Connect with us

Finance

Future-Forward Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses Today

Avatar photo

Published

on

business-interview

We have become so digital-centric, it’s hardly possible to visualize the future of business without it. Just like it’s impossible to imagine businesses thriving without digital marketing.

As we look at the future of business, companies that have already incorporated digital marketing will work towards perfecting their strategies.

For these companies, the question becomes, “what digital marketing strategies can we implement today that take into account the future?”

We are going to explore some of these strategies here.

If you haven’t joined the digital bandwagon, well, it’s about time you do or risk losing substantial business opportunities to competitors that already have.

1.      Data Analytics

Data analytics is a strategy that will remain relevant for years to come.

It examines large data sets to draw conclusions about consumer behavior, rising trends, and untapped opportunities your business can leverage.

So rather than drawing your insights from whiteboards and papers, you digitize your data and allow technology to do the job.

The results are far more accurate and allow you to make research-informed marketing decisions.

Decisions that facilitate highly optimized marketing campaigns, better value for clients, improved operational efficiency and increased sales.

Here are some ways data analytics may help your business:

  • Improving sales forecasting. By comparing historical feedback (customer behavior, responses, complaints, and sales activities) and present circumstances, data analytics help you understand your performance and even predict future circumstances. You can then make proper budgetary allocations.
  • Improving marketing segmentation. Data analytics allow you to define your buyer personas and group potential customers into these personas. It makes for granular level message personalization that appeals to audiences and encourages engagement.
  • Boosting email marketing campaigns for improved interactions. Email is perfect for reaching audiences. Data analytics steps in to let you know which subject lines and messages generate engagement, and the best days and times to push out emails.

2.      Chatbot Marketing

With artificial intelligence technology continuously developing, chatbots are becoming increasingly helpful in providing fast and efficient solutions to site visitors.

Round-the-clock availability feature means your site serves customers and prospects nonstop, boosting lead generation efforts and revenue.

To build an effective chatbot strategy, consider the following:

  • Understand your users. Having an all-round view of your customer aka your buyer persona should shape the scope and execution of this strategy.
  • Define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Think about your customer conversion process and work backward to identify all touchpoints. What value can your chatbot offer? How can it get site visitors to convert?
  • Choose a platform. The obvious choice is your website, but you can also have them on your social media channels. On your website, consider placing the bot on high-intent pages (service pages, pricing pages, and landing pages), high-traffic pages, and blogs.
  • Create chat flows. Create pre-planned conversations based on varying customer responses for your chatbot to follow. You should also program the chatbot to send queries it doesn’t understand to human agents.
  • Build the bot. You can build your chatbot using a chatbot builder (like Chatfuel, Pandorabots, ManyChat, MobileMonkey, etc) or buy one. Both options have a different impact in terms of resources and skills needed, risk management, and user experience.
  • Test the bot. Use every possible interaction you can think of to test the chatbot before going live. It will help minimize errors when you go live.
  • Monitor your bot. Keep an eye on the bot once it’s live to ensure it works as you intended. Update the bot with evolving industry trends and common questions site visitors ask.

3.      Interactive Content

Interactive content facilitates a two-way conversation with your audience. They are not just reading what you’ve written, but can engage with it and try out different outcomes.

So, while static content works, consumers are increasingly interested in interactive content that gives them a feel of products/services.

This type of content does a great job of grabbing audience attention and boosting lead generation while allowing you to collect user data.

You can embed them in your email marketing campaigns, landing pages, ads, and on social media posts.

Examples of interactive content include interactive calculators, interactive assessments, interactive quizzes, interactive infographics, and interactive videos.

Benefits of using interactive content include:

  • Attracting and engaging users. The dynamic nature of this content grabs attention and keeps your visitors engaged longer. Audiences personalize the content in real-time for varied outcomes.
  • Assisting lead generation. Experiences like calculators and assessments offer real value to users, which means audiences are more likely to share their contact information for them.
  • Aiding SEO efforts. Incorporating interactive content and sharing it on social media, website, emails or paid ads may help improve brand visibility. Making your interactive content shareable may help increase backlinks and improve your SEO.

4.      Cold Calling

How is cold calling a future-forward strategy?

As long as we’re setting up new businesses and looking for solutions to improve operational efficiency and boost sales, cold calling has a future.

Sales and marketing teams will continue prospecting and reaching out to businesses they haven’t dealt with before to share their unique value propositions

Communication is real-time, two-way, allowing teams to get feedback and evaluate the quality of their leads.

It gives them a deeper understanding of their target market and how to develop personal relationships.

Here are actionable tips to help you reach more prospects and close deals:

  • Pre-qualify your leads. Study your target market to understand their needs, motivations, pain points, and your solution’s capability. It will ensure you spend more time talking with good-fit brands and not wasting time on those who aren’t interested.
  • Know your offerings. Keep useful data and stats handy so you can share it with prospects. Go further and stay abreast of industry trends, legislation and their impact on your brand/solutions..
  • Use a script. Just don’t read it verbatim unless your company requires you to do so—in which case you should try to sound natural. Cover all the points you wish to discuss and include some FAQs, objections, and objective responses.
  • Keep things simple. Most B2B needs and concerns revolve around improving operational efficiency, driving higher revenue, or reducing costs. Explain in the simplest terms possible how your products/services solve these problems.
  • Agree on the next step. Before ending the call, be sure you both agree on what will happen next then act accordingly.

5.      Influencer Marketing

From customers to industry experts, company employees, and journalists, B2B influencers command a following in their niche.

It may not be a huge following like you would find in the B2C sector, but it is an engaged one. And targeting an engaged audience is perfect for maximizing visibility, building your credibility, and improving sales numbers.

Top considerations when implementing the influencer marketing strategy include:

  • Create reasonable timelines. While B2Bs aren’t likely to buy on impulse, an influencer they admire and respect is likely to sway their decisions. Keep this in mind, besides the fact that B2B purchases typically take longer to finalize.
  • Know who your customers and target audiences follow, listen to, read from, and watch. These influencers make excellent advocates since they have already established trust and authority among their followers.
  • Set standards. Put together a criteria that potential partners must meet to work with your organization. Look at brand collaboration history, audience engagement rates, content distribution channels, and top performing content, among other pre-qualifiers.
Continue Reading
Comments

Finance

De-dollarization is gaining momentum

Avatar photo

Published

on

Brazil and China have reportedly struck a deal to ditch the U.S. dollar in favor of their own currencies in trade transactions.

The announced deal will enable China and Brazil to carry out trade and financial transactions directly, exchanging yuan for reais – or vice versa – rather than first converting their currencies to the U.S. dollar.

The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) said the new arrangement is expected to “reduce costs” and “promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment.”

China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, accounting for more than a fifth of all imports, followed by the United States, according to the latest figures. China is also Brazil’s largest export market, accounting for more than a third of all exports.

China overtook the United States as Brazil’s top trading partner in 2009. Today, Brazil is the largest recipient of Chinese investment in Latin America, driven by spending on high-tension electricity transmission lines and oil extraction.

Brazilian President Luiz da Silva, sworn in on January, has moved to strengthen ties with Beijing after a period of rocky relations under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who used anti-China rhetoric on the campaign trail and in office.

An official meeting of all ASEAN Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors kicked off in Indonesia. Top of the agenda are discussions to reduce dependence on the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and move to settlements in local currencies.

The meeting discussed efforts to reduce dependence on major currencies through the Local Currency Transaction (LCT) scheme. This is an extension of the previous Local Currency Settlement (LCS) scheme that has already begun to be implemented between ASEAN members.

This means that an ASEAN cross-border digital payment system would be expanded further and allow ASEAN states to use local currencies for trade. An agreement on such cooperation was reached between Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand in November 2022. This follows from Indonesia’s banking regulator, stating on March 27 that the Bank of Indonesia is preparing to introduce its own domestic payment system.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has urged regional administrations to start using credit cards issued by local banks and gradually stop using foreign payment systems. He argued that Indonesia needed to shield itself from geopolitical disruptions, citing the sanctions targeting Russia’s financial sector from the US, EU, and their allies over the conflict in Ukraine.

Moving away from Western payment systems is necessary to protect transactions from “possible geopolitical repercussions,” Widodo said.

Of the ASEAN nations, just Singapore has enforced sanctions on Russia, while all other ASEAN nations continue to trade with the country. There has been alarm at being caught up in US-led secondary sanctions, as are short to impact Central and South Asia countries involved in cotton manufacturing, a major industry in the region employing millions of people.

Continue Reading

Finance

U.S. bank trouble heralds The End of dollar Reserve system

Avatar photo

Published

on

The US banking system is broken, stresses ‘The Asia Times’. That doesn’t portend more high-profile failures like Credit Suisse. The central banks will keep moribund institutions on life support.

But the era of dollar-based reserves and floating exchange rates that began on August 15, 1971, when the US severed the link between the dollar and gold, is coming to an end. The pain will be transferred from the banks to the real economy, which will starve for credit.

And the geopolitical consequences will be enormous. The seize-up of dollar credit will accelerate the shift to a multipolar reserve system, with advantage to China’s yuan as a competitor to the dollar.

Gold, the “barbarous relic” abhorred by John Maynard Keynes, will play a bigger role because the dollar banking system is dysfunctional, and no other currency — surely not the tightly-controlled yuan — can replace it. Now at an all-time record price of US$2,000 an ounce, gold is likely to rise further.

The greatest danger to dollar hegemony and the strategic power that it imparts to Washington is not China’s ambition to expand the international role of the yuan.

This crisis is utterly unlike 2008, when banks levered up trillions of dollars of dodgy assets based on “liar’s loans” to homeowners. Fifteen years ago, the credit quality of the banking system was rotten and leverage was out of control. Bank credit quality today is the best in a generation. The crisis stems from the now-impossible task of financing America’s ever-expanding foreign debt.

America’s chronic current account deficits of the past 30 years amount to an exchange of goods for paper: America buys more goods than it sells, and sells assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on) to foreigners to make up the difference.

America now owes a net $18 trillion to foreigners, roughly equal to the cumulative sum of these deficits over 30 years. The trouble is that the foreigners who own US assets receive cash flows in dollars, but need to spend money in their own currencies.

Before 1971, when central banks maintained exchange rates at a fixed level and the United States covered its relatively small current account deficit by transferring gold to foreign central banks at a fixed price of $35 an ounce, none of this was necessary.

The end of the gold link to the dollar and the new regime of floating exchange rates allowed the United States to run massive current account deficits by selling its assets to the world.

In effect, the market worries that buying inflation protection from the US government is like passengers on the Titanic buying shipwreck insurance from the captain. The gold market is too big and diverse to manipulate.

The dollar reserve system will go out not with a bang, but a whimper. The central banks will step in to prevent any dramatic failures. But bank balance sheets will shrink, credit to the real economy will diminish and international lending in particular will evaporate.

Southeast Asia will rely more on its own currencies and the yuan. The dollar frog will boil by slow increments.

It’s fortuitous that Western sanctions on Russia during the past year prompted China, Russia, India and the Persian Gulf states to find alternative financing arrangements. These are not a monetary phenomenon, but an expensive, inefficient and cumbersome way to work around the US dollar banking system.

As dollar credit diminishes, though, these alternative arrangements will turn into permanent features of the monetary landscape, and other currencies will continue to gain ground against the dollar, concludes ‘The Asia Times’.

Continue Reading

Finance

Mastering Writing Skills: Write Effectively for Academic and Professional Success

Published

on

Most people underestimate the importance of knowing how to write. In school, students are assigned paper after paper. The results help teachers grade their knowledge. But, that’s not the main reason why these are assigned. Essays and other papers give students practice, and a chance to learn effective writing. It’s a lifelong skill that not only serves to land them a passing grade but can also help them boost their professional success later on.

How to Master Your Writing Skills

If you want to make sure that you learn how to write better, both for academic and professional success, here are some tips and tricks for you.

1.Ask Someone to Write for You

The best way to learn how to write is to read what you need to write. If you aim for academic success but don’t know how to craft a paper that gets you an A, get some writing help from a reliable service. Today you can simply go online and request to write my essay and you’ll receive a top-notch assignment. This isn’t just to help you meet a deadline or land a high grade. You can also use it for college learning – to read what a good paper should look like.

When you have a finished piece of writing, this can be your guide. Students often order papers online to meet deadlines or make sure they get a high grade. Even if this is the case, use the opportunity to learn, too – next time you need to craft a similar paper, refer to the one written by an expert to boost your writing skills.

2.Read What You Like

Reading is an amazing way to boost your writing skills. How is this possible, you wonder?

For starters, reading books, articles, other papers, or anything else – can boost your vocabulary. When you read, you also come across different writing styles, giving you ideas for when you need to write.

Even though it might not seem this way when you actually read, reading gives you a lot of useful information that is stored in your subconscious.

3.Practice Writing

If you want to master writing, truly master it, you need practice. Those essay assignments are not enough. You should do some free writing, too. Start your blog or journal, write letters to your peers, join a writing workshop, etc. Just write for the sake of it – practice is very important!

4.Don’t Skimp on the Editing Part

Editing is as important as writing itself – maybe even more important. While some mistakes might be acceptable in school, these are never welcome in professional circles. A single, unintentional mistake can have a devastating effect and ruin the quality or the message in your writing.

Research and writing are tiring, but this is no reason to skip the editing part and submit the work in a rush. If you want to learn to write better, you need to start by editing your work. When you proofread and edit it, you can find the most common mistakes you make and learn how to avoid them.

5.Focus on the Structure

The first draft is often a result of free writing. It’s good to write with the flow without focusing on the details, the mistakes, or the structure. This allows your thought to run without interruptions.

But, you can’t submit the first draft of any writing – not if you want it to be good.

In addition to editing the mistakes out of your writing, focus on the structure, too. Structure makes sure that your ideas get across to those who read the content.

Outlines are very useful for this. Many students see them as a waste of time since they aren’t formally required. However, a good outline can actually cut down the time you spend on editing and formatting your task. It will also make sure that the information in your essay flow and are clear to the reader.

6.Ask for Feedback – and Use It!

Unless you’ve mastered the skill of writing, you’ll make mistakes. This is how you learn, and there’s no shame in it. It’s also the time when feedback can really help you. Ask your mentors, your peers, your parents, and friends to take a look at your writing. Ask them to be blunt and tell you what flaws they find in your writing.

You might not accept all of their notes and feedback, but learning how others view and understand your writing is very useful.

Wrapping Up

Writing requires some talent but most importantly, it requires practice. It is something you learn in time, which is why it’s assigned at every academic level.  So, practice, practice, and practice some more. This is how you’ll master the skill!

Continue Reading

Publications

Latest

Russia1 hour ago

Geopolitical Changes and the Significance of Russia’s New Foreign Policy Concept

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed an order to endorse Russia’s updated foreign policy concept which was complied and presented...

Economy3 hours ago

Looking at Indonesia’s Nickel Downstream Efforts from The Perspective of Resource Curse

Republic of Indonesia under the government of President Joko Widodo is intensively pursuing downstream industries, mainly in the natural resource...

South Asia7 hours ago

Ways to Overcome Afghanistan Crisis in Post-Republic Collapse

On August 15, 2021, the Afghan Republic government collapsed and the Taliban took over the Afghan capital city of Kabul....

World News10 hours ago

Foreign Affairs: What sanctions on Russia can and cannot achieve

“U.S. policymakers began planning major sanctions on Russia in late 2021” (before the beginning of Ukrainian conflict!), recognizes ‘Foreign Affairs’....

World News12 hours ago

Elsie Initiative Fund: call for proposals to continue investing in women’s meaningful participation in peacekeeping

At an event that brought together more than 350 representatives from Member States, UN organizations, academia and civil society, the Elsie...

World News14 hours ago

What Beijing’s Iran-Saudi deal means

The agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh was no “peace deal,” but the rivals did decide to...

Finance15 hours ago

De-dollarization is gaining momentum

Brazil and China have reportedly struck a deal to ditch the U.S. dollar in favor of their own currencies in...

Trending