What is Values Based Marketing? 7 Steps to Incorporate along with Benefits

What is Values Based Marketing? 7 Steps to Incorporate along with Benefits

In the real world, your values stand you out from the rest. It is what defines you, your thoughts, your vision, your mission, and where you want to move ahead.

It is also the same in the world of marketing, if you have not yet defined your values then you’ll be the next forgettable brand in this digital world of competition.

Values-based marketing is incorporating the values in your marketing kit. Values will make you and your brand more authentic and reliable. Let’s get to know more about values-based marketing.

What is Values Based Marketing?

Values-based marketing is sometimes called value-added marketing. It is an outward-focused strategy that works for bringing change in the world by doing some good. It is an appeal to a customer’s values, core beliefs, and ethics. As here we’re talking about the values of our customers so it shifts the marketing approach to customer-centric from product-centric. And businesses add value to the lives of their customer with this marketing strategy which is why it is called value-added marketing.

Value-added marketing keeps the customers first, it focuses on the customer’s needs and wants. This way it’s easy for the customers and brands to make a genuine connection beyond interest in a product or service. It is possible because the brands and customers are sharing the same types of values.

Different marketers define values in different ways, some try to justify it with the cost, and others compare it with the worthiness of the products. What do you think the value is?

Well, according to me value is the combined benefits that customers get whether quantitative or qualitative, after purchasing your products or services along with bettering the world. Some digital marketers take cause-related marketing and values-based marketing as one, but I would say, Cause-related marketing is just an aspect of values-based marketing.

There are different types of values a business and customers can share with each other that are following:

  1. Business Values: This shows the values a business can get from its customers. In this, we can include the short-term and long-term goals and growth of the business along with enhanced productivity with improved efficiency.
  2. Social Values: In a way, social values shows the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibilities) of a brand and also how can a user connect with other on social platforms and causes. You can know more about how to incorporate social causes in the marketing in cause-based marketing.
  3. Cultural Values: It shows your brand’s cultural values. Cultural values can depict any shared beliefs that a brand and consumers resonate with each other. This creates a favourable environment for a brand to operate easily and for a customer to connect with the brand.
  4. Consumer Values: Consumer values are also the most important part as values based marketing is completely dependent on the needs and wants of a customer. These show thought process, behaviour, attitude, frequency, advocacy, loyalty etc.
  5. Functional Values: It depicts the solutions to a problem a business is providing to its customers. It shows the functionality of the offer a customer will get after purchasing products or services from a brand.
  6. Economic or Monetary Values: This is the monetary value a business gets from its consumers in return for services and products. In simple words, the price of functionalities. Here, Functions and price intersect with each other.
  7. Psychological Values: When we buy some products, no matter what we think we are psychologically attached to the product. These values depict the feelings of a person after purchasing the products or services like is the consumer feeling better after purchasing the product, and being able to express emotions.

The aforementioned are the different types of values that a brand and its customers share with each other in different phases of the sales process. With these 7 types of values every business or brand wants to reflect the following core values in their messaging:

  1. Freedom
  2. Purpose
  3. Tradition
  4. Security
  5. Achievement
  6. Pleasure

The biggest secret to being successful in values-based marketing is, “To practise what you preach” or “Stick to the values you’ve decided for your brand no matter what”. Delivering the promises your brand makes through your promotions helps in establishing unbreakable trust with consumers. This way your brand will resonate with your customers, and they’ll spread the good words about your brand.

I hope you’ve understood clearly what value-added marketing is, now let’s take a look at the steps of incorporating value-added marketing into your brand.

Steps to Incorporate Values Based Marketing

Well, you can add different values to different phases of the marketing funnel. It depends on you how you want to tackle the values for the benefit of both business and consumers.

  1. Define Your Target Audience & Create a Customer Persona
  2. Define Your Brand Voice (Tone of Communication)
  3. Define Your Brand’s Core & Unique Values (Can be based on the results your Brand has helped in achieving for your customers)
  4. Revisit Target Audience and after getting feedback make improvement
  5. Follow and Study your successful competitors in Values-based Marketing
  6. Adapt Your Strategy after identifying your core brand values from the aforementioned
  7. Continue getting feedback & Keep Improving: Improvement is the key to every successful marketing campaign.

If you’ll follow the above 7 steps then you can get benefitted from the value-added marketing. Every marketing strategy is a lifelong process, it needs improvement from time to time, and a business can’t run the same campaigns for years over years.

Now, let’s move forward and discuss some examples to get more clarity on values-based marketing strategy.

Examples of Values Based Marketing

Messaging

Simple messaging that inspires people to interact with the brand including some simple hashtags. It should be as simple as it can deliver the brand’s values clearly with no confusion. For better understanding, we can take an example of DigiAvtar’s messaging

DigiAvtar: Digitalising Brands for Exponential Growth

I hope everybody can understand with this simple messaging what DigiAvtar is stating and standing for. It says DigiAvtar is a brand that is working in the field of digitalising and positioning brands for their exponential growth with their services.

Storytelling

You need to keep your storytelling strong and visual as visuals grab more attention than texts or static content. It is a fact that people on the internet read only 20% of a webpage, so it’s better to include strong visual storytelling in value-added marketing campaigns. Adding visuals will support your storytelling. Click to know more about Storytelling.

Social Sharing

Social sharing is the easiest way to reach a mass audience with the lowest cost. SMM platforms are very much popular and people spend a lot of time on them. Share your mission, values, and goals on different social platforms you’re active on.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility shows how much your brand is responsible for social causes like environmental causes. Emphasis on social causes your brand is supporting, you can know more about this in cause-related marketing.

Connect with Audience and Share UGC

Connecting with your audience helps both customers and brands to understand each other’s values, beliefs etc. You can run small campaigns like a collage competition, graphic competition, content competition, or anything else. Always share the UGC (user-generated content) on your social media handles or any places your audiences are connected with you. It’ll make them feel valued, and listened.

Strong and One CTA at a Time

A call to action helps people in pushing for purchases. Without a call to action, they don’t really know what to do. But having too many calls to action make them confused, and most of them leave the platform. So, it is good to keep only one strong call to action in one copy.

Now, we’ve also discussed the examples of values based marketing. So, let’s move one step further and discuss the benefits of values-based marketing.

