Why Mobile Important Now ???

 A little more than a year later, over half of all worldwide searches happen on mobile devices. It’s a big deal in marketing.If your site isn't mobile-friendly, you’re waving goodbye to more than half of your potential. Google wants to help with useful links and tools as well as guides designed specifically for content management systems (CMS). It’s good for you, and it’s good for Google.

A mobile world.

It’s hard to remember the world before smartphones. They’ve changed everything. According to Morgan Stanley, 91 percent of Americans keep their phones within reach 24/7.
We use them all the time for what’s been dubbed “micro-moments,” those countless instances when we turn to our phones for information, directions, to do something, to buy something, to compare, to evaluate, to learn and more.
Consider this: Search queries using “near me,” “close” or “nearby” have increased 34 times since 2011. Among smartphone users, 82 percent use a search engine when looking for local businesses. It must be a magic number: 82 percent of smartphone owners also consult their devices while shopping in a store. With apologies to Stanley Kramer, it’s a mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile world.
Related: 15 Tips for Designing a Mobile-Friendly E-Commerce Site
Talking about “mobile SEO" vs.“regular SEO" is a bit of a misnomer. It’s just SEO. They’re all cogs in the same machine.
That said, if the thought of launching a “mobile SEO" campaign gives you nightmares, it's worth walking through the basics. Take these steps to avoid being penalized by search engines (you need their love) and begin targeting mobile users.

Mobile-friendly is a must.

Mobile-friendly simply means a site looks good and behaves properly on a mobile device. A mobile-friendly site can be designed in a number ways:

• Responsive. The site morphs depending on the size of the screen.
• Parallel-mobile. A second, independent site created for mobile users.
• Dynamic-serving. The server detects and loads an appropriate page depending on the user agent.  

Each type of site has its pros and cons, but a responsive site is the easiest and most cost-effective to implement. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also Google’s official recommendation. You can accomplish this using a responsive theme, for which you’ll find free options and paid options, or a responsive plug-in.
Your first step is to determine whether your website is, in fact, mobile-friendly.
The mobile-friendly test from Google is straightforward. Enter your URL. Google's tool will tell if you're you're mobile-friendly and what you can do to improve your results if you don't pass muster.

Page speed matters.

We know mobile friendliness is a ranking signal. So is site speed. Mobile users expect service on demand: 40 percent of surfers will abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load.
Check your site’s speed using PageSpeed Insights. The guide presents both mobile and desktop results, letting you know which features are issue-free and helpfully suggesting which elements need serious attention. GTmetrix is another handy resource.
Next, turn to the Google Search Console for tons of useful tools and advice. To tackle speed concerns, you’ll need to look into your Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) data. AMP is a stripped-down, faster HTML designed for mobile users. You can use Google AMP tools to see all pages that implement AMP, identify which of them contain errors and learn what you can do to fix those mistakes.
Pages built using AMP load anywhere from 15 to 85 percent faster, but that’s only the start of the story. You can learn more at AMP Project (including tutorials for getting started). Just be aware it’s not for everyone or every site. It’s best for news-type sites such as blogs, and that’s in part because AMP doesn’t support opt-in forms. Adding AMP to Wordpress is reasonably uncomplicated, and sites using it will rank higher in mobile search-engine results pages (SERPs).
Finally, explore Mobile Usability on the Google Search Console. It reports any existing errors, which might include flash usage, a font that’s too small or a viewport that isn’t configured. Any errors will affect your mobile SEO, so eliminate them wherever you can.

Use Google My Business.

One stop. Done. Want to be found when people search online? Google My Business gets your address, contact details and hours on both Google Search and Google Maps. You can edit it all from one convenient platform. Add photos, respond to reviews and shape how your business appears online.
It’s easy. And crucial. Do it.

Claim your business.

Claim your business and check the details on local directories such as Yelp, Bing Places, Yellow Pages, CityGrid and Foursquare.
These services are increasingly popular, and people use them to find local products and services. Bonus: They’re ranked favorably by the search engines. Follow the guidelines, and make sure everything is up-to-date.
Google Maps may lead the way in mobile location-finding, but Apple Maps still is at the party. Don’t ignore it. Publish accurate information so people can find and contact you when they’re on the go.

Track mobile stats on Google Analytics.

Log in to Google Analytics and conduct some research on your mobile site visitors. Filter those results by day, time and device to discover exactly when your mobile customers are most active. Publish mobile-friendly content (more on that below) at those times to maximize your effect and reach.

