UX vs UI: Which is more important?

Is there a difference between UX and UI?

Or, are they the same?

Which is better?

Which one comes first?

Image source: http://assets.kompasiana.com

We get it. UX and UI seem the same, and this confusion is real. That’s why we have made a comprehensive guide to solve the issue once and for all.

Let’s begin.

UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. If you have a website, you need both to work optimally. They define and highlight your brand, products and services to customers. As you can see already, if you want to have high conversions online, you need both.

Before we go any further, I will elaborate on the difference between UX and UI. Once you understand that, you can determine which to dedicate more time and resources to.

The Difference between UX and UI Web Design

Web Design spans many functions and features and all of these come together to create a unique and engaging experience for customers. A website with all these elements ensures smooth navigation, appealing aesthetics, and clear directions towards a page a visitor may wish to go. For instance, if you want to go to the FAQ page, you must easily find the links to that page.

Some people say that the most crucial web design features are user interface design and user experience design. The concepts are similar, and both depend on and complement each other. However, and as you’ll see, they are different parts of the web design job.

Here’s a rundown of the two.

UX web design: This prioritizes creating a seamless navigational experience for the visitors or users of your website, web pages and apps.
UI web design: The work here relates to creating digital spaces that visitors or users see, such as buttons and scrolling elements.

The difference between them?

UX deals with creating the whole user experience on apps, websites and web pages and the work here affects the entire website’s design.

The UI is all about creating design elements and the interface, which is essential for guiding a visitor or user from one page to another.

Let us now look at UX and UI in more detail.

UX Web Design Explained

There’s a lot of brainstorming, feature and usability testing behind creating a web experience. It is the job of UI web design and UX design generally.

It’ll be interesting to note that the term “User Experience” was coined in 1990 by Don Norman, the co-founder and cognitive scientist at Nielsen Norman Group Design Consultancy. As he explained it, UX is “All aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”

A good UX design has elements of:

Market research
Psychology
Technology

Apart from that, it also monitors:

User behaviour
Changes in user behaviour

Thus, they can respond to such changes in time, influencing customers to take the desired action.

UX designers have several responsibilities and play different functions. As such, success metrics can be tough to determine. However, the success metrics are commonly agreed to be the seamless user experience of websites, products and services.

Which are the common principles that help in developing a satisfying UX?

Clarity and simplicity
Scannability
Function over flash
Visual hierarchy
Audience knowledge

Before creating a User Experience, you have to know what your audience desires and their tastes. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself when designing the UX of your website, webpage and app.

Is it findable?
Is it useful?
Is it usable?
Is it accessible?
Is it desirable?
Is it credible?

For a good UX, designer’s projects need to be user-centric.

UI Web Design Explained

If User Experience designing is the grand strategy, User Interface designing is the battle tactic. You can’t have one without the other.

We have seen what the UX is all about. Let’s now learn about how the UI functions.

UI interface design focuses on satisfying the user’s experience. Let’s say that a prospective customer or client visits your website. You need a good menu, headers and footers, images and other elements linking to various website pages. You also need photos, graphics and animations, if applicable. Therefore, the primary focus is on the web page or whatever a company is offering.

UI is the framework around which the UX can function. Users enter through the interface, interact with it, navigate with the aid of the framework, and then have a good user experience.

How Do User Experience And User Interface Designing Impact Conversions?

“Which is better? UX or UI?”

It is a very common question.

But here’s the thing: both are important, and you can’t have one without the other.

Can you have a car without an engine? And what use is the engine alone without the chassis?

Think of anything with at least two components, neither of which can work alone.

UX and UI are just like that. There’s no winner here simply because you need both of them. Without a good UI, a UX is bland, uninspiring and flat. Without a UX, a User Interface has no relevance at all. If the UI is wrong, it creates a bad impression on visitors and vice versa.

However, some people will still ask, “Which is more important for conversions?”

It depends on the type of conversions you are looking for. It also depends on whether these conversions are related to UX and UI.

For instance, the user interface doesn’t matter unless people come to your website. That’s the domain of User Experience, which begins much before someone visits your site. It focuses on designing tactics that aid in driving traffic to your website and takes the help of online advertising and marketing.

You need both UX and UI.

If you have a website, the best way to engage and convert visitors is to have excellent UX and UI. The better your User Experience, the more effective your User Interface.

Conversions depend on many factors, but for conversions to improve, both UX and UI are essential. They have to work in tandem.

Here are some proven UX/UI elements that help in improving conversions:

Understanding customer journey
Gathering and analysing data
Optimizing content to decrease load times
Designing apps for mobile
Simplifying and streamlining
Usability testing

For having a good user experience and online conversions, you need both. However, create a website that focuses on the visitors first and then you’ll have your conversions.

March 21, 2022July 29, 2022

Here’s why You Should Prioritize Internal Linking in 2022

Here’s Why You Should Prioritize Internal Linking in 2022

Most SEO strategies incorporate internal linking, but that’s not enough. They deserve more priority.

SEO often tends to focus on a host of other ranking factors; internal linking is one. However, we often fail to realize how powerful internal linking boosts keyword rankings.

Take a look at the chart below.

According to this 2021 data, out of 15 SEO factors responsible for search rankings worldwide, internal linking figures are just at 13.7%. But that does not mean it is any less critical for digital marketing campaigns. It means that it is not being utilized optimally.

And this is what we are going to show you in this article.

We’ll tell you:

Why is internal linking so important?
How to set up an internal linking strategy?

What are internal links?

An internal link connects two pages of your website. It has many benefits, and we’ll come to that in detail later.

Let’s say that it helps both website visitors and search engines. It allows website visitors to look at related information and know more about your company. Doing so decreases your site’s bounce rate, especially if your website’s content is informative. It helps you rank higher on search engines since they use links to navigate your website.

There are many types of internal linking. No website can do without links on the menu, the home page, links to post feed, etc. But you can add links within the content called contextual links.

Contextual links are important because they lead readers to find related and exciting content.

Besides that, Contextual linking also allows search engines to find out which content is related, which determines which content is most valuable. The more links a page gets, the more valuable it will seem to search engines.

Internal linking vs and external linking

Before we understand why internal linking is necessary, we must clear out the confusion. If you’ve ever been confused between internal and external linking, this is where we sort it out.

Internal links connect pages within your website.

External links connect your pages to other websites.

In this post, we’ll focus on the former.

Why is internal linking so important?

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(Click on video to see the YouTube video explaining why internal linking is essential)

This video shows several reasons why it is essential to focus on internal ranking in most SEO campaigns. Search engines follow links to find content on websites, and then they rank these websites on search results. When search engines see a page or post having a lot of links, it sees them as being high-value content. It works for both internal and external linking.

You’ll also see how you can build an internal linking strategy. We’ll talk about that later as well, so hang on!

If you are new to all this and want to learn from the ground up, Ahrefs has this handy video on internal linking for beginners.

Relationships between content

We’ll talk about Google for our topic. There are other search engines, but Google is the most dominant one.

Have you wondered how Google crawls your website? Or how does it determine which site deserves to be ranked higher?

Google does that by using its Googlebot. It is a web crawler that follows both internal and external links. When this crawler comes to your website, it renders your homepage and goes for the first link. The search engine can determine the relationship between your pages, posts and other materials by following the link. This lets Google understand which pages are related.

Link value

After understanding the relationship between content, it is essential to comprehend link value. Google divides link value across all links on a web page. The homepage tends to have the most backlinks and has the highest link value. This link value is shared between all the links on the homepage, and it then gets passed onto the next page and then gets divided between all other pages linked to it – the process repeats.

If you link your newest article on your homepage, it’ll get more link value. Doing so helps Google find your recent posts faster as well.

