All Posts in GuestBlogging

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 4 Comments

One of the fast emerging marketing techniques is couponing business. CouponMAMU has brought a revolution in the way marketing takes place. You simply produce a booklet with different schemes in it after tagging certain hotshots of various categories and the customers can benefit from the discounts relevant to those brands. It is a win-win situation for the buyer and the brand offering discounts as the latter gains multiple customers within a short span of time.

Different Types of Couponing

If you are a shopping enthusiastic or an ardent businessperson, knowing what all kinds of coupons you can enjoy the benefits or offer would be of great advantage to you. Thus, the following types of coupons are available:-

Cash discounts
You may use these types of coupons for any period of time and attain the said discount benefits on relevant products.

• Limited time

These coupons are issued only for a limited period of time after which you cannot attain benefits from it. But usually, given to the limited time duration, such coupons are highly lucrative for, both – the consumers & business people, as well.

• Discount today
This is an immediate discount scheme wherein you get upfront discounts based on the purchases you have made.

• Deferred Discount

In this type of coupons, you get discounts each time that you make a purchase and it keeps on accumulating until a substantial amount is accrued which you can make use of at a later date. It brings more customers and increases the purchase of goods of the respective brand.

• Coupon mix
Here, more than one kinds of coupon scheme are clubbed so that the businesses can devise a scheme that is highly beneficial to itself & which also seems attractive to customers.

Strategies for Couponing Business

In order to thrive in the couponing business, a businessperson has to be smart enough to device perfect strategies for marketing.

• Word Of Mouth
You can gain exclusive hoards of customers once you spread the word about your coupons. Word of mouth is really effective to gain customer fan-base in a short span of time for free or minimal cost.

• Communication skills
The way you represent the coupons and show their prospects makes a lot of difference. You should be convincing and, yet, not  overbearing to the customer.

• Lucrative offers
Too many lucrative schemes would do you no harm, in fact, it would drag potential customers to you like you’re some hot shopping hub.

• Customer loyalty
You need to tap customer loyalty by staying in touch with them, updating them of newer schemes & establishing cordial relations with them.

• Online buzz
Internet is a great medium for marketing. You may put a post on any Social-networking website’s or create a viral video regarding your coupons and their benefits and your work is done! People would spread it like crazy !!!

CouponMAMU holds a wide range of gadgets, accessories and apparels. Do give them a spin & let us know your comments …

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

Social media marketing is hailed as one of the best ways to promote a start up. It is cheap, relatively easy and pretty effective in helping a company establish its own identity and brand. While there are certainly many benefits to social media marketing, truly benefiting from your efforts requires a certain level of skill and dedication. With the wrong approach, your social media presence could even harm your fledgling business.

These five tips will help any start-up make the most of this hectic time & leverage the power of social media for maximum benefits.

Focus Your Efforts

It seems that every day a new social media platform launches and claims it will be the next Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. This provides a mind-boggling number of options for you to try with your social media efforts. While exposure is a good thing, spreading yourself out too thin is not. Pick a platform that works best for your business. B2B start-ups could consider LinkedIn. Targeting a younger audience, consider Twitter.

Are you a local business? Facebook offers plenty of tools to expand your subscriber base by location. By limiting the number of platforms that you are tracking, you can invest real time and effort for your start-up. This can also help to avoid mistakes as you get accustomed to the platform and social media marketing.

Be Interactive

In many cases, the ultimate goal of social media marketing is to increase exposure, drive traffic and create leads. This leads to some misconceptions on how to use the platform. Simply promoting yourself everywhere you can will only find a small level of success. The true power in social media lies in building relationships, establishing authority & offering benefits to subscribers. The first step in this is actually interacting with your subscribers. Every little interaction, from thanking them for reading or sharing one of your posts, to responding to questions helps to build a relationship for your brand. This is also the best way to keep track of what readers and users are saying about your company and an integral part of brand management.

Establish Authority

Anyone can create a social media account and post about how great their own products or services are. In fact, you will see a large amount of this. However, this is just a basic implementation of the platform. As a startup, you should be establishing authority in your field and building your subscriber base. A great way to do this is to find other relevant social media accounts, blogs, sites and services and mention them on your social media feeds. By establishing authority, followers will be more likely to trust your suggestions, look at your links and come to you for products, services and information.

Participate Regularly

Frequent interaction with your social media accounts is essential to success. Try to set aside a few minutes each day to dedicate to finding new targeted subscribers, posting new content and communicating with your existing base. If you have trouble updating your social media during appropriate hours, simple use a scheduling service, such as HootSuite for Twitter or Buffer. If you use scheduled posting applications, be sure to keep each post unique and check back in periodically to interact with and respond to anyone who mentioned the post.

