Business Ideas during Corona-Virus

Link Sticky
Businesses worldwide are currently experiencing the worst global pandemic that happened for generations. I‘m giving ideas on business ideas to do, insights on where to look for resources and suggestions.

Outlook:

This global pandemic, the corona-virus, is impacting the economy as well as global health. Forecasts are terrible, as the outcome is not possible to forecast precisely, many people will lose loved ones, and the job market will look different compared to before. I write this blog post on what activities do during and after this pandemic.

Business Ideas:

Online shopping:

Many of you shop online. Some people might not know where to go online. An idea is the delivery of food and necessities. This trend is an excellent example of how technology and the sharing economy works. Communications tools, such as Whatsapp, can be used to set up communication services, and communicate about the need for groceries.

Online education and classes:

Another useful task which we can do is supporting the elderly, with constant communication and provide  internet classes on fitness exercises, online marketing, DYI activities for the elderly and the toddlers. As life during this pandemic become even more sedentary, many of us need to exercise and learn new skills.

Big Data and Analytics

A side from the online learning, another big trend that is happening is the amount of data that this pandemic is producing. A future skills that will be important is definitely data analysis. This was already a trend that was happening before the corona-virus, but with the increase usage of online content from users, it is useful to understand what this data will mean. To conclude, remember the value of the good neighborhood and social behavior, as one of the impacts that social distance might have is also influencing social norms.
Advertisements

Outsourcing innovation management to small business, an actual smart idea:

Sticky

At first glance, outsourcing innovation management to a small business might seem risky but there are many advantages to external innovation management. By outsourcing corporate tasks like IT or accounting, the companies will be able to concentrate more on their USP and be able to act more effectively. However, a lot of the decision-makers cannot imagine having others perform core tasks for them like innovating and managing. In this article, you will get to know how outsourcing of innovation management will boost your business.• Creates the basis for sound decision making

Outsourcing innovation management doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on innovation. Instead, the decisions as to which innovations are supposed to be released in the market should lie in the hands of an external party. Otherwise, it can be difficult to internally convince with the innovation as the company will hardly support such projects.• The love for your own idea can harm the company

If the business has decision-makers with a high level of expertise, they will logically be involved with research and development while formulating their own ideas. This can put them in a tricky position as they will want to prefer their own ideas over others. It would become impossible to treat that idea objectively and evaluate it.• Ensure the USP continues to generate profits in the future

Outsourcing innovation management will ensure that your company maintains its unique selling proposition while creating relevant benefits for new customers thus generating better sales in the future. It is understandable that management would like control and full power of disposal over this area but it would be better if it could be outsourced to innovation management as they are bound to get better results.

The latest wave of businessmen never hesitates in taking tips on the internet and reading blogs to improve their day-to-day working. One of the best blogs that you can read and implement to improve your business and marketing is blogexperts.net. The blog would be an excellent motivation for those who like to innovate and come up with new ideas. They have an excellent string of informative articles that will surely help you understand and adapt to the current market.

Open Innovation VS Closed Innovation

Sticky

Today topic is a discussion between a concept in innovation that is defined as type of innovation strategy.

Nowadays, innovation discussion is clearly a critical dimension in any dynamic approach to business, as it allows businesses to achieve and defend competitive advantage.

Closed innovation, is the more classical approach to innovation, and in such, it develop patents, (intellectual property, licenses and grants) through formal means, and closed corporations.

Open Innovations is more related to the development of technology through adiacent and common techniques, such as outsourcing, competition establishing, and game theory.

Open Innovation, as defined by Dr. Henry Chesbrough in his book, is: “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. Open Innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. (Chesbrough, Open Innovation, p.2).”

Here is a graph of the two distinct type of innovations as explained in his book.

Graph explaining the different type of innovation strategy.

In the past i had the privilege of working for a short time period in both type of organisations, closed ones and open ones. I wont say which organisation for reason of privacy. But they were large organisations.

In both organisations the important aspect was the development of work in which was happening. I noticed immediately that in the open innovative business communication was more open and the setting of collaboration was more direct, whereas, the type of collaboration in closed innovation was more secretive, as patents and new research and development techniques were happening.

