The Digital Marketing Podcast
Mandar Marathe
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The Digital Marketing Podcast by Mandar Marathe covers diverse topics related to Online Marketing. Right from Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Conversion Optimisation to SEO, Paid Search and everything in between, I share all the knowledge I have acquired and taught over the past 11 years.
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
Sep 27, 2020
Bryan Clayton: How GreenPal grew its lawn mowing services business to $20Mn via Digital Marketing
Bryan Clayton is a serial entrepreneur with multiple exits. He is currently co-founder of GreenPal, a web and mobile app that instantly connects homeowners with lawn mowing & maintenance service professionals.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we discuss various aspects of GreenPal's business and how Bryan + team has grown it to $20 Million ARR via SEO, Content Marketing and Video.
> Growth story of GreenPal - How does yourgreenpal.com drive traffic and conversions? What are its top channels?
> What's the current marketing / growth team like at GreenPal
> Content marketing efforts at GreenPal
> More and more marketers / brands are turning towards Video. What's Bryan's take?
> How has the pandemic affected GreenPal's business? What are some of the key learnings?
> Advice for business owners who are facing a tough time due to the pandemic
Sep 13, 2020
MN Hemant Mahto: YouTuber and Online Entrepreneur - 0 to 200k YouTube subscribers in a year
This podcast episode brings to the forefront a small-town boy MN Hemant Mahto from Bokaro, Ranchi, Jharkhand who has grown his YouTube channel from 0 - 198k subscribers in under a year.
We talk about YouTube growth, personal branding and Hemant's content creation philosophy.
The podcast is in Hindi with intermittent English translation.
Sep 1, 2020
Xenia Muntean: How marketing teams can reinvent collaboration
Xenia is the founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams at brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Viber, Siemens, and United Nations. For the past four years, she has worked with hundreds of marketing teams, helping them collaborate efficiently from across the room or across the globe.
Xenia was recognized on Forbes 30U30, spoke at Cannes Lions, and has been a guest on Growth Marketing Today, Social Geek, Social Minds and many other podcasts. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has recently launched her own podcast – People of Marketing.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we talk about how marketing teams can rise to the current challenges and reinvent collaboration.
Aug 24, 2020
Katija Vlatkovich: Helping small businesses succeed online during Covid
Katija Vlatkovich has been working in digital for the past decade, focusing on the areas of digital marketing strategy and advertising for retail/hospitality brands.
Due to Covid-19, she has been sharing her knowledge with business owners helping them to change their business strategy during this time of chaos, by providing free advice and training in the newly established Ecommerce Training & Advice Facebook Group. She has leveraged her global network of digital marketing and eCommerce experts to provide value to business owners who need some assistance and don’t know where to begin.
She’s worked across the social and digital advertising strategies for some of Australia and New Zealand’s largest retailers including Coles, Kmart, Target, Spotlight, Anaconda, Kathmandu and Blackmores.
She started her current agency, Misfit Digital, in order to start creating digital advertising strategies that actually made a difference, working with businesses that are centered at adding value to their customers. She believes in looking under the hood of a business and finding real ways that digital can actually help impact the bottom line. She believes in creating real connections with customers, rather than a short term gain.
For this reason, at Misfit Digital she got together a team of very intelligent people who love data, marketing and digital as much as she does. The team is excellent at solving problems through digital executions and finding ways to connect with an audience that makes them take action.
They focus on proving ROI and giving our clients real results.
This year they won the top platinum award at the AVA Digital awards for an ecommerce Facebook ads campaign for Australian electronics company, OzMobiles. Achieving an average ROAS of x24.
Katija is one of the leaders in the industry, providing honest, strategic marketing advice that truly gets results.
Aug 19, 2020
Rohan Chaubey: Growth Hacking
Rohan Chaubey is the international bestselling author of the award-winning book “The Growth Hacking Book”. His book is endorsed by Amitabh Kant, CEO and Director, NITI Aayog, Government of India. Twitter and IBM’s partner product.
Audiense ranks Rohan as India’s most-followed Growth Hacker. He co-founded International Growth Hacking Day on July 13th, 2019. He also had the honor of being listed as one of the 30 changemakers in India for the year 2018.
He has helped notable organizations like UNESCO, UBER, RedBull, Kalyan Jewellers, Congress, BJP, SoGoSurvey, Freshworks, Interesting Engineering, Quest Nutrition, etc.
Rohan is the host of his own web television series RohanChaubeyTV. He specializes in helping startups acquire their first 100, 1000, 10000 and 100K users/customers/followers.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing podcast, we spoke extensively about Rohan's mantra of growth hacking.
Aug 18, 2020
Interview with Avi Arya - Social Media Marketer & CEO of Internet Moguls
Avi Arya is a father of two girls and 6 dogs, a street car racer turned hotelier turned Social Media Influencer. He is named among the top 25 influencers by Influencive, ranked as one of the top 100 digital icons of the region by Impact Magazine and credited to create 100 million dollar revenues for his clients.
With over 20+ years of experience, Avi now shares his knowledge about Social Media, Digital Marketing and Revenue Generation.
In this podcast interview with Avi, we discuss how Video can be used as a powerful tool to build a personal brand and market your business.
Aug 6, 2020
Interview with Graham Brown - Host of the Asia Tech Podcast & CEO of Pikkal, a B2B Podcast Agency
I had a candid conversation with Graham Brown - Host of the Asia Tech Podcast & CEO of Pikkal, a B2B Podcast Agency
We spoke about
* Graham's Podcasting journey
* How podcasting has evolved
* How Graham landed a podcast interview with Tony Fernandes, CEO of Air Asia.
* Graham's story of starting a B2B podcasting agency - Pikkal
* Why today's leaders need to start a podcast - How can companies & leaders benefit from Podcasting
* Graham's favorite podcasts
* What does a typical day in Graham's life look like and his idea of work-life balance.
* Graham's singular goal / mission in life - What's his goal & vision
* Graham's outlook on the podcasting industry in Asia
* What you should know before starting a Podcast
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Who is Mandar Marathe and why should you listen to him in 2020?
I am a software engineer turned digital marketing consultant, owner of a specialized Startup & SME Digital Marketing agency -Briefkase, a professor of Digital Marketing at some of the top B-schools in India including IIT Bombay, Great Lakes & IIM Sirmaur.
I am a cricket traggic, a father to a son and a daughter and husband to a superwoman doctor.
My mission is to help 1 Lac business owners, marketers & business owners become better with Digital Marketing.
Know more about me: https://mandarmarathe.net/digital-marketing-consultant/
FREE Webinars
My free "Digital Traveler" webinar on digital marketing strategy: https://mandarmarathe.net/dt/
My free webinar on "How to build your personal brand on LinkedIn": https://mandarmarathe.net/linkedin/
Digital Courses
Personal branding & lead generation on LinkedIn course - My Winning with LinkedIn: https://mandarmarathe.net/linkedin-growth/
How to build your Winning Website in a Week WhatsApp class: https://mandarmarathe.net/www/
Podcast
All episodes of The Digital Marketing Podcast https://mandarmarathe.net/the-digital-marketing-podcast/
Jul 27, 2020
Interview with Micha McLain - CEO at SearchClickGrow
Search Click Grow is a marketing agency that builds business growth systems to rapidly 2-4x your sales using proven digital strategies. Micha McLain has deep expertise in building funnels for his clients and has been in business for more than 16 years.
Here are some question I asked Micha:
1. What does a typical day look like for you?
2. You have been in business for 16+ years. What are your learning?
3. Give us 3 actionable tips for building funnels
4. What are some of the tools you use to build funnels
5. Could you talk to us about the most profitable funnel that you have built
6. Importance of buyer persona's and audience definition
Micha also shared his book recommendations for digital marketers.
Jul 21, 2020
Interview with John Vuong - Founder & President LocalSEOSearch.ca
As the owner of Local SEO Search since 2013, John's mission is to equip local business owners with the right products (websites), services (SEO) and knowledge to grow and expand to position these business owners as the industry thought leaders by being honest, transparent and having a strong will to succeed in business.
Here are some question I asked John:
1. What is your Why? (Mission / Purpose / Goal in life)
2. What does a typical day look like for you?
3. Do you have a mentor / guru? Are there any people you admire and learn from?
4. You have been in the Local SEO Search business for 7+ years. What are your learnings?
5. Give us 3 actionable tips for growing SEO traffic w.r.t local businesses
6. What is the most important skill to have as a Local SEO? Why?
7. Do you read books? Any recommendations?
8. What should folks who are starting out in Local SEO focus on?
9. What should businesses that are not yet online should focus on?
10. Giveaway to all podcast listeners
Jul 1, 2020
Tips to get good ROI from Facebook Ads
I have been running Facebook Ads since 2014 for over a 100 clients now. Here are some tips that I have to get good amount of ROI from Facebook / Instagram Ads:
1. Full-form copy
2. Thumb-stopping visuals
3. Lead capture forms
4. Remarket to website visitors
5. A good compelling one-time offer
Jun 17, 2020
10 tactics to grow your email list
Here are 10 tactics you can use to grow your email list
1. Lead quizzes
2. Chat bot
3. Newsletter
4. Free courses
5. eBooks
6. Community / Forum
7. Webinar
8. Incentivized Survey's
9. Giveaways
10. Refer a friend
Jun 8, 2020
How to write a killer LinkedIn post that goes viral?
Want to get your post to trend on LinkedIn? Want to get people to react and engage with your content? Listen to the podcast and know how to go viral on LinkedIn.
Jun 8, 2020
What's LinkedIn SEO?
How can you optimize your LinkedIn profile to be easily discovered by your target audience.