Benefits of Values Based Marketing

The popularity of value-added marketing is increasing day by day as it focuses on the wants, and needs of the consumers. Along with this, there are several benefits you can earn by implementing this marketing strategy in your business that are following:

Builds Strong Relationships

It is easy to build strong relationships when you give priority to other people. And in value-added marketing, customers are first priority. As it is customer-centric, so it’s easy to build strong relationships with the customers in less time. Adding value to the products or services works as a milestone in the foundations of the connection. It’ll further lead to unbreakable trust and then brand loyalty.

Helps Getting Retainer Clients

You can only get retainer clients when you’ve built strong emotional relationships with your clients and your clients are loyal to your brand. And I’m sure values-based marketing is the best way to build strong emotional relationships. Retainer clients give ROI without any promotion. So, if you want to have retaining clients in your business then implement tactics of values-based marketing in your campaigns.

Build Brand Advocates

Brand advocates are those customers who’re completely satisfied with your services, and have unbreakable faith in your business. These people promote your products and services without the cost and help in ROI.

It can only be the result of consistent efforts and improvements in your marketing campaigns, providing a positive customer experience and solving their queries, connecting with them on different occasions, and building strong relationships.

Brand advocates help in growing your community and establishing yourself as an industry expert.

Scoring Better Leads and Easy Conversion

Values-based marketing gives power to your leads. You get better leads, and conversion is easy, as it’s completely based on customer relationships.

Increased Brand Value and Position Higher in the Market

As value-based marketing is completely about providing value to the customers and respecting their values. So, as a result, it also increases brand value. Increased brand value helps a brand in expansion, and position higher in the market. You can beat the competition with help of value-added marketing.

We’ve talked about the benefits you can get from value-added marketing, now let’s talk about some tips you need to consider in the value-based marketing campaigns

Tips for Values Based Marketing Campaigns

We’re going to discuss some tips that will help you in running the campaign smoothly. So, be attentive and focused.

  1. Stand Out Yourself Unique to be non-comparable
  2. Target the right audience that’ll help you in saving time, cost and energy, and walking in your customer’s shoes
  3. Include Visual Storytelling in Your Marketing Content to make the content attention-grabbing.
  4. Tell Customer Stories through testimonials, reviews, infographics, videos, and case studies to make a connection and build trust.
  5. Provide your audience good quality educational content through webinars, workshops, eBooks, video tutorials, blog posts, infographics etc.
  6. Provide exceptional customer service by solving every query of your customers keeping a humble tone of communication.
  7. Tell Benefits of Your product or services rather than talking about the features, it’ll make them feel attached and emotionally connected with your products and services.
  8. Understand your clients’ needs and provide them personalized experience by providing customized products and services
  9. Address your customers’ emotions to make them feel a part of the community, and connected to the products and services.
  10. Provide a good user interface and experience through your website by making it mobile-friendly and responsive.
  11. Use the right tools for marketing and automation
  12. Don’t bargain and leverage customer evidence. Keeping away from bargaining will stand your business as a brand, and leveraging customer evidence help in building strong emotional relationships with your customers.

So, now you know the tips you need to include while performing value-based marketing. I hope we’ve included everything now, so let’s wrap up!

Wrapping UP

Values are the most important aspects whether we are talking about business or people. We are being identified by the values and ethics we walk within the society. Our unique values make us believable, authoritative, unique, and recognizable.

Values based marketing helps us in adding value to businesses and customers along with bettering the world. Values based marketing helps in bettering the world by supporting social causes, which is also a part of cause-related marketing. Well, in other words, we can consider cause-related marketing an aspect of values based marketing, it is what I believe. What do you believe?

We’ve included everything from what is values based marketing to steps of incorporating values based marketing in the business, examples and benefits of values based marketing along with tips for values based marketing campaigns.

If you still have questions, you can ask in the comment section. And if you got valuable information from the blog, please leave some appreciation in the comment section. For more blogs on marketing visit the blog.

Difference between B2B and B2C Marketing: 11 Key Differences

Difference between B2B and B2C Marketing: 11 Key Differences

When we enter the field of marketing, we get to know a lot about different marketing strategies based on different segments of marketing. And it is not an easy task to pinpoint the best marketing strategy for the sake of your business growth. Once we do it, I can assure you, it’s worth achieving. How to find out the best marketing strategy for your brand depends on the knowledge you’ve gotten so far and how’s your implementation. If you want to know everything about what marketing is and the different types of marketing strategies, then you can check the blog on marketing written by Team DigiAvtar, click here to read.

Today we’ll be knowing about the b2b and b2c marketing, and measure the difference between b2b and b2c along with their relative real-life examples. So stay tuned!

What is b2b Marketing?

B2B = Business to Business

B2B is an acronym for Business to Business. It is a marketing strategy that works in niche markets. It is the process where one business solves specific problems for other businesses with the help of products and services. Under this marketing, strategy businesses focus on serving other businesses rather than individual customers. As we’re selling products and services to other businesses so, in b2b marketing, we’ve to focus on the challenges, interests, and needs of the businesses.

This is a marketing strategy that focuses on logical process-driven purchasing decisions, which means the transactions do not take place on impulse. Businesses strive to maintain open communication in the decision-making process, so the whole process of the sales funnel is longer than it is in b2c marketing. If you want to know more in deep about b2b marketing, then click here.

Examples of b2b Marketing

  1. Salesforce: Salesforce is a customer relationship management solution to bring companies and customers together in a single platform.
  2. PabblyConnect: Pabblyconnect enhances the functionality by connecting different types of applications in a single platform
  3. Mailchimp: It is an email marketing and automation tool. It’s easy to run and understand
  4. Indiamart: It is an eCommerce b2b company located in India.
  5. Slack: It is a project management tool. It helps in organizing teams, and projects.

Let’s move further and get to know about b2c marketing!

What is b2c marketing?

B2C = Business to Customer

B2C is an acronym that stands for Business to Customer. It is a marketing strategy that is completely focused on selling the products and customers to individual customers. It is a process where customers purchase the products most commonly for their daily lives and personal needs. As in B2C, we are selling the products and services for individuals, so we’ve to focus on the challenges, interests, and needs of the businesses.

It is a marketing strategy that focuses on emotion-driven purchasing decisions, which means the transactions take place on impulse. In b2c, businesses strive to maintain the whole sales process as quick and easy as possible, so the whole process of sales is shorter than it is in b2b marketing.

