How to Build a High Traffic Travel Website
D
o you want a travel website that gets a lot of traffic and gives you quality sales leads?
We are handling a travel website project for an adventure tour company.
We built this adventure-tour business website site and generated sales leads for them without spending any money on Google / Paid ads. We are sharing lessons learned from this travel website project, where we took this website to more than 26,000 page views in a year.
This adventure tour website gets 2,000+ page views a month, and we will take it to more than 20,000 page views a month soon.
Analytics shows we’ve had more than 26,000 page views in the last year. Now our goal is to get this much traffic every month. That would be 2.4+ Lac page views a year.
In our journey of implementing Digital marketing to promote business, we learned a lot of things about getting traffic to a travel website.
We are sharing the 3 top tips for getting traffic so that you can gain confidence and get high traffic to your travel website.
Tip 1. Taking Consistent Action
Yes. Consistent, disciplined action is the most significant determining factor for the success of your website. Consistency might not sound like a secret when everyone is searching for secrets to get website traffic. But the real secret is: taking action every single day. Trust us; It is the No.1 skill required to drive your website traffic.
Growing traffic to a website is like planting a seed and developing it into a tree.
In the beginning, you will not see the seed sprout into a plant. Yet, you have to keep nurturing it every single day. You must keep publishing posts on your website at least once a week. Even if you cannot see any results, keep doing it. On other days do the keyword research related to your travel business, analyze the traffic statistics, and prepare content for new posts.
You need to water your plant (write posts) every day. They say, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years back, and the next best time is now.” We can say the same about growing traffic to your website. The best time was three years ago, and the next best time is now.
When you start creating posts for your website, you will see some results in a month or two, but the results might need to be more motivating. The results will be similar to a seed that sprouts into a plant but doesn’t bear fruits.
But, the sprouting is an indication that it is capable of bearing fruits in the future. When you post consistently, you will only be able to get leads out of it for a maximum of six-nine months. But you keep nurturing your website if you want it to grow into a big tree that will eventually bear fruits.
When growing a tree, you can’t measure the growth daily. Sometimes even after a week, you will not be able to see any difference. But within months and a year, you will see that the tree is growing big and soon it will be big enough, and you can pluck fruits.
When you publish a post on your website, you will not benefit from it immediately, unlike paid ads, where you get instant leads. That’s the most challenging part about nurturing a website.
Everyone expects results immediately. Wanting instant gratification for your work is the greatest enemy of a high-traffic website.
Remember how you started your business and how it has grown into what it is now. It didn’t happen overnight. There were a lot of consistent efforts over several years. That’s the only way you can create anything significant.
It’s the law of Nature. Good things grow organically and take time. You need to understand this very clearly to create a high-traffic website.
Here is a snapshot of the Organic keywords count and their ranking on Google.
As you can see, this website has 21 important keywords ranking in the first three positions on Google search. And 50 essential keywords rank between 4 and 10 on Google’s first page.
This site now has 71 keywords on the first page of Google and 1100+ organic keywords ranking on other pages, some of which will soon be on Google’s first page. These 71 keywords give this site free organic traffic from Google and generate sales leads without spending any money on Google ads. We could generate 300+ sales leads in November and December for a trip in January.
We could achieve all this by consistently putting up content on the website.
But how to be consistent? And Where to start?
We did this by writing 500 words every day about their brand. We wrote about the expertise they had developed in their business and “published it.”
We wrote one helpful blog post a week for their website. We were consistent and authentic. We didn’t wait for the best quality ideas or content; we just did it and did it regularly.
What we’ve learned is this: consistency beats talent. Consistency beats luck.And you know what – Consistency even beats quality.
That’s right. We regularly and consistently outperformed others whose work is of much higher quality than ours.
We didn’t do work for immediate rewards. Rewards eventually come as Google takes time to recognize the content and rank it higher on the first page.
We also ensured that the technical aspects of SEO – Search Engine Optimization was taken care of. With the right mix of valuable content, technical SEO and a waiting period of 2-3 months, these posts/pages ranked higher on the first page of Google.
Now, these site is getting free organic traffic that provides quality sales leads.
You need to have patience !!
Have you made any systematic investments? You know how the investment grows if you repeat the same thing repeatedly. After an extended period, the benefit of compounding sets in, and you have a corpus.
All significant achievements in life come with the power of compounding. Health, wealth, and also website traffic.
Tip 2. Write for Your Ideal customer
The second most powerful thing that helped us grow traffic was that we were able to connect with the readers well.
Do you realize that we are talking directly to you as you read this?
Mostly Yes!!!
We can connect with you because we write just for you. We will reach 100,000 people through this post, but everyone reading this post is an individual and will feel like we are writing to them directly.
You have to write for one person, and that person is your customer. You need to know that person well.
You may have a broad spectrum of customers but talk to one central customer avatar. Do you know your target customer well? How to build your ideal Customer Avatar?
Get a fair idea about their goals, fears, aspirations, failures, mindset, attitude, and more. Know them as a friend. That is how you build a customer avatar. It’s an image you make about your customer in your mind. That’s when you can write to them.
When you write, there is a feeling that you have to be relevant to all the people who will read your blog. But if you try to appeal to everybody, you’ll end up appealing to nobody. You have to write to your target customer.
