5-Ways-to-Grow-Business-Amid-Pandemic-with-Digital-Marketing-Tools | Till It Clicks

5 Ways to Grow Business Amid Pandemic with Digital Marketing Tools

The pandemic and its economic ramifications have changed the face of and brought about revolutionary changes in digital marketing. As businesses are grappling with the growing uncertainties, digital marketing tools and strategies have had to go through major transformations in order to help businesses to rise stronger from the pandemic. Innovative and new-age digital marketing strategies are ensuring the seamless functioning of businesses across the world. As the situation gets worse day-by-day, digital marketing campaigns are expected to solve this Gordian Knot for businesses in the near future.

Post the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, there have been severe modifications in the way business processes are carried out and in the way products and services are being consumed. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, has stated that Microsoft has seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. Digital transformation has thus been at the core of all these transformations and is accelerating the pace of change at marketing departments everywhere today.

In today’s world, online presence has become the ultimate face of businesses. The ability to establish and maintain relationships & expand their customer base is helping businesses to grow even in today’s uncertain scenario. A huge increase in open rates is boosting the significance of email marketing and marketers are adopting an agile approach to effectively tap into the changing consumer buying patterns. Thus, the effective use of digital marketing will help businesses to thrive in this grave situation and even assist them to stay relevant post the pandemic.

 

          1. Boost Conversions by Tapping into the Increased Online Activity 

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has brought a paradigm shift in the way people use the internet. With the number of internet users and the overall online activity increasing each day, websites are witnessing a staggering rise in their online traffic. As a result, businesses are compelled to up their game and convert this traffic into leads by redesigning their strategies and improving their presence on online platforms. 

Good online visibility of a business plays a vital role in garnering the attention of customers and bringing them to your website. However, focused and attractive landing pages, good CTA’s and short, simple forms can make the visitor stay on your website for a longer period and thereby, help you in capturing leads. 

With prospects becoming more active on the internet, it is imperative for businesses to create informative and engaging content in the form of text or video, that relates to customers’ needs and interests. Thus, investing in conversion rate optimization can enhance the digital presence of your businesses and thereby improve your website’s ability to generate traffic and leads even in these testing times.

 

          2. Now is the Time to Prioritize your Digital Advertising Efforts

The advertising market had grown to around $646 billion USD in 2019 and was forecast to grow to $865 billion USD by 2024. However, with the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been a considerable drop in out-of-home, cinema as well as print advertising. As a result, relying more on digital advertising has become the need of the hour.

With the web traffic skyrocketing and the number of advertisers being comparatively less, digital ads are becoming cheaper as the cost per click for ads is decreasing. Businesses that are ramping up their paid ad efforts are seeing substantial growth in their ROI. This is encouraging businesses to optimize their bid strategies to drive better results. Thus, increasing ad spends can be a smart move for businesses today as they are proving to be more effective than ever in generating high returns.

Even though the lockdown restrictions in most parts of the world have been lifted, consumers are still hesitant to go out shopping like they used to before. As consumer purchasing preference is shifting from offline to online, businesses must accordingly focus on spending more on digital advertisements to ensure business continuity.

 

          3. Expand Consumer Base With Geographical Diversification

The major concern for businesses today is the inability to expand their reach to more people and expand their consumer base. Especially in the current socio-economic scenario where different regions are dealing with the pandemic and economic crisis in different ways, relying on a single region to grow your customer base can be a huge risk.

Businesses can identify countries that are driving a good amount of traffic to their site and optimize their content for those countries. With international SEO, businesses can tailor their SEO efforts according to audiences in different parts of the world, thereby gaining more traffic and being less reliant on a specific region to grow their customer base. 

With the help of geo-targeting and hreflang tags, marketers can build digital marketing strategies that are more personalized and relevant in different parts of the world. This way, businesses can leverage international SEO to target prospective consumers across the world and manage to grow their consumer base even in the present crisis situation.

 

          4. Reinforce Fading Significance of Effective Email Marketing

Email marketing is certainly not a new tool in the digital marketing environment. However, with the upsurge in social media marketing in recent years, the dominance of email was slowly diminishing.

