“Did you know that 90% of all digital marketers admit that social media has increased their food business exposure? “

From the last decade, social media has emerged as an important tool of marketing as it increases brand visibility and gets traction. More and more restaurant business owners are incorporating social media marketing to create hype. Earlier, it was a luxury, but now it is necessary as more than four billion people are active on different social media platforms.

Being proactive in social media helps business owners to establish strong relations with consumers and aids in spreading recent updates and developments that have been taking place in your food business. If you are running a restaurant business and leveraging social media, you will get certain benefits such as,

1. It let customers “Check-in” and show their and followers where they are eating a delicious meal ( free promotion of restaurant)
2. It will also give consumers to give reviews and ratings that will encourage others to visit.
3. Cost-effective promotional tool unless you opt for paid advertisements.

Social media definitely has changed the face of marketing for the food business. Restaurants are no longer dependent on conventional marketing approaches even though they are cost-effective. Every business can benefit from social media when it comes to generating sales and strengthening its brand, and the food business is no exception.

Why Social Media Is Crucial For Your Food Business

All major food and beverage companies are on social media, from Coca Cola to Pizza Hut.  

Social media is important because it allows brands to reach, nurture, and communicate with their target audience, irrespective of their location. When a food business uses social media to connect with its target audience, it also offers certain other benefits such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and revenue altogether.

Below are the five reasons that can help understand the importance of social media marketing for your restaurant business.

# It Shows the World Who You Are

We have heard it several times after reading reviews on social media, people visit restaurants or place an order because people trust word-of-mouth over anything else. Social media gives you the chance to highlight all the facets of your food business with a single click.

For example, you are running a small restaurant business, you have created a Facebook page, you can highlight all the popular dishes, consumer reviews, update your menu, mention website and application link, and much more. All this information any user will get within one click.

All this vital information attracts consumers and drives more traffic to your business. Social media’s importance is seen when you realize you are generating more leads, and people also find it easy to get more information about your business. Social media allows you to demonstrate your expertise in multiple ways, including sharing recent industry news, publish content that highlights your restaurant’s core values, and creating a unique brand voice. 

# Brand Advocacy

The main motto behind brand advocacy is to promote your food business without spending a hefty amount; it means a cost-effective technique to market your food business.

Especially for the food business, social media is inevitable because “ food is the most photographed topic on Instagram and Facebook”. It means there is no better way to create brand advocacy through social media as customers will post pictures and generate buzz about your popular dishes.

Furthermore, if someone does not know about your new restaurant business, social media through they will get aware and browse your products and services. Building brand advocacy among potential customers that your brand even exists is the first important task your business has to perform as it facilitates long-term relations with consumers.

However, creating brand awareness is a time-consuming process but will give you the desired results and bring new customers.

# Social Media Ads Allow Targeting and Retargeting

Hootsuite found that a well-planned social media strategy drives repeat business and maximizes profitability. Social media advertising offers highly targeted ads that can be modified as per your consumers’ preferences.

Facebook ads, for instance, can target customers by various factors such as age, location, industry type, consumer’s choices, browsing history, and even user behavior. You can also choose advanced tools such as HubSpot and Buffer, as it will give you detailed insights into your ad campaigns.

You can also install Facebook pixel on your food business website to track how your ads are running and will also allow you to see which ads are turning visitors into potential customers.

# Driving Website and App Traffic

One of the major benefits of having a strong presence on social media is it will drive traffic to your website and application. Due to the increasing trend on online ordering, more and more business owners are deploying ubereats clone script into their business, it streamlines business operations. It enables consumers to get doorstep delivery without any trouble.

But how will you attract consumers? How will you increase app downloads? The answer is social media. Inspire people with catchy and quality content related to your food business and make the first impression the best ones for your consumers. More than 5% of website visits come from social media.

The more likes and engagement your posts get, the more exposure you will get. It means more clicks to your website and app. Your website traffic generated from social media sites can be measured through an advanced tool such as Google Analytics that will help you know what type of content has been key traffic drivers.

Based on that, you can plan your future social media strategy; it will also increase your “Order now” or “ Buy Now” conversion ratio.

# Keep Ahead of The Competition

The food industry is facing fierce competition right now. Social media marketing will help you stay ahead in the competition. Engaging with customers regularly, reply to customer’s reviews promptly, send them personalized offers, these types of fine activities will increase customer satisfaction, and foster brand loyalty.

Customers also feel valued when they directly communicate with the brand. Social media marketing will keep you ahead in the game and offer a chance to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

To Sum up…

Overall, social media is a quick and cost-effective option for restaurants to promote their business. Today, more and more customers are looking at getting information through digital channels; thus, social media is an impressive way to market your business.

Begin to build-up your own social media presence and start making the most out of it.

The prevailing situation of the Covid 19 has toppled down the entire functional progress leaving every sector scratching their head before making the next step. Many companies are affected due to the loss of clients, and business functions are questioning their ability of quicker recovery through a strategic plan.

Since, customers and clients are forced to use online data to carry their activities, along with online commercial activities; search activities conducted online are also changed. Customers have become health conscious and are engaged in a continuous process of updating themselves with Covid measures and Covid related announcements. 

How to prepare your SEO strategy

Creating engaging content

The first step to any marketing campaign is to create content which is engaging and relevant to the target user. In fact, even SEO deals with this aspect. And while there is more to SEO than just keyword optimization, it is a good place to start.

Writing original, unique, and creative content strategies would get you a long way. Put in the effort to make your website readable and easier to navigate. Also, while we are at it, let’s also talk about plagiarism. Google and other search engines have heavy penalties for content duplication or plagiarism. It is always better to run your content through a plagiarism checking software first.

