Sonic Branding: Just A Jingle or More than That?

Sonic Branding: Just A Jingle or More than That?

Do you remember the sound you hear after switching on the mobile? Every brand has a different sound that comes after the mobile is switched on. Why? Does that matter?

It’s in every field, even on social media like Facebook, when we push the like button, we hear a sound. Why do we need that sound?

If you hear any particular sound associated with a brand, then you can be definitely sure that the brand is using sonic branding in marketing.

In this blog, we’ll be looking at what sonic branding is, sonic signatures, and sonic logo, along with benefits, tips, examples, and psychology behind using sonic branding in marketing.

So, let’s get started!

What is Sonic Branding, Sonic Logo, & Signature?

Let’s first get together with sonic branding, then we’ll move ahead to sonic signatures and logo.

Sonic branding is the association and strategic use of specific pieces of sounds or jingles with a brand to identify and advertise products and services.

Incorporating sound into the brand makes it more recognizable along with an improved user experience.

Why marketers are using sound? Have you ever thought about it?

Well, sound is the most powerful memory of the human brain, it’s easy to recognize the sound and everyone can connect with it. Human beings only take 0.146 seconds in reacting to it.

I hope you’ve got your answer to why marketers are using it. If a piece of sound can make a powerful brand, then why shouldn’t we cash it!

It’s becoming a powerful and popular medium for conveying a memorable, personalized, and targeted message to its target audience, and the use of sonic logos and sonic signatures are making it livelier.

Sonic logos are the audio cue used by a brand. These are made to leave an impression of the brand in the consumer’s mind. Sonic logos are instantly recognizable and memorable for a longer period of time.

While on the other hand, a sonic signature is a particular type of sonic branding in which a few notes are repeated in the same way. Mostly signatures are used for confirmation of an action.

As we know now that sonic branding is the sound of your brand. Now, the question is, who creates it?

Well, if it’s a part of the strategy then, it’s obvious that it’s developed by the brands. Developing a sonic branding strategy, sonic logo, and sonic signature is part of an intentional strategy. It helps audiences in associating some specific sounds with a particular brand.

I hope, now you have a clear understanding of sonic branding, logos, and signatures. Now, let’s move forward, and get to know the psychology behind using sound in marketing!

The psychology behind using Sound in Marketing

Do you know about the concept of visual branding? Most people know about visual branding, but sound branding isn’t as well-known as visual branding. But for small companies and businesses, it’s as important as visuals, and sometimes even more.

The psychology behind using sound in marketing is, that human beings make their best and ultimate decisions in a non-rational way. These decisions are made by the limbic part of the human mind. And do you know, that the limbic part of the human mind is aroused by sound or music?

You can comprehend now, how sound can impart a big role in the sales process and in the growth of the brand.

What types of Businesses should start with Sonic Branding?

Not every type of business can incorporate Sonic Branding. As, it’s about incorporating sound in the marketing materials, and each brand doesn’t use audio and video materials, but if used then this is highly impactful for them. Brands and individuals that can incorporate it are;

  1. An author producing audiobooks
  2. A tutor producing video tutorials
  3. An individual hosting a vlog or podcast
  4. Hold Music for the customer service department
  5. Brands use audio and video in marketing materials whether to advertise or describe products and services.

Now, let’s move ahead and get to know about the benefits of sonic branding.

Benefits of Sonic Branding

There are a lot of benefits it can provide to a business. In sonic branding, we use simple mnemonics, specific pieces of sounds, jingles, specific audios, sound effects etc. But these simple things carry a lot of emotional and exclusive value that helps consumers to connect with the brand on both emotional and personal levels

The benefits we can get through it are:

  1. Emotionally Connect with the brand by Triggering Emotions
  2. Getting more attention and recognition
  3. Stronger Brand Loyalty
  4. Boosting Brand Personality
  5. Enhanced Brand Experience, Engagement and Recall
  6. Communicating Clear and Single Messaging at a time
  7. Conveys Purpose and Values easily

We’ve seen that sonic branding provides so many benefits to the brands. Sonic branding connects customers on an emotional level with the help of sounds. Being resonating on an emotional level, it’s very easy and efficient to convey purpose and value with sonic branding. In the same way, sounds humanise the digital web presence of a brand and make it more appealing to the customers.