The better you are at targeting one segment of the audience, the better you will be able to connect with them.
Get their attention first. Have a conversation with them using your posts.
Marketing is about good conversations.
Tip 3: Answer Buyer questions. Solve their problems.
Find buyer queries and answer them. Your website should be a channel and medium to help your buyers. Solve their problems.
You are reading this blog post because you want to build a high-traffic travel website.
If you are writing only about your business products and services, you will have a few readers from your social circle, but that’s about it. It will not spread, and you will not get more traffic because it is not helping people.
Find what your audience wants and write helpful posts on their problems.
Finding out what your audience wants is a challenging task. It takes a lot of effort to understand their problems. If required, call your existing customers. Speak to them for 10-15 minutes and understand their challenges better. Understanding their desires and goals and will help you to answer better.
The desire to answer and help people will only come when you understand their problems.
You cannot help someone whom you do not understand. Spend less time promoting your business directly. Use this indirect method of understanding your buyer’s desires and serving them. The people you help will ensure they help you by promoting your brand. They will keep coming back to you for more information, and sooner or later, many of them will be your customers.
Conclusion:
There are several tips and tricks for driving traffic to a website successfully. However, we have realized that some things are more important than others. The site’s design is important; the images on your website should be great, it should have a perfect domain name, and each page should be attractive with excellent graphics.
Yes, they are important. But having consistency, writing for your ideal customer, and helping them by answering their queries are even more critical. If you focus on the above three, you will make profits and build credibility and trust.
We hope you enjoyed reading this post.
If you have read this 1500+ word article, you have discovered the secret of keeping your audience engaged.
We wish you success.
Cheers,
Don’t Find Customers. Be Found !!
How would it feel if customers come flocking to you instead of you interrupting them with unsolicited promotions and advertisements?
You may think. Is it Even Possible? Yes. It’s possible.
You can attract customers to automatically come to you when it’s time for them to buy. This is known as Inbound Marketing.
Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on drawing in potential customers and visitors to your website or social media page instead of you interrupting them with unsolicited promotions and advertisements
Many brands have understood the power of Inbound Marketing and are embracing it in a big way.
They are spending 90% of their marketing money on inbound marketing and only 10% of it on outbound marketing.
Let’s face it. Reaching out to your customers with mass marketing techniques is no longer effective.
No one likes commercials popping up in the middle of their Facebook or Instagram feed.
No one likes waking up to an inbox full of salesy emails from brands especially if they have not subscribed to it.
Customers now decide for themselves what to buy, who to buy from, and most importantly when to buy.
You can no longer influence them to buy at your convenience.
Rather, you need to be available to them when they are ready to buy.
So, how do I know when my customer is going to buy?
How do I attract them so that they come to me?
Simple!!!
Instead of shoving your product or service in your customers’ faces, you focus on creating valuable content that answers their questions and solves their problems.
Whenever they are searching for solutions they find you and reach you.
Such leads are the most promising and have a very high chance of converting.
84% of consumers will buy from a brand they found or follow over a competitor.
How does Inbound Marketing work?
As you may have understood by now that Inbound marketing is pull marketing where you get prospects to find you.
It utilizes many forms of Digital Marketing – Content Marketing, Blogs, SEO, Social Media, Email automation, and online events in an integrated manner to create brand awareness and offer solutions.
In contrast to outbound marketing, where you attempt to find customers via exhibitions, trade shows, print, or online advertisements, inbound marketing earns the attention of customers whenever they are ready to buy.
In short, Customers find you, you don’t find them.
Inbound Marketing is replacing outdated “renting attention” tactics or Advertisements.
It is geared such that prospects find your company in the early stages of their decision-making process. This leads to a stronger influence on their future buying decisions.
Inbound marketing has numerous benefits when utilized effectively.
It helps to:
- Shape a preference and influence future purchases of your customers.
- Increase your Personal or Company brand awareness.
- Enable customers to engage with your brand at their point of need, 24/7.
- Generate qualified leads for less money (when compared with traditional marketing).
- Generate social media shares and inbound links.
- Put customers as the decision-maker leading to faster conversions.
What makes for a successful Inbound Digital Marketing Campaign?
A successful inbound marketing campaign incorporates all or parts of the following elements:
- Defining your Target audience: Identify your target audience and learn all you can about them. Click here to know more.
- Building a High Traffic Website or blog with useful content. Find what makes your audience tick and write content for your customers. Text, Videos, whitepapers, eBooks, e-newsletters, Testimonials, Case Studies… Any opportunity to share valuable content is an opportunity to drive traffic to your website or Blog. Make sure your content is seen by the right audience so that it brings in the right leads. Click here to know more.
- Search Engine Optimization: SEO ensures your content is structured effectively for search engines like Google so that they recognize it. Using effective keyword analysis, well-structured site design, and other SEO “best practices” will launch your site to the top of search results. SEO will ensure that your user-friendly content is ranked higher by Google. Click here to Know More.
- Social Media: 67% of online adults are using social media to share information. Use the widely popular online communities such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin effectively to share your content. Don’t irritate them with Sales Ads.
- Email Automation: Email Marketing automation empowers you with tools and strategies to convert leads, fans, and followers to customers. You can accomplish this by cultivating relationships with leads that are not yet ready to buy (most often via targeted email campaigns). Email Automation also enhances your inbound efforts by helping you separate good leads from not-so-good ones.
- Online Events and Webinars: You can take inbound marketing to the next level with online webinars and live events.
To be successful in inbound marketing, you need to introduce a disciplined approach to content creation, introduce marketing automation tools that help you to nurture and score leads. You need to optimize how these leads flow through the sales pipeline.
Why Inbound Marketing should be your preferred strategy?
Buyers today are more empowered due to easy online access. The internet provides them with instant information and the gratification of finding what they searched for.
They have access to detailed specs, pricing, and reviews about goods and services 24/7 in a few clicks. Smartphones have added a wherever/whenever dimension to every aspect of their search experience.
Not only are they finding but also sharing on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. This builds immense trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing your business.
How to Quantify Your Inbound Marketing Success?
When measuring the success of your inbound marketing efforts, there are a few metrics to choose from.
You can look at your SEO rankings, inbound links, or the number of articles published to derive insights into how your campaigns are performing.
Having 5,000 followers on Facebook or Instagram might sound impressive, but this number is useless if you don’t get real business results.
Instead, you should be looking at metrics that show how Inbound marketing helped your company generate more leads and faster growth against your competitors.
One of the valuable metrics is organic traffic.
It tells you how many people find your website by means of a search engine rather than typing in your URL or searching for your brand name.
If your website or blog pops up high in the search results, then you’ve benefited from a successful inbound marketing strategy.
Tracking how much of this organic traffic converted into inbound leads will give you an idea of how you might need to adjust your marketing strategies.
You can also check how quickly your online presence graph is improving using analytics.
Conclusion: Make Inbound Digital Marketing Work For Your Brand!
In today’s online world, the Internet and social media are shaping our daily decisions. Customers are more educated as they are exposed to more information than ever. This phenomenon is causing a change in buying behaviors. As a result, all businesses have to adjust and respond to this shift.
Outbound marketing efforts alone are no longer enough to produce leads. If you need to attract customers and not chase them down you need to invest in inbound marketing.
When it comes to inbound marketing, the more you invest, the greater your return.!
To be successful in inbound marketing, businesses need to fix an annual marketing budget and execute it in a sustained manner over a longer period rather than doing sporadic acts of marketing activity which usually is a waste of time and money.
7 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO
As a business owner, if you know about Digital Marketing, you probably know that you need SEO for your website.
The primary reason you want SEO is to rank on the first page of google. You also know that if your site is ranking on the first page in Google, then it is worth investing in SEO.
SEO is worth and will always be.
But ranking on the first page is not the only benefit SEO brings for you to take SEO seriously. SEO will improve your website’s overall visibility as it will start appearing in Google searches, but there are other fundamental values that SEO offers.
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In this article, I will clarify to business owners why you need SEO rather than paid ads for your business.
How using SEO, you can take your brand to the next level with SEO. This is regardless of the industry you belong to or the size of your business.
1: The Ad Costs are Increasing
Facebook ad costs and Google pay-per-click cost has doubled in the last few years. The cost to acquire a lead through Facebook and Google ads has increased tremendously. The cost has been increasing every year. If you run an ad for INR 10 a click last year, it is at least INR 20 a click now.
2: The Quality of Leads is decreasing
Even though the lead acquisition cost has increased, the lead quality has decreased. With the increased cost, one would have expected to get quality leads and convert them into buyers.
But that’s not the case anymore. Paid ad campaigns are now not as profitable as before.
I am seeing a marked decrease in the quality of leads I get from the paid ads campaigns I run for my customers.
What is the reason?
This is because your buyers are saturated with ads. They see several ads every day in your business category, and they are not just clicking on your ads but also your competitors.
Audiences are now Smarter than before. They aren’t clicking ads or filling out the lead forms like earlier. Some are using ad blockers and other tools to block the ads. They are more worried about their privacy.
In the past, buyers have clicked on ads with tall claims, but when they transacted with them, they had a bad experience. So customers have changed their perception of the ads and don’t trust their ads.
3: You are approaching it Wrong
Are you approaching your paid ad campaigns as your sales/conversion drivers?
Are you running your ad campaigns such that you want to convert your cold or first-time audience into leads or customers?
I’m sure many are doing this. What was the result of those campaigns? The answer, in all probability, is – Low response.
The response is low because you cannot convert someone who knows very little about you or your business and try to convert them into your customer with one single ad.
Conversions no longer happen like that. It happens in stages over an extended buying cycle.
4: SEO has a positive impact on the Buying Cycle
The buying cycle starts with awareness. A buyer who is facing a problem has to know about your solution. Then he should know how your solution can solve his problem, how it will benefit him, and why he should buy it from you instead of all other competitors.
A lot happens when the buyer realizes he has a problem, searches the internet, finds you and decides to purchase your solution to fix his problem.
This is called a buyer’s journey or buying cycle. You can no longer transform the customer with just one ad.
Let’s assume you are running a paid ads campaign for your product or service on Google. If your ad landing page is good, you may get 1% or 2% of direct conversions, which will directly come to you.
