Why do businesses need call center services?

How does a call center help your organization grow?

Actually, call centers are proving their mettle by offering an astounding level of assistance in every sector of business.

Right from the e-commerce industry to the IT sector to media houses and government organizations, call centers are showing their significance everywhere.

The Need for Call Center Outsourcing – An overview

When we talk about call centers, a typical image of an office space where hundreds of calling agents are sitting and continuously conversing comes to our mind.

This is only 20% of what all call centers are all about.

The story of call centers starts from the early 90s when the IT sector witnessed a phenomenal boom and western companies, in their relentless quest to acquire higher efficiency without spending a huge sum, started delegating their business functions.

The destinations were the ‘third world nations’ where labor costs were cheap, which ultimately trims the operational overhead. Slowly, more and more companies began to outsource their tasks.

India, China, Malaysia, etc. are some of the promising outsourcing destinations in the world.

By the end of the 1990s, outsourcing of IT related tasks become essential for businesses.

In fact, the long list of benefits that outsourcing brings along with it is what attracts most of the business owners across the globe.

Apart from cost-effectiveness, call center outsourcing also helps businesses to focus on their core competencies, get direct access to a much more competent team, and experience higher returns.

With these big advantages, IT companies adopted outsourcing as their primary business extension in the early 2000s.

However, call center outsourcing was never meant to be strung within a couple of business industries.

As the boom of digitalization grasped pace, call center services extended their scope to a much wider spectrum of industries.

The rejuvenation of call center services

Digitalization has completely revolutionized the business style of every sector.

With e-commerce sector now expanding at an exponential rate, the essentiality of prodigious customer service becomes a must-have for every business.

Every business in any sector now wishes to deliver unparalleled customer experience. Why?

Because stupendous customer service has become the USP of all businesses.

This is where call center services fit in.

With the increasing emphasis on customer service, call centers across the globe are now focusing more on delivering an unmatched experience through their service.

And it’s not just through a phone call that agents are satiating customers, but also through different mediums, thanks to hi-tech tools and platforms that have emerged recently.

For instance, companies are contracting with leading call centers in India, Philippines and Malaysia etc. to avail impeccable but cheap chat support.

With the internet now harboring 80% of businesses across industries, the kind of experience your customers have on the website matters remarkably.

So, call center outsourcing companies have now trained professionals who are experts in providing instantaneous response to customers’ queries when the latter visits the website.

Several researchers have found that when a customer experiences sublime service while exploring the website, the chance of making a purchase increases splendidly.

In addition to this, call center agents are also playing a crucial role in helping startups to expand their business.

With outbound support in lead generation, market research, telemarketing, and survey collection, call centers are offering an affordable way for the new business owners to stretch their legs without putting a burden on their pockets.

Along with this, for SMBs (small and medium businesses), call center services has emerged as a savior. These organizations are generally small in size and usually, have limited resources to spend.

In this situation, extraneous business tasks like hiring & training of employees, accounting, payroll processing, and phone answering are duly undertaken by call centers.

This helps SMBs to not just save their expense but also get access to an already trained team, which will streamline their business tasks smoothly.

Along with this, there are other tasks like content creation, designing, app development, maintenance, etc. that are also included in the portfolio of call center services.

These are the tasks that are now delivered by modern call centers or contact centers. So, call center services have a wide spectrum of services to offer to businesses today.

Companies are availing these services from third-party companies because they know call center services have become an essential mantra for success in today’s cut-throat competition.

Final Words

So, the next time someone asks you why call center services are such a hit amongst businesses, remember the list of benefits it offers.

Call centers have become an extension of businesses to not just provide A-Okay customer service but also to:

• Reduce Operation Cost
• Increase Organizational Productivity
• Raise better ROI
• Have superior expansion
• Smooth functioning
• Gain a competitive edge
• Be technologically sound
• Get access to state-of-art infrastructure

It won’t be wrong to state that in the coming years, outsourcing is going to become more prevalent. With globalization becoming more and more prevalent, the idea of remote working is picking up the pace.

Call center outsourcing is a Utopia for freelancers. People who have high skills in a specific domain are now providing consulting services to big and small organizations, making outsourcing a much wider concept than before.

Hence, outsourcing is and will be an imperative asset for businesses of all sectors. What are your thoughts?

Do you think outsourcing is worth all the hype or do you consider it as an avoidable strategy without which also businesses can grow and become successful?

Share your opinion. Thanks, readers!

The post Why Call Center Outsourcing is an Imperative Asset for Businesses appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

This is so because outsourcing in itself is a business tactic that not just aids you to save operational expenses but also helps you in creating an impressive brand image of your company.

Having said that, there are instances when business owners have not-so-great experiences with outsourcing. 90% of these cases arise because businesses make blunders in selecting their outsourcing partner.

So, if you have experienced horrendous outsourcing experience or are feeling scared because of what your friend has said about call center services, this write-up will offer you a clear picture.

I will be discussing a few parameters that would help you choose the ideal outsourcing partner for your business:

Selecting a call center outsourcing company – what not to do!

While on the quest to select the best call center services provider, you may make a couple of mistakes that would eventually doom the entire objective altogether.

Hence, here is a list of don’ts while choosing your next outsourcing partner:

Don’t go for the hype

While there are thousands of service providers available, not everyone is meant for you.

The biggest mistake you can make while choosing your outsourcing company is to fall for false words.

For instance, if your friend who experienced a spectacular result with a call center outsourcing firm A may suggest you go for the same. However, the same provider may not be fit for your business.

It becomes essential to comprehend that not every business uses outsourcing the same way other organizations do.

So, it is strongly recommended to never fall for word-of-mouth; instead, check yourself if the outsourcing company is matching your business bottom line.

Don’t be cheap

While outsourcing is known for its money saving capability, it doesn’t always work like that.

For example – if you want to outsource AI or IOT solutions from a call center in India, USA, UK, etc., it is not recommended to always choose the provider who is charging the minimum.

You have to understand that outsourcing companies have to install ultra-modern technology and high-end tools to ensure that the services delivered are prompt and of first-string quality.

A call center outsourcing provider that is offering cheap rates for such solutions may or may not offer you the desired quality standard.

Hence, it is recommended to select the outsourcing firm with decent charges, as future technology requires higher maintenance and more capital.

Note that albeit we are talking about the high price, this will still be less as compared to the cost that will be incurred in getting these ultra-modern technologies in-house.

Don’t sign the contract without checking SLAs

A lot of times, business owners in a hurry to get it done quickly sign contracts with an incompetent outsourcing company.

One thing as a business owner you should always keep in mind is that on the internet, every outsourcing vendor seems unbeatable and outstanding.

However, when it comes to which company to choose, only a bunch of these are able to deliver what you are looking for.

So, what is the way to examine the authentication and the competency of an impeccable outsourcing partner?

The first way is to cross-check the website of the outsourcing vendor and see if any testimonials are written by previous clients.

Testimonials are the first-hand feedback of the companies that have availed the call center outsourcing services from the vendor in the past.

If you aren’t satisfied with this, you can always look for social media communities (on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook) to see if a particular vendor is being talked about somewhere.

If your would-be outsourcing partner is famous for good reasons, there will be reviews praising it somewhere on the internet.

This means that you need to explore different groups and communities on different social networking sites and see if any positive word-of-mouth is shared about the vendor.

Similarly, you can also search for negative feedback. A vendor that has too many negative reviews is the one you should refrain from partnering.

Selecting a call center outsourcing company – what to do!

Here is a list of to-dos you should keep in mind while selecting your next call center services provider:

Matching the business objectives

It is paramount that you choose your call center outsourcing company in adherence to your business objectives. For instance, if your business is facing a heap of incoming customer queries, you require inbound call center assistance.

Now, if you hire an outsourcing partner that just offers outbound solutions, the partnership won’t yield a productive result.

In a similar context, if you are planning to enter an uncharted territory to expand your business, you should select an outbound call center with local dialect skills.

However, the best solution would be to choose a call center outsourcing company that offers both inbound and outbound solutions so that when the time is right, you can opt for both services.

Checking the on-call experience

While a number of vendors will promise you first-string service, I would recommend you yourself examine the quality of calling agents.

For this, you can always request the current client list of the vendor and give a call (discreetly) to the call center. Doing this will offer you the raw experience of how call center agents deal with customers and whether the same is in conformation with what your business is looking for.

Look for an experienced vendor

If I would have been seeking call center assistance for my company, the vendor who has a longer performance history of satiating businesses in the past would be preferred more by me rather than the one who is new in the domain.

Experienced call center services provider will offer your business the flexibility it needs and will also mitigate any risk involved.

This one is a sitter!

The post How to Select Your Next Call Center Outsourcing Company? appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

“These violent delights have violent ends.”

That’s what the entire first season of HBO’s ‘Westworld’ is all about.

Today, when scientists, programmers, and analysts are trying to comprehend and mold machine learning into artificial intelligence, can we conclude that the future has already begun?

If you can’t stop thinking about AI and still haven’t watched the HBO-aired Westworld, you are missing out on something extraordinary, off-beat, and extremely crisp.

I used the adjective ‘extraordinary’ because Westworld doesn’t just speak about applications of artificial intelligence but also about infusing consciousness into AI.

Sounds absurd, right? How can that be?

Even the leading neuroscientists and big-wigs of AI would agree that nothing as such is possible right now.

However, what Westworld has shown is the probability of this happening in the future.

Westworld – Provoking AI

Released in February of the year 2016, Westworld became the most-watched first season of an original HBO show ever.

It is science fiction.

Although the two words ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ are ironical when written together, Westworld reflects a tantalizing yet risky possibility of AI experiencing consciousness – in short, artificial intelligence that can feel and question its existence.

Is it really possible though?

The series follows a gratuitous theme park, created in the tone of the American Old West.

This park has ‘hosts’, artificially intelligent beings that are tantamount to humans, almost.

The park is open for humans who pay a colossal sum to enter the park and treat the ‘hosts’ in whatever horrendous and bizarre ways they like.

Humans are shown doing all kinds of heinous things to these hosts.

The mutilated hosts are then taken away, cleaned, reprogrammed (with all the memories erased), and then placed again for new customers.

So, the problem arises when the robots or the hosts (I like calling them that) start realizing that they aren’t humans, but a plaything of this civilization.

As some of the hosts start to remember every abhorrent and nasty thing they have gone through, they get out of line by starting an insurgency.

For entertainment purposes, HBO and the creators of the show have done a fantastic job.

But for AI enthusiasts, the show has again sparked the debate of whether it is possible that AI will develop consciousness or is it even possible to create consciousness in artificial intelligence.

David Eagleman, who is a neuroscientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, is also the scientific advisor to Westworld.

As per Eagleman, we are still quite distant from the future shown in Westworld because of several reasons.

It’s true! AI is quite progressive today – it can distinguish between pictures of cat and dog, it can play chess with you, and can also tell you which song genre you like most.

However, if we talk about the broad notion of intelligence, AI is still a toddler.

To make it simpler, AI is still far behind a 3-year-old baby when it comes to acquiring a broad intelligence and grasping simple concepts.

A 3-year-old can pick up things, can talk with people, can be persuasive, and can explore a room without running into furniture.

Currently, AI isn’t able to do all this.

So, the primary element of Westworld that showed AI-powered hosts as indistinguishable to humans is still a distant dream to accomplish.

Human Brain and AI – A leap of a million years

Apart from the physical aspect, the most arduous task for humans is to replicate our brain with AI.

This is easier said than done.

If you don’t know, a human brain consists of hundreds of billions of neurons (which are specific kinds of cells) in the brain, each having 10000s of connections to adjacent cells.

This means that a single human brain comprises of approximately a thousand trillion connections. We haven’t yet unfurled our brain’s potential and the secrets that lie in it.

So,

Can AI ever feel emotions?

The most notable neuroscientists in the world have always debated on the topic, “Whether it is possible to make a machine that becomes conscious?”

If you look at how the human body works, it does look quite possible. The structure of our body is made of biological pieces and parts that are adhering to the laws of physics and chemistry.

This means that our body works just like a machine where everything is driving everything else.

As per this approach, it definitely looks possible to design a machine that is consciously active.

Ironically, it’s just a theory. Humans have just imagined it; we have not invented the way to do it yet.

And this happens because nobody knows what consciousness is actually.

Despite the greatest efforts of the brightest minds of our human race, we still haven’t found a way to derive an equation that defines what pain is or taste of cheese is or bitterness in chili is.

So, the biggest problem with AI getting consciousness is that we ourselves don’t know how to express the private subjective experience.

Eagleman explained the depiction of a special vest in Westworld as a way to transmit information into the brain.

And this isn’t just a gimmick but a real endeavor running at NeoSensory. The objective is to transfer information to our brain using impressions of touch on the skin.

With a lot of vibratory motors equipped in the vest (that operate like tiny buzzers in our cellphones), scientists and researchers at NeoSensory are trying to pass information into the brain of deaf people through the patterns of touch on the skin.

The notion is to make deaf people learn to hear and comprehend what is happening by the feel on their skin puts the application of artificial intelligence to another level.

Another endeavor is to make blind people intuitive about what is going around them through the same approach.

This is done by using LiDAR that is used in Google’s office. LiDAR is basically a laser radar that is quite often seen on the top of self-driving cars. This radar helps Google to track whereabouts of everything in its premises.

NeoSensory experts have fetched data from LiDAR and target blind people with the same skin-touch approach.

This helped blind people in anticipating movements around them. As someone starts approaching a blind man, he will feel sensation/vibration in his skin. The intensity of vibes increases as the person comes nearer.

In the show (Westworld), these vests are shown used by private military contractors who intrude the park and are able to spot the position of ‘hosts’ sensing it on their skin.

Westworld Showed AI-backed robots can have Free Will!

It is pretty exciting and thrilling to even think that artificial intelligence can actually have emotions of its own.

I have found Westworld pretty chilling and aphotic in terms of theme, yet intriguing because of the fanaticism with which the show has displayed how machines can have despair and sorrow.

Albeit this has been the core point of focus for neuroscientists all along but when the concept is amalgamated with fiction, a larger audience gets familiar with it.

And this so because storytelling has always been the most gripping tool to enlighten a larger audience.

Let’s assume we are able to imitate human consciousness into AI, what do you think will happen?

It would mean that you can download the brain of a person, redesign it, and fix it into a robot.

No doubt, whether this would be ethically right or not is questionable.

However, that’s a long road ahead even if there is the slightest possibility to do that.

Again, if we assume that the human brain and memory are transferable to robots, does it mean that humans will become immortal?

Not really. Since technology and its application are quite expensive, only people with affluence will be able to leverage the power of AI.

Ethical reform would be definitely needed, just as it is required now.

Building Castles in the Sky – AI and Consciousness

Considering the nebulous nature of consciousness and the dilated sphere of cognitive experiences and properties it shadows, drawing an interrelation with artificial intelligence seems like a pipe dream.

Westworld depicted that ‘hosts’ possess two elementary attributes of consciousness – A-consciousness and P-consciousness.

A-consciousness and P-consciousness are derived from the foundation built by NYU professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Ned Block.   

So, Arnold (played by Jeffrey Wright) and Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins), showcased as the architects of Westworld, found it extremely easy to create A-consciousness or access consciousness, as it signifies the factors of our brain that enable us to fetch information from ourselves.

This information includes memories, necessary factors of identity, personal details, and anything typically at a subjective level.

Developing A-consciousness in AI-powered bots is still a possibility but the real problem arises when creating P-consciousness.

Phenomenal consciousness is the crude experiences we feel. The emergence of P-consciousness in the human brain is still a closed book.

As mentioned earlier, this is the type of consciousness that is responsible for our taste of different food, our smell sensations and so on.

Our body has organs that just collect sensation, but why do we connect or feel them is still unexplained.

So, in the real world and not Westworld, if we think of creating such remarkable robots that could question their existence and can feel pain, love, hatred, and fear – then we are still in the dark ages where we can design a robot, infuse AI into it but cannot make it human.

Is this an inevitable loop?

Westworld is revolutionary as a TV series because it has opened up new possibilities to think and imagine.

AI experts, neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists have been continuously brainstorming about making AI-backed robots similar to humans.

As per Westworld’s maker Ford, every decision that we take is a result of our experiences and our genetics.

By this apprehension, humans are following pre-set rules driven by our genetics and experiences. So, free will is an illusion.

Apparently, like me, you will also disregard this theory saying “it’s all about choices we make”.

But Ford said that our conscious mind is just a chimera of our imaginations that make it seem like you are making a free-will choice but in reality, you are doing what was pre-determined.

This is pretty deep, right?

Let’s get back to the year 1980 when Benjamin Libet conducted fierce tests regarding free will.  

He attached EEG to patients so as to track brain activity and told them to move their one hand whenever they like to.

Patients were asked specifically to pinpoint the moment they consciously decide to move their hand.

And the results were stunning.

Records showed that brain started the movement hundreds of milliseconds before the conscious decision was taken.

So, Libet concluded that the conscious mind didn’t play any role in the hand movement process because the brain activity was already in progress when patients decided consciously to move their hands.

This was an extraordinary discovery with respect to understanding the free-will notion of humans.

However, Libet himself agreed that our conscious mind is powerful enough to counter an action right between when the mind gives direction to move the hand and when the actual movement takes place.

Scientifically, there is no way to prove that the human mind is capable of rejecting our subconscious mind, however, there is evidence that indicates that it does exist in some unknown form.

All this humdrum of neuroscience and psychology becomes quintessential to have much clarity vis-à-vis the comprehension of AI and consciousness together.

Ending Statement

I don’t expect all my readers to agree with the fact that free-will is an illusion or what is shown in Westworld is completely true.

Since we are living in an era where every smarty pants is looking to either explore the universe or create robots that can imitate human traits, Westworld has surely given a new perspective.

Artificial intelligence is just decades old, so it would be too soon to assume that it is impossible to develop consciousness in robots.

Grab your popcorn, put on your thinking hat, and watch Westworld at the earliest if you are at all interested in AI and consciousness blended together.

Share your thoughts and let me know your favorite moment of the show. Thanks!

The post Bicameral Mind through AI – Inspecting HBO’s ‘Westworld’ appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Today, however, the blend of digital marketing and AI is picking up pace. Marketers and business owners are using the power of machine learning technology to make the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

As per stats, around 47% of the companies that use first-string digital marketing practices have already a pre-set AI plan.

Digital marketing is all about making a prosperous and lasting connection with your audience.

With AI, the need for human intervention in extraneous yet necessary tasks like visual perception, decision-making, voice-recognition, and the translation is eradicated.

Market experts have predicted that by the end of the year 2025, the AI industry will leverage a market of $190 billion.

This means that the amplification of AI will penetrate and revamp the digital industry just like it has been influencing other sectors. The scope for digital marketing is bigger though.

Metamorphosing Digital Marketing through AI

If you are running a business in the USA, you can tie up with a digital marketing company in India and can streamline your efforts for a higher return. They will promote your business through all different mediums like Social media marketing, PPC, SEO etc.

We all know how revolutionary the inclusion of chatbots has been for online marketers.

The notion of using an AI-backed chatbot to respond to customers’ queries in order to provide an impeccable user experience is really a game changer for business owners.

Stats tell us that every 6 out of 10 Americans regard the ability to provide 24*7 support around the week as the best attribute of chatbots.

This means that as a business owner, neither you have to hire extra manpower nor you have to worry about the customer queries or complains.

No doubt, elimination of human intervention is surely one of the highlighting aspects of applications of AI in the digital marketing sector.

In today’s time, if you are available for your customers all the time, you are creating a lasting impression in their mind.

Apart from this, AI helps digital marketers in personalizing their content, which is exposed to the user navigating their websites.

Machine learning technology is helping marketers to record and analyze the purchasing habit of users and notify their preferences accordingly.

Using this insight, the classification of your audience becomes easier and sales driven through tailor-made content becomes inevitable.

So, AI aids digital marketers to become more efficient and yield a better return. However, one of the most highlighted merits of infusing AI into digital marketing is the reduction of expense.

Many marketers are using AI to trim the overhead cost of their holistic digital marketing efforts.

Let’s take a look at how the big brands are utilizing AI to make their digital marketing endeavors more impactful and effective:

AI and Digital Marketing: Examples

Digital marketing is the need of the hour for every business owner.

Whether you are directing the digital marketing efforts from an in-house team or if you are availing the solutions from a digital marketing company in India, you cannot afford to oversee this division.

Till now we have only talked about how digital marketing ‘can be’ smoothened by AI – Now we’ll see how digital marketing is actually boosted by AI.

Here are a few examples of illustrious companies using AI to sharpen their digital marketing efforts:

Disney

Many of you might be thinking that the domination of Disney is slowly fading away in modern times.

That’s not true.

Disney has invested in the artificial intelligence tool, FVAEs or Factorized Variational Autoencoders. The move is taken to comprehend its moviegoers and identify their preferences accurately.

How did they do that?

FVAE tool is apparently a pattern identification tactic that works quite similar to recommendation engines.

In more technical terms, FVAEs hypothesizes and assesses the audience responses to find what attracts people and what pushes them away.

This way, Disney is able to find the scenes that are most liked or disliked by an audience.

Marvel, which is owned by Disney, is utilizing a ferocious combination of FVAE system and Big Data to examine the instances and moments in their narration that is mostly liked by the people.

Disney has also deployed an intriguing way of exploiting AI using the spectacular Magic Bench.

This an ideal amalgamation of mixed reality and augmented reality (MR and AR).

Users are made to sit on a bench and are connected with a humanoid animal. The visuals of users and animated humanoid is exhibited on a screen.

As the animal sits down, vibrations are developed using the haptic sensors and speakers that are affixed with bench. The entire room is crafted in a 3D visual on the screen enabling people to move alongside or ahead or behind the animated characters.

Netflix

Netflix, the American media-services provider, that is slowly becoming a household name across the globe, is making a strong inclination towards the AI-backed algorithms or anticipative technologies.

The objective is to offer a personalized experience to each user by recommending the sort of series, movies, documentaries, etc, based on the preferences of the audience.

Before the deployment of AI, Netflix is known to recommend the shows based on the feedback of users.

Today, by using predictive algorithms, Netflix is suggesting movies and shows that are in line with what users have previously liked or seen.

This is a sheer epitome of effective preemptive marketing.

Also, to become an apex media-service provider, Netflix uses AI to purge out the recurring issues like irritating pauses and rebuffering problems.

Amazon

The multinational American company is one of the early brands that invested in artificial intelligence technology.   

Long before companies even knew about the applications of artificial intelligence, Amazon has been benefiting from the product recommendation feature.

Research tells that the recommendation engine of Amazon contributes more than 35% of the company’s overall earning.  

Being an ace digital marketer, Amazon has constantly updated the algorithms to make recommendations more precise.

Amazon reviews are considered extremely useful for companies that look to market and promote their brand.

However, a lot of organizations started putting up fake reviews to generate high product rating, which was failing the purpose.

Hence, as a countermeasure, Amazon developed an ML algorithm, which can weed out fake reviews and identify credible feedback.

Amazon’s product like Go Store, Alexa, and Amazon recommendation engine are all elevated by an extravagant combination of AI and ML.

Applications of AI in digital marketing

Above-mentioned examples give a generalized picture of how Fat Cats of the industry are using AI to better their digital marketing approach.

In this section, we are going to see a few direct implementations of AI in digital marketing endeavors:

Generating and curating content

We all will agree that AI is still not that advanced that it can scribble down its own political impression for a newspaper or jot down thought-leadership write-ups.

However, marketers are now utilizing AI to create such content that has the power to bring visitors to your website.

One of the biggest contributions of Ai in the content field is its proficiency to generate reports and news based on data and information available.

These pre-set forms and templates are filled by artificial intelligence using the data and keywords, which makes the content looks like written by a human.

And these proven tactic is already being employed by the biggest media companies like CBS, BBC, the New York Times, Forbes, Reuters, etc.

AI is also able to curate content to have better user engagement. In the previous section, we have already discussed how AI is helping Netflix and Amazon to offer recommendations to their users.

Email marketing

Artificial intelligence analyzes your email history and customer data to find out the best time in a day and the best days in a week to send emails to potential customers.

Depending on every prospect’s behavior and preference, the artificial intelligence is able to help marketers in setting up an adequate frequency of their emails, design intriguing content, and jot down captivating subject lines.

If you are looking to handover your endeavors, tie up with a renowned digital marketing company in India that can speed up your email efforts using AI. A lot of service vendors have also started delivering AI-boosted digital solutions.

Digital advertising

Marketers who are taking care of social media promotion or running ad campaigns on Google or Facebook know how easy it is to target segmented audience depending on various demographics.

These companies have utilized AI and ML both to assess user data that comprises demographics, actions, interests, and options to come out with the most persuasive audience for different brands.

In this way, if you are planning to run a campaign for your product running shoes, you can set up the settings to target male and female customers aged between 15-30 and those living in metro cities.

This way, you can set up the most relevant audience for your efforts.

AI-powered search

Artificial intelligence is known to help businesses through the utilization of colossal data that is available on the web.

This lone feature helps businesses to drive search based on users’ intent, behavior, and preferences.

AI has also empowered users to find information by giving out voice commands. Various devices like Google Home, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa are examples of AI-led voice searches.

Voice-based searches now comprise 20% of the total Google searches today.

Therefore, companies of all sectors are now adjusting the voice-based search algorithms along with the conventional text-based searches strategies.

A suitable tip to implement persuasive voice-based search is by optimizing the pages with search phrases that initiate with words like “What”, “Who”, “Where”, “Why”, “How”, and “When”.

Enhancing user experience

When you are successfully able to examine a user’s data, you should devise a tantalizing user experience on the website through directed algorithms.

As per the users’ preference and behavior, AI is able to offer offers and information to make the experience more comfortable and friendly.

Connect with a competent digital marketing company in India that can ensure easy anticipation of customers’ behavior and demographics by keeping a close eye on their search cycles.

When you are able to render a compelling experience and user-friendly website, then only your audience will keep coming back to you.

We have already discussed applications of artificial intelligence through chatbots and predictive analysis.

Conclusion

The world of digital marketing has been hit hard by the propulsion of AI – for good of course.

From revamping and generating user-enticing content that can encourage user engagement to provide users with relevant suggestions for products and services, AI has been perpetually displaying its significance in the digital marketing sector.

Voice-based and visual-based searches are becoming the new trend of the industry.

With people working day & night to further power AI, who knows how AI will resurface the digital marketing sector in the future.

One thing is certain though – AI is going to stay as a permanent booster in the digital marketing industry for a long time.

For more updates, stay tuned. Thanks!

The post AI and Digital Marketing: Integrating Innovation and Strategy appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

When the brightest minds of the 20^th century started working on artificial intelligence, the focus was to develop human-like intellect and sense in machines.

However, AI is still in its evolution process.

As far as applications of artificial intelligence are concerned, this technology has already imprinted its utility in various sectors.

Typically, AI:

• Streamlines repetitive tasks, ultimately raising the operational efficiency of businesses.
• Gathers and analyzes Big Data, aiding business owners to make smart decisions.
• Offers market, industry, and competitor’s insight to businesses.
• Handles customer service division to lift the brand image of businesses.

But can AI implement creative tasks too?

No doubt AI is able to collect colossal data from customers, online platforms, and information available on different forums.

The question is, can AI use tons of data to articulate a blog, article, or similar content?

AI can write, really?

Jotting down a high-quality write-up is a step-by-step process that involves topic selection, research, title creation, keywords extraction, setting up the structure, regulating the tone, and finally, drafting a proofread think piece.

So, Artificial Intelligence, which is eventually nothing but math at its crux, is a research field, where new advancements are made every now and then.

The base of AI is machine learning (ML) technology whose algorithm is known to scrutinize a cluster of data, spot trends, and consequently offer forecasts about collected information, depending on the analysis.

What’s the simplest example of AI enhancing writing skills?

Pick up your smartphone and type a message on Whatsapp or any messenger.

You can see that as you type a couple of letters, your smartphone grabs the patterns and then guesses which words generally come after.

I know this can’t be set side by side with what we are discussing here. Anticipating the next word is not as same as writing. Still, being a writer, deep inside you know that these suggestions may come handy.

But AI isn’t always right and that can be clearly seen in the afore-mentioned example itself.

How many times does the autocorrect feature annoy you? You want to write something and the tool brings out something else.

For instance, if you want to write ‘I like this’, the autocorrect feature pops up ‘I love you’ as a suggestion.

This clearly shows that albeit AI is picking up the suggestion based on the highest probability of phrase, it ain’t right!

Even the Whatsapp chat shows the words or phrases you use most despite you want to use it or not.

So, AI is quite advanced and useful but it still needs some alterations.

How can a machine write a Harry Potter book then?

Yes, this happened already?

AI has scribbled down a Harry Potter Fan Fiction in the year 2017 and the entire writer community was biting its nails.

As a writer, it is quite understandably concerning.

But before you fret more, understand how a machine learning model is able to jot down an entire book.

AI, which runs on machine learning technology, can develop content but it requires a colossal set of information from where it can anticipate and learn.

So, when I say AI has written a book of the famous Harry Potter series, the machine learning model collected and studied the data available on the web.

The algorithm of machine learning technology is such that it tracks other words with respect to particular topics. However, the book was not produced without any human intervention.

To give structure and suitable tone to the words generated by AI, a team of writers was allocated to edit and arrange the content.

So, will AI ever be able to write like a human?

It can, that’s for sure. However, we aren’t there yet.

AI and the writing skill

Every writer has his/her own set of challenges while jotting down a write-up. Some may find it tedious to conceptualize while others may find the final proofreading part boring.

If you ask me, one of the most arduous tasks is to recall pre-set, brainstormed, conventions for a particular user context.

Here, the notion of artificial intelligence offering suggestions to ease the misery of writers seems like a befitting application.

So, AI can put up the suggestions and you as a writer can choose which phrase or word suits the context perfectly.

This ultra-modern tech can surely pace up the overall articulation process.

But the capability of machine learning technology to grab and analyze information depends on humans to first jot down such write-ups.

Simply put, you need to decide the objective of write up, the target audience, most apparent literature, and the most subtle language.

Until you are decided on these aspects, it becomes impossible for AI to write down anything. So, AI cannot replace humans until we want it.

Writers can pass on some of the trivial and repetitive tasks however, it is impossible for this technology to create something totally new.

Only humans can be imaginative to a limitless possibility.

You ask Google (which is also a perfect example of AI) about the best topics to write on. But you cannot expect Google to give a revolutionary idea that has never been talked or thought of before.

The proficiency of artificial intelligence in writing depends on the humungous base of information available on the internet that is put up by humans eventually.

AI can surely be a booster for writers but it cannot be a substitute for them.

So,

How AI and Writing can go hand-in-hand?

Just like the microwave in your kitchen is able to set up the right time and temperature to heat up or prepare some dishes, which saves you the trouble of doing it on your own, saving a lot of your time and effort – in the similar context, AI helps writers by providing the facility to select the content from data strings.

There can be multiple phrases and words, which means you can test different scenarios for your content.

Without AI, this is typically done by researching manually from the data on the web, which is undoubtedly, too tedious.

So, using AI-backed tools to prepare write-ups is definitely a spectacular way to speed up the process, but the need for human writers remain inevitable.

How AI benefits you as a writer?

When the extraneous portion of your writing process is handled by AI, this gives you extra time and space to elevate your creativity and push your writing to an apex level.

Conclusion

So, all the skepticism around ‘AI is going to replace writers’ is just an assumption filled with fears and no truth.

Applications of artificial intelligence can actually offer more space and time to you as a writer that you can use to polish your creativity, imaginativeness, and articulation.

So, technology is here to provide you that little push but ultimately you are the one that drives the road.

For more updates on AI, stay tuned. Thanks!

The post Is Artificial Intelligence a Pinch-Hitter for Writers? appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

And why shouldn’t it be?

AI – the technology that promises machines to be at the same scale of human intelligence has found applicability in a number of business industries; marketing is one of them.

However, AI is in its pupillage and there is a long road ahead before the fancied vision is accomplished.

This said, applications of artificial intelligence have already penetrated the marketing sector quite ferociously and we aren’t aware of it.

Here are some of the vivid examples of AI being used in marketing sector:

Helping consumers choose the right product

Welcome to the digital world.

Here, numerous companies have hovered up on the internet to tap their customers and raise profitability.

Billions of people are on the internet and the only way to fetch your part of market share is to comprehend your target audience and provide them what they want.

To do so, the term ‘product recommendation’ – the practice of aggregating customer behaviors to forecast future actions – plays a vital role.

Amazon, the American e-commerce and cloud computing giant, started the deployment of ‘collaborative filtering’ way back in 1998 only.

Today, you can witness the same tactics being unfolded by the likes of Netflix and Spotify where they provide recommendations to users based on the latter’s behavior and preferences.

And product recommendation is sourced from artificial intelligence.

The ability to group and analyze consumer data dichotomized with profile information and statistics is a gift from AI to marketers.

For each consumer action, the AI-backed system collects and adheres with your audiences’ taste to respond with crisp suggestions customized in real time.

Take the example of Sky, a British telecom titan, which has enforced a machine learning model that is crafted to put up content in accordance with the viewers’ state of mind.

And since the premium brands are making people accustomed to highly personalized care (in the form of recommendations), same is expected from other organizations too.  

Online publishers aren’t too far behind leveraging applications of artificial intelligence in real-time.

You can witness various eminent publishers having content recommendation widget implemented on their platforms to proffer suggestions to readers.

These AI-based widgets are also known to concretize the recommendations base on audiences’ reading pattern.

So, artificial intelligence is helping the brands to put up the right products in front of customers depending on consumers’ purchasing habit or behavior.

Data dribbling and beating a dead horse

Today, the notion of marketing is often assumed to be related to promoting your brand, product, service, etc. to your audience on the web.

The colossal presence of billions of people on the internet has made marketers rush towards digital marketing tactics.

What is the most astonishing benefit of implementing marketing in present times?

You get humungous data of customer behavior.

It would be unquestionably right to conclude that marketing is driven by data today.

So, the success of your business depends on your proficiency to utilize this data to amplify customer experience, push personalization, and ensure precise targeting of your audience.

Since the clustered data is enormous, examining it and locating symmetry is an arduous challenge of human analysts.

For all those people who think we don’t need AI, here is an answer to you – AI can venture sophisticated business and evaluation tasks that humans find too complex to address and resolve.

This liberates humans to put their attention on the tasks that are more visceral and prolific work they are more fitted to execute.

Demandbase, a prominent name in account-based marketing (ABM), have implemented AI technology to filtrate organizations from its potential customers’ list that would not yield out profitability in the long run.

The Exactitude of Search Engines

Ever heard of RankBrain?

In the year 2015, Google announced that it has been using a system known as RankBrain to accelerate and streamline its search algorithm.

You are guessing right; RankBrain is an AI-backed system, which capitalizes on machine learning to comprehend users’ requirements exceptionally when they type a search query on Google.

It means the moment you write, “Artificial Intelligence” on Google, a number of suggestions hurled up based on your search behavior.

Even if RankBrain isn’t able to understand or classify a word or a phrase, it still speculates terms and patois that might have alike apprehensions and drain the outcomes accordingly.

What’s more is that RankBrain is able to update itself with time, implementing its inference on what is the future search is going to be all about.

So, AI has the competency to decode sophisticated, blurry, and crudely written long-tail search queries to provide precise results for users.

Following the footprints of Google, various e-commerce websites have deployed artificial intelligence in their search engines to ease user navigation and make product searching nimble.

This is why whenever you are shopping on Amazon or Alibaba or Flipkart, you can see a number of similar products list beyond the product you actually searched.

Applications of artificial intelligence thus stretch to identifying fitting outcomes, comprehending wrongly written words, and facilitating users to end up with products they didn’t even know they were trying to discover.

Visual AI – the power of smart images

Visual search is the new stud in the marketing sector.

It is astonishing how image searching has opened up new possibilities for marketers looking to put up their brand on the top.

If you want to see how visual search has the potential to find results that are visibly similar to one another, visit the social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

But the pressing question is – how can visual search revolutionize the marketing efforts?

Visual search, which is derived from AI, has the power to enhance the merchandising experience and make shopping more personalized.

On the first look, the advancement of visual-based search makes the ‘recommended product’ feature way too outdated.

Instead of offering products on consumers’ purchase actions, visual search suggests results depending on their appearances. This eases users’ efforts who are seeking a similar looking or somewhat same appearance product.

One of America’s prominent retailers, Target and the illustrious British fashion & cosmetic retailer, ASOS, have committed big-time implementing visual search.

Target puts in motion collaboration with Pinterest in 2017 when it linked Pinterest Lens into its application. The Pinterest Lens is the image based search tool of the social media channel.

This empowered people to click a photo of any product offline and seek a similar item on Target’s website only. Sounds amazing.

Likewise, ASOS launched Style Match, a tool that works in a similar fashion and is focused to provide an extraordinary shopping experience to consumers.

Customers are empowered by these visual tools as they get the convenience to see any product anywhere in the real-world and search the same on their preferred retailer’s application.

Another advantage of image-based search is that marketers can utilize it to locate the utility of brand products and logos on social media sites. This helps marketers to pattern out the latest visual trends.

It means if you are running a brand, visual search can help you to find out who is talking about your brand, interacting with your logo, or reviewing your product, on social media sites, even when no textual reference is given.

Machine learning – it listens and observes consumers

With every brand and almost every consumer now floating on the web, it is becoming important for the marketers to weigh out their brand presence on the internet.

If people are talking about your brand on the internet, tracking such conversation brings a lot of opportunities for your marketing plan.

Applications of artificial intelligence also sheath social listening and sentiment analysis tasks for businesses.

AI helps your marketing team to analyze the attitude of prospects and customers whenever they converse about your brand on the web space, offering you an edge. You can consequently set up campaigns and target audience accordingly.

Samsung gives the best example of how social listening and sentiment analysis can do wonders for your brand.  

This South Korean multinational conglomerate worked with AI-backed consumer insight organization, Crimson Hexagon mainly to find and address customer discontentment with a red hue on the screen of its S8 mobile phones.

Typically AI-backed tools help you as a marketer or as a brand owner to comprehend what your existing and potential customers are talking about you on social media and modulate your approach to promote your offerings.

Marketers should handle this specific attribute carefully though otherwise, they would look kind of eerie and pushy.

Anticipating future trends – Enhancing CX

Being a marketer, you must be familiar with the term ‘Predictive Analytics’, which is the procedure of digging out insights from the collected information to find what’s going to trend in the future.

Predictive analysis is specifically popular with the e-commerce marketers who want to get familiar with what eludes their customers by tracking the purchase patterns.

Typically speaking, AI helps marketers to elevate the customer experience by remodeling their marketing efforts to yield positive outcomes.

Best examples of using AI-backed predictive analysis are FedEx and Sprint. FedEx uses predictive analysis to anticipate how many of its existing patrons will switch to competitors accurately.

In the same line, Sprint also classifies the set of customers more likely to cancel orders precisely.

This ensures a dip in customer churn rate and a boost in the retention percentage.

When marketers are able to successfully pinpoint the segment of customers that are about to make an exit, the former can strategize and reach out to such patrons with focused messages.

Along with this, predictive analysis can also be utilized for customer service.

AI can make precise forecasting about when the call volumes are going to climb or dive so that the company can staff the phone lines in accordance with the requirement.

Ending Statement

Believe it or not, applications of artificial intelligence also covers the copywriting division of marketing today.

Although the parameter in which the operations of AI is spread is still limited to email subject lines and product descriptions, the contribution cannot be ignored.

If you want to see how adequately and creatively machine learning can produce ad copies for your brand, contact the vendor Phrasee, which is an AI system that produces content for email marketing, push messaging and Facebook copy.

So, AI has the ability to transition the way we work, shop, promote, and sell.

Even though it is not working at even half of its potential now, artificial intelligence has the magic of doing things that weren’t possible before.

If you have witnessed exemplary ways using which any brand is deploying AI and smoothening their marketing efforts, share with us. Thanks!

The post Exploiting AI to Engineer Marketing Strategies – A Case Study appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Then why everyone isn’t able to leverage the benefits Google AdWords offer?

One reason can be the inadequacy to slash out the noise and design a PPC strategy that actually pushes your brand towards profit.

If you are using AdWords for the first time, it may look mind-boggling and an arduous task to complete.

However, AdWords is nothing but a nozzle for your business that you can immediately switch on to drive new traffic to your website.  

But there is one problem.

Driving traffic is not your business’s bottom line – Generating revenue certainly is.

This seems quite simplistic right now but when you are actually running a campaign, the success rate may differ depending on how well you have optimized keywords.

Keywords – The crux of Ad campaigns

As an SEM expert, you want to set up your Ad campaigns in complete synchronization with your business requirement and target relevant keywords in a precise manner, right?

It all looks fantastic written in a sentence but how to do this in real?

The best of SEM and Online advertisers recommend blending the Ad Group theming and Modified Broad Keywords.

This helps you in designing a focused approach that ultimately provides A-Okay traffic in a jiffy and setting up a framework that tips you over and over by providing stronger sets of keywords.

Let’s take an in-depth dive into the amazing world of AdWords and see how Keyword matching can be done to push your Ad Campaigns in the right direction:

Appositeness matters

When talking about Google AdWords, the term relevancy means how your content is matched to what your potential customer is searching.

In the same line –

• Keywords are the sentences, words, phrases, you think your audience might utilize to search, define, or inquire about your product/service.
• Search terms are the sentences people actually look out for.
• Your Ad will appear on the search result page.
• Your landing page is the ultimate destination you want your audience to touch down as soon as the Ad is clicked.

a)      Keywords pertinent for search queries

What makes your Ad appear to people who are looking for what you are offering?

The most elementary thing is to match keywords with what your target customers are typing in the search box.

To nail this perfectly, you have to bid on the term that is matching to your audience’s query.

This is so because as soon as someone seeks Google by typing a query, Google initiates a search using your keyword. If the bid is already done by you, Google will make your advertisement appear and vice versa.

So, what I recommend is to utilize Broad and Modified keywords to augment the likelihood of Google making sense of your keyword as a match to prospect’s query.

b)      Ads pertinent for keywords

The success of your Ads on Google is directly proportional to the inclusion of keywords.

As an SEM marketer, you should put in your efforts to match the wording of your ads with keywords in your ad groups.

Every part of your ad is accountable for weighing out the relevance. So, if you think that the headline alone is the measuring factor for relevance, you are making a blunder.

If you want to calculate the Ad rank, the output will depend on the following aspects:

• Blend of bids
• Ad style
• Ad extensions
• Quality Score

c)       The pertinence of landing pages to keywords

Suppose you are successful in reaching the relevant audience, now what?

If the prospects click on the link, they are going to land on the website page you want.

This means how your landing page is optimized matters, right?

It is paramount to see that the messages of your ad match with the content of your landing page.

This increases the conversion probability by instantly responding to the searcher’s expected results.

Broad Match Keywords

As the name suggests, broad match keywords are used by marketers to get a wider audience.

These keywords are named broad because they are being searched by a mass audience quite often.

This means these keywords are the most usual search phrases and sentences used by people while seeking some product or service on Google.

The general public is typically not so precise while seeking something on Google, this indicates that most people end up scribbling the broad match keywords that offer them a wider myriad of results.

If you would contact a digital marketing company in India, you would know that they prefer broad match keywords while setting up the campaign owing to their competency to cover a wider audience.

Did you know that broad match keywords include variations of the main term, similar phrases, misspellings, plurals, and synonyms?

This is what empowers your campaign to target a colossal audience.

Utilization of broad match keywords in your ad campaign is one of the best methods to discover the most appropriate long-tail keywords and to drive a large number of users to your website.

However, there are some setbacks too. Since the matching is done on a wider scale, the traffic your website receives is more spread out.

Also, a few keywords used by you may not be relatable to the theme or subject of your website or blog. This may result in a dip in the Quality Score of the website.

Exact Match Keywords

This one is the contra of broad match keywords.

Exact match is the set of keywords that is dependent on the search queries that are identical to the last detail.

So, unlike broad match keywords that cover a vast array, exact match keywords only tap the specific search queries.

When the search query is matched with the exact keywords, the search engine/Google will drive the user to your website or ad or landing page.

Hence, it is one of the toughest keyword matches marketers try to accomplish while optimizing their ad campaigns.

On the other hand, the traffic that lands on your website through exact match keywords is much relevant and refined.

This doesn’t mean that the traffic will be high. In fact, if you want high traffic on your website through an ad campaign, using broad match keywords is much preferred.

However, if you wish to achieve higher traffic on your website through the exact match, you need to include a wider set of keywords to your campaign.

Talking about conversions, exact search has more probability of converting a visitor into a patron. So, low traffic is also able to generate revenue.

Phrase Match Keywords

Running an ad campaign is a mixed attempt of adjustments and adaptations depending on user intents and keywords usage.

Phrase match is a mid-way solution for marketers who look to target keywords more than broad match but less converged than exact match.

So, phrase match keywords have the tendency to provide flexibility to the marketers looking to get more traffic for their websites.

As discussed, exact keywords are too hard to match and broad match are too spread out to have a higher conversion, so the phrase match is a feasible solution.

The traffic will be lower than what you could have achieved using broad match but more than what exact match would offer.

Negative Match Keywords

Google will give out results depending on what input you have given.

So, while you reluctantly try to optimize the keywords based on what you want to target, it is also important to focus on what you don’t want to search for.

Negative keywords are like a tool that is used to trim out the clutter from your ad campaign results.

These phrases and terms help your ads in not appearing for queries and search sentences that have absolutely nothing to do with your business.

For instance, if you are selling toothbrush, you don’t want to show up for queries looking for a hairbrush.

Generally speaking, negative match keywords are of three kinds:

• Negative Broad Match
• Negative Phrase Match
• Negative Exact Match

All three kinds work in a similar manner as discussed above with just one exception; the targeting is done to avoid showing ad results for focused phrases and terms.

Final Statement

Remember, there isn’t a perfect way to optimize your keyword. For each way, there are pros and cons.

However, if optimized, both in accordance with your business objective and in terms of your audience’s demographic and search intent, the results may be less hampering.

Broad match, exact match, phrase match are the keyword types that you generally take care while setting up the ad campaign. Follow the above tips and set up your campaign accordingly.

Do not forget the negative keywords.

For more queries, reach us in the comment section. Thanks!

The post Popular Keyword Matching Tactics to boost your AdWords Campaigns appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

With Orkut and Facebook hitting the deck in the early 2000s and a ferocious emergence of different social networking sites in the last decade, the advertising approach has completely transformed.

It wasn’t late before advertisers put up an insurgency against the traditional advertising techniques.

So, if you are running a small or a medium sized business and haven’t exercised social media advertising yet, you are missing out big time.

Talking about the United States alone, more than 65% of people use social media platforms on a daily basis.

Do you know how much time these people spend on social media every day? An average of 2 hours and 15 minutes each day.

The most fantastic part is – if implemented correctly, your social media advertising can empower you to reach around 50000 people on a specific day. Yes, that can happen, only if you follow a profitable and viable approach.

Social Media Advertising

Do you want to increase your brand’s popularity on social media sites?

Social media advertising is a proven way using which you can place targeted ads on these channels.

The most arousing factor in social media advertising is the presence of a colossal audience that is nothing but revenue making opportunities for business.

Now, the hard part is that you need to classify your target audience out of the large crowd present on social media. How would you do that?

Putting up ads on social media sites is a great way to reach your audience.

From big players to SMB owners, everyone is today pacing up their social media advertising efforts.

A glimpse of how big social media advertising can be seen by the stat that reveals an expenditure of $ 67.9 million USD for the year 2018. This means that companies are almost spending $23 on each user.

And this is going to increase at a rapid annual rate of 28.4%. Market experts have predicted that by the year 2022, total spending on social media advertising is going to touch $ 185 million USD.

Why Social Media Advertising?

A number of social media consulting and social media marketing companies have emerged in recent times promising businesses to offer a prolific result.

The emergence of social media agency is the direct consequence of an increase in demand for social media advertising.

And this is so because branding and advertising on social networking sites have been extremely beneficial for business of all sizes and sectors.

Here are some of the apparent benefits that you can avail with social media advertising:

• Elevated traffic
• More brand exposure
• Generation of loyal fans
• Getting warm and relevant leads
• Enhanced sales
• Valuable market insights
• Better business partnership

A great way to segregate the audience

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you can classify your market to direct your marketing efforts in a much lucrative manner?

Social networking sites generally encourage users to offer additional details so as to amplify the experience. In some cases, apart from generic information like name and email address, social media platforms also collect demographic details like age, location, gender, etc.

For instance, social networking sites keep a log of their users depending on what group or community they are joining. This offers these social channels to develop posts in accordance with their users’ interest.

In a nutshell, social media advertising empowers business owners and marketers to segment their prospects/customers on geographic, demographic, and psychological factors.

How to select the most appropriate social media channel?

Want to know which social media platform will be the best fit for your paid campaigns?

Look for social networking sites where your organic tasks are performing best.

The platforms where your brand’s content is enticing most engagement should be an apparent choice for your paid advertising endeavors.

Paid advertising is all about targeting where your customers are most densely available, most accessible, and show most engagement.

Trendy social media marketing channels

Here are some popular and most engaging social networking sites that are best for your paid campaign efforts.

Facebook

As of December 2018, Facebook has around 2.32 billion MAU (monthly active users).

This is what makes Facebook stand apart in terms of the availability of potential customers for businesses to target.

The most astonishing feat is that Facebook offers the customization facility so that you can tailor-make your advertising campaign with respect to your business objective.

There are a total of 11 campaigns goals that are spread under 3 parent segments, which comes handy and convenient when looking to narrow down that humungous set of people available on Facebook.

All in all, there are 3 sorts of parent categories under which Facebook looks to offer different types of campaigns. These are:

Awareness: As the name suggests, this kind of campaign is centered to raise brand awareness of your business.

Under this segment, there are three types of campaigns that you can deploy:

• Brand awareness: Helps your brand to stand on top in your customers’ mind
• Local awareness: Aids you in reaching an audience near your business location
• Reach: Assists in offering maximum brand exposure for your business

Consideration: This type of Facebook campaign offers you options to increase engagement with your audience.

There are five ways using which you can customize this campaign suiting your business requirement:

• Traffic: When you look to direct the traffic to your website or app.
• Engagement: Supports in increasing the page likes, elevate attendance at events, or raise the customer engagement for a special offer or discount.
• App Installments: When you want to encourage people to install your brand’s application.
• Video Views: Helps in bringing in more people to watch your videos.
• Lead Generation: Strengthening your sales team by getting closable leads.

Conversion: This sort of Facebook campaign provides you the facility to increase the conversion rate for your business.

• Conversions: Making users take a specific action like subscribe or purchase through your website.
• Product Catalogue Sales: You can bridge your product catalog with Facebook advertisements to entice users in making a purchase decision.
• Store Visits: Produce content that direct users to your store (brick & mortar).

In addition to this, there are 8 types of Facebook ads that you can run for your business:

1. Photo Ads
2. Video Ads
3. Carousel Ads
4. Slideshow Ads
5. Collection Ads
6. Messenger Ads
7. Lead Ads
8. Dynamic Ads

Instagram

This image-based social networking site is one of the highest visited channels second to Facebook.

User engagement is more on Instagram than on Facebook, making it a perfect medium to advertise your product using organic content.

Since Instagram is held by Facebook, the advertisements here serve the same classifications of business goals i.e. awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Let’s go through the type of Instagram ads you can run:

Photo or Video: I assume every one of you has been on Instagram or know what’s it like, right?

Videos and Images are shared by different users on Instagram as these are only ways of putting up content on this social networking site.

A photo advertisement doesn’t look any different from the normally shared image except for one thing; a photo advertisement has ‘sponsored’ written on the top corner of the image.

If your business is looking for conversion or engagement, putting up a CTA (call-to-action) button the ad will increase the scope of the advertisements.

Since the visual appeal is the only way to target and bring in the audience on Instagram, you have to make sure that the images or videos that you are sharing are in adherence with your business objective and brand style.