Personally i preferred the open innovative business, which allowed to learn new skills such as Wiki development and learning Marketing first hand and people skills. Working in open innovative companies is like working for a new startup, in which capital is limited, but passion is everywhere, and there is will to improve even when there are limited resources, whereas working in closed innovative companies is challenging as resources are present, but competition drives the work.

Today topic is more of a self reflection and less of a guide, compared to previous topics.

However, I will post a second article about Edge Strategy soon, as I am reading a book about it, and will be related to Corporate Strategy.

Digital Marketing Terms That You Should Know

If you are new to the world of digital marketing, then you must be already aware of the complicated jargon that the industry seems to be full of. It can get a bit too overwhelming to wrap your head around terms like SEO sprinkled casually everywhere. To help you catch up, we at https://blogexperts.net have compiled phrases and terms that are commonly used in the digital marketing industry.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing refers to the practice of channelizing group wisdom towards achieving a common goal. It is best exemplified while solving complicated problems innovatively.

Though crowdsourcing has existed in some form or another through generations, the practice actually rose to prominence along with the rise of e-commerce, social media interactions, and the overall smartphone culture. With this increased connectivity people have managed to generate awareness and funds for common business interests.

To crowdsource effectively, compartmentalizing the overall goal into workable actionable tasks is paramount. Workers then take on these micro-tasks individually to streamline the entire process.

Tasks are distributed according to every individual’s skills and experience. A business might seek the help of a digital space — which may be called a crowdsourcing or micro-labor platform– where each of the workers works on their assigned tasks individually.

Even more complex projects need workers with certain specialized skills, where the businesses might need a highly specialized platform which is industry-specific. If a business specializes in collecting customers’ data, they may utilize either social media platforms or consumer-facing platforms for crowdsourcing all information from its customers.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can be defined as the use of various digital strategies and channels for connecting with customers where they are most likely to be found online. From the very website that customers might visit to the business’s online branding platforms-such as- email marketing, digital advertising, online brochures etc — there’s an entire range of strategies which can fall under “digital marketing.”

Well versed digital marketers understand how each digital marketing campaign tacitly buttresses their overall goals. And depending on those very goals, marketers can partly support a greater campaign either via free or paid mediums.

Freemium

It is a technique wherein a business might offer a free baseline product. This gives the customer the option to check out the advanced version of the product for a higher price.

Freemium basically works by offering a basic product to attract a potential customer, who will be later offered a premium service or product charged for a higher fee. This way sales can be obviated to mean extra pushy. Freemium paves the path for more effective crowdsourcing, which becomes important especially for software programs being tested for any bugs. Since the product or service used more at people’s ends, detecting design flaws becomes easier.

Keyword

Keyword is either a single word or a combination of words that people search with online to locate a particular subject. Keywords are also strategically placed within a body of text in online content. Blog posts and pages with a keyword focus are called “SEO optimized”.

Landing Page

Any page online that generates traffic from a source other than the pages on your website (which explains the term “landing”) is called a landing page. A landing page is copy, images, or a form. A landing page is generally used to gently nudge visitors to purchase a product or perhaps sign up for receiving content offers. Landing pages can be either long or short, and the content depends on the action your visitors are persuaded to take.

Lead Generation

Lead generation refers to the process of creating new leads. Online lead generation is brought about by exchanging valuable information to website visitors with their respective contact information.

Lead Nurturing

Most visitors are unlikely to make a purchase even after being converted into a lead. Lead nurturing then begins with gradually persuading your initial leads with irresistible information about your product or service until they cannot resist making a purchase. By showing that you care for your leads and their well being, you convince them how your industry is well suited to their needs.

Link Building

Link building involves strengthening the number of outside sites redirecting to yours (a phenomenon called “backlinking”). This process basically involves creating high-quality interesting and engaging content which others can’t hold back from sharing.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQLs)

Marketing qualified leads are tactical prospects which have shown some interest in your business by engaging in any manner with your content online. They might also have provided contact information that turns them into a prospective lead.