As we’ve discussed earlier the sonic logo, don’t you want to know the tips for creating a sonic logo of your own?

Tips to Create Sonic Logo for a Brand

Well, the sonic logo is the heart of branding campaigns, moving forward without discussing about it wouldn’t be justice to the blog. So, the tips you need to remember while creating a sonic logo are;

Find out your competitors & Target Audience

It’s better to identify your competitors as well as your audience. You need to find out who your competitors are, and to who are you selling your products and services. For the target audience, you can create a user persona, and for brand competitors, you can make a list.

Conduct a Sonic Branding Audit of your own and competitors’ Brands

After determining the audience and target audience, you need to conduct a branding audit to look for inspiration. After that, you should also conduct a branding audit of your own find, to find out where you’re lacking, what type of end screens and words you are using at the end of your educational or training video materials, are using any background music in the videos?

After auditing your own brands and competitors you’ll a crystal clear understanding of where you are standing right now.

Keep Sonic Logo Simple and Easily Recognizable

When you’ll see the existing brands that are using it in their brands, you’ll find out that they’ve not included the whole jingle, long music, or songs. But, instead, they’ve used some musical mnemonics to generate a specific emotion in the target audience. So, keep your sonic logo as simple as possible, and don’t rely on words.

A couple of seconds would be more than enough to generate emotion in the consumer’s mind and get the right response. If your logo is simple, only then it would be easily recognizable, and memorable, so don’t overwhelm it with emotions by making it complicated. A simple sonic logo is enough to fulfil what we’re expecting.

Trigger Emotions with Your Sonic Logo

It triggers emotions that help consumers in communicating with the brand and feeling relaxed. Your logo should trigger positive emotions.

Triggering positive emotions, like feeling relaxed, peaceful, secure etc. would make your sound meaningful. Because the sonic logo is about focusing on particular emotions, it isn’t a random sound.

Don’t include so much, your logo and tagline with the piece of simple positive music would be enough for your sonic logo.

Make a Unique Sonic Logo

If you’re leaving a chance of comparing then you’re losing a lot of your customers. The easiest way from standing out from the competition is to be unique. So, you need to generate your own customised Sonic Logo.

Keep Improving

As in marketing, we can’t say what audiences will like and what not. So, if your Sonic Logo isn’t performing well, then you can always conduct an audit as to why your consumers are not appreciating your logo. You can always improve as it takes time. It isn’t easy to create an iconic logo, but you’ll eventually get there if you don’t lose sight of your vision.

Follow these 6 tips for creating a Sonic Logo of your brand, I’m sure now you are ready to create a Logo of your own. Let’s see the examples of sonic branding to get more clarity about it.

Examples of Sonic Branding

There’re a lot of examples of it we can see in our daily life. As many big giants are using it for decades and everyone can identify them with their sound only. Some of the most famous examples of Sonic Branding are;

  1. Netflix’s “Ta-dum”
  2. NBC’s “Three-tone Chime”
  3. Coca-Cola’s “Taste the Feeling”
  4. HBO’s “Ahh”
  5. Intel Inside
  6. Nokia’s Default Tune
  7. T-series’ “Drum-beat with Music

We’ve seen big brands in the electronics, music, food and Television industries using it in marketing for quite a long time. It’s time for you to decide the sonic branding strategy of your brand. You can see in the examples how brands are incorporating it from just simple sound to music. Some are also including a tagline that is generating a particular emotion.

Now, let’s wrap up the blog!

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, sonic branding is about using sound in marketing. We create a sonic logo and signature. But these are just the beginning of sonic branding. For proper branding and to be heard, known and recognized worldwide, you need to manage the sound experience for every consumer and touchpoints in every market. As we know sound or music connects and inspires us by triggering emotions, so this branding technique provides an opportunity to tap into public emotions.

As we know music and sounds bring us together by relaxing, motivating or generating other emotions, no matter where we stand in our culture, people, or demographics. I hope now you have understood that “Sonic Branding isn’t just a jingle; it’s more than that. “

Want to start with Sonic Branding with your brand? Ask a simple question to yourself, “What and how does your brand sound like?