When you understand link value, you’ll see that more links in a post mean adding more value to it. Google thinks pages with more valuable links are more important than your competitors. That’s how you rank higher.

Advantages of good internal linking

There are many ways in which internal linking is valuable for your overall SEO strategy. In this article, we will focus on the top six benefits.

They improve usability through anchor texts.

Internal links help visitors navigate to your website easily. This is made possible when you add sufficient user-friendly links to your articles. You must ensure that these point to related, relevant content pieces when you add anchor text. The aim is to direct viewers to content that shall interest them.

They spread the link juice.

It is equally important to focus on both external and internal linking. Creating backlinks is essential. Yes, but don’t ignore internal linking. They aid in spreading the link juice to other pages of a website. While building backlinks to a page, ensure that the page has links to other relevant pages. Here’s the most important thing you should ask yourself: is the link juice reaching your monetization pages? Is it reaching your blog, information repository, and product or service pages?

They boost your page views.

You already know that anchor texts help visitors navigate to your website. They are more likely to read the articles you have linked from the original content if they are relevant. Linking through your content helps in increasing your conversion rate. Relevant links are great for assisting visitors in discovering a website. The more links they follow, the higher your page views get. You have to avoid those significant bounce rates and optimize page speeds for all this to work.

They improve PageRank

Before we move on to why internal linking is vital for PageRank, let’s define PageRank first.

PageRank is a metric devised by Google to find out how essential web pages are. This is based on the number of backlinks relieved by a website, and the score is from 0 to 10.

Pages with PageRank can increase the metric score through internal linking since that helps spread the ‘juice’ to other connected pages. As a result, the related pages slightly boost authority and rankings.

They improve time on site.

One of the best things about using internal linking is the lower bounce rate. Since you take viewers from one page to the next relevant one, they remain on your website for longer. To reduce bounce rate, link them to essential pages for them, relevant and valuable.

They help Google crawlers in indexing your site

We have saved the best for last!

Google bots are getting smarter every day. Already, they can replicate the way a human browses your website. These bots follow all the links on your pages and thus get a good idea of your site’s architecture. With a solid internal architecture backed by internal linking, crawlers can visit pages that website visitors do not often see. Thus, linking to pages increases your search engine ranking.

Now that we have seen why internal linking is so important, it’s time to make sense of it all. It is time for…

Setting up an internal linking strategy

Internal linking is for your website what cardio is in a fitness regimen.

It can jumpstart your SEO strategy when you’re stuck in a rut.

When you add relevant links on your website, you’re telling Google:

How relevant your pages are
How your pages are related
What is the value of your pages

If you want to set up an internal linking strategy, you need to proceed step by step. Of course, it all depends on your website, but there are some steps to follow.

Determine your website’s ideal structure

Imagine your website as a pyramid. At the top, you have your webpage, below which you have sections and categories. Further down, you have individual pages and posts.

It is a basic site architecture, and if constructed well, your website’s menu will reflect the structure.

Want to know how to create the ideal site structure? Click here!

Determine which one is your most important content

Once you have created the best possible site architecture, it is now time to determine which your cornerstone content is.

Not sure what cornerstone content is? Here’s a handy video!

In short, it is the content that you want people to find out the most. It is your best and most complete content. It can be the content that tells people about your company, its values, and its functions.

Now, the way to make Google know this is the critical content you have to add links to it.

Add contextual links

At the beginning of this article, we spoke about contextual linking, remember?

Well, here is where we’ll talk about that in more detail.

How can you show Google that your articles are topically related? By linking them to each other. It doesn’t need to be complicated either. You can add links in the content itself or at the very bottom of the post.

Remember, you want to show Google your cornerstone content. You have to link to your cornerstone content from all the relevant pages and the other way around.

Link hierarchical pages

Suppose your website has a hierarchical structure that interlink parent and child pages. Additionally, interlink sibling pages as well. These pages should be related to a well-organized site, and it makes sense to connect them.

Think about adding a related post section

Whether you’re using WordPress, Wix, or something else, plugins and modules add a related post section to your blogs. If you have a similar strategy, determine whether the associated posts are related. If you’re unsure, it is best to add links manually.

Add navigational links

Apart from interlinking related pages and posts, you can make your cornerstone content even more authoritative by adding links from your home page and even from the top navigation. Ideally, you should do it for posts and pages most valuable for your business. Doing this will give the pages more link value, which ultimately helps rank higher on search engines.

Add links to taxonomies.

Taxonomies, such as tags and categories, help you organize your website, and they also allow both Google and viewers to understand your content’s subject. If you have a blog page, it can be good to have internal links in taxonomies to which the post belongs. This helps Google’s bots understand your blog’s structure, and your website visitors navigate your posts with ease.

Think about adding links to recent and popular posts

It is a no-brainer. If you have recent or all-time popular posts, don’t hide them away—link to such posts from your homepage itself. There are several ways for doing this, and you can link them on the:

Sidebar
Footer

That way, viewers will see them on every page they visit!

Remember about the little thing called link value we spoke of? These pages get a boost in authority when they get more link value. Additionally, showcasing your popular and recent posts help viewers to find them easily. And more traffic is an excellent sign to Google.

We have seen the benefits of internal linking, and we have also seen how to start building an internal linking strategy for your website.

But that happens when a website has poor internal linking? How does that affect your SEO?

Let’s find that out next.

Consequences of poor internal linking

We have seen how essential internal linking is. However, they still require manual upkeep and maintenance. This is why you should have regular site audits, and not doing so can create the same kind of problems that inadequate internal linking brings.

Your website does not remain the same over time, and it goes through significant change, both in structure and content. Unfortunately, such changes tend to produce broken links, and broken links lead to a dead-end or a page that no longer exists. As you can understand, this can put off most website visitors.

So what can you do?

Each time you remove pages or migrate them to a new location, you also need to redirect their links. Find out which links direct visitors to the migrated or deleted page, remove the links or redirect them to a new URL.

Several tools will be of help to you when auditing website:

Discovering broken internal links is essential for your SEO campaigns, as is ensuring link equity from external links throughout your website.

A Recap: Why should you pay attention to internal links?

Internal links are as important as external links.

External links empower your website’s search engine ranking and visibility. Internal links influence your SEO as well.

To recap what we talked about in this article, internal links:

Help search crawlers in determining which pages are important to viewers and search engines
Deteriorate over time naturally, which necessitates the fixing of broken links
Build direct link equity, which is essential for your pages

You should undoubtedly go for external links, but don’t forget your internal links.

February 25, 2022April 26, 2022

Email marketing in 2022

The world’s first email was launched in 1970, ushering the world into a new era of communication. It eventually became a part of marketing. Once that happened, the number of email users only grew. Today, email is the mainstay of marketing globally.

As of 2020, revenue from email marketing was USD $7.5 billion across the world. It is said that by 2023, this will reach the USD 10 billion mark! While it is true that new marketing channels are coming to the forefront, few can match email marketing’s average ROI. Companies can expect to get USD 545 from every $1 they spend on ads. Thus, it is no wonder that this marketing channel has held its ground till now.

Email marketing metrics, usage and performance

Email marketing remains one of the most popular digital marketing channels. More than 80% of industry experts used it for marketing strategies in 2020. The CTR (Click-Through-Rate) of marketing emails in 2020 was 14%. The publishing sector claimed the highest share of these clicks. On the other hand, automated messages had more than 50% conversion rate.

What do viewers think of email marketing?

Email marketing is designed to connect with customers, share information, increase sales, and more. But what do customers feel about this marketing channel themselves?

Let’s find out!

When users signed up for mailing lists and newsletters, they showed interest in the company. A survey conducted in 2020 showed that for 46% of all responding mobile users, email had been the preferred business communication channel. It shows that this channel has massive potential in customer targeting and marketing.