Middle Of The Funnel aka MOFU

MOFU or “Middle Of The Funnel” is the term given to the consideration stage of a buyer’s decision-making journey. A MOFU lead is someone who has moved from awareness of the product/service to deep consideration and wants to receive further information about your business’s product and/or service. A pre-made offer is provided to the lead who might demand more information- further addressing any pushback.

Native Advertising

This can be defined as those advertisements which are primarily content-driven and featured along with other, non-paid content on most platforms. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are the most prominent example of this.

Page Performance

Page performance considers these- CTA conversion rate, page SEO, contacts acquired and website traffic.

Page Rank

Your Page Rank is an indicator of your site/page’s popularity and trustworthiness as determined by Google’s algorithm. Websites are ranked from 0 to 10, with 0 implying poor search engine results (not good) and 10 referring high search frequency (most of such sites are owned by either Google, Apple, or Adobe).

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC involves channelizing traffic to your webpage or website by making payments to a third party publisher every time someone clicks your ad. Google Ads is perhaps the most prominent example of this. It allows you to book for top ranking spaces on Google’s search results’ pages “for every click”.

Other channels which use PPC include:

  • Paid ads on Facebook: Users usually pay for customizing a video post, an image, or slideshow presentation, which Facebook might display on the newsfeeds of those people who might be inclined to your business.
  • Twitter Ads campaigns: Here, users pay for strategically placing a series of profile badges or posts into the news feeds of a very specific audience, all of whom might be interested in your business as reflected by their online activity.
  • Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Users can directly pay to send messages towards specific LinkedIn users based on their industry, preferences and background.

Persona (aka Ideal Buyer)

In terms of marketing, a persona is commonly defined as the perfect representation of your ideal buyer. An ideal buyer or perfect persona is someone who showcases all the traits for persuasion, hopes, goals, wishes, dreams, demographics, and professional careers.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

A sales qualified lead is in fact, a marketing qualified lead that has been approved by the entire sales team and warrants a sales team member to reach out. An SQL is someone who is on the threshold of being sold to and is most likely to purchase the company’s product or service.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimizing for a website or webpage means adjusting the off-page as well as the on-page SEO parameters so as to increase the page’s rank in Google’s search results.

This is the process wherein you optimize your online content/website to get a better “rank” search engine results pages, thus increasing the flow of organically grown (or freely generated) traffic that your pages receive. The platforms that usually benefit from SEO include webpages/websites, blogposts, and infotainment.

Smarketing

Smarketing involves combining sales and marketing so as to work towards the shared interest of growing business revenue. 

Sales Funnel

The sales funnel refers to each step that a potential customer/client has to make in order to become your absolute client/customer.

Let us consider a real brick-and-mortar sales funnel for example. The people at the top of the metaphorical sales funnel simply decide to walk past your store. Some of them might decide to take a look inside, which is the next step of the funnel.

A person inside your store might merely glance at the products on display. If they make an effort to physically browse through the products, then they perform the next step. Some of them might select a product to actually purchase it. That’s the final step. Purchasing and checking out implies reaching the bottom part of the funnel.

This same pattern repeats itself for online businesses involving digital marketing as well. Your sales funnel could exist as:

Sponsored Content

It is more like soliciting the expertise of a third party business to create content for your business’ promotion.

A prominent example of this is influencer marketing. Here, a brand sponsors an influencer from a particular field relevant to its industry. The influencer is then required to publish somehow related to the business on their personal social media profile.

To know more about such digital marketing terms, click on: https://blogexperts.net/

Digital Marketing Keyword Facts

Nowadays is important to have a keyword strategy when writing new content, as such, a tool like google keyword planner helps in establishing what are the main keywords that you want to cover.

As such keywords, the strategy is twofold, either go for long keywords (3 or more words), or short keywords (1 or 2 words), which are more marketed, but is more difficult to obtain audience.

These strategies, help in defining the niche that the blog covers. For example, when writing an article about sports car, is good to specify also the type of car, and the engine. By having more keywords when writing an article, is possible to be found more easily by search engine, such as Google or Bing.

Whenever I write an article, I tend to look for keywords that are mostly used, so that I can target my audience with specificity and detail.

This strategy is used by many bloggers, and help in defining what to write, and gives some ideas on what to write.

