Buzzsumo and come up with an engaging title that suits the guest website most. Approach them with your suggested title and on getting approval, submit the best possible guests-graphic. Along with the submission of guests-graphic, offer a small blog-style write up explaining that infographic.

2. Testimonials – the secret sauce to build quality backlinks

When you just read the single term “testimonial”, the first thing that might appear in your mind would be some good words written by your customers for you. Yes, we are also talking about the same thing – testimonials – but the other way round. Try giving testimonials on others’ websites.

Testimonials-For-Bulid-Quality-Backlinks

For instance, if you are using any social media marketing tool, SEO tool or email marketing software – write good reviews on their portals. On getting your feedback approved, you might earn quality backlinks. Providing you are a loyal customer of that product or service, chances are high that you can build backlinks in exchange for a testimonial. But, make a point that you write a review that actually helps others to make a decision regarding that service. Don’t just write to earn a backlink.

3. Quote industry influencers in your content

This one is a little tricky, especially if your brand awareness isn’t spread to a significant level. Write a long-form blog post and quote experiences, findings or sayings of industry experts therein. While promoting that blog or article, give a shout-out to the quoted influencer on social media. If your content is well written and they like the citation, they might place a link of your article on their website. This way you will earn quality backlinks as well as will get known in their huge and widespread network.

You can use data from the reliable sources in your niche from the sites like Statista, Pew Research and others. While writing such posts, take care of your keywords too. It should not be completely out of the place. This is because your website readers would be habituated of reading some sort of content from you. If all of a sudden, they will find something irrelevant to them, anytime they can unsubscribe.

4. Niche relevant blog commenting, forum commenting

This is a little similar to writing testimonials. It is a bitter truth that not all your testimonials will get approved in a single click; but, then what? You can’t sit and wait to build backlinks. You have to find other ways that also fall under complete white hat SEO. The similar technique is blog commenting and forum posting.

Most of the businesses run a blog and every blogger would love to read comments on their blogs. Identify the best blogs and blogging sites in your niche, and comment on your findings of that content. Do not post sales pitch or offensive content. But, post your overall positive opinion about that post. Also, you can ask to read a sequel or prequel of that post. Such comments have higher chances of getting approved rather than silly comments like “nice article”, “thanks for publishing”, etc.

Coming back to forum commenting i.e. forum participation – it is equally important as blog commenting. Here, you need to identify the active forums of your domain, preferably where industry influencers also visit. Few of the best places (as forums) are Quora, Inbound.org, LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups. Start with participating in the trending posts and the most active posts. Once your name and presence get established, you can start creating your own posts and ask for others’ opinion.

In both cases, you need to create a thorough authentic profile with a correct URL to your website.

5. Spread the word about your business

There’s a saying, “Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen.” Here, we are talking about spreading awareness about your business. Unless and until you do self-promotion, chances are rare that you will get noticed in the crowd. It does not mean that in each and every promotion sound too salesy. Rather, help your community by providing value. Build some long-lasting valuable relationships on social media with fellow industry people. Know about them and let them know about you. Once your online presence gets noticed in front of them, you can then make an “ask”.

One of the advised ways is to reach journalists and influencers from your niche through emails. If you don’t get their email ID, reach out to them on social networks. When you pitch them, ensure that your content copy is scrip and to the point. No one in this world has time to sit and read through long boring emails.

6. Become a contributor on the websites having high DA/PA

There are many portals which allow you to post your content and in exchange, you get a backlink to your website. But, post your content only on the sites having high DA (domain authority) and high PA (page authority). This is because your goal is not only to build backlinks but to build quality backlinks. Also, check spam scores of those portals. It should not be more than 2. You can use tools like Open Site Explorer to check these parameters.

Few of the recommended sites are Medium, List.ly, Growth hackers, etc. Try out these if it falls under your niche. Another major advantage you will get is building your brand value. On posting frequently, you will get subscribers to your post and that’s how people will get habituated to hear from you at regular intervals. This, in turn, will boost your personal brand as well as the corporate brand.

7. Difficult but fruitful method – HARO (Help a reporter out)

How many sites you daily come across which offers FREE trials? Too many, right? And there would be surely some portals which can be accessed for FREE forever but what all it requires is your registration.

Similarly, there is a site called HARO (https://www.helpareporter.com/).

Help_A_Reporter-HARO-for-Backlink-building

HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage.

Go and create your account thereby filling all required details, including your website URL. You will receive three emails a day with requests to reply to the information that reporters need. Scan through the emails you have received, identify the most relevant to you and post the reply to that particular query. You will not be able to build backlinks for all your replies. But you never know, for which relevant reply you may earn a good one.

Closing Thoughts:

The above-listed techniques are not the only ones, there are many. You can also help hacked sites, fix external broken links, and do social media promotions and business listing. Benefits will come from these areas too. If you are popular in your network but only your site is a newbie, try to get interviewed by an expert and in return earn backlinks.

Hope you loved reading it. Do drop in your thoughts on building backlinks in the comments box. We’d love to hear from you.