Test, Analyze and Improve

There is no guaranteed formula to social media success. It all depends on your market, your business and your investment. Certain tactics may work great for a competitor but fail for you. Track interactions, clicks and other important stats on your social media campaigns from the start. Though they make take a little time to provide useful information, you do not have to worry about not having access to the information should you need it. From the time you post to headlines and hashtags, any little detail could be the difference between social media obscurity and viral success. Do not be afraid to try new tactics. With your analytics behind you it, it is hard to go wrong.

One last bonus tip is to keep your brand’s messaging consistent. This requires some discipline in brand management and not veering off into every new trend that pops up on the Web. In this case, your Brand will send a mixed message to your audience members, hurting your chance for properly positioning your company in their minds as solution for a specific problem — one of the basic principles of branding and marketing.

About the Author

Steven Anderson has been writing about brand management and marketing solutions for nearly a decade. Visit Cloverleaf Innovation to learn more.

|In: Brand Building|Last Updated:

Though there are plenty of things to worry about during the start-up phase of any business, there are few things as important as brand creation and management. Whether you are securing investors or building your customer base, your brand is often one of the major determining factors in your success.

The following tips and tricks are great ways for your start-up to establish & build a brand:

Understand the Many Facets of Your Brand
Many start-ups get lost in the act of brand building and fail to realize just how detailed the process can be. The end result is a weak brand. Brand building and management is not just about everyone sees your brand. It is about how investors, employees, customers and partners see your business individually. Though positive aspects for each group tend to offer some benefit to others, building a truly strong brand is about focusing on each specific group and showing them exactly how your start-up is the best target for their money, time and trust. By monitoring and building your brand from each perspective, you can ensure that your brand is solid, stable and strong.

Research Your Market to Help Establish Your Brand
With the competitive nature of a globalized economy, market research is more important than ever. Establish a demographic & market and build your brand from there. Knowing your market makes establishing value and building your brand much easier. This also ensures that other parts of your brand, such as the name, logo and advertising, are honed easily to fit your market for improved results in your start-up efforts. Each of these factors can impact the success of your start-up. It is also much harder to alter many of these smaller aspects once the business is established. By researching before and during the start-up phase of your business, you position it for long-term success.

Embrace Your Brand
You can ask anyone what they feel makes the brand of a large corporation or business and get many answers in return. It is easy to promote a brand after it is created. However, establishing a brand in a start-up is very different. Most start-ups have only a few employees. This means that everyone should be embracing and living the brand of the company. When so few people are involved, every action you take reflect directly back on your start-up and could help or hurt its success. If you are living your brand and integrating into your practices, partners and eventually employees will be more likely to adopt your stance as well. This makes brand management and promotion easier in later stages of the business. The opposite is also true. If you live in opposition to your brand, your employees, investors and customers will be the first to notice and point it out to others.

Build Your Brand from the Beginning
Every second that a business delays in building its brand it is risking failure. Branding is not a process that requires substantial investments or dedicated professional services. Branding should start at the conception. This means that it should be an integral part of the start-up process. Branding establishes a number of things, ranging from your target market to your potential competition. This makes it one of the most crucial yet overlooked aspects of the start-up process. By establishing your brand early, you are defining the value and benefits that your start-up will offer consumers, investors and other entities. While making money is important for any business to succeed, creating value and establishing a market are two major keys to long-term success.

In summary, know what you are trying to convey with the brand, do the market research to know what your target audience will respond to, and don’t delay in executing — just do it !!!

About the Author

Eric Armstrong is a marketing professional specializing in qualitative market research.

Recommended Read

Some more interesting articles on “Brand Building” can be found here

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

Gone are the days when we had to stand in queues for booking train/bus or even Flight tickets. With the rise of OTA, it has not only become convenient for customers to book tickets but also get great discounts on them. Today we have an article by Rohit who works for  Coupon Lava & his awesome customer experience with MMT gave rise to this article where he touches upon “The success of MakeMyTrip”. He can be reached on Google+

Initial Days of MakeMyTrip

Many might think that MakeMyTrip [ henceforth referred as MMT ]is yet another website founded in the early 2010’s. But it is certainly not so. MMT became the traditional online travel-booking site of India a few years ago. It was founded on the 1st of April in 2000 by Deep Kalra, a successful agency businessman from Haryana. The website was almost untouched till 2002 and then, advertisements triggered a revolution in the field of tours and travels. MMT is funded by Helion Ventures, Sierra Ventures and SAIF Partners and the amount is nearly Rs. 13,000,000.

Sweet taste of Success

According to some official surveys and accounts of the Indian Airspace, it was inferred that nearly 1/12th of all the domestic flight bookings was done using this website in the year 2009. Initially, MMT was just an intermediate between the passengers and the ticket counters for air travel. Subsequently, as time moved on, the website experts and the IT technicians decided to boost the privileges and started online booking for railway trains, registered government bus services and international airways.

After 2005’s incredible success, the developers started focusing on e-tickets. Today, the e-ticket is processed in less than 30 minutes and is immediately emailed to the concerned passenger. Bookings of domestic flights, international flights, hotels, packages like ‘flight plus hotel’, holidays, taxi cabs, private cars, bus and railways are the services offered by the company.

Some critiques and journalists say that online travel booking is totally unsafe as the discounts have no relevant roots behind them. The companies never tell the source of discount and subsidies. To curb this problem, MMT added trusted brand-ambassadors and increased the advertisement frequencies to let everyone know about their genuine and reliable methods of operation. Also, they have consistently provided great MakeMyTrip coupons which can be easily found at coupon websites like Coupon Lava, CouponCabin etc. Also, in the quest to provide economical travelling solutions to its customers, MMT launched the ‘Trip Rewards’. According to this deal, a passenger earns a certain number of reward points after (s)he books a relevant travel plan with the online mega-company. These reward points can be used as discounts for all the future transactions.

MMT is also one of the first Indian websites to accept online payments via PayPal.  The payments can be made via many accounts. More than 70 employees are engaged in website development, consumer support and customer relations.

The history, revolutionary development and the present success of this e-company is capable enough to make us believe in the bright future of this company.

If you had an awesome experience with any OTA, please share them in the comments section …

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated:

For many people, working at a startup is the holy grail of employment, and it’s not hard to understand why. You can get in on the ground floor, be a part of something exciting, and maybe even be a part of huge growth. That’s why it’s so cool to work for a startup, but that’s also why it’s so hard to actually get a job with one: everyone else wants to do it too. Competition is fierce, but with the right knowledge and approach, you can find a way to make the cut. Read on, and you’ll discover 33 insider tips that can help you land a coveted job at a hot startup.

Find a startup you love
Identify a startup you can really connect with, and the rest is easy. With the right fit, you’ll be better poised to connect with the startup’s culture, vision, goals, and needs.

Present yourself as an innovator
Startups are always ravenous for fresh and creative ideas. You can really stand out if you come to your interview prepared with ideas for growing and improving the business.

Show that you’re well-rounded
Do you have side projects that demonstrate your interest and passion for technology? Discuss what you’ve been working on and your dedication will be clear.

Identify what makes you unique and valuable
Getting a job means being a great salesperson, and every great salesperson knows you’ve got to have a unique selling point (USP). What’s yours? Be sure it’s the star of your resume and cover letter.

Engage in startup-related chatter
Check in on Quora and other great sites featuring startup discussions, and do your best to answer questions impressively. By being a part of the conversation, you just might catch the attention of a startup that’s hiring.

Don’t wait to see a job posting
Actual startup job postings may not show up for quite some time, especially among those in the early stage. Rather than waiting to see if they’ll pop up, get engaged with the startup early on to express your interest.

Go big or go home
Go into the application process with the mindset of leaving it all on the table. Successful startup hires have created infographics, catchy slideshows, even interesting websites to stand out in the crowd.

Be flexible
Working at a startup isn’t like working at a 9 to 5, usually. You may have weird hours, unusual commitments, and strange tasks. Be willing to take them in stride and don’t be shocked when you’re asked how you’d feel about taking them on in the interview.

Just start working
One of Square’s earliest employees was initially denied an interview at the company. But he brushed it off and took it upon himself to acquire card readers and use them to sign up 10 new merchants for the service in one day. It’s a bold move, one that got him noticed, and hired, by the startup.

Say thank you
Sure, it’s impressive to create high tech, attention-getting media to woo your potential employer, and if you have the skills, by all means, do it. But startups are made up of regular people too, and everyone, yes, everyone appreciates a good, old-fashioned hand-written thank you note. Do this, and you’ll really stand out.

Fill multiple needs
Being great at one thing is impressive, but it’s much more likely to get you a job at a big company where they can afford to have one employee for one task. At a startup, needs tend to be much broader, as each employee is expected to take on a wide variety of tasks. Show that you can contribute with a wide skill set that fills multiple needs.