Nov 24, 2019
Sales Funnels
In this episode of the Digital Marketing podcast, we talk about Sales funnels and why its important that you have an optimized one.
We talk about the different types of sales funnels and the components of a typical sales funnel including channels, pre-sales pages, sales pages, check out and email automation workflows.
Sep 25, 2019
How to setup an employee advocacy program
When someone advocates for your brand or business, they extend the reach of your message by sharing it with their network. With an employee advocacy program, employees are the ones doing the advocating.
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is the promotion of an organization by its workforce. This could mean that employees share information about specific products or campaigns. Or, it can mean that employees share the company culture online. This can help boost brand reputation and make recruitment easier.
It’s not just the company that benefits. Employees get something out of advocacy too. They can enhance their credibility and position themselves as industry experts.
Employee advocacy stats
* LinkedIn found the employees of a company tend to have 10 times more followers than the company itself.
* LinkedIn also found that while only about 2% of employees re-share their company’s social posts, they are responsible for 20% of overall engagement.
* Nearly 86% of e…
Sep 25, 2019
Micro-influencer marketing
What is micro-influencer marketing?
A newer concept known as micro-influencer marketing recently joined the social media scene. It’s the same concept as influencer marketing, but on a smaller scale: Brands partner with individuals with smaller followings on social media, typically 1k to 10k followers, to promote products with authentic, visual posts
instead of sponsored ads. Influencer vs Micro-influencer
* Influencers are celebrities. Micro-influencers are not known by many
* Influencers get a lot of public attention, whereas micro-influencers do niche work in their industry.
* Influencers have a huge social media following, typically more than a million. Micro-influencers have 1k to 10k followers.
* It is expensive to work with an influencers. Most would charge an arm and a leg. Micro-influencers come at a relatively lower cost
* Influencers are less authentic as they receive public scrutiny. Micro-influencers are more authentic and portray their real lives online.
*…
Sep 24, 2019
What is moment marketing and how to do it well
Digital marketing is always evolving and moment marketing is something that has come to the fore in recent years.
Across channels, your ads need to take current events into consideration.
What is moment marketing?
It is a means of connecting with viewers both online and offline. Moment marketing is creating campaigns that embrace the moment and cater to current events - you’re far more likely to reach your target audience.
We all know that topical trends and events or moments that attract public attention result in countless conversations and innumerable interactions.
Examples of moment marketing
Oreo’s ‘Dunk in the Dark’ tweet
Superdome in New Orleans faced a 34-minute power outage during the Super Bowl 2013; Oreo latched on to this moment and promptly came up with the tweet. Till date, the "You can dunk in the dark" tweet has 14.4K Retweets and 6.8K Likes
Fevicol - I want those elephants
For a scene from the series finale of a popular TV Show - Game Of Thrones - Fevi…
Sep 13, 2019
Top 10 Productivity Apps for Brand Managers & Marketers
The world has gone mobile. If you are a Brand Manager or a Digital Marketer, why shy away from going mobile? As an Inbound marketers, we have been using some apps that have improved our productivity and helped us make better use of limited time.
Here is a list of the Top 10 mobile apps that I use to boost productivity :
1. Asana (or Slack)
Easily and by far the best project management / collaboration app for small teams, Asana with its revamped mobile interface flows like a silent river carving through rocks. The app helps me keep track of tasks associated with different clients and obtain a high level view of each client project.
2. Feedly
Feedly is the successor and rightful replacement of the Google Reader. A RSS / feed aggregator app, Feedly allows me to collate articles (or atleast article summaries) across my favorite blogs and serves them to me in a free flowing, minimalistic interface. As described in detail earlier in my blog article, "Feeding The Content Monster", the ap…
Sep 12, 2019
Interview with Shane Barker - Digital Marketing Consultant & Influencer
From working with celebrities on digital reputation management to obtaining a #1 national ranking with PROskore as a social media consultant, Shane has built an impressive list of accomplishments as a digital marketing consultant.
He is a regular contributor to publications like Salesforce, Yahoo Small Business, Marketing Profs and others.
Shane runs a very popular marketing podcast that goes by the name "Marketing Madness Podcast" - iTunes just recognized our podcast as “New & Noteworthy”.
Here is what we covered on the episode:
* How did Shane get started with digital marketing
* The toughest part about Consulting
* Influencer marketing - Is it authentic? How can a brand find the right influencers?
* Content outreach is a toughjob. It is difficult to get others to talk / write about you / your clients. What's Shane's approach to content outreach
* Personal branding - How important is it to build a personal brand in the services space.
* How does…
Sep 12, 2019
3 golden rules of client servicing
Clients are the lifeline of an advertising industry. No clients, no business, no revenue, no agency.
This is a universal truth. And if you are a client servicing person, you know it more than I do. For those who have opted to service clients (and be the face of your agency), it’s time to understand and learn the rules of engagement. If you follow these three golden rules, you will have a happy client, a happy boss and a happy pay check ;)
Rule No. 1: Clients are human beings
Just like you and me – some clients are smart, some unreasonable, some number driven, some go by their gut, some give your nightmares and some give you a pat on your back. To err is human and so is to service clients. Treat them as human beings and try to understand their psyche. If you have a degree in human psychology or you are a natural expert at studying human behaviour, you are one up on your client servicing peers.
Over a period of time, try to get into the psyche of your client(s). It will help you…
Sep 11, 2019
How to move from paid to owned and earned media?
The terms paid, owned and earned media have gained some importance in digital marketing. With the world economy in a recessionary state, brand managers and chief marketing officers are forced to deal with reduced marketing budgets. Consumer decision making process has undergone a transformation, leading to an increased focus on owned and earned media.
What can a new age CEO /CMO do to transform their organisation’s marketing and sales efforts and align them with today’s economic scenario. Here are three crucial strategies that your organization can leverage.
Hire the right people for the job
Make these critical hires, irrespective of your marketing budget.
* _Social media and online reputation management:_ Either hire an adept digital agency or hire smart people who can orchestrate your social media efforts. Social media marketing is not a choice, it’s a mandate. Figure out the people part first, tools for social media and online reputation management are a secondary concer…
Sep 10, 2019
How to make a good pitch deck
What goes into making a good pitch. This is what we have in every pitch deck:
1. Executive Summary - What the entire presentation is about. High level numbers for spends, returns, RoI, leads, CPL, Reach etc. which talks directly to the decision maker - the CEO / CMO / CTO who wants to have a birds eye view.
2. Roadmap to get there - Clearly define business goals and KPIs to measure the goals. Also include a strategic overview of how to achieve our goals.
3. Details - Don't be afraid of giving everything. Think as if you have the client signed up and give complete details. Be transparent and comprehensive in your pitch presentation
4. Competitive landscape - Your understanding of the competitors strategy, gaps, and overall industry.
5. Non-negotiable - What you need from the client to achieve success. Any dependencies that you have on your client before you sign up. Be open, honest and upfront with all the assumptions you are making.
6. Case studies - Show how you have done it for…
Sep 3, 2019
3 keys to eCommerce success
Markets are moving online. Largest categories of online retail globally include apparel, consumer electronics and computer hardware. The fastest-growing categories include grocery, beauty & cosmetics, home appliances, and furniture.
Online retail in India was $15 billion in 2016 and estimated to be $200 billion in 2026.
India is the largest growing market globally in e-commerce.
Online retail via mobile will grow to reach $1 trillion in 2020 whereas online shoppers in India would reach 475 million by 2026
eCommerce has tremendous potential. But, how do you get a share of the pie? What does it take to enjoy success in eCom market? 3 Keys to eCommerce Success.
1. Generate visibility
In early days of eCommerce query-based traffic dominated sales. "Query based” means people type in a search term (a query) and are then shown an ad relevant to their search, like on Google.
Since Facebook and now Instagram, there has been a shift to contextual advertising where you choose whom you wa…
Sep 3, 2019
5 Google Ads extensions you should be using
Google Ads extensions, as the name goes, allow you to change, add, or alter Ads in your Google Ad campaigns. They extend the communication in your search ad copies. Along with click-thru rate, landing page speed and relevance of ad copy, usage of Ad extensions is considered as one of the factors in determining the quality score for each keyword you use in your Google Ad campaign.
Different extensions do different things. With some extensions, you can add customer testimonials or get your potential customers to call you. With others, you can add offers on a link to your physical store.
Google Ad extensions will help you improve your click-through rate, lower your cost per click, and increase your ROI.
Here are five extensions that you should be using, but probably aren’t:
1. Sitelink extensions
The first extension you should know about is the sitelink extension. This extension allows you to use additional links that show below your primary link (or display URL). In most cases wit…
Aug 31, 2019
Top 5 conversion rate optimization tactics
Here are my top 5 conversion optimization tactics. Before we get started,
What is Conversion Optimization?
If I would have to define conversion optimization, it is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert to customers or more generally take any desired action on a web page. It is commonly referred as CRO.
Conversion rate formula is straightforward. It is the number of goals achieved divided by the visitors at your website. For example, if there are a hundred people that come to your website and its an eCommerce website and five people end up buying products from your website, the conversion rate is 5%. If you are a services website and let say you get 100 visitors to your services website and 10 people end up putting an inquiry on the contact us page, then your conversion rate is 10%.
Most commonly used or most well-known conversion optimization techniques:
1. AB testing: Here what we do is we create two versions of the same page. It is also kno…
Aug 31, 2019
How to write a blog post
How do you go about writing a blog post? Here are the steps that I would recommend:
1. Find a Blog Topic: First, you need to identify the right blog topic to write about. There are 1 Billion blogs, one for every 7 individuals. That is way too many blogs. How do you stand out? There are some tools you can use to know what to write about.