Long Keywords are helpful as when writing, deviating from the topic and going off topic becomes more difficult.

Using Short Keywords, is more competitive and more difficult, as the search engine spawn many results, and usually the attention span of the user of the search engine, is focused on the first 3 results, or Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

The use of long keywords, is also suggestable when creating ads campaigns, as it allows to avoid to spend too much budget on digital marketing campaigns.

Not that Digital Marketing Campaigns are not important, but the problem rely in the cost of such campaigns.

Industry networking in Various Industry

Nowadays, there are many exhibitions that show the development of Technology and Industry worldwide. One of these exhibition is the InterAirport Show of Munich, which was happening from the 8th of October till the 11th of October.

This year was full of innovations and companies which were promoting their innovation, as a strategy is very attractive to be in fairs, and one such as the InterAirport, where I was invited to explore the various things happening.

Strategy wise, a Fair is an old Marketing technique, and presence or attendence of such can bring new Businesses and Insights, such as what are the new technologies present on the market, and what are the current trends.

It allows for companies to demostrate their capabilities and their key success factors (KSF).

An example is ADB SafeGate, a company which was advertising their skills and capabilities as leader in the Airport Industry.

Moreover it allows for new business to negotiate and form new alliances for international trade.

Such Business is for example AFM Group, which was present on the Fair to network with new businesses to form new partnership for the Middle East market.

Networking is an important skill as it allows for companies to expand their contacts and their capabilities to attract new customers, check what the competitors are doing and allow for new insights on Technology and Innovations. More people you see and the more your network expands, allowing to cover more territory than before, and allowing to reach certain markets that before were difficult to cover.

Moreover networking is important in Strategy as it allows to be knowledgeable about the happenings in the industry, events run fast, and many things happens, so is important to have an agenda and a plan on where to go and who to visit, as they can be hectic and people tend to become busy with new visitors.

Events such as fairs, are an excellent tool to perform analysis, on the post events fact. For example, is important to remember the 3C of marketing, Customer, Competitors and Costs, and via events is possible to obtain such information in informal way.

Moreover is possible to compare the innovations with those of competition, so to see who is more advanced in the field.

Uplift Your Brand Value With an Innovative Digital Marketing Video Strategy

Today, every business is using content marketing to stand out in the marketplace. But, an enormous rise in the content driven strategies of brands has also led to a sea of content and blog articles that is losing its actual shine. So, how is that you make your brand standout and take its marketing strategy to the next level?

The answer is simple. At the time when written content, or for that matter display ads are also losing their impact on prospects, it is digital video marketing that can save your day!

It is estimated that by the year 2021, the traffic from video marketing will be responsible for more than 80% of the entire consumer traffic on the internet. So, here are the main reasons and benefits why you need to start thinking about incorporating video marketing in your business strategy:

  • Increase Conversions by Providing Valuable & Informative Video Content

One of the main reasons you must start investing in digital video marketing for your business is that it makes it so simple and easy for your clients to understand the features of your products and services. A high quality and engaging promotional video forces your potential customer to stay on your website, which ultimately increases the likelihood of conversions for your brand. Another reason that makes video marketing a great idea for your business is that helps deconstruct a complex idea associated with your services, without making it any less amusing for your customer.

  • Grow your Audience

It is high time that you embrace video marketing as an important strategy for your business, as it will help you grow and expand your audience to the next level. A highly creative and engaging marketing video has the full potential of going viral and defining your brand name like never before.

  • Improve SEO

Adding a good quality and informative video to your post can also help improve your ranking on search engines and help you find new users who would be interested in your products. This way, you get an opportunity to strategize your video content with the right keywords and improve your SEO on different online platforms.

While, there is no doubt about the fact that video marketing is the best innovative digital strategy for your business at the present, it is equally important for you to make sure that the video that you have created for your brand marketing is of the highest visual and audio standards.

Chatbots innovative business solutions

Has this ever happened to you that when you’ve called the customer services, you get a chatbot and you just feel like demanding an agent or representative because you wanted to speak to a human?

Humans interact with chatbots all the time and they are made to believe that chatbots provide the best solutions but in reality, chatbots are only adequate for simple questions.

