There’s a secret behind why some campaigns gain more traction than others.

They communicate when the consumer is most willing to listen and interact.

And trust me, the marketers behind these campaigns aren’t psychologists. They just understand the situations and consumer behaviour better than others. They know the importance of moments and when it is beneficial to capitalize on them.

After all, in this world of overwhelming information density, the ones who stand out are the ones who know how to communicate the right thing at the right time.

This brings us to the concept of moment marketing.

What Is Moment Marketing?

Moment marketing (or right time marketing) refers to the act of communicating the right message to the right audience, at the right time, in context.

Let’s take the example of episode 3 of Game of Thrones — Battle of Winterfell. As soon as the episode was aired, social media went crazy for -

• It being so dark

Caroline Darya Framke on Twitter

Live footage of the Battle of Winterfell #GameofThrones

• Its epic dialogue — “not today”

Now, this was a moment which brands could capitalize on to become a part of the conversation and get viral

…and many did.

But moment marketing isn’t limited to this. The strategy is called right-time marketing for a reason. It refers to being there when the consumer is most likely to engage with your message. It aims to find the path of least resistance between your brand and the customer.

Let’s say you are watching an online Disney show with your 11-year-old daughter who just played a Disney game on your phone. Now, it’s a perfect moment for an ad with a 40% discount for your trip to Disneyland given that there are a lot more chances that you’ll consider it, taking into account your daughter’s addiction to Disney.

So, How Exactly Do You Know It’s A Moment?

Moment marketing isn’t that difficult when it relates to masses or segments. You just need to be aware of the present and prospective moments that are trending among your target audience and look for the best time to capitalize on it.

Oreo was able to capitalize on it in 2013 when there was a power outage of 34 minutes during the Superbowl.

OREO Cookie on Twitter: "Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC / Twitter"

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

The social media went crazy about the Twitter ad and Oreo became a star even though it didn’t sponsor the event.

But

Finding the right moment when it comes to the individual customer is a real task.

This is where the smartphone and the concept of micro-moments kick in.

Micro-Moments

With mobile becoming an integral part of our daily lives, there is a fundamental change in the way we consume media now. The chances are that you are reading this article on your smartphone or are going to check your smartphone in another…say 5 minutes.

Once what was predictable, our interaction with the online world is now fragmented all over the day. All it takes is just a few taps… to check the time, mail a client, text a friend, or chat on social media. And then there are other important moments like — I want to know, I want to go, I want to buy, etc. which force you to pick your phone and open an app or search on the internet.

All these are considered as micro-moments that prove out to be a game-changer for both brands and consumers.

For me, whenever I’m reading a novel and find a new word, I pick my smartphone, open Google and look for its meaning. Don’t you do the same?

I bet you do!

According to WSJ, 91% of smartphone users look up information on their smartphone while right in the middle of a task.

Even though this looks like a small moment, it joins hands with other moments and results in shaping our preferences.

69% of leisure travellers use their smartphones to search for travel ideas during spare moments like standing in a queue or waiting for their food at a restaurant. Nearly half of them then use an entirely separate channel to finally book the trip.

Similarly, 82% of smartphone users consult their phones before deciding what product to buy in a supermarket.

Now, if you don’t capitalize on the initial moments, it’ll be really hard for you to kick in during the later stages of their buying funnel.

Your focus here should be to develop a marketing funnel which includes all these micro-moments.

Many companies do the same.

Take eCommerce companies for example. I usually buy my clothes from Amazon. A few months back, I used to search for Amazon coupons on the internet in case I get a discount from a coupon site.

And not getting any coupon made me abandon my cart many times.

It wasn’t just me, and the company noticed this.

Some weeks later, the company ran an ad on Google targeting the keyword ‘Amazon Coupons’ and provided me with the coupons itself, hence preventing me from abandoning the cart and saving the commissions paid to the partner websites.

This was capitalizing on the moment.

The Right Thing, The Right Time

Moment marketing is all about finding the right time to put on the right message. It can complement your brand communication strategy like that of Oreo’s at Superbowl or an aid to get more conversions like Amazon.

All that matters is that you’re there to communicate your message when the customer is most willing to listen.

Content marketing is a perfect example of seizing moments. Recently I Googled “inbound marketing” to learn more about the term just like many curious marketers do.

The first result was of Hubspot’s. Hubspot is a company which develops tools to aid inbound marketing.