Create mobile-friendly content.

Not all content is mobile-friendly, even when it’s on a mobile-friendly site. Focus on these tactics:

• Bullet points, which are easy to scan
• Short and concise text
• Easily shared articles and links
• Compressed images and videos that do not auto-play, so you benefit from faster load times and less data consumption
• Meta-title and meta descriptions that are short and to the point -- perfect for mobile displays

Time of day is a factor here, too. Publish shorter content during morning and afternoon commutes and longer pieces during typical lunch breaks for your target market. Save your longest content for when people are likely to be at home. And remember, mobile users often look for informational content.

Use local keywords.

When conducting keyword research, be sure include local vocabulary that might be unique to your area. Think about terms and slang that don’t appear anywhere else: nicknames for neighborhoods or the city itself, colorful and relevant expressions, regional specialties or whatever.
When people search for you online, what language and words might they actually use? Target them.

Optimize for voice search.

People are talking to Siri or Google Now more than ever on their smartphones. In fact, 20 percent of Google searches on Android are now done via voice search. That amounts to hundreds of millions of inquiries, with 55 percent of teens and 41 percent of adults using voice search at least once per day.
Voice search is the better option when walking (or driving -- which you shouldn’t do). But it does have its own set of criteria. Voice-search queries tend to be more conversational. We pose a question or ask our phones to perform a task in the same way we would talk to another human being.
Craft your content to match those specific, real-life questions and optimize for the three biggest voice platforms.

Remember the takeaway.

There’s a lot more you could do, but this is a great jumping-off point. It is the beginner’s guide, after all.
If you take away only two things, these are it: Make sure you’re mobile friendly, and remember that page speed matters.Mobile optimization will get only more important. Don’t be left behind.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

So you’re thinking about adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to your website? Stop thinking and start doing! Of course, it is all about how you implement AMP, but we'll get into that.
If you’re unfamiliar with AMP, it’s an open-source technology that enables pages on your site to load quickly for users on a mobile device. This happens with the help of a JavaScript library and some additional HTML markup.
Here are five reasons why you should add AMP technology to your website:

1. AMP is essential for good mobile SEO.

By now, you already know that if you want your site to rank well, you need to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly. That’s also why you need AMP. Think of it as the latest iteration of mobile-friendly design.
With AMP, your pages and blog posts will load quickly on mobile devices. That will not only give your users a better experience, but it will also give Google a good reason to rank your site well in the mobile search engine results pages (SERPs).
But it’s not just about organic ranking with AMP. Your site could be featured at the very top of the SERPs. How? With Google’s carousel that displays AMP pages -- and only AMP pages -- at the very top of the results list.
If you take your mobile device right now and Google a keyword related to current events, you’ll see that the results include a carousel of AMP pages at the very top of the SERPs. That’s where your page could be, but only if you adopt AMP.

2. AMP is so fast, it will reduce your bounce rate.

Don’t you hate a high bounce rate? When people visit your site, hang around for a few seconds, and then go somewhere else, you’re obviously not doing something right to inspire them to hang around for a while.
One reason people bounce -- the site is just too darned slow. That’s why AMP is so valuable. It will load your pages in a flash so that users will have one less reason to run away.

3. AMP could help you monetize your site.

Do you know why some sites are agonizingly slow? It’s because they’re loaded up with ad technology. It’s ironic, really. Websites increase ads to generate more revenue, but in the process the increased load times caused by the new ads also cause people to leave the site. That means, in all likelihood, less revenue in the long run.
Of course, some users who really like ad-overloaded websites will install ad blockers just so that the sites load faster. That’s also a problem for publishers because their ads won’t be seen, and they’ll lose revenue.
Enter AMP. It was designed with ad monetization in mind.
Here’s what the folks who started the AMP project have to say about their technology as it relates to advertising. “A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach. With that context, the objective is to provide support for a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies in Accelerated Mobile Pages.”
The idea is that mobile pages -- even ones with an abundance of ads -- will load quickly with AMP. As a result, mobile users won’t see any reason to install ad blockers. AMP is great news for advertisers and publishers alike.

4. AMP offers analytics.

By now, everybody in the online marketing universe knows about the importance of analytics. Those are key metrics that offer insight about the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns. AMP offers analytics as well.
Using AMP, you can track important information about visitor counts, new versus returning users, clicks, conversions, video engagement, link tracking and more.
Even better -- AMP analytics offer built-in support for almost every marketer’s favorite analytics tool, Google Analytics. Specifically, you can easily track three request values with AMP -- page views, events and social interactions.
If you’re really a hardcore GA aficionado, you can even use AMP to send custom dimension parameters to Google Analytics. That way, you can track very specific data points.