Google always prefers to highlight unique original and value-driven content, ranking it on their top results page. It makes your brand more visible and accessible to the end-user, resulting in better sales and an overall successful performance.

Increasing the SEO traffic through trending searches

The indoor lifestyle has forced people to browse the web space for specified and favourite results, and so Covid 19 has disrupted the balanced deductions of SEO analysation. There is a comprehensive cyber hunt search to know about user trends and their customized wants. Simple ways to gather what users want; SEO analyzers use the help of Google Trends. Google Trends is used to know the top, famous searches and hashtags on the web. The SEO analyzers can observe and do extensive research on trending topics and can use the same to create similar but different trending content to increase their web traffic. 

Remodifying the keywords

The Google keywords index analyzes search results only through search keywords related to pertaining topics. For example: if your website is about marketing and designs, keywords like “design thinking” would be most frequently searched. Right now, the current trending search results available on the search engine platform are about the Covid 19 safe practices. The recent media also started to pour their contents about Covid 19 due to the reason that search results showed more numbers of Covid 19 related information. 

Upgrading the website navigation

When searching for results on the search engine platform, users will always be in an instant to know answers. The common practice for internet users is to go for the first result available on the result page to reduce time consumption. Apart from the keyword, the search engine will also look for the fastest website available on cyber space and will project the same as the results. Web service providers should increase the web speed, which in turn will be shown as the first result. According to recent statistics, a web page must not take more than 3 seconds to load when accessed by the user. This is one significant way to prepare your SEO strategy during the virus.

Use of Schema Markup to increase the traffic

One of the ways to increase or update the website traffic can be done by using Schema Markup. Schema Markup is the official micro data of the Schema.org also called as a coding tool used by many companies in their websites to get additional traffic. Schema Markup is compatible with many search engines where a separate URL is created in the micro data. The particular URL will have sufficient information with proper keywords within the coding language. Schema Markup is considered to be one of the essential tools for increasing web traffic and your Google ranking as well. 

Publishing Covid 19 related information on the website

As the current pandemic has led the mass public to check the website about health issues and health-related tips regarding Covid 19 infection, the web companies have forced themselves to write about the Covid 19 problems and health tips to safeguard both humans and the environment instead of normal topics regarding marketing and designing. Web owners should focus on what the user search wants and on Covid 19 related content. 

Web owners should focus on broad-gauged contents

A pandemic attack is very vulnerable as many people have lost their jobs, so many unemployed people will have a primary mission, i.e. to get an employment opportunity. The broad-gauged content should have articles and posts in various areas that might help businesses such as topics relating SEO and how to handle your business during the virus. Particularly, topics such as employment opportunities must have important focus and many useful contents related to it as well. The contents will be helpful for unemployed people who will receive a lot of web traffic for the website. 

Update the site to get a My Business Page

One of the possible ways to generate viewers’ traffic is to claim My Business Page on Google. This method of SEO strategizing is beneficial for small scale business people in the time of a pandemic situation. Receiving reviews from the customers is one of the most positive impacts the web owners can get from My Business Page. My Business Page speeds up the results making the website a top priority in the works. This way, the SEO analyzers can establish the website on the first page of the search result column. 

Tie up with micro-influencers

To gather support for their websites, the owners can have a franchise with micro-influencers all over the place. These micro-influencers will use their skill to attract even more viewers and can establish their identity all over the area. The SEO tactic behind this is the promo code and the product description used by website owners where a promo code will be given to micro-influencers, and they invite people for better offers through the promo code. To simply put it, it is propaganda through SEO. 

Know your competition

The market is pretty competitive, with demands soaring and businesses trying their best to attract the most customers. Porter’s five forces is an essential framework which can be used by SEO developers so that they can analyze the SEO competition in the sector. Porter’s Five Forces was initially founded in 1979 by the Harvard Business School. It is regarded as one of the most influential concepts of analyzing business competition along with its substantial growth. Like SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces is differentiated into five points. The five classifications of Porter’s Forces are Entrants, Suppliers, Buyers, Substitutes and Competition. 

Entrants in Porter’s Five Forces are subjected due to the new entry of keywords. Some of the keywords will be unused, so that keyword research is fundamental, and researchers can drive more traffic and conversions for the content will be more efficient. On Porter’s Five Forces, the buyers on SEO refer to the buyers who are drawn due to the impact of it. Substitute refers to the alternate way or the productive way where the focus will be on a higher ROI. Competition refers to the rivalry of other sectors and the subsequent strategy used to contain the market.

Conclusion

Although the pandemic destroyed many businesses, strategies acquired through SEO are not exhaustive as the contents are infinite in numbers. The writers who are engaged in the process of SEO analysis have many routes to stabilize the usage of SEO applications. Through this situation, SEO analyzers have a chance to look after data trends periodically.

Although there is no silver bullet to soar the search engine, a few smart strategies can help you climb the charts gradually. And local SEO is one such tactic.

With today’s modern technology, more people are using Google Maps and associated business listings to find local companies. According to eMarketer, eight out of ten consumers prefer to use search engines to find local products/services.

Therefore, dominating Google search these days is critical for a business. If you are one of the big corporate gurus, you probably have many resources to do so. However, if you belong to middle or lower corporate strata, you should opt for local SEO practices.

Local SEO is, unfortunately, not always focused on by many business entities. This is why their original customer base dwindles. In fact, a bunch of recent studies has confirmed that most online purchases happen after people search for these products locally.

• 72% of consumers who did a local search visited the store within five miles. (WordStream, 2016)
• 28% of searches for something in surroundings result in a purchase. (Google, 2016)
• 78% of local-mobile searches turn into offline purchases. (Search Engine Land, 2014)
• 30% of mobile searches are linked with a location. (Google, 2016)

A local presence is your way to go if you are a start-up or a new entrant in the field. Below, we have some reasons to convince you even more.