* BuzzSumo - Just type in the topic on BuzzSumo and check the top ranking blogs. See their evergreen Score or the number of social shares hey have received.
* Ahrefs / SEMRush - Just type in a competitors domain and have a look at the top pages / blogs that rank for the competitor. Create a blog that is 10X stronger than that of the competitor.
* Udemy - Udemy courses are also an excellent source for identifying blog topics.
* Amazon - Search for the topic on Amazon and find the top selling books. The book titles used on Amazon could be used as a blog topic title.
* YouTube - YouTube being the second largest search engine can be your source…
Aug 25, 2019
What is Account Based Marketing
What is Account based Marketing (ABM) ?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a highly focused business strategy in which a marketing team treats an individual prospect or customer like its very own market.
The marketing team can create content, events, and entire campaigns dedicated to the people associated with that account, rather than the industry as a whole.
ABM has a high RoI - 97% B2B marketers believe that ABM has a higher RoI whereas 70% marketers identify ABM to be a top-most revenue generation strategy.
How to start Account Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing is a joint exercise conducted by sales and marketing teams. Here are the steps to implement ABM:
1. Identify your target market: This includes identifying the
* Industry - Which specific segment do you want to target - healthcare, education, Saas etc.
* Company Size - Small / Mid / Large size company based on the number of employees
* Location - Which region is your target companies based out of. Are you go…
Aug 21, 2019
How to ace your content distribution strategy
Let's talk about content distribution and how do you do it right.
If you would want to talk about content marketing, then I would say that 20% of your time should be spent on creating content whereas the rest 80% of your time should be spent on distributing the content across your multiple channels.
Content distribution is required for getting people to actually read the content or listen to the podcast or watch the video - whatever form of content you have created, it’s getting people to actually have a look at the content. If you have a remarkable piece of content but its just sitting on your website, what is the use of that content if no one sees it?
What I would recommend and what I try to do is that I first try to identify one piece of pillar content or central content or long-form content that I would you use to create multiple other forms of content. For example, let's say this podcast episode is roughly around 6 to 8 minutes and if I would have to create multiple forms of…
Aug 20, 2019
Free Digital Marketing Courses
Today I am talking about free courses on digital marketing. Yes, you heard it right. A lot of students and working professionals come up to me and ask me, “How do I start learning digital marketing”.
Someone said that there is no free lunch, but when it comes to digital marketing and online courses for Digital Marketing there are tons of courses out there available for free and these are not basic concepts, but comprehensive detailed courses.
So let's get started!
Basic/ Fundamental courses:
First and foremost, for getting the basics of digital marketing and clearing your fundamentals of digital marketing:
Hubspot
I would suggest that you set up an account on Hubspot academy. - that is academy.hubspot.com and they have basic course on Inbound digital marketing. Anyone who wants to start a career in digital marketing should definitely take that course.
Google
Apart from that there is a basic digital marketing certification available from Google and you can find it at learnd…
Aug 15, 2019
Copywriting - The ultimate digital marketing skill
Its not SEO, its not paid search. It's not your ability to run Facebook Ads or Google Ads. It's not how many followers your have on Social Media - Instagram or Facebook. It's not about partnerships or affiliate marketing. What I feel is the ultimate skill in digital marketing is to be able to write good copy.
What is copywriting?
Before the printing press was invented by Guttenberg, people used to write on clay. They used to write on papyrus rolls, on wax or on parchments. There was no way of replicating the content they produced then - wherever they wrote it, it was just there. Only after the printing press was invented, you could literally copy someone's writing. People who started writing for newspapers or magazines were know as copywriters. Those who wrote copy for advertisements were known as Ad copywriters. So the skill of copy writing comes from the print industry.
Why is copy writing important for Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is advertising or promoting your product…
Aug 14, 2019
How to create content clusters to boost organic traffic
Major search engines like Google have made fundamental changes to their algorithms to favor topic-based content. Google makes minor changes to its algorithm every single day. Most major search engines roll out 500-600 updates a year and release 2-3 major named updates. With Search algorithms evolving to the point where they can understand complex search queries and also the connections between searches (similar search queries), SEOs and Content Marketers need to adapt to these changes ever faster.
What are content clusters?
Content clusters are a group of pages that revolve around a central topic. They are similar to a Hub-and-Spoke model used in transport, telecommunications, freight or distributed computing. To simplify my analogy, we need to create a central page that acts as the “Hub” for the content cluster and several “Spoke” pages that are related to the central hub page.
All of the spoke pages are interlinked to the hub page and the hub page links back to each of the…
Aug 13, 2019
How to build backlinks using competitive intelligence
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are hyperlinks from external websites that point to web pages on your websites. Why are backlinks important? They have been the core or crux of Google's PageRank algorithm. Google give a lot of importance to links from external websites to your website. Even today, backlinks are considered as one of the important factors for ranking your page in search results.
How can you build backlinks using competitive intelligence?
First and foremost, I'd like to say that link building is very tough. In today's time its one of the toughest job to get someone else to link back to your website. Lets look at it smartly. What I am going to do is, I would go to Google and search for the keyword for which I want to build a backlink. I would type in the keyword phrase - for e.g. "seo company in india" is a keyword for which I would want briefkase.in as a website to rank higher in SERPs. I will see the top 10 results in SERPs. You can also use UberSuggest and type in the k…
Aug 12, 2019
How to respond to online reviews
If you might have see that there are a lot of websites that review your business. For example you have Google My Business which lists you on Maps or you have Bing Places. People can visit your listings and review your business. If you are a restaurant, people can review you on Zomato. If you are a spa, you would have a listing on Trip Advisor or a listing website like Just Dial or Sulekha. People might go and review your business on these sites. So how do you actually tackle these reviews online?
Monitor brand presence: You need to make a list of all websites where your brand has been mentioned or a list of websites where your company profile has been created. Lets say you have Google My Business, Trip Advisor, Bing Places, Just Dial, Sulekha, Zomato. Keep a track of all the listings of your business across these sites in a spreadsheet. Every week pull up this sheet and check whether there are new reviews that have come in on the company profiles.
If you have received a good review,…
Aug 12, 2019
How to get more organic downloads for your apps
As of July 2019, there are 2.7 million apps on the Play Store and 1.9 million apps on the app store (iTunes). If you would have realized, you would have 30-40 apps installed on your phone. With the limited shelf space and real estate available, it is difficult to gain market share and downloads for your apps. Moreover, if you need to get organic downloads (without spending on Ads), it gets doubly difficult.
How to get more organic downloads for your apps?
App Store Optimization: This is SEO for your app that is listed on the Play store or App store. By optimizing your app listing for searches happening on the store, you can rank higher.
a) Research : First and foremost, you need to conduct detailed research for other apps listed on the app stores. Type in your focus keyword and see which apps are showing up. You need to look at the reviews they have received. Also the ratings they have. You need to look at the keyword usage in the app title and description. Go one step further and d…
Aug 6, 2019
Top digital marketing tactics for manufacturing companies
Manufacturing companies are not focused on digital marketing techniques. Lets say you are a spare parts supplier to the automotive industry or lets say a sterilizer equipment manufacturer for hospitals / medical facilities, you can drive leads and inquiries for your business using digital marketing. Here are 4 tactics you can leverage:
1. Have a remarkable website: Your website is your business card. Most of your customers who want to would want to do business with you, would visit your website first. It is imperative to have all your product information listed on your site along with product catalogs / product brochures available in a PDF downloadable format. Also, you would want to have up-to-date contact information listed on your site. Your content should speak to your buyer persona or your target audience - use language and visuals that would appeal to them.
2. SEO: Not many manufacturing businesses are focusing on SEO or producing content that can be indexed by search engines.…
Aug 5, 2019
Key digital marketing tactics for local businesses
Local search queries are on the rise and are growing 7% YoY as per data from Google. If you are a local business, then you can grow with digital marketing tactics that we are going to talk about.
1. Rock your map listings: Whether its Google My Business, Bing Places or Apple Maps, you need to get your business listed on these maps platforms. If you have multiple listings for your business, then use Moz Local to maintain consistency across your listings on all platforms.
2. Local listing / aggregator websites: Sites such as JustDial.com or Sulekha.com do well with local searches. Make sure that your business is listed on such sites and have reviews as people tend to use these sites when it comes to searching for local services.
3. Local / city pages on website: An example I would like to state here is that of Agarwalpackers.com - They are a packing and moving company offering services across multiple cities in India. If you search for packers and movers in Mumbai or packers and mover…
Aug 4, 2019
Top digital marketing tactics for E-commerce
If you are selling online, then obviously you will need to market your business online. What are some of the digital marketing tactics that you should be putting into practice?
1. Conversion Optimization: Do not focus on getting more traffic to your site, but focus on optimizing traffic for getting more sales / conversions. Use exit intent notifications, provide offers on exit, include call to actions in your blog and use a chat bot / chat agent to convert the visitors to your site to buyers.
2. SEO: An eCommerce website has homepage, category pages and product pages. You need to focus on optimizing your category and product pages. Make sure that you have 800-1000 words of content on the category pages. Search for mens shirts or kids clothes and visit the pages on Myntra. You will see that they have a lot of SEO content on their page towards the bottom. On the product pages, you need to include detailed product description and use schema - Product schema, AggregateRatin…
Jul 31, 2019
Interview with Kapil Nakra, Co-founder at Digital Vidya
Kapil Nakra is a Co-founder at Digital Vidya (digitalvidya.com). He started his journey as an entrepreneur in 2000 with Whiz Labs and kick-started Digital Vidya (DV) 9 years ago. DV has trained more than 35k participants across 55 countries.
In this podcast episode, I have a candid conversation with Kapil on how he has grown his businesses with digital marketing. We spoke about:
1. How and when did you start in Digital Marketing
2. Tell us a bit about your journey at Digital Vidya
3. How has digital marketing changed over the years? What's been your observation?
4. Should small & mid-size businesses invest in Digital Marketing? If so, what would be your advice to them?
5. There is a lot of talk about Big Data. What are your views. Is data the new oil?
6. How does someone grow into a role of a Digital Marketing strategist?
7. Few personal Qs
a. What would you have chosen as a profession if not DV
b. Are there any favorite authors and books you read. Any reco's
c. How do you s…
Jul 28, 2019
How to develop a TikTok marketing strategy
If you are a digital marketer and you are not leveraging TikTok to market your products and services, you are already too late. TikTok is the latest kid on the block - an app that is growing at a rapid pace.
* TikTok has been downloaded over 1bn times
* It has 500 million monthly active users
* It’s seen a 275% YoY growth in monthly new users
* Users spend more than 50 minutes/day on the app
* 41% of users are aged 16–24
What Is TikTok?
TikTok was originally called Musical.ly which was a karaoke app used by teens. The Chinese company ByteDance bought Musical.ly and integrated it into its own TikTok app, creating a new app as we have it now. TikTok allows users to create 15-second videos, which can be combined to make longer videos. You can use filters, effects, music, editing tools and more all within the app.
The app is no longer a karaoke app, but it’s an app for self-expression and showcasing your creativity.
Are brands using TikTok?…
Jul 28, 2019
The Great Hack by Netflix - What we can learn from it?
How is this really related to Digital Marketing?
Well, we use Facebook Ads & Google Ads for almost all of our clients. With Facebook Ads, you are able to target people based on their demographic profile. Although, as marketers, we don't have access to 5000 data points on our customers, like Cambridge Analytica had, we are still a part of the data economy that wants to do 1:1 marketing.
When by daughter is 18, Facebook & Google will have may 70000 data points on her. Is this what I want? Is this what she wants? No. But, it is something that is inevitable.
Technology is moving at such a rapid pace that we are not able to cope up. Instead, we want to make sure that we look cool on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn. And we want to share our daily lives on these social media platforms. Should we be doing so?
Please understand, you are the product. You are the commodity. Data is already the new oil. And its upto us to own our data and know how to share it with full cognizance.
I persona…
Jul 28, 2019
How to use Quora for SEO
Quora is a Question and Answer platform / community. Indians are the highest number of users on Quora. You can create an account on Quora and find topics of your interest. Each topic would have many questions which present you with the opportunity of answering them. How do you make use of Quora from a SEO perspective ?
1. Identify Content Topics: Quora.com is a goldmine to discover topics on which you can create content. Simple type in in a business relevant topic on Quora (search bar on top) and you will get questions related to those topics. You can pick questions that have very high traction (weekly / all time views) and look on building similar content for your blog.
2. Publishing content on Quora: Quora question pages are optimised for SEO. If you search for a particular question on Google, it is highly likely that you will find a Quora page showing up in SERPs. Let's say you have a question "How to buy insurance online" and you type it into Google. If a Quora page shows up its…
Jul 27, 2019
How to use Udemy.com for content creation
Have you ever wondered that Udemy.com can be used as a source of formulating your content strategy? If not, read further!
For the uninitiated, Udemy offers online courses created by Instructors across the globe. The courses are on varied subjects including Business, Finance, Software Engineering, Marketing and more. Every course on Udemy gets rated by people who take the course. You can also have a look at all testimonials received for a course and know about the ratings the course has received + number of students who have taken the course.
How to you use Udemy.com for building your content strategy?
1. First and foremost, you need to identify topics that are related to your line of business. For example, for an online Insurance aggregator and seller, some broad topics for content creation would be health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, bike insurance and so on. When it comes to preparing content strategy you need to identify the broad topics and sub-topics / su…
Jul 26, 2019
How to grow as a Digital Marketer?
How can you become an expert at digital marketing - either at your job or for starting a business.
When it comes to learning anything or any field, what I believe is that you need to be a jack of all trades and master of one. For example, when it come to Digital Marketing, there are different areas / facets such as SEO, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, content creation etc. Digital marketing in itself is a very vast domain. You need to have tangential knowledge across all areas of digital marketing but specialize or have deep knowledge / expertise in one area. You need to be a T-shaped digital marketer.
For e.g. when it comes to digital marketing, earlier I used to focus a lot on Web Analytics or Data Analytics, and I thought I'd develop my expertise in that area. But slowly, i started getting more attracted towards SEO - and that's where I spend most of my time today - in terms of reading blogs relate…
Jul 26, 2019
Do you need to build a personal brand?
Well, if you need an answer, you need to ask yourself this question ? What is it that you want to achieve in the long term? Do you want to run a business that employs 100's of people and generates a ton of revenue? Or do you want to run a business that is location independent, employs a few people and you can make a small side income.
In either case, I feel that building a personal brand does go a long way in achieving your goals. So, why do you need a personal brand. What are the benefits?
1. Establish credibility & reputation: If you want to do business with a company, you will search for a person's name with whom you are going to do business. You will go through the social media profiles of the prospect on LinkedIn - you will see what groups they are a part of or what do they like. People who want to do business with you, first analyse your profiles on Social Media.
2. Establish thought leadership: If you want to be seen as someone who has deep knowledge and expert…
Jul 22, 2019
Interview with Nistha Tripathi - Author of No Shortcuts
Nistha is the bestselling author of No Shortcuts which is a great read on Indian startups. A few people know that she runs her own career consulting venture called Scholar Strategy and its been six years now. She is a top writer on Quora and uses social media extensively to get her voice out. Today, we are going to talk to her about personal branding, social media marketing and how she uses Quora to market her career consulting venture.
Here are some of the questions Nistha answered on the podcast:
1. From dropping out of NYU to work at a startup in New York and coming back to India, tell us a bit about your journey
2. Lets talk about your books - How do you promote them online?
3. Lets talk about Scholar Strategy - How to you leverage Quora as a platform to promote your business?
4. Is personal branding important? How do you go about it?
5. Few personal Q's
a. Any book recommendations - What are you reading lately?
b. Favorite travel destination for working remotely
c. How do…
Jul 20, 2019
20 point website audit in 20 minutes
Do you want to quickly audit your website and check how it is doing? We have a 20-point Website Audit that you can run in 20 minutes! Lets get started:
1. Robots.txt: Your website should have a robots.txt file. Simply type in www.domainname.com/robots.txt in your browse to check whether your website has a Robots file. This file serves as a directive to Search Engine Bots for crawling or blocking certain pages / sections on your website.
2. Sitemap.xml: It is imperative to have a hierarchical sitemap in place so that Google understands the structure of your website. Each entry in a sitemap would have the page URL, priority (between 0 to 1) and updated time. If you do not have a sitemap, then you can use the online sitemap generator or Screaming Frog tool to generate a sitemap of your website.
3. Pages Indexed: We want to see how many pages are indexed by Google. If your website has 100 page, but Google has indexed only 80 of them, then the rest 20 would not be appearing in SERPs. A q…
Jul 20, 2019
Should you rely on Paid Digital Advertising?
Let's re-frame the question a bit. Should you ONLY rely on paid advertising? A lot of small businesses or startups that come to us for generating traction / leads / demand rely heavily on Paid Digital Marketing. So, what is paid digital marketing - It is advertising on Social Media Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. It is also using Search Engine Ads on Bing or Google (Google Ads) or using Amazon Ads to advertise your eCommerce products. Essentially, businesses are relying heaving on paid mediums to generate traffic / leads / sales. Is this the right approach to rely heavily on paid Ads? Well, what we recommend for most of our clients is to diversify from Day 1. You should focus on content creation, SEO and other channels also. Here's why:
1. Google & Facebook command 70-75% of the spends done by most brands online. There are advertising options available with LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and other Ad Networks. Over the last few years, CPC's are shoot…
Jul 18, 2019
How to keep yourself updated with the latest trends in Digital Marketing
The internet is a constantly evolving landscape. Facebook was once a growing Social Media network, but now the audiences have moved on to Instagram and Tik Tok (with the explosion of video). If you are a digital marketer, then you need to keep your self updated with the latest trends in Digital Marketing.
This is how I keep myself updated with the latest trends in Digital Marketing:
1. Feedly App: The Feedly App on my mobile device is basically a RSS Reader. I have configured it to receive updates from the blogs I read regularly
* SEO - Backlinko.com / NeilPatel / Moz.com / SearchEngineJournal / SearchEngineLand / Google Webmaster / BuiltVisible / SEOByTheSea / SEMRush
* Marketing - Seth Godin / HubSpot / MarketingProfs / AndrewChen / OkDork / GrowthHackers Trending
* Analytics - Kaushik.net (Avinash Kaushik's blog)
2. Twitter: If you are on Twitter, you can create lists of the topics that you are interested in. The list will have people from your industry who would share upd…
Jul 18, 2019
Google Core Algorithm Update June 2019
In early June 2019, Google launched two updates to their algorithm. The major update was rolled out from June 3rd to June 8th which coincided with the diversity update rolled out from June 4 - June 6th.
Diversity update: Google wants to diversify the domains that are appearing in SERPs. i.e. for a search query, lets say "restaurants in mumbai", zomato.com would occupy 3-4 slots on the first page. With the diversity update only the strongest page for the search term would rank.