When putting up videos, one should consider the fact that the videos are played on mute mode on Instagram, so if you are able to set up video without sound, it would be perfect for this image-sharing platform.

Carousel: Carousel is putting up a storyline or compelling message by utilizing various elements like photos or videos (maximum 10) to pinpoint the attributes and value your product or product line offers to consumers.

This type of social media advertising requires you to use a uniform theme for all images so that they seem visually symmetric and pleasing.

Story: This is another compelling way to elude users towards your brand. Instagram offers you the benefit to design and put up a story of photos or videos of 15 seconds max.

The highlight of these ads is that they are displayed in full-screen format between the users’ stories on your Instagram feed. Remember the length of these ads is 24 hours only, so an excellent tactic for immediate marketing.

Twitter

When the business objective is to make the content viral or reach to a huge audience base within less span of time, Twitter is the best place to invest.

From the advertisement point of view, Twitter is a haven for marketers. This social media platform provides you the leverage to set up ads based on 6 business goals.

Don’t forget, there are millions of tweets sent every day so if you want your content to be visible, you require strategy and timing.

Let’s have a quick look at the variety of twitter campaign:

Awareness: If you wish that your brand’s tweet or your tweet should be visible to a larger audience, this kind of ad comes handy.

Different social media consultants or social media agency will charge you a particular amount per 1000 impressions.

Engagement: Business owners who are looking to increase user engagement on promoted tweets need to pay for each engagement. For instance, for every retweet, comment or like with unique user you need to pay up.

This is one of the fastest methods to elevate customer engagement with your brand.

Followers: This one is an easy peasy. With these ads, you can build up a strong Twitter audience for yourself or your business. The billing is done for each new follower.

Conversions: For running this kind of ad, you have to spend for each click.

Installment: Twitter charges you for each app installment by users.

Re-engagement: People have downloaded your app but aren’t using it! You run the re-engagement ad and make people use your app. Charges are for each app click.

Promoted video views: Twitter increases the views of your Video or GIF and charges you for each view.

Types of Twitter Ads

Typically, two types of ads you can run on Twitter:

Promoted tweets:  These are normal tweets. The only difference is that your tweets will be available to people who don’t follow you. You pay for that. These tweets have ‘sponsored’ written over them.

Promoted accounts: If you want to boost the visibility of your profile to a wider audience who you think might be intrigued in your content, you can have promoted account on Twitter.

The best part is that these accounts are shown in the timeline of prospects in the ‘Who to Follow’ suggestion and search results.

LinkedIn

This one social networking platform is regarded as an extraordinarily prolific channel for networking and cementing business relationships.

If you wish to advertise on LinkedIn, you need to run ads depending on three business objectives; awareness, consideration, and conversion (all three same as discussed above).

LinkedIn offers you to make a strong brand presence by running these 6 kinds of advertisements:

Sponsored content: Looks like a generic post and will be available to desktop and mobile users. Typically used by the brands to put up content in front of a bigger prospect base.

Sponsored inmail: The only difference between LinkedIn’s sponsored inmail and normal email marketing is that the sponsored content reaches the inbox of users’ Twitter inbox. The sending and receiving of email are done only when the user is active.

Text ads: You might have noticed the small ads appearing on the top right of the desktop screen while on Twitter. These are text ads and can be set up with thumbnail images.

Video ads: When it comes to visual advertising, video ads are considered as the most impactful way to reach and entice the audience. LinkedIn offers video ads that you can run to create a distinguishable brand image of your business.

Display ads: You want ads that should be directed towards a particular set of audience? Run display advertisements on LinkedIn in a noise-free environment specifically targeting your desired set of prospects.

Dynamic ads: This one is a personalized message or advertisement that is sent to your audience based on its behavior so as to create a strong impact.

Final Statement

There are other social media channels like Snapchat, Pinterest, and YouTube, where you can run advertisements for your brand.

While Snapchat and Pinterest are typically about running visual advertisements including images, GIFs, and videos, YouTube offers a splendid opportunity to promote your brand through enticing videos.

Having said this, social media is a dazzling and splashy dais to not just increase the brand awareness and user engagement, but also to cement a strong place of your business for the long run.

We have tried to cover the top 4 popular social media channels and their respective advertisement options. If you want more clarification, reach us in the comment section. Thanks!

The post A Capsulization of Social Media Advertising 2019 appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Stats tell us that the global SaaS market is going to touch the $ 117 Billion by the end of the year 2022.

Sounds perfect if you are a SaaS business owner, right?

The growing interest of the business world in the SaaS market is a clear indication of how services and their delivery is going to rule the future market.

With zealous climb, the upsurge of the SaaS market also resuscitated notions like marketing automation among the businesses.

With automation comes chatbots.

And if you are one of SaaS zealots who also want to set up a successful business and looking for some push, here is a golden tip – start using Chatbots now.

If you don’t know about chatbots, here is a quick glimpse of how it all started:

The Dawn of Chatbots – touched by Artificial Intelligence

Simply put, a chatbot is a creation of computer program or AI (as we know it) that has the competency to engage users via text messages or audio conversations.

• Chatbot, for the very first time, was ruminated by Alan Turing, a British scientist, in his jotted paper, ‘Computer Machinery and Intelligence’ in the year 1950.
• Then in 1966, Joseph-Weizenbaum, an American scientist, developed ELIZA, in 1966, which laid the groundwork for chatbots structuring.
• In the succeeding years, scientists keep on working more advanced chatbots.
• Finally, in 1995, L.I.C.E was created by Richard Wallace, for which it won the Loebner Prize in 2000, 2001, and 2004.
• In 2001, Smartchild, a bot to offer prompt access to weather, news, stock, movies, and transit information, was released by the now discarded AIM dais. This was considered as an Usher of Siri and S Voice.
• Today, Google has Google Now, Amazon has Alexa, Facebook has Portal, IBM has Watson, and Apple has Siri.

How Chatbots foster your SaaS Business?

There are certain ways using which you can actually optimize your SaaS business’s online efficiency and reach out to your customers in an engaging manner.

Let’s take these ways one by one:

Delineating your patrons

Call a spade a spade – yes, Chatbots can really help a SaaS business owner to outline the target audience remarkably.

If you are planning to open up a SaaS startup, remember there are two typical ways using which you can edge out your target audience:

• You can either use a wide-spread targeting method and let people themselves express if they want your solutions or not.
• You can use confined targeting, which is dependent on data and postulations and size up the outcome.

Chatbots can exist on multiple channels for your SaaS startup – website, social media, messenger, emails, etc.

Despite where the chatbot is placed, you can always use this artificial intelligence backed tool to get a better comprehension of your target users.

How?

Chatbots ask the most befitting questions to your audience. Based on the response, chatbots have the proficiency to fetch critical information. You can utilize this useful data to clearly outline your focused customer-base and develop your customer personifications.

Using this method, you can strategize your action plan in strict accordance with the preference and taste of your audience.

As a startup owner, you should know that heaping information in form of data from multiple origins is quite necessary to make tactical accords and make your reach in the market more efficient.

So, ensure to design a soothing and frictionless script of meaningful questions and then utilize it as a knowledge-base to sketch your audience clearly.

Impeccable capacitation

One of the most important aspects of a startup is to generate warm and closable leads for your business.

Believe it or not, chatbots can help your SaaS startup to streamline your lead generation process quite effectively.

Needless to say, the lead generation process is quite tedious and requires an immense investment of time, money, and efforts.

Automation is the brand new way of generating leads to start your startup. This approach is going to save your money, time, efforts, and is also going to offer you relevant leads.

You can always put up qualification questions in front of your audience to find whether the particular user is eligible to become your lead or not.

An example of a qualifying question is

“What is the major objective of your business? To lessen the customer service cost, to elevate the customer engagement or to boost your sales?”

As per your business objective, you can formulate limitless questions that could offer you clearance with respect to the quality of leads.

As a personal recommendation, I would suggest making short questions that keep the user interested and engaged with your chatbot.

Cementing your turf

SaaS businesses are all about how you offer value to your customers through your offerings.

However, you need to build a community first for which you need to constantly incorporate value. Pick any of the renowned SaaS startups, each one of them had built a strong community.

You can also start by creating a turf for your chatbot. Most of the SaaS entrepreneurs are utilizing community for their chatbots to get highly engaged subscribers. A great example of such an approach is Viral Loops.

Bottom line – you can infuse value to your customer-base via your chatbot by enticing a long list of subscribers that could be converted into loyal customers.

Filter your paid traffic

SaaS business owners expect the closure of the sales cycle in a matter of days – sometimes even in hours.

For this, a lot of startup owners look towards Paid targeting.

A lot of business experts and entrepreneurs of the SaaS sector has complained that their Facebook click-to-messenger Ads are not generating expected results.

I agree. It is so because you are implementing the paid targeting strategy in the wrong manner.

