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Have you come across dubious pop-up ads and notifications while browsing websites? How many times has that happened? Plenty, we guess.

Back when businesses had just started out with online marketing, frauds and flashy emails became quite common. Internet users would be continuously flooded with exasperating and aggressive ads that didn’t make any sense at all.

And do you know what the worst part about all this was? These apparently senseless and infuriating ads actually worked! Users would click on these dubious pop-ups expecting to win a free iPhone, millions of dollars, and so on.

But today, things have changed entirely. People have become smarter than ever. Even though users are still flooded with such in-your-face ads, they are no longer naive enough to even think for a moment that somebody wants to give them a million dollars or the latest iPhone out of the blue.

Why? Well, to begin with, gone are the days when aggressive ads, shallow marketing, and poor web design were a thing. In addition to this, nowadays, user engagement is all about human-centered user interface and user experience design while minimizing the spam as much as possible.

Today, what you need to do is design your website in a way that strikes the right chord with your target audience, and for that, you have to appeal to their best emotions. Wondering how exactly you would do this? It’s quite simple, actually – by using the right web design elements like font, content, typography, colors, graphics, etc., depending on the fundamentals of consumer psychology.

While the majority of website design companies know how web designing psychology works, building a site that wins requires much more than just understanding the fundamentals of how visuals and colors work.

We wouldn’t deny the fact that human brains are incredibly complex, and it is indeed challenging to impress the average consumer. But with just a little bit of practice, you can fine-tune your website to distinguish yourself from the crowd genuinely.

In this blog, we will look at how web design psychology can help you enhance your user experience.

WHAT IS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WEB DESIGN?

Before we start discussing how you should use consumer psychology, let us first talk about what psychology is and why it plays a vital role in website design.

In simple words, psychology refers to the study of how the human mind works. Since our thoughts and minds control almost everything we do, it only seems logical for us to first understand consumer psychology so that we can develop powerful branding strategies and website design.

In order to understand the fundamental part psychology plays in a user-friendly web design, take this into account:

The limbic system is responsible for our memories and the way we react to positive experiences. Now, if you could help the users associate with your site on a positive note, there are better chances of them revisiting your website and recommending it to their peers as well.

The neocortex is the part of the human brain which is responsible for ‘thinking,’ and this is the one component of web design psychology that designers feel the most comfortable with. Why? Because it is the most logical part of our brain that craves loads of information that makes sense. Therefore, incorporating lots of useful and informative content within your site could be an excellent way to appeal to the users’ neocortex.

The way we think and process information is known as cognition. Nevertheless, making the audience think and like your content simultaneously is neither easy nor cheap. What the average user expects is an easy but pleasant experience from your website or app. Grasping how cognition helps can actually go a long way into building an engaging web design and boosting conversions.

Well, now that you know how web design psychology works, let’s discuss some ways you can channel the power of psychology to build a web design that wins!

MINIMIZE STRESS ON COGNITION

Today most people have limited patience levels and increasingly reduced attention spans. Hence, minimizing cognitive stress sounds like a brilliant idea because the average user can’t handle too much information all at once.

Plus, if you are considering delivering a positive user experience, you need to ensure that your UI and UX design are intuitive, simple, and easy to grasp.

For starters, you can explore pre-existing schemas and mental models. From the typical search button to sign in and checkout processes, these could be anything. Incorporate forms that your site visitors can fill out quickly and ensure that all the components on your web page are in rational groupings.

The majority of people scan things rather than reading them online, so it only sounds logical to include super simple banners, headings, and keywords.

If you are thinking about building a persuasive eCommerce web design, ensure that your site visitors fulfill their goal of purchasing products via a smooth process. There are a couple of things you can do to enhance your overall user experience, such as streamlining your search bar, minimizing the number of primary categories, and modifying the look of your input field.

INCLUDE SOCIAL PROOF

As human beings, we all love things that we can personally relate to. We are all hardwired to think what other people like might be beneficial to us too. What could justify this better than reviews and star ratings? Whole organizations have expanded their businesses based on social validation (for example, reviews and ratings on IMDb, food reviews on Zomato, etc.).

Social proof has emerged as a crucial marketing tool that significant companies take advantage of in their website design as well as customer support. Now and again, we succumb to these biases and wind up purchasing products we were not even planning to buy in the first place.

You can include social proof on your website using images, reviews, star ratings, and customer testimonials to convey how consumers loved your products or services. Doing so will help you motivate your site visitors and potential customers to take the desired action or engage with your brand further.

TYPOGRAPHY AND FONT PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE

Just the way colors matter a big deal when it comes to engaging your site visitors, so do typography and font. Both are closely connected to our emotions and can evoke various feelings.

There is a wide range of fonts and styles available for you to pick from – based on the type of emotion you want to elicit when users interact with your website, you can select the one that aptly reflects your brand voice and ethos.

For example, specific fonts such as Sans Serif fonts seem sophisticated, elegant, and classic. In contrast, the Irvin typeface used in The New Yorker emits serious yet innovative, artistic vibes.

WRAPPING IT UP

By now, you must have got a pretty good idea of how psychology matters in web design and how you can utilize it to build a web design that wins. All you need to do is take care of these points while designing your website to make sure it attracts and engages your target audience in the best way possible. Whether you have a web designer in your organization or are hiring a freelancer to do it for you, make sure they pay attention to these details to create a web design that actually works for your brand.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

The Google-owned YouTube is launching a new short-form video sharing feature called “Clips” in its beta version. With the roll-out of this new feature, creators will be able to clip out, give a title and share tiny 5 to 60 seconds long clips from an existing YouTube live stream or video.

Undoubtedly, this new feature will be a great addition to the platform. These short clips will act as teasers for long-form content writing, which sounds pretty good for creating buzz around your content or generating interest or excitement in the minds of your audience.

YouTube has made this feature available in its beta version as of now since it is in its testing phase and is only accessible to a select group of gaming channels currently. Individuals using a desktop or Android device can only view this feature for the time being until it is fully developed. This means it is not available for iOS users at the moment but is expected to go public very soon.

While users can use this feature on various types of videos, it is not available for use on children’s content, live broadcasts that are more than 8 hours long, premieres while they’re still “live,” and content that has either been removed, set to private or goes against YouTube community guidelines.

Clips will allow creators to share select chunks of videos or Live YouTube videos, making it even more convenient for the audience to get an idea of what the video is all about.

If you happen to be one of those creators who have managed to get their hands on this new feature, you can follow these steps to start sharing tiny video clips right away.

STEPS TO SHARE A YOUTUBE CLIP

Click on any of your YouTube videos that qualify to be shared as a “Clip.”

Under the video, look for the “clip” icon, which will appear in the shape of a scissor.

Tap or click on this icon to create a clip.

As soon as you click that, you will get the option to make a clip and select the duration of your Clip. Your Clips can be as short as 5 seconds but not longer than 60 seconds.

Once you have done this, proceed to assign a title to your Clip and click on the “Share Clip” option.

A new panel will pop up on your screen, providing you with multiple sharing options that include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Here you will also spot the options to embed or email your Clip. On the other hand, you can just copy the URL and paste it wherever you like manually.

WRAPPING IT UP

The popular video-sharing platform, YouTube, is back with yet another exciting update. The company is testing out a new video-sharing feature that lets users share bite-size “Clips” from their existing videos or live streams with their audience. As per reports, the length of these clips can be anywhere between 5 to 60 seconds. While this feature can be used for a range of videos, there are certain types of videos that are excluded from its use. This feature is currently only available in YouTube’s beta version and for a few gaming channels. Desktop and Android users can only see this feature right now. Let’s see how this new update turns out for the platform and hope the platform rolls it out widely to the general public soon.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

Amidst the rising concerns for data privacy and new measures being taken to ensure it, the sales department is still struggling to discover the right accounts, get to know their consumers, and create better sales plans. And for all that, they need data – accurate and reliable data to be precise. In the middle of this data crisis, LinkedIn has come to the rescue.

The company is considering presenting the users with more ways to put their extensive professional dataset to use. LinkedIn has introduced a new tool called “Sales Insights,” a data analytics tool that offers a real-time overview of important business opportunities depending on your selected market niche and criteria. It allows users to tap into LinkedIn’s data pool of hundreds of millions of users worldwide. LinkedIn Sales Insights (LSI) is the second product the company has introduced in its Sales Solutions portfolio.

Getting your hands on good data that too from a reliable source has become more challenging now than ever. Third-party data will only get more and more difficult to access in the coming times. With the introduction of ad blockers and the end of third-party cookies, not only Marketing but Sales are suffering too. Obviously, there are still many companies willing to sell lists of organizations and contact, but who even trusts them now? Good reliable sources of data are getting harder to find day by day.

THE RIGHT DATA IS CRUCIAL

Times have changed, and with that, things have also changed tremendously for the Sales companies. Before this pandemic took place, organizations used to analyze their businesses in terms of years, whereas now the window is more like 1-1.5 months. Therefore, programs should be built for speed now.

Companies need to have that quickness to make faster decisions and then work on those decisions equally or even faster. When things are not working right as expected, they need to turn quickly. To be able to do that, organizations need data, and by data, we don’t mean just any data – reliable and trustworthy data.

LEVERAGING THE LINKEDIN MEMBERSHIP DATA

A lot of salespeople leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator to discover and engage with potential customers. Incorporating Sales Insights above that takes them even further. With the release of LinkedIn’s new feature Sales Insights, they will be able to plan, research, and identify opportunities utilizing real-time data, make more conscious and informed decisions regarding where they should focus their efforts.

Sales Navigator offers the tools to carry out those plans. However, in order to use Sales Insights, you don’t need Sales Navigator – both of them are individual products.

Moreover, marketing people can also utilize LinkedIn Sales Insights to identify relevant accounts that match their ideal customer profile and create account lists for account-based marketing programs. As per the company, marketers and sales professionals have quite similar questions, such as which are the fastest-growing accounts, or which departments or functions are the biggest within a particular account or what are the most prominent opportunities available across their market niche, and so on.

In addition to all this, the data also displays areas where relationships already exist between sales professionals and contacts within accounts.

USING THE LINKEDIN SALES INSIGHTS

The Sales Insights dashboard allows users to concentrate on a particular set of data based on geographical locations, growth trends, job functions, and so on. This sort of data will help the sales and marketing professionals find significant opportunities to connect with the right companies at the right time.

That’s not just it. LinkedIn Sales Insights also lets you see which of your employees are connected to people associated with your target organizations, presenting you with an “in” to increase your response rates.

