Why is it Important for you to Understand your Niche

 

What is A Niche?

Before we dive right in, let us understand what it means when we use the term ‘Niche’. A niche is the type or group of people or customers that your brand or business appeals to. Or, people who show interest in your products and services and are willing to be a part of the community that you may develop. The people in your niche usually share common goals and aspirations and look up to your brand or business for similar interests, opportunities or solutions.

Understanding Your Niche

It is said that it is important to identify your niche before devising a marketing strategy. To be able to do this, it is crucial for you to understand that everyone you come across is not your customer/client.

You cannot appeal to and target every single person that uses the internet, hence it is imperative that you spend your advertising and marketing budgets on people who have a higher probability of being converted from mere leads to customers and from that, to your brand or business’ loyal customers.

There is an infamous saying that if you try to sell your products to everybody, you end up selling it to nobody. Which is why it is crucial to funnel down because what you want at the end of the day for the growth and success of your brand/business is leads and sales.

You can achieve this by identifying your niche and the people that you cater to, then directing your marketing efforts towards them not only to give them what they want but also to retain them. This way, your business may have a small but loyal audience that looks upto you for the fulfilment their needs.

Benefits of Having Identified your Niche

1. Targeted Marketing Efforts
2. Efficacy in Managing your Marketing and Advertising Budget
3. Genuinely Interested Audience/Customers
4. Efficient Content Creation (Create Content Only as Per your Niche and Audience)
5. Building a Community Becomes Comparatively Simpler
6. You Are Able to Provide More Value to your Audience

 

 

 

 

 

Why are Customer Testimonials and Reviews Important for Business?

 

First Things First

When it comes to business, you cannot afford to go wrong, especially when it comes to customer satisfaction. Generally, Word of mouth from your existing customers plays a huge role in building a reputation for your business. Similarly, in the digital world, customer reviews and testimonials have a greater role to play in building your brand online. Let us understand how.

 What are Customer Reviews and Testimonials?

To cut it short, customer reviews and testimonials are anything that your customers/clients have to say about you. These are snippets of text in which your customers/clients communicate about their experience with your product or service. Even though these terms are often used interchangeably, there are some notable differences between the two.

 Customer Testimonial V/S Customer Review

The most obvious differences between the two are that customer testimonials are usually more detailed in comparison to customer reviews. Moreover, since a testimonial is directly given to the company, it always highlights the positive features of your product or service. As a business, you might need to reach out to your customer/client for a testimonial sooner or later.

On the flip side, a review is usually given on a third-party website and sometimes on the company’s website, voluntarily by the customer. A customer review is more like honest feedback as it highlights the negatives as well as the positives of your product/service. You may subtly ask your customers to leave a review post purchasing your product/service. However, you have little control over what your customer might have to say about you. But why are these important for your business?

 Why are Customer Reviews and Testimonials important for your business?

Customer reviews and testimonials are important to convert leads into customers. They have huge convincing power as they play an important role in helping the customer to make a decision. This is based on ‘herd mentality. When a user visits your website, they read the experience shared by other people who previously purchased your product/service and are convinced to try it for themselves.

Why are Customer Reviews and Testimonials important for your business?

Customer testimonials and reviews also make your website look legitimate and add value to it. They also add content to your website and help you to look more valuable and believable to those who are exploring it for the first time. Customer testimonials along with reviews can help to show that your site has value and that you are a reliable supplier of the product/service that you are providing. In short, it builds trust which is ultimately good for your brand’s image.

 

Does Customer Service Impact your Brand's Image?

 What is Customer Service? 

Customer service is the support that a company provides to its customers, after purchasing its products and services. This goes beyond telephonic customer support. In the modern world, there are many ways to practice effective customer service. Customer service has a great role to play in the management of your brand or company’s overall reputation. Let us see how. 

Why is Customer Service Important? 

Customer service plays a crucial role in determining your brand’s image in the market. Apart from their products and services, most B2C brands are known for the experience that they provide to their customers. Marketing may help you target new customers, but customer service and satisfaction set you apart from the competition and retain the existing ones.