For a normal business, the key to success is by developing a prosperous relationship with your potential customers first. After you do so, then only you can try to sell your offering.

But most of the SaaS startup owners do the mistake of selling before offering any value through Facebook click-to-messenger Ads.

So, the correct way is to use your chatbot to promote unique and crisp content. Also, you can utilize your chatbot to educate your new leads too.

This ensures that your Paid Ad campaigns offer you expected return – that sometimes is measured in value too.

Final Statement

The aforementioned tips are not new at all. If you would explore the Google, you may find these tricks disseminated in different articles.

However, it is unfortunate that despite the presence of so much knowledge, many SaaS startup owners still practice their chatbot in a totally wrong fashion.

If you think that chatbots are just a quick way to inform your target audience about the upcoming offers and latest information, you haven’t yet witnessed the limitless potential of this AI-backed super tool.

Follow these simple tips and see how fluently and productively chatbots can really push your SaaS startup towards success.

The post Chatbots – The Vanguard Angel of SaaS Startups appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

March 12, 1989, the tech legend, Tim Berners-Lee, introduced the World Wide Web, an unparalleled and fantastic application to us on 12 March 1989. Nevertheless, with such a razzle-dazzle invention, everything in the business world was meant to get disrupted, for better.

Conventional, outdated, and humdrum practices of businesses across several industries took huge bumps, which gave these organizations a new face in this era of digital transformation. No wonder, people are calling this epoch as the fourth industrial revolution.

Amidst all this technologically fused topsy-turviness, there is one business sector that has been able to hold its ground strongly; Consultancy.

Business consultancy or the industry where companies or individuals offer valuable insights and advice to the C-suites of different organizations for varied requirements is on the verge of massive disruption and there is nothing you can do to stop that.

From being a traditional sector with an astounding performance record, this new wave of digitalization and ultra-modern techs is threatening the decades’ old heritage of business consultancy.

Business Consulting – An Epitome of Constancy

One of the most stupendous characteristics of the business consulting sector is its firmness.

The primary business model of consulting industry has not experienced any change in the last 100 years or more.

What consulting was successful in doing was sending smart professionals (external resources) into enterprises for a specific time-frame to provide solutions to the most sophisticated issues bothering their clients.

Two aspects that have always shielded the business consulting sector from disruption are obscurity and alacrity.

The world of consulting is highly murky and understandably so. Even the bigwigs of the consulting world have matured into ‘solution shops’ where answers to the most complex problems are developed in the ‘black box’ of the staff room.

From a client’s perspective, it becomes really hard to measure or judge the competency of a consulting firm. It is so because businesses hire these consulting companies to gain some domain knowledge and proficiency that they themselves crave for.

Whether the project has been completed or not is also very difficult to identify because of intrusion of external aspects like management transformation, the standard of execution, and time frame. These factors influence the outcome of the consulting firms’ propositions.

Business Consultancy – the rise of the Digital Age

Simply put, digitalization has put the consulting sector in a completely new phase, which is quite apparent as the businesses that were availing these services also faced drastic transformation.

The sudden permutation of the marketplace, which trimmed the share of conventional management consulting has disrupted a lot of organizations.

In the past, the segmentation of business consultancy firms was easy to do. For instance, companies like IBM and Accenture were known for operations and implementations. And if a company has a business consultancy requirement, then BCG or Bain was the obvious choice.

Today, it isn’t easy to distinguish what’s what. This is so because clients are now vigorously seeking digital solutions. Business consulting firms are hence incorporating technological operations alongside conventional strategies. This has transformed the roles of consulting firms as:

• Firms offering operations and execution assistance had to brace and strengthen their tactical divisions.
• Contrarily, business consulting firms had to fixate on developing digital practices.

One of the biggest repercussions of digital transition could be seen in how the consulting sector viewed itself. Post the digital boom, the perspectives of consulting firms took a U-turn. Today, business consulting firms are more focused on data and experience.

What changed? Why? How?

To fathom the disruption in the consulting sector due to digital transition, you require to have a far-sighted vision along with a bigger picture scenario.

For example, the average life of a Fortune500 company around five decades back was 60 years approximately.

In the year 2010, this dipped to 18 years.

It is expected that by the end of 2020, 75% of today’s Fortune500 companies will perish.  

Why so?

• Customer expectations are climbing up like a squirrel, which is again incited by randomly popping up digital experiences. This, in turn, spikes the competition in the market from newly formed digitally-sound companies that are meeting customers’ demand at a much rapid pace.
• This is the reasons that quite a lot of enterprises and SMBs are now working with digital transformation consulting vendors.
• However, this ain’t easy too.
• Today, to survive in this cut-throat rivalry, you require to get on the same page with customers and comprehend how they and their preferences have transformed during this digital revolution. Then only you can market an innovative environment and culture needed to endure the volatile business climate.
• This makes the main objective of consulting engagements to now set on customers. Today, if any company is thriving in such an ambiguous environment, it’s not an IT firm but the organization that is customer-centric.

The Modern Consulting Company

1. The modern business consulting firms are helping businesses to design & understand personas, extract leads with user motivations, pave customer journeys and identify & invent ways to appropriate and unscramble customers’ course vis-à-vis digital transformation.
2. If you look in the past, consulting organizations have shown dependency on direct readouts and PPTs to offer their solutions.
3. Today, these stagnant insights become useless within weeks of their implementation owing to the constantly transforming digital climate.
4. Hence, the disruptive business environment requires a modern approach where management consulting firms invest in cloud techs and evolving approaches.
5. A lot of business consulting firms have thus started using online platforms to offer amendable information in real-time. These flexible solutions can be influenced, modified, tuned, and bolstered even after the engagement readouts are winded up.
6. Roadmaps and customer journeys are readily updated and versed with any new technology that commences in the market through these daises.
7. Along with this, these platforms become a reliable and frictionless point-of-contact for consulting companies with their clients, which ensures a cognizant upselling.

Preparing sharp and crisp processes

Disruptive consulting companies address the volatile and rare requirements of Fortune 500 companies by strategizing new processes that are aimed to captivate the inventive customer-centricity of the engaging malleability of sharp design and development.

This approach empowers the companies that follow their legacy systems to comprehend, test, adapt, and socialize ideas, which, in return, allows the organizations to transit from whiteboards to innovation, design, funding, and development.

Cross-sector competencies

Another phenomenal change is that consulting companies are today utilizing cross-sector best practices method to offer solutions to the businesses.

Previously, a domain expert was assigned or an industry-centric approach was aligned for every engagement.

Today, advanced technology and a significant rise of user experience patterns have apparently proven that a few business models can be imitated. These replicated models are then utilized to create prosperous and meaningful user experiences and attain expected business outcomes.

This makes today’s consulting firms not an expert of any particular industry but a constant follower of successful business models, best user experiences, and innovative technology integrations across different sectors.

Data Rules

So, how do modern consultants string together all the tiny details and competencies of clients and mix them together to make tactical hops in the sector?

It is the proficiency to identify which tools and techs suit the clients profitably and feasibly. So, today’s consultants always look to stretch their expertise and ace new innovations in unique ways to benefit clients.

The consulting company that can curtail the void between technology and strategy is in true meaning, a competent consultant.

Amidst this, there is one particular competency that all the modern consultants and firms need to possess in order to provide best solutions to businesses – data, is perhaps the most critical elements that make the difference.

In a digital age, where communication between businesses and customers are happening all over the secure platforms, data is like a gold mine. Data is everywhere.

Consultants looking to get a solid grip on data extraction to comprehend the latest trends, customer behavior, competitor’s strategy, and so much more. Businesses are continuously gathering data on a daily basis, which leads to the rise of data warehouses in today’s environment.

One of the most playful strategies of today’s companies is to manipulate and monetize the data. Advanced insights are sheltered by the products and services of businesses that would use these valuable insights to generate a superlative experience for their customers.

The Future

• Market experts have predicted that in a decade or so, the course of business consulting will be even smoother and more frictionless.
• With the continuous refurbishment of technology, the future will witness in the demand of consultants who have specific domain expertise and experience.
• Since the generation of today is not getting STEM (Science, technology, Engineering, Math) education at a rate similar to the older times, many opportunities and doors will be opened to experts with related education to particular sectors.
• Additionally, it is also predicted that future consultants will utilize Artificial Intelligence to improve their offered solutions.
• Also, the future will see a complete eradication of the practice of preparing deliverables in a black box or inside a conference room. Instead, consulting firms or consultants will involve throughout the engagement process to make a better experience for clients and their customers.
• A few ardent names in the consulting sector has also claimed that the future consulting industry will witness an annihilation of billable hours, commissions, and project fees altogether.
• Client relationship will play a decisive role to solve problems.

What’s your prediction? Do you think that the erratic run of the business consulting sector in the last 30 years will be resumed or will the disruption consume this humungous industry as a whole?

Thanks!

The post The Fickle Drift of Business Consultancy appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.