This is one of the latest efforts of the platform to put their unparalleled professional data to use. LinkedIn can offer users valuable in-depth insights into the operations of modern organizations, and ways in which salespeople can reach the ideal people, and discover the excellent opportunities to help you get the most out of your efforts.

No other platform except LinkedIn can offer insights to this extent. If the platform is able to harness these insights effectively, it can become a crucial element in multiple business processes.

CONCLUSION

The professional networking site, LinkedIn, offers an abundance of data about its members that organizations can utilize to discover and create the right accounts. Even though it is third-party data, it is the data that members of LinkedIn create themselves, so one can easily understand that it is accurate and, in most cases, up-to-date.

Plenty of sales companies are already utilizing LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator to reach and engage with users, so of course, the next logical step is to focus on accounts and the right markets.

This is an excellent tool for marketers as well as salespeople since it would save them a great deal of time and effort that they spend in searching for the right accounts and still many a time end up focusing on the wrong places. However, we are not quite sure about the LinkedIn members’ reaction considering that they will be outreached by different companies due to this, whether they want to engage with them or not.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

In this digital era, Twitter can be an excellent marketing channel to drive traffic and generate leads.

As a matter of fact, a good majority of Twitter users follow their favorite small businesses online. Even the big brands like Google and Amazon have official Twitter accounts and boast a massive following on the platform.

Undeniably, Twitter is a popular communication channel for millions of internet users worldwide, ranging from the most famous people like celebrities to the most influential people like presidents.

However, it can be really easy for your organic post to get buried deep somewhere in this ocean of posts considering the millions of tweets sent out daily.

However, this may come as a surprise, but this is also one of the reasons Twitter Ads can be extremely beneficial and powerful for small businesses.

When it comes to building brand awareness, the sheer volume of information present on the platform can benefit small businesses.

Investing in Twitter Ads can remarkably work in your business’ favor, provided that you are deploying the right techniques.

In fact, digital marketing agencies have actually helped their clients gain new followers for just a couple of cents, and well, generating new leads for an amount as tiny as that is a good investment.

This goes without saying; Twitter Ads present your brand with the opportunity to reach hundreds of millions of people who fall within your target audience.

Reaching these qualified groups of audiences actually provides your company with direct access to your prospects, which means more traffic and leads will be acquired, ultimately leading to more conversions for your business.

This blog covers four ways that make Twitter Ads ideal for your small business and how you can leverage it to increase your brand exposure and foster business growth.

So, let’s dive in!

Why Twitter Ads?

In case you aren’t still utilizing Twitter, then it may be the time for you to get on board now and leverage this incredible platform. But this doesn’t imply just being present on the platform and sending out a few tweets every day.

Remember, tweeting and running ads are not the same. There’s a vast difference between the two, which is clearly reflected in the different results they yield individually.

Simply put, we are talking about advertising on this platform using Twitter Ads in particular. By that, we mean Twitter Ads can easily be a feasible marketing and advertising channel for many small businesses.

However, there’s no running away from the fact that Twitter is not as effective as other, more popular marketing channels such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

But again, this doesn’t mean they aren’t worth or capable of yielding striking results.

And if truth be told, Twitter ads, in reality, offer a range of unique ad targeting features that these other platforms don’t offer to the advertisers.

This is the reason why we think investing in Twitter Ads can do wonders for your small business and prove to be a smart investment.

But that’s not it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous ways in which Twitter Ads can work in favor of your small business.

Having said that, it’s time to now dive into the reasons why businesses should start using Twitter Ads right away.

Objective-Based Campaign and Pricing

When you run ads on Twitter, you only have to pay when your marketing objective is achieved.

This can significantly impact your overall marketing budget and make your overall ad spend even more effective.

On the other hand, you might have to pay the other marketing channels for running your ads whether you get the desired results or not. And therefore, here, you would end up paying for an ad that didn’t yield you any results, let alone meet your objectives.

For example, if you are running Twitter ads to drive more traffic to your website or acquire more followers on the platform, you will only pay when users visit your site or follow your Twitter account.

Similarly, if you are running an ad intending to get more people to install your app, then you will only have to pay when users install your app on their device successfully.

Therefore, with Twitter’s objective-based pricing model, advertisers can make sure that they only pay for the results that actually impact your overall marketing objectives.

Now, this, of course, puts the advertisers in a win-win situation because, frankly speaking, Twitter doesn’t mind taking up a bit of risk.

This instantly makes Twitter Ads a more appealing option but remember it will still be your responsibility to ensure that you reach the ideal audience that will convert.

Or else your ads won’t be as successful, and you will be primarily just exhausting your advertising budget uselessly, which you would certainly want to avoid no matter what.

Keyword Targeting

The next great feature of Twitter Ads is its exceptional keyword targeting.

And this is probably what makes Twitter so unique from the rest of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

For instance, Facebook lets you target specific groups of audiences but not specific keywords. This precision on Twitter lets brands cut through the noise and get even closer to their target audiences.

It allows the advertisers to target the users who have used a particular term or hashtag in their tweets within the last week. And taking this game to the ultimate next level, Twitter allows you even to target users who have interacted with tweets that include specific terms in the past week.

For example, let’s assume you run a local coffee shop, and you want to target coffee lovers.

