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5 effective ways to increase awareness of your brand

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Published: Wednesday, 25 May 2022 10:36

As a small business owner, you’ve worked hard to get your brand up and running. And, if you want to achieve the success you have in mind, your target audience needs to know all about your work and be able to find you. This is where brand awareness comes into play. 

Brand awareness refers to how many customers recognize your business and what it offers. It’s the most important marketing lever because it has a huge impact on the first stages of your sales funnel and the foundation of customer acquisition. The more brand awareness you can generate, the higher your sales numbers will be. 

So what can you do to increase awareness of your brand? Here are five practical ways to shine a spotlight on your company and attract the right people. 

1. Regularly publish content your audience wants

Content will act as a visitor magnet for your website. So you must develop a solid and consistent content marketing plan to attract the right customers. 

Content marketing is a strategy businesses can use to engage and retain their target audience using blog posts, videos, infographics  and other media types. This is vital for raising awareness of your brand because it establishes you as an expert in your field and keeps your business in the minds of potential customers. 

But, to get the best results, you need to ensure that you don’t just generate content for the sake of it. You must put together content that your ideal customers actually want and need. Here are some ways you can make sure you’re creating genuinely helpful content that your audience is looking for: 

• Conduct keyword research to understand what your customers need and how you can appear at the top of relevant search engine results pages. 

• Visit forums and social media accounts relevant to your niche to see what questions people are asking about your industry. 

• Take note of the questions your prospective customers have so you can write content to help answer them. 

To give you some content marketing inspiration, let’s take a look at a number of different businesses that always get it right. 

RMIT Online is an online university that does a great job of regularly publishing content that its target audience — mainly consisting of prospective students — genuinely wants. This helps them to reach more of their target clients. 

For instance, they’ve put together detailed articles about what salary a marketing manager can expect to get. This is perfectly geared towards answering common questions their ideal customers are likely to have because pay is a huge consideration when it comes to what you should study and pursue as a career path. 

This piece of content answers all the questions potential students might have about the salaries for various marketing positions, giving a rough idea of what they can expect to find in the job market after graduating. The article also does a great job of discussing other requirements and job duties of the positions to help educate students looking to enter the field. 

Let’s also look at an example from FreshBooks, an online accounting software tool, to understand how to create great content to increase awareness of your brand. Their post on how to write a winning invoice letter offers key information that customers will return to each time they need guidance on this process. 

Their approach includes publishing blog posts that outline step-by-step instructions for processes that are essential for their target customers. This content educates and positions the brand as the go-to source for information about handling your finances and ensuring clients can pay you quickly and easily. Since the content addresses the needs of the company’s audience, FreshBooks will draw new customers to their site and this can build brand awareness among those looking to buy accounting software in the future. 

You can use the same approach in your content marketing strategy by creating content that your target audience is searching for. This will help you appear at the top of relevant search results and build brand awareness among potential customers. 

Finally, another great example of content marketing comes from Helix Hearing Care, a hearing aid provider. They have a fantastic and comprehensive guide to hearing aid maintenance that’s sure to prove very useful for their target customers. 

It does a great job of explaining all aspects of hearing aid maintenance, and it addresses common questions that potential and current customers are likely to have about their hearing aids. This will help build brand awareness for the company as potential customers are likely to find the page when looking for tips on how to maintain their hearing aid devices. 

The content is optimized with relevant keywords in its headers and it dives into everything from what cleaning tools to use to how to replace a hearing aid battery. This type of in-depth content will help the brand rank for competitive keywords, and build brand awareness as a result.  

You can implement the same strategy by thinking about common questions that your customers have and then creating content to address them. This approach will help you rank higher for relevant queries and build awareness of your brand over time. 

2. Invest in PPC advertising

Pay per click, or PPC, marketing is a strategy that involves paying a fee when one of your ads is clicked on. 

PPC advertising tends to be relatively cost-effective since you’ll only pay for ads whenever someone clicks on them. You’ll need to take steps to get the most out of your PPC ads, though. Here are some strategies you’ll need to use: 

• Keyword bidding: If you want your PPC ads to appear on relevant search engine results pages, you’ll need to bid on the keywords you would like to target. It’s important you choose these wisely, looking at metrics like their search volumes and levels of competition. 

• Write engaging PPC ads: You need to ensure, when putting together your PPC ads, that your copy will really connect with your ideal audience. Consider factors like their pain points and priorities to ensure they click through and buy. 