However, studies show that the average time spent reading brand-related emails has dropped from 13 to 10 seconds. Thus, marketers have a much smaller window to engage and influence their audiences.

Did you know?

Data	Percentage
Percentage of marketers using email marketing- 82%	82%
Percentage of marketers using automated email marketing	65%
Percentage of companies using videos in email marketing campaigns	47%

– Rate of marketers using email marketing- 82%

– Percentage of marketers using automated email marketing – 65%

– Share of companies using videos in email marketing campaigns– 47%

What is the trend in 2022 and beyond?

Number of email users worldwide from 2017 to 2025 (in millions)

Number of sent and received emails per day from 2017 to 2025 (in billions)

Importance of email marketing

So far, we have seen how this marketing channel is performing now. We have seen how relevant it will be in the future. It’s now time to know the importance of email marketing.

The growth of email marketing has skyrocketed over the years, and it will only grow in the future. Every brand will try to make the most from it, giving rise to a competitive environment. So, you must focus on email marketing campaigns in 2022 and beyond.

First, we’ll tell you about the value of email marketing. Later, we’ll let you know about its current trends.

People still use email

People who say that email is dead don’t understand the power of email marketing. 83% of customers say that they still prefer email for getting communications for companies. Email marketing is so important because it works.

If your company follows an email marketing strategy, you can continue using that. To succeed in marketing through this channel, you need to look at future trends and implement those strategies that will ensure success now and beyond.

According to Radicati, it is estimated that 4.25 billion email users will still have 1.86 accounts on average. In 2019, 4.33 billion people had internal[a1] access, while 3.93 billion people had access to email.

Email strategy is faster to build and implement

You can develop and deploy an email marketing strategy overnight. It may not be easy, but it is undoubtedly more straightforward than other marketing options. By 2022, a business email shall be worth around $200 billion.

There are ample opportunities for you:

– if you know how to grow your customer base

– if you know how to use email marketing strategy

That, in brief, is why this marketing channel is still important.

Now let’s look at the email marketing trends.

Email marketing trends for 2022 and beyond

To remain competitive when marketing through this channel, you must know the latest email marketing trends.

Trend 1: User-generated content

You should undoubtedly generate and publish your content on emails, and you should implement user-generated content as well. It is essential for several reasons.

First of all, doing so gives you a chance to integrate multiple perspectives. You can personalize your messages.

Secondly, user-generated content also shows viewers that their satisfaction is a priority for you. For instance, some companies send emails with pictures of happy customers with their products. They may also give built-in social proof showing what benefits one can have by using their products.

Trend 2: Hyper segmentation and personalization

Gone are the days of sending out just one weekly email to your subscriber list. Today, segmentation and personalization are more effective. You need to send the right content to the right user, at the right time and through the right channel.

For instance, if your customers tend to buy around 6 PM, sending emails around this time can be more effective. The more personalized your messages are, the more interested they’ll be. However, segmentation can only go so far. You will also need to gather as much information as possible about your customers. It, however, will be a challenge for marketers this year, primarily due to the end of third-party cookies.

Trend 3: Omnichannel communication

Email is undoubtedly effective, but the effectiveness can multiply when combined with other channels. Such channels include social media, SMS, web-push notifications, and more. With just a few channels, restricting yourself may also limit your growth and reach.

Omnichannel marketing campaigns are more effective than multichannel marketing. You can adjust the messages on every platform to reflect a user’s activity. Thus you can personalize messages, which lead to more leads and sales.

Trend 4: AR and VR

These two are the most exciting emerging developments, crucial for business and personal lives. Different companies are taking baby steps to implement these technologies, but the marketers face challenges in implementing them. Thankfully, AR and VR are becoming more accessible across various devices and systems.

For instance, Apple has integrated AR into their iPads and iPhones. It lets its customers view AR content from their email app and other native apps. Users can send basic 2D images in emails, expanding into 3D AR objects on tapping or clicking.

Before you use AR and VR, know that desktop and Android users can still enjoy such AR content. It goes for VR content as well.

While the use of VR has rapidly increased, it is still used by less than 20% of people in the US.

Trend 5: Interactivity

Interactive content certainly attracts more viewers; they stand out as creative and unique. If you want your emails to stand out, you need to focus on making your content more interactive and engaging.

You can get authentic customer feedback through forms, surveys and polls. You can also emphasise how much you care about their experiences through these.

Gamification is gaining ground. For instance, Neil Patel’s blog had a ‘wheel of fortune’ for viewers to win random gifts.

To sum up

Email marketing is evolving every year, and these changes are due to maturing regulations, new technologies, and a few other factors. To stay ahead of your competitors, you must know the latest email marketing trends and adjust your plans and campaigns accordingly.

February 17, 2022March 31, 2022

Why do brands jump to NFT trends?

Bitcoin has been making headlines for some time now. It is hugely popular around the world and many governments are making laws to regulate crypto trading. However, there is another digital asset that is rising simultaneously. This new asset is NFT, which looks like it will be here for a long time!

NFTs, or Non-fungible tokens, have a lot to offer to the world and work in tandem with blockchain. We’ll get to that in a bit, though.

In this article, we are going to tell you:

– What NFT is

– How it is used

– How brands are using it (with real examples!)

Now, let’s begin.

What is an NFT?

NFT, or non-fungible tokens, are non-interchangeable units of data. These are stored on the blockchain in digital ledgers. Thus, NFTs can be sold and traded. There are several NFT digital assets like photos, audio and video. However, NFTs are different from crypto-currencies since each of these tokens are individually identifiable.

Why are brands using this technology?

It is because of NFT’s versatility. You can use them to represent virtual creative works in fashion, virtual world-building, virtual real estate, virtual vehicles, virtual apparel, and so much more.

Before studying how different brands are using NFTs, know why they do so.

How can brands use NFTs?

The use of NFTs brings a number of benefits for a brand. Here are some of them:

– Create hype about the ownership of a virtual item

– Leverage the existing fan base to increase sales, hype or goodwill

– Allows you to create a larger market by reselling

– Create excitement among viewers about the pre-launch of events and products

– It opens a new revenue stream for you. You can earn by selling digital products or associated products that complement the physical item.

Here are how some brands are using NFTs.

How are brands using NFTs all over the world?

Below you’ll see how some of the top brands use NFTs?

Taco Bell’s Taco-llectables

Taco Bell – a fast-food brand popular in the USA and beyond, recently introduced its taco-llectables on Rarible. Rarible is an online marketplace. What happened was that Taco Bell sold out its first batch of virtual collectables quickly!

Here’s what the company did!

They created five distinct NFTs and sold them in five batches.

On Twitter, the brand said, “Our Spicy Potato Soft Tacos can now live in your hearts, stomachs, and digital wallets.” For all their troubles, the company will get 0.01% of all sales in the future. All of the earnings will go to the Taco Bell Foundation, an institution that helps people in pursuing their careers.

Smart, right?

Certainly, but wait to see how the following brand is using NFT.

Nike

Nike has been one of the first few prominent brands that understood NFTs significance. The company has been silently observing the growing desire for digital sneakers for some time. It even received a patent for tokenizing digital sneakers.

Here’s what happens:

Whenever customers buy a physical shoe, they unlock NFT tokens from Nike. The company gives them a digital copy of the purchase, which collectively represents CryptoKick. These tokens are assigned by blockchain to properly verify the authenticity and ownership of privileges assigned to those digital shoes.

The great thing about these assets is that the owners remain in complete control. For instance, they can sell rights to third parties who can mix show designs. They can also limit how many times the asset can be copied or cloned. NFTs record essential information about the product, such as its design, color and style. Thus, owners can mix and match to create their custom type. You can monetize this indefinitely as long as they have the ownership.