I hope we’ve covered everything regarding Sonic Branding, if you’ve more questions, you can drop us a comment!

For more marketing resources, visit our blog.

Multichannel Marketing: 7 Step Framework For Successful Strategy

Multichannel Marketing: 7 Step Framework For Successful Strategy

The world of marketing is so much important, versatile, and enormous and getting bigger and bigger as the days are passing. It’s becoming very crucial and difficult to target your audience. This is the phase where multichannel marketing comes in handy.

If you’re willing to target every platform your consumers spend time, then you are going to enter the world of multichannel marketing. It is so much valuable tactic for any kind and size of the company. Want to know everything about this marketing strategy, then you’re in the right place, we’re going to cover every aspect of multichannel marketing in this blog.

Let’s get started!

What is Multichannel Marketing?

It is called Multichannel Marketing when a brand connects with its consumers through various different channels whether direct or indirect communications.

We’re passing through the digital era, and we spend our time on different platforms for entertainment, information, and connecting with people. So, according to multichannel marketing, if we’re implementing it, then we can reach a wider audience in varying scenarios. It is also good for the customer that he can reach out to us with no effort.

The channels that we can target in multichannel marketing can be:

  1. Website
  2. SMM Platforms (Social Media)
  3. E-mail
  4. Newspapers
  5. Print Advertising (Pamphlets)
  6. Billboards and Flyers
  7. Mobile Applications
  8. Video Advertising
  9. Business (Brand) Catalogue
  10. Push Notifications
  11. Text Messages (SMS)
  12. Podcasts
  13. Television
  14. Radio
  15. Direct Mail
  16. Paid Search
  17. Physical Location

So, we’ve included somewhat every possible channel the consumers can contact you with. Multichannel marketing uses both approaches inbound and outbound marketing. The ultimate goal of multichannel marketing is to provide consumers with the choice to reach out to brands wherever and whenever they want without making efforts. In this whole process, consumers control the whole buying process. They decide from where they want to enter the buying process, and how and on which platform they want to get out.

Well, it’s not an easy task to target various different platforms simultaneously and provide consumers with a seamless experience. For this, every brand needs a strategy that they can follow and provide their customers with the experience they preach.

How to build a multichannel marketing strategy for a brand?

In multichannel marketing, brands need to target various platforms simultaneously for that they need a long-term plan. This long-term plan will help them in spreading brand awareness and increasing engagement with the consumers along with building strong emotional relationships.

Well, we’ve different marketing channels and we need to create content for every channel for the consumers on those platforms. As for this, we need a clear and deep understanding of marketing data to design the right creative content for the audience. This understanding can come only with A/B testing and analysing of the previous marketing data, and can only be achieved by following some simple steps:

Targeting & Understanding the Right Audience after Creating Brand’s User Persona

As we’re communicating with the audiences on different platforms, if we’re not targeting the right audience then all the efforts will go in vain. So, it’s better to make the user persona before implementation.

As multichannel marketing is all about giving users a choice to connect with us on whichever platform they want. For this, first, we need to understand our users and gather data about them. We need to find out where and how our users consume content, and on which platform they spend their valuable time.

After that, we can plan our multichannel marketing strategy around those particular platforms. This way they will make spontaneous purchases without feeling pushy because they feel like it’s their choice.

Develop & Study Analytics

Develop customer data from surveys and forms or collect it from various data platforms, and perform analysis on it. Analysis helps us in creating targeted marketing messages. Using this you can create a personalized marketing strategy for various platforms based on personal, behavioural and demographic consumer data. This strategy will boost consumer engagement along with user experience.

Integrating Marketing Teams for Seamless Communication

As we’re performing multichannel marketing campaigns that target many platforms at once, it’s obviously different teams would be working on different platforms. As result, some problems generate like communication disruption and hindrance in the collaboration process. Silos are developed naturally within the organization because of team members’ loyalty only towards the team and not sharing the marketing material and data with other teams.

We need to break down these barriers, and this can be possible if all the teams are working in unison. Breaking down existing silos will help in integrating marketing teams for seamless communication within the organization.