Theoretically, you can simply run a Twitter ad that is only displayed to users who have mentioned or interacted with keywords such as coffee, cappuccino, etc.

You could even narrow down your targeting to your particular area code or radius.

Now with Facebook ads, you don’t get all these options. On Facebook Ads manager, you can’t target your ads by keywords, and the primary targeting options are based on behaviors and interests only.

Therefore, your audience there isn’t as narrow as it is on Twitter.

But this isn’t a strike on Facebook because when it comes to social media marketing, Facebook still has the most robust advertising platform.

There is just a noticeable difference in how they have established their ad targeting.

On the contrary, instead of playing the two platforms against one another, you can deploy them in a combination to produce better results since they both work in different ways.

That being said, let’s now move on to the next fantastic feature that makes Twitter Ads so unique.

Tweet Engagement Targeting

This is yet another feature that makes Twitter Ads stand out from the crowd.

Google Ads offers you the retargeting option. If you are a regular internet user, perhaps you must have noticed an ad popping up from a website you recently visited showcasing the same product you were checking out that time.

That’s exactly how it works on Twitter, too, and none of the other social media networks enable you to do this.

Basically, with tweet engagement targeting, you can remarket to those users who have recently viewed or interacted with any of your tweets.

Studies suggest that customers tend to engage more with brands they see often. While this is closely connected with ad recall, it is relatively easy to stay more engaged with brands you bump into more frequently.

This can be a precious tool for dedicated advertisers as once they have successfully developed enough engagement on their tweets, they can target users who will genuinely be interested in engaging with their content again.

In a nutshell, here, you will start moving potential customers through your marketing funnel by staying in their sight.

This improves the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and helps you generate more conversions at a faster pace.

As stated in this blog earlier, millions of tweets are sent out every single day; thus, having this option helps ensure that your tweets are not lost in this deep ocean of posts.

Once users have come across your brand enough times and have become entirely familiar with you and your offerings, they develop a liking for your company or find you credible; it becomes easier to persuade them to take the desired action.

Whether it is to subscribe to your newsletter, visit your website, or if you get it right, even purchase one of your products.

That being said, it’s time to take a look at the fourth and the last unique feature that makes Twitter Ads worth considering.

Low Cost-Per-Click

We understand that being a small business owner, you would clearly want to know the costs before jumping to any conclusion. And well, after going through all those appealing features that come with Twitter Ads, you might be thinking that they must be costly.

But this may come as a surprise to you – Twitter ads have a low CPC in reality.

Some businesses can even generate good results for literally a few cents. The CPC is almost 5 to 10 times less than the average CPC you see on Facebook ads.

And well, that’s probably because the competition on Twitter is much less than Facebook.

Most social media platforms determine the pricing based on an auction. So technically, it has got everything to do with how much and for what people are willing to pay.

Hence, we guess the majority of people are willing to pay for clicks or conversions on Facebook compared to Twitter.

Because bear in mind, at the end of the day, Twitter is really a very loud place, and having a huge following there does not mean you are reaching them daily.

But the CPC could be low-priced because, in comparison to Facebook, there are relatively fewer users on Twitter and, thus, fewer advertisers.

However, we expect this cost to only increase with time as more and more people start realizing the true potential of Twitter ads – just like most ad costs continue to increase on most marketing platforms.

Therefore, in short, with Twitter Ads, not only do advertisers only have to pay for the clicks they acquire, but the cost-per-click is also way too cheaper compared to other platforms.

So ultimately, simply put, in order to produce excellent results, you must be ready to spend money on your ads.

But if you are not here for paid ads and looking for something more organic, you can do that too.

Strategies like SEO and content marketing are generally deployed to generate organic results, and these actually work wonders for small businesses on a tight budget who want to build more brand awareness.

With these strategies, brands use engaging and useful content to connect with their target audience and establish trustworthy relationships. Ultimately, this helps the brand position itself as an authentic industry leader.

Eventually, such companies get rewarded with long-term customer relationships or what we call “customer loyalty” in the marketing world.

Whichever path you choose to go down will depend on the individual needs, overall marketing budget, and target audience of your brand. So that’s really up to you because there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes down to this.

Conclusion

To wrap up, Twitter Ads can be an excellent place to market your brand.

There are an array of possibilities that come with this platform, and if you’re an innovative marketer, you could indeed leverage Twitter to achieve your marketing goals.

Several big companies use Twitter to increase their brand visibility and establish real connections with their audience, and this approach has proven to work time after time.

However, the only drawback we can really see here is that with Twitter Ads, you can only reach the people who are on Twitter, and it is a relatively smaller audience compared to other popular social media platforms like Facebook.

But you can still find a niche audience that works for your brand and extract great returns, and once you get this right, you will see for yourself the true hidden power of Twitter Ads.

Moreover, you can get a lot more from your niche audience on Twitter than on any other platform.

But as we said earlier, you don’t need to reject all the other platforms and cling to Twitter only.

Instead, you can utilize Twitter as a ground to start building your audience and then, over time, invest in other platforms to expand your reach. This will provide your brand with the opportunity to reach the right audience no matter on which platform they are.

With all this information at your disposal, we hope you have realized just how powerful Twitter Ads are. So start building engaging ads for your brand right away to grow your small business and take it to new heights. We wouldn’t want you to miss out on an opportunity as incredible as this because there is an audience waiting for you to tap into.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

Being a small business owner, you might find yourself thinking about whether marketing is more critical or sales. Or whether you should pour more money into your marketing efforts or employ an iconic sales team.

Honestly, we have tried our hands at both to expand our business, so we are savvy about capitalizing on both these strategies effectively.

In this blog, we will throw some light on this topic and help you analyze the pros and cons of both methods for your exclusive business!

But before diving into which strategy you should choose for your company, let’s first discuss marketing vs. sales.

Marketing vs. Sales

Let’s understand this with an example.

An XYZ marketing agency is a small business established recently. Now they are looking to grow their business, and every advisor they talk to, every book they read, or every business person they meet says that without having a reliable sales team, making their business successful is a far-fetched game.

Just when they were about to pick sales to invest in, it struck them that despite their efforts, people aren’t approaching them still, and that being a marketing agency, they aren’t even using marketing for their own business growth. So they decided to go with marketing, and within a couple of years, they were able to establish their company as a reputed and trusted brand.

Wondering what point we are trying to make here? Well, what we are trying to convey is that both sales and marketing can do the trick and help your business grow. However, what you need to do is grasp the main differences between both these methods to embrace a strategy that will encourage your business growth.

That being said, let’s proceed to understand the primary difference between marketing and sales, and as you continue reading, we will address more of these differences.

Understanding the Difference Between Marketing and Sales

For starters, marketing and sales are two different things. Marketing comprises all the efforts that you make to draw leads into your sales funnel or sales pipeline. Whereas sales is what seals the deal with prospects who get into your sales funnel or sales pipeline.

Thus, you need to have an established sales pipeline to become successful at sales.

But in case you don’t have one, your marketing can take up your pipeline. Or if you’ve hired the right talented team, they can create their own sales pipeline by building meaningful relationships or through other outbound efforts.

However, if you wish to go with the former, i.e., let marketing fill your sales pipeline, then you must focus on your branding, brand positioning, product pricing, and marketing mix. For instance, you might decide to focus all your marketing efforts on creating a robust online presence on Google, social media, and other search engines, or you might choose to focus on expanding your email list.

Marketing’s end goal is to pull in as many high-quality, low-cost, and filtered leads into your sales pipeline as possible.

Meanwhile, your sales team can also construct their pipeline through outbound efforts like cold calling, cold emailing, networking, door-to-door sales, etc.

Marketing and sales are both challenging tasks that require different skill sets.

Nevertheless, to make sure you are dumping your money into the right approach that fosters growth in your business, you must ascertain the most suitable strategy for your unique business. For that, it’s time to go further in-depth and discover the five top differences between marketing and sales.

Time Horizon

One of the key differences between sales and marketing is the total amount of time required before you can finally see the results.

While in sales, you can see the results within a 3-month period, in marketing, it can take you up to a year before you begin seeing notable results. And even then, remember that you have just “started” seeing the results, which means your efforts have just begun gathering steam.

Now, as one might expect, business owners are sales-driven people; they want short-term results, and they want to see them right away.

So, if the business were some sort of sport, the owner would want his company to win the game in the first quarter only.

But with marketing, you would most often lose the first quarter. It is more of a fourth-quarter game. Now you might seem to be losing the game in the fourth quarter, too, but suddenly, it would turn the tables and make you win.

What you need to remember here is that marketing that pays off can compound into results, which is just not attainable with a sales mindset.

So if marketing is exponential, sales is linear. If sales is a game of numbers, marketing is an art.

The focus of sales is to achieve short-term results and allowances, while marketing doesn’t even care about it. It is focusing on long-term gains.

Sure, marketing takes a great deal of time, effort, and even resources, but fortunately, it is all worth it.

Customer Preference

How does it feel when a person tries to sell a product to you?

Like how do you feel knowing that the other person just wants to make a few bucks through you?

Will you trust that person or even be interested in listening to them?

Well, we don’t know about you, but the majority of people hate being sold to. Customers typically prefer interacting with a person who is more explanatory than pushy and is more concerned with helping you genuinely instead of getting money from you.

Most people today don’t really like dealing with salespeople at all. Or well, at least salespeople who become overly pushy to get you to make a purchase anyhow.

With the emergence of the internet, a lot of customers have abandoned sales strategies in exchange for more value-based content.

By offering value to your target audience through marketing, you are actually helping them realize their need for your product/service.

So, in this case, marketing is the clear-cut winner. Not that sales isn’t effective anymore; it’s just that over the years, pushy and incompetent salespeople have ruined the reputation of sales to the extent that even the name scares some people away.

In short, customers nowadays prefer to engage more with marketing since it is more interested in meeting the goals and satisfying their needs.

Attracting vs. Chasing

Sales professionals need to chase opportunities, and if they don’t have opportunities, they have to create a list of potential customers and chase them instead.

In contrast to marketing, marketing creates opportunities. Effective marketing will catch eyes and turn people’s heads towards your brand.

However, one crucial thing that you should keep in mind is that it is useless to expect your marketing to only bring in good leads for your business. Even if you implement the best of the best targeting in the world, even then, you will see some bad leads too.

In order for your marketing to be successful, it needs to capture the audience’s attention. Now you may make every possible attempt to bring in a particular group of audience, but it would be ignorant to think that you won’t have a bunch of poor quality leads as well.

In short, the advantage of sales is that you can decide who you want to chase. But with marketing, you can’t do this – here, your success depends on the leads you’ve acquired. If you have obtained bad leads or no leads at all, you won’t succeed.

Meanwhile, with marketing, you have the advantage of drawing prospects to your brand instead of chasing them aggressively and receiving a fair share of rejection.

And well, frankly, with sales, you must get used to rejection as early as you can, and it’s no secret that sales isn’t the ideal line for soft-hearted people.

Storytelling vs. Asking

Effective marketing narrates a story, and if you don’t have a good story, you’ll fail.

But what story exactly should you tell your audience? – A story of a person who had a problem that was quickly resolved with the help of your product or service.

Or a story of a person who is suffering and exasperating that feeling to the extent where they must do something about it.

As we discussed earlier, marketing is an art, and so is storytelling. And if you fail to create a messaging that is capable of capturing your target audience’s attention successfully, then marketing is going to be challenging for you. Thus, you must have good copywriting skills in order to craft engaging messaging.

Contrarily, sales is more about conversations and less about stories.

Conversations where the salesperson typically asks questions from the potential customers. Questions such as “what are your goals?” “How do you plan on achieving those goals?” “How much does accomplishing those goals mean to you?” “What are you willing to do about it?”

Good salespeople sell by asking questions, not by telling stuff.

That means you also need to have good listening skills to be able to sell your product to each individual customer.

If you fail to get it right, you will end up sounding like every typical salesperson ever – just attempting to get your customers to give you money.

So, in a nutshell, while marketing requires good copywriting and communication skills, sales require good listening and communication skills as well.

Marketing Sells Product First; Sales Sell People First

In sales, the majority of customers purchase products from salespeople they really like and trust. And that’s why it isn’t surprising for people to buy a bad product from a friendly salesperson.

Not that you are selling a bad product, but this point indicates the advantage of having talented and professional salespeople within your easy reach.

However, you don’t essentially need to have someone at the front and center to create sales opportunities with marketing.

Effective marketing is self-sufficient and capable of selling a product all by itself. The more effective your marketing is, the less selling you need to do.

Conclusion

Well, these were the top five differences between marketing and sales. Now which one you choose for your business is absolutely 100% your choice. You know what’s best for your business. Take your time to weigh the pros and cons of both and then pick the most suitable approach, even if that means employing both simultaneously.

The big thing to keep in mind here is that marketing is what you do to draw prospects into your sales funnel, whereas sales is what you do to close the prospects who have entered your sales funnel.

In every aspect, marketing and sales have proved to be very different from each other, but they both can work wonders for your business together when done right. While one generates faster results, the other takes a bit more time but delivers long-lasting and invaluable results. So go ahead, keep the pros and cons in mind while choosing your strategy, and you’ll be all set to grow your business and take it to new heights.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

Social media giant Facebook is back again with another striking feature called “Drives.” It’s not the cloud storage service type of drive; it’s in the sense of “food drive,” “clothing drive,” etc. 

Today, the platform has introduced a US-only feature to enable the users to collect as well as donate items like food, clothes, and other essentials for the people in need. Users will be able to access this new feature by visiting the existing Community Help hub. 

Facebook had introduced the Community Help hub back in 2017 to allow the users to centralize their resources after a catastrophe, whether human-made, accidental or natural disasters such as extreme weather events or terrorist attacks. However, this year, the Community Help feature has been utilized at a broader scale as a part of the social network’s Covid-19 efforts, where the platform aimed at helping those affected the most by the outbreak of this pandemic. 

Given how long-lasting this pandemic has turned out to be, it has triggered an economic crisis all over the world, especially in the U.S., where millions of people are jobless now, and millions might no longer have their unemployment benefits by the end of this year as soon as the CARES Act provisions expire. Moreover, the uncertainty continues to be in the air – food insecurity and insufficient funds to pay bills such as house rent and mortgage payments, along with the inability to manage other household expenses, are also affecting millions of people. 

However, with the launch of Facebook Drives, users can create and share their efforts to gather essentials for the needy people, such as a food or clothing drive working to collect goods and other necessities for local shelters, or any event where people are looking to gather items to help the people in need. 

To create a ‘Drive,’ just type “Community Help” in Facebook’s search bar, hit ‘enter,’ then click on “Request or Offer Help,” and then tap “Create Drive.” A form will appear on your screen. All you need to do is fill it out and set a goal for the total number of items you want to collect through your drive. Doing so will allow other people to view how many items are still left to collect with the help of this goal tracker once you publish your Facebook Drive. Once you create it, besides appearing in the Community Help hub, your drive will also show up in your Timeline and News Feed just like any other regular post. 

As per the company’s announcement, this feature has started rolling out today; however, they had also mentioned that it might still not be broadly available to all users for a few coming weeks. Well, this is definitely unfortunate, considering a lot of people most probably would have wanted to run holiday-related Facebook Drives as the holiday season is approaching to collect food, clothes, or toys for holiday meals and gifts for families in need. However, Facebook also said that it would accelerate the feature to make sure it reaches just in time for the holidays. 

The company also mentions that they review all the Community Help hub posts, including Drives now, to make sure they don’t contravene Facebook’s Community Standards or Community Help Product Policies. These guidelines forbid insensitive and promotional content, spam, counterfeit posts, and posts from users under the age of 18, etc. If any post is seen violating these policies, the platform takes it down immediately. 

Meanwhile, as a bonus, Facebook’s Instagram will also be getting new fundraising tools soon. As of now, Instagram users can raise funds using Stickers on their Stories or via Live streaming, but as the fundraising features roll out, users will be able to share fundraiser posts on their feed too. However, no exact time frame is known yet as to when Facebook will roll out these features for Instagram. 

Conclusion

“Drives” is one of the many features that the social network has rolled out as a part of its Covid-19 efforts. Social media platforms have become an indispensable part of our lives today, and it sure is an incredible way to spread the word. While it is a hotspot for spreading misinformation, using it for a noble cause is exactly what we needed. 

With the launch of Facebook’s Drives, we are sure a lot of people will be able to receive the much-needed help in the wake of this crisis. Let’s see how this turns out once the feature is officially available to all.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

This year has seen a tremendous shift in consumer behavior considering the shorter than normal shopping season, uncertainty surrounding last-mile delivery, and the continuing health concerns; the reason is quite evident. Keeping in mind how widespread and enduring this pandemic has turned out to be, none of us could have possibly imagined the circumstances we are currently in. Amid all this, most local businesses have been sent near the edge already, and they might find this holiday season much more competitive than it usually is, which is why they need to prioritize their local SEO strategy.

This holiday cum shopping season, marketers, all the more so, need to put their fingers rigidly on the pulse of their target market and opportunities. Utilizing relevant and real-time customer data is the key.

Understand the Key Concerns of the Consumers and Take Measures to Tackle Them

All of us are going through a tough time phase currently, and therefore, it is crucial that you realize the problems the shoppers are facing.

For starters, you should offer multiple payment options such as debit card, credit card, PayPal, etc., to your customers to facilitate a smooth shopping experience. This way, shoppers won’t have to struggle at the time of payment and swiftly complete the transaction choosing their convenient payment mode.

Today most customers’ purchase decisions are heavily influenced by three primary factors: convenience, value, and availability. Since people are concerned about their health and safety, they are increasingly turning to online shopping, and they sure are planning to shop more during this holiday season. However, the majority of them have online shopping security concerns, according to a report.

Users have become more tech-savvy than ever. They are progressively scanning, researching, and shopping across multiple websites. They have become more value-conscious now and are constantly seeking reassurance that their data and privacy is secured while purchasing products and services online.

Update your site, local business listings, landing pages, social profiles, etc., with correct answers to outshine FAQs. These optimizations matter a great deal – to such an extent that business listing platforms such as Google and Yelp are putting this information in the spotlight on business profiles for customers. If the users are unable to find what they are searching for on your listing, then they’ll proceed to the next business as simple as that.

Get to Know Your Target Audience ‘Really’ This Holiday Season

Building campaigns based on the past data just won’t pull it off this year. Smart AI and agile marketers will unite to power the messaging and customer experiences required for conversions in upturned markets.

Given the current situation, it is pretty much challenging to predict who will knock on your door (or land in your site’s shopping cart) this holiday season, but you can expect to run into almost every type of customer.

You can experience a variety of motivations and shopping taking place this year. Consumers who have fortunately managed to dodge the pandemic’s direct repercussions might be counterbalancing for the luxuries they have given up this year – may be a canceled foreign trip or a big purchase that was postponed because of the initial uncertainty. However, on the other hand, you will find customers who are financially and physically affected by the pandemic, have a limited amount of funds to spend and are also restrained by the lockdown measures.

Grasping your both macro market and micro opportunities at the individual site visitor-level are the key to make the most out of your opportunities for conversions this holiday season.

Offer Personalized and Engaging Content That Complements Holiday Season Search

According to reports, the majority of customers have started shopping for products online, and most of them plan to continue doing so even after the pandemic ends. Even though the products are smaller in value, customers are browsing and shopping more often.

Make sure that the content you are offering this holiday season is personalized and engaging and reflects your target audience’s current wants, needs, behaviors, and interests accurately. Use dynamic content optimization to activate your search insights to keep pace with the shifting customer behaviors.

This year has been a hard one for everyone. So the best thing to do is think like your customer who is worn out of the effects of the pandemic. Make your customers realize how purchasing your product/service can add entertainment, comfort, security, or maybe fulfill a necessity in their or their loved one’s life.

Utilize all the available tools to expand and add interest to your search results.

Publish new photos and videos more frequently.

Leverage Google Posts to feature promotions, products/services, in-store or virtual events, and so on.

Ensure that your on-page SEO is right and your web pages have appropriate schema markup.

Work with your paid search team jointly to make sure that your paid and organic strategies are augmenting each other, not cannibalizing.

Maintain interest and gain more traction across different channels changing your content types often.

Focus on Building Experiences

Ever since people have started spending more time in their homes, they have also started spending more time watching television, reading, taking part in hobbies, writing, playing games, and engaging in other fun and recreational activities. All this is only because they are craving for experiences that may help fill that void left behind by closed restaurants, canceled events and concerts, limited travel, and fewer in-person meetings.

Even outside of this pandemic’s impact, it was expected that customer experience would outweigh the product and pricing as the primary brand differentiator. No matter how much planning you are putting into it, consumers are having an experience with your brand. Therefore, during this holiday season, focusing on this aspect is definitely worth it.