What made me ponder was that the result wasn’t an ad to promote Hubspot’s products. It was a comprehensive article to educate the reader about the benefits of inbound marketing.

The company actually seized this moment.

Now if I would go for scouting inbound marketing tools, Hubspot would already be among my top considerations since I am already aware of the company and it gained my trust with that article.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on moment marketing in the comments section.

Originally published at https://www.feedough.com.

Before we start, let’s agree on one point — not everything which seems free is actually free.

This goes unsaid for the apps as well. Well, people still don’t know how Whatsapp makes money (or if it makes money at all). Many other apps have disrupted the market with their innovative business and revenue models; take Google Maps for example. It makes most of its money from third parties like Uber which uses its API to enhance its offerings (ever noticed the small Google logo on the bottom left while booking your Uber?).

But this doesn’t mean that the traditional app revenue models like advertisements or freemium should be looked down upon. Candy crush used both of them simultaneously and almost none of its users minded the microtransactions or interacting with advertisements to get more lives.

Here’s the thing-

Your app revenue model will work if it doesn’t add friction to the user experience. It can be made up of ads, in-app purchases, partnerships, incentivized rewards, data monetization or the combination of all. Just make sure that your money-making strategies are not stopping the user from using your application and referring it to others.

Advertising

For apps where the user spends a lot of time, advertising is probably the most suitable revenue earning strategy. If your application is successful in making the users get hooked, you can always give them a break and an incentive for interacting with your still or video ads.

Incentives can be in the form of extra credits, bonus features, extra time, etc. It totally depends on the business model of your application.

Incentivized Advertising

A different, unique, and sometimes preferable type of advertising is incentivized advertising.

It involves the users to perform certain tasks like downloading an application to either unlock certain features or get monetary benefits in return.

App developers usually use this when the incentive the user gets is equivalent to getting paid or not paying for something.

Freemium

Offering the application for free and charging the users for extra features is what many experts think to be a perfect alternative to premium apps.

Freemium isn’t just providing a free trial. It means you provide the core features of the application for free and charge for the add-ons or more usage. It can be categorized into 5 types -

1. Limited Features: Slack provides the core features for free but charges for add-on features like guest accounts and data exports.
2. License Limitation: Drift is free for the individuals but it charges if you want it for the teams.
3. Capacity Limitation: Google drives lets you use 15gb of the storage for free but charges if you require more cloud storage space.
4. Limited Usage: Mailchimp lets you send emails to up to 2000 subscribers for free but charges if you want to send to more.
5. Ad Supported: Ultimate guitar asks you to pay a certain amount to get rid of the advertisements and enjoy the application without interruptions.

Data Monetization

Data monetization is a new type of revenue model which has an increasing demand today. As the name suggests, it involves using the user data to earn money. The revenue model can be divided into two categories -

• Using Data — Like what Facebook does. It provides its service for free and use the collected data to make money using targeted advertisements and other strategies.
• Supplying Data — Like what twitter does. It provides its services for free, collects the data, and licence it to the third parties.

If you plan build your revenue model around data monetization, make sure your app reach to and engage with millions of users.

Open Source API

An open-source API business model is an extension of the data monetization model. It involves providing the application free to the users and improving it by taking the feedback and analyzing the usage data. The same offering, however, is provided as an API to the businesses and charged per usage or according to the contracts between the two parties.

A perfect example of an app utilizing this business and revenue model is Google Maps.

Choosing The Most Suitable Revenue Model For Your Startup

Choosing the right app revenue model could literally be rocket science if you’ve not done enough research on who actually your target audience is and what it desires.

Release an MVP first and validate your assumptions on who your target audience is. Once done, release the ‘free’ beta and study their usage patterns.

Choose the advertising model if your target audience spends considerable time on your app.

Go for incentivized advertising if you’re targeting someone who doesn’t earn yet and will be likely to engage more if provided incentives.

Freemium suits when you’re targeting a hobby or when your target audience include businesses.

Monetize your data when you have tons of it.

And release an API only if your business model supports it and if it’ll add value to those who use it.

If it is just name, logo, colour, font, ambassador, and any other attribute, you need to read this article till the end.

Because a brand isn’t what you think it is all about.

It is the combination of all the properties within and outside the product which gives it an identity and a personality. Yes, it consists of a name, logo, some symbols, and other attributes. But it also includes the associations, message, tonality, voice and the overall outlook of the company.