This idea from Nike is similar to CryptoKitties, but is a bit better than that! Owners get their unique shoe pairs which are secured forever through blockchain. They can see the ancestral tree of their digital footwear’s development as well.

Cool, isn’t it?

Yes, but wait till you see what the next brand did.

Louis Vuitton

The fashion industry is another entity with a keen interest in NFTs. Various fashion houses worldwide are studying this technology, and its use in the industry. They believe that NFTs natural scarcity, coupled with its ability to accrue value over time, can bridge the gap between the real and virtual fashion.

By collaborating with League of Legends from Riot Games, Louis Vuitton created a special skin. This skin is named the True Damage Qiyana Prestige Edition. It showcases the gaming champion’s weapon covered in the unique Louis Vuitton pattern.

We have seen how some brands are using this revolutionary technology.

Let’s now see how Augmented Reality is used in NFTs.

Augmented Reality & NFTs

Till now, we have seen what NFTs are and how we can interact with them.

We have also seen how brands are using them.

However, this is not the only way NFTs exist in the world. Right now, people are taking baby steps in using this technology. There’s a lot more potential, but that’ll come in time as brands start discovering more benefits.

Due to the lockdowns over the past two years, artists had more time to develop unique and creative digital products. For instance, in 2021, there were AR NFTs. These are interactive 3D visual items, can be used in virtual environments, and are cooler than traditional NFTs. You can experience AR NFTs in a virtual world like multiverses, but traditional ones are little more than the items on your desktop.

The virtual designs of Andrés Reisinger, an Argentinian designer, are an excellent example of this. He created and sold at an NFT auction ten pieces of surrealist furniture.

But what’s great about that?

Here’s what: if you own one of them, you can use them anywhere in the multiverse forever. These 3D models thus work through virtual and augmented reality. These can be used by gaming platforms like Unreal Engines and Unity to develop animations, games and even CGI movies. The developer, Andrés Reisinger, will also turn certain virtual items into physical ones!

As you can see, VR, AR and the avatar economy are trending now. And who knows, in the future, NFT may well be one of the ways to conduct business in the metaverse.

For brands, it means that those who take the jump early may benefit faster. Those who don’t may fall behind.

How will you know if your brand should use NFTs?

Virtual worlds shall only continue to grow from here on. The opportunities to build, use and sell virtual assets shall also grow. With more people coming into metaverses, demand for these assets shall continue to grow.

Your brand must act now. Acting later may mean losing the initiative against your competitors. The metaverse is big enough for both buyers and sellers. The clock is ticking!!

February 11, 2022March 21, 2022

Omnichannel Marketing In 2022

Did you know that 86% of online shoppers channel hop? It includes hopping not only across online shops but across multiple channels too.

Sometimes, people make online purchases even when waiting in a shopping queue. They seldom want to wait anymore. If an online shopping portal offers a better experience, they will go for it.

Because of such an emerging trend, an omnichannel marketing strategy is essential for your company.

Businesses worldwide are waking up to realize that they need to offer a consistent experience across multiple channels to be on top of their industry.

Your business needs to understand the importance of omnichannel marketing. Only then can you maximize your ROI by creating a unique online experience for your customers.

In this article, you’ll see a comprehensive guide on Omnichannel Marketing. We’ll show you trends, tips, and marketing strategies galore. By the time you finish reading it, you’ll know how to use omnichannel marketing to take your company to new heights.

Let’s begin.

What is omnichannel marketing?

Don’t be scared of the complicated words. They don’t bite!

Before we come to omnichannel marketing, let us talk about single-channel marketing.

Let’s say that you have got a lovely email list of people for your newest sales campaign. Now, again let’s say 20-30% of the readers decide to buy your stuff.

It is single-channel marketing. Instead of emails, it can also be online ads and similar things. You get coupons and leaflets as sales promotion items, which induces you to purchase.

Now, omnichannel marketing can also be named ‘multichannel marketing’ because that is what it is. It is the tactic of creating and enhancing your brand’s presence across multiple channels. Such channels can include SMS, Email, social media, various apps, websites, and online ads.

Besides these, it can also have offline channels like special promotional events, retail store sales promotion tactics, call centre customer service, and others. The aim is to give customers a positive and seamless experience, no matter which channel mix you choose.

Words like ‘seamless’ and ‘positive’ are not thrown around casually. Studies show that 67% of online customers say that they move away from websites offering lousy customer experiences.

Omnichannel marketing is unique because it provides your customers with a positive and seamless experience throughout their journey.

Why is Omnichannel marketing important?

Omnichannel marketing is crucial because it lets you develop a positive experience for your customers. You can do so for every stage of a buyer’s journey.

Take what Starbucks did, for example. They were the first in their industry to develop an app through which people could pre-order coffee and pick it up later. Such a change was revolutionary and soon became immensely popular, especially in the corporate sector. They could now pre-order their favourite coffee brew, pick it up on their way home, and enjoy it at leisure!

Before, they had to go home, tired after a day’s work and make their blend. Through their new app, Starbucks made ordering and paying more manageable. 29% of in-app payments were made through smartphones. Therefore, the company enhanced customer experience and used omnichannel marketing to boost its revenue.

Why do you need Omnichannel Marketing?

Harvard Business Review teamed up with a significant US retail company to conduct a 14-month long study. The purpose of the study was to understand customers’ shopping behaviour. For this, they interviewed more than 46,000 shoppers.

It is what they found:

– 7% only did online shopping

– 20% only shopped at physical stores

– 73% used multiple channels throughout the shopping journey.

The study also found that the more channels goods and services went through, the more valuable they seemed to the buyers. For instance, it was found that customers going through more than four marketing channels spent 9% more time in stores than those who only went through one channel.

It proves that omnichannel marketing is essential. It is the need of the hour, and customers demand it. Now, retailers around the world have to re-analyze their customer journey. They then have to find new ways to acquire more customers and engage and retain them. It is possible only by offering positive experiences across all channels.

It is time to focus on omnichannel marketing strategies more than the traditional marketing avenues.

Pros and Cons of Omnichannel marketing vs Multichannel marketing

Multichannel marketing shines when you need to grow your reach, expand your customer base and multiply sales. However, there is no transparency between channels due to a lack of cohesiveness.

Instead of working together towards a common goal, these channels compete. All of these result in an inconsistent customer experience across the channels.

Omnichannel marketing ensures transparency and consistency by keeping all touchpoints together and by offering a seamless customer experience.

How to create the perfect omnichannel experience for your customers?

Start by understanding your customers.

Get a profound understanding of the issues they face and how you can solve them. Going back to the example of Starbucks, they found out that their customers’ pain point is that they don’t want to stand in long queues for buying coffee. The company then used this demand to develop an omnichannel experience.

When trying to understand your customers and their pain points, you also need to see:

– What are their challenges? Which devices are they using?

– What is their purchasing behaviour?

– Which platform are they using frequently?

– How do they interact with brands across multiple touchpoints?

Collating this data will help you discover the vital touchpoints to focus on.

Thus, you can make a seamless and customized experience. You can also identify common problems faced by your customers and their solutions.

Now, let’s see how you can build the best possible omnichannel marketing strategy for your purpose.

How to create the best possible omnichannel marketing strategy?

Let us take a brief look at how Disney created an omnichannel marketing strategy that suited their situation. The company did this to improve its customer experience at Disney’s theme parks. This is what Disney did: they streamlined the booking process, added ride timing information, and a host of other amenities on their dedicated app. All these meant that customers no longer needed to stand in long queues.

Exciting, right?

To create an omnichannel like Disney, you primarily need data and a marketing strategy based on it.

Here’s how to create an omnichannel marketing strategy?