Creating Brand Style Guide for Consistent Brand Messaging

If you’re willing to establish your business as a brand, then creating a brand style guide is the first and must thing. It will help all the marketing teams also to deliver a consistent brand message on all platforms.

It’ll keep team members on a single page in what colours to be used, font, and what types of visual graphics should be used and when. This way, the businesses can develop their own design system that works seamlessly. If you want to know how to create a brand style guide then click here.

Choosing the Right Channels for Marketing

Choosing the right platforms can be a great start for the success of a multichannel marketing campaign. The choice of the channels differs for every company. It depends on the needs, and values of the company, and also on which platform their consumers are spending their time.

For getting a rough idea and analysis you can use the current platforms you’re working on. It’ll provide you with a good and clear idea of what type of content your customers are consuming, and where you need improvements.

Measure the Success from a Multichannel Marketing Platform

After every campaign or a certain period of time, you should measure the performance of your multichannel marketing efforts. It’s better if you can measure it from a single dashboard, for this you need to set up a multichannel marketing platform. It’ll provide you 360-degree customer view based on the marketing data from different channels. After analysing the data, you can perform improvements in the tactics.

Improve and Keep Consistent Brand Messaging & Customer Experience

As everyone says, improvement is better than not trying. So, after measuring all the factors, we need to focus on strong areas, but also workout on the weak areas of the campaign.

One thing more consistency makes you recognizable, so we need to keep brand messaging & customer experience consistent. Consistency doesn’t mean the same texts, same creatives or same content everywhere, but using the same fonts, colours, visual graphics etc.

We’ve discussed the 7 step framework of creating and implementing a multichannel marketing strategy, now let’s move forward and discuss the benefits of multichannel marketing

Benefits of Multichannel Marketing

There are a lot of benefits multichannel marketing provides to businesses. One study claims that multichannel consumers spend 2 to 3 times more than single-channel customers. Let’s explore more about the benefits of multichannel marketing;

  1. Providing Choice to Customers: In reality, multichannel marketing is about giving control of the sales process to the hands of the user. In the whole sales process, customers will have a choice of entering and exiting the sales process anywhere and anytime they want. They will at least have free will in the sales process.
  2. Expanded Reach & Increased Awareness: Because of targeting multiple platforms at a time, multichannel marketing targets the masses through different channels and markets. Being active on every possible platform, our consumers are spending time, increasing awareness of the businesses. So, in simple words expanded reach means increased awareness.
  3. Increased Engagement: As there are multiple platforms in it, so has the increased number of consumer touchpoints. Engagement is increased because consumers can connect to the brand on whichever platform they want.
  4. Increased Effectiveness: Well, having a web presence on the channels our customers are active will make our business more effective. Our strategy will be more impactful on the users and the brand will be recognizable to every user.
  5. Consistent and Targeted Messaging: Consistent and Targeted Brand messaging is a challenge many companies are trying to figure out. A multichannel marketing strategy ensures the consistency of brand awareness.

Examples of Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing is being implemented by every brand nowadays. Any brand that comes to your mind is implementing multichannel marketing. Not a single brand is there that isn’t using multichannel marketing right now. For example:

  1. Netflix
  2. Amazon
  3. DigiAvtar
  4. Flipkart
  5. Hotstar

I don’t think there’s a meaning in putting the brand names here and telling that they’re the brand using a multichannel marketing strategy. I would say, every brand is using multichannel marketing knowingly or unknowingly.

Let’s move forward and discuss the future of multichannel marketing.

The Future of Multichannel Marketing

As we know now that it is being performed by every company knowingly or unknowingly. Then, isn’t every brand being benefitted from this?

I would say, yes, every brand gets benefits from this strategy in some ways. But if it is done in the right way then it can be quite fruitful for the growth of your brand. So, follow the steps and do what’s been told in the above sections.

But, is it enough to be on all the platforms, and performing the strategy? What can we do more after mastering the multichannel marketing strategy?

It’s the place where Omnichannel marketing enters!

So, what is Omnichannel Marketing? And what’s the difference between Multichannel Marketing and Omnichannel Marketing?

Difference between Multichannel and Omnichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing is about securing positions on all the different marketing platforms. In multichannel marketing, brands have a good web presence on various different marketing channels, and users can connect with the brands from whichever platform they want.