Greater Local Visibility

In a lot of ways, a local presence is easier to obtain than a national one. Once you learn what you are doing, you can understand your local market much better than anyone else. Or you can take locally reputed professionals on board. For example, SEO experts in Seattle can bring more valuable insights if you want to pursue your venture in Seattle.

They will devise strategies to promote your products/services to potential customers by scrutinizing the current trends. Signals such as social profile pages, links, local content, and citations are local SEO information. This allows the search engine to bring relevant results for the users, improving rankings and escalating sales.

To start with, get yourself on Google my Business listing. Plus, there are plenty of others like Yelp, Yellowbook, Bing Places to improve visibility. Chatmeter states that if the first position of a local listing gets 30% of the clicks, local listings after the sixth ranking get fewer than 2% of clicks. And this is for search results that are still on the first page.

So make sure your local SEO strategies are in place to retain a higher position in the list.

Establishes Business Credibility

Google handles more than 63,000 search queries each second. (Quora)

This staggering search statistic reveals how critical it is for a small business to strive for the higher ranks. It gives the audience a reason to check you out.

Users find local listings that pop up on the top of a search engine more authentic than paid or organic search. As per Hubspot, SEO is 5.66 times more effective than paid search advertising. Be sure to use long-tail keywords with local modifiers and semantic variations to expand your keyword coverage.

Steps like including directions on Google Map on your contacts will allow the customers to find you easily. The local algorithms will have further data to confirm your location.

Along with this, having customer reviews is another factor in enhancing your authenticity. Research by BrightLocal revealed that about 88% of local users trust online business reviews. Hence, it is essential to ensure you get your regulars to share their experiences. After all, word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing, and it’s free!

Better Return on Investment (ROI)

Brian Halligan, the co-founder at Hubspot, staunchly believes in an organic-first strategy for its strong conversion performance and longevity.

Spending money on advertising may appear like throwing your bucks down a dark pit as you struggle to calculate the return on investment. On the contrary, targeting a local audience allows you to find the exact audience you are looking for. You can select the target audience based on search terms like gender, age, interests, and location.

SEO ROI accumulates with time as content creators establish visibility and authority of your platform. Potential buyers tend to visit a website more than once before making a purchase or filling a form. Thus, ranking higher for more keywords increases the likelihood of conversion as time passes. Acknowledge yourself with Google Ranking Factors in the upcoming years to maintain your SEO plans.

In the past, local companies had to operate traditional marketing routes, such as newspaper adverts, leaflets, and radio ads. These methods are in steep decline (given how the local newspaper agencies are gradually shutting down).

Research from Poynter found that local newspapers have lost about 80% of their readership over the last two decades. The internet allows people to consume news when and how they like. Local SEO makes sure prospects find you when they need your solutions, not when they don’t.

Let’s Wrap it Up

Knowing that consumers are looking for local brick and mortar stores for instant purchases, it is more crucial than ever to have a solid local SEO strategy. For this to work, it comes down to 3 main categories:

• Reviews
• Online Business Listings
• Local Search Rankings

As search engines notice a growth in “near me” searches with urgent words like “open today” or “now,”  companies should ensure their local visibility is in line with their customers’ needs. Remember understanding your market is the primary factor to uncover what they require. Make sure you have a strong team to evaluate the market and upgrade your virtual presence accordingly.

We hope our blog will help you jumpstart your Local SEO tactics. Let us know what would be your first step!

It’s important to show employees that you value them and their hard work, especially in a time of enormous economic and labor uncertainty.

People spend much of their lives working and need regular confirmation that their efforts are valued.

Demonstrating your gratitude helps to reinforce positive behavior, improve business performance, and bolster employee loyalty.

Right now, it’s more important than ever: Most companies are asking employees to stay home for their health and safety. So far, 22 million have filed for unemployment benefits, an economic downturn that has impacted all corners of the economy.

Even for those fortunate enough to retain their positions, job stability is incredibly shaky.

Companies need to realize the gravity of that decision. Of course, it’s the right thing to do. Asking employees to remain productive and engaged during this period, though, is incredibly challenging. There are greater things at stake.

Here are 3 ways to make sure your company’s employees know they are valued.

1. Always Praise Good Work

Praise is a surefire, free way to show employees that your care and secure quality work in the future.

According to Gallup, employees who received praise within the last seven days were responsible for a 10-20% difference in revenue and productivity.

Meanwhile, employees that didn’t receive adequate recognition said they were three times more likely to quit in the coming year.

When offering praise, it’s best to provide detailed feedback about what made the work suitable.

This helps employees improve and reinforces the positive behavior that’s helping your business succeed.

Frequent praise also fosters a sense of belonging, loyalty, and motivation in the workplace.

This means that every level of leadership should make it a habit to recognize employees for producing quality work.

For best results, managers should acknowledge those directly below them and adjust their praise to the context. This way, every commendation feels relevant and genuine.

2. Award Year-End Bonuses And Incentives

Bonuses are a simple, effective way to demonstrate to staff that you value their hard work and commitment during the year.

These can be cash payments, reward cards, or desirable perks such as extra vacation days.

Right now would be a great time to explore additional employee perks to conserve cash.

Year-end bonuses are a strong reminder that business performance and employee commitment are connected. This also gives employees something to look forward to.

Performance bonuses also can help drive motivation and performance in times of change or need.

Anchor bonuses to specific goals and metrics, and communicate these aims throughout the year to maintain motivation.

If you’re only awarding bonuses to select employees, it’s best to deliver them in private. This enhances the importance of receiving a bonus without diminishing the contributions of others.

In the absence of bonuses, a year-end party or a retreat is an effective way to demonstrate your gratitude.

Use this time to celebrate your employees and reinforce your company values in a fun, informal atmosphere.