For example, when in-store shopping isn’t possible, you can offer your local shoppers a different way to engage with your business, like pasting a QR code on your door for them to scan, which will direct them to an online experience.

Regardless of what channel and format you pick, analyze what type of experience you are curating for your customers. How does your brand demonstrate that it is devoted to their happiness and satisfaction? How does your brand grab and retain their attention and interest?

Your customer interactions are not merely touchpoints, but they define their overall shopping experience. Take time to think things over and improve the customer experience.

Be Sure to Highlight Your Local Relevance

As per recent research, consumers are showing more interest in supporting small businesses, and the majority of them would love to shop from local businesses.

This is an excellent opportunity for businesses. Think about how you will clarify your local relevance to your potential customers and the search engine you depend upon to place you in front of them?

Be sure to claim, verify, and optimize all locations.

Localize your content. Post more on-location photos and videos to engage your audience. Wherever possible, cite local landmarks, participate in local events, and establish connections within your local community.

Perform local keyword research and optimize your website, landing pages, and business listings.

Make your fulfillment options clear that you offer to your local customers, such as additional shipping options, contactless delivery, curbside pickup, etc.

Capitalize on your local reviews by tracking them closely, responding quickly, and featuring positive reviews across different channels.

CONCLUSION

Consumer behavior has seen a dramatic shift this year, and the trends are changing too. This holiday season will prove to be an exceptional shopping season, provided that you make the most out of it by taking the necessary measures. Keep your customers engaged with your brand continuously via content, offers, updates, etc. This is the best way to keep your brand on the top-of-mind of your customers.

People are Covid-weary right now and seeking entertainment, comfort, and convenience. If you want your business to thrive this holiday season, take the steps discussed in this blog, and you will see promising results.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms that people today love to spend time on. However, if you have been keeping up with it recently, you must have noticed it has introduced many changes over a relatively short period. But the latest update has turned out to be a disaster (we guess it is safe to say so considering the outrage among users) as it hints that the platform is shifting its focus towards the “Reels” feature, which has disappointed its loyal users.

If you have logged in to your Instagram account over the last few days, you must have observed a teeny-tiny but significant change in the user interface.

Well, if you remember, a few months ago, Instagram replaced the “Explore” button with “Reels” and shifted the former at the top of the screen beside the direct message icon. This change caused quite a discomfort as users would habitually click on the button that earlier opened their explore feed only to find reels videos there.

A similar change has been introduced with the latest update where Instagram has replaced the “Create” button (the plus icon) with the “Reels” button and the ‘Activity” tab (the heart icon) with the “Shop” tab on the bottom navbar. Users can now find the create button and activity tab on their screen’s top right-hand side beside the direct message button.

Whether Instagram has done this deliberately or not, giving the “Reels” a center position on its navigation bar gives the users a hint that the platform is now giving more priority to Reels and Shopping than the main feed content. As one can figure it out, users are not really delighted with this, and you can see how furious they are through their online posts and tweets.

Instagram’s Take on This New Update

With its recent announcement about the update, Instagram asserts that the way youngsters and content creators of this generation are using the platform is transforming. The number of short videos posted across the platform has skyrocketed, and also there has been a tremendous shift towards online shopping ever since the pandemic hit the world.

On this new addition of the reels tab, Instagram believes that it offers a type of global stage to the content creators for sharing their art and work with the rest of the world and have an opportunity to break out and discover an audience.

However, if truth be told, this Reels feature is actually competing with the famous TikTok platform directly, and Instagram is hyping it just like it hyped the “Stories” feature, which was also copied from another popular social media platform, Snapchat.

But unlike Instagram Stories, Reels is not resonating with the platform’s loyal users, which is why the app is pouring all the more efforts and going the extra mile by actually placing the tab front and center.

Replacing the “Create” tab with the “Reels” feature is certainly a risk, although the company believes that not introducing such changes will be an even bigger risk to the platform’s future.

Moreover, Instagram further said that they don’t bring these changes without giving it a good deal of consideration. Plus, it’s been a while since the platform has made any significant changes to its home screen. The way people create content and enjoy social media has significantly changed. Instagram believes that the greatest risk to its platform is not that it changes too often, but that it doesn’t change fast enough and becomes irrelevant to the audience.

While the company seems quite excited about this new update, its user base does not seem to have mutual feelings.

In fact, the audience seems to be so furious on Instagram that they took to various platforms, including Twitter, to share their hard feelings. Not just the regular Instagram users but even influencers with millions of followers have shown their disappointment (only to a level that allows them to work on it safely) about this latest update.

This rage isn’t just among a group of users; it seems consistent across the platform. Users believe that Instagram is not mending things that the audience sees as broken; instead, it is bringing in new things that nobody even asked for.

Conclusion

Taking all this into consideration, it is crystal-clear that all Instagram users want a simple and easy to use platform that they can easily navigate and an algorithm that shows them the content they are truly interested to see.

Clearly, users don’t care about watching the Reels videos or shopping via Instagram; that’s not why they open the app. However, only time can tell whether or not the platform is able to make a shift in the user behavior, whether the users will be sold on this Reels feature, or the app will be forced to go back to its former version.

As of now, we can’t say anything for sure. But we will definitely find out a lot about the impact this new update is having on the users once Instagram’s next quarterly report is published.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.