But, as the expectations of users are increasing and they are expecting seamless unified personalized user experience from the brands across the platforms. For that, we need a shift to Omnichannel Marketing. But it doesn’t make multichannel marketing less valuable than Omnichannel. Because Omnichannel Marketing can be performed well only if multichannel has been performed well, multichannel marketing is the first step we need to take before entering the world of Omnichannel.

Multichannel Marketing is about providing businesses with a solution to reach consumers on various different platforms, but it does not offer a unified seamless personalized experience.

While on the other hand, Omnichannel marketing reaches consumers on different platforms providing them a unified seamless personalized experience so that they feel connected with the business.

Omnichannel marketing starts from where multichannel marketing ends. It’s moving one step ahead in the area of user experience.

Omnichannel marketing connects all the channels of multichannel marketing to provide a unified seamless experience to its users. It also blurs the line between offline and online marketing.

In simple words, Omnichannel marketing is about connecting all the channels and working as a single entity providing personalized & targeted content to its users for a uniform seamless experience. But you can achieve great benefits from it only if you’ve performed multichannel marketing very well because it needs data from previous campaigns to make a better and more successful Omnichannel marketing strategy.

If you want to know more about it, then click here.

I hope you’ve got clear what is the basic difference between Multichannel Marketing and Omnichannel Marketing.

We’ve come so far now let’s conclude the blog!

Wrapping Up

We’ve included everything so far that’s necessary to understand what multichannel marketing is all about, and we’ve understood the difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing strategies.

If it is performed well then it can be a great tool for the growth of your business. Connect all of your channels and incorporate Omnichannel Marketing after working on Multichannel Marketing for a good amount of time. We wish you success in your future multichannel marketing campaigns.

If you still have any questions then feel free to ask in the comment section, and we’d love to know if you like to leave a comment if the blog is valuable or not.

For more valuable blogs on a marketing visit our blog.

Blockchain Application in Business | 4 Popular Blockchain Platforms

Blockchain Application in Business | 4 Popular Blockchain Platforms

Research has it that about 55% of businesses in India are already adopting blockchain technology. Generally, the blockchain is such a disruptive technology to the extent that it has a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) to be 82.4%.

The market size was recorded to be 3.67 billion USD dollars as of 2020. The exciting thing is that the growth rate will maintain the upward signal even till around 2028. While these results may or may not startle you, the important questions you need to answer without dilly-dallying are these;

Are you adopting blockchain technology?

Are you integrating this technology into your business?

What is the blockchain application in business?

Have you started using blockchain-based applications and platforms to your advantage?

As you thoroughly search your heart for the truth about those questions, let me quickly remind you of what blockchain is in case you don’t exactly know.

Blockchain is a decentralised shared ledger technology that; tracks transactions and keeps records immutable, transparent and secure in a business network.

Blockchain Application in Business

The blockchain application in business is still in its early stage just like Bitcoin in 2009.

I just chipped in this to tell you that this is the best time to carry this subject of discussion; “blockchain application in business” as a case in your head.

Carrying it as a case in your head is to start making baby steps towards integrating it into your business.

My mission in this piece is to show you the 4 blockchain-based applications and social media platforms you should not fail to leverage as a business or even a marketer.

They will help you rake in more cash.

4 Blockchain-based Apps and Social Media Platforms

WordProof: Claim ownership of your content

Content Marketing is a very good tool to deploy for business growth. As a business or a content marketer, maximising the benefits that come with content marketing practices should be one of the tops on your table.

Hence the reason to show you what WordProof can help you achieve. What I am about to say now can be painful. I know because I have experienced it and possibly you too. Imagine situations where you’ve gone through a mental draining exercise to come up with original, quality and captivating content, only for your competitor to write on the exact topic and even rank better.

Quite painful!

Isn’t it?

I know so but hey, those potential moments of pain will be cut off once you start utilizing WordProof. It is a WordPress plugin built on blockchain technology. With WordProof, you can put a time stamp on the blockchain which will be processed on the general ledger.

