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Collaborative working allows teams to pool their expertise, foster innovation, and solve complex problems more efficiently. It enhances communication, encourages creativity, and breaks down silos, leading to better decision-making and faster project completion. I love to break my fast on the balcony. It lends me a unique sense of pleasure that I am unable to acquire through the hectic monotony of my life otherwise. When I got down to introspecting why that was so, I realized that it’s the charm of the serene morning sun coupled with the blissful chirping of the birds and the waves of positivity exuded in the wee hours of the morning that combine to instill in me such bouts of tranquility, and not the taste of my humble fare of bacon and eggs. As the holiday season finally encroached upon my life, I was happy to dive right into that time of the year that rejoices me the most. So on the very first day of the season, I woke up a tad early, microwaved my hot English muffin and a cup of black coffee (a rare luxury given my morning bouts of lethargy) and settled down in the balcony, wrapped up in a long coat to prevent the tendrils of winter chill from reaching deep into my bones. Right when I was about to unravel the crisp morning paper, I witnessed something unusual. I saw a pair of nesting sparrows. Since the need to have a safe home to keep out the worst of the weather becomes more crucial in winter than at any other time of the year, I saw both of them working together. One was flying straws and pieces of cotton, cloth, and other construction paraphernalia, while the other quickly weaved them together. Within a few hours, I could see that they had managed to put together a cozy nest that was going to be their shelter for the tough season. Their working together reminded me of what most of us forget to do in the digitally influenced world of today; Collaborative working. Also Read: 5 Surprisingly Wonderful Communication Tools Collaborative working is not a new concept for the working class. However, it’s not widely practiced, unfortunately. In this era, remaining connected is probably the most important factor for anyone and thanks to the marvels of the internet, we are now in a better position to effectively get in touch with people we know and care for or the ones we work with. The rising waves of digital influence have rendered the means of collaboration clearer to us. Businesses that capitalize on collaborative working enjoy increased benefits in terms of productivity and effective conflict management and also create a viable workplace that respects the needs of individuals and conforms to the requirements of the team. This, in turn, fosters productivity. It dawned on me that collaborative learning is the dire need of responsible business corporations of today.

4 Benefits of Collaborative Working in the Digital World

Here are the benefits that I believe are going to become the by-products of the action mentioned above:

1. Recognize Individual Talents:

Individual talents are not recognized well until they are assessed within a team environment. Collaborative working challenges each member working within a team and distills their core talents by assessing what they are great at and what they do poorly. Once you are sure about the core competencies of your employees, you will be able to assign tasks to them according to their strengths, which is bound to reap better outcomes.

2. Scalability:

"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." - Helen Keller. The phrase effortlessly sums up the benefit that collaborative working can introduce to organizations. Problem-solving becomes easier and more effective, when multiple heads are put together, and the results that are achieved by sharing resources and leveraging their core competencies become more transparent and scalable. It gets easier to tap into unexplored markets and helps you in strengthening the connections that you have fostered with your customers.

3. Creative Catalyst:

Collaborative working ignites friction among team members. When more brains work together, more ideas are pooled in, hence the approval or rejection of some ideas takes place. Normally, this is termed team friction and is perceived as a negative. Alternatively, we could also summon this disagreement into something positive and create something that complements each of them. This creativity is more applicable to companies working in the design category. Online website design agencies are the ones that are going to get the maximum benefit from it.

4. Collaboration Propels Learning:

Collaborative working promotes learning within organizations. As more resources work together to create a probable solution for an issue, each of them optimizes the working capacity of their teammates beyond their comfort zone. This helps to increase the overall productivity and maximizes the learning and development curve of the individuals. Thankfully, we have multiple tools available that can be used to leverage collaborative working within organizations in the fast-paced digital age of today. Some of the most effective collaborative working tools are:

• Online workspaces
• Forums
• Blogs
• Social media &
• Company wiki

The benefits of using each of these collaborative working tools are pretty obvious and I didn’t find it of much importance to include them here. However, their usage provides comprehensive and easily accessible resources to everyone within the organization. Alternatively, there are digital branding agencies that can help online brands put their best foot forward within their specific industries and can also instill in budding businesses the benefits of collaborative working.

Nothing can be more exasperating than drooling futilely over someone sporting your dream shoes or jacket in the wild, only to realize to your dismay that you can never find it in the chaotic mess online. Without a viable style, brand, code, or distinguishing characteristic to anchor the visual search. An avid researcher would find digging up a piece of apparel or a product through text search alone, harder than excavating out a hidden underground city! Now imagine this; you love the floral dress a stranger is wearing to a party. Instead of having to swallow your pride and ask them about it. You simply take a picture, search for the dress entirely on the basis of the image, and get a number of results that include actionable information about the product. You can pinch yourself now since 2018 is promising to take visual search technology to unprecedented heights of success! It’s high time for entrepreneurs to position themselves in the new realm of marketing as we are moving quickly into the world of visual search. Recent improvements in visual search technology allow consumers to upload an image or take a picture of a product, and then use that image for their search. One of the greatest advantages of visual search is its freedom from textual language. It draws on images to surpass the semantic difference between keywords projected by marketers and those used by consumers. Instead of laboriously searching for the product you want. You can use an image of that product and immediately find the website from where you can purchase it. According to a Visual Search report by Moz, nearly 74% of consumers say that text-based keywords often prove ineffective when it comes to finding products online. While 67% of consumers claim that the quality of product images matters a lot while making a purchase. Slyce also asserts that “businesses that implemented visual search gained great advantages. Visitors who used visual search viewed 37% more products, started 68% more returns visits, spent 36% more time on the website, and had an average order value of 11% more than those visitors who did not use visual search”. If you want to make the most out of this innovative visual search technology. Follow these easy steps to make it easier for your customers to discover your products or services while providing them with a great customer experience.