It is not developed when you find an available domain name on the internet. It requires extensive research on consumer behaviour, the product features, the right positioning for the product, and the personality you want your offering to have.

Know the basics

Before we move on to discuss the actionable branding tips for your startup, it’s important for you to understand the basics as we’ll be using them a lot.

• Brand Personality: Brand personality is the set of human traits like unique, caring, funny, trustworthy, creative, straightforward, dishonest, rebel, etc. assigned to your brand. All the brand communication strategies revolve around building its personality as the company desires it to be.
• Brand Associations: These are the tangible and intangible product features like logo, colour scheme, ambassadors, owners, etc which increases your brand recall.
• Brand Positioning: Positioning is the unique position your brand occupies in the minds of your customers. It makes your customers view your offering in a unique way and makes it stand out from the competition. Positioning is different from personality. It is how your customers recognise your offering’s USP and not how they recognise your personality.
• Brand Identity: It is how your brand portrays itself to the customers. It is how you want to be perceived by your customers.
• Brand Image: It is how your customers perceive your brand. It is what your brand stands for as a whole to the customers. Brand image builds over time and is the aggregate of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a customer holds regarding the brand.

Your brand should work on building its personality by forming brand associations and executing brand identity building strategies. This personality will eventually position the brand in a unique way and gives rise to the brand image.

Remember, you cannot directly alter your brand image. But you can work on building a good brand personality which forms your brand image.

Never Ignore The Buyer Persona

Your brand should be built around what your customers desire. Position your offering according to what they want and you’ll have a magnetic brand.

If your customer likes buying premium looking brands but is short of money, why not use these two characteristics to create a unique identity in the market?

Build a buyer persona before drafting your branding strategies (even before you select the name for your brand).

Build Your Brand As If It Is A Person

A brand is the personification of the company or the offering. Build it like you’re creating a new person. Don’t just focus on the appearance, define how it’ll talk to the audience, how it’ll age, and what all it’ll be associated to.

If you’re creating a sports brand, instead of just focusing on the logo and tagline, specify the products you’ll be focusing on (premium products, accessories, or low-cost products), the perfect colour palette (for the sporty look), the tonality of the communications (to build the personality) on posters, blog posts, social media posts, and the replies. Strategize brand placement in every communication message. It isn’t necessary to be just the logo; it could be the brand message, the tagline or just the brand colours.

Consider What’s Driving Your Business

Building your brand around your value proposition is always a good idea as it makes it easy to understand your communication and also helps in positioning the brand as you want it to be.

If being organic drives your business, instead of building a generic niche brand, focus more on being organic while developing and deciding the brand attributes, identity, and associations.

Test Drive Everything (Split Testing)

A brand built on just the assumptions rarely succeeds. Validate your assumptions using split testing. Create a different landing page for every alternative and collect data on how the user interacts with it.

Test drive everything and be 100% sure before releasing it in the market. Leadpages, Click Funnels, and Product Hunt Ship are great tools to help you split test to validate your assumptions.

Ask Questions & Take Feedback

Another (and more preferred) way of validating your branding assumptions is to go out and talk to the users. Draft your questions to understand the desirable but untapped positioning opportunity in the market.

Product Hunt Ship lets you do that too. Or you can select the survey tool according to your needs from our list of best survey tools on the internet.

Prioritize Your Brand From Day One

Never think of building the product first and the brand later. Start working on your brand from the day one and make it inseparable from the offering.

Even your early adopters should know everything about the brand they bought it from.

Be Consistent

Consistency is the key to successful branding. Your focus should be to communicate a consistent brand message to set the desired positioning in the minds of the customers.

Setting brand guidelines and developing distinct products which are unique to your brand will help you in maintaining such consistency.

Take Apple for example. The company has built up its brand consistency over time with a series of products and communications that reinforce the company’s central identity.

One can easily identify an iPhone advertisement even before the logo actually shows up.

Never Mimic

You wouldn’t want to be called ‘a brand like XYZ’. Always focus on building an identity which is unique, identifiable, and differentiable.

While mimicking may help you make use of the existing brand’s followership in the short run, it would result in your brand getting lost forgotten in the long run as you will never be alone in this.

Think Long-Term

Every year we are told about how our attention spans are shrinking. There is a lot of information, a lot of products, and a lot of other things vying for our attention. Our attention has become a commodity now.

Continuous investment in the brand with consistent communication of the brand message helps in finding a distinct place in the minds of the customers which eventually reaps more profits in the long run as compared to any new brand.