Examples of b2c Marketing

  1. Amazon: It is an online eCommerce platform.
  2. Airbnb: This platform provides rental stays all over the world at a low cost.
  3. Nike: It is a brand in the shoe industry providing different types of branded shoes to the customers
  4. Spotify: It is a digital music service. You can listen to millions of songs on their platform.
  5. Uber: If you want to book a ride then Uber is your friend. You can book a ride anywhere, anytime you want from this platform

I hope you’ve cleared it in your head what is b2b marketing, what is b2c, and examples of b2b and b2c business marketing strategies. Now, let’s differentiate between b2b and b2c marketing!

11 Key Difference between b2b and b2c marketing strategies

Well, we know now that b2b and b2b focus on different types of target audiences, so they have many differences. But as their ultimate goal is sales, so they also have a lot in common.

Once you’ll have a deeper understanding of what these are then it can help you in building marketing campaigns resonating with your target audience.

So, without wasting time, let’s discuss the key differences between b2b and b2c marketing strategies:

Target Audience

The target audience is different for both of them. In b2b marketing, the target audience is companies, teams, or groups of people, or it can be an individual whose whole career depends on what one is doing (like any solopreneurs). In B2b Marketing, companies focus on finding a niche for targeting the audience. So, it’s also called niche marketing. Most of the B2b companies are in Niche Markets, which means their products and services are specifically directed to a particular type of business. If you want to be successful in Niche Marketing, then you should be able to showcase how your products and services will make their business better.

While on the other hand, the target audience in B2C marketing is most of individuals and households. B2c marketing focuses on funnel most rather than niche marketing.

Marketing Approach

B2b marketing focuses on building relationships, so it’s a relationship-driven approach. Relationships take time to build, and we need to nurture them by putting in a lot of effort.

While on the other hand, B2c marketing focuses on products. In this marketing strategy, the relationships are short-term.

Customer Relationships

B2b businesses focus on building personal relationships. Personal relationships are the result of consistent effort, to stand by what you say. So, to build personal relationships we need to showcase the customers’ reviews, and how can our product help them in enhancing their business and solving problems. Always tell the benefits of the products and services rather than talking about features. Incorporate storytelling in your marketing material to make it more meaningful and easily understandable to the human mind.

B2c Marketing focuses more on transactions rather than on building personal relationships. Follow any marketing funnel (E.g. CATT Marketing Funnel) that suits you, and build a successful b2c marketing campaign implementing each step of the particular funnel in sequence.

Decision Making & Makers

As we know already that b2b is relationship-driven marketing, b2b businesses need to maintain open communication in the decision-making process for strong relationships. In this decision-makers are a group of 5-12 people or individuals representing their whole business.

As for b2c marketing, it’s focused on products, and more like a funnel so, b2c business focuses more on making the process as simple and quick as possible. In b2c, decision-makers are 1-2 people purchasing the products for themselves.

Quantity of Merchandise and Relationship Horizon

As in b2b the product is built for companies so the quantity of merchandise is large, and to sell this we need to build relationships and that takes time. Hence, the relationship horizon is also long-term.

While in b2c the product is built for individuals so the quantity of merchandise is small, and to sell this we need to work on our sales funnel like CATT Marketing Funnel. And if we’re following the steps we can easily sell the products. Hence the relationship horizon is also short-term.

Amount of Purchase

In b2b, the amount of purchase is higher. As in this marketing strategy, the products are built to solve the specific problem of another business and to make the business better. Hence, the size of purchase also becomes higher in amounts rather than it is in b2c.

As we all know that in b2c, the product is built for individuals or households. So, the purchase size should not be so much higher, businesses need to keep it low cost so that everyone can buy it real quick without thinking twice.

Buying Cycles

Buying cycle in b2b is greater than it is in b2c. As b2b is a marketing approach completely driven by relationships and relationships take time to build. So, the buying cycle in b2b can be months to years.

In b2c marketing, everything leans towards the funnel and products. All focus is on selling the products. So, the buying cycle in b2c can be days to weeks.

Buying Decisions (Decision Rationale)

In b2b marketing buying decisions are based on needs and skewed towards rationale. These are planned and logical. As, people purchase for the betterment of the brand, and on the behalf of businesses. So, people first watch carefully and understand which product would be the best fit for their business needs. They observe everything and compare it with other products. So, the whole process is so much longer.

On the other hand in b2c marketing buying decisions are based on the emotions, and desires of the people, and skewed towards emotion. As individuals purchase the product in b2c for the betterment of daily life. And everybody wants comfort as soon as possible in their life. So, they are quick. People purchase the products on impulse here.

Branding and Creation of Brand Value

Branding is the process by which we create the value of the brand in the market to make it recognizable, easily accessible, and authoritative in its domain.

In b2b marketing, it is focused on positioning the brand. In this, brand value is created by trust and mutual relationships. DigiAvtar is also working in the same domain, as our slogan is “Digitalising Brands for Exponential Growth”.

On the other hand, brand value in b2c is created by advertising and promotions. As the decisions are quick in b2c and based on emotions, so advertising and promotions can be used to sell the products directly.

Ad Copy

In b2b marketing ad copy, you should include the word that your clients are most familiar with. Don’t make it transactional and emotional. Be authentic, and talk about the benefits, along with the proof of how well you’ve served your clients, and how it helped them in the growth of their business. Don’t show urgency in your b2b ad copy, as decisions are taken after brainstorming and following your brand for a very long time.

In b2c marketing, you can play more with your ad copy. You can use fluff and emotional copywriting in the b2c marketing ad copy. As the decisions are so fast and quick in this, so you can show urgency and make it transactional. You can directly show your products with the ad copy in b2c marketing. Urgency and Emotional Copywriting will help you in quick sales, as people will buy on impulse. But, keep the ad copy industry jargon-free, and attention-grabbing. The reason behind keeping the ad copy jargon-free is, that most people are familiar with industrial jargon.

ROI (Return on Investment)

B2b customers look for the products by which they can get a return on investment. B2b businesses have to find a way by which their products can play a vital role in increasing the ROI of the businesses that will use the product. Because businesses will only invest in your products and services if they can generate the money from your product.

On the other hand, b2c customers seek entertainment, enjoyment, comfort, and deals. So, they can buy anything that can solve their current problem. ROI from the product isn’t the concern of b2b clients.

We’ve discussed 11 key differences between b2b and b2c marketing strategies. Now, you must be thinking about which strategy you should go with. Well, let’s discuss then you can decide on your own, how you want to target your audience.