Bonuses and incentives let you show, not just tell, employees how much you value their input.

3. Offer Opportunities For Employee Skill-Building And Advancement

Employees are eager to develop themselves and feel valued when employers offer such opportunities.

According to LinkedIn, 93% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it helped them invest in their careers.

Helping employees advance themselves professionally is proof that you value them and their drive to improve.

Advancement opportunities can be in the form of:

• Training
• Retraining
• Complimentary memberships in professional organizations

For example, sending staff to a workshop adds new skills to your team while creating happy ambassadors for your brand.

It’s important for leadership to set aside adequate time for staff to learn.

This is because people prefer to learn in small modules rather than lengthy seminars that dump heaps of information on them. If employees feel stressed by the added workload of skill-building, it negates the value of the opportunity.

Self-development is a welcome challenge for employees and a chance for businesses to acknowledge this determination.

Showing Gratitude For Your Employees

Recognition is a powerful motivator that’s essential to a happy and productive workforce.

From praise to bonuses to self-development opportunities, companies should demonstrate their appreciation for employees in varied ways.

Fostering a culture of gratitude pays dividends in the form of employee retention, productivity, and business performance.

Grayson Kemper is a Content & Editorial Manager at Clutch, the leading B2B research, ratings, reviews platform. Clutch helps businesses identify, vet, and connect with the most relevant business services providers for their needs.

2020 is getting over, and tech-savvy experts are predicting new technology trends in development for business growth. Software development is a must need of today’s highly competitive tech arena, and developers work as a valuable asset to businesses to enable them to grow, evolve, and innovate.

Everything from decision making to problem-solving relies upon the expertise and skills of developers.

The tech world is rapidly changing and evolving the way businesses work and perform. Web and mobile apps, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), cross-platform development, low code development and other tech trends are being adopted by businesses to encounter present-day challenges.

Offering multiple benefits, such trends and dedicated developers support businesses to reduce costs and meet their customer-centric needs.

As a result, web and mobile application development has become vital to the growth, profit, and success of any business. Cutting-edge software technologies are enabling businesses to get win-win situation ever.

Here in this writing, we will describe the top 5 software development trends for 2021:

1. Internet of Things (IoT)

As technology is evolving, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as one of the widely used technology not just to increase your tech range but also to increase your business growth.

IoT is a big network of multiple physical elements such as appliances, devices, gadgets, vehicles etc., all these devices incorporate sensors. Devices using such technology utilize Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to exchange data on the web.

According to Forbes, “In 2017, the worldwide spent on IoT was valued at $235 billion.” The market is expected to reach $520 billion in 2021.

Additionally, the emergence of IoT will increase more in 2021. The demand for Bluetooth speakers, Point of Sale (POS) devices, smart home systems, IoT will be in top 5 software development trends of 2021.

With this, there will be more functional opportunities that will improve your quality of life and ease of doing business. More effective and affordable IoT devices will capture more market.

For IoT software development, its developers across the globe should enhance their programming knowledge to frame standard codes for different devices.

IoT offers lots of other advantages, enabling businesses to prevent equipment breakdown, reduce operational costs, accelerate multiple processes, ensure inventory management and gather a large amount of data.

• Artificial intelligence (AI)

The year 2020 has proved itself a buzzword for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Businesses across the globe are investing in building powerful, cost-effective and reliable AI-technologies. Speech processing, machine leading and others have a huge demand for AI. The trend will speed up more in 2021.

As per MarketsAndMarkets “the global market of AI was $16.06 billion in 2017 and will reach $190.61 billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 36.62% during the 2018-2025 period.”

AI tends to develop machines to perform tasks better like human beings. It is a big field and globally used technology. It has created various dimensions in research, development, and commercialization.

AI incorporates different functional capabilities such as speech, machine learning, vision, natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, etc.

• Low-code development

For any software development, a big team of software developers, architects, designers, and engineers is required. However, the trend is changing now.

Low-code development frameworks have a huge demand in the software development industry. Companies are seeking to create software with low-code platforms.

Developing software was typical for medium-scale businesses but not now as low-code development frameworks are available to help them required software at less cost, time resources. Low-code development has solved lots of complex programming issues.

It speeds up the work of software development. Low-code platforms offer simple interfaces, avoid lots of manual work and offer high potential to enable businesses to create new apps with less programming skills, time, and money.

• Hybrid and cross-platform development

Cross-platform technologies are a big time-saver for the industries planning to develop an app for their business. Companies that need to capture all customers using different devices, web browsers and OS must go with cross-platform development.

Hybrid frameworks allow developers to code ones and run the app on different platforms without compromising its delivery and functionality. It is a wise investment option in 2021 if you go with hybrid and cross-platform development.

• Continuous Integration And Deployment

It is one of the top 5 software development trends in 2021 as it allows more experiments and flexibility, less need for bug fixing, and frequent delivery of software.

Continuous integration and deployment tend software to get into development for thorough testing, while deployment automatically updates them. A shared repository is used here where the code is added; now, it is tested to speed up the delivery.

It assists developers to improve quality, functionality, and deliver software quickly. There will be no surprise that more software development companies will get into this approach.

Therefore, continuous integration and continuous deployment assist development teams to deliver apps much faster to the market. In this way, it also assists companies in saving a lot of time required in software development.

Final Words

Technology is an ever-changing process. Every year we see new development trends in the software industry. No doubt, the software industry is one of the fast-changing and highly competitive industries today, as new technologies are striking the market every year. In this writing, we have described the top 5 software development trends of 2021 that will dominate the market.

Are you confused about whether to use display ads or native ads to promote your e-commerce website?

You have come to the right place.