Core Algorithm update: The core algorithm update also led to fluctuations in rankings across many businesses. What experts say is that the core update devalued older pages on websites. For example, if you have 150 pages on your website, and 80% of these are not updated regularly, then they might loose ranking on SERPs and your traffic might drop.
How do you counter the drop in Organic traffic due to these updates.
1. First and foremost, you need to understand which pages on your websites have seen a drop in t…
Jul 15, 2019
Augmented Reality Marketing Examples
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has said that AR will one day be as important in our everyday lives as “eating three meals a day.”
Augmented Reality (AR) is emerging as one of the key drivers of the tech economy. By some estimates, the total value of the AR market is expected to reach $100 billion by 2020
As The Drum reports, AR can capture people’s attention for over 85 seconds, increase interaction rates by 20 percent, and improve click-through rates to purchase by 33 percent. we’ll look at some use cases of AR in innovative and inspiring ways.
These examples should be all the inspiration you need to brainstorm and execute a long-term AR marketing strategy:
1. Medical Training: From operating MRI equipment to performing complex surgeries
2. Retail: Harley Davidson has done it in their showrooms. Tata Motors & Maruti use 3D to provide a virtual experience and are planning to implement customization solutions via AR.
3. Repair & Maintenance: Repair a…
Jul 13, 2019
How to calculate RoI for SEO?
I get this question a lot from clients - Tell me one reason why we need to invest in SEO. The easiest way to convince your manager or your client is to project the Return on Investment (RoI) for SEO. How do you go about calculating the RoI for SEO? We use SEMRush (paid version) to estimate RoI for SEO.
Here are the steps that we follow:
1. Put in your domain on SEMRush Organic Search and get a list of Keywords for which you are getting traffic. You will get search volumes,CTR, Traffic, CPC for entire set of keywords. Simply do Traffic x CPC for each keyword and sum it up to get the current value of SEO traffic. You could remove brand keywords from the mix to arrive at a true traffic worth. For e.g. Lets say there are 1000 KWs for which you are getting traffic of 5000 per month and the Average CPC is $3, then Traffic x Avg CPC = 5000 x 3 = 15,000. You can also apply a conversion rate to this value. i.e. If you are an ecommerce website with conversion rate at 1%, then you have…
Jul 11, 2019
eCommerce Conversion Optimization Tactics
eCommerce is booming in India and in the western countries like USA, Canada a lot of businesses have already gone online. In India, traders are signing up on Amazon & Flipkart to sell their products online. Many businesses are also setting up their own eCommerce shop to sell online. Selling online does not mean that you focus on getting more traffic to your website. It actually works better when you focus on getting relevant traffic and then optimizing your website for conversions.
Here are my eCommerce Conversion Optimization Tactics:
1. Mobile compatible website: What we have seen for a lot of eCommerce clients is that their website gets 60-65% of traffic from mobile devices. Even more in some cases. This further's the case of having a mobile responsive / friendly website. Your audience is going to visit your eCommerce store on the go and it is important that you don't lose your audience. If you are on Shopify, Magento or OpenCart then you can simply choose a theme that is mobile r…
Jul 7, 2019
Social Selling and LinkedIn's Social Selling Index
Social selling is taking out the pitching component of sales. You’re creating conversations about your product and services which organically can produce sales conversations.
There are 4 elements to social selling:
1. Establish your professional brand: Complete your profile with the customer in mind. Become a thought-leader by publishing meaningful posts.
2. Find the right people: Identify better prospects in less time using efficient search and research tools.
3. Engage with insights: Discover and share conversation-worthy updates to create and grow relationships.
4. Build relationships: Strengthen your network by connecting and establishing trust with decision makers.
According to LinkedIn:
* Social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than peers with lower SSI.
* Social selling leaders are 51% more likely to reach quota.
* 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.
LinkedIn has launched SSI score. Your Social Selling Index (SSI)…
Jul 7, 2019
5 Essential Digital Marketing Tactics for B2B companies
Marketing for B2B companies is slightly different than marketing for B2C companies. For B2B companies, the target audience is quite niche. You are targeting top fortune 500 companies or may be just the CEO's / CMO's / CTO's who are decision makers at these companies. For such a small and well defined market, you need to reach out to them in a different manner.
Here are our 5 essential digital marketing tactics for B2B companies:
1. LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn has paid advertising which allows you to precisely target decision makers. You can target basis of geography / location, role, designation, years of experience and many more parameters. You could also upload email IDs and remarket to your website visitors. If you opt to use LinkedIn Ads, we'd recommend using the Lead form on LinkedIn. We also recommend using carousel / single image / video in your sponsored content. Here are some additional tips on generating leads via LinkedIn.
2. LinkedIn Organic: One way to dr…
Jul 6, 2019
5 Core Digital Marketing Strategies for SaaS Products
If you are a SaaS (Software as a service) company, chances are that you are investing a lot of efforts on digital marketing to drive leads. We have worked with a few SaaS companies in the past and since these businesses target a niche audience, it is slightly tougher to market a SaaS business.
Here are my 5 core digital marketing strategies for SaaS products:
1. Content Marketing: When it comes to SaaS businesses, focus your effort on content creation because not many in the B2B space are doing that great with content creation. Build comprehensive guides (10000+ words) and convert them to web pages, create eBooks, Infographics, and explanatory videos. You will need to build content across the consumer journey to have them choose your SaaS product.
2. Reviews: Most of the marketing managers / CIOs / CTOs would choose a SaaS product by reading reviews onG2Crowd, SoftwareAdvice and other review websites. Make sure you rock these reviews. Get your best customers to rat…
Jul 2, 2019
Top 5 Digital Marketing Tactics for Educational Institutes
Educational Institutes that are offering courses at physical locations are turning to Digital marketing to promote their services. i.e. they want to target a student audience in and around a catchment area / their physical location.
Here are 5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Educational Institutes
1. Local SEO: Make sure that you rock your Google My Business Listing. Most of your potential customers are going to search for your institute using locality names in their search queries. For e.g. Engineering Classes in Mumbai, Chineese Tutor in Chicago etc. For such local queries, Google Search Results are dominated by the 3-pack Google Maps Listing. To show up in Google Maps, you need to have a Google My Business Account. Here are some tips to optimize your Google My Business account. Apart from listing on GMB, Bing Places and other maps sites, you can also list your educational institute on local listing sites such as Sulekha.com, JustDial.com and other aggregators such as Shiksha.…
Jul 2, 2019
5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Hospitals and Medical Practitioners
Hospitals and Healthcare service providers / medical practitioners such as doctors & nutritionists are turning to Digital marketing to promote their services. Most of these services are local in nature i.e. you want to target an audience in and around at catchment area / your physical location.
Here are 5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Hospitals and Medical Practitioners:
1. Local SEO: Make sure that you rock your Google My Business Listing. Most of your potential customers are going to search for your business using locality names in their search queries. For e.g. Physiotherapist in Mumbai, Pediatrician in Chicago etc. For such local queries, Google Search Results are dominated by the 3-pack Google Maps Listing. To show up in Google Maps, you need to have a Google My Business Account. Here are some tips to optimize your Google My Business account. Apart from listing on GMB, Bing Places and other maps sites, you can also list your hospital / medical practice on loc…
Jun 30, 2019
Interview with Sakket Rao, VP Marketing at OxfordCaps
Sakket Rao is a top brand & marketing Leader who consistently champions business growth and market leadership by delivering strategy and thought leadership and promotes a culture of innovation, trust, and comfort. He has demonstrated prowess in building and leading global brands (Retail & E-Tail, FMCG, BFSI, Real Estate, and Consumer Durables) with extensive B2C, B2B, and B2B2C experience
With a track record of leading large MNCs and startups such as MasterCard, Barclays, and Housing.com through conceptualization and implementation of highly effective, targeted, and optimal-budget integrated marketing and growth strategies, Sakket is now leading the marketing efforts at OxfordCaps.
In this episode of the digital marketing podcast, we have a candid conversation on the following topics:
* How Sakket started his career as a Marketer and how he has grown in the past 15 years.
* Sakket talks about his current role as VP Marketing at OxfordCaps and how he is leveraging digital media t…
Jun 26, 2019
How to start a Podcast
Why should you podcast?
* The rise of audio & podcasting - 51% Americans have listened to a podcast atleast once. According to Statista, 90 million Americans have listened to a podcast in 2019. This case is true for China and other South East Asian countries too. I do not have stats about growth of podcasts in India
What should you speak about?
* Understand who is your target audience
* What's their broad area of interest
* Identify Topics & Sub-topics and list them down for future reference
* Competition Research - See which other podcasts exist in your niche and try to learn from them. What kind of content are they creating, how are they promoting their content etc.
* Setup a publishing calendar - Before you start recording a podcast you need to have a calendar in place to organize yourself. This will help in devising a marketing strategy for episodes you will be recording.
Recording your podcast
* Essential equipment for podcasting - phone, microphone, laptop,
*…
Jun 26, 2019
Marketing Stacks and MarTech Tools
A marketing technology stack is the set of technologies that marketers use to execute, analyze and improve their marketing effectiveness across the customer lifecycle. The goal of marketing technologies (MarTech) is to improve internal collaboration, measure the impact of marketing activities and reach customers in new ways.
There is no one-size-fits-all marketing stack that could work across all types of businesses. For example, a business that sells their products or services to consumers (B2C) or to businesses (B2B) will use different channels and techniques to acquire customers, and will have varying technology needs as a result.