According to research by Mckinsey, firms with long-term strategies had 47% more top-line growth than other companies, 36% higher earnings, and added an average market capitalization of $8.67 billion.

So, how do you think long term?

Well, you need to focus on building up and imbibing your brand promise in the minds of your target audience over time. Build products that are consistent, have consistency in all your communication strategies, and build a balance between short term and long term goals (40:60).

Never ignore your existing customers. Keep them happy, take their feedback, and fulfil their after-sale requirements to make them stay for long (and even refer the people in their network).

Create An Experience

It’s easier to forget about the product but it takes time to forget about an experience. A brand experience is the sum of all the interactions your target audience have with your brand.

Focus on enhancing the brand experience. Try to woo your customers at every stage of their buyer journey (and even after he has made the purchase). Be approachable, answer their questions, know their expectations, talk to them on social media, and keep them happy even after the sale has taken place.

Connect Your Brand Strategy With Marketing

Don’t just market your product. Market how your brand has added a special touch to a generic product. Market your brand promise and you’ll definitely build a long-term brand.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think of our article on branding tips in the comments section

Originally published at https://www.feedough.com.

Chatbots

Don’t you just love how Siri/Google assistant/ Cortana/ Alexa answers all of your questions? Don’t you just love when you receive instant replies on some websites’ chat-boxes no matter what the time is? Marketers know you love them and this is the reason why they are there.

A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface — Chatbotsmagazine.com

It’s one of the best example of automation and artificial intelligence in marketing. Two main types of chatbots exist today –

• Chatbots designed to serve one or more purposes to the customers. For example, a chatbot operating in a chat screen of a website, or a bot operating in any social networking website’s chatbox. National Geographic lets you chat with Albert Einstein on Facebook messenger to raise awareness of the launch of its new original series Genius that dissects the psyche of the physicist Albert Einstein.

• Assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. These AI powered chatbots are made to converse with users and help them by providing a variety of information and fulfilling their other information wants. Amazon’s echo look even rates your look based on machine learning algorithms with advice from fashion specialists.

Recommendations / Content curation

Recommendation is one of the best examples of AI in marketing. E-commerce websites, blogs, and many social networking and media websites use artificial intelligence to analyse your activities on the internet and recommend you products and content for better conversions and to make you spend more time at their websites.

Marketers look for ways to engage with you. They want you to spend maximum time on their website / application and to fulfill same they use AI to act as an intelligent salesman and give you recommendations based on your activities, interests, and opinions.

Dynamic pricing

Has it ever happened to you that when you are looking for product to buy on internet, you seldom get discounts or less price for that product? It’s because the bots on these websites know when you actually need a product. Your cookies, searches, and other activities are monitored to provide you with a personalized pricing in response to your customer profile which that e-commerce website is generating in real time.

Dynamic pricing (often referred to as personalized pricing) is a pricing strategy where the price is determined depending upon the demand, the availability and the profile of the customer. AI technologies are even used to decide and design personalized offers based on customer profiles.

Ad targeting

Your activities, interests, and device is taken into consideration before serving you an advertisement. Marketers want to make the most out of advertisements by making them relevant for you. Advertisements relating to a product you recently searched about or from a website you recently visited are common on internet.

Computer vision

The computers now have a vision just like we do. Computer vision helps bots gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. It utilizes pattern recognition and machine learning technology to gain the accuracy of human visual system. Visual recognition is used by Facebook, Google, Snapchat and other applications to provide better experience to you. It’s possible to search all the cats photos on your phone by just typing cats in the search section of the Google photos application.

Facebook and Google photos recognize a person face with the help of computer vision. Many new applications use this technology to create image filters and other engaging features.

Speech recognition

Bots now recognize your voice and understands everything you say. Siri, Google assistant, Alexa and most of the other chatbots now comes with speech recognition technology. Speech recognition is also used in applications like Shazam, google search, GPS maps, and other hands free systems.

Including speech recognition in the operating model of your product/application is a great idea as users now look for hands free features for for more convenience.

Data analysis

One of the most useful examples of AI in marketing is data analysis. These days you don’t have to guess what will work for what audience. There are thousands of data points attached to the target audience that can be accurately analysed by bots to understand which message is going to appeal to whom.

AI closes the gap by moving far past human limitations to consume and analyze data on a scale no human can. The “intelligence” in artificial intelligence is the ability to think independently, to grow more knowledgeable from being exposed to more information and to adapt and adjust when things change.