Create High Quality Content

Keep in mind that your visual content must be of high quality if you really want to inspire confidence and encourage consumers to buy directly on the basis of the images they see. Authenticity matters a lot to readers and consumers alike. It can help you drive more sales. Desired.de recently implemented a visual search on their website. It simply gives users more suggestions about a product category by hovering over a product that catches their fancy.

Be Very Careful About Context

Even while focusing on quality, context should have precedence. Visual search works best when you understand how your consumers interact with your website. Your audience uses visual search differently on their mobile devices than they do via desktop or laptop. Make sure your visual content is consistently relevant to your target demographic. The UK-based eCommerce fashion brand ASOS recently launched a visual search on its native app. Now users can search for their favorite clothes and accessories using images. The brand wants its users to easily find the products they are looking for. If you are not sure what you want, or you have seen something that has inspired you, visual search gives you visually similar products.

Improve User Experience and Customer Satisfaction

The technology that enables visual search is tailor-made to help users search through images even if they don’t know the product name or anything related to it, but only an image. They can simply capture an image of a product they like most with their cell phone’s camera and upload it on your website. This helps customers search for their desired product and also opens up all the similar products that they might like. It is easy and simple, saving valuable time of youraudience. It also improves the shopping experience of your customers. Having high-quality and well-optimized images on the product pages of your website serves to communicate a better picture to the search engine algorithm and the end users. AsiaOne, Asia’s leading news portal provides a visual search to help readers find and buy outfits or accessories they see on the website by simply hovering over the red shopping bag in the photo. AsiaOne is the first website in Singapore that created a new visual commerce platform with the help of the artificial intelligence company Visenze.

Helps Spear fishers to Find Their Desired Product

Visual search is indeed a powerful tool for customers who are looking for a particular product and want to find it quickly, called spearfishers. Visual search greatly helps spearfishing, as visual input provides better context than text-based keywords and delivers a more accurate set of search results. Let’s take the example of Heels.com. Their visual search feature allows shoppers to upload an image to find their desired product. This is a great example of an exact match application of visual search that takes customers directly to the product page they are looking for. Visual search helps reduce the number of steps the customers have to go through to find a particular product. Thus reducing the shopping cart abandonment rate. It will also eliminate the intricate process that usually frustrates and annoys customers.

Cross-Selling Similar Items

Visual search also serves as a great cross-selling tool. For instance, if your eCommerce store doesn’t have a specific item in stock. It has the ability to show similar or relevant items that might still prompt a purchase. It can help users to imagine how other items might complement it. If you are searching for a blue dress, but you see an image of a woman wearing a blue dress and a pair of blue shoes that completes the entire look, you might be motivated to buy more than one product. Let’s take the example of Urban Outfitters, their visual search software can identify 2D images from ads and catalogs. Thus removing search hurdles and engaging new customers. The visual search option can cross-sell similar items and encourage consumers to buy more products.

How to Add Visual Search Technology to Your Website?

Visual search works perfectly for users who are searching for one specific product. Visual search typically yields more targeted and accurate results that entice these highly qualified leads. To put it in a nutshell, visual search promotes better usability. Your users will get more accurate results and enjoy more positive experiences on your website. Removing unnecessary steps for your consumers should be a critical part of your usability testing. If you want to implement this innovative technology into your website. You can consider different options such as Visenze, Cortexica, Slyce, and more. You can also find specific niche options, such as Snap Fashion, which focuses particularly on fashion. All apps are tailor-made to improve user experience or augment your SEO. Once you have incorporated visual search into your website, it’s time to measure your results and continue tweaking.

Wrapping it Up

Visual images have a charismatic effect that can increase the number of visitors to your website. It can be said that visual data has a real potential to increase your website traffic. But it is not going to completely replace text-based search. You still need rich keywords and detailed metadata to get your images to show up in the search results. However, visuals are a more powerful tool to grab the attention of your audience. Being a digital marketer or business owner, you should create your identity on the visual web with the help of compelling images to appeal to your target audience as it is more customer-friendly. And it’s a rising marketing trend that you should follow to take your business toward new heights of success.

With shopping malls decked out with holly and pumpkin lattes back in season, countless brands are rushing to cash in on the shopping spree fever. Holiday marketing campaigns are pro-life ratings across social media and our inboxes must be flooded with holiday-themed promotional offers. To put it in a nutshell, holiday emails, social media posts, and TVCs are all one gets to see these days. While you may not be one to belt your own rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, and bake reindeer and Santa-shaped cookies. You cannot possibly overlook the holiday season as a perfect time to spread some joy and cheerily connect with your customers! It might seem like holiday marketing is running rampant. Some brands are getting the most out of the holiday shopping season and doing it very well. While others are striving hard to come up with promotional campaign ideas to finish off the year with record-breaking sales. Just like shopping for gifts, planning for holiday promotional campaigns is something you don’t want to put off until the last minute. With Christmas just around the corner and New Year following at its heels, customers are ready to turn their pockets. Therefore, it is important to create a timely plan for reaching out to your existing and potential customers before your competitors do. There are a plethora of brands who actually know the trick of interacting with the right audience and delighting their customers. They promote sharing and evoke emotions by connecting with their brand advocates or partnering with a nonprofit organization. Also Read: Top 5 Successful Marketing Campaigns Are you looking for some great holiday marketing ideas for your Christmas advertising campaigns? Check out these successful holiday marketing drives to spruce up your promotional campaign:

Starbucks’ Newest Holiday Cups

Starbucks has been producing holiday cups for 20 years.  This year, they came up with a unique idea; the cup displays a ubiquitous Christmas tradition; a festooned Christmas tree, illustrations of presents, and people holding hands. Starbucks' Christmas campaign claims that “The holidays mean something different for everyone.” Sanja Gould, a company spokeswoman, says, “This year’s hand-drawn cup features scenes of celebrating with loved ones — whoever they may be. We intentionally designed the cup so our customers can interpret it in their own way, adding their own color and illustrations.” This is an amazing Christmas promotional idea that created social media buzz and gained widespread public attention. The holidays are all about remembering what it means to spread goodness into the world and give love, and these are the emotions the red cup means to evoke!

Coca-Cola: #Holidays Are Coming Campaign

For Coca-Cola fans, the twinkling Coca-Cola Christmas trucks are synonymous with the festive season. For the last twenty-one years, twinkling Coca-Cola Christmas trucks have been spreading holiday cheer across Europe. Coca-Cola holiday trucks herald the festive season each year. The ever-popular Coca-Cola truck tours spread happiness and joy across the whole continent. The brand has already announced its 2017 route and tour dates. Watch the new Coca-Cola Christmas advert 2017 to see the spectacle for yourself: https://youtu.be/1S0z7oTNCkY

HubSpot’s #Holiday Hub Campaign

Do you think your digital marketing team can celebrate Christmas and New Year in style? Take a look at this HubSpot Holiday Hub campaign. The brand used microsites to highlight its holiday campaign and target a particular demographic of online shoppers. The HubSpot holiday-themed microsite is a perfect business promotional idea for your brand. You can also use the animated snow effect using HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript to create a feeling of festive joy.

Google Santa Tracker

Google Santa Tracker has been around for many years, and each year it comes up with more advanced features. The Santa Tracker app includes new games, Android TV support, and more. Every year on Christmas Eve, you can track Santa on his real journey across the globe delivering presents. The Santa tracker is back for 2017 with a lot of new games, a redesigned village, and allowing its users to follow Santa’s journey on Android TV, making it even more fun!

Samsung Galaxy: Unwrap The Feels

https://youtu.be/1fZPghhQWDY Samsung always seeks to bring holiday cheer to its wide user base with some unique and awesome ideas. As virtual reality is gradually becoming an important marketing device for brands to create an exceptional user experience. The brand used the idea of VR Gear in its holiday marketing promotional campaigns. With their Unwrap the Feels campaign for these holidays, the brand wants to portray the feelings that come with relatives gifting their loved ones Samsung Galaxy smartphones equipped with a VR headset. It evokes a broad range of reactions and emotions among recipients – shock, wonder, and happiness, to name a few

Dollar Shave Club: Holiday Shave Set

Last year, Dollar Shave Club came up with an amazing video promoting its Holiday Shave Gift Set with the tagline “The Gift that Other Gifts can’t handle”. In this image, the brand wants to show its audience how its products can spice up the holiday monotony with a simple, catchy idea.

Getting it Right This Christmas and New Year

If your brand wants to get ahead of the curve this Christmas season. You need to focus on what has worked for many brands and follow their lead. With a unique holiday marketing idea and effective execution, you can make all the difference and make your holiday marketing campaign a huge success. When these brands can make a difference, why not you? Get your campaign up and running right away. Evoke emotions, connect with your audience, and delight your customers.

Building a successful brand requires a clear understanding of your target audience, a unique value proposition, and consistent messaging that resonates with customers. It involves creating a strong brand identity, including a memorable logo, design, and tone, while maintaining authenticity and transparency. Successful brands prioritize customer experience, delivering on their promises and building trust over time. Starting a business involves finding clients to sustain your business, nurturing grandiose dreams into reality, and managing a thousand ideas amongst a plethora of other factors! However, if you are working on a shoestring budget out of the mice-infested basement of your parent’s house, fret not. Who needs a fancy, glass-walled office with white-collar employees in stiffly starched shirts, when you have great branding ideas and a will to realize them? In fact, the world is replete with garage-to-fortune 500 firm stories. Your beloved behemoth Amazon didn’t just pop up into existence by a genie in a bottle. Jeff Bezoz kick-started the global giant from his basement in Bellevue. Susan Wojcicki’s garage became the birthplace of Google, while the invoicing company FreshBooks lodged in the basement of Mike McDerments’ parents for many years! Mark Zuckerberg worked on Facebook from his dorm room. Compared to that, consider your basement a luxury! Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Microsoft, and Apple were also headquartered in the basements of their founders. In case you needed inspiration from more multi-billion dollar corporations! When capital runs low, it is often prudent to launch your business from home. So that you save up on overhead costs! However, if the thought of contending with the bigger fish in the sea is making you bite your nails in apprehension. Here is everything you need to know about making it big as an entrepreneur and making sure your intended audience finds you just in time:

Start With a Great Idea

Whether you are planning to launch a cyber security business or sell handcrafted jewelry from home. You will need to come up with a viable plan for what your business will do, how you are going to turn it into a lucrative venture, and how it will run. Running a business from your basement doesn’t exactly put you in a spot to acquire a huge team, so you’ll probably be doing the major chunk of work yourself. No matter the plan you conjure up, it should incorporate a long-term growth plan. Your ultimate ambition should be to reach a point where you can boost your work volume and hire more employees. In addition to a great plan, your products/services should have the propensity to create quite a stir. Unless you can solve a real-life problem better than your competitors, your start-up won’t have much chance of surfacing from the underworld! For instance, the founders of Bear Naked Granola, Kelly Flatley and Brendan Synnott, took the health industry by storm when they came up with their all-natural scrumptious treat, revolutionizing the way we see granola bars. Broke and fresh out of college, the duo bunked in with their parents, ran on coffee for a gazillion sleepless nights, and worked day in and day out to prepare their granola bars. Their efforts paid off when their brand was acquired by Kellogg for $60 Million.

Competitor Analysis

One of the most proficient strategies to build a viable branding strategy for yourself is to first look at what others are doing within a business niche. Commonly known as competitor analysis, it lets you know the trends others are following or the advancements in technology that are expected to revolutionize your business industry. The more you learn about your pertinent industry, the better equipped you will be to deal with whatever comes your way. For instance, Alyssa Smith, the owner of Alyssa Smith Jewelry excels in designing handmade jewelry. She kick-started her business a year after graduating with a major in Applied Arts and Marketing. She had next to no knowledge about the jewelry industry. She started working in a jewelry store to research the ins and outs of the industry and drilled herself into all that needed to be learned about the trade.

Evangelize

Regardless of how compelling your services or products claim to be, they will forever be stuck in your basement if no one knows about them. First things first, you need to serve as an evangelist for your venture. Bring your business into the limelight by connecting and networking with the right people in person and online. Even if you are already striving to get out of your pajamas for once and go out to meet the right people, you need to double down. Send out mailers to licensed professionals, print up flyers to hand out, send out complimentary samples to the right influencers, and spread the word about your business at every opportunity. Not only would it help you establish your venture as a key industry resource. But you can also hone in on your entrepreneurial skills and overcome start-up fears. Even if you think you are acquiring enough customers, don’t give in to the temptation to take a respite. Especially if your business is seasonal, offering products/services that clients may not need constantly. There is a good chance that even your happiest clients will disappear overnight. Alexander Acker, president of the creative agency Adventure House, has developed a habit of continually luring in new business. According to Acker, “Clients eventually move on; things change, economies tank, so the road to success is to always be paved with potholes and sinkholes. To pull yourself out of it, you always need to have a channel available where you can connect with potential customers. To stay successful, I regularly attend conferences, to give my company exposure to new opportunities. It helps you arm yourself with a plan and dream big.”

Scale with Integrity

When you are desperate for some cash, it isn’t unheard of for budding businesses to deliver a subpar service or product, compromise their values, and cut corners. Businesses that stick to their guns and weather their growing pains are the ones that shine the brightest and last longest. For instance, Luke Holden, the CEO of the seafood chain Luke’s Lobster, says about integrity, "A commitment to being an entrepreneur is a commitment to change and evolution. I don't think you ever really know you're going the right way, but you must also be prepared to find, and build, a new way." As your business starts to bear fruit, you will inevitably be faced with the dilemma of scaling with integrity. When Luke Holden faced the same challenge because his supplier couldn’t meet the growing demands of his patrons, he still held fast to the commitment he had made to his audience. He took all his profits and built his own seafood company to ensure transparency. He took a huge risk on his patrons, and it more than paid off. Even today, he industriously tried to push his own boundaries by nurturing relationships at the source.

Conclusion

Alternatively, there are branding agencies in USA that are working for the benefit of entrepreneurs across the globe. If you have a business idea that you want to be turned into a branding marvel. Get in touch with them and they will be happy to share some branding insights with you.

Once upon a time, there was this Entrepreneur. He wanted to find out the power of storytelling in business. So, he did this experiment. He purchased 200 toys that cost an average of $6 per toy from eBay and asked bloggers to take part in this amazing social storytelling study. Now, the guy had 200 toys with an intriguing story for each. He went back to eBay and uploaded these toys with stories. How much do you think he made by adding a simple story? Any guesses? I bet you cannot. The man could make $25 on average from every toy, just by adding the element of the story. Yes, you might think that people are mad to buy a $6 toy for $25. No, my friend. The only thing that raised the value was a story that was told with the toy. This is the power of storytelling in business we need to use and share with our customers. Storytelling might seem like an old-fashioned tool, today. But when done with proper planning, it can change the narrative and touch the hearts of our customers. Sure, data can persuade your customers, but if you want your customers to act, trigger their emotions. This is what we will be discussing in this blog. First, let’s start with the elements of storytelling.

Elements of Storytelling

1. Reason For Your Story

Simon Sinek in his TED talk emphasized finding the ‘why’ of your business first. For instance, if you want to create an eCommerce gift portal, you will start by creating a website so you can sell products. But first, you need to start with why you want to create the business in the first place. For example, my friend who visited the USA for a vacation. He wanted to send gifts to his wife back in UAE. He used a service but that service was not able to convey his emotions for the wife. This gave birth to a gifting portal that made my friends millions for generations to come. Now, therefore you need a reason for your story that can resonate with your customers. You need to find that sweet spot where your reason and what the customer is looking for aligning together.

2. The Hero of Your Story

You need to treat your customer as the hero of your story. According to Kapost, only 23% of B2B marketers claim to have a customer-centric marketing strategy versus a channel or product-centric strategy. Start from the backstory. What does the customer want? What is bothering your customer? Use the power of visual storytelling to gain insights into what your users really want. This information will not easily be given, you need to dig deeper to get this kind of info. Use a survey, customer feedback, or trend analysis of your customer to know more about him. In your brand story treat your customer as an antagonist. Here antagonist is a metaphor. To fulfill the needs of your customers. Like solving a business problem, or poor time management problem, or creating a mobile app for your customer. Check out this ad from Vanderbilt MBA: Most MBA programs brag about how good they are or good much market experience they have, here, Vanderbilt MBA turns the customer into a hero and guides the way forward.

3. Start with a Conflict

Would you buy a brand with the tagline “We’re pretty wonderful, buy our stuff.” Of course not. Nobody wants to buy from a brand that doesn't understand the customer. To create a conflict, you first need to understand the types of conflict that exist. In storytelling, there are 6 types of conflicts.

• Person to person
• Person to self
• Person to technology
• Person to environment
• Person to Nature
• Person to Supernatural

But for the sake of branding, we only need to understand 3 types of conflicts. Person to person – Here you need to make customers realize that your competition is tough and if you don’t do anything about it (use your service) they will be left behind by their competition. Person to technology – This makes the customer realize that technology is playing an important part in the growth of the organization. Here you need to state how your service will save time for your customer or make his life easy. Person to self – This is the most interesting type of conflict you can create. Here you need to tell the customers how not using your service will make their life static. In this fast-paced digital world, your customers will find peace by improving their lives. And the only way to do that is to use your service.

4. Creation of Awareness

In this strategy, you need to educate and make your customer aware of their need. Check out this Dunkin’ Donuts campaign which makes use of good storytelling to sell their idea.

Dunkin' Donuts Flavor Radio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2tP-FAn6u8 For your brand, you need to think of your target market and devise the story behind that specific market.

Leave an Impact

You cannot win your customers if you do not give them a reason which impacts their lives. War by Parker – an American brand of prescription eyeglasses is changing lives by selling economical glasses. Check out their campaign which created ripples in the social media for its authenticity and audaciousness. War by Parker also donates a large part of their profits to needy people. This alone makes this brand impactful.

Benefits of Storytelling

• Storytelling Humanizes Your Business: Gives your brand a story that resonates with the everyday life of your customer.
• Got Vision? Get Story: Include your company’s vision as part of your story.
• Spark Change: If your story is not igniting your users to take action, you need to change the narrative of that story.
• Transfer Your Values Through Story: What are your values? Show and convey them in a storytelling format.

Now for the Climax

Every story needs to end. You cannot create a story without a heart-touching story. Just like fiction, your story needs to leave a powerful impact on the lives of your customers. Brands like Charity Water are using impactful stories to humanize themselves to their customers, and in return customers trust them. If you want to create stories that matter feel free to get in touch with us. We will not only help you create memorable stories, we will guide you through your existing stories to create more impact for your brand.

In the year 2009, a journalist by the name of Bob Walker set out to unearth if storytelling really is the most powerful tool that helps brands outshine their competition. He purchased 200 items from eBay and priced each item at $1 on average. He then contacted 200 authors and posed a question, “Would you like to be a part of the significant object study? That is, can you write stories for these items?” The authors were happy to oblige and fabricate a narrative for each item. One of the items was this intricately carved horse bust that cost around $6. The horse bust that was initially bought for $6 was sold, after it was compounded with a compelling story, for a whopping $65. Yes, you read that right! That’s around 10 times the original price of the object. And why did people buy it at such an exorbitant price? The story was engaging enough to coax them into making the purchase, despite the high price. Was this a one-off situation? No. The items that were bought for $200 were sold for $8,000. Insane, right? I don’t know what Bob did with all that money, but what I can tell you is that he taught us a valuable lesson. The power of storytelling and how it is impacting our lives. All the top-notch digital agencies are using storytelling or we can say the power of visual storytelling in cutting down their marketing costs and exponentially increasing their sales. Here is your chance to find out what the top agencies are actually doing that is working in their favor.

Twoodie

Let us start with Twoodie. The images they post are easy to understand. Everything is gray except the toys, which are the only pops of color in the images. Each image is telling us a story. A story of beauty, simplicity, playfulness, and fun. These are not just simple objects; with compelling visual storytelling, Twoodie has transformed them into phenomenal objects that are stirring, lively, and essential.

Charity Water

Every time we donate to a social organization, our major concern lies in whether our donations will serve their purpose and reach their destination in time. Charity Water does an awesome job of making sure that the money we are donating is benefiting the communities in getting access to cleaner water. And the best part, they are using storytelling to make us trust them even more than any other social organization. By portraying the happiness of people over the globe, they instill in us a passion for giving back to the community.

Knownsupply

There is a 39% chance that your best employees are thinking of quitting in the next month. How so? Well, a study by Gallup shows that if you do not keep your best employees happy, they are bound to leave the nest soon in search of greener pastures. Amidst a raging global war, brands are working hard to come up with the best teams and flaunt how happy they are and how much fun they have at their jobs. While everyone else is dreaming about it, Known supply is making it possible. If you’re working in Known Supply, you are valued for sharing your stories on your Instagram account.

The Wild Unknown

Are you into magic, tarot card reading, and the mystery of destiny? Well, I am not. But still, I bought the whole collection from The Wild Unknown. Why, you may ask? Their gripping Instagram visual storytelling cast a spell over me and made me buy the item. If you peruse through their Instagram feed, you’ll fall head over heels in love with the way they are narrating stories. Every picture and every piece is magical. Their stories will teleport you into a different dimension and you will return to Earth only after you purchase something from them.

Piston

Consider this: you just finished watching a James Bond movie for the umpteenth time. You’re highly impressed by the man. You’re walking on your way home and thinking; how can I be like this man? And you see a watch in a shop display that is exactly like the one Bond was wearing. You bought the $8,000 watch and you step out of the store feeling like bond. What just happened? The story they told in James Bond was compelling enough to force you to buy that $8,000 Rolex watch. Piston – a San Diego-based marketing agency is making the same impact on people. They are a nut most professional agency that markets themselves as the James Bond for the digital age. When you avail their services, they give you a feeling of heroism. It is just an ordinary agency that is using visual storytelling to turn your brand into a superhero.

The Happy Ending

You can use maps, data visualizations, and real-life photos to tell your story. Whether your goal is to boost your sales or bring traffic to your website, you need to harness the power of visual storytelling. Most importantly, you need to keep your hero – the audience- in mind. Whereas old customers preferred to skim through long product descriptions including even the tiniest details about the product, Generation Y customers are more predisposed towards the stories you telling them, about how your product is adding value in their lives! If you want your brand to stand out, you need to start telling stories that customers are willing to hear.

Artificial Intelligence is here to make our lives better. Whether it be asking Siri about a local restaurant or business, or probing Alexa about the outside weather. Netflix suggests what to watch next, or Amazon lays out all the products you could potentially be interested in; AI is reaching into our homes, and our pockets and listening to our commands. Artificial Intelligence has a plethora of uses; both business-related and personal. Facebook Messenger bots are just one example of how companies are quickly leveraging AI to streamline mundane tasks and customer service. Most modern-day consumers prefer to connect with a brand through messaging apps and are not afraid to make purchases via this channel. Many AI-driven software programs are eliminating a great deal of manual work, helping brands make better decisions about how to approach potential customers, personalize conversations, and above all, recommend existing leads that deserve follow-up. Chatbots make up the largest portion of artificial intelligence and they could save businesses a lot of money. Chatbots have the potential to save $174 billion across financial services, sales, customer service, and insurance. So, are you ready to incorporate AI into your marketing strategy? Also Read: Exploring the Potential of Artificial Intelligence in the Future If not, here are some easy ways to discover how AI can help you improve your marketing efforts and allow businesses to generate more leads in 2018.

Generate More Leads

I know it’s hard to believe for many marketers that artificial intelligence can actually help them generate more leads than their current, age-old, run-of-the-mill marketing techniques. Did you know that businesses that incorporate AI into their marketing efforts receive 52% higher conversion rates, 54% increase in user engagement and traffic, 58% more profits, and 59% better close rates for sales? In nearly every aspect, AI rules over human marketing. AI is less expensive, more efficient, and can perform many time-consuming tasks quickly. However, humans can still deliver more value and a high level of personalization that robots can’t. There will always be a special place for human marketers, writers, and customer support representatives. But regardless of the extremely high levels of human intelligence, robots are not far behind and are in fact learning fast enough. AI is going to rule lead generation in 2018 as it has the ability to give you a higher ROI for your hard-earned dollars than the average human. And that is pretty interesting.

Nurture Leads

Most people don’t simply visit your website and make a purchase. Marketers are well aware of the fact that a potential buyer will visit your website multiple times before making a final purchase decision. This is why lead nurturing has become ever more indispensable. You need to follow up on prospective leads with more offers to turn them from visitors to paying customers. Before the advent of AI technology, lead nurturing was done through manual prospect massaging, email segmentation, and email messages. Some stick-in-the-mud marketers still adhere to the notion that lead nurturing can only be performed by humans. But according to a recent study, 59% of Americans are willing to receive special offers and coupons via chatbots. As people are getting ever more comfortable with conversing with chatbots, incorporating them into your business strategy will help you grow. When it comes to customer retention, chatbots also come out successful. The average customer retention rate after one month of chatbot usage is 40-60%, while for apps, it has plummeted to 20-40%. Reason? Chatbots are tireless, supernatural beings who can deliver timely responses regardless of the time of the day and never forget to send a reply. In fact, they are simply perfect for nurturing leads and retaining customers.

Potential Customer’s Data

In today’s fierce business world, data is everything. Without valuable data, digital marketing agencies are dead. They need to know their prospects and customers through A/B testing which has now become possible with the dawn of artificial intelligence and chatbots. Since chatbots are new to the marketing world, they are highly experimental, with a plethora of untapped opportunities surrounding them. Since we are yet to find out the potential of these chatbots, continuous testing is vital. Botanalytics offers valuable chatbot data for digital marketers to improve their marketing efforts. Chatbots also boast a tremendous amount of conversations in a very short period, and each conversation is a valuable piece of data. When you choose a celebrity, it offers recommendations so you can buy products according to your celebrity’s outfit style. Every single customer who chooses a celebrity and buys a product represents a valuable piece of data. Chatbots can provide businesses with more and more meaningful data than they ever thought possible by funneling significant insights and figures into analytical tools.

Increased Brand Engagement

Would you rather respond to an email or a chatbot? Emails have been used for years, and almost every marketer has an email list which they use to send special offers to their subscribers. But chatbots are mainly untapped because they are new marketing arena. This is why customers are more interested in messages sent from chatbots rather than old email marketing tactics. Let’s consider this case study, where a company developed a bot that received a massive amount of engagement. The customers spent an average of 4.27 minutes talking to a bot, and the company received more than 780 replies. Let’s take another example of Madi, a shopping bot. When users send the bot a snap-shot of their hair and color, it offers personalized hair color suggestions drawing upon their facial structure, natural hair tone, skin tone, and myriad other factors. When users take a picture of their face and hair, a bot gives personalized hair color suggestions based on their hair color, face structure, and a variety of other features. By letting customers venture a foot forward into the awe-inspiring realm of artificial intelligence, chatbots can boost brand engagement quickly.

Outstanding Customer Support

For nearly every business, providing exceptional customer support is a big challenge. Customers have their concerns that need to be solved by a call center or a chat center representative. Businesses need to invest more to offer the best possible support to their customers. However, with the rise of chatbots, businesses can provide faster and better customer support. In the healthcare and banking sectors, chatbots are answering customers’ queries instead of humans, and they are saving 4 minutes per inquiry. How? When a robot is replying to customers’ questions, it simply saves money and time while allowing humans to perform operations that only they can do. More than 50% of consumers expect businesses and their support staff to be active round the clock to entertain their queries. Chatbots can stay up and work tirelessly. More than 71% of customers want to be able to solve service issues on their own. So, customers prefer sending a message over talking on the phone. Chatbots can save money and time and will likely be an important part of customer support in the future.

Closing Thoughts

With the increasing abilities of AI, services such as prospect data, customer support, lead generation, and nurturing are cheaper and faster. And that is good news for businesses. More and more entrepreneurs, small business owners, and startups can utilize the benefits of artificial intelligence and build a successful and profitable business. In 2018, the process of lead generation will be completely transformed by AI because chatbots have officially become smarter, better, and faster than humans.

The demand for E-commerce is rising dramatically in the current times and with the rising demand. Contenders are joining in making the market reach its saturation point. For any ecommerce website business, creating and launching an online business is definitely a daunting task that requires significant efforts both in terms of research and development. However, marketplaces exist to make the lives of e-commerce business owners easier and allow them to focus on their business, its strengths, and the opportunities that can be availed. Today, custom web development agencies offer different development opportunities to help your online e-commerce business get off the ground, and looking at them for the sake of is really not a bad idea. You can also get help from marketplaces to boost your online business. A marketplace is an online reseller of your products that may also host it for you. Multiple online marketplaces are also highly visible to online users which many of us already know about. To name the giants, Amazon and eBay are the two most famous ones. Also Read: How To Start An E-commerce Business? Let us see now some of the prominent advantages of using an online marketplace to publicize your product:

Helps You Gain Visibility in the Non-traditional Audience

One of the main reasons for hosting your products on an online marketplace is to gain visibility among the not-so-traditional audience that also affects the traffic on your website, positively. Along with the interested audience, there will be targets that were not too interested in your product but might help the overall ecommerce website industry as they may purchase the product later on from you or some other online resource.

Easy Liquidity of Slow-moving Goods

Another reason why online sellers host their products on several marketplaces is to quickly liquidate slow-moving goods. Since online marketplaces have a huge and diverse traffic of online shoppers on them, therefore a product that might not be a running product on your eCommerce website can become a cash cow on this other marketplace that you choose to host your product on.

To Pinpoint Search Engine Optimization Efforts on a Smaller Line of Products

Search engine optimization is among the best practices for achieving a good influx of interested traffic on your website design. Custom web design agencies make it a point to offer reliable and affordable search engine optimization services to their clients so that their business may shine and this can also be a reason for you to choose a marketplace for your products. One of your products is enjoying the limelight in the marketplace through its dedicated search engine efforts. You can focus on a smaller line of products that you may have launched not too long ago and opt to converge all your efforts in the search engine optimization of this product to achieve better visibility.

Customer’s Trust on Marketplaces

Popular marketplaces become popular after spending a significant time in the industry and they have invested momentous efforts to gain the position they are at. Customers also trust these popular sources to shop due to their strong brand heritage and industry presence. Business owners choose to list their products on such marketplaces not only because of the large customer base that they can get but because of the credibility too that these marketplaces brings to their products.

They Offer Innovation

An online marketplace is a huge collection of products listed under various categories. This automatically makes them very big, both as an entity and in terms of online traffic as well. To keep their game on the top level, they keep inventing themselves, by introducing newer product ranges and by instilling newer technologies they make the entire user browsing experience fulfilling for online customers. Now that we know how a marketplace can help your product and you as a business owner. Let us look into some effective tips for choosing a viable marketplace for your product offerings:

How to Choose a Marketplace For Your Product?

There are several things that a business owner must consider before finalizing the decision. It’s always easy to choose an established marketplace but with that, you are also offering yourself up to the mercy of the competition that bigger marketplaces have. Irrespective of the size, a marketplace that is well adapted to your product type can help in increasing sales dramatically.

According to Categories

Marketplaces categorize different products into well-placed product categories. These categories are created to help customers in finding the product of their interest with ease. These categories help filter down the products in front of the customers and foster better visibility.

According to the Costs Involved

Normally, whenever you choose to list your product on a marketplace there is a minimum monthly subscription involved that enables you to host your product. For smaller ecommerce businesses, a higher hosting cost means increasing the burden and risk.

Ease of Payment and Security

Popular marketplaces offer multiple payment options to online customers along with data security. This is exactly why people prefer to buy from places like Amazon and eBay instead of an e-commerce website that is fairly new in the market. For a business owner where to sell online makes it easier to compare multiple online marketplaces to finalize one to host their products. So now that we know how to evaluate a marketplace for our product hosting. Let us have a look at how to sell on marketplaces with increased efficiency:

How to Sell on Marketplaces?

So you know now why you should sell through a marketplace, but we are not done yet. How to sell is a question that is still unanswered. Let’s learn now:

What Products to Sell?

If you are thinking about your best sellers, you are absolutely wrong. The idea of selling on marketplaces is to bring traffic from popular resources to your website. If you put your best selling product on the marketplace for sale you are actually offering your prized possession to someone else, and no sane person does it. Keep them to you only so that the loyalty of your customers remains intact with you only, and put a less-selling product on a marketplace so that its sales boost and can also bring traffic to your website due to the increased visibility that it will receive on the marketplace.

What Information Should You Put There?

Make sure to put every relevant information about your product on the marketplace without missing out on even one point. Since it’s an external resource, missing information means missing out on a probable lead. That being said, do not attempt to copy and paste information from one resource to another. Doing this may cause an error in your search engine optimization efforts and may result in a marketplace content duplicate which the search engine as well as the marketplace won’t like. I hope you enjoyed reading the article and hope it is informational for you. Marketplace selling isn’t only to dip your toes in the ecommerce waters. It can serve as a great strategy for smaller ecommerce businesses to gain visibility and sales hikes at the same time. Please leave a comment below if you like the article or if you have any questions popping up in your mind.

I haven’t met Elon Musk yet – but I am a big fan of the man. A genius-level Entrepreneur who started with a dream and outsmarted the competition. "Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there barriers in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?'" ~Marcus Aurelius Einstein said it best "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." As a serial Entrepreneur, I know what it feels like to stay on your toes all the time. To sacrifice your sleep, your family, and sometimes your personal space just so that you can initiate your business. Also Read: 6 Must-Do things before you quit your job I am just an ordinary Entrepreneur who is floating on the surface. For me, I am surviving. It is a long road ahead and I might be successful or not. But in either case, you, on the other hand, need to gear up for your success. You need to equip yourself with the basic tools that can make you successful. After studying Elon Musk for quite some time now, I figured out a specific pattern with which Elon Musk solves his problems. These are common skills that anyone can acquire. So, here I am laying down my understanding of problem-solving methods that you can adopt from Elon Musk: These are simple steps that you can use to solve any problem whether it is a personal or a business-related problem. The key is to follow the steps in the same manner as described here:

Step 1: Identify the Problem You Want To Solve

“It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.”~Malcolm Forbes The first step you need is to know the problem in and out. For instance, when I started my eCommerce website, the initial reaction I got was that "My product is too expensive" This was the realization phase. For Elon Musk, the first problem was how to raise investment for his dream. If you don’t know what is the problem you’re facing, you won’t take the necessary steps to solve that problem. To know what is wrong, you can ask for feedback. Feedback from friends and even from customers can help you get your first step right.