1. Plan customer experiences: Understand your customers’ preferred communication channels and their behaviour on all those channels. Then you can create a plan for creating an experience across all those touchpoints.

2. Use data to strategize: You can discover how your customers behave by studying CRM data, customer’s online search behaviour, and social media data. You can then analyze these to understand their pain points and design a solution around them.

3. Personalize their journey by segmenting users: You can easily segment users into multiple categories after data analysis. This division should be based on common behaviour patterns. Segmenting will help in creating personalized journeys for each customer group.

4. Context is crucial: You don’t want to send the wrong message to the wrong customer at the wrong time. If you do so, customers won’t engage with your messages creating an unwanted impact on the brand. So make sure that the messages you send to them are super relevant. Send them when they are most active and on the channel, they frequently visit.

5. Pick the ideal marketing tools: Don’t go by what other companies do. The marketing tools that you need can be different from others. Before selecting, do a comprehensive analysis of your situation and what you require.

6. Your company needs to become customer-centric: Strategies won’t help if your employees are not trained enough to give a consistent experience to customers individually. So, prepare your resources to have a customer-centric approach.

By now, you understand what omnichannel marketing is and how you can create the best possible strategy for yourself.

It is now time to learn how to implement that in your organization.

Here’s how to boost your ROI with omnichannel marketing!

If you want to create the best possible online experience for your customers, you have to convince your management to invest in omnichannel marketing.

Explain how it can boost your ROI. To do that, here are four curated steps.

1. Give consistent messages: Messaging needs to remain consistent across all touchpoints. Train your staff to automate your customer relations by implementing a CRM solution and personalizing content for each stage of a customer’s buying journey.

2. Give a consistent experience: To improve your customers’ LTV (Lifetime Value), your company needs to deliver a consistent experience across the various touchpoints. Align your strategy with an appropriately trained team for smooth and consistent customer experiences. Quickly respond to their queries and feedback provide solutions without any noticeable delay.

3. Consistent communication: It is essential to have consistency across all channels. Thus, customers will remain guided across all the channels during their journey.

4. Data-driven marketing: Personalization is the keyword. Use raw data fetched by a CRM solution to understand your customers. Use the understanding to create engaging content and enhance their interaction with the brand on relevant channels.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Despite having the best marketing strategy and automation tools, sometimes campaigns fail.

Marketers continue to face problems in developing a consistent omnichannel experience.

It can be due to two reasons. Either they cannot manage data across multiple channels, or they cannot use the data optimally to create the desired customer experience.

What’s the result?

The dreaded customer churn!

Here are seven common mistakes marketers make and what they can do instead.

– Ineffective content strategy: You can’t be successful in marketing without a plan. Understand your customers thoroughly, draft a proper content plan to bring your target audience on the same page, generate relevant and personalized content to invoke their interest and engage them with your brand.

– Not using data optimally: Did you know that more than 79% of the executives believe that companies will fail if they don’t use big data solutions? Sadly, marketers have, till now, not been able to use data for this purpose optimally. We often choose the wrong data or fail to create the most effective strategy optimally. It will pay more to take time and correctly use the available information.

– Isolated analytics: The lines between offline and online channels tend to blur. It is where you may lose tracking the effectiveness of individual touchpoints. It disrupts your strategy. So, why not take all the touchpoints into account simultaneously instead?

– Not taking action on new findings: If you fail to take immediate, actionable steps on available data, you won’t positively impact your strategies. To fix this and implement the latest technology, hire the right resources to analyze the user data and break it into actionable suggestions. The marketing team can then use it for making better effective strategies.

– Ineffective strategy: Poor strategy is the primary reason for poor and inconsistent customer experiences. As a result, you lose them. Take a data-driven and customer-centric approach to develop effective strategies and work with them.

– Implementation failure: Sometimes, campaigns fail due to problems in implementation. It can be due to a lack of cohesion within your marketing divisions. It can also be due to a lack of understanding, or due to a lack of clear goal. Before creating such a campaign, be sure that your personnel know what the aim is, and what each of their roles are. Ensure that they have proper technical knowledge as well.

– Measuring KPI: The entire campaign can be pretty long, and it can be challenging to understand its effectiveness in its entirety. Instead, you can have KPIs to check how many you have achieved at every stage. Breaking down the process into different steps and evaluating their effectiveness exposes anomalies and gives you a better chance to correct them. It helps in ensuring more effectiveness.

Now you know how to create an effective omnichannel marketing strategy.

Finally, it is time to learn about the trends expected to make a significant impact on omnichannel marketing in 2022.

Omnichannel marketing trends 2022

Omnichannel marketing is the big thing that’s set to transform businesses. There are omnichannel marketing trends that stand to make a significant impact in 2022 and beyond. Whether you have just started investing in omnichannel marketing or have been doing so for a long time, it is essential to know what works. You are on the right page if you have yet to try this!

Here are the trends that have a great potential to improve business and related brands.

Omnichannel is better than multichannel.

Omnichannel marketing is customer-focused, while multichannel marketing strategies are brand-focused and channel-centric. In a multichannel strategy, you use various channels to spread your message without paying much attention to individual customer behaviours.

Multichannel marketing aims to reach the maximum number of people using the maximum number of channels. Since it is channel-centric, the success of your promotional message will depend on the channel.

Omnichannel marketing is not focused on platforms and devices. Its focus is on its target audience and thus aims to give a consistent message and a seamless experience throughout all touchpoints.

Omnichannel marketing is more agile and effective and thus will surpass multichannel marketing.

Video marketing is rising

Videos are a dynamic way of disseminating a message. It is becoming increasingly popular with time. More and more companies are investing in video marketing now. If you want to get your news out, a few ways can be better. Go for video marketing to unify your marketing channels and make your customers’ journey engaging.

Videos can :

– announce information about your brand

– showcase your products, services and ideas

– highlight important information

– lower bounce rate on your websites

– give an engagement that is professional and informative

– boost your SEO rankings with long-form video content

Finally, video content is excellent for omnichannel marketing. That’s because these work effectively on social platforms, mobile platforms and physical locations. Thus, you get a unified experience for your consumers.

Site search is becoming more important

A website search.

That’s what a practical omnichannel experience begins with.

It is essential to know what your customers are looking for and when. Only then can you present it to them at the right time.

A common mistake that both big e-commerce stores and smaller companies often make is ignoring internal search functionality. It is a grave mistake. If, even after searching, your website is not found, you can lose a lot of potential customers. As many as 68% of online shoppers won’t return if your website’s search results are poor.

Here’s what you can do.

– Add some more relevant keywords

– Give brand-specific messages

Then your customers shall find what they are searching for, which will boost your sales.

Digital payment trend is on the rise

You may have noticed that even your local shops are now accepting digital payments.

With the constant evolution of the global industry and economy, cash is fast becoming obsolete. Brands are more focused on increasing sales, and thus, we are now relying more on digital payment methods.

Because of changing customer preferences for digital payment, companies have started adopting an omnichannel approach to online payments. If you don’t want to fall behind, you need to ensure that your business supports all payment options. You may even lose customers if you aren’t accepting digital payments.

From 2022 onwards, more and more customers expect to pay digitally for almost everything. Thus, the use of cryptocurrencies, mobile wallets, virtual credit cards, and other online payment methods shall increase.

Offering these payment options will surely help you boost sales brand loyalty and retain customers.

Brick and mortar stores aren’t going anywhere

While this is a digital age and you can buy almost everything online, people still prefer physical stores.

Digital stores and e-commerce platforms give a lot of apparent benefits like lower prices, higher discounts, more choices, and so on. However, there are issues too. Customers don’t like waiting for delivery or buying things with colossal shipping and delivery costs. What may add to these challenges is payment processing issues.

In the case of physical stores, you only need to walk over there. There are no advertisements to bore you.