Your marketing stack / MarTech Tools can be broken down into three key stages:
Stage 1: Attract your prospects
Stage 2: Engage your website / app users
Stage 3: Analyze user data and optimize marketing campaigns
1. Attract
Paid : Google Ads - Search Ads, Remarketing, Interest & Behaviour Targeting | Facebook Ads | LinkedIn Ads
Organic : Social Medi…
Jun 25, 2019
Interview with Sanchit Babbar, Managing Partner at WeAddo
Sanchit Babbar is a Techno Marketer who creates solutions for businesses by making technology an enabler.
How and when did you start in Digital Marketing?
Itʼs been 10 years now I am helping clients with Digital transformation from Tech to Marketing.
My first job (proper job apart from being gift delivery boy to Call Centre Executive) was with Email Marketing product in their Tech Support department as Customer Care & HTML developer. Back in 2009 I got this opportunity to know basics of Email Marketing and then my interest been drawn to SEO & .NET development.
Then with self pace learning cracked an opening with Smile group which was a game changer for me and my marketing career. Got a chance to work with incubation department to launch Fashion and You, Deals and You , Bestylish and to execute campaigns like Brand campaign like Incredible India, Atithi Devo bhava, Dominos, Hungry kya , all as executions and strategist. I have done execution of SEO, Web design, landing pages , Soci…
Jun 24, 2019
Interview with Kunal Mehta, Data Lead at Publicis Sapient
With more than 12 years of experience in advanced analytics domain, Kunal Mehta is more of a perennial student and a part time professional, with a goal to become Oracle someday, that is, someone who knows everything about everything. Understanding ever evolving nature of our analytics domain through different tools and technology solutions in the industry and implementing this knowledge to garner strategic objectives of our client partners has always been his goal.
In his professional experience, Kunal has worked as core member of analytics CoE teams to ideate, innovate, develop and implement integrated analytics solution to address business problems ranging from attrition rate, to cross sell, to design & execute marketing strategies.
Currently, Kunal is working with Publicis Sapient, as a Data Lead, helping clients from diverse industries like Retail, Hospitality, Education, Automobile, Pharma, BFSi etc. to extract maximum value from data to solve their business problem…
Jun 23, 2019
How to use Quora effectively
Quora is a social platform where you can ask questions and also contribute with answers for different topics related to an industry.
1. CREATE THE OPTIMAL QUORA PROFILE
Every time you leave an answer, a bit of your bio is viewable right at the top. This is a great opportunity to extend a little branding. Quora shows the first 50 characters of your profile (your name and bio) as a tagline above your answer. Mention your brand name as close to the beginning as you can. Your full bio can contain clickable links and even @-mentions. Go ahead and complete your Quora profile as much as possible. Add a detailed About Me section. Add your areas of expertise / Topic Experience. Add your interests, previous companies and connect your other social media accounts
2. FOLLOW TOPICS IN YOUR INDUSTRY
Quora is great for market research of your business. Use the search functionality to learn what people are asking about your industry. Click through to a topic page to see an extra list of related top…
Jun 23, 2019
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn is the most used professional networking platform. After the acquisition by Microsoft, they have put more emphasis on content creation and also getting influencer's to contribute with more content on LinkedIn. How do you make the most out of LinkedIn ? By having an optimized LinkedIn profile.
1. Research Keywords for LinkedIn:
If you need to get other professionals to view your profile, you need to use relevant keywords in your profile information. For e.g. if you are working at a digital marketing agency, then you need to identify 5-10 keywords related to your business and use these in your headline, summary and other sections of your profile. By including relevant keywords, your profile views will increase for searches related to your industry and you will get more connections / business.
2. Professional Image, cover photo
Use a professional image for your profile photo and a professional background as your cover photo. People form a first impression about you by looking…
Jun 23, 2019
All about Schema / Structured Data
Founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet. There are different types of schema including those for creative work, events, organization, person, place, and product.
Schema can be written in Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD format. Google prefers the JSON-LD format for schema.
If you have no knowledge of writing schema code, then you can use Google Search Console's Data Highlighter Tool to generate schema tags. You need to simply point and click on different elements on your website using the tool.
To check the schema code generated, you can use Google Structured Data testing tool.
Jun 23, 2019
Tips to optimize your Google My Business Listing
For most of the local searches e.g. "restaurant near me" or "doctor near me", Google My Business listings (maps listing) show up higher in Google SERPs. Local searches are increasing year on year, at roughly 7%. How do you get the most out of your Google My Business Account? Here are few tips to follow:
1. Create GMB account using an official company ID
If you are creating a Google My Business account, use your company email ID e.g. yourname@companyname.com. This way it is easier for Google to verify your locations published through your account.
2. Make sure that there are no duplicate locations that exist
It might be the case that someone else has created a Google My Business listing for your location. In such a case, you can ask the current owner to make you the owner or to add you as a manager. You can also request for transfer of ownership to your listing. Once you have access to duplicate listings, make sure you delete incorrect listings and maintain t…
Jun 21, 2019
YouTube SEO
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. More and more individuals and brands are turning to video as a medium to create powerful content to reach out the their audience. As per a report, by 2022, 75% of the global internet bandwidth would be dominated by video viewing. Facebook, Google (YouTube), LinkedIn and other social media channels are giving a lot of importance to video content.
YouTube is the biggest video platform out there. Hence, if you are getting into creating & producing videos, you need to leverage this platform. To ensure that your video content reaches out to the right audience, you need to optimize the video for search engines. How do you go about YouTube SEO?
1. Title of the video: Use your focus keyword in the video title, preferably at the start of the title. YouTube & Google looks at title of your video to see whether the keywords used match the search query of a user (either on YouTube or on Google).
2. Video description: You need to have at l…
Jun 20, 2019
How to identify blog topics
Finding blog topics to write about can be tough. I have 6 ways of finding blog topics to write about:
1. Wikipedia: Wikipedia has pages for different topics and a lot of these topic pages rank higher in search results. You could simply go to Wikipedia and type in your topic to find a page. The page will have table of contents which act as sub-topics and help you not just to identify blog topics but also to structure your blog.
2. Reddit: You could find sub-reddit's related to a topic. For example you could search for "SEO" on reditt and find different topics / communities related to SEO. People ask a lot of questions related to topics and you can use it to understand the problems that consumers are facing. You could write a blog topic that provides a solution to questions asked in communities.
3. BuzzSumo: Buzzsumo tells you which topics are trending on Social media in terms of likes, comments, shares and evergreen score. You could just type in a generic term a…
Jun 17, 2019
Interview with Lindsey Bnadad, Senior Marketing Strategist at iHeartMedia
Lindsey Bnadad builds marketing partnerships on behalf of iHeartMedia. She works with partners at the local, regional and national levels to put their brands in front of people and to help them grow their businesses.
How and when did you get into digital marketing?
I started learning about digital marketing here and there during my first media job, and I even got digital marketing certified by the Radio Advertising Bureau. But it wasn’t until I started my first stint with iHeartMedia, back in the days when it was Clear Channel, that I really started using digital marketing in any real way because they were starting to offer tools for digital marketing that made sense for my clients.
What was your path to iHeartMedia?
It’s funny, I’ve actually come full-circle. As I mentioned, I worked for iHeart back when the company was really just starting to get its legs under it digitally.
The iHeartRadio app had launched and the company was in full re-branding mode when I was recruited…
Jun 17, 2019
Interview with Billy Attar, Head of Growth at Orbs (Hybrid Blockchain)
Billy Attar is the Head of Growth at Orbs, which raised $120 million for its blockchain, for the past 1.5 years. Before that, he spent 4 years heading up the marketing at Pipl - a leading identity data engine, building it's B2B business from 0 to 10's of millions of $. Prior to Pipl, Billy worked at ClickTale, helping it grow from 8 employees to 150 by the time he left. And before all of this, Billy sold fabric in New York for 8 years.
How and when did you start in Digital Marketing?
About 10 years ago I joined ClickTale as my first hi-tech job. I started as an account manager since my experience was in sales up to that point. But I was the guy who would take on any new role the company needed to fill as it grew, so I worked in sales, customer support, business analysis and eventually shifted completely to marketing by managing affiliates, conversion rate optimization, content and marketing ops.
Tell us a bit about your journey that has led you to Orbs?
It's been a short jou…
Jun 15, 2019
How to grow your podcast audience using SEO and Social media
To grow your podcast audience, you need to focus on these 6 tips
1. Title of the podcast: Apple iTunes and Google Play give a lot of importance to the title of an episode in their algorithm. Make sure you have done proper keyword research for your episode and use the focus keyword at the start of the title. By using keywords in the episode title, wherever your podcast is distributed, you will gain higher reach on the organic searches happening on that platform,
2. Website: Make sure that you have a website where all podcast episodes are hosted. Each episode needs to have a page on your site. The page needs to be optimized for usage of keywords in title, meta description and content. Most podcast distribution platforms would restrict the number of words / characters in the description of your episode, but there is no such restriction if you publish the episode on your website. You can produce a full transcription of your podcast episode to get SEO benefits.
3. Creat…
Jun 15, 2019
3 digital marketing skills to have in 2019
To become good at digital marketing, you need to have these 3 essential skills
1. Content creation: You should have the ability to produce quality content. Whether it is writing blogs, producing podcasts or creating videos, you should be able to create remarkable content. To create content, first you need to understand who your target audience is and accordingly create content for your buyer persona's. One essential skill that you need to gain is Keyword Research. If you can use Ubersuggest or any other keyword research tool, you can identify the keywords that are being searched by your target audience and create keyword-rich content. If you include the right keywords in your blog / podcast / youtube videos, you will show up higher in search results, thus getting more traffic to your website.