Companies are working on the latest business innovation strategy where chatbots actually understood what you were asking instead of directly answering the saved input. Different companies have different business models but almost all established ones have too big of an audience that they have to implement chatbots for customer support. This new technology for chatbots will prove to be an excellent business strategy and innovation as it will lead to better and more precise results.

If your chatbots understand what is being asked, they will be able to anticipate obstacles similar to how customer service agents do after a lot of interactions. So how can companies enable the chatbot systems to have such conversations? Merely adding more pairs of question-answer to the system will never help you accomplish that. Instead, you will need to implement an innovation strategic framework which enables the system to reach about the domain constraints and tasks involved.

If you want to successfully apply this strategic innovation management and want it to be successful, you will have to know the task at hand and the constraints involved. You should anticipate all the possible scenarios and problem that might arise. The challenging part would be to represent this kind of task-related knowledge with enough relevant information and granularity to anticipate the obstacles and remedies without actually overdoing it.

Capturing fine distinctions which involve the minute details can lead the system astray as it wouldn’t be able to take any actions on those. You should want to provide support just enough inference such that it can go past the stilted limitations of the scripted bots that are usually used these days. It will help the clients have conversations with the system and get an actual answer to problems instead of simply get answers to FAQs. This is how the companies will scale beyond the incremental and unmaintainable current approach. This is the groundwork being laid with the advanced AI research at labs to find the pathway which leads to interactions which are truly smart.

Innovative Ways to Expand your Skillset & Improve your Job Potential

In this competitive work environment that you live in, moving your career forward is entirely up to you. You need to be proactive and keep on refining your skillset to inculcate unique innovation strategy frameworks if you want to advance and thrive.

But how can one stay up-to-date and come up with business innovation strategies to always remain competitive? The best way to do that would be to embrace the concept of upskilling. This basically means you have to build on the existing skillsets of yours and practice self-directed learning. It will help you learn the most in-demand skills and give you a better arsenal of services you can provide. Here are some of the ways you can use upskilling to your advantage and come up with

  • Take advantage of online learning

If you have the ambition and persistence to learn new and innovative skills, you can easily find the needed resources online. You can look for decent learning platforms online as there are thousands of course on every imaginable skill available. If you have a boss who is expert at strategic innovation management, you can talk to them about the upcoming trends and the scope of different innovative courses. 

  • Certify your way as you climb up the corporate ladder

It isn’t necessary that you must have a degree for climbing up the corporate ladder but you do need to have certifications. For technology networks such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), getting certified will be a great way of proving your skills and that you are a serious candidate for the bigger positions.

  • Learn the trending in-demand skills

Skills often come and go in the workplace because with changes in technology, the needed skills will also change. These days, skills come and go in a few years or even months. This might seem overwhelming but learning the in-demand skills can make a huge difference to your career. No matter which business models your company follow but there are always opportunities that arise for those who are up-to-date with the trending skills.

  • Align with peers who are headed to the top

The coworkers in the office, executives of the company, or the network of people you deal with can all be seen as resources to help you learn and grow your job potential. Try to cultivate a network of highly motivated and skilled people that are interested in building their skills and coming up with a unique business strategy and innovation for every problem.

How to master the strategic use of keywords in your Blogging Strategy

Over the years blogging as evolved as a platform that does more than just sharing ideas and information. Today, blogging is an intrinsic part of a brand’s digital marketing strategy, as it offers an endless scope to optimize your business website with an improved SEO.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization or SEO, keywords are the inputs that help your site rank high in organic search results. Hence, in order to achieve a higher and improved ranking for your website on search engines, you need to master the use of SEO keywords in your blog content. Here are some useful tips that will help you make an optimum use of keywords in your blogging strategy:

Tip 1 Use Keywords as Part of a Solution to a Problem

One of the first things that you must keep in mind while including keywords in your blog posts for improved SEO is to use them as answers to questions related to the topic in concern. By using keywords as an answer or solution to a problem put up in the article, you will be able to instigate a more genuine interest in your readers to go through the entire blog and grasp your brand message. Using keywords as part of the natural flow of sentences will also keep you away from keyword stuffing – a common mistake that is made by even the biggest of brands while blogging for marketing purposes.