But with a substantial rise in email open rates post the COVID-19 outbreak, the significance of email marketing has scaled up tremendously. There has been considerable growth in the sending volumes as compared to that of pre-COVID times and thus, marketers must now rely on email marketing strategies more than ever.

While increased online activity worldwide is forcing marketers to increase their sending volumes, it is also compelling them to optimize and get their email marketing strategies right. This can help in boosting email engagement and email e-commerce purchases during these testing times. Thus, with open rates remaining stronger, marketers can again lean into email as a medium to effectively connect with their customers and boost sales.

 

          5. Adopt Agile Marketing Processes to Thrive in the New Normal

With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus affecting every business across the world, marketers have been looking for ways to bounce and return back stronger and smarter from this crisis.  They have realized that to transform their businesses with digital marketing, responding quickly to the extreme changes in consumer behaviour is critical. 

Considering the current scheme of things, going forward, digital marketing campaigns will have to thrive under stringent budgets and perform better to generate targeted ROI. For this, marketers can bring an agile approach in their marketing strategies to be able to tap into and adapt to changing consumer behaviour. 

The effective combination of AI models and data-driven marketing can enable marketers to enhance their responsiveness in order to drive better outcomes. Thus, agile marketing can turn out to be the new normal for businesses to efficiently reach out to their target audience and drive sales through optimised data-driven marketing strategies.

           

              Coming Out of COVID-19, Stronger and Better!

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are far-reaching and these effects don’t seem to subside soon. Businesses must be quick on their feet in adapting to changing demands and build innovative digital strategies to tackle the rising uncertainties. 

Businesses must identify their target groups and assure customers how they can cater their services even during these difficult times. This attitude of putting customer’s interest forward helps in establishing relations and earning trust that can be beneficial to businesses post the pandemic as well.

Going forward, businesses will have to effectively understand and adapt to changing consumer buying patterns. Marketers will need to focus on their short-term goals to enable themselves to be flexible with their digital marketing strategies and thereby, improve sales and meet their targeted returns. Thus, by capitalizing on the current trends to generate decent revenues, businesses can make sure that they maintain the seamless functioning of their business operations and come out of the pandemic in good shape.

11-Tips-to-Make-Impressive-Investor-Pitch-Deck-and-Win-over-Investors | Till It Clicks

11 Tips to Make Impressive Investor Pitch Deck and Win over Investors

Raising money for your business can be a tough job. However, presenting a compelling business case with an impressive pitch deck can make your job easier. A great pitch deck has the ability to engage as well as excite your potential investors about your business idea. This further initiates a conversation between you and the investors about the various aspects of your business and finally culminates into an investment.

Maintaining the right flow, using the right colour scheme and crafting an attractive design are factors that need to be considered while making an investor presentation in order to grab the attention of investors and keep them engaged. Being simple and clear with your presentation can help investors with a better understanding of your business idea. Also, performing high-value research to present significant statistics and reports that showcase your competitive advantage is essential in establishing your brand and winning the trust & confidence of investors. 

Here are 10 actionable insights for you to master the art and science of creating a compelling pitch deck for your investors.

  1. Seamless Narrative: Maintain a Natural, Logical Flow

Establishing a suitable pitch deck order that works best for you is one of the most important factors that can maximize your chances of getting investments. An ideal pitch deck is the one in which statements and arguments flow seamlessly through different stages. The right sequence of investor pitch deck ensures that each slide leads organically into the next and builds a persuasive case for investment.
The order of your pitch deck should be as follows – 

  1. Title

Make a great first impression with a compelling logo, brand name and an effective tagline in your title slide

  1. Problem Statement

Articulate the problem you plan to solve in a simple, straightforward manner. This effectively builds context to the product/service you intend to provide. 

  1. Solution

Paint an objective picture of how your strong solutions can solve the problem and ensure 100% customer satisfaction.

  1. Business Model

Clearly define who your customers are and what value they find in your offerings. Explain how you maintain business relations with your clientele and how you ensure the profits of both. 

  1. Unique differentiator – Proprietary material

Showcase your key differentiators and explain how your services/solutions are superior to all the other ones.