2. Content promotion via Social Media: Content creation is only 20% of the job done. The rest 80% is promoting your content so that it reaches out to the right audience. You can levera…
Jun 11, 2019
Interview with Nitin Manchanda, Former Global SEO Head at Trivago
Nitin Manchanda is a developer who turned into SEO and is now responsible for the organic visibility of Berlin based travel startup, Omio (formerly GoEuro), across the globe. In the past, Nitin has helped some really popular brands like trivago and Flipkart grow organically.
Nitin also hosted the super famous webinar series, in association with SEMrush, "SEO Surgery in India", and now hosting another series called “Indian Search Marketing Academy”. He's the founder of SEOSurgeon.in, the brand he uses for his SEO consultancy services. When not busy reading SEO articles or setting up his own SEO experiments, you'll find him spending time with his daughter, or planning his next trip.
How and when did you start in SEO?
* Started my professional journey with Flipkart back in 2012, right after completing my masters from University of Pune
* I started my career as a Software Engineer, not an SEO
* Was assigned SEO tech team
* Started my experiments there -…
Jun 11, 2019
Video Marketing - Interview with Zain Siddiqui of Wicked Broz
Zain Siddiqui is a trainer at Digital Vidya and has conducted digital marketing workshops for startups and entrepreneurs. He is also a co-founder of Wicked Broz, which is India’s premier graffiti agency. His favorite quote is - "I eat failures for breakfast" - Eric Ries
According to Zain, "Digital marketing is a doorway to success in all industries now and in the future. It is the one ring to rule them all.
The one who digs the internet the deepest and collects the secret gems of insight from all his projects will be the master of this magic kingdom."
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, we talk about video marketing and how it impacts brands. Should you produce more video content? Should you have an in-house team to produce content or should you outsource it? How do you produce quality video content? These are some topics on which I had a free-wheeling discussion with Zain.
About Wicked Broz:
Wicked Broz solves the problem of how to make a living as an artist in In…
Jun 8, 2019
The ideal SEO URL structure for e-commerce websites
eCommerce websites have a lot of pages. Look at Amazon or Flipkart, you will see that they sell products under hundreds of categories and 1000's of sub-categories. For example Electronics is a category and Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, Fans are sub-categories.
Having a well defined URL structure allows Google and other Search Engine bots to crawl your website more efficiently.
For an ecommerce website, you have 3 types of pages - Homepage, Category & Sub-category pages and product pages. If you have your website in Shopify, category pages are called collections. So whats the ideal URL structure for an eCommerce website:
A) First and foremost, you need to have a well defined hierarchy for your pages
0. Homepage: domain name
1. Category page: /category
2. Product page: /category/product-name
Everything related to make up is under /category
B) Use Keywords in the URL: Since the product pages will have the product name in the URL, ideally…
Jun 7, 2019
Why you need to use the LinkedIn Lead Gen Form
LinkedIn is a B2B gold mine. It’s where most Fortune 500 decision-makers and executives like to spend their spare time. The best part? More often than not, they’re actually scrolling through actively looking for valuable content to read. There isn’t the same barrier you need to break down like on other social platforms like Facebook.
With LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, you can generate high-quality leads at scale. Lead Gen Forms come pre-filled with accurate LinkedIn profile data, letting members send you their professional info with just a couple of clicks.
You can also prove the ROI of your lead gen campaigns - Track your campaigns' cost per lead, lead form fill rate, and the number of leads you're getting from specific professional audience segments.
Furthermore, you can access and manage your leads with ease - Download your leads from Campaign Manager or integrate with your preferred marketing automation or CRM tool.
Here's how LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms wo…
Jun 5, 2019
6 Reasons Why You Need To Use Facebook Lead Ads
As of January 2019, the highest number of Facebook users is in India at 300 million users. The United States is a bit further behind at 210 million users.
An overwhelming majority of Facebook users have accessed the network via tablet or smartphone. According to Statista, 96% access Facebook on mobile devices.
Lots of people want to hear from your business, but filling in forms can be difficult on mobile. Facebook lead ads makes the lead generation process easy. People can simply tap your ad and a form pops up – it's already pre-populated with their Facebook contact information and ready to be sent directly to you. With just a few taps, they can get the information they want, and you generate a qualified lead for your business.
1 .Make the most of mobile Pre-populated forms means people can submit their contact information with ease, even on the small screen.
2. Reduce drop-offs: Our lead ads do most of the work of filling in contact forms, so people a…
Jun 4, 2019
Interviewing Tokopedia's Product Manager, Tarun Valecha - Tokopedia is Indonesia's $7Bn Unicorn 🦄
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, I have a free wheeling conversation with Tarun Valecha, Product Manager at Tokopedia, Indonesia's biggest Internet company.
We speak about the e-commerce ecosystem in Indonesia, the Ramadan ekstra sale (Big Billion Day equivalent) and Tarun's journey from IIT Roorkee to Flipkart to Tokopedia in Jakarta.
May 14, 2019
5 Basic SEO Tips to rank higher in Google
Gone is the time where ranking a website was as simple as creating a bunch of low-quality content pages, stuffing them with keywords and doing some artificial link building. Today, we live in a post Panda, post Penguin era – two of the major algorithm updates that helped Google remove millions of pages.
Here are 5 basic SEO tips that will help you rank higher in Google:
Tip #1: Use Keyword in Title, Meta Description and variations of keyword in the content
Keyword research is one of the most valuable, important & high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website.
Title tags are crucial as it makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is all about. Including keywords in the title tag is important, but not enough to get you to rank high. Search engines now weigh in the click th…
May 14, 2019
How does the LinkedIn algorithm work and how you can optimise your posts
The main LinkedIn feed is based on an algorithm, not on recency. Much like Facebook and Instagram, the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes
content you’re most likely to find relevant and engage with over the most recent content. This means that means the way to stand out in the feed is not by posting 20 times a day.
However, it also means that just posting is not enough. In order to consistently make it into people’s feeds, you need to be regularly putting out good content that your followers reliably engage with.
There are also a lot more unknown factors affecting your visibility in the main feed. There are 4 filters we know which LinkedIn applies to our posts:
Filter #1: The first step in the flow is pretty simple: every time you post something, the LinkedIn feed algorithm determines whether it’s spam, low quality, or good to go. Obviously, you want to be in the “good to go” category.
Filter #2: If you passed go, your content appears in the feed temporarily. It is extremely…
May 14, 2019
3 simple Google Search Console hacks to boost organic traffic
Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmasters is a free, powerful tool created by Google for SEO's and webmasters. It provides a ton of data & insights including top queries / keywords driving traffic to your website, top pages ranking higher in Google search results, mobile usability issues, index & coverage issues with your website.
Here are 3 simple Google Search Console hacks to boost organic traffic to your website:
Tip #1: Performance --> Queries Report
In the queries report, you can get the top keywords that are driving traffic to your website. Export this list of keywords and find keywords that have a low Avg. Position. Now, try to use these keywords more often in the content of your web pages. As you will increase keyword density for low ranking keywords, the pages which use these keywords will start moving up the pecking order.
Tip #2: Performance --> Pages Report
Similar to the queries report, the pages report shows the top pages that are getting traffic fr…
May 14, 2019
8 tips to optimize landing pages for conversions
Today, we will discuss Landing pages and optimizing landing pages for conversions– a key conversion strategy deployed by most pay for performance marketers.
Landing pages are pages on your websites that users come to via directed marketing communication. If you are trying to generate prospects (new leads) or sell products online, landing pages form a critical component of your marketing strategy.
A landing page usually includes a compelling header, interesting copy, minimal navigation, and an optimized form. It is thus imperative to build unique landing pages for every marketing offer you have – Whether you want users to read case studies or download eBooks, whitepapers or coupons, make sure that users get them via gated landing pages.
Since landing pages are a key component of lead generation and consequently revenue, one must ensure that each and every element of the page is optimized for conversion. Below are some general guidelines for optimizing LP’s :
Headline: Having…
May 14, 2019
How to choose the right agency to market your business
Before answering the question, you should really consider one of the two options.
Option 1: You have less time to manage your business but have more money
Option 2: You have more time, but less money.
In case of Option 2, its better to work with freelancers for multiple reasons. Since you have time, you can supervise the work done by freelancers and get the most out of them at a lower cost.
In case of Option 1, its better to hire an agency as they have set processes and expertise to market your business. How should you go about choosing the right agency for your business.
Step 1: Define Business Objectives
You need to define business objectives for your business and then ask the potential agency for a plan on how they will go about achieving the business objectives. Make sure that the plan they submit is tailored to your business as opposed to a generic plan.
Step 2: Check for Industry experience
Make sure that the agency you hire has previous experience in managing clients fro…
May 14, 2019
Why you should produce less content
There is already too much content out there. There are 1 Billion Blogs - 1 blog for every 7 people on earth. Its already a saturated market for textual content. If you are starting with a blog in a competitive industry (say digital marketing), then you are competing with the big boys and ranking higher on Google is going to be tough.
You could still produce video and audio content. Video content creation is on the rise, so soon you will see this type of content also being competitive. Audio content (like podcasts) have not yet caught fire in India. May be in the United States or UK, podcasts are listened too. So you can still focus on video and audio content as opposed to creating text based content.
Produce less content of high quality. It will give you better results as opposed to playing the volume game.
May 14, 2019
How to do SEO for a small business website
If you are having a small website and you have built it on Wordpress, then you need not hire an agency to do your SEO. You could simply do it yourself. Here are 2 key tips on SEO for small websites:
1. Competitor Research: Use SEMRush.com ($100/mo) or ($75/mo for annual payment) Organic Research tool to find out the keywords and pages for which you competitors are ranking for. Make a list of all high-traffic pages and identify the content gaps on your website. Beef up the content on existing pages (make it comprehensive with 2k words) or create new pages as per the competition gap.