Online advertising can be especially beneficial for creating brand awareness. And with the number of mobile users increasing day by day, if you optimize your ads for mobile, your advertising efforts will be more effective.

Statistics have it that by appearing in mobile search ads results, a company’s brand awareness can be increased by 46%.

In this article, we will be discussing native ads and display ads, their pros and cons, and when to use them. It will give you a clearer understanding of the two ads and help you decide which one to use to promote your e-commerce website.

What are Display Ads?

Display ads, also known as banner ads are ads that attract and compel the audience of a website, social media platform, or other digital mediums to click-through to a landing page and take a specific action.

Display ads can be text-based, images, or even videos. Most display ads are charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis. It means, every time the user clicks on your ad, you’ll have to pay a certain amount based on how you have made your bid.

What’s more, display ads come in all sizes.

Here’s a display ad from Adobe:

Note that display ads are more effective on the desktop.

What are Native Ads?

Native ads are like paid content that appears in a media and match the look, feels and function of its format. You will find native ads mostly in social media feeds, or on a website page as recommended content.

“Unlike display ads, native ads don’t look like ads. Instead, they blend into the editorial flow of the page. Hence, native ads are non-disruptive,” explains Devesh Sharma of Design Bombs.

No wonder consumers look at native ads more frequently than display ads.

Take this native ad, for instance:

Naturally, the look and feel of Native ads make them more effective on mobile.

Pros of display ads

• It is visually appealing – Since display ads are graphic content, you can design and style them. You can use graphics, audio, video, etc., to stand out and attract their attention.
• It can create brand awareness – Its visual element can benefit your business by facilitating brand awareness. Very often, display ads are branded and styled with an offer. Thus, users can gather your brand’s information by merely seeing your display ad. They don’t even have to click on the ad to get the ad’s overall look and feel.
• It makes targeting and retargeting possible – You can target people most relevant to your business by creating specific parameters for your ads. You can also use it for retargeting by putting your ad in front of customers who have visited your site before. 
• It provides data – With the data provided by display ads, you can measure your marketing activities right away.
• Diversity – Display ads come in varied shapes and sizes and can be presented in different formats. You can pick a style and format depending on your goals.
• Measurable – You can measure clicks, impressions, and conversions using Google Ads and Analytics. 
• Reach – You can access countless sites from your Google Ads account.

Cons of display ads

• Lower click-through rate.
• Lower conversions.
• People usually avoid or block display ads.

Pros of native ads

• You can create branded content – As per a study, 2 in 3 GenZ, Millennials and GenX customers trust custom or branded content more than traditional ads. 
• It can engage the customers – Since the content is created by understanding the audience, they can engage with it more. Plus, when you know how, when, where, and why the content should be placed, it can create an emotional connection with the readers.
• It receives higher click-through rates – As per a study, the CTR of native ads is 8.8 times higher.
• It is less disruptive – As they are included within the content, they are less disruptive.

Cons of native ads

• It is challenging to measure metrics, such as ROI and effectiveness.
• It is costly and time-consuming.
• It has the potential to be too discrete.

When to use display ads and native ads?

As you can see, both display ads and native ads have their own advantages and disadvantages. To use them should depend on your business goals.

Use display ads for:

• Creating brand awareness.
• Targeting and retargeting campaigns.
• Attracting users to click-through to a landing page and take a specific action.

Use native ads for:

• Increasing click-through rates.
• Creating brand awareness.
• Engaging the audience.
• Providing information about your business or services to users.
• Driving traffic to your site.

Split test your ads

You can also conduct A/B testing/split testing to see which version of your ad is performing better. Here are some key features you can test and optimize to increase your click-through rates.

• Headline: Check the length, tone of voice, and play around with color, font size, contrast, etc.
• Image: Consider the background image color, number of images used, and whether you are using products or people.
• Call to Action: Test the color of the button, language, contrast, style of the button, etc.
• Copy: Are you using long-form or short-form? Does it resonate with the audience?
• Landing pages forms: Test the form length, design, and the number of fields.

Wrapping-Up

Many e-commerce businesses use marketing ads to create brand awareness, drive traffic to their website, engage users, target customers, and also for retargeting.

Launching your business on mobile-optimized platforms like Shopify Plus will make your marketing efforts easier. It can easily enable you to reach your audience and promote your products from the platform. Plus, it has high-volume traffic capacity.

Since you now know when to use display ads and native ads, you can choose the right type of ad for your business, depending on your business goals.

Display ads are mainly used for branding and targeting and retargeting customers. Native ads, on the other hand, can be used for shelling out information about your business, increasing click-through rates, and also driving users to your site.

As a programmer, you would know exactly what technical skills you should learn to have a steep career growth. But are these technical skills enough? Of course not!

Professional and soft skills might not have a direct impact on your learning, but they do impact any programmer’s career significantly. Unfortunately, such non-programming skills are often overlooked by programmers.

Today, being skilled in your programming niche is not enough. To survive and thrive, you also need to develop strong relationships with people and build your personal brand with the help of digital marketing. Both of these are not possible without learning professional skills.

In this article, let’s look at some of the essential non-programming skills that you need to possess as a modern programmer.

1. Communication

As a programmer, you can only be as good as your communication skills. Without the ability to communicate your thoughts and listen to others, your success will be limited. Communication doesn’t just refer to a good command of your language. There’s a lot more to it.

In your day-to-day life, you’ll have to interact with clients, fellow-programmers, program analysts, solution architects, managers, stakeholders, and the list is endless. If you are not able to express your thought process and opinions in the right manner, there might be a lot of misunderstandings.

Lack of communication skills might lead to the development of wrong solutions, and your voice might get lost amongst the crowd. Hence, good communication skills will always help you to progress a couple of steps further than the other programmers.

Good listening skills are also an essential part of communication. With good listening skills, you will be able to understand and grasp what your peers have to say, and you’ll be respected more in your workplace.