It means that 98% of those who clicked your ads left without taking action.
You can still retarget them with more ads and increase your conversion rate by another 3%. Still, it leaves 95% of your visitors out. If you have the best ad copy and a highly effective sales copy, you could get 10% of your audience to convert.
Even then, 90% of your audiences are not opting for you. That’s where most of your paid ad campaigns end. You cannot keep repeating your campaigns and retargeting your leaked customers until they convert. The cost of such repeat ads and retargeting is too high. Isn’t it?
SEO solves this problem.
5: SEO Means Increased Traffic, Engagement & Conversions
Customers do their research. That’s one of the most significant advantages of the internet from a buyer’s perspective.
Use this to your advantage. First, create relevant content to attract visitors to your website, engage them at different stages of the funnel, and finally convert them.
Get a good SEO agency or SEO expert who will work and create great content. Creating great content is mostly a one-time effort.
After that, you need to add more juice (relevancy) to the content consistently to retain its position at the top of the search results.
Then you build content for all the stages of the buyer’s journey and implement it on your website. People at this particular stage can find the content through search engines, visit it, consume it and then a few of them will become your sales lead.
These leads can come back anytime again for more content, check out your product or service offerings, and eventually become your customers.
All this will happen without you doing anything.
No sequential ads and no retargeting ad campaigns are required. No repeated ad money to be spent. Isn’t it great?
6: SEO Builds Trust & Credibility
Since the audience has found your website via search engines, he trusts it more because he understands it takes a lot of work to rank at the top of the search results. Running the ads is much more straightforward for any seller he pays to get the buyer’s attention.
A lead acquired with a search result is much better than one obtained with ads. These leads will convert to a buyer faster than the ad route lead because the buyer takes all the actions here without any external push. He has taken all the action himself.
And the best part is you’ll keep getting website visitors forever unless you stop updating your content. In that case, someone else will outrank you. If you update your content regularly, you can rank for more keywords spanning different stages of your customer journey.
That is how SEO is much more powerful and valuable than ever in these times, significantly when the ad costs are rising while the ad trust is decreasing.
7: SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light
Applying quality SEO to your business means submersing an SEO expert along with you and your brand. He has to understand your passion for the business and brand truly.
The better he understands your business, the more opportunities he will find with SEO for your business to thrive.
High-quality SEO will always discover new opportunities for your business. The better a customer’s need is understood, the more product or services you can offer and thrive. You can leverage these opportunities and outshine your competitors with an early mover advantage.
Conclusion:
Implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand’s website with relevant content will always benefit that business and its marketing efforts.
SEO with buyer-specific content is the “new age” marketing technique. It’s critical to a brand’s growth today, especially as competition continues to increase and grow.
Social Media Lessons to Learn from TamilNadu Weatherman Posts
Who is the Tamilnadu weatherman and what are his posts about?
When massive floods hit Tamil Nadu in December 2015, a silent hero rose to the occasion. This silent hero from Chennai started a revolution in the world of weather forecasts.
During this unprecedented flooding, most cities in Tamil Nadu had a power outage and continuous rains. The rain kept pounding each day, and the only hope people had was that the tough time would pass.
This is when our Chennai weatherman Pradeep John or PJ as he is called in his personal circle, stepped in and became a hero.
Pradeep John, now, popularly known as the Tamilnadu weatherman posted regular updates on the cloud patterns on his Facebook page. He also forecasted the possibility of rains in the coming days based on scientific data and analysis.
This Tamil Nadu weatherman’s interpretations were spot on.
His love for numbers stemmed from the fact that he has an MBA in finance!!
In the world of Facebook, he is known as the Tamil Nadu weatherman or Chennai weatherman. He has more than half a million followers on Facebook, and his following is growing exponentially.
But he is more than just a weatherman. He is an individual who is passionate about the weather and its changing patterns. For all wannabe weathermen who want to learn weather patterns and cloud behavior, he would be the perfect guide as his posts are very descriptive and enlightening.
Digital Marketers can learn a lot from this Tamil Nadu weatherman.
One biggest lesson would be – How to use social media for a good cause and educate people, in his case about the weather.
He considers himself to be a pluviophile. The meaning of the word pluviophile~ (n.) a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days
In Tamil Nadu, it is was a usual practice of people to start the day by reading newspapers or visiting a temple.
But with the advent of digital media, times have changed now. People now open Facebook first thing in the morning and most of them check what Tamil Nadu weatherman posts today.
This is the impact he has created over a few years.
The critical factor which makes him stand out is the accuracy of his weather forecast.
In December 2016, When the Vardah storm hit Chennai, he was the first person to issue a warning about a “very severe” cyclonic storm hitting Tamil Nadu’s shores. He posted this on Facebook, asking people not to venture out sharing that the cyclone looks deadly.
After his regular updates and warnings, the schools, colleges, and offices were shut in Tamil Nadu.
His Facebook page is most sought after by people, and he takes a lot of pain to keep updating the page because he is concerned for the well-being of people.
He is a great humanitarian, and when he is not sharing weather forecasts, he inspires people with his quotes.
In one of his interviews, he has quoted “It’s not always about the knowledge. It is how you connect to the people that defines you”.