AI technologies can be used to analyze data at a speed and accuracy better than any human. There are systems to analyze and forecast the market fluctuations. These can also be programmed to respond to changes on the spot depending upon the conditions.

Content generation

Many tools, like wordsmith, are used by marketers to convert data into sensible text. This auto content generation technology involves artificial intelligence and saves their lot of time. The best part about this AI generated content is that readers are not able to discern automated content from content written by a human.

The bots are so good at authoring content that according to Gartner “By 2018, 20% of all business content will be authored by machines.”

Search

Ever wondered how google knows everything you want to search? How can it convert your wrong spellings, grammar, and spoken words into correct queries and come out exact results what you were looking for?

Google uses Rankbrain, a machine learning technology, to analyze your search queries (both spoken and written) and to process them into search results that are most likely to be what you’re looking for.

“If you’re searching for an ambiguous query, or you’re using colloquial terms or talking to Google like it was a person, traditionally, computers will break down, because they can’t understand your query or they haven’t seen that phrase before. RankBrain can generalize it: ‘That phrase seems like something I’ve seen in the past, so I’m going to assume that you meant this.’ It’s much like a person hearing you talking to them in a crowded bar — they can’t hear everything you’re saying, but they still can guess what you’re meaning and have a conversation with you.” — Greg Corrado

Business forecasting

There are many factors and forces that influence the present and future of a business in the market. They are complex, high correlated, and sometimes difficult to measure. One of the challenges marketers face is how to predict the exact future of the business or a product using complex set of inputs under tight time constraints. Many machine learning processes have been designed to automatically learn patterns in the numerous data inputs and help marketers to predict future of anything they want to.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think of this article on examples of AI in marketing in the comments section.

Originally published at www.feedough.com on May 7, 2017.

Here is all you need to know about startup funding.

Level 1: The Company

The actual story starts after the company is formed. But there are several steps before you get to start your brand. Choosing a brand name and a logo isn’t enough. A company has to be registered to become and act like a legal entity and to perform certain functions like signing a contract, suing, etc.

Costs at level 1 of startup funding

Company registration

It takes registration to convert a concept into the actual company. It’s one of the easiest yet one of the most crucial steps in the life of an entrepreneur. Company registration forms a legal structure over which everything is placed in future.

Company registration has different costs in different countries and may vary among states of the same country as well.

USA : the cost of incorporating a company vary from $25 to few thousand dollars which include registration fees and legal fees.

India : the cost of incorporating a private limited company is just ₹7000 if you incorporate it with the minimum authorized capital of ₹ 1 lakh.

UK : the cost of incorporating a private limited company vary from £12 to £100 depending upon the mode of registration. (£12 for online registration. £40 for registration by post.£100 for same day offline registration.)

Australia : incorporating a proprietary limited company will cost around $469.

Other Expenditures

An entrepreneur has to calculate the total amount of expenditure that he’s going to incur before contacting someone who can invest. A usual company doesn’t start to earn profits right from the start and it takes time to reach break even. The time taken to reach break even is different in different industries.

Expenditures other than registration while starting a company usually include

Research & Development costs : Your business hasn’t started yet. You must research about competitors, markets, etc. before getting yourself to the racetrack.

Server costs : if your company requires an application or a website to run. These fixed costs will come under server costs.

Operating costs : If your business require daily/weekly/monthly transactions which will incur certain costs. These costs must be calculated and should be labelled as operating costs.

Company assets : This expense usually include expenses incurred for purchasing/renting office space, furniture, equipment, machinery, etc.

Marketing costs : These costs vary from business to business. Some business require a huge amount of marketing costs at level one while some don’t even consider them at this level of funding.

Procurement of funds

It’s not the right time to contact VCs and angel investors to fund your startup as your business hasn’t started to operate yet. Usually the funds are procured from relative, friends, family and other contacts.

This type of investment is called seed investment. The investor actually plays a gamble by investing at your business and hence ask for a lot of shares.

Shares and valuation

A startup usually issues 100,000 shares of equal denomination at the time of seed funding. Valuation of the firm is decided based on the investment amount and the shares given to the seed investor.

Suppose your friend invested a sum of $10,000 and asked for 20% share in your company. The valuation of the company will come out to be $50,000 with you owning 80% of the shares worth $40,000.

Level 2: Capital Raise

You’ll need more money once your company is established. This level of startup funding require money either for continuing the operations to reach break even or to expand the business after you’ve started earning profits (which is rare).