Know everything there is to know
Don’t just check out the company’s website a few hours before your interview. Really spend time getting to know what the startup is all about. Do extensive research, connect with their social media outlets, and learn about their development. Go beyond the surface so that you’ll be able to stand out as knowledgeable and intensely interested in what the startup stands for.

Don’t try to share any BS
Entrepreneurs tend to have great BS detectors. Don’t give them a reason to lose faith in you by trying to feed them any. If you don’t know the answer, own up to it and offer to find out and follow up with them.

Be a part of the community
Be visible in all the right circles. Attend meetups, hackathons, and launch parties. Take the time to make connections and nurture your network. Connect with the right people, and it’s likely to lead you to a great startup job.

Be personal
Joining a small startup means lots of one on one time with the first people with boots on the ground. If you don’t click personally, chances are, you’re not getting hired. Do you fit in with the company’s culture? Get along with the founders? If you think you do, make sure that you let your personality shine through so they will recognize it as well.

Have your own questions
Be really impressive by showing that you’ve taken the time to contemplate what the startup is all about. Come to the interview with your own questions, ones beyond salary, hours, and benefits, that really demonstrate an understanding, appreciation, and willingness to explore the company.

(more…)

|In: Business|Last Updated:

The world is chock full of business opportunities that are ripe with the possibility of expanding your skills, increasing your bank account balance and more. Of course, there are also plenty of bogus opportunities that can eat away at your time, strip you of cash and more. The ability to distinguish the good business opportunities from the bad is critical if you want to enjoy the greatest level of success in life. So what can you look for in a business opportunity to determine if it is legitimate and may provide you with significant benefits?

Today we have a guest article from Matt Doyle [earlier post from him here] who gives us some tips on “Which business opportunities should one take very seriously”

[ PS : This article might not be useful for readers from India but would be a boon for U.K based readers.]

Financial Backing
A surety bond is typically used by companies to provide a contractor with the peace of mind that he or she will get paid on a project. A company can take out a surety bond with a third party provider, and the SBA can also assist in providing a bond guarantee if needed. You may find comfort in knowing you will get paid for your efforts when working with a company backed by a surety bond.

Consider the Motive
According to Brian Tracy, a renowned entrepreneur, you should carefully consider why a company is offering you a specific opportunity. A legitimate opportunity that is worth your time and effort working on may not be an opportunity that is offered to just anyone. If a company is making a blanket opportunity available to many people, you may want to turn the other way. When a company seeks you out for specific skills or talents, there is a good chance that the offer is legitimate.

Check the Company’s Background
It is important to check the company’s background thoroughly before you start doing any work for a company. You can check the Better Business Bureau if you are going to work with a company. If you are offered an opportunity from an individual, the Better Business Bureau may not be helpful. You can consider checking the individual’s credit rating to learn about their financial status, judgments against them and more.

Read Consumer Reviews
You should always carefully review the products, services and overall reputation of a company before working with them. Ensure that the reviews you are reading are posted by individuals rather than by individuals working for the company or by the company itself. Keep in mind that anyone can post just about anything online, so you’ll want to read through numerous reviews on several different websites to form a complete opinion about the company.

Review the Compensation Terms
There are many bogus opportunities available that provide unique compensation terms. Rather than pay you for selling a product or service or for working certain work hours, they may pay you for recruiting people into the scheme. Compensation based recruitment rather than on sales, time or other traditional methods is a likely sign that the work opportunity is a scam.

While these tips can help to steer you clear of bogus opportunities, you should also consider the final step of trusting your instincts. If you are uncomfortable with an opportunity but just cannot put your finger on why, it may be best to walk away from the opportunity.

About the author
Matt Doyle is an expert in surety bonds and when he is not writing you can find him traveling the world one random place at a time.

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

Getting on the “most popular” list is one of the best ways of gaining social recognition when using Instagram. This may even earn you a recognition message from the makers of Instagram which will help you get more followers.

Today we have a guest article from Steven Stretton who writes for Buy Instagram Followers – a website designed to help boost your Instagram likes & Instagram profile. Here he shares his tips which he has listed down from his personal experience on Instagram.

[ Please get in touch if you think there are some missing points, or leave your tips in the comments section ]

What is the “Most Popular” secret formula ?

Just like Coca Cola the “Most Popular” formula is not a well known secret but if you happen to get a huge number of likes within a short period of time then this will definitely increase the chances of you becoming popular. Receiving a lot of likes within a minute will definitely help you make this chart. The number of followers plays a huge part as well as working on your profile.