Customer Service and Brand Image

The modern consumer values companies with a humanistic approach, and not just a mere corporate. This means that consumers expect their favourite brands to be ‘in touch’ post completing the buyer journey. This can be done through follow-up emails, messages and social media. (Note, most customers do not appreciate phone calls). Great things happen when brands communicate to their customers that their goals go way beyond the marketing of their product or service.

Many times a customer may face issues with your product or service and might want to get it resolved. How will they do it? They can either drop an email or contact customer support through the contact details provided on the website. In most cases, a customer drops numerous emails/forms and receives no response. Not responding to your customers’ queries and interacting with them through various platforms can prove to be detrimental to your brand’s image.

What can be done? 

There is a very real chance that your customers might get demotivated to purchase from you if you fail to address their concerns. So, how do we overcome this? The foolproof and most sustainable solution to this problem is equipping your customer service department. As a customer service professional, make sure you respond to important customer queries as a priority. 

You can respond to customer queries via email, or by replying to customer queries and reviews on your website and social media pages. Alternately, you can address some common concerns on your brand’s social media for engagement. This way, your brand is not only getting marketed but is also fulfilling its customer support goals. 

Added Workload and Responsibilities

Customer service is a tedious job that requires you to be available for your brand and customers. But this does not mean that employees have to stress themselves. Modern consumers value a humanistic approach. the best way to practice this is to inform. Inform your customers through your website or social media that you will be responding to their queries only during work hours. For example- Monday to Friday from 10 am-6 pm. 

You can also opt for automation. The majority of customers have the same set of queries. You can make use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate automated responses to common customer queries. 

Conclusion

Customer service is one of those pillars that support your brand/company. It is important for building a strong foundation for your brand. Effective customer service can reap benefits in your marketing campaigns as well. 

 

Clever Marketing Communication; Skin Care Edition

 

What are we talking about? 

Very often, brands try to use clever communication or messages in their marketing strategies. One such communication you may have come across, coming from brands and companies that deal in health and beauty products is that of 'Results Guaranteed". 

The impact of this communication is very strong and creates a need or desire in the consumer to try the product. The consumer may or may not see the results within the mentioned time period, but the purchase of the product has certainly fulfilled one and many goals of marketers.

To boost their sales further, it was imperative for the marketers to adapt. When marketers got bored of this particular communication, they thought of a new way to pitch to the consumers. By adding numbers and time periods into the communication, brands found a very effective way to sell to their customers.

To Boost Their Sales Further, Marketers had to Make a Change... 

You may have observed brands communicating “Results guaranteed within 90 days” or “For best results, use for 3 months”. Through this communication, the consumer is made to believe that the product will work wonders within the mentioned time period. Knowing this, the consumer is convinced to make a purchase and try the product. Because of this communication, marketers were able to convert leads into sales in lesser time than usual.

Which Communication do you Think Will Have a Better Impact and Why? 

The communication that mentioned “Results in 90 days” will have a better impact on the consumer as compared to the one mentioning "Results in 3 months. Why? Even though 3 months and 90 days mean the same, the word “days” makes the consumer think that a product will show results faster than the product that mentions “Results in 3 months”.

See the impact of marketing strategies and communication on human behaviour?

The "No Marketing" Marketing Gimmick

 What are we talking about? 

You may have observed the brand communication and taglines of many businesses claiming "No Marketing, only service " or "0% Marketing, 100% Trust" while promoting their products and services. But is that true? Or is this just another marketing gimmick? Let's find out. 

Many brands have started to promote their products by using communication that claims that the brand is not intentionally marketing or promoting their product, but is providing a genuine review or feedback that seems to be more believable. Modern consumers are smart and are able to identify the basic marketing tactics. So, marketers needed to come up with something new and quick. 

What did the Marketers do? 

Marketers, through their strategies, tried to convince the consumers that they themselves are against fake marketing and advertising claims. By using taglines and captions like "No Marketing " or "0% Marketing ", the brand is trying to portray that it is against lame marketing tactics and is more concerned about the customer's experience

The Result 

By reading "No Marketing " or "0% Marketing ", The consumer, to some extent is made to believe that the brand works on transparency and is urged to try the product. With this approach, brands were able to convert leads into sales and met their marketing goals without actually saying it

Social Media and Privacy Concerns

 Social media has become an indispensable part of our lives. The fine line of distinction between real and virtual life seems to fade each day, even more during these uncertain times when the entire world is under lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Such times have provided people with an opportunity to develop or enhance their skills, and start that blog that they thought of a while ago but had no time to invest in it. People have seemed to reconnect with their long lost hobbies and are now more confident to display them on the internet, particularly on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and audio-video platforms like Tik Tok and youtube.

 Utilising their time productively we have come across n number of influencers, chefs, motivational speakers, video bloggers, writers etc. who have gone public on social media with their work to make it big. 

The world wide web, no doubt has provided a free space for upcoming artists to display their work and writers, enabling them to self publish. However, when it comes to Social media, going public brings with it, some concerns, primarily 'Privacy concerns'.

In the digital age, the role of social media is not only limited to connecting with fellow users but also promoting one's business so as to increase the market value of their products and services to models, hoping to land a contract through their aesthetic Instagram feeds or artists wanting their work to be discovered and appreciated. Everything is digital.

Social media, in the digital age, has great potential to become a huge employment generator. The question that now arises is if or not our privacy is maintained on websites. To subscribe to a website's products and services, it becomes imperative to provide socio-demographic data like personal details, phone number, email and at times GPS location. With the trend of memes and trolling, a person who posts something that does not interest an individual's core values is likely to become a victim to online harassment and trolling. Online harassment often includes actions carried out through an electronic medium like a mobile phone, tablet, or computer intending to directly disrupt a person's mental peace or make them fall victim to a crime.

Crimes are also committed online. Such a crime committed through an electronic medium is termed 'cybercrime'. Very often, the content that we choose to post on our social media handles and lack of privacy measures that enable us to go public and our choice to share every aspect of our lives on such platforms end up making us a subject to cybercrime. All it takes is your IP address or if you choose to go public on social media platforms, then your GPS location for a stranger to find you. There have been real cases when crimes have been committed with the accused figuring out the real-time location of the victim through their social media. 

Citing the example of a popular Netflix show, 'YOU'. Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) stalks a girl, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) through her public social media handle in the busy city of New York until he finally gains access to her mobile phone and eventually her social media contacts. In the entire course of the show, Joe stalks Beck and murders her acquaintances and ultimately, Beck herself. Indirectly or directly, the show portrays how easy it is, in the digital age for our data to be misused.

Just like your real life, your social life must also be private irrespective of a public or private social media handle. Avoid posting and updating about your personal life. Check your settings regularly so as to know if your location is being used in the background by a website or an application. Last but not the least, refrain from providing personal details to websites on the world wide web.

Stay Cyber smart. Stay Cyber safe. 

Make your Social Media a Happy Place

 In a world that now highly depends on technological advancement, social media brought us together and it made us apart. It increased our knowledge of the remotest corners of the world and it kept us glued to our mobile phones. We've had enough debates deciding on whether this gift of technology is a boon for modern society or, in fact, a bane. No matter which conclusion we reach in the due course of time, we have to agree that social media has become a crucial part of our lives be it in the terms of connecting with family and friends or promoting your business online, making it reach potential customers on the opposite side of the globe.

Social media is a place that you hate to love or vice versa. You just cannot ignore it. What makes me say that? I plan on a social media detox that I miserably fail three hours into, and you know I am not the only one. 

I have talked about 'social media and privacy concerns' and 'Online harassment' in my previous articles. Being someone who is an active user of this technology, I have come to an understanding that I am indeed in charge of how I use my social media and how I let it treat me. In this article, I am going to share with you how I transformed my social media from a 'crappy place' into a 'happy space'. 

CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE

Does that one influencer with no real talent make you insecure? or that acquaintance who regularly posts stories about his luxury? or a family member who questions your presence on social media, let alone your posts. Well, it's time you unfollow them. If you are someone who wishes not to unfollow someone then do not fret! Various social media platforms provide you with features that enable you to 'mute' someone so as to maintain a distance from them over social media. For example, Instagram calls this feature 'Restrict'. When you restrict/mute someone, they will not be able to see your posts that often, nor will they be able to view the comments on your pictures. Their messages to you will end up in your message requests. 

CLOSE FRIENDS ON INSTAGRAM/PRIVATE STORIES ON SNAPCHAT

Various social media platforms, particularly Instagram and Snapchat provide you with an option to hide your stories from certain people. If you wish to post something private, particularly a story, that you don't wish to share with all your followers, you can create a 'close friends' list on Instagram or a 'private story' on Snapchat. The pictures and videos that you upload on your 'close friends' story will only be viewed by accounts listed by yourself. 

CHOOSE WISELY WHO YOU FOLLOW 

I cannot emphasise this enough but follow pages and people that make you feel good about yourself. There is a huge variety of feel-good accounts and influencers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter that can change your perspective on things like life, society, politics and whatnot. Consuming good and meaningful content for content is the king for any social media. Positivity and self-care are #trending. 

FOLLOWERS AND LIKES ARE JUST NUMBERS

Followers and likes are just numbers we attribute so much value to that at one point

we use them to define our self-worth. Do not rush after increasing your followers and likes. Refrain from purchasing fake ones as more than anything, it's unsafe. People you should be concerned about probably already follow you.

POST WHAT YOU WANT

Post that picture that embraces your scars or that quote which defines your homosexuality. When I say this, I mean post what makes you feel good or defines you without fret. But the social medium must be used with a responsible attitude. Make sure you don't hurt someone else's sentiments in an attempt to make your own social media a happy place. together we are wishing for a pleasant and safe social media experience. 

IT'S OKAY TO BE MIA

For those of you who don't know what 'MIA' means, it is a common abbreviation used for 'missing in action. It's okay to not be active on your social media for a while. You don't have to explain your social absence to anyone but people who are truly concerned about you. 

Any kind of media is great as long as humans know how to manipulate their access to it according to their needs and comfort and when it comes to social media, various apps and platforms are coming up with updates that enable you to design your own experience while using them. Make the most out of new data and security apps, and indulge in responsible behaviour. Don't do to others, what you won't tolerate yourself. In the end, consume only content that does well for you and society. Avoid promoting content that tends to mock or hurt the sentiments of a community. 

PS- Never take social media seriously. Most of it is a lie or an illusion created by influencers and businesses to market their products and people. Happy scrolling. 

Marketing Behind Skin Care Products

 Let us begin this blog with a few questions; How often do you purchase skincare products? Have you noticed a new beauty trend in which people are now more drawn to natural and chemical-free products? If you somehow happen to have the answers to these questions, then you may have also observed a shift in the way these products are marketed and advertised. 

As you may have seen, nowadays, people are more concerned about their health. When it comes to beauty,  according to the latest consumer trends, people are now more woke about the ingredients, particularly in their skin and hair care products. Marketers were first to recognise this trend and acted on it through their marketing strategies. Let's see how:

 The Gamechanger 

Previously, the advertising for skincare products focused on listing out the benefits of the product or associating the product with some kind of success or achievement in life. To cite an example, we may look at the advertisements for 'Fair & Lovely' over the years, the brand has always tried to associate its product with the success of a working woman based on her beauty. The latter strategy created a need for the product, which generated high sales. 

Now, people have started to embrace their bodies the way they are, are done with the fake advertising promises and have started looking for and researching the ingredients in a product. And, marketers were the first to identify this shift in consumer behaviour. 

What Changed? 

Marketers and advertisers noticed that listing the product benefits alone won't be enough to create a buzz for the same in the market and generate a need in the consumer, which may ultimately not result in sales and profits. 

Many newly launched brands adopted a new marketing strategy. After having done a SWOT analysis on the product and applying the AIDA Model correctly, they decided to list out the benefits of their skincare product range, but with a twist. Instead of rattling about the product benefits, brands decided to target keywords like 'Science Backed' or 'Made with Science' in their marketing communications. 

Marketers understood that vaguely listing the product benefits and fake promises would not create the need or desire in the consumer to convert to their products. But mentioning the ingredients or the %age value of certain ingredients like 10% Niacinamide, 2% Vitamin C in marketing communications would lead the customer to believe that the skincare product is medicated or 'science backed' and may work.

The Result? 

This approach has been successful in generating high sales for products like 10% Niacinamide face serums or 2% Vitamin C face serum or 3% Redensyl and 5% Minoxidil hair growth serums. We don't know if these products are effective or not until we purchase them. And, having the consumers purchase a particular product is the goal of most marketers.