Procurement of funds at capital raise level

This stage requires an entrepreneur to contact an angel investor or a venture capital firm as at this stage the business has already started operating and there are figures on which predictions and promises can be made.

An angel investor is high net worth individual who invests in the business in return of convertible debt or ownership equity.

A venture capital firm is an organisation composed of many angel investors and other corporates who pool in their money to invest in businesses with huge growth potentials.

The money invested in the business at this level of startup funding is called venture capital. The angel investor and VC firms invest a lot of capital in the firm in return of ownership equity and a say in decision making.

Series A,B,C funding

Once the seed has been planted, the business firm needs increased nourishment at different levels of its operation. It all starts with seed A funding followed by B,C,D.. and so on. Every round of funding will dilute your ownership and will add more VCs and angel investors on board who’ll have a say in the decision making of the company.

Shares and Valuation

The share percentage of every stakeholder after the capital raise level of startup funding depends on the valuation of the firm. There are two types of valuation that must be considered while deciding the share percentage of the existing and new stakeholders of the company.

Pre-money valuation — is the company’s value before it receives outside financing. It’s the current value of your startup.

Post money valuation — is the company’s valuation after it receives outside financing. If explained in simple terms, post money valuation is pre money valuation + the investment you’re looking to collect from VCs and angel investors.

The pre money valuation of the company gives the current share price and the post money valuation decides the future share prices and the number of shares the investor will receive.

Suppose, a VC agreed to invest $1 million in your company for a post money valuation of $5 million which gives a pre money valuation of $4 million.

Now, its already assumed that you’ve issued 100,000 shares previously of worth –

Pre-money valuation/ # shares outstanding → $4,000,000/100,000 → $40 per share

The investor will require issuing of new shares for his $1 million dollars. The new shares issued will amount to –

Investment/Pre-money price per share → $1,000,000/$40 → 25000 shares

Another method of calculating investors share in your start up is –

series investment / post money valuation → investors share in your start up

$1,000,000/$5,000,000 → 20% shares

The existing stakeholders shares get diluted to 80%. To make it simple, you now own 64% shares of the company (which was previously 80%) and the seed investor owns 16%. This process is called share dilution. Share dilution doesn’t mean you now own less shares but

The entrepreneurs should maintain a high post money valuation to make sure that the investors don’t dilute their ownership much.

Level 3: Exit

Once your company is all set and has started earning profits, it’s time to sell your investments, reduce your stake in business and earn substantial profits.

An exit strategy is a strategic plan of the stakeholders to sell their stake in the business to earn profits. You’ll have two options when it comes to planning an exit strategy.

Selling your company to a corporate giant

An exit strategy is planned right from the start. If an entrepreneur and the investors are in the business purely to earn profits and nothing else, this seems the most beneficial idea as they usually gets the shares of the acquiring company (there is an option to get money too). The shares provided usually vest after a certain period of time but are a great offer for such entrepreneur. The entrepreneur meanwhile work with the acquiring company where he handles the company he just sold to the corporate.

Initial public offering

A better alternative to selling your company to a corporate giant is to launch an initial public offering. An IPO is just another form of capital raise which takes place in the stock market and where investors are the real public. Prior to an IPO the company is considered private, this is why an IPO is also referred to as “going public.” There are certain rules and regulations that the company has to follow to go for an IPO. An IPO results in every share becoming a trade-able document whose price is decided based on the market factors like demand and supply. You will continue to have the amount of shares you had before but the decision making of the company now shifts to the board of directors elected by a majority of the shareholders.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think of our article on ‘startup funding’ in the comments section.

Originally published at www.feedough.com on April 12, 2017.

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of the online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, their websites, and online advertisements to carry out their marketing motives of brand/product awareness, user engagement and connect, etc. Digital marketing strategies are routes to fulfill digital marketing goals. Marketers usually confuse tactics with strategies and that is one of the main reasons why digital marketing strategies fail.

What constitutes a Digital Marketing strategy?

Digital Marketing Strategies are routes which business takes to achieve specific goals. Strategies can defined keeping in mind 6 layers –

Goals — Increased Traffic / More Reach / Increased Sales / Customer Retention etc. A goal should be measurable.

Device — Desktop, Mobile, Tablet, or any other digital gadget like Kindle, Apple Watch, etc.

Purpose — brand awareness / brand building or product awareness / increase in sales, etc.