Step 2: List Reasons Why You Cannot Solve the Problem

The second part is to list down your limitations. Your limitation might include "My parts cost is too high" or "The CFO doesn't want to spend more money on innovation." For Elon Musk, it was building trust among the stakeholders. Because launching a rocket is not an ordinary thing. But the good news is, you don’t have a problem with that intensity. Your problem is small. So, you can list down the steps on paper, and what are your limitations.

How to Solve a Problem by Elon Musk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grSdMoiMgb4

Step 3: Screw the Limited Resources

The next step is to know what you can do to solve your problem. Do you have the resources to solve that problem, or you will be required to hire external resources to solve the problem? Sometimes it is best to hire people with a different perspective. A solution for an over-expensive product might typically be moving manufacturing overseas - but then quality control and shipping costs can increase. A CEO and CFO might agree to cut one department to give more resources to a high-performing team, but layoffs might decrease office morale and severance packages reduce the financial benefit in the short term.

Step 4: Execute & Test Your Hypothesis

Once you’re done with the first three steps, now is the time to execute. If your core desire is to develop an inexpensive and effective product, then you might design a new product made with more sustainable and inexpensive materials, or with a completely unique engine or operating system. If the core of the company is to tackle innovation & product development, you need to introduce new departments or you can simply combine departments to get the creative juice flowing the company. You need to have an open-door policy so that you can analyze the problem and execute the solution based on all the facts that are available to you. Execution without giving a thought is a suicide mission. You need to lay down facts and execute. Once the execution is done, you need to compare the results and see what is working and what isn’t. For instance, for someone who is willing to start a business you need to test the beta version of your website before you really launch a fully-fleshed website. This beta version will give you results, and you can then analyze the results to do something about it.

To End it All

Elon Musk is a highly successful and intelligent Entrepreneur. You can learn a lot from him. His biography is a great read for everyone who wants to start their own business or are struggling with their business. Use the above tips to solve your business problems. You can always mold the steps in accordance with your business needs. But ensure that these steps can do wonders for your business.

In the start, it was the dorm, the laptop, and a big idea. Then I read about journaling. Which raised another question. How can Entrepreneurs build a better business by journaling every day?

Start Your Day with Morning Pages

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about morning pages. https://www.youtube.com/embed/3DA45eebMCg Morning pages will set the tone for your day. Additionally, it will empty your mind to think about what is most important for your business. You might have seen people having fancy diaries in which they write all about their life. But wait, there is a huge difference between keeping a diary and writing a journal. Also Read: 8 morning rituals of highly successful Entrepreneurs In a diary, you record all the actions that have happened on that day. While writing a journal goes one step ahead. In the journal, you analyze and retrospect your day. You write whatever inspires you, and if you’re an Entrepreneur who is willing to build a better business by journaling every day, you need to learn how to make the best use of journaling every day. When you’re small, you might have written a diary, or maybe not. In both cases, you know what to write in a diary, but now you’re grown up, and you don’t know what to write in the journal. Well, the good news is you’re here to learn more about journaling for Entrepreneurs. So, here are some things that you can write in your journal:

Log in Every Piece of Idea You Get

"Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" ~William Shakespeare The thing with writing everything down is that you never know which of your ideas will change the world. Keep a journal with you at every time. And if you cannot carry a journal, use Evernote to keep track of your ideas. Here is my screenshot of Evernote where I am brainstorming some ideas for my next blog post. It is not about making sense of ideas. For now, write whatever comes to your mind. Write raw ideas. And later, you can craft those ideas for perfection.

The Lessons Learned

As an Entrepreneur, you will fail a lot. And if you do not learn from those lessons, they will keep repeating themselves. Every day you will be faced with good or bad experiences. What successful people do, is recognize the pattern when they get successful and analyze their failures. You can journal what have you learned from your mistakes that day. If you stumbled upon a presentation with a client, write that down. You missed a deadline, write that down. You messed up and order, write that down. Everything you write, ensure that on weekends you’ll analyze the mistake and see what went wrong. Use your failures to ignite the fire within. And use that fire to move toward success.

Fire Up Your Pressure Cooker

Journaling is an amazing way to release some pressure off your back. Did you get a passive-aggressive, condescending, or downright hostile email today? Did a client yell at you for something that was out of your control? There’s no more perfect place to vent your workplace frustrations than in the privacy of your own journal. In your journal, jot down the response you really wanted to send to that colleague or client. Read it a few more times if you want, then let it go. With journaling, you can take off all the pressure and clear your mind for better understanding. Jot down all your worries and it will help you make well-informed decisions.

Collect Compliments

It might feel a bit odd at the start, but once you start jotting down the compliments you get every day, you’ll see how blessed you are. How amazing you are. And how great it feels to get appreciated by the people you love and total strangers who are true about how you work and see the world. Reading compliments, again and again, gives you a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling that cannot be replaced by anything else. When you’re feeling down, just look at the compliments you’ve received. These compliments make your Entrepreneurial journey a lot easier and worth pursuing.

Envision Your Future

A person without a clear vision of the future is like a bird with no feathers. Bad Entrepreneurs live in their past, while great Entrepreneurs envision their future. While you’re on your way to success, you need to visualize where you want to be in the coming years. Write every day. Where you want to be soon. What rewards, achievements, and successes do you want in the future? The great thing about writing things down is that, when you write things down, half of the battle is already won. Use every sense you have. The feel, the touch, and the success-after-party you want when you get there. Write everything as if you’ve already achieved it.

To Wrap it All Up

As a struggling Entrepreneur, you will be faced with an enormous amount of pressure. And while you’re doing all the necessary stuff, it will get difficult to reach your full potential if you’re busy with these mundane tasks.