2. Focus on Content: If you have the time, you should create content yourself. If not, you could hire bloggers from problogger.net or we use WittyPen in India. Provide bloggers with topics, keyword research and basic outline to your content. Get them produce comprehensive content. This would cost you $30-$40 for a blog article of roughly 1000 words. Be consistent with your content creation efforts. Focus o…
May 13, 2019
Do you need an SEO while developing a website?
Yes & No.
If you are short on cash for hiring a SEO and your website is 15-20 pages, you can simply choose Wordpress as a platform, use Yoast SEO plugin and do all the basic SEO by yourself.
Now, if you are doing a website redesign for a fairly large website that has many moving parts, you might want to involve an SEO at the outset. Your SEO team will help you migrate the website to the new URL by mitigating loss of link juice from backlinking. They will also take care of the URL structure and architecture of your website.
May 13, 2019
Bill Slawski Interview on SEO & AEO
Today we have with us Bill Slawski. For those in SEO, he needs no introduction. Bill writes about Search rankings and algorithms at SEObytheSea.com and is the Director of SEO Research for Go Fish Digital, where he helps guide clients on award-winning industry campaigns involving Named Entities, Structured Data and Semantic Search. Bill has spoken at various industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX) and SearchLove. Bill is my first guest on The Digital Marketing Podcast and its a true honor to have him on the show!
Questions for Bill Slawski
(You have to listen to the podcast for the answers!)
1. For those who are unaware, Bill has worked for the highest level trial Court in Delaware, Superior Court of Delaware, for 14 years as a court manager and administrator. This was in the 90's. So Bill, how did you make the switch from the legal profession to SEO?
2. How has Google changed over the years? How do you stay at the cutting edge of SE…
May 12, 2019
How to generate leads from LinkedIn
There are two ways to generate leads from LinkedIn
1. Organically: Post on LinkedIn from your company profile or business profile often. The organic reach of LinkedIn is quite high nowadays as compared to any other social network. The content you post should essentially take users to a blog or a resource that you have created which is gated. Also, get your employees to post on their LinkedIn profile. Make sure you build contacts on LinkedIn - You could have 30k first degree connections on LinkedIn. A quick way to get connected with others on LinkedIn in your domain is to export your email contact list and import it into LinkedIn. That way you could expand reach for most of your posts.
2. LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn Ads work well for B2B businesses who want to target decision makers. I recommend that you use Sponsored Content to promote a post from a company page. Make sure you use the LinkedIn lead form that allows you to capture leads which can be exported to a spreadsheet. The lead form…
May 11, 2019
How to find influencers on Instagram
Every business that uses Social Media to promote its products / services would need to work with Influencers to push the envelope. How do you find the right influencers to work with on Instagram or any other social network. There are two approaches that may work for you
Approach #1 : Search on Instagram - Use the search box on Instagram to find people, locations, tags for a particular keyword. Instagram would recommend the most active accounts / people for that topic. You could simply DM these people and reach out to them for collaboration opportunities.
Approach #2 : Find influencers offline - Go attend a local meetup of a community. For e.g. if you are finding influencers for Nikon, go attend a local meetup of photographers in your city and make friends with influencers. You could hire these friends for a project / assignment. We have seen that 1 or 2 good influencers also bring in the rest as they have already established connections in their coterie.
May 11, 2019
6 Google Ads hacks any business could use
Lets talk about 6 Google Ads hacks any business could use.
Hack #1: Custom intent campaigns - Pick relevant keywords and make a list of landing pages / websites of your competitors. Create a custom intent audience by combining the keywords and landing page list. Target this audience on the Google Display Network with a better offer than your competition.
Hack #2 Dynamic Product Remarketing - Connect your Google Merchant account with your Google Ads account and target customers who are browsing products on your site. The Ads on GDN will show the products they visited, but did not buy
Hack #3 Remarketing to people who have not converted - Simply figure out why they have not converted (use a chat bot, conduct a survey etc.) and build another landing page with a better offer. Take people who have not converted to this new landing page.
Hack #4 Gmail Sponsored Promotions - Target Gmail users with Ads. Simply select domain names of competitors from whom your potential customers would be…
May 10, 2019
How often should you blog?
There are two school of thoughts - Publishing as many blog posts as possible vs. publishing quality content.
1. Quantity: By publishing as often as possible, you are in for the volume game. Like Hubspot or Neil Patel. I work with DigitalVidya.com as a corporate trainer and they publish 2 to 3 blog posts every day. They get 200k visitors to their website as per SEMRush. GOQii.com, which is another client we work with gets 65-70k traffic from blogs. They publish 1 blog post a day. You can adopt this approach if you have the resources at your disposal. Funds to pay freelance writers or an in-house team to create content everyday.
2. Quality: The same result of getting considerable amount of traffic can be achieved by posting fewer number of times, but focusing on quality & comprehensive content. By comprehensive content, I mean that a blog post is a minimum of 2k words. Brian Dean from backlinko.com follows this approach. If you are an individual contributor to your blog, I'd recommend…
May 8, 2019
How to get more views for your LinkedIn posts
LinkedIn has high organic reach compared to other social media networks like Facebook or Instagram. You can ride on this current trend by sharing your content on LinkedIn. There are two ways to get more views for your LinkedIn posts
1. Post from personal profiles as opposed to just posting from Company / Business page on LinkedIn. As per LinkedIn, people get 7X - 10X reach over company updates. Start an employee engagement initiative to have them share your LinkedIn company posts on their profile. If you are the company owner, then you should be posting more frequently on LinkedIn.
2. Tag relevant influencers in your LinkedIn posts. Make sure that the content you are posting on LinkedIn (blog, podcast or video) mentions these influencers. Get LinkedIn influencers to share their views on the content you have created. Tagging influencers and other people in your LinkedIn posts will definitely boost your organic post views.
May 7, 2019
How to start with Facebook Ads
Ever since Facebook opened up its platform for ads, a ton of advertising dollars have shifted to Facebook Ads. As a brand, if you are not advertising via Facebook, then you are losing out on relevant traffic / leads / sales.
To get started with Facebook Ads you need to learn the ropes. Head over to facebook.com/business/learn and take up all the free courses they have created. If you are serious about Facebook Ads, then you should take their Core Advertising & Planning certifications. Once you have a little knowledge of how Facebook Ads work, you can start promoting your business on Facebook. I'd recommend the following Ads to start with:
1. Page Like campaigns: Get more people to like your Facebook page. Make sure that you have created a custom audience of emails that you have collected. Using this custom audience, build a lookalike audience and target this audience for your page like campaign.
2. Boost Posts: As I've said earlier, the organic reach for Facebook has reduced to less…
May 7, 2019
How to start in SEO
How do you build a career in SEO?
I started SEO 5 years ago. May be I should have done it earlier.
There are two ways in which you could learn SEO and make a living out of it:
1. Build a website / blog in Wordpress, create a ton of content and optimize that content for search terms. This is a long drawn process as your domain (website) is very new and it might take some time for Google to rank your website.
2. Learn SEO by following experts and implement it for a business that already exists: You could reach out to your friend or anyone you know who owns a business and has a website. Once you get buy in from your friend / family member, you simply offer SEO help for free. While you are learning the ropes of SEO, you can put your knowledge to action. Some of the SEO Blogs that I follow: SEOByTheSea.com by Bill Slawsky, Moz.com (Rand Fishkin), NeilPatel.com, SearchEngineJournal.com and my recent favorite backlinko.com by Brian Dean.
May 5, 2019
How to uncover your competitors Facebook Ads strategy
Do you want to know which Ads your competitor is running on Facebook? There are two ways in which you could do this:
1. Head over to facebook.com/ads/library and type in the name of the brand that you want to analyse. You can get which ads your competitors are running, whether they are active or inactive, how much have they spent on Facebook Ads in the last 3 months and in the past week and also get a segmentation based on Ads running for a particular geography (country).
2. You could simply go to the brand page. For e.g. facebook.com/flipkart and click on the "Info & Ads" tab in the left hand side menu. Again, you will be able to see the Ads that Flipkart is running.
Try to analyse the creative, copy and regional targeting done by your competitors and use some of the key takeaways to better your Facebook Ads. Over to you!
May 4, 2019
Email Marketing: Does it still work like it did in 1978?
As per State of Inbound Report published by HubSpot, 30% Sales reps prefer Email as a channel to connect with a prospect. The same report also states that 32% of C level executives (CEO, CMOs) prefer to communicate over email. This means that email marketing does work in 2019.
So which email clients are most used: Gmail 28%, Apple iPhone 28%, Outlook 9%
Gmail Promotions tab: What impact did it have on marketers?
To everyone’s surprise, the new Gmail categorization did not negatively impact marketers. As a matter of fact, the Promotions tab is the second most adopted tab (right behind Social), with a 60 percent adoption rate as per a study conducted by ReturnPath. Almost half of Gmail users (45.1 percent to be exact) check their Promotions tab at least once a day.
Email Trivia
Ray Tomlinson sent the first ever email 48 years ago.
Billed as the 'Father of Spam' Gary Thuerk, a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp started the ball rolling for commercial email by sending the…
May 3, 2019
Websites : How I built my first website & why you should too
Having a responsive, fast loading, intuitive and functional website is critical to achieving success with digital marketing. In this episode, I talk about the first website I designed as a 14 year old teen. I also talk about WordPress as a platform for building your website.
May 2, 2019
The Internet : My tryst with a 28 Kbps modem
How I got access to the Internet and what did I do with Internet access. My 1996 story of being a privileged Internet user.