What does that mean for you?

It means that you can create a relevant omnichannel experience. Here the customers’ journey online needs to sync with in-person marketing tactics. You also need to improve your portal’s Customer Experience or CX.

Is Omnichannel Marketing worth the investment?

You or your company’s marketers may still be asking: is it worth the effort?

Here are some statistics that may show you why it is so important. With an omnichannel marketing strategy:

– Customer retention is +90%

– Marketers are seeing a +250% engagement rate when compared to single-channel marketing

– The value of the average order rose by +19%.

Creating an omnichannel marketing strategy means that your team has a more defined plan to work with. It also calls for combining technical and marketing experiences and studying massive amounts of data.

But in the end, you’ll be able to create refined customer experiences. And that’s what it all matters!

January 21, 2022February 11, 2022

Personal Branding vs Corporate Branding

Corporate and Personal Branding

Is there a difference between the two?

Yes and no.

Branding over time

The concept of ‘brand’ first originated amongst farmers and ranchers to designate the cattle which belonged to them. The branding technique was used throughout history in several countries, and the method is still used today. Branding cattle helped one to identify cattle among others.

Gradually, it gained corporate meaning as well. Corporate branding started with its logo and gradually evolved to include the entire company, its activities, corporate individuals, products and services. In other words, the concept has taken a holistic and more inclusive meaning. By holistic brands, we refer to identifying an individual or an entity by the attributes of their brands, their intrinsic values.

Corporate brands

A corporate brand is a collection of a company’s customer’s perception, purpose, values, performance, corporate social responsibility and market dominance, to name a few. It is an aggregate of what its customers perceive and think about a company. For instance, Tata is known for its wide range of services, products, and corporate social responsibility activities. It is a valued entity not just in the corporate sector, its peers and industry but even for society.

Additionally, a corporate brand also refers to how valuable its products and services are. For instance, Maggi is quite a prominent brand in the instant food industry.

Sometimes, brands become more well-known or prominent than the company itself! Take the Xerox machine, for instance. The Xerox Corporation manufactures it. But their product is so well known that the device is synonymous with photocopying. Very few people know the name of its manufacturing company.

Again, consider the brand Dettol. It is known worldwide as an antiseptic, and this product is available in almost every home due to affordable pricing, marketing, and a host of other variables. However, how many people know the name of its manufacturing company?

For some customers, sporting certain branded items like a Rolex watch or a BMW car show off their status. People love to own products from premium brands to upgrade their lifestyle and position in society.

Personal Brands

A personal brand is similar to a corporate brand, but it is certainly not the same thing.

It is similar because it comprises values, purpose, community service, and market dominance. Just like well-known corporate brands like Dettol and Xerox have high perceived values. An individual with valuable abilities is held in high regard. Take motivational speakers, for example. There are many motivational speakers, but the ones at the top have the highest perceived value, and this is due to their skillsets, their public image – that’s their brand.

One unique thing about personal brands, as opposed to corporate brands, is developing into a devout following. Take personalities like Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and others. Personal brands influence public opinion, individual’s life and living. People with branded identity have followers who value every word from the influencer; they wait for their next action.

What is the difference between a Personal Brand and a Corporate Brand?

Image source: https://keydifferences.com

By now, you have looked at corporate and personal brands. While elaborating on them, we have even touched upon the differences.

But there are certainly more differences!

Most corporate organizations are very conscious of their corporate identity and pay great attention to it. They invest significant resources for building its image according to their agenda, increasing its popularity and creating a desire to own it. Different companies have a dedicated department for their branding.

On the other hand, most people tend to ignore their personal brand.

The biggest difference is that most people are unaware that branding involves attention, strategy and commitment. Companies know it, but people either know it or tend to overlook it.

Now that you know about the difference between the two, the next logical question is…

Should you focus on personal branding or business branding?

It is recommended that you begin with developing a personal brand. This is because if you start by building your personal brand, you’ll define your mission, values, vision and message. You’ll also know to whom you are offering your products and services and why. And as you can see, some of these elements overlap with business branding as well.

Thus, developing a personal brand is the primary step to creating a corporate brand.

As you define your mission and vision and build your personal brand, you start off on the right foot. Your business or company is an extension of yourself. It is also easier to start off by creating a personal brand because, in the beginning, your business or company does not have a personality. When you focus on creating a personal brand, you lend it character.

But creating a personal brand demands a clear vision and persistence, and it may expose your brand to more vulnerability. During adverse situations, there is nothing you can hide.

If this is not something you want to go for, you can create a corporate brand.

To begin with, you need to create an appealing story around the brand and personality of your company or business. It will interest your target audience to know about your brand. This can include making an avatar, a cartoon, or something similar.

Regardless of your path, the content you create should be informative, practical, engaging, and unparalleled. You can’t build a successful brand overnight; it takes years of consistent effort.

Where to begin?

Start by asking yourself these questions:

What is your purpose?
What are you here for?
What do you want to achieve?
Why are you offering this product or service?

What’s next?

Image source: https://insightbasedcoaching.com/

Should you build a corporate brand first to earn money?

If you hate the thought of being a public person or an online leader, then yes, start with business branding.

Personal brand building can be more effective, though, and it certainly brings revenue faster. Besides, it brings in sustainability. We recommend creating a personal brand and transforming it into a corporate brand.

January 4, 2022February 11, 2022

Four Digital marketing trends for 2022

Entropy.

That is possibly one word by which you can denote everything that happened in 2020.

We’re not just talking about the changes in people’s lives, or about changes that the countries were forced to grapple with, but also about the changes forced on different industries.

The digital marketing industry saw unprecedented changes last year. While marketers played their best cards to stay on top of trends, the developments came in fast and furious. The speed at which these new developments came rarely gave any scope to prepare for them.

Thankfully, 2021 has been more about working with those trends, and the risk factor was even lower this year.

Let’s not forget that the pandemic is yet to cease; the intensity has just reduced. However, it continues to affect the global economy, leading to uncertainty.

The fate of the ‘new year’ is uncertain as well. For instance, what shall be the landscape of social media advertising? How long will the current digital marketing trends be valid when remote jobs end? It is worthwhile to note a few potential digital marketing trends for 2022. Businesses taking these trends seriously will be successful and enjoy more profit.

Digital marketers need to pay attention to the various performance indicators, learn and analyse their goals. This is a transition period, and such times are certainly not easy.

However, if we pick a reasonable approach, it is quite possible to use the current situation.

In this article, we will consider and analyse current trends and technologies that can be useful to digital marketing. While we shall come across multiple new trends, some are not entirely new.

Search Engine Optimization

Search algorithms evolve constantly. Now, there won’t be any dramatic changes in 2022, but some trends have been noticed already.

Google Trends

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Want to know how key terms are being searched? Use Google Trends a bit more in your overall SEO strategy after considering the search engine’s actions and how it uses keywords for business development.

User Experience

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Users online always have expected fast turnover, whether it is getting an answer to a query or finding information online about a company. With more and more people working from home, the competition for companies to get a customer’s attention has only got tougher.

Your customers want feedback right now—every second matters. So if something is not working out right now in your UX, maybe it’s time to look for alternatives. Also, remember search engines factor in your User Experience. It means that if your website constantly loads slowly, visitors may leave the site sooner, search engines will penalize you.

How?

Giving you a lower search engine ranking also lowers your traffic footfall. Yes, UX is that important!

Want to create a positive UX?

We know you do! Here’s how to do it.

1. Have fast page loading times.

2. Your website needs to have a simple and logical structure.

3. Your website needs to be mobile-friendly since more and more people use smartphones to access websites and other online utilities.