  1. Marketing Plan (Customer acquisition plan)

Layout your long-term customer acquisition strategies and exhibit the LTV of a customer to generate revenue estimates.

  1. Competitor landscape 

Give details about who your competitors are, how you fit into the competitive landscape and how you are better than the alternatives present in the market.

  1. Team

Explain the knowledge and expertise your team brings to the table and how it is the best team to effectively deal with the problem at hand.

  1. Current Status – Current Traction

This slide should include sales, growth, SEO rankings and other performance parameters that put you in a good light to make investors confident about your business.

  1. Projections

Provide detailed analysis about your past expenses and revenues. Making projections or forecasts based on your current traction can be useful in winning trust.

  1. Funding Needs

Your presentation should clearly voice your funding needs in terms how much money you will need and what it will be used for. Also, make sure to clarify other parameters such as ownership percentage, rounds of financing, and the expected outcome.

  1. Exit Strategy

This slide should outline who your potential acquirers might be and how you plan on providing investors with their desired returns.

Hence, your presentation should begin by mentioning the problem and your proposed solution. This should be followed by mentioning the USP of your product and outline the market niche to make investors aware of where your product will compete. 

After explaining the benefits of your product, the next thing is to exhibit your accomplishments to ensure investors’ trust and confidence. Finally, you can showcase the traction your business is getting in terms of sales & growth, and display your growth projections for the next few years. With this order, you can ensure that the transitions between slides are logical & organic, which helps in building a persuasive case for investment.

  1. Minimalist Design: Achieve More With Less

Crafting a compelling and attractive presentation with strong, powerful words and eye-catching graphics can be crucial in effectively providing necessary context and sending across your message clearly. Adopting a minimalist design approach can help you to express your ideas in a clear, concise manner. This further helps in finding the perfect balance between content and graphics by simplifying design and thereby, focusing only on the most essential features of your presentation. Thus, by incorporating a simplistic and minimalist design approach for your investor pitch deck, you can easily win the confidence of investors and raise substantial funds.

  1. Colour Psychology: Invoke the Right Emotions

Even after finalising on the structure, content and graphics, there is still an important element that needs to be considered – the colour scheme of your pitch deck. Different colours have the ability to invoke different emotions. The colour scheme of your presentation can have a major influence on how the investors perceive your funding proposal and on whether you get a follow-up meeting or not.

Using brand colours for your pitch deck can be a great idea to create a unique image of your brand. Making small modifications like using green colour for all the stats & numbers can easily instill positivity as green signifies growth & prosperity. Red is often associated with mistakes and poor performance. Hence, avoiding the use of red colour is necessary as it can raise literal red flags about the potential of your business. Thus, by using different colours and implementing different colour schemes, you can make your investor deck more vivid and lively and thus, streamline the process of raising series A or series B fundings.

  1. Scalability: Decipher Your Competitive Advantage

What investors really look for in a pitch deck is your business’ ability to scale and maintain a competitive advantage. Investors are interested in knowing how you plan on expanding your customer base and growing your business across different geographies, verticals, etc. They want to understand your edge over your competitors and the barriers to entry.

Performing competitor analysis using a matrix, where you compare yourself with major players across different criteria can be a good way of showcasing your scalability factors in various aspects of the business. It also exhibits how you fit into the competitive landscape and provides investors with the recipe to the ‘secret sauce’ that only you possess. This, in turn, will explain how the end-users will prefer you over other players and thus, make the investors more confident about your product.

  1. Maintain Clarity: Devise a Simple & Crystal-Clear Pitch

A key skill necessary for you to have as an entrepreneur is to be able to effectively articulate and convey your idea to the audience, even more so when you are pitching to investors. You need to understand that between you and the investors, only you are the expert in your domain. Hence, it is necessary to be simple, clear, and avoid using specific business terms to successfully explain your business idea to investors.

You can only have the undivided attention of your audience for a limited time and you need to make the most of it. Making the presentation relate to the investors or being more interactive can result in the investors being more receptive to your pitch. By identifying the problem and explaining your solution in simple words, you can keep your pitch short and concise, and thus, be sure that the investors have heard you out attentively and are acquainted with the key areas of your business. 

  1. Narrative by Numbers: Build Credibility with Statistics

No matter how strong and attractive your business idea is, at the end of the day, numbers are all that really matter. As you progress through the fundraising rounds, numbers become more and more significant for the investors. Adding simple reports to your pitch deck that showcase revenue, net profit, gross profit, etc can provide the necessary evidence to prove that your business idea has the potential to be profitable.

You can give a brief overview of your acquisition costs to explain your customer acquisition strategy to the investors. Further, you can also exhibit the customer lifetime value number to give the investors a good sense of how you will deploy your capital if they invest in you. This way, numbers can play a great role in showcasing your traction and thereby, help in effectively building credibility.

  1. Practicability: Create Enchanting yet Realistic Projections

The point of financial projections is to make predictions about opportunities, growth, and profits in the form of numbers. A numerical framework that complements and reinforces your vision can be crucial in winning the confidence of investors and securing your desired funds. While doing so, it is very important to showcase numbers that put you in a good light as well as numbers that are not in your favour.

Even though projections are basically predictions, you should never make unrealistically high profitable projections that you yourself are not sure of accomplishing. Investors immediately get skeptical about hockey-stick shaped growth charts, which can severely hamper your credibility. Hence, as you make financial forecasts and growth assumptions while pitching for your potential investors, it is necessary to ensure that the numbers you promise are well-researched and achievable. 

  1. Show Your Sources: Ensure Authenticity and Reliability of Your Claims 

Using numbers to make projections and to showcase your KPI’s can be a great way of winning the trust of investors and securing funds for your business. However, if asked, you need to prove the credibility of these numbers. Investors give more importance to numbers with credible sources rather than numbers that are picked from unreliable sources. 

While making your investor pitch deck, investors sometimes might want to know about the source of a specific report or statistic. So, you need to be prepared with a repository of sources of all the numbers and statistics that you have included in your presentation. This way, investors are completely assured and confident about the authenticity of all the projections, KPI’s and statistics that you have mentioned.

  1. Gain Trust: Build Strong, Transparent Relationships with Investors

One of the most important things to take care of while presenting your pitch deck is to be completely honest and transparent with the investors. Being honest not only helps in providing investors with key insights to your business but also helps in building trust and reliability. Hiding vital information or misrepresenting certain numbers can reflect poorly on your business and also affect your relationship with investors and thereby, affect their funding decision.

From details about the stakeholders to details about debts if any, investors deserve to know everything about your business. The more transparent you are with the investors, the more clearly they will understand your business needs. While exhibiting your achievements will put you in a good light, being transparent about possible risks and pain points will showcase your dedication and make the investors realize that you are thinking about the business beyond the pitch. 

  1. Show Your Research: Compile all Assumptions and Sources

Investors might, at times, want to know more or verify the authenticity of a specific report or statistic. In such a situation, if you don’t have all your reference sources together, you could end up spending more time finding the necessary referral link and lose the attention of investors. 

Every successful investor presentation consists of a meticulously researched sheet that comprises referral links to provide more information and prove the credibility of all your claims. Thus, having a sheet that keeps all your assumptions and sources handy and in one place is turning out to be a great factor in making your presentation as effective as possible.

  1. Build Credibility: Showcase all the Relevant Accomplishments

The team slide is one of the most important slides in your pitch deck; attaching a few headshots with names and titles underneath is certainly an opportunity missed. A good team slide not only covers the ‘who’ but also addresses the ‘why’, as in ‘why is this a team that the investors should believe in’. 

While doing that, it is necessary to ensure that your team slide is as crisp and precise as possible. The quicker you explain the establishments of your team, the sooner you get to the meat of the presentation. This goal can be accomplished by succinctly citing the team’s prior achievements in the relevant domain, and thereby building credibility of the founders and the entire team.

Telling compelling stories about how your product can solve customer problems instead of just presenting facts can be a great way to generate interest and make the investors excited about your business idea. Investor pitch decks must be able to go beyond just providing information and also establish relevance, convey emotion, and finally, end with a positive outcome. Thus, by keeping your presentation simple, precisely conveying your idea, explaining the other business dynamics and leaving room for questions, you can make your investor pitch as successful as possible and raise funds for your business.