How are his weather forecasts accurate?
How does he get this data on the weather?
He spends around INR 20,000 per annum out of his pocket to get the weather data and study it. He has the thirst to gain knowledge in the weather domain and share it with people.
The Tamilnadu weather man himself has posted on Facebook that he has been mysteriously helped on several occasions by strangers. To quote Paul Coelho “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”.
This has resulted in almost all his forecasts being near to accurate.
What are the Social Media Marketing Lessons To Learn From this Tamil Nadu Weatherman?
1. Help People & Answer Their Key Questions (solve problems):
As a blogger, influencer or Social Media Marketer, always identify the critical issues of your audience first. Then see how you can address them through your blogs/updates on social media channels. This is exactly what this Chennai weatherman does. He identifies the critical problems of people during Chennai Rains and addresses them in his posts. Millions of people search in Google for “Tamilnadu weatherman posts today” and read his posts.
His Facebook updates usually get thousands of shares and also get widely circulated on Whatsapp groups. In Tamil Nadu, when people plan their travel, they first see his Facebook page before they leave their homes/offices.
2. Focus on One core Digital Channel:
Many Social Media Marketers tend to use a lot of Channels and try to post and optimize all channels for their success. The two things to learn from his success story are –
Understand Where your customers are.
Which channel you are most comfortable with.
Chennai alone has 7.5 million users on Facebook, close to about 15 million people from Tamil Nadu. So, Instead of focusing on Instagram, Twitter and other channels Pradeep concentrates only on Facebook – a platform that the Tamil Nadu audience is most comfortable with.
He has now connected his Facebook updates with his Twitter profile which gets him additional attention because of his great content and popularity.
3. Simplify Complex Things:
This Tamil Nadu weatherman has the ability to simplify the complex graphical representations about the weather and explain in a simple manner. Here is an example of one of his interpretations – “The rain band is a snake-shaped cloud”. This helps the common man to take a look at his representations and understand them quickly.
4. Be Consistent:
Many users of Social Media start their journey with a bang. They share several posts in a spark but later fade away. Pradeep John doesn’t wait for Monsoon season to share his weather updates (which he is most known for), even during the summer season his page is active. He gives regular updates on Heatwaves in the summer season, shares inspirational quotes memes, real images, quick videos, links to articles and more to engage his audience.
He is consistent with his posts though he claims that he is not doing it full time.
In the days of rain, I break this self-imposed rule – says this remarkable Tamilnadu weatherman.
Why to use Google Analytics for Business
G
oogle Analytics is a web analytics tool provided by Google for free and if you aren’t utilizing it yet for your business, then you’re missing out on something significant !!
Nowadays, developing and hosting a website is relatively easy and familiar among small business owners.
But only a few know how to leverage the website to drive prospects and acquire new customers from the website.
Whether you use the website for personal or professional use, it is imperative to know three things.
Who visits your website?
How did they reach it?
What was their behavior while they spent time visiting your business pages?
You can acquire all this data and more from Google Analytics.
With this data, you have the potential to convert your business website from mediocre to outstanding. This is the power of using Google Analytics.
Google Analytics, in simple terms, analyses and reports every piece of information your site receives right from the moment visitors click on your site till they leave it.
Noticing the data from Google analytics is one aspect, but interpreting it and taking action is another.
Google Analytics provides you insights and recommendations based on which you can take action to improve your Internet marketing ROI.
Here are four crucial aspects that google analytics shows about your website.
- It gives you an accurate description of your audience.
- You can find out every detail about your website users, from their demographics, interests, and behavior patterns to which pages they liked the most.
- You can also track what drove them to the site or check if they left your site without visiting another page (the bounce rate).
- Which are the popular pages visited?
With this data, You can:
Direct your content to the right audience and boost your site traffic.
Segment users according to their personalities.
Reshape the value of your page content by determining which are the popular pages visited on your website.
Focus on the type of visitors your site receives and build and enhance the experience for the relevant visitors in the long run.
Develop and maintain a robust online identity by tracking this data effectively.
Subsequently, you can deploy your marketing strategies creatively and increase your conversions.
Creating Your Ideal Customer Avataar
How to know who my Ideal Customer is?
In any business, it is essential to know who my Target audience is or, in business terms, who my Customer is.
All communication you do about your business will be based on these essential criteria.
In business, learning how to talk and when to talk is vital, but the most important is whom to talk to.
If I talk to everyone, then I am talking to no one.
You have to talk to people directly from your niche.
And for this, you need to figure out the personality or persona of your Customer.
But how is that possible? Because your Customer isn’t one person, they are a group of people of different ages, regions, languages, etc. It can be so confusing.
How to Find the Ideal Client or Target Audience?
To find the ideal client, you need to develop a Customer Avatar?
Two important aspects for developing a Customer Avatar are:
1. Learn their Demo-graphics (What is their age/ Which region they come from etc.)
2. Learn their Psycho-graphics (What are their Interests /Likes/ Dislikes / Fears etc.)
For this, develop a Customer Avatar questionnaire.
From the data you collect from the questionnaire, you have to focus on the center, not the periphery.
In the center, you will find people from a particular age group, region, interests, likes/dislikes, etc.
Narrow down the customers to one person.
Learn the art of communicating with that person better. It is now a one-on-one conversation with that person.
Because every person reads from their device alone, emails and direct messages are more powerful than social media. Social media posts are talking to everyone.
“Marketing is about good conversations.”
I had heard this many years ago from a friend who is a salesperson but had not taken it seriously then.
Since I am in (digital) marketing, it has struck me like lightning.
I learned that to be successful; I need to communicate with only some people. I need to focus on improving my communication with my customers.
Digital mediums like blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc., has given us an excellent opportunity to reach and communicate with our customers directly. And for that, we don’t have to travel or seek appointments. I can be sitting at my desk in my office and conversing with them.
I can also reach a wider audience. I need to learn a manner of communication that differs from how I do with friends.
The most important aspect is I need to be Authentic.
I have to be myself. I should not portray a false image or personality, which many people do on social media.
People are sick of seeing false personalities. They want to listen to authentic people.
Some people may dislike genuine behavior and drift away, but some will stay. I will gain new followers.
It’s part of the churning process.
To be an excellent communicator, you need to have various life experiences.
It would be best to pursue your hobbies, learn new skills, or read books. Having varied experiences is vital to be a better marketer.
Here it is essential to know that you should join an existing conversation that people already have in their minds.
Do Not assume and start a new topic or discussion.
Write an article or a blog post with a catchy headline
Let the headline lead to the first sentence and then to the second, third, and fourth sentences.
Make sure every word is carved out very well, as people’s attention spans are very low nowadays.
You have to understand your Customer so well that the products and services you sell should fit them so well that they have to desire it.
If you can find people to fill out the customer avatar questionnaire or need help to talk or meet people, you can make an educated guess.
But, it would be best if you never assumed or pushed a product expecting the market to accept it.
Initially, the accuracy of the customer avatar will be less, but later on, you will get more accurate.
Having a name and image of a customer avatar and keeping it in front of you while writing the articles helps a lot.
By taking time to understand these leading “characters,” you’ll be able to capture your Customer’s attention better, keep them engaged and ensure that your business offerings are bestsellers — with healthy profits to match.
Post-Lockdown Scenario: Will Technology Change The Way We Do Business Forever
Several businesses are at a standstill due to social distancing measures and the extended lockdown has amplified the strain further.
Nevertheless, some businesses have been quite productive and smart in utilizing their resources with the aid of technology and have managed to stay afloat.
They are taking the help of the internet, messaging applications, video conferencing, and cloud infrastructure to work from home. All business meetings are taken over by video calling and virtual conferencing.
Traditional companies that have never used technology are struggling to get to these platforms, but are slowly getting used to it.
Schools and colleges have started as per schedule, but the difference is they are taking their sessions on video calling apps, and students are attending their lectures online.
Not only student’s even professionals and homemakers are taking up new courses to upgrade their skills.
Online learning platforms like Upgrad, Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, etc have found new users who want to enhance their skills and knowledge. It is not that these courses were not available earlier, it is the free time that people are having due to the lockdown and they want to utilize it with learning. This has created more demand for existing and new online courses There is a number of free courses available too during this lockdown period.
Apart from business, technology is also being used by many for personal activities such as socializing, streaming shows and movies, etc. Digital entertainment platforms like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar, etc are gaining a lot of fresh viewers apart from the already existing ones during this lockdown,
The world after lockdown…
Will Technology Change The Way We Do Business after lockdown?
A Big Yes !!!
Technology has been a savior during the lockdown and it will be remembered for its major role to survive in the pandemic. It’s hard to imagine being without the internet in this lockdown.
Video calling & Online Education
Technology has proven that traveling for a meeting, attending a course or educational program is not as important anymore since it can be achieved through virtual means. Online meetings and training with video conferencing or webinars may not be as effective as in-person interaction but one can’t deny how convenient it has proven to be.
Use of Social media platforms
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, Snapchat, Tik Tok, etc, are being used and viewed by people for entertainment and also to stay updated. Even those who weren’t active on social media have started using it during the lockdown. Not only updates in people’s lives, but also product and service offerings are broadcasted through social media applications. This might become a new way to announce things even after the lockdown.
Although social media was already used before, it is expected to grow exponentially after the lockdown as more businesses will utilize it to gain visibility.
Variety of apps
So far apps like Swiggy, Zomato, BigBasket and Uber were already installed on our smartphones. This lockdown saw a tremendous increase in the download of fitness apps. People who neglected their health have now become fitness conscious and are more concerned about their well-being.
Several educational apps are downloaded by students for their studies apart from their regular online classes.
Even after the lockdown ends, these apps will stay because they efficiently helped during the lockdown and work from home activities.
Marketing
Several big businesses were already digitally active and using Digital Marketing even before this pandemic. But now even small businesses have to learn the tactics of digital marketing and try to reach their target audience by digital means.
In the post COVID situation, only those businesses that are online and reach their customers digitally will survive and grow.
Digital marketing will prove to be a boon for many small businesses in the future.
Conclusion
It’s now time that you revamp business operations and shift as much as online for success in the long term.
If you are confused about it, just contact me, so that I can help you grow your business online
Technology will not be the purview of big companies but even small businesses will have to adopt technology to get an upper hand.
Those who find it scary and don’t adapt to this change will find it difficult to survive and eventually perish.
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin
How to Keep Your Ideal Clients Engaged
T
o engage with your Ideal Clients, you start conversations with them. When you converse with them intelligently, you get to know them better. Such interactions allow them to tell you what they want and need from your business.
How do you keep your Ideal Customers engaged?
Before knowing how to keep your Ideal Clients engaged, you should know precisely who your Ideal Client is.
How to know who is my Ideal Client is?
In your business, it is essential to know who is your Ideal Client or, in business terms, who your customer is.
All communication you do about your travel business will be based on these essential criteria.
In business, learning how to talk and when to talk is essential. But the most vital aspect is who to talk to.
If I talk to everyone, then I am talking to no one.
You have to talk to people directly about your niche.
And for this, you need to figure out the personality or persona of your Customer.
But how is that possible? Because your Customer isn’t one person, they are a group of people of different ages, regions, languages, etc. It can be so confusing.
How to Find the Ideal Client or Target Audience?
To find the ideal client, you need to develop a Customer Avatar.
Two important aspects for developing a Customer Avatar are:
who is your ideal client
1. Learn their Demo-graphics (What is their age/ Which region do they come from etc.)
2. Learn their Psycho-graphics (What are their Interests /Likes/ Dislikes / Fears etc.)
For this, develop a Customer Avatar questionnaire.
From the data you collect from the questionnaire, you have to focus on the center, not the periphery.
In the center, you will find people from a particular age group, region, interests, likes/dislikes, etc. Narrow down the customers to one person. Learn the art of communicating with that person better. It is now a one-on-one conversation with that person.
Because every person is sitting on their laptop alone, emails and direct messages are more powerful than social media. Social media posts are talking to everyone.
“Marketing is about good conversations.”
Reflect on your past efforts at marketing and find out if you were having good conversations with your prospective clients. “Better communicators are better Marketers”
good conversations |
To be successful in marketing, you communicate with only some people. It would be best if you focused on improving your communication with your Ideal Clients.
The digital medium has allowed us to reach and communicate with our customers directly. And for that, we don’t have to travel or seek appointments. I can be sitting at my desk in my office and conversing with them.
I can also reach a wider audience. I need to learn a manner of communication that differs from how I do with friends.
The most important aspect is I need to be Authentic.
I have to be myself. I should not portray a false image or personality, which many people do on social media. People are sick of seeing false personalities. They want to listen to authentic people. Some people may dislike genuine behavior and drift away, but some will stay. I will gain new followers. It’s part of the churning process. To be an excellent communicator, you need to have various life experiences. It would be best to pursue your hobbies, learn new skills, or read books. Having varied experiences is vital to be a better marketer. Here it is essential to know that you should join an existing conversation that people already have in their minds. Do Not assume and start a new topic or discussion.
How to start a conversation online?
Write an article or a blog post with a catchy headline.
Let the headline lead to the first sentence and then to the second, third, and fourth sentences.
travel blogs
Make sure every word is carved out very well, as the attention span of people could be much higher nowadays. You have to understand your Customer so well that the products and services you sell should fit them so well that they have to desire it. If you can not find people to fill out the customer avatar questionnaire or cannot talk or meet people, then you can make an educated guess.
But, it would help if you never assumed or pushed a product expecting the market to accept it.
Initially, the accuracy of the customer avatar will be less, but later on, you will get more accurate.
Having a name and image of a customer avatar and keeping it in front of you while writing the articles helps a lot.
By taking time to understand these leading “characters,” you’ll be able to capture your ideal Customer’s attention better, keep them engaged and ensure that your travel business offerings are bestsellers — with healthy profits to match.
How To Build a Solid Digital Marketing Plan
T
he biggest challenge I’ve seen most small business owners have is to move off the excel spreadsheet and accept that they need to create a solid Digital Marketing Plan.
Another significant issue is to have digital marketing efforts in a consistent and sustained manner rather than doing it sporadically. Most of the efforts I see are “random acts of marketing,” which means the company will suddenly start or stop its marketing efforts without any Digital Marketing Plan.
When the company wants leads, it turns it on, and when it gets leads, it will turn them off.
There are several reasons for this. It could be due to the seasonality of the business, production capabilities, or availability of resources for marketing.
The most potent advice I can give a local business owner is to commit to a solid Digital Marketing Plan all year long.
Why commit to a solid Digital Marketing Plan all year long?
Because to leverage a Digital Marketing Plan, you use content marketing with paid advertising and marketing automation systems to create and build an active list of prospects.
These prospects will convert to customers at different times during the year, giving you a continuous stream of business.
You can nurture the “fence-sitters” (a group of buyers doing research and not fully ready to buy) over a more extended period by giving them answers to their queries. These buyers need time before making their purchase decision, so you must actively keep them engaged.
I understood the dynamics of this process and found that one can still market in the off-season months when sales fall and benefit from these prospects in “research mode,” which would search out your solutions and then opt-in to our offers.
This is only possible if you stay connected with them consistently.
This is the actual value of developing a consistent and sustained “digital marketing plan” rather than looking at marketing as just paying for and buying leads.