This timestamp after processing can not be adjusted and its link will now appear at the bottom of your content (article). This now proves that you are the owner of the content

Steemit: Incentivized blogging platform

Steemit is a blockchain-based social media blogging platform. When you publish an article, you can earn tokens. These tokens are earned when you get a lot of thumbs from the Steemit visitors for reading and voting for your article.

Any reader can as well earn tokens when he votes for the article first. As a business or a marketer, Steemit is sure another platform to earn more.

Tippin.me: Get some tips into your pocket

When you are registered with tipping.me, you can earn from your tweets. What you need to do is to install its Chrome extension and then link it to your Twitter username.

This will make a lightning icon appear on your tweets at the bottom side after the retweet, message, like and reply symbol. When the lightning is clicked, you can get tips by scanning the QR code that will appear with your new wallet created on the tipping.me account. Get to know more here

Brave: Earn as a Brave user

A brave web browser is a search engine that protects the user’s data. It displays ads based on the user’s browsing history which is stored locally. Users are at liberty to turn on the ads they want in place of seeing generic ads.

It creates a win-win scenario for both the user and the publisher. Both parties earn at the end of the day. If you become a brave user, you stand to earn 15% of the brave’s revenue while 55% goes to the publisher. These earnings are in the form of Brave’s BAT crypto and are paid into the user’s Brave’s wallet.

One can transfer the money in their wallet to any of their favourite content creators as tips using the tipping feature. Better still, a user can withdraw their BAT (Brave’s Attention Token) as cash.

Brave makes it possible for advertisers to display personalized ads and at the same time, users are in control of their privacy.

Conclusion:

When you are knowledgeable of how blockchain can benefit you and help improve businesses, honestly, you will not fail to start getting involved now with the blockchain wave.

If you want to create websites or apps for your businesses, don’t do it the conventional way, involve blockchain-oriented software developers to get the job done. Let me softly echo it once more into your ears, and start integrating it into your business and in all your endeavours.

Most importantly, you can enrol on a blockchain literacy class so you can have an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. This is candid advice you can implement without shilly-shallying.

What will be your next action concerning the blockchain journey after you leave this page? Please do tell me in the comment section, I will love to know.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a blockchain application?

Blockchain applications are a step further when compared to conventional apps. They have new and improved features such as the crypto-economic system and decentralised architecture. These features help to appreciably increase trust and security, create tokenized assets and design network incentives.

What apps can be built on blockchain?

The top 13 apps that can be built on blockchain are; Cryptocurrency Exchange, Personal Identity System, Original Content Creation, Voting Mechanism, Real Estate Processing platform, Supply Chain and Logistics Monitoring, Advertising Insights, NFT Marketplaces, Cross-border Payments, Securing Sharing of Medical Data, Anti-money Laundry Tracking System, Music Royalties Tracking, Real-time IoT Operating Systems, etc.

What are the benefits of blockchain technology?

The easy-to-spot benefits of blockchain technology are top-notch security of transactions, the privacy of data, transparency, tokenization, built-in incentivization, shared IT network, elimination of the third party, removal of the fake factor and duplication effect.

What is the biggest problem with blockchain?

What seems to be the major problem with blockchain is the transaction speed. The fact that the nodes must verify each transaction before it is accepted by the blocks creates a slow time in the transaction speed.
To get the picture clearer, see this; Visa averagely processes about 1,736 transactions per second while Bitcoin, a blockchain-based digital currency handles 4.6 transactions per second.

WhatsApp Marketing For Small Businesses

WhatsApp Marketing For Small Businesses

WhatsApp is more than just a messaging tool for people. In addition to communicating with existing customers, it is a great platform for businesses to reach out to prospective customers.

How? Let’s figure that out in this blog.

When we talk about social media marketing, social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest are usually the first to come to mind. However, social media channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, and Telegram are also important for your marketing strategy.

Many brands have already started using WhatsApp Marketing in their marketing strategy to improve their customer service. WhatsApp is also starting to become a popular tool for small businesses with its app WhatsApp Business.

WhatsApp Business enables you to offer personal customer support to your audience with automated messages and chatbot-like capabilities. So, if you’re launching a new product, WhatsApp can automatically send the messages you’ve created to the customers you select.

Why Use WhatsApp for Your Small Business?