2. Openness

In your career as a programmer, you would have faced many challenges and situations where hiding somethings might seem to be the better solution. You’d also have faced situations where you found yourself hesitating to put across a point.

As a programmer, an important skill to develop is being open about your thought process with others at your workplace, while being polite. Not expressing yourself and holding back on things may lead to unnecessary conflicts and misconceptions.

Also, not being open about things can seem right at the moment, but might lead to disastrous consequences later on.

Hence, always know what level of transparency is expected from you at your workplace or with your clients. And, try to stick to it no matter what. To start with, being open might be a little difficult for you, especially if you are an introvert. But, over time, it’ll become an easy habit.

3. Empathy

Empathy is also a must-have skill for modern programmers. This is because, as a developer, you are at the core of building any design. Hence, working with empathy can prove to be helpful to develop applications that encourage inclusivity and user-friendliness.

It is easy to get caught up in your own programming world. But, when you are developing a piece of code, try to empathize with the users and think from their point of view.

For instance, if you are a SuperOffice CRM developer, you ought to give thought to the usability of the tool and how the target audience would be impacted by your code. How user-friendly is the design you are implementing? Is there a better way to go about it?

You should also think about accessibility. Accessibility and inclusivity are things that can be inculcated right from the development stage. Empathizing with disabled people will help you develop more thoughtful and sought-after applications.

Empathy is also needed when you are working with your clients, your peers, your managers, and other people who are involved in your work. Just thinking about why they do what they do, can help you make better decisions and have harmony at your workplace.

4. Leadership

As a programmer, you’ll be faced with various situations where leading other developers and team members would be essential. As your career progresses, you’ll have to take up some leadership roles in your workplace. Hence, leadership is also an essential skill to acquire as a programmer.

Right from guiding fellow-developers, training others in your expertise, sharing your opinions, to reviewing other developers’ codes, leadership skills play a role in every step of your career. Hence, you should start focusing on developing leadership skills right from the initial stages of your programming career.

Patience, confidence, decision making, self-awareness, interpersonal skills, integrity, are a few of the skills that will help you emerge as a good leader.

Final Thoughts

Remember that these non-programming, but essential know-hows are necessary for the growth of your career as a successful programmer. These skills will brilliantly complement your technical skills and give you the much-needed nudge in the right direction.

It is also good to have in mind that practice makes perfect. Unlike technical skills, these professional skills cannot be perfected with the help of courses and training.

You have to be self-aware and practice these skills every single day. And, over time, these will essentially become a part of who you are. So, take inspiration from the ideas in this article and work towards making these a part of your programming life.

Managing finances can be cumbersome for a business operation manager or personnel. To ease out the process of managing accounting data, businesses can integrate accounting applications into their business ecosystem.

But do you actually think that just managing accounting data is enough? Businesses need to look beyond accounting applications and think about avenues that can help them in extracting much out of this accounting information with Salesforce QuickBooks Integration.

Salesforce and QuickBooks have been one of the most popular cloud computing software managing customer and accounting information respectively.

From small-scale business to enterprises, QuickBooks has been the most preferred online accounting software to track sales, create and send invoices, and know-how your business is doing at any time.

On the other hand, Salesforce CRM moves deals faster by tracking customer information and interactions in one place.

But still, businesses don’t have much idea about integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together. Data Synchronization can help your business in syncing data from QuickBooks to Salesforce but still many of you must be integrating data manually consuming your time and efforts.

The manual way of data integration seems tedious and time-consuming as it can lead to data duplicity and synchronization errors while integrating data from QuickBooks to Salesforce.

Why you should consider Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration?

For Accounting businesses, Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration not only help in data synchronization but it will also help in converting opportunities into leads within Salesforce CRM.

It helps in automating business processes, improved productivity, and optimized manual data integration to save business incurring cost and time.

When you integrate Salesforce CRM with your accounting software, you can easily import and sync data, customer’s information from QuickBooks to Salesforce to achieve overall business visibility within Salesforce CRM.

Key Activities which you can achieve when you integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together are:

• Synchronize QuickBooks accounting data at Salesforce CRM end to avail CRM benefits
• Synchronization of Categories from QuickBooks to Salesforce
• Customers synchronization as Accounts and Contacts at Salesforce end
• Orders and Products synchronization to manage products and Inventory
• Provides unified Salesforce platform to manage both QuickBooks and CRM data
• Salesforce Centric configuration concept to avail hassle-free environment
• Users concept to track placed Orders and their info
• Interactive design with the user interface at Salesforce end adding on effective data utilization

How to integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration can ensure business data consistency and integrity. With real-time and bidirectional data sync, you need not wait for long hours to sync data from QuickBooks to Salesforce and vice-versa.

But what are some of the different ways to integrate Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Custom Integration:

Intuit, the company that owns QuickBooks, has released its own SDK, a collection of protocols for integration. This can be used to create a custom solution to integrate your products.

Customization would obviously cost more as you would have to hire dedicated Salesforce developers. This way is most useful for those who are heavily dependent on Salesforce and QuickBooks and have many fields to sync.

Third-Party Integrations:

There are several third-party applications also popularly known as QuickBooks connector that helps in integrating QuickBooks and Salesforce together to sync data thereby providing a single shared view of data without the need to switch between these two platforms.

You can explore more about these third-party applications from Salesforce AppExchange, which acts as a repository for third-party applications for Salesforce integrated products.

You can find numerous applications on AppExchange integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together, some of the popular applications which you can explore are eShopSync for QuickBooks, DBSync, Workato, and Zapier.

These are some of the popular applications when it comes to integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together. But here’s a pro tip, if you are looking out for an application you must look forward to your business ecosystem before you go ahead to purchase the paid version of the application.