• Optimize your landing pages: The job of a landing page is to get your audience to convert, because it’s where customers will land when they click on a PPC ad. So, you should make it easy to convert with simple forms or other ways for your audience to contact or buy from you. 

PPC campaigns can also help raise general awareness of your brand.. Even people who see your ads but don’t click on them may be hearing about your company for the first time and may circle back to see what you have to offer. It takes some time, but PPC marketing is a great way to raise brand awareness. 

3. Turn customers into brand ambassadors with referral incentives

If you want to turn existing customers into loyal brand ambassadors who spread the word about your brand, you may want to provide them with incentives. This means that, when someone recommends your products or services and it leads to a sale, they will receive some sort of compensation for their actions. 

This could be done through a structured affiliate marketing program, offering discount codes, or even free products. You could also generate traffic with influencers by offering them incentives for incorporating your products into their content to further extend the reach of your brand and establish more awareness of what you do.

Referral incentives can help you drive new business for your company. They offer an essential type of social proof that will make new customers feel more secure in their purchases. Take the time to think about your target audience and what incentives will work best for your company’s bottom line while also building awareness of your brand.

4. Build a strong presence on social media 

There isn’t a more powerful tool for raising brand awareness than social media. The more active you are across multiple social media platforms, the more likely the right people will hear about your business, products, and services. 

Effectively engage with your audience on social media by maintaining a constant and predictable presence. Post content at peak times when your target audience is most active and use a scheduling tool to make sure your output is consistent. It’s also important that you monitor your analytics to ensure your posts are performing as they should. 

For example, LinkedIn marketing tools can help you scale your marketing efforts and identify precisely what techniques will help to build the most awareness around your brand. This is a great way to streamline the engagement process and ensure your social media efforts get results by targeting the right people with the right message and at the right times.

You can also engage with your followers by responding to their comments and even sharing their posts that relate to your brand. This approach helps build a relationship with your audience, which can grow your presence over time. 

5. Reach your ideal customers on search engines with SEO 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of enhancing your online presence. The goal of this is to help your site rank highly on relevant search engine results pages, or SERPs, which can help boost your brand awareness. SEO also tends to be a very cost-effective way of building recognition for your brand because it can provide a fantastic ROI by driving relevant traffic to your site over time.

When you have a comprehensive SEO strategy, it helps to increase your brand reach by driving consistent traffic with content that answers questions and addresses the pain points of your audience. Be sure to conduct keyword research to find relevant terms that your audience uses when searching for your products, services, or content online. You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to find keywords with high search volumes and low competition to drive the right people to your site. 

Once you have a list of keywords, you can build your website copy and content like blog posts and how-to guides around those terms. Use them in your titles, headers, and content to help ensure you get discovered through search engines. 

Summary

You want to build brand awareness the correct way to reach the right people. Think about your target audience and keep an eye on your competitors. Take your time and make choices that will set your business up for long-term success. 

As your brand awareness grows, you’ll find yourself facing more and more opportunities to attract new customers and make sales. So it’s something that’s well worth investing some of your time and digital marketing budget into. 

SaaS Security Risks: What You Need to Know In 2022

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Published: Thursday, 19 May 2022 08:30

In 2022, SaaS will be the primary delivery model for enterprise applications. As a result, organizations must pay close attention to the security risks associated with this new way of doing business. 

Don't worry, we are here to help! In this blog post, we will discuss SaaS security best practices for secure customer data storage. We will also outline the new risks that businesses face in 2022 and how to overcome them. Finally, we will ask the question: Will SaaS security measures slow business?

What Is SaaS?

It is a type of software that is delivered over the internet, instead of being installed on a local computer or server, often using a thin client such as a web browser.

Thanks to the growth of high-speed internet access, SaaS has become a popular delivery model for many business applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and human capital management (HCM).

What Are SaaS Security Best Practices For Secure Customer Data Storage?

There are several best practices that organizations should follow to ensure the security of their customer data:

• Use strong encryption methods to protect data in transit and at rest.

• Implement access controls to restrict who can access sensitive data.

• Conduct regular security audits to identify vulnerabilities.

• Use a secure development lifecycle to ensure that applications are built with security in mind.

What Are New Risks In 2022?

The rise of SaaS has created new risks for businesses, including the following:

• Data breaches: Because customer data is stored in the cloud, it is more vulnerable to attack than data stored on-premises. Because SaaS applications are hosted online, they are vulnerable to data breaches. Hackers can gain access to customer data if they can penetrate the security defenses of the provider.