You might want to reconsider including WhatsApp in your marketing strategy if you haven’t already. Let me tell you why: it has over 1.5 billion monthly active users! In fact, it has even surpassed Facebook! What’s even more valuable is the number of times people utilize the message feature. Approximately 60 billion messages are sent every day by its users, according to recent statistics.

Another interesting fact about instant messaging-based social media apps is that 53% of people say they are more likely to do business with a brand they can directly communicate with.

Lastly, it has an awesome engagement rate. Almost nine out of ten messages are opened and read, and 90% are opened within three seconds of receiving them. The prospect of what that could mean to your customer service might make you a little bit excited. By using the WhatsApp marketing strategy, you can provide your customers with a direct line of communication that makes you more accessible and convenient for them.

In addition, WhatsApp Marketing gives you the freedom to communicate with more people than you would be able to do with text messaging. You can create broadcast lists or groups and send the same message to all your customers if you’d like. You can even send videos, photos, and audio messages via WhatsApp.

Using the WhatsApp Business App, you can harness the popularity and easy-to-use tools that WhatsApp provides to reach your customers and really connect with them.

How To Use WhatsApp Business for Your Marketing Strategy?

The first step involves downloading the free WhatsApp Business app on your device. Once you have that downloaded, you’re ready to get started.

Create a Business Profile and a Catalog

WhatsApp Business requires you to create a business profile and provide your customers with relevant information. You can add a short description of your business, your address, email address, and website URL. You can also create your own product catalogue to showcase your products and services!

Automatic Replies

This offers you Quick Replies, which is a tool that lets you save and reuse messages you often use with just one click. You can also create automatic replies for when you’re not available.

Link to Your WhatsApp Business Account

When you create a Business Account on it, you will get a short link for your account. This means that you can share this link on other social media apps and even in emails and on your website. When users click on that link, they will be redirected to it so they can message you directly.

Add Labels

Another awesome feature is the ability to add labels to your WhatsApp contacts. You can create labels to differentiate new customers from customers with pending payments, and so on.

Green Tick for Verified Accounts

When you verify your business account on it, you receive a green tick. This shows your customers that your account is the official account of your business. This helps them feel more comfortable reaching out to you, and they’ll know that all your contact information is correct.

Broadcast Lists

You can send messages to a broadcast list using it for Business, which could be a powerful marketing tool. However, there is a limit, you can only send messages to up to 256 contacts.

Statistics

One of the coolest features of the business app is the statistics feature. You will be able to see how many messages were sent, delivered, read, and received based on the analytics they share with you. Access to this kind of data is a great way to create a more successful WhatsApp customer service plan.

Use a Different Phone Number on WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business

One of the greatest advantages is that you can now have two numbers on your phone without needing a dual-sim phone. You do need to have two sim cards since you need to verify your phone number, but you only need to have your “business” number on your phone to verify it. With a number on your regular WhatsApp account and a different one on the WhatsApp Business app, it’s much easier to keep your personal and business messages separate.

Tips for Crafting a Killer WhatsApp Marketing Strategy

Create a Customer Persona

Every marketing strategy ought, to begin with, a customer persona. The more detailed persona you have, the clear marketing communication you will have.
Read More: How to create a customer persona for your brand

Share Relevant Content – for Free

Content marketing works anywhere, including WhatsApp. This is something small businesses often overlook. As with any social media channel, you need great content in order to create a successful WhatsApp marketing campaign.
Read More: Content Marketing

Improve the quality of your customer service

It helps you to be there for your people. If you want to respond quickly or urgently to a customer’s question, it is the perfect tool. People don’t like to wait, especially when they are ready to buy.

Your business can use it to connect with your customers and make them feel valued. Get to know them, ask questions, engage, and use their valuable feedback to improve your products and services.

Create contests and campaigns

Due to its instant messaging feature, it is a great platform for brand-related contests and campaigns. The key to a successful campaign is encouraging your audience to engage with you directly on it.

Collect customer testimonials for social proof

In order to understand the needs of your customers, it’s very important to get customer feedback. While bad reviews help you pinpoint the gaps, great reviews provide social proofing that can get you more business. Using it to collect customer feedback can deliver much better results than email.

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.