To ensure this, you must always explore the free-trial versions, which gives you an environment to try out the application first-hand before making your final choice.

What are the benefits of integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks together?

Integrating Quickbooks and Salesforce not only helps businesses to sync and import data from Quickbooks to Salesforce, but there is much more which you can achieve from Salesforce QuickBooks Integration:

Benefits of Salesforce and QuickBooks Integration are:

• Helps in optimizing integration time as the data flow is bidirectional
• Your in-house sales team accesses an in-depth analysis of the sales pattern within Salesforce.
• You can also go through the balance sheet and can also check for open balances and credit limits from within Salesforce.
• It will also help in tracking each and every customer information and history in detail with the help of Salesforce.
• With the help of Salesforce, you can easily analyze sales histories for each prospect or customer.
• Helps in Reducing Redundant Data Errors

Conclusion:

Data Synchronization via Salesforce QuickBooks Integration allows you to access data from these two distinguished platforms in a single shared view so that you don’t have to switch between applications to access data.

So, data synchronization is a must for business as they not only can access data from one single point of view but they can also access data within Salesforce CRM which helps them in converting opportunities and estimates into leads taking business revenues to a new high.

With this exploration guide on Salesforce QuickBooks Integration, you are now all set to take your business to the next level.

What comes to your mind when you hear digital marketing? Search engines? Social media? Mobile apps? Email? Or websites? These are the high-level digital channels out there via which marketers endorse their brands, goods, and services.

If you take a look at the stats, in 2019, mobile devices, excluding tablets, created about half of all website traffic worldwide.

It is also said that 63.57% of the companies are actively investing their time in SEO.

There are more than 80 million small businesses that use Facebook’s free business tools. And most of the content that marketers create is for different social media channels and company websites.

It is well understood that a company needs to take the digital marketing path to remain in the competition and to succeed in this day and age.

But since a lot of questions are still asked about digital marketing – this article will answer who, why, and how of digital marketing.

Who is a digital marketer?

A digital marketer is someone who implements marketing strategies using an electronic device or the internet. Digital marketers use digital channels, including search engines, email, social media, and other websites to connect with existing and prospective customers.

Who can use digital marketing?

Any business, big or small, should adopt some aspects of digital marketing in order to stay competitive. In fact, so many businesses out there are using digital marketing.

The worldwide digital marketing spend was estimated to be $290–310 billion in 2019, and it is anticipated to reach around $330–340 billion in 2020.

Since there are so many options out there, you can experiment with different marketing strategies on a budget and implement those that best suit your business.

For instance, a business-to-business (B2B) needs to attract and convert quality leads through your business site and digital channels. Thus, B2B digital marketing will mainly focus on online lead generation for the salespeople. Business-focused social channels such as LinkedIn are best suited for B2Bs.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, on the other hand, will need to attract people via their digital marketing efforts to their website and convert them into customers without having to speak to a salesperson.

Thus, their focus will be on making the customer’s journey as fast and great as possible, from the moment a buyer lands on their site to the moment that they buy a product or service. B2C companies have to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).

Social channels like Instagram and Pinterest are more suitable for B2C companies.

Why should you implement digital marketing?

If your business doesn’t have an online presence in this digital world, it will be hard for you to compete and grow your business. 

Here are some crucial reasons why you should implement digital marketing:

• Global reach: If you have a website, you will be able to find new markets and trade internationally without having to invest much.
• Lower cost: Digital marketing will incur lower costs than traditional marketing, provided you have proper planning and have a well-targeted campaign to reach the right audience.
• Track and measure results: By using web analytics and other online metric tools, businesses can analyze their marketing efforts. Having detailed information about how customers engage with your site or responding to your ads will help you breach any loopholes in your strategies.
• Personalization: People feel frustrated when they receive irrelevant emails or read irrelevant website content. They engage better with personalized content. 91% of customers say they are more likely to buy from brands that deliver offers and recommendations relevant to them. Linking your customer database to your site can help you to offer targeted offers.
• Improved conversion rates: Since digital marketing can be seamless and instantaneous, unlike traditional marketing, you will see enhanced conversion rates.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

From personas to selecting the right tools, there are several things that can determine your digital marketing strategy’s success. Here’s the initial work you need to do to ensure your digital marketing strategy is successful:

• Create customer personas: Buyer personas can be created by surveying and contacting your pre-defined target group. Online tools such as MakeMyPersona can help you with it.
• Define your goals: Without defined goals, your digital marketing strategy won’t work. Also, make sure that those goals are suitable and measurable.
• Focus on blogging: Creating high-quality content is crucial for any digital marketing strategy. And blogging is an excellent way to create high-quality content. It will help you bring more traffic to your website, reinforce social media presence, give a competitive edge, and rank you high on search engines. Outsource your work to an SEO agency for the best results.
• Automate marketing: The leading marketing automation platforms can take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. They will make it easier to automate activities such as email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and so on. 
• Focus on building a mobile-optimized site: With the number of mobile phone users increasing daily, there is no reason why you should not be building a mobile-optimized site. Focus on page speed, site design, and various other SEO practices to offer the best experience to your site visitors. Also, ensure to review your mobile responsive design and email templates. You have to implement only the latest methods and deliver only relevant and latest data.
• Make yourself easily accessible to customers: If you connect the right way with your audience, your business will automatically grow. To ensure that your customers are not making an effort to communicate with you, avoid asking for irrelevant data on your landing pages and making call-to-actions clearly visible on the website.

Wrapping-Up

Digital marketing is something your business cannot avoid in this digital era. Thus, you need to be aware of the latest trends and strategies of digital marketing and how to implement them.

You can always refer to this article to eliminate any doubt about who, why, and how of digital marketing. Also, make sure that you are incorporating some digital marketing strategies so that you can gain a competitive edge and grow your business.

Today, the eCommerce industry is saturated with hundreds of options, each trying to have a piece of this lucrative pie. But, only a few have cracked the code of running a successful eCommerce store.

Amid the cut-throat competition, you have to develop out-of-the-box strategies to rise above your competitors and make your store the preferred shopping destination for the customers.

If you feel like you’re drowning in the sea of sheer competition, or don’t have the heart to compete with multinational companies holding onto huge ad spends, think again.

What can you do that hasn’t been done before? What is the most inexpensive way to beat your rivals? The answer lies in your link building strategy.

After all, it’s a crucial aspect of SEO. Experts believe that link building can contribute 50% to your SEO success.

Sit down and take a moment to read this blog. I’ve compiled a guide to help your eCommerce link building campaign get off the ground.

1. Set the bar high

You’ve got to understand that link building is all about offering value to the target audience so that at the end of the day, someone will link back to you.

So what do you have in mind?

• In-depth information

Blogging is the easiest way to get backlinks. According to HubSpot, businesses with blogs are getting 97% more backlinks than those without it.

Content full of fluff is not going to get you anywhere. But you already knew that, right?So, provide additional value through interviews, quotes from industry experts, citing research statistics, etc. The most important advice- keep information current.

More importantly, identify trending topics and products. As soon as you find something, contribute to or create content around it ASAP. You can get links by answering questions on forums and Q&A networks.

• Onboard visually appealing content

KISSmetrics has a secret to share. Photos can get you 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more clicks on links than text-based posts. Sure, visuals are a great way to enhance engagement.

But stock photos are boring. How about investing in custom-made images to make them more unique? Remember, leveraging image SEO can increase organic traffic to your website and earn links over time. Image search comprises 27% of Google searches in the US.

• Don’t forget to add videos

Many eCommerce brands don’t understand the true potential of video marketing. With over 3 billion searches per month, YouTube is the second largest search engine – bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL combined.

Have you considered promoting your brand through video? You can attract quality links by producing tutorials, instructional videos, how-to guides, and much more. And since video content is more popular than text, you have a better chance of acquiring links.

Sephora got over 1,000 backlinks to their video section. Consider embedding videos on your shop page or including them in your blog. After all, it’s a great way to boost SERP rankings.

2. Email outreach

Link building via email requires developing a relationship with customers. Even though acquiring links through email outreach can be time-consuming, it is a useful strategy to secure more leads.

Most link building relationships start by sending a cold email to a prospective customer. However, an average cold email has only a 15.22% chance of getting opened. Yikes!

You need to backtrack and try a smother approach. Start with your contacts and people who have a positive attitude towards your product.

I recommend using a two-step process. In the first email, introduce yourself with a personalized email. A link prospect will want to see your credentials, so mention one of your best blogs. Showcase how you can bring value to their audience.

Present your pitch in the second email. Make it attractive for the link prospects and convince them how they benefit from your offer. In this way, you can demonstrate the mutual benefits of publishing content on their blog.

3. Get social

Everyone knows the quickest way to reach your target audience is through social media exposure. You can easily amplify impact and extend reach, primarily through an influencer campaign.

The comments and social shares convince people that you’re valuable and famous, and therefore link-worthy.

Remember that you need to reach out on all your social media networks. However, you may need to publish content multiple times to get more engagement.

But there’s something else you can do as well.

You can create sponsored accounts just like ASOS did for selected influencers and established fashion bloggers. They posted pictures wearing branded outfits and offered fashion tips. Customers were inspired to “buy the look” by clicking on the targeted links.

4. Consider brand ambassadorship

One of the easiest and most effective ways to get links is to get people talking about your e-commerce brand, whether that’s by meeting people, guest blogging, contributing to charities, engaging on social media, or gifting giveaways.

Ann Smarty, the founder of Viral Content Bee, claims she got links to her site by building many connections. But don’t confuse influencer marketing with a brand ambassador program.

Influencers are contributors, motivated by what they receive in return, often money or discounts.

On the other hand, brand ambassadors are unpaid loyal customers. Their passion for a brand is what drives them to tell others, whether through word-of-mouth (WOM), reviews, user-generated content (UGC), etc. It helps generate more traffic and sales to your eCommerce site.

More importantly, as your ambassadors mention your eCommerce store in their videos, social media posts, and blogs, you’re getting precious backlinks. Yeah!

But remember, it all begins with developing a strong relationship with your customers and maintaining that relationship. I bet you didn’t know happy customers could be part of your link building campaign.

Ready to give it a try?

Link building is a process that requires extensive research and expertise to get results. Therefore, hiring the services of a reputed link building agency will ease the job for you. The agency will bring their expertise to the table and curate a link building strategy for your e-commerce store to earn maximum leads.

However, e-commerce stores have hundreds of product pages, and doing link building for an e-commerce store can be an overwhelming task even for a reputed SEO company.

So, if you’re an SEO company who is finding it tough to deal with the burden of e-commerce link building, you can reach out to a white label SEO company and delegate some of your link building tasks to them.

For example, Growth Proton provides whitelabel SEO services in Delaware; similarly, various other SEO companies provide area-specific link building services. You can acquire the services of these companies to do link building for your client in some states and ease the burden off your shoulders.

They can create high-quality, industry-relevant content that can significantly improve the customer acquisition rate of your client.

Final word

It requires considerable effort and hard work to run a successful eCommerce store. You need customers to keep coming back to your website. For this, you have to be there, not only in people’s minds but also at the top of Google search results.

You’ll be surprised to learn that human psychology can be used to sell your products and build backlinks. With content that is unique, relevant to your audience, and evokes a strong emotional reaction, you’re off to a good start.