• Compliance issues: Organizations must ensure that their SaaS applications meet all relevant compliance requirements.

• Vendor lock-in: Once an organization commits to a SaaS solution, it can be difficult and expensive to switch to another provider. This can lead to vendor lock-in, which can limit an organization's flexibility and increase its dependence on the SaaS provider.

How To Overcome The Risks?

Fortunately, there are several steps that organizations can take to overcome these security risks:

• Educate employees about security risks: Employees should be aware of the potential risks of using SaaS applications and how to protect themselves from them.

• Conduct regular security audits: Regular security audits can help identify vulnerabilities in SaaS applications and ensure that they are properly addressed.

• Use a secure development lifecycle: When developing SaaS applications, organizations should follow a secure development lifecycle to ensure that security is built into the application from the start.

• Implement security controls: Organizations should implement security controls such as encryption, access control, and auditing to protect their data.

• Select a reputable SaaS provider: Organizations should carefully select a SaaS provider that has a good reputation for security.

• Use encryption: Encryption is a process of transforming data into a format that cannot be read by anyone who does not have the appropriate decryption key. This ensures that data is protected in transit and at rest.

In addition, the use of SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions means that companies are reliant on third-party providers. This can create vulnerabilities if the provider is not adequately protected. As a result, it is important for companies to be aware of the new risks associated with SaaS solutions and to take steps to protect themselves.

Will SaaS Security Measures Slow Business?

No, SaaS security measures will not slow business. They may even improve business efficiency by reducing the need for IT support. Additionally, SaaS providers often offer their customers an SLA (service level agreement) that guarantees a certain level of uptime and performance. This means that businesses can have peace of mind knowing that their applications are always available and running smoothly.

While SaaS providers must take steps to protect customer data, these measures will not slow down the business. Many of the security measures that SaaS providers use are invisible to users and have minimal impact on performance.

Conclusion

So there you have it! These are the things you need to know about SaaS security in 2022. We hope this blog post has been helpful.

What Are Residential Proxies & Why Do You Need Them?

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Published: Wednesday, 18 May 2022 05:08

Residential proxies route your internet traffic through an intermediary server and allow you to choose a specific country, city, or mobile carrier where you can surf the web as a real user in that area. 

Many users prefer residential proxies as they are comparatively better and safe. With trusted internet providers, you can access their network of millions of IP addresses and perform your tasks efficiently. 

But do companies really need residential proxies? This article will walk you through the working of these proxy servers along with relevant use cases. 

How Do Residential Proxies Work? 

The internet provider assigns you an alternative IP address to process your search requests. All your search requests go from the provided IP address to the proxy server from where it reaches the resource server. 

The high-anonymity level and low block rate make them a preferred choice. The provided IP address belongs to an actual device. Due to this, the sites perceive your activity like any other regular user, yet you remain anonymous. The block rate is negligible since the IP addresses come from trusted internet providers. 

You have the option of choosing between static and rotating a residential proxy. You are provided a new IP address for every request in rotating IPs. Moreover, some providers also give access to the same IP address for 30 minutes.

Lastly, while choosing your provider, make sure you can integrate proxies with all significant automation bots.

Let’s now take a detailed look at the use cases of residential proxies: 

Make The Most Of Your Advertising Budget Through Ad Verification 

Do you know that the total cost of ad fraud is set at $34 billion, predicted to reach $87 billion in 2022? 

Ad verification is a process followed by digital advertisers to ensure their ads appear in front of a real targeted audience on appropriate sites. With time ad fraud is drastically increasing as hackers, and black hatters find ways to portray fake traffic on their sites. It’s common to run an ad bot or a fake ad site these days. 

Here are some common ad frauds you can save yourself from using residential proxies:

Impression Laundering

Some ads are solely running based on impressions which motivate individuals to practice impression laundering. They stack in a massive amount of money based on impressions that, in reality, weren’t there. The ads are generally reduced to a pixel size, hidden beneath other information or behind the main page.

Ad Click Fraud 

Automating ad clicks through ad bots causes maximum damage to advertisers. They even create fake accounts that give an idea of actual human interaction with the ads. Furthermore, their ideas are continually evolving to rob advertising funds successfully. 

Fake Website Traffic

Fake website traffic is the traffic generated using bots or software. The bots mimic human interaction and give an impression someone is viewing the website. As a result, the ad space becomes more expensive. Advertisers/marketers lose millions of dollars due to fake web traffic every year. The fraudsters achieve their agenda by inflating the overall ad views. Moreover, they create a website image that entices marketers and increases the overall website selling price.