Tip 2 Use Multiple Questions

Another creative way of using keywords in blogs created for your brand’s digital marketing strategy is to frame multiple questions around it. For instance, if you are writing a blog post about “choosing the best flooring”, it is a great idea to include multiple questions about this topic in the same post (like, “wood flooring vs. tile flooring” or “wood flooring features etc.”) By doing so, you will not only increase the frequency of the keywords used in one single blog post, but also add more useful information for your readers.

Tip 3 Create a Keyword Strategy that is Different from the one used by your Competitors

Thirdly, you must work towards creating a keyword strategy for your blog posts that is unique from the one followed by your competitor with a higher ranking. Find a better and different way to channelize your blogs with SEO keywords, and you will gradually improve your web ranking with increased leads.

Market research and its importance for businesses

Most of the new businesses today, try to dismiss the overall concept of market research. Many of them think that spending hours and days on market research just for selling a product or service is not that important. So, such businesses directly jump into the game of selling without even understanding the market properly. For grabbing a potential area in the market, market research is the only tool that can help new businesses as well as the old ones. It is most important for the small-sized businesses where the first 5-6 months can turn out to be precarious. The small and new businesses require customers and sales as soon as possible. Market research is the tool in digital marketing that can help in gathering more customers and sales for you. According to a recent study, 48% of the new businesses are opting for market research for grabbing their individual markets.

Market research and surveying

Survey was the term that was used much before market research came into the picture. There was a time when new businesses used to run behind their potential customers for filling out the survey forms. Gone are those days now. In the digital marketing world, the picture of surveying has completely changed. People now turn towards social media platforms and websites for researching about their potential customers.

According to a recent survey from Forbes, businesses that conducted extensive market research on social media had a growth rate of 20% than the ones which didn’t use market research. The companies which do not use market research had an average growth rate of 15% only.

From the above data, it can be stated that company A was the one which opted for market research and company B didn’t opt for market research.

Market research and consumers

“Market research aims at understanding the reasons your consumers will buy your product or use your service”.

Market research studies each and every element which is required for your company growth such as behavior of your consumers, personal factors, market trend etc. The basic things that market research will answer are Who, Why, What and How.

Market research and setting up your business goals

“The best vision for your vision is insight”.

Without market research, you won’t be able to set up goals for your business. You want to double up your sales, but is it possible without getting to know the size of your target market? No, it is not. With proper market research, you can set up your goals along with the growth plans that you need.

Innovative Business Ideas

Are you looking to build a large clientele for your new business? If yes, then you have landed at the right place!

Today, we are going to talk about some innovative and uncommon ways that will help grow your business in the most cost effective and shortest time possible. Here are 5 successful ways to achieve growth for your business in 2019:

  1. Target a Specific Audience

In order to grow your business in the right direction, your focus must be on targeting your ideal audience. Once you know who your ideal clientele is, you must create a marketing campaign that speaks our specifically to that community. By doing so, you will be successful in creating an effective campaign that will help you in many ways to establish your brand name in any marketplace.

  • Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a simple business strategy, in which your clients help promote your products or services through recommendations. Despite the fact that referral marketing is one of the most effective and trusted ways to create a growing user base in the shortest time, it has not been used to its full potential by both small businesses and large enterprises.

  • Partner with another Brand

This might seem like an out of the box idea to grow your business, but associating your business with a brand that already has a loyal following can actually help you in the long run. Working on a partnership or collaboration with another brand can help you reach out to a new audience and give you a platform to increase your brand presence in the marketplace.

  • Associate your Brand with an Important Cause

Associating your business with an important social cause is one of the most creative ways to promote your brand name. This is one marketing strategy that will not just increase the visibility of your business, but also add a higher purpose to your brand values.

  • Create a Viral-Worthy Video to Promote your Product

Last but not least, another great way to promote your business in 2019 is to create a promotional video for your brand products and services that is entertaining enough to catch the attention of your target audiences on different social media platforms. Your video should be unique and viral-worthy in delivering your brand message, so that it succeeds in spreading your brand name through word of mouth as well!

Let’s get started then!