Customer Profile — Demographics of the customers.

Location — City, country, countries, continent, or global.

Time frame for ROI — Sometimes the reason why digital marketing strategies fail is because marketers fail to predict and set the time-frame for ROI. They expect immediate returns from a strategy that would actually take an year to reap results.

Difference between Digital Marketing Strategies and Tactics.

Strategies are roads taken by the marketers to achieve their goals. Tactics are the steps they undertake to carry out the strategy. To make it simpler –

Strategy is the route business takes, whereas tactics are the shoes it wear.

For example, a digital strategy to increase user engagement on social media could be to post at least 8 times in a day. Whereas the tactics of digital marketing strategy could be to post on Facebook at around 3–5 pm and on twitter at around 6–7 pm.

Multiple Goals or No Goal

A digital marketing strategy must be formed keeping in mind a single goal which needs to be fulfilled. There can’t be a single digital marketing strategy to increase the reach and sales at the same time. Similarly a strategy which doesn’t have a set goal will reap varied and non measurable results and will be a waste of resources and time. Marketers should think about what each tactic should compel users to do and form user journey according to it.

The reason why digital marketing strategies fail is because marketers try to fulfill everything at once. They should realize that online marketing strategies, just like offline strategies, require a call to action, tactics, and results that can be measured.

Excessive Push Efforts (with no Pull Communication)

Some overly obsessed marketers forget the importance of pull effort in the communication. Push and Pull communication efforts can easily be distinguished. Pull communication is designed in such a way that the consumers willingly fulfill the marketing goals of the marketers whereas cases where the marketers insist customers to fulfill their goals, it is called push communication.

It’s not always bad to use a push communication and not always good to use pull efforts. But things have to be balanced keeping in mind the type of your product and your marketing needs.

push & pull strategies simplified

An imbalance can be seen in this digital video advertisement of Windows 7 where Microsoft is seen trying so hard to sell its new product.

Strategies & Tactics Confusion

Tactics are part of a strategy. When Tactics are mistaken for strategies, it becomes hard for a digital marketing strategy to succeed and reap results.

No Synergy

All marketing efforts, offline — online & online — online must be in synergy and focus on a single goal. Contradicting efforts may result in varied brand image and brand positioning in the mind of the customers.

An example of synergy in marketing efforts can be seen in strategies developed by IKEA. IKEA is amazing when it comes to marketing. It launched the Catalogue app in 2013 which not only gave users access to the company’s inventory, but via augmented reality, actually allowed them to view how items would look in their home spaces. This was a great step to synergize the online and offline marketing efforts and tackle competitors (both online and offline) effectively.

Lack of Research

Every marketing strategy is focused on customers. The company should know about their audience, their wants, needs, and luxury.

Digital Marketing strategy should give the users what they want. Content marketing and search engine Marketing strategies should focus more on the keywords and content whereas social media marketing, and email marketing should focus more user trends and engagement.

This research, however, should be done carefully or it can have results like one of the Microsoft’s trolls where it sent Hey Bae letter to millennials as an offer for interview.

My roommate received this email from a Microsoft recruiter today. pic.twitter.com/90Qwr78eGO

— Patrick Burtchaell (@pburtchaell) July 6, 2016

Rigidity

Digital business environment is more dynamic than the usual business environment. Rigid strategies with fixed tactics don’t usually work in the digital environment. Once goals are set, strategies and tactics are needed to be modified from time to time based on the user trends, search engine trends, and other digital factors.

Unable to predict the Time-frame

Some marketers accept a premature defeat because of wrong predicted time-frame for results from a digital marketing efforts. Digital marketing efforts, just like other marketing efforts, take time to reap desired results.

Digital marketing goal setting and execution is a bit different from usual marketing goals. It needs actual analytics to be read and understood to proceed.

Less Focus on Customers

When you focus more on your product and less on consumers and consumer psyche, you may land up in a mess similar to MCD which launched a name your own burger digital marketing campaign to support its create your taste campaign and ended up getting very hilarious and offending names. The campaign was pulled soon after it went live.

Mcd Digital marketing campaign

Not Following the Trend

Trend rules the digital world. If you know the art of using trend for your own benefit, you can be the king of digital world.

Many marketers fail to realize the importance of trend while implementing their efforts which is why many digital marketing strategies fail.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think of our article on Why Digital Marketing Strategies Fail in the comments section.

Originally published at www.feedough.com.