5. Google loves AMP so you should too. 

If you want to maximize the visibility of your website, then you need to play nice with Google. And Google absolutely loves AMP.
Just within the past few weeks, Google has made it easier to split-test AMP pages, announced that it will display AMP errors to site owners in search results and announced that AMP pages will be added to Google’s organic search results.
And that’s not all. If your site doesn’t support AMP, you might log in to the Search Console and see the following message -- “Google has detected that your site has many pages that may benefit from being served as AMP pages. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are HTML pages that are optimized to load fast on mobile devices. Learn more about AMP benefits in the resources below. Valid AMP pages on your site will be eligible to be shown in search results and receive special badging in search results.”
In other words, Google really wants you to use AMP. Why not get started today?

It's pretty clear that AMP is here to stay. They are even making AMP possible for e-commerce websites now.

How does SME sector helps Improve Business ??

The SME sector is the backbone of India’s growth contributing to 45% of manufacturing output, 40% of total exports and targeted to contribute to 20% of India’s GDP by 2020. Backed by the government via the Digital India initiative, this sector is likely to embrace technology in a big way to promote growth. Irrespective of segment, there are numerous research reports that provide statistics on the link between technology adoption and the SME sector growth with some stating that SME’s who were early adopters of technology could increase their annual revenue 15% faster than their competitors.
This article explores the five leading ways in which technology will encourage growth in the SME sector:

1. Creating a digital business: SME success depends upon creating early differentiators. Thinking through and executing a digital business model could mean getting that ticket to differentiation. This requires a fundamental shift in strategy in favor of leveraging digital, to either bring out a new offering or take the existing offering to market in newer ways.  This means being able to explore technologies such as IoT for say creating a new business offerings, leveraging robotics for say faster plant output, analytics for a deeper understanding into the internal and external business environment to leveraging social for customer outreach or cloud for flexibility and lower capex. The option are numerous. It only requires very strong business understanding to be able to analyze the existing business models, analyze what the ecosystem looks like, have a very strong understanding of the customer and their unstated expectations to then be able to devise an appropriate strategy to create the digital business model.
2. Hiring the right talent: Senior management of SME’s need to change the lens with which they view enterprise talent. Digital talent is not only about technical skills, but goes much beyond permeating business processes, to deal with the new requirements brought about by changing customer expectations. As a famous quote goes “Even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15% of one’s financial success is due one’s technical knowledge and about 85% is due to skill in human engineering, to personality and the ability to lead people.”  Transforming business by leveraging digital is a huge opportunity provided that the SME equips itself with the right talent that is able to accelerate the pace of growth.
3. Information Management to increase productivity: With fully automated business processes, the SME creates a paperless office, where the right information to execute a business process seamlessly is available to the right user when they need it. No longer do they need to clamor for information – everything that they need to deliver process cycle time is available to them on their fingertips including complete automation of workflows and integration to the ERP or back end applications. What this really leads to is significant increase in productivity and doing more with less.
4. Understanding the customer / customer outreach: What used to be a last channel of resort for customers is now turning out to be the natural and most immediate touch point for progressive brands.  According to some studies, companies with social care experience see a 5.6% increase in the first contact resolutions, 6.5% increase in agent productivity and 17.5% increase in SLA attainment. Social is being leveraged by SME’s like never before to gain a good understanding of the customer. With social and sentiment analysis, SME’s in the B2C space are not only able to better understand customer’s perception of a brand and their expectations, but also leverage it for generating leads, managing engagement with prospects to delivering customer service in newer ways.
5. Lower capex with cloud: Rather than owning assets, SME’s can leverage cloud to be operators of those assets owned by an external provider. This enables quick readiness and faster ‘reach to their enterprise goals’, thereby making it a significant driver for SME growth.

The SME segment plays a very crucial role in the socio-economic growth story of the country, and technology is likely to become a sine qua non for driving business growth. Taking a lead early on in this respect will make a big difference between the also-rans to those who are really going to drive a new wave of growth enabled by technology.

Growth Strategies Hiring Technology Small BizTips Small Businesses

Buying Needs Social proofs

These days consumers are influenced by other people more than they realize it is also that  social norms influence consumption behavior and even private interests, including one’s taste in music. This is what makes the concept of social proof a powerful one.

What is social proof?

In Science social proof is described as a psychological phenomenon in which people follow the actions of others in an effort to reflect what is considered correct behavior for any given situation -- including online experiences. Simply put, social proof influences people's decisions on how they should behave.
We've traditionally turned to a variety of useful sources as social proof. These include credible experts, thought leaders, celebrities, friends and the wisdom of the crowd. But today's diners rarely go to a restaurant without first visiting Yelp, and shoppers seldom make a meaningful purchase without first reading what verified buyers have to say. Online reviews have significant effects on purchasing behaviors. Predictably, they've emerged as one of the most potent forms of social proof.

When customers read reviews on various sites such as Google, Amazon or TripAdvisor, they depend on star ratings to determine the quality of a product or service. They read others' comments and ask increasingly specific questions.

• “Will this bank location help solve my problem the way it solved others’ problems?”
• “Is the food as good as advertised? What do previous diners really think?”
• “How long will I have to wait before I see the doctor? How long did others have to wait?”
• “Based on others’ experiences, what potential issues or problems might I have to face when I decide to buy this product?”

Do reviews really guide purchase decisions?

According to a survey nearly eighty percent of consumers in the United States read reviews before making a purchase decision. The report reinforces findings in a previous study that found that 87 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust friends and family. On the other end of the spectrum, four out of five consumers reverse their purchase decisions based on negative reviews.

People take positive reviews and high ratings as social proof a product or service is worth the purchase. They reason, “This has great reviews, so I’m buying it.”

How do reviews shape perception and future feedback?

According to a study published in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, the average rating for a hotel with 11 to 20 reviews is 3.5 out of 5 stars, with “terrible” reviews (a rating of 1 star) at close to 12 percent. Interesting, as a hotel sees 101 reviews or more, its average star rating increases to 3.9. The feedback pattern, therefore, favors quantity. The more your business is reviewed, the likelier you are to receive higher ratings.
Apart from providing social proof for customers looking to make a purchase decision, reviews also provide social proof in other ways. These online testimonials shape how people perceive brands. And reviews also influence what people think they should say, when it's time to add their own voice to the conversation.
A customer’s opinion about a Yelp-listed restaurant with 100 reviews and an average rating of 4.5 stars is less likely to go against the grain and offer a counterpoint to all the positive feedback. The consumer thinks, “This has great reviews, so I’m going to say the same about it.”

How should you manage and respond to reviews?

To stay competitive, you must be able to effectively manage your online reputation. Track and monitor your reviews. Know when and where your customers are talking about your brand. Respond to customer feedback, both positive and negative. Dive deeper into the comments to look for useful insights and information that will help you improve the customer experience.
Related: Why Big Businesses Must Proactively Manage Their Online Reputations
Here are a few tips on responding to negative reviews:

• If you or your staff made a mistake, apologize. Even if you didn’t make a mistake, apologize and thank the reviewer for taking time to tell you what he or she thinks. Social proof is most potent when you’re able to turn unhappy customers into loyal fans. If someone wrote a harshly unfair comment and gave your business a low rating, keep your head up, say sorry, and tell them you hope they’ll come back so you can offer a better experience.
• Address all parts of the review. For example, if the reviewer writes the bank teller was rude or your bank’s app is buggy, acknowledge the issues and address them individually in your response.
• Ask the customer to reach out to you directly. Explore whether there’s anything you can do to make up for the customer's bad experience. There's a caveat, though: Never offer bribes or incentives for customers to change their review's sentiment.

Of course, harnessing the potential of reviews as social proof isn’t only about righting wrongs or recovering critics and detractors. It’s also about activating happy customers and promoters. Keeping that in mind, here are some equally important tips on maximizing the social proof inherent in positive reviews:

• Say thank you. If a customer took the time to present social proof for other prospective customers to see, expressing your gratitude is the very least you can do.
• Reinforce what customers love most about their experiences. In your response, explain that the delicious cupcakes actually are homemade. Let them in on how you grow your own arugula, or tell them others also have commented on the amazing views from your resort's cliffside swimming pool.
• Respond in a reasonable amount of time. Seven days or less is an ideal time frame to start.

Customers who are active online can influence others’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. While there's no way to control what people say about your business online or offline, you do have the power to change the conversation. Managing customer feedback and leveraging the right kind of social proof ensures you account for the positive opinions shared by your happiest customers. 

Not Yet Samsung Re- Launched Note 7

Samsung has said it will delay restarting the sale of its Galaxy Note 7 phone in South Korea, as the firm needs more time for the global recall of the device.

The South Korean tech giant was forced to recall some 2.5 million devices globally due to overheating batteries.
Dozens of devices were reported to have caught fire.
The phone was to be back on the shelf on 28 September but is now expected to be available 1 October at the earliest.
On 2 September Samsung had said it would stop selling the phones and offered to replace the ones already sold. The firm also urged people to stop using the device.
The global recall affects 10 markets. In South Korea, some 200,000 customers have already returned their devices with the same number of people still left for the recall, according to Samsung.
Reuters reported that the next markets where the phone will be available for sale again will be Australia and Singapore in October.

What makes lithium batteries catch fire?
On Friday, cabin crew on an Indian passenger aircraft used a fire extinguisher to tackle a smoking older Samsung handset.
The Galaxy Note 2 - a model launched in 2012 - was smouldering and spitting sparks, according to a statement from airline IndiGo.

Image copyright Ariel Gonzalez

Image caption The recall came after reports of 'exploding' phones

In the US, regulators have ordered a formal recall of the Note 7, while the country's Federal Aviation Administration has told airline passengers not to bring the phones on planes unless they keep them turned off and don't charge them during the flight.
A number of airlines around the globe have also banned the phone from being used or charged on their planes.
The phone was originally launched on 19 August and had been generally well-received by critics and consumers.
The recall comes at a crucial time for Samsung as rival Apple has just released its new iPhone 7.

Why Email marketing ???

It is fact that Email marketing allows you to reach a highly targeted audience at a low cost. In fact, experts at Campaign Monitor, an email marketing company, estimate that an effective email marketing message has the potential to result in $38 in revenue, for just $1 of marketing investment.Here are some email marketing conversion tips all small businesses can use:

1. Include descriptive tags with your images. 

Online publication giants revealed that the average person receives more than 400 commercial emails a month. Emails that include images can help your small business stand out in an already-crowded inbox, especially if you choose those that evoke an emotional response to a product, a promotional campaign concept or your brand. 

However, email marketing now comes with a “catch 22,” given that at least half of all email messages are checked on a mobile device, according to experts at Litmus, an email analytics company. While mobile devices may positively boost response to time-sensitive messages, small screens aren’t always conducive to images. If a recipient opens your email only to see that images have been blocked, you could be banished to his or her spam box indefinitely. The more often that happens, the harder it is to form a reputation as a sender whose emails are recognized as legitimate: According to the experts at Sender Score, 28 percent of the email messages that are sent reach a user’s inbox.

2. Don’t send messages that aren’t targeted. 

While you may not have robust data on prospects, you can learn a little more about what they respond to with each message you send. Diligently track open and click-through rates with each campaign, including the optimal times to send messages based on response and headline tests. Place email recipients in segments based on your findings to build an effective drip campaign that is personalized and relevant based on their activity.  Internet Retailer reports that retailer totes Isotoner improved its email marketing campaign revenue by a whopping 7,000 percent when it used analytics based on past email activity, site search history and past purchases to deliver highly targeted email messages.

3. Don’t ask for too much. 

Segment your email marketing campaigns so that each recipient is served the most relevant offer based on his or her preferences, and that he or she is presented with one clear message, call to action and a seamless checkout experience -- whether on a desktop or mobile device. Prefill special offers the email message may include so customers aren’t required to key special discount codes that are part of your email offer at checkout. Partner with a reputable mobile payment provider for a secure and branded checkout experience to eliminate concerns with payment security, or require the customer to take additional steps to complete the transaction. For example, Mobile Commerce Daily reports that despite the popularity of PayPal by retailers in online sales, evidence suggests that it kills conversion by nearly 15 percent (particularly when consumers are shopping on a mobile device), because it requires additional steps to make a purchase.

4. Use emails to form a lasting relationship. 

Email campaigns should build upon one another, and acknowledge what you know about the customer, based on his or her past activity. In fact, marketing firm Epsilon cites data indicating that “triggered” emails targeted based on a recipient’s engagement with past messages have open rates that are 76 percent higher than those with generic messaging. If you cannot convince your customers to click on your message, you can’t convert them, regardless of your pricing or product quality.

Conclusion 

Email marketing is an affordable way to communicate with prospects and customers, gain valuable insights about their preferences and increase sales. However, it requires strategy to convert message recipients into buyers. Follow these steps to improve the ROI you realize from every email you send.

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Make Your Digital Marketing to the Customer Experience

As much as two decades ago, the way consumers seek for buying brands depended on how much the brands were able to thrust their products into the consumers’ vicinity and at the same time, appeal to their taste. For instance, a commercial soap ad in between a TV series or a radio program, would be enough to sway consumers’ preferences of buying a soap product. In fact, that gave rise to the term ‘soap operas.’ Procter and Gamble (P&G) would produce radio and TV shows so that they could advertise their products during the breaks.
Fast forward to 2016, and you will see that brands have drastically changed the way they communicate with consumers. In the Internet era, brands push their products to their consumers in the form of recommendations. That is why Amazon and other ecommerce sites are able to execute targeted ads in the form of suggestions and recommendations.

Today’s technologically-savvy consumers are more informed and knowledgeable, and are moving out of the traditional route of researching and making purchasing decisions about products. They research well before buying a product or a service. This post that highlights ‘from search to store’ by Matt Lawson does great justice about how brands must ‘deliver on expectations in moments that matter’. Then the pertinent question to digital marketers is:

• What is our customer's’ decision making journey?
• Why and how should we align our digital marketing strategies that will fall in place with the customer’s decision?

Let’s give a quick look at what our customer’s decision making journey looks like: Recognition → Familiarization → Consideration → Purchase
The idea is to avoid premature optimization in marketing. We don’t solve a non-existent problem, when it comes to engineering. But we identify a problem and build a solution around it. Similarly we must focus on the right things at the right stage when it comes to digital marketing.

Recognition.

If you think about building a business, your website would be a natural location to showcase everything about your business and product. And one way to build maximum awareness and recognition is by generating traffic to your website. So, your first objective would be to get, say, 100 visitors a day, and then, 1,000 visitors a week.
37Signals wrote an interesting post on how they built the buzz with their side projects. “It takes a lot to differentiate your brand in today’s “me too” world of electronic business solutions”, it says. And it is very important to engage in such projects that will ensure that traffic is headed your way -- consistently. How:

• Hang out where your audience hangs out and sign out with your website details -- answer relevant questions on Reddit, HackerNews, Quora etc., so that the audience learns of your expertise in the space.
• Use Call to Actions at different places on the site so that the visitors are engaged and are compelled to explore the website, rather than opt for an early exit.
• Invest in SEO efforts to drive organic search traffic to your website.
• Paid Search is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website, but businesses must be able to justify the expenses while measuring the outcome. (Here’s a hack - you could experiment with a paid search channel like Google Adwords even before you build your product, if you have the budget. This works well as a research tool, to see if the product you are building has demand and will sell).

Familiarization.

Right, now that you have a 1.000 potential leads visiting your site, how do you familiarize them with your product? How do you ensure that they know what they have signed up for? Customers rely on their common sense of familiarity of choosing a familiar and known brand. How do you feature there? Simple - meaningful and engaging content.

Content Marketing found its origins in 1891. More than a century ago, August Oetker, the German inventor of baking powder - Backin, sold packages to households. What made Backin a familiar brand was the little recipes printed on the back of these packages. In 1911, he published his cookbook and over 100 years, it reached a global audience with about 19 million copies. That was the first example of content marketing.
It’s 2016, and that’s still pretty much how we could do it too along with the added advantage of using social media. With the right message and relevant content, across mediums, marketers should focus their attention on their target market.

Consideration.

The top of the mind problem for a brief time is signup conversion. So you move to the next stage, which is user engagement. Now, here’s the thing about brand consideration. In today’s digital world, consumers speak with brands as much as brands speak with consumers. In this two way communication, you would need to empower customers to explore your product, to play around the sandbox test site, to ask questions. How:

• Two way engagement with customers
• Test and prioritize objectives. Optimize CTAs. Here are some great posts on optimizing CTAs by HubSpot and CrazyEgg.
• Treat pricing as a filter. Change pricing to attract the right audience that you need.

Buying.

Now you are happy with user engagement, why aren't they converting into paying customers sooner? How:        

• Continue making tweaks -- tweak application onboarding process.
• Setup demo calls with prospects to understand their business requirements and make  suggestions on how your product can cater to them.
• Fix application onboarding with drip emails, simplifying documentation, product and measure time it takes for customers to go-live.

While you are at it, rinse and repeat what is already working for your business to bring in more traffic. With hundreds of such iterations you now have a pipe instead of a straw to convert visitors into customers. A positive user experience through all these bottlenecks will ensure that your customers who have now bought your product will spread positive word about not just your business, but your attention to detail to improve customer experience.