Why Do Companies Need Residential Proxies For Catching Ad Frauds? 

Many advertising and marketing companies rely on residential proxies to catch ad frauds. Proxies are essential during this step, as a unique IP address will prevent fraudsters from blocking site access. You are likely to keep them on the radar instead of checking once. Companies can easily detect ad frauds and take appropriate steps with millions of IP addresses. 

Helps In Web Scraping

Researching your competition is one of the significant factors contributing to the success of online marketing. Web scraping is obtaining a large number of website data using bots. You can acquire all relevant data about your competition, analyze their strategies, and plan your next moves accordingly. The process is easily tackled with residential proxies as rotating proxies support mass scraping. They are preferred over other proxies as they work efficiently during large-scale scraping on platforms like Google, LinkedIn, etc. 

Maintain A Competitive Pricing 

If you are in an industry with heavy competition, pricing becomes a crucial factor in surviving in the market. To keep your sales high, you need to keep up with the current market price trends. Rotating residential proxies help businesses acquire information about the ongoing price trends. You can charge your products or services accordingly by being updated with the instant market price updates. 

Avoiding this step often leads to overpriced products people won’t purchase or recommend. Using appropriate sales intelligence software is another core factor in determining the proper pricing updates. Residential proxies allow using different software to acquire accurate information for crucial business decisions. 

Access To Snickers & Ticket Websites 

Scraping data from snicker sites is comparatively tricky due to the industry's identity theft, design copying, and purchase limitations. However, residential proxies will help you acquire all relevant information without any restrictions. 

On the other hand, residential proxies are best suited for scraping data from ticket websites. You can easily compare ticket prices among various providers. 

Achieve Exceptional Marketing Results 

You can shape your marketing strategies after acquiring relevant information about the competition. Make the most of ad automation, social media campaigns, email automation, etc., to boost your market reach and connect with your target audience. 

Social Media Management Made Easy

Social media plays a crucial role in online marketing. A strong social presence is essential to reach your targeted audience. You can easily create and manage multiple social accounts using residential proxies. In the end, making the most of the proper social channels is the way to go. 

Improve Overall Site Performance

You can improve your organic reach as residential proxies support different SEO tools. Begin by making your website multilingual and increasing your audience base. Next, work on using the right tools to create meaningful links for your site. Lastly, use audit and crawling tools to improve your overall performance. 

Final Thoughts

Residential proxies are extremely helpful for understanding your competitors, efficiently using your ad budget, and improving your overall site performance. Start researching your available options and choose an appropriate internet provider to get started today!

Best HubSpot Alternatives For Small Businesses In 2022

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Published: Tuesday, 03 May 2022 06:52

In recent years, many small business owners have been turning to HubSpot for their marketing and sales needs.

However, the rise of automation in all areas of life has resulted in an increased awareness of the importance of robust marketing automation platforms that are easy to set up.

In 2022, there will be a new set of Hubspot alternatives that are gaining popularity among small businesses.

But first, let us give you a brief about HubSpot and why you would need a HubSpot alternative in the first place.

What Is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a cloud-based marketing and sales software platform that helps businesses grow by attracting more visitors, leads, and customers. It is one of the most renowned sales, inbound marketing and CRM tools that stand competitive against the likes of Salesforce.

The HubSpot platform includes tools for website optimization, email marketing, social media monitoring, contact management, and reporting.

It integrates with 1000s of popular tools and boasts solid customer support via email, phone and live chat.

Despite all these factors, you might want to look for a better HubSpot alternative. 

Why Should You Look For A HubSpot Alternative?

One of the major drawbacks of HubSpot is its expensive pricing structure. Once your free plan gets exhausted, you might want to upgrade to a pro plan that would cost $113/month for the sales, service and marketing tool. 

And, that gives only access to the basic marketing features. If you want to get access to broad marketing automation features, landing page builders and onboarding, it would cost you over $800 a month. 

If you have tasks to schedule, you will have to automate and set up daily tasks. There is no feature of automatic recurring tasks scheduling. 

Further, the dashboard is clumsy and is hard to navigate for the newbies. 

Considering these factors, we have enlisted the 5 Best HubSpot alternatives for small businesses and marketers.

1. EngageBay

EngageBay is indeed the best HubSpot alternative because of its functionalities, stellar customer support and affordable pricing. 

It wouldn’t be wrong to say EngageBay is an affordable version of HubSpot. Hence, EngageBay is an amazing alternative to HubSpot for small businesses. 

It has an all-in-one marketing suite that streamlines your marketing, sales and support team in one place. 

EngageBay boasts various standout features such as marketing automation, drag-and-drop email builder, free CRM, landing page builder, web sign up forms and tons of others. 

Pros: 

• No need to set up recurring tasks daily. Your repetitive tasks will be automated and scheduled. 

• Engagebay has a sleek interface and provides a smooth customer onboarding. 

• You can boost its functionality by integrating it with other third-party apps such as Linkedin, Shopify, DocuSign, CallHippo, and WooCommerce. 

• Their email CRM feature helps close more deals and provides better insights into customer behaviour. 

Cons: 

• Though the templates are customizable, there are only a few email templates in the library. 

• In terms of integration, HubSpot takes the edge over EngageBay.

2. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is another reliable HubSpot alternative for small businesses. One of the major USPs of this tool is quick automation. 

You can automate follow-ups, social media posts and set conditions. 

Apart from this, the CRM functionalities include lead scoring, win probabilities and advanced segmentation. 

Pros: 

• ActiveCampaign boasts superior integration with tools like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Unbounce and more. 

• You can also sync tasks using Google Calendar, Outlook and other calendar tools and schedule them within the CRM. 

• ActiveCampaign is low-priced when compared to HubSpot. The email marketing starts at just $9/month. However, you won’t get a CRM or landing page builder with this. 

• ActiveCampaign uses machine learning capabilities to schedule emails. Thus, the predictive sending feature helps you send emails at the right time when customers are going to open them. 

Cons: 

• ActiveCampaign does not offer any free plan. 

• The lite plan costs $25/month for 1,000 contacts and it lacks various CRM features.

3. InfusionSoft (Keap)

InfusionSoft (Keap) is an easy to use sales and marketing automation tool that comes with robust CRM functionalities. Keap integrates with your Gmail or Outlook and pulls your data into CRM to close deals quickly. 

Furthermore, Keap surpasses HubSpot in terms of its robust reports and analytics. Even the newbies can analyze the metrics without wrapping their heads around it. 

You can create predictable workflows using its advanced automation builder. This automation builder creates workflows using personalized triggers. 

Pros: 

• InfusionSoft integrates with over 2,500 third-party apps of different kinds. 

• They have one of the best sales pipeline features. You can track and analyze every deal in the pipeline. 

• It gives a 14-day free trial to try its basic features and CRM. 

Cons: 

• InfusionSoft starts at $59/month for 500 contacts. This is lower than HubSpot but not affordable for small businesses. 

• It does not have an autosave feature to save your progress.

4. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a CRM software aimed largely at sales teams from small-to-medium-sized businesses. 

Pipedrive's UI is incredibly easy to navigate and an excellent tool for all levels, despite the various customization choices and dashboard features.

There is not much difference between HubSpot and Pipedrive when it comes to reporting features. 

Pros:

• Pipedrive’s lowest plan starts at $12.50 per month which is fair enough when compared to HubSpot. 

• Pipedrive is available in 13 languages such as Portuguese, English, German, Spanish and others. 

• It has a dedicated mobile app that gives you real-time updates on your sales process. 

Cons:

• Pipedrive is good for the sales team. For the marketing, it offers integration but the options are limited. 

• There is no free plan to start with.

5. Sharpspring

SharpSpring is a less known name in CRM marketing tools. Started in 2012, this tool offers various features for marketing teams and sales teams. 

Pros: 

• It gives a 360-degree view of the customer sales cycle. 

• The tool also provides features that are customized for various industry verticals. 

• It has a dedicated marketplace that lets you add integrations to your account. 

Cons: 

• Compared to HubSpot which has a free CRM, SharpSpring costs $449/month for just 1,000 contacts. 

• SharpSpring has a complicated dashboard with so many features piling up together.

Conclusion

True that HubSpot is a market leader in CRM, but it is not for everyone. Once your company grows and you have massive data of contacts to manage, you would want to switch from HubSpot to a more reliable and functional platform. 

In our opinion, EngageBay is a perfect alternative to HubSpot that small businesses should look for. It is fairly easy to set up and you can get started for free!

You can streamline your tasks from a single place. Be it your sales, marketing or support team, EngageBay has all the features for task automation and customer management. 

And, the best part is it doesn’t get cheaper even when you upgrade.