Toppling Traditional Marketing With Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the new norm. Many companies that were once totally into traditional marketing have now moved to the digital field. Why the switch? What has made them realize this? Let us see what gives digital marketing solutions an edge over traditional marketing.Traditional Marketing
• Cost: Traditional media like television ads, newspapers, hoardings can be very expensive. A front page ad could cost anywhere around a few lakhs. The same story again with television and hoardings.• Cannot be quantified: Inspite of all this investment, it is practically impossible to calculate the exact number of people who have seen your ad, number of conversion, number of people who are interested etc. Thus, impossible to calculate a return on investment. So how do you quantify or on what basis do you decide if your campaign has worked out or not?• Area: Suppose you put up a hoarding, people only in that area would be able to see it. It does not reach anyone else. Or if you say a newspaper, it will reach that city alone.• Availability: There is a time constraint. Your store would be accessible to customers only at a certain time of day.Digital Marketing
• Reduced Cost: Compared to traditional media a digital marketing solution will cost you peanuts. The only paid form of digital media is Pay per Click (PPC) which still costs you much lesser. Even here, you have to pay only for the result you get. No irrelevant costs are involved. Search engine optimization (SEO) and social media (SMM) are almost free.• Great return on investment: As mention above every penny invested will give you a certain return. The customers will atleast visit your page. If not converted to an immediate lead, he could atleast be a potential lead in the future.• Measurability: There are various tools available to measure every aspect of your campaign. For instance, the webmasters tool, Facebook/ LinkedIn insights etc. These will exactly provide the no. of visitors, conversion rate, no. of views and also their age, gender, location etc.• Targeting: Due to the above mentioned tools available at our disposal (for free) our ads can also target a specific group of people depending upon the product. This is impossible in traditional marketing.• Reach: Digital marketing can reach not only a town, city or country but can go worldwide. This extends your customer base, higher chances of sale and all of this keeping the cost in check.All in all Digital marketing can earn you a place among the biggest of brands. Money is not a constraint for competition. Now you can compete with national or even international chains even if your office is based in a single room. Digital marketing is coming up as the most effective strategy.
Virtual Assistant: New Online Business Idea
There are countless online business ideas out there. While there is no single internet business idea that is great for everyone, there is one new idea that is very interesting and very useful for people. It is called the virtual assistant. This online business idea has become something that is incredibly useful for internet business owners.It is obvious what an assistant does for a business owner. This person works for another business owner that has a lot of responsibility, keeping things organized and doing whatever is needed to keep the business running smoothly. This person always has to have organizational skills, a good memory and often good customer service skills. They usually make fairly good money doing whatever the owner needs to do.The creation of online businesses today has grown greatly. Today, many owners choose to keep all of their work strictly online instead of even going into the office. This saves them time and money and allows them to work on a more flexible schedule. And with a global society and economy, this is pretty much a necessity in many areas of business. It is becoming a very popular method of doing business and allows more people to become business owners.Of course, even a web business is a business still, with all of the needs of a regular business. And business owners still have some odds and ends that can be wrapped up by someone else because they just don’t always have the time to do everything that is needed. They still need assistants to do these things or they would be working around the clock doing small things instead of making large business decisions and communicating with new customers. This is where the idea of the virtual assistant came in as a great web business idea.A virtual assistant is a great business idea for many people to take up. They can assist one an owner or run a company assisting many owners. They can either do this all on their own or hire a team of assistants to lend out for various owners when needed.This type of business and the virtual assistant have become very valuable for business owners. They provide the internet business owner with the extra services needed. These individuals have the qualifications and knowledge to do a wide range of activities online, and they also have the resources to do them. Online business owners depend on them often if there is a lot of work to be done so that they don’t have to do it all alone.This internet business idea has become a very valuable one for many online business owners. Virtual assistants get paid a very good amount of money, just like a regular business assistant. Of course, they have to have the same eye for detail and organizational skills as a regular assistant. But, they of course don’t have to bring the coffee to their boss every morning.
Time to Spend Or Save? Mixed Messages From the World of Finance
During these tough economic times many of are us are paying more and more attention to financial news and financial advise from experts. Yet, we often still feel lost. Why? Often we’re getting mixed messages. Mixed may be putting it lightly. Sometimes the advice is down right conflicting.Here’s an example:The Wall Street Journal ran a story one day titled “Leverage, Baby!” that encouraged more and not less debt.The next day U.S. News & World Report ran “How to Plan for a Double-Dip Recession” and the advice? Pay off debts as quickly as you can. On one side we’re being encouraged to spend more to avoid a further recession and on the other side we’re told to buckle down and lessen debt to prepare for an even worse recession to come. What’s a consumer to do?Let’s look at each position and argument more closely to see to whom and when each applies.The advice in the Wall Street Journal article “Leverage, Baby!” is targeted to “sophisticated, disciplined investors who have lived and invested within their means.” Christopher Jones, a New York financial planner with high-net-worth clients says,” “Most important, there’s nothing inherently wrong with leverage, or borrowed money.”This advice applies to people who understand and have the capacity to take on debt and can tolerate the risk. For these people “Now is an ideal time to leverage cheap dollars to buy into areas that can produce much higher returns over the longer term,” Jones says. Especially with mortgages at 4.9% this may be the time to buy or refinance.The news from the US & World Report about another recession is likely not a “the sky is falling” cry. Although some analysts, like Moody’s Economy.com say there’s just a 23% chance that we’ll be in a recession six months from now, others don’t agree. There are several signs that illustrate the likelihood that we could have a double dip recession.
We’re likely to see a negative impact here from the debt problems of Europe in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy.
Increasing federal debt seems to be making investors wary.
The housing crisis hasn’t seen the light at the end of the tunnel.
Government stimulus package spending is slowly trickling to an end.So for those of us who don’t fall under the disciplined investors with room for risk category, what can we do to make ourselves more recession proof?Turn “savings” into real “savings.” What does this mean? Often we say we “saved” dollars by using a buy one get one free coupon at a restaurant or we’re told that we “saved” dollars when we use coupons at the grocery store. To turn savings into real savings we have to actually put it into savings, no matter how small the amount. Otherwise our savings really just means delayed spending money that is spent somewhere else.Practice patience. A low interest rate still isn’t a deal if you can’t make the payments months from now. Put off making new purchases like furniture or vehicles if things are already tight and the future is so unpredictable.Keep liquid money. Staying liquid means keeping some money easily accessible if times do become bad. Don’t have everything tied up in stocks, bonds, investments, or mutual funds where it could be at risk or would take too long to access if needed during a further recession.One up your education. Now may be the time to get a degree, certification or licensure to be ahead of the games when companies do start hiring again.Start a side job. If you are always needing a little more money, consider starting something on the side. Whether it’s summer lawn car, selling on eBay, offering summer child care or tutoring or finally taking some of your handmade hobbies to a community show, a side job may help you make ends meet and be a saving grace if things get worse.Consider these 5 tips to keep yourself protected from a further recession. Applied all together, they may just help you keep a handle on “what’s in your wallet”.