A prospect of your company acquired through your content is much more than a lead. When properly nurtured, many of these prospects would eventually become buyers.
Look at these sustained efforts from the perspective of a marketing funnel and start developing your first few pieces of content strategically designed for one purpose: getting their information.
Why will an online visitor to your site share his information?
Offer him something for Free!!
By free, I mean guides (white papers, lead magnets, or whatever you can offer to sample your product or service,
It should be relevant to your marketing target “avatar” or your core demographic group of potential buyers.
The guides are “The 7 Facts You Should Know” and “The 10 Questions You Should Ask.” These can be focused on common questions your prospects want answers to.
Most of the time, your sales team is going out or attending calls to answer questions. Whereas what you want them is to go out and close deals. Right !!!
So answer questions for your prospects using your marketing channels and deliver that content as part of your strategy (by building it in advance).
This will allow you to shrink the barrier of objections and close the sale more effortlessly. This way, you begin to create more qualified buyers.
How does one implement this as part of a Digital Marketing Plan?
Perform research around the keywords and phrases your prospects are searching for and begin to optimize your blog posts and create content on your website around these topics.
Once you know what people were looking for when they were searching for the products and services you offer, create free guides around those terms.
The content you create should lead the prospects to an opt-in landing page
These pages should be connected to specific marketing funnels and designed to segment prospects into distinct buyer groups.
From here, let the marketing automation and lead-nurturing systems provide a steady drip of content, known as drip email marketing.
Have distinctly different marketing messages written for a specific avatar or persona around that particular product or service.
Not only will your prospects benefit from this content you create, but the business and local brand will also benefit.
Over time, your brand will be perceived as a subject matter expert or an authority in the market simply because you are becoming the go-to destination for answering prospects’ queries through free guides and blog content.
You achieve all this by simply giving away your best content for free.
This info-marketing process, which addresses common questions, will significantly reduce your sales team or call center’s stress.
Since your guides have already addressed the common questions, over time, your sales team will interact with the prospect only to close the deal.
As you have already positioned your brand on value rather than price, you will also be able to demand premium prices.
Once you focus on marketing using a Digital Marketing Plan, you will discover that marketing automation and follow-up systems automatically begin to create more qualified buyers.
How To Use Covid-19 To Benefit Your Business
It’s been more than a month now since the Coronavirus crisis made our lives upside down.
Governments announced a complete lockdown to practice social distancing and businesses took a big hit. No business owner was prepared for this situation as the Coronavirus is something none of us expected.
Have a look at the traffic stats below. The result for many industries is catastrophic.
There are several businesses that have started to lose a lot of money.
What can we do in such helpless situations? How can we use Covid-19 to benefit our Business?
Never Let A Good Crisis Go Waste – Winston Churchill
Yes !! We can use this crisis to our advantage.
All of us are having more time now (sadly), so use it to our advantage.
Lockdown is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
The lockdown is a good time to look back at all the possible errors in our business and work towards rectifying them.
In normal times, all business owners are busy running theIr businesses and have very little time to relax, think creatively and innovate.
Most of the time we are in fear of the competition and finding solutions to deal with it. Preparing a strategy to grow our brand is the last thing in our minds. Now as most businesses have come to a halt because of the fear of the coronavirus, use this time constructively and innovate.
Utilize this Pause, rethink your current activities, adapt to the current situation and plan for the future. Learn from your past mistakes and take corrective actions.
Now is the time to prepare a marketing strategy and implement it with digital initiatives so you can grow when the lockdown ends.
Imagine a situation – A Coronavirus vaccine is produced in the next few months and business re-starts with a bang. In such a situation you will be caught on the wrong foot if you are not prepared and competitors who have planned well get most of the business.
This is the time to build your online presence and come out stronger on the other side of lockdown
Almost everybody is at home and is utilizing their internet devices more than ever before. This is the perfect time to make a strong presence online using websites, social media and automated Email marketing.
Build your website if you don’t have one. If you have a website probably it was built many years ago. Redesign or Rebuild your business website with changes in functionality that you wanted to undertake for a long time but didn’t have time.
Review your customer data and analyze your customer avatar to find out the best marketing solution. All lead generation services like Email Marketing, Content Marketing or Google / FB Ads depend on the customer avatar.
Click Here to Know How to Create your ideal customer avatar.
This lockdown is an opportunity to try new marketing ideas, for adopting technology or for automation to reach out to your customers.
You will struggle to generate revenue if you start marketing post lockdown as all marketing efforts take two to three months to generate results.
Start now
Now is the time to market organically and build a strong brand.
Build trust with your audience by starting conversations with them and get them attached to your brand by launching digital campaigns.
This is a perfect opportunity to get your digital marketing plans sorted.
Plan for your short-term and long-term needs. Your short-term goal should be to generate income for business survival and your long-term goal should be to build a strong presence in the market. Both goals can be achieved with digital means.
Feel free to contact me if you need help in preparing a Digital Marketing Plan
It’s important you stay positive, put your head down, and build for the future.
Vaccines are being tested and may come out sooner or later. There is light at the end of the tunnel. We should be prepared to welcome that light with new energy and enthusiasm.
Cheers !!
Do share this post with your business friends who might find it beneficial.