Just like in Twitter, you can get a lot of followers by actually doing some following on your part. The best thing remains working on your profile and making it better.

The Instagram team needs to improve their current formula since it awards a few people who have a lot more users. This makes it hard to discover new users this only a few people can join the “Popular.”

Here are a few basics on how you can go about boosting your Instagram profile

Who you are

It is essential for you to have names or nick names which are unique and easy to remember. Better to maintain a uniform nickname across all your social platforms so that the users can easily check how popular you are on other platforms & what you have lately been upto.

Your Profile picture

People who are handsome or beautiful will have no problem here. If you are not so sure, sun glasses will give you some confidence.

It is good to have a good sense of humour, humility and humanity because these are aspects that people are bound to find appealing.

Getting into “Most Popular” List

There are several effects that will be great boosts when it comes to getting into the “Most Popular”

1.  The quality and uniqueness of your photos will definitely earn you points. Make sure you take your time editing & coming up with creative and original photos.

2.  The information about your photos i.e. The titles, types of effects you employ & basically the style you use on your photos that is unique to you.

3.  Location Geo-tagging & linking your account to Foursquare can help with identifying the location.

4.  Knowledge you transmit to users: Users will only follow you if you have something to offer that adds value to their life.

5.  Your interest in the users – The time you spend on Instagram is dependent on the size of your group. If it is a big group then you will certainly spend more time communicating with them.

6.  Make use of emoticons in nicks & comments and this will make people recognize you.

7.  Organize original contests – This may take some time but it is a good method that is known to work.

8.  Make sure you thank your followers & celebrate your hits. Congratulate them as well. An example is when you thank your followers for helping you reach a certain milestone for example a certain number of followers.

Just like other social networks, your time zone at the time of posting is important. It is good for you to post at a time when a lot of people in your time zone have woken up and are free. This will give you more followers and help you make it to the “Most Populars. ” Doing it too early or too late may earn you followers from different time zones.

(more…)

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Whether you are into a job or doing some business; it is very important to be credible. In this post, we have guest author Matt Doyle who gives us tips on “Improving the Credibility of Business”.

When starting a new business, one of the big challenges that companies often have is making themselves look credible to customers and suppliers. Unless you can gain some level of credibility, you’re going to have a hard time being successful in any industry. If you’re interested in improving the credibility of your business, here are five tips to keep in mind.

Explore Surety Bonds

Buying a surety bond can be a good way to put your customer’s fears at ease when doing business. In some cases, you may be required to have a surety bond anyway. According to the Small Business Administration, you may be contractually obligated to maintain a surety bond to guarantee your performance. With surety bonds, you take the financial risk off of your customer and put it back on you and your surety company. The customer will feel much more comfortable as a result of having this on hand.

Give More Information

Secrecy doesn’t lend itself to credibility. If you want to be able to build some credibility with your customers, give them more information. According to Dun & Bradstreet, you should “provide your customers with a real address for your business & not a P.O. Box.” You should also include information such as a business history, a privacy statement, and other measures to give your customers information about your company.

Credentials

If you want to boost the credibility of your company, you may want to explore the possibility of certification or credentials. One of the best ways for small businesses to gain credibility is via credentials & certifications. Look for ways that you can get certified or join an organization in your field. This makes your company look a lot more legitimate compared to companies that do not have these certifications and organizational memberships. It makes it look like you are serious about your craft.

Online Credibility

When you have a business website, there are ways that you can improve your credibility online as well. According to Dun & Bradstreet, a site that contains real testimonials from satisfied customers will do better than one that doesn’t. You may want to use graphics from online verification services to lend yourself a little bit of credibility as well. If you can find some positive reviews of your products or services online, you may want to link to them from your website. If you’re a member of the Better Business Bureau, include a link to your profile on their site as well. This can go a long way toward making yourself look more credible.

Get Published

Being published in a major publication is perhaps the single best way to achieve credibility. For example, if you can write an article that is published in an industry magazine or on a popular website, this can give you a lot of credibility overall. It shows people in your industry that you are a serious contributor, and it shows your customers that you are a legitimate source of information.

Overall, the process of gaining credibility is not easy. However, if you will keep doing a little bit every day toward making yourself and your business more credible, it can pay big dividends in the future.

About the Author

Matt Doyle is an expert in surety bonds and when he is not writing you can find him traveling the world one random place at a time.

Image Courtesy
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=484010