What strategy is the best fit for your business?

It’s not that hard to decide which strategy would be the best fit for you. As in b2b and b2c, everything depends on the target audience.

Decide who you want to target! If you want to target individuals then b2c will be the best fit, and if you want to target businesses then b2b will be the best fit for you.

But if you want to target both individuals and brands then you can work on the combination of b2b and b2c marketing in separate campaigns.

We all know that b2b and b2c also intersect with each other on several points, the reason is in the end people take a decision in both cases whether to buy a product or not.

We can go with both, but we should always keep the budget in mind. B2c marketing casts across so many channels, platforms and ad types. If you want to target the masses on different platforms then go with a b2c marketing strategy.

On the other hand, b2b marketing doesn’t consider many platforms. We should work on the chosen platform only if we’re applying it to this business marketing strategy, as it is niche-based marketing. Have a smaller budget or a niche product, then b2b wins the race! In b2b it takes more planning than it takes in b2c but it’s worth it.

I hope you have a clear idea of which marketing strategy you want to go in growing your business. Now, let’s conclude the blog, by repeating some important facts about b2b and b2c marketing.

Conclusions

First, make yourself clear about what is b2b and b2c marketing. Once you’re clear about it, it’s time to identify your target audience. If you’ve done then you can implement the strategy that best suits your business goals. You can work on both strategies simultaneously by running separate campaigns for businesses and individuals. When we work together on these two business models, we cover the complete business process.

In b2b marketing, businesses focus on long-lasting personal relationships with other businesses, focusing on brand values, and open communication to understand client businesses’ challenges and requirements. If you want to add value to another business then it is the best fit for you. B2b businesses focus more on personalization and provide customized solutions to their client by understanding the business attentively. These focus on higher ticket pricing clients, so there’s always a marketing team completely dedicated to understanding the needs of the business of the client. Customer experience is a big part of a b2b marketing strategy.

While in b2c marketing, businesses focus on creating simple, impulsive, transactional, visual content across the channels. These businesses are available on trending social platforms. Customer experience also matters in b2c marketing too, but it is less required than b2b. You need not make the customer experience personalized for every client in b2c. I hope you’ve understood all the aspects of b2b and b2c marketing and are able to choose the best strategy for the growth of your own brand.

If you still have questions you can drop your queries in the comment section, & if you like this blogpost then leave some message to appreciate us. Want to read more valuable blogposts on marketing then visit the blog.

Personalized Marketing – 5-step Framework for Building a strategy

Personalized Marketing – 5-step Framework for Building a strategy

Do you want to be called with your name or just “hey you, hey buddy, hey friend”? I’m sure most people want to be called by their name, why?

Have you ever thought about it why you like to be called by your name? There’s is a simple reason behind this, when we’re called by our name it makes us feel valued. It is a psychological fact that we attract to the person who calls us by our name. It shows that someone is paying attention to us, we are very important to that person, because it is personalized. This is why personalized marketing originated, but personalized marketing isn’t all about calling us by our name, it’s much more than that. Then, what is personalized marketing all about?

What is personalized marketing?

There’re two important factors of every successful business, user interface and user experience. If you’re lacking in any one of them, you’re losing so many of your customers. Personalized marketing focuses on the second user experience. It’s the opposite of mass marketing (which is designed to target a broad demographic or audience) as it focuses on each individual.

It is a marketing technique that focuses on the needs of an individual current or prospective customer, because of this it is also called one-to-one marketing. As it focuses on an individual, it is essentially called the most focused form of targeted marketing.

Personalized marketing is about reaching the right message to the right person with the right offer at the right time, and with the right product or service suggestions by approaching the customers with their name, offering what they want, and providing the most accurate data they’re looking for.

And all of this can be possible if we’ve collected enough data about the customers, their behaviour, interest, and desires.

So, how does the data inform personalized marketing strategy?

How does the data inform personalized marketing?

Data is everything you need to expect the future needs and actions of your customers for better customizing your interactions with your users. It became popular when marketers realized the power of the data.

When you’ll have enough data about your users you can predict where they can land in the buyer’s journey. At that right moment, you can communicate to your user with the right message and the right offer.

There are two channels for collecting the data:

Analytics: Analytics helps you in understanding the user’s behaviour. There are various software to track the behaviour of users, and the most famous tool is google analytics. Google Analytics is the official tool of google that provides data in several fields like how many visitors did visit your website or app, what devices they are using, paid visits or organic visits, bounce rate, etc.

Feedback Form & Customers Surveys: Feedback forms and customer surveys are the most transparent and efficient way of knowing about user experience, user interface, and so many other factors. They tell us what type of products, or services customers are willing to buy from the brand.

People prefer to fill out the survey form and are more comfortable with this technique, but a long-form might irritate them, so always try to keep it precise and short.

The data that will be most beneficial for you for personalized marketing can include:

  • Name
  • Location
  • Paid visits or organic visits
  • Devices users are using
  • Pages on the website a particular user visited
  • Click through rates of every page
  • Products viewed by the user
  • Time spent on specific pages by the user
  • Bounce rate
  • Interests
  • Spending Levels
  • Clicking on call to action or contacting the support
  • Chatting on messenger bot or not

On the basis of these factors, we can create a customer persona for our potential buyer, and on the basis of customer persona, we can design a customer journey map. These things will help us personalise the data in every step of our sales funnel. This data can benefit us a lot in different aspects of personalized marketing strategy.

How to create a personalized marketing strategy for your business?

When you have enough data about your customer’s name, location, behaviour and interests then you can easily build a personalized marketing strategy for your business.

A personalized marketing strategy is the most focused and accurate marketing strategy because of paying attention to an individual’s needs. People fear incorporating this marketing strategy into their system because it needs data and clarity on how to perform. Some people only use this for just including the name of the users in their email marketing campaigns, others might not even try because of the confusion.

We’ve tried to cover every aspect of personalized marketing strategy in this blog. Follow the following steps and make a personalized marketing campaign for your own brand:

Build a Team, Research and Compare

If you want to make a successful personalized marketing strategy for your business then you should work with skilled professionals in this field. Make a team, and research the market about the tools and everything they’re using to collect the users’ data.

Leveraging a personalization tool or platform will help you get structured and refined data. If you’re not currently using it then compare all the available options in the market, and make use of the best suitable tool for you.

Collect Data

Once you’ve chosen the best personalization tools for your business, collecting data would be easier for you. Implementation of these tools is easy. Eg when you want to add Google Analytics or Search Console to your website, it just takes a code snippet to connect with your website. Once the code is added, you can get a lot of information from the tool like the time spent on the website, total clicks on the webpages, bounce rate, total visitors, etc.

Analyse & Segment Your Data

In this phase you need to analyse your data on the basis of several factors, after analysing you can segment your data based on the following factors:

  • Demographic Data
  • Behavioural Data
  • Spending Data
  • Interests
  • Buying Patterns
  • Medium of Traffic
  • Expectations

You can segment data according to the needs of your business. You need to customize the messages, and marketing material, so you need to decide what factors will affect the most to your customers.

Customize & Personalize the Marketing Material

Here, you need to customize your data, by adding the personalization tone of communication in your marketing material, like addressing your users with their names, providing them with what they want, talking to them and solving their problems through customized messages. You personalize your emails, retargeting ads, landing pages, welcome message, support systems, and much more.

Execute the Campaign & Deliver personalized Content, Engagement, Outreach, Products & Services, Recommendations, and Support

After personalizing your data, here you can execute the campaign by giving your users a personalized experience.

Start with personalized content. You can personalize your content in many forms like customizing your email automation, lead magnets, media apps, social media interactions, and landing pages of the website.

Then you can move on to personalize engagement. It is customized. This is real-time. It can be via chat, phone call, or comments. You should give your customers time and promptly reply to your customers. This can help you in establishing a brand, and lead to long-term relationships with recurring income.

Next is personalized outreach. Representatives from your brand should reach out one-on-one with customers. It is the ultimate in personalized outreach. The representative can use phone, email, or chat app. personalized outreach is beneficial in nurturing the leads. Custom outreach is beneficial for both b2b and b2c brands.

Let’s discuss the next, Products and services. Many companies (most of the brands related to clothing and beauty) provide custom products. This is done to give the products personal touch, and they feel like this has been made only for them. First, companies know about the customer’s needs and on the basis of that, they provide customized products and services. E.g. whenever any projects come to DigiAvtar, we first keep a one-on-one meeting with the client, and then after understanding all the customer’s needs, we start developing the project.

Next is providing personalized recommendations. This is being done somewhat in every industry. But the biggest industry that is using this technique is e-commerce. E.g. someone who visited their online store and liked or disliked something, then while visiting again they show you the similar recommended products of different brands. The big brands that are using this technique are Amazon, Flipkart, Hotstar, YouTube, etc.

So, we’ve discussed the 5-step framework for building a personalized marketing strategy. Follow all the steps along and make a personalized marketing strategy for your brand.

Now, let’s discuss the benefits of personalized marketing

Benefits of Personalized Marketing

There’re a lot of benefits we can get after implementing the techniques of personalized marketing strategies in our marketing materials. As we all know, personalized marketing is focused on the experience of each user. So, user experience is the most important factor in personalized marketing. And there are a lot of benefits we can get by improving our user experience through personalized marketing.

It’s the best strategy for getting closer to our audience along with improving ROI and achieving the desired financial outcomes.

Next, let’s discuss the other benefits of personalized marketing!

  1. Builds a happier and satisfied customer base
  2. Better and Improved Customer Experience
  3. Increase in Brand Loyalty and Brand advocates
  4. Customers Get Relevant Content
  5. Increment in Brand Engagement
  6. Customers Gain Valuable Suggestions
  7. More Accurate and Targeted Advertising
  8. Drive more Sales and Revenue
  9. Consistent brand voice across all the channels
  10. Better & Optimized ROI (Return on Investment)

Let’s move ahead and discuss the examples of personalized marketing

Examples of personalized marketing trends

  1. Custom & Targeted Emails
  2. Custom Messages (Video or Text)
  3. Targeted Discounts
  4. Engagement Campaign on Social Media Marketing
  5. Targeted Ads Campaigns
  6. Service and Product Recommendations
  7. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Campaigns

We also have seen the benefits and examples of personalized marketing, along with how to build a personalized marketing strategy for our brand. Now, let’s move a step further and discuss how companies are using this strategy

How companies are using Personalized Marketing Strategy?

In the starting, there were only some brands that were using this strategy. But, nowadays every business is looking to this strategy. Let’s see how big giants are using this strategy

  1. Netflix: – Nextflix is the oldest OTT platform. It shows you your favourite shows, movies, and everything on the basis of only one thing, the behaviour of the user on the platform.
  2. Amazon & Flipkart: – These are eCommerce companies which show you relevant products on the basis of your browsing history and previous purchases.
  3. FB, Insta YouTube, Spotify, and Jio Saavn: – These are also working on the same strategy of personalization. These show you posts, videos, and songs in the same genre you’ve watched earlier on these platforms.

We’ve seen how big giants are using this marketing strategy for better engagement and seamless user experience. Whether your brand is small or big, you can always start over with this technology.

Tools for Personalized Marketing

For making easier all the processes automated and smooth, we need to take the help of the tools. With the help of tools, we can save a lot of our time, with more efficiency. We can also easily scale with the help of the tools. Let’s list the different types of tools for a successful personalized marketing strategy:

  1. Data Management
  2. Data Analytics Tools & platform
  3. Customer Relationship Management(CRM) Software
  4. E-mail Marketing Tool

Conclusion

We’ve discussed everything already from what is personalized marketing to, benefits, examples, strategy, and the top companies using this strategy.

In conclusion, it is a technique completely focussing on the needs of an individual, and making him happier by building strong relationships and providing them with the value they yearn for. Brands are building close relationships and improving user experience with the help of this excellent strategy. It can be the greatest asset for the success of your business.

Now, you are free to start over with your own personalized marketing strategy for your business. If you still have questions, you can ask in the comment sections. To read more similar and valuable blogs, visit our blog.

Benefits of blockchain in Digital Marketing: 7 ways of improving your business without becoming a crypto investor

Benefits of blockchain in Digital Marketing: 7 ways of improving your business without becoming a crypto investor

The early adopters of Bitcoin in 2009 might not have known how massive the adoption would benefit them about 5 to 10 years later.

Statistically, someone who invested $1000 back then had his money turned into not less than $15 million 10 years later.

I will leave you to calculate the return on investment (ROI) yourself.

Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency built on blockchain technology. Fortunately, blockchain technology is not only applicable to cryptocurrency which is in the finance industry.

It is also applicable in other industries and digital marketing is one of them. The benefits of blockchain in digital marketing cannot be overlooked.

Hence, the reason I want to show you the 7 ways it can benefit your business. Don’t forget that you cannot separate an extremely successful business from effective digital marketing practices.

I somehow feel that you are probably wishing that you did not miss out on the Bitcoin rise.

Don’t worry, you have another opportunity.

What you have to do now is to adopt this technology and start taking baby steps to integrate it into your business(s). What this means for you is that, now that the application of blockchain technology in digital marketing is at its infant stage, it is the best time to secure a spot.

In a few years to come, your brand/business will experience the kind of smile the early adopters of Bitcoin had. Let me chip in this; for the tech and giant companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Alibaba, etc. to have secured their spot, it means that the handwriting on the wall is readable.

Before we discuss the benefits of blockchain in digital marketing, let’s get a full grasp of what blockchain technology entails.

What is blockchain technology in simple words?

Blockchain is a decentralised digital system that thrives on three key elements namely;

  1. Immutable records
  2. Shared ledger technology
  3. Smart Contract

Blockchain technology contains chains of blocks of immutable records in the sense that no one can either tamper or change the transaction records in the distributed ledger.

Even if the transaction is erroneous, a new transaction is added to correct the error. Afterwards, both transactions become visible. Its shared ledger technology makes it possible for all the network participants to have access to immutable records.

It also eliminates the possibility of transaction duplicates unlike that of a traditional business network. To make transactions faster, it stores and automatically executes a set of commands and rules called smart contracts.

Having briefly described each element, one can safely say that it is a chain of blocks of immutable distributed ledger that processes, records, and tracks transactions and assets within a business network.

The assets can either be tangible (land, vehicles, furniture, machinery, etc) or intangible (copyrights, licenses, intellectual property, patents, trademarks, etc)

At this juncture, I want to believe that you can explain what blockchain technology is in simple words to your grandmother with ease. You can even go further to talk more about how it works.

It’s time to tell you how it can help your business

Benefits of Blockchain in Digital Marketing: 7 ways of Improving Business with Blockchain Technology

Eliminate the fake factor effect

So many business pages out there in the online space are littered with fake likes, followers and products. This has paved the way for cyber criminals to always have their way into people’s pockets unpermitted. It is also the reason businesses do not reap a good return on investment (ROI) in marketing. Consumers on the other hand now have little to zero trust in advertisements.

The challenge businesses and consumers do experience as aforementioned can be dealt with. That’s where blockchain comes in. You will be able to do away with dubious third parties and deal with the publishers directly. It will help you know if the money you are spending on ads is going to the targeted audience.

At the end of the day, you will achieve an effective marketing practice for your business. You will also gain back the customers’ trust.

Opportunity for Small businesses to build trust

When you are in a red ocean market, it can be very difficult to stand out as a small business. Of course, you do know that consumers do not want to take chances with businesses or brands that are not popular. This system will help you easily establish trust as a growing business.

The fact that customers can easily track the record of the supply chain is already a plus.  Nothing compels a customer to stick with you over your competitors when they know they can verify every step of their buying journey.

Raise your security bar

It is no news that online buyers and sellers are always faced with the issue of uncertainty that surrounds the security of their identity and information. I know that you will feel cool to be involved in a transaction that is transparent and verifiable yet you are anonymous.

It is the beauty of what it can do. It secures all transactions and at the same time keep everyone behind the scene. Honestly, I don’t know about you but I am always thrilled with this feature.

Acquisition of refined and quality consumer information

The issue of signing up with a particular brand and getting unsolicited updates and ads from different other brands is tiring and annoying. With blockchain, people can be in charge of their personal information. They are sure that only the brands they are interested in have access to their information.

Another good thing about it is that these people can charge for giving out their data. Though this may sound not so good for business, in the real sense, the opposite is the case. It saves businesses from wasting money on people whose data will not be useful to them.

Purchase ads without a third party

No business would want to buy ads that are placed on low-quality websites which may not even target the right audience. Trust and quality are of great importance to them.

To ensure that trust, they pay a fee to a company like Google which serves as the middle man to establish what the business and website owners are looking for. You can entirely cut off the middle man ads network like Google and still have the trust factor maintained. Blockchain makes this possible.

Alternative Payment

Blockchain gives you a secure alternative payment that will save you a whole lot from chargebacks, banking fees and fraud. The blockchain’s major alternative form of payment comes in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Though this alternative form may not yet be the order of the day, companies have started utilizing it. You should also queue in.

Transparency in the supply chain

Your business may be the type that sources products and supplies from different channels. If this is true for you, then it’s good for your customers to know. This is because they appreciate it when they are sure that any of your business claims is true.

Your consumers can verify your claims with the help of blockchain. That way, you will be vindicated even before any potential accusation.

Conclusion

What more can I say? It is undoubtedly the future of marketing and business. Start positioning your brand. If you are a small business, you are at an advantage. You can easily compete with larger ones, establish customers’ trust and reduce costs.

Don’t forget that I earlier established that you cannot separate an extremely successful business from effective digital marketing practices. For your business growth, I would employ you to reach out to the most preferred digital marketing agency known for making their clients happy.

Before you leave this page, I will like you to share in the comment section the blockchain benefit(s) that interests you the most. Your response means a lot to me. As a token of my appreciation towards you for engaging with this piece, here is the list of marketing tools that will do your business good.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is blockchain marketing?

Without mincing words, blockchain marketing happens when blockchain is integrated into marketing and advertising activities. Blockchain technology eliminates the third party while still establishing trust. It verifies and keeps every transaction records untampered. Marketers and businesses deploy blockchain features to acquire quality leads and help them maintain a satisfying customer experience.

How can blockchain help social media?

The blockchain is a huge advantage to social media. With it, the users’ contents are untampered, and their data are secured. The sweet part is that users can have control of reputation and incentives which they can claim as rewards.

How is blockchain used in business?

Businesses can use blockchain to increase the level of security and transparency in transactions. The following features of blockchain make it very useful for businesses; Distributed ledger, Security, Immutability, Ability to eliminate duplicates.

Can blockchain be used in advertising?

Yes, it can and it is a no-brainer advantage. With blockchain deployed on ad networks, one can bypass the third party and still be able to target the right audience. It also saves advertising costs.

Seasonal Marketing

Seasonal Marketing

Hello everyone, how’re you doing? I hope you’re doing rough and tough in your life. Let me ask you one thing. When is your birthday!

Well, you must be thinking why I’m asking this out-of-context question? But in reality, it’s not out of context, our birthday represents a special day for us in a year, and we do so many things to make it more special. We invite friends, cut cake, host a feast, and hang out with them, and the planning starts at least one month before. It’s the same with Seasonal Marketing.

When something special season comes we promote our products and services by portraying their marketing materials according to that particular season.

So, now the question is, what seasonal marketing is, and how to build a successful seasonal marketing plan with effective ideas to get the best out of seasonal marketing.

What is Seasonal Marketing?

Seasonal Marketing can be described as any promotion that is being done on certain days or times of the year. It refers to the marketing that revolves around special occasions like Holi, Diwali, Black Friday, Christmas, Eid etc. It is the marketing of products and services during these special points of the year.

We can also divide the special days into the following categories

  1. Government or Official Holidays: In these holidays mostly comes festivals like Holi, Diwali, Makar Sankranti, Raksha Bandhan, Teej, Jayantis of Great Ancestors, Independence Day, Republic Day etc.
  2. Non-traditional Holidays: These are not official but are celebrated by a large number of communities to spread awareness about the cause like Earth Day, Environment Day, Pollution Day etc.
  3. Annual Cultural Events: Annual Cultural Events include Spring Break, Back-To-School, Summer Vacation, Winter Vacation Etc. These take place every year at the same time.

Seasonal Marketing doesn’t mean that it’s only done on special days, but we can divide a whole year also into different seasons and can update our marketing plan seasonally. As we see there’re mostly seasons considered summer, winter, fall and rain. So, we can update our marketing plan according to these seasons by updating our marketing materials for a unique and relative theme.

You can choose how you want to make it, and with which factors. Seasonal Marketing shouldn’t coincide with an ‘official’ event. It is necessary because some businesses perform well at certain points in the year and struggle on other days. So, seasonal marketing can help us in boosting our sales and getting the most out of the times when the customers are looking for our services and products.

So, now I hope you’ve understood why seasonal marketing plans can be a game-changing factor in our marketing plans. Creating seasonal marketing campaigns for our brand keeps our marketing plan fresh. Customers get excited by getting the special seasonal offer for the products they’re looking for.

How to Build a Seasonal Marketing Plan?

Creating Seasonal Marketing isn’t that hard, it’s simple if you’ve understood the concept of seasonal marketing. As aforementioned you can either create a seasonal marketing plan around special days or holidays, or you can make it for winter, spring, summer, rain, and fall. It depends on you and your business.

As we know that a seasonal marketing strategy isn’t general marketing but it is a customized marketing plan for a particular season. It can help us in boosting our brand awareness, and increase sales at intervals throughout the year.

Let’s build a seasonal marketing plan step by step:

Understand Your Niche and Audience

Understanding your niche and audience is a must in this competitive digital world. If you know who you’re marketing to and what’s the place of your business in the industry then it’ll be a focussed marketing campaign. We always run focused marketing campaigns to get better results.

For understanding our potential clients we need to create a customer profile on the basis of age, location, gender, profession, your customer’s expectations, pain points, and much more. This customer profile is called customer persona. If you don’t know how to create a marketing persona, then click here, the directed blog will help you in creating a marketing persona for your business.

A thorough understanding of your customers will help you in designing your products and services specific to your customer’s needs, and understanding your business’s niche.

Determine Goals

Without having a goal you’re not moving anywhere, so you should always determine goals in every aspect of your life.

Always determine what you want to achieve from a particular campaign, it’ll help you in tracking how successful your marketing campaign has been.

Goals keep you motivated, so ensure to determine some for your marketing campaigns.

Research Your Competitors

Researching your competitors and dissecting their successful marketing campaigns can help you a lot in building a successful marketing campaign of your own. Dissecting piece by piece their successful marketing campaigns you can know how they approach the audience for buying their services or products, and what tactics they are using to attract the visitors.

This will help you in giving a form to your seasonal marketing campaigns and using the tested marketing tactics.

Build Your Marketing Calendar

We should create a yearly marketing calendar including all the major events, and holidays. It’ll help you in keeping pace with the holidays and be on time. Include all the events, and big holidays, it’ll also help you create your content planner.

Plan Early: Time is of the Essence

Planning early can save you from last-moment anxiety, and irritation. As we all know that seasonal marketing is all about marketing around a specific time, so if time passes we can’t perform it. To be safe from missing out on the opportunity you need to plan everything in advance.

Plan your offer, the channels you’ll be promoting on, which assets you’ll be using, and what technicalities will be needed. So, you need to plan all these things in advance

Tap into the sentiment of the season:

You can tap into the sentiment of the season by putting a creative spin on products, services, and other offerings. For this, you need to understand the customer’s emotions, and how they feel about your brand.

For tapping into the sentiments of your customers, you can showcase to them the stories of your previous customers, and how they achieved the desired results through your products and services. Showcase your testimonials, and reviews to build trust and authority in the market. Offer something free to make them feel valued.

People don’t easily leave their previous brands, and move ahead to a new one because of their core beliefs, and what’s the way of changing beliefs without forcing them on the customers?

We all know that stories are easy to remember and make a larger impact on the human brain, so incorporating storytelling in seasonal marketing campaigns can help us in touching the audiences. It’ll make our brand memorable, recognizable, and trustable, and will help us in tapping the sentiment of the season.

Leverage Social Media and User-generated content

We should not forget the importance of social media, it can be included in every marketing strategy, as social media presence is the best way to showcase your company’s profile and marketing tactics.

As well your social media presence should reflect the seasonal marketing plan by having posts related to the overall marketing campaign.

You can send your social media users to your website or store from where they can buy your products, can create an atmosphere of excitement around the special offers you’re willing to provide, can drive users to the email list, and can engage with your users through giveaways and user-generated content.

User-generated content is the content generated by users through participating in different types of competitions. This is a great way of engaging with your users and using their created content by giving them credit for it. They also enjoy these types of events because they’re actively participating in the competition and interacting with the business. You can incentivize the whole campaign to perform particular tasks.

Maximize Your Discounts

Who doesn’t like discounts? I don’t know about you, but I feel so much happier when I get something at discount.

Well, this is also a marketing tactic of providing a discount on a particular occasion or season sales. You can also make this part of your marketing campaigns. Keep discounts on your products and services according to the seasons

One thing you need to remember is always keep your discounts percentage-wise (50%), not like 50$ etc. It impacts so much. Percentage sign makes customers believe that they’re having a great deal. 50% look more than 50$, even when they’re equal.

Host a Giveaway

Giveaways are the best way of getting the data from your user in return for some free usable materials. Hosting a giveaway isn’t all about giving your users something, but giving something valuable that can have value in their life.

So, the service or product you’re providing in a giveaway should be useful to your users. Giveaways can help you in growing your following, and spread brand awareness.

Always host a season-centric giveaway to support the seasonal marketing campaigns.

Don’t Try to Be the Best: Make Yourself Unique

Don’t try to be the best, as if you’re trying to provide the same deal as your competitors are providing with better benefits, then your customers will compare your brand to your competitors. So, to avoid this problem you need to be unique. Make a unique deal for your customers that they can’t get at any other time during the year. You can also provide a limited-time edition product that’s only valid during a specific timeframe.

Improve Your SEO

Don’t you want to rank higher on search engines? Everyone wants that their social media pages and website should rank higher on search engine result pages than their competitors.

But, to achieve this you need to focus on SEO which is also called search engine optimisation. It helps in driving organic free traffic and can potentially increase sales of your products or services during the season sale.

For improving SEO, you should start a blog on your website, and keep it updated with frequent blog posts. Content Marketing is an excellent SEO tool, as well as it is beneficial in educating your customers about your products and services. But, you need to improve the technicality of the websites, website speed, and keep the content relevant to your brand.

Because SEO works well when the content is relevant.

Bring Back Old Success Marketing Campaigns

You need to look back sometimes, as everyone says, history repeats itself. List the successful seasonal marketing campaigns. Now, you need to repeat those successful seasonal marketing campaigns.

Even some big brands run the same seasonal promotions every year. It helps in building brand loyalty and drives new and old customers who want to get in on the offers. It can also excite your current followers for visiting the shop and making the purchase.

So, always try to repeat the success, by running successful campaigns.

Create Tailored Email Outreach

If we’re talking about marketing strategies and we don’t talk about the emails, then all in vain. Well, the reason behind this is, that people provide email more frequently than their mobile number, and email is a great way to nurture your leads.

As we know that we can’t convert our users into customers so easily because of their previous core beliefs system, and trust factors.

So, we can nurture our new subscribers by sending them a series of emails about offers according to the particular season.

We can also send our current email subscribers a special offer designed only for them. So, don’t leave it.

Scheduling

Well choosing the best time for starting the seasonal marketing campaign is easy. You need to watch your competitors closely and note down when they start promoting their offers on a particular season, you just need to start the promotions of special offers just before them. One thing more, don’t forget your audience because they are the ones who’ll make a purchase, not your competitors. So, schedule your seasonal marketing campaign on the best time to communicate with your users. And build your marketing material in a storytelling format and with what your users will most likely engage with.

So, schedule everything before time and your competitors keeping in mind your audience.

Execution

Execution is the most important part, well, you need to promote your offers on each platforms your business or you are active on. One of the most common characteristics of a successful business is to make the best use of Omnichannel Marketing. You should also incorporate it into your marketing campaigns. Omnichannel Marketing is all about providing your users with a uniform and seamless experience on each platform they visit with. It is a business marketing strategy that is used to provide a seamless and best user experience along with improving business growth. Team DigiAvtar have already written a blog for you on this topic, click here to know more about Omnichannel Marketing.

Well, we’ve discussed the steps of creating a seasonal marketing campaign with the help of the aforementioned steps, now let’s talk about the benefits of seasonal Marketing plans

Benefits of Launching a Seasonal Marketing Campaign

Many new and established businesses can be seen enjoying the benefits of seasonal marketing plans. With the help of seasonal transitions and holidays, they appeal to their new and existing customers with special offers. Here are some common benefits every business can enjoy from seasonal marketing strategies:

  1. Create Immediacy & appealing to Seasonal Excitement
  2. Drives Traffic
  3. Increase Brand Awareness
  4. Makes Your Brand Recognizable
  5. Converting Potential Customers into Paying Clients
  6. Shows Adaptiveness of the Businesses towards the Market
  7. Boost Products Sales
  8. Cost-Effective and Reusable
  9. Increase visibility and Chances of Conversion

Every marketing plan has its own benefits according to its nature, as seasonal marketing has. We’ve discussed the most important benefits we can get by implementing seasonal marketing in our business.

Let’s move forward and discuss about some tips and ideas for seasonal marketing campaigns.

Seasonal Marketing Tips and Ideas

  1. Provide Helpful Content or Customized Product Guides
  2. Photo/collage Contests
  3. Free Samples for attracting visitors & solving some of their problems
  4. Use of Limited-time Offers for creating a sense of immediacy
  5. Use of Daily Offers
  6. Seasonal Social Media Posts and Ads for creating a seasonal game
  7. “Best of” Content
  8. Animated Content on Social Media and Ads for grabbing user’s attention
  9. Automated Countdown Timer to Landing Pages and Ads for building anticipation
  10. Season Specific Testimonials & Social Proofs in Ad Copy and Images
  11. Always Keep your ads simple and enticing
  12. Use of Carousel for Sharing Photos of Seasonal Product Categories and Products
  13. FB’s 360 video
  14. Add Gift Wrapping on Checkout
  15. Look at your competitors and listen to your audience
  16. Building an email list
  17. Track your campaign and revenue for checking whether the campaign is successful or not, and reusable
  18. Plan your seasonal marketing campaign in the off-season
  19. Don’t start and stop all of your marketing at once
  20. Start Early and Visually
  21. Use previous data to know the best time for your marketing campaign
  22. Don’t offend your audience and make storytelling your friend.

Conclusion

Seasonal marketing plans are made for a specific period of time in a year. We should update our marketing plans with seasonal marketing. It helps us in communicating easily with our users and helping them in getting the products and services according to the particular season. So, it boosts sales in a great way.

You must be willing to make a seasonal marketing plan for your company, well, by following the aforementioned steps you can make a seasonal marketing plan for your brand.

If you’ve any more questions, you can ask us in the comment section, and visit our blog for more similar blogs.