Semantic search

soruce: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/265309iE3532411CAAF6151/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999

Most of the time, web users are searching for something. Keywords have been a prominent factor behind such visibility. This allows search engines to rank content according to search relevance, which also aids in ranking up a site. All of this is due to semantic search methods and content SEO.

Search robots, also called crawlers, use the web searchers’ query semantics to determine their search intention. As years pass by, this capability of crawlers is only increasing. Search queries are becoming more conversational, and this is done to understand one’s intention and goal quickly and precisely.

Today, voice assistants perform better in semantic search and are based on A.I. technology.

PPC Advertising

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PPC advertising is highly appreciated for its effectiveness, and this trend will continue in 2022. The truth is that high-quality PPC advertising is essential for digital marketing.

According to Google Economic Impact, a business gets $2 back for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. This is something you may want to remember when creating your PPC campaign strategy for 2022. Here are the top contextual advertising trends for the coming year.

Privacy concerns

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Many companies are collecting user data like queries, location, and interests. This is being done to make using the World Wide Web more accessible and effective for users. However, it becomes tough to pay more attention to confidential information and personal data protection. User information is taken only to understand target audience behaviour and choose the ideal way of advertising. Most search engines and companies allow people to determine what information can be collected; it doesn’t compromise confidentiality.

When it comes to PPC advertising, these limitations create issues. For PPC marketers, these limitations directly affect the effectiveness of their campaigns. The bad news is that evolving data protection laws will be coming in 2022, and these requirements will only increase from here on. Non-compliance will only cost companies a whole lot more due to hefty fines.

According to Gartner, content personalization will be abandoned in the coming years, mainly due to personal information fraud rather than strict rules protecting personal information online. Only 12% of users are happy about their data being collected for advertising as it helps them search for what they want.

Companies shall protect their users’ personal information and won’t go against the confidentiality norms.

A.I.

It is essential to know how to increase conversion when it comes to advertisement campaign efficiency. This is where Artificial Intelligence is proving to be helpful. It allows automated contextual advertising to appear and thus increase the success rate of an ad campaign. Due to A.I., it is easier for ad campaigns to be client-focussed and forecast clicks and conversion ratings.

Voice search analysis

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This is a relatively newer technology. Big names like Apple, Amazon, and Google have all created their versions of voice search. All one needs to do is to use it. Voice allows businesses to grow organically. Most of the time, people who search by voice are more interested in the search results, be they services or products. Such an audience is more likely to buy, which boosts your sales.

Predictive chatbots

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Chatbots are getting more predictive, and that’s a good thing. They can learn how to communicate better through communicating with clients and customers. Such chatbots are essential for your client service department.

They can answer questions faster, can solve problems more quickly, and if all else fails, they can transfer the communication to a human agent. And since chatbots are fantastic in helping people advance from being a visitor to being a buyer, these are good sales agents as well.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

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CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization allows for the fine-tuning of a sales funnel. This increases your ROI. CRO aims to get visitors to your website and then turn those visitors into revenue-generation avenues. This does not necessarily mean a purchase since revenue can also be generated by downloading a specific free resource, booking a class, or buying a subscription.

For CRO, there are two crucial factors:

– How are people arriving at your website?

– What are they doing on your website?

Analysis of these facets lets you know where to optimize and what to strengthen. For instance, you may need to change the website, add advertising, adjust a page structure, change content, etc. For 2022, CRO trends shall be:

– Adapting the website to mobile devices

– Reasonable personalization in compliance with data confidentiality rules

– Building trust with users by providing transparency of work

All of these shall increase your conversion.

Social Media Marketing

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Covid-19 has forced people to work from home or has given them more time to spend on social media platforms. Due to this, more marketing strategies have also moved to social media avenues.

When creating a social media strategy, it is essential to consider the current global scenario and the location you are targeting. The more global and local knowledge you get, the more personalized and empathic your messages can be. Thus, it is vital to keep in touch with current trends.

Video marketing

Advertising by video format is on the rise. More and more users don’t like to go through a wall of text each time. Video is faster to go through, can be more fun, entertaining and informative.

For digital marketing, it means that professionals need to experiment with, create and perfect various video formats and interaction methods. It is crucial to optimize all videos for increasing page view numbers. To do that, you need a good thumbnail image, good subtitles, and a transcription text of the video.

Conclusion

In 2022, digital marketers will have to walk a fine line between compliance with confidentiality laws and providing personalized content. Keeping customers and users in the centre of a product has always been important, and this trend will only grow stronger from here on.

All of the trends discussed above will be useful for digital marketers in 2022. However, two things shall continue to play a pivotal role: the pandemic and technological developments.

The pandemic is not over. Thus, it will pay to remain flexible in marketing planning and to know about changing market conditions, interest and demand, and global and local trends.

December 10, 2021January 26, 2022

Upcoming graphic design trends for 2022

A graphic designer is one who is involved in developing visual communications intended to transmit messages. Such messages can be meant to be disseminated in any media thinkable, from infographics, videos, and of course, standalone graphics.

It also involves creating web page layout, visual hierarchy online, and more.

image source: https://kampunginggrissemarang.com

What is graphic design?

Graphic design is the art of creating appealing visual content.

Besides applying page layout techniques and visual hierarchy, designers use typography and images to meet the user’s specific requirements. To optimize the UX (or User Experience) primarily, they focus on the logic of displaying elements in an interactive design.

Types of graphic design

There are eight different types of graphic designing:

1. Visual Identity Graphic Design

2. Marketing and Advertising Graphic Design

3. Web Design comes under a specific discipline of Graphic design

4. Package Design

5. Graphic Design for Publications

6. Motion Graphic Design

7. Illustration Graphic Design

8. Environmental Design

There are a few critical takeaways for upcoming graphic design trends in 2022

Colourful Minimalism

According to the conventional way of graphic design, minimalism includes a combination of black text with a white background, due to which images lack brightness and colourfulness. It is a warm palette mainly consisting of traditional black and white colours, but recently a number of new software have completely changed the concept of “Minimalistic design”.

Today, graphic design has colour palettes primarily based on a neutral colour scheme. The central concept is that using a two-colour palette and pairing it with one accent colour is the perfect choice for a minimal graphic design.

Already several MNCs, including global giants like Apple Inc., have implemented muted and neutral colour palettes in their marketing messages.

A range of colour palettes may exist, but that does not prove to be an obstacle for graphic designers. They successfully make a beautiful combination of sophisticated design with traditional minimalism.

Colours and creativity proved to be an added advantage for many reputed brands in the market. This has led to the dismissing of several unnecessary elements and gave due consideration to visual effects.

Attention to Inclusion

image source: https://i0.wp.com/howfarfromhome.com/

Black Live Matter is a socio-political movement in the USA. It developed right after the death of a few black men and women in the hands of U.S. policemen. It is commonly believed that these are hate crimes fed by generations of racial hatred and prejudice based on skin colour.

This movement still inspires people all over the globe, but particularly graphic designers. The historical gesture so touches the graphic designers or professionals that they still portray black people in inspiring works of art. The purpose of this movement within the ranks of graphic designers shall be to highlight various cultures, beliefs and prejudices.

Geometric shapes

Image source: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/7e/02/e4/7e02e4fd9a397c65e508fd0cbbb49866.jpg

More and more geometric shapes have shown up in this year’s artworks and graphic designs. Wherever you look, you’ll see designers use such shapes in their work while replacing abstract ones which were used to define graphics earlier.

You can combine them with any image and create a unique mix of unusual details. They became popular with many companies such as Rivet, Zendesk, and Venngage.

image source: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/35/b8/5935b8d63315507023c405ddb4a8a00b.jpg

Apart from the images, you can use shapes to represent data points, display content, and even reflect your brand.

Even better, when combined with muted colours, these shapes create client-friendly text and stunning visual effects.

In recent years, it has been seen that more and more geometric shapes are applied in graphic design. Designers are replacing old abstract designs on graphics with geometrical shapes, combining them with any image. This results in the development of a unique mix of unusual details. These are becoming popular with several major industries such as Rivet, Zendesk and Venngage.

Some of the top upcoming graphic design trends for 2022

Graphic design is an interesting topic because of the slow and gradual trends. A graphic designer may not be required to use the latest graphic designing trends and their regular work. However, picking up new ideas, inspirations and techniques are essential. These are some trends that are shaping the industry.

Some of these latest trends adopted by professionals are as follows:-

Inclusive Visuals

image source: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8b/49/84/8b49843ae3d1e4b893ecb77f1f3c722b.jpg

Several projects related to graphic design such as website design, event posters and print collateral implement Inclusive Visuals. It comprises illustrations, icons, videos, images, sound and voices.

Earlier it was enough to include a white male to represent the public by default in most images. Now, graphic designers are including people of all races, genders, ability levels and sizes. This development is to make projects more inclusive, and this is a part of a broader effort trickled into the graphic design space.

It’s nice to allow projects to reach a wider audience while providing a new set of design options. This graphic trend is visual and is also done to make one feel good about the company or project itself.

Background patterns are bolder

image source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/fa/e9/fafae942a0ad084142316039f8aba4ed.jpg

It is time to forget traditional and limited styles and think of something more expansive, bolder, and inclusive. It involves making bold divisions between the background and the foreground of an image. This trend in graphic design is welcoming because it attracts the viewers’ attention.

Text Layer Effects

image source: https://graphicburger.com/

For a long time, the layered text effect has been a design technique for graphic design print. Recently, it is becoming a trend for website design projects as well.

By layering text effects, including its colour, motion, size, etc., the designer can turn typography into the dominant visual impact in the design.

Faceless Imagery

image source: https://cdna.artstation.com/

It is a big concern for the designers to decide whether to mask or not to mask the images and photos. If there is a demand for designing faceless imagery, it includes many silhouettes or images that project people from the background.

What is the purpose behind faceless imagery?

It helps the designers to serve two purposes.

It assists them in working with images already placed with some brand in the market, i.e. not to be under any violation of legal acts related to copywriting.

Also, it saves them time and energy to retake the photos and adheres to health and societal norms.

Oversizing the design elements

It is another essential aspect of digital projects. Several oversized elements combined with scroll effects and animation helps the viewer to get a glimpse of the rest of the picture.

In the case of oversized elements, there is the possibility of design elements overlapping. For instance, an image may overlap the text. The technique may not be highly recommended, but its popularity is increasing.

This works only with simple typography where only a couple of words are understandable while the rest are covered. The result can be impressive and impactful.

Experimental Typography

image source: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/

Experimental typefaces are inclusive of anything different from the traditional model. It may include fonts with edgy and funky lines, experimental strokes, animation, 3D elements, colour, illustrations and styling elements. There are speciality fonts that come in all manner of styles and options. These are attractive and give each project a unique and personalized feeling.

To sum up

In 2022, we may see some design trends which may not be in this topic. But you can be sure of one thing. The trends mentioned here, are here to stay. And these won’t be only for 2022, but for several subsequent years as well. If you are a graphic designer or work in an office where you have a graphic designing department, these are trends you have to know about to stay competitive.

For an unlimited design package, contact us

December 3, 2021January 26, 2022

A Deep Dive Into Metaverse Marketing

In the age of rapid growth of technology, we notice various innovations in the market which may have been unimaginable before.

Among these innovations, there is the metaverse.

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse is a unique, immersive and virtual environment, and it is rapidly taking over the internet.

The actual word ‘Metaverse’ generally indicates a virtual world that lies beyond or extends the physical world. The specific word was coined in the sci-fi novel Snow Crash written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. However, in the technical term, it is a virtual reality space that enables the users to interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.

This is a new version of the internet, supporting 3D virtual environments by personal computing, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. Though in a limited form, we find ‘Metaverse’ on platforms like VR chat or specific next-gen technology related to video games.

The concept of Metaverse

Generally, the Metaverse uses a shared virtual space allowing users to be represented by virtual avatars. In the virtual world, an avatar is a graphical representation of the user’s character.

This representation may be:

a 2D form like an icon
a 3D form as in games and virtual worlds

Depending on user-made decisions and interactions, these virtual worlds continue to evolve and grow.

Marketing in Metaverse

To compete in the global market, digital marketing professionals need to keep up with the latest technological developments.

It involves understanding the Metaverse and its full potential. Marketers should know that Metaverse is not just a trendy new thing but will remain in the global market for a long time. The Metaverse is the next big thing.

How online marketers can cope up with expanding metaverse market

First of all, marketers need to consider the value of the millennials and Gen Z as their target market. This is because they are avid users of some forms of Metaverse, such as online games and VR technologies.

Biggest opportunities for brands:

Source: https://www.roundhillinvestments.com/

Several big brands are adopting Metaverse for their promotion.

Big brands like Warner Bros, Hyundai and Gucci have already built their virtual worlds.

Industry giants like Sephora, Nike and HBO are concentrating upon getting into AR and VR experiences.

Other reputed brands such as Coca-Cola, Crockpot, and Anheuser-Busch are carefully making their move by selling non-fungible tokens which can be purchased or sold on the blockchain.

From selling virtual clothing, selling on NFTs, on branded shops in games, and providing virtual concerts and fashion shows are only some of the brands conducted in the past few years to determine how to market products to their consumers in the Metaverse.

Though Metaverse is not precisely what science fiction has shown it to be, it continues to produce remarkable results as a new platform for online marketing.

According to a global survey, it is estimated that in 2021 an approximate number of 85 million global users will experience Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in a month.

With the rapid growth in virtual reality and augmented reality in recent years, metaverse technology successfully penetrated the internet.

Theoretically, it will comprise multiple reconcilable virtual worlds, allowing people to teleport from one experience to another quickly.

These worlds shall facilitate everything from social interactions, being a source of online entertainment, being an avenue to do online marketing, and doing much more online. One may go for placing their own virtual advertisement in the Metaverse.

What Mobile Marketing Association and Culture Group says about it

In their whitepaper, Mobile Marketing Association and Culture Group have described Metaverse as “shared virtual worlds that seamlessly blend applied game mechanics, massive interactive live events (MILE), blockchain-enabled digital goods and virtual commerce.”

Facebook has taken interest enough to invest $10 billion to become a metaverse company in the next five years and proposed taking thousands of new employees from Europe apart from changing the company’s name from Facebook to “Meta”. Several other multi-national concerns are showing interest in this technology as well.

The fundamental reason is that there are so many interactive opportunities to generate attention for a company.

Take Roblox, for example. It gets more than 200 million active users every month. Half of them are not yet teenagers. They love to play hundreds of thousands of virtual games. Most of these games require brand activation.

How is Metaverse responsible for bringing a revolution in marketing?

source: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fictional-battle-omniverse

It is a revolution in the field of online marketing. It has already brought remarkable changes for the future of online technology. Metaverse gives a surety of getting the physical world and the virtual world together with the aid of new technologies.

Such new technologies lead to the transformation in the way:

people interact with each other
do marketing online,
entertain themselves
engage in various other daily life activities

“It is a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said about the Metaverse.

Director of the technical department at Byte Isabel Perry said, “Metaverses are jam-packed with innovative marketing potential, ranging from live shopping to virtual stores, fashion shows, launching of products, and live events, content production, NFTs…”

These developments are paving the way for the real economy.

The possibilities these hybrid worlds offer are endless. It’s time for innovative brands to get involved in this new technology of the future.

Metaverse is the next generation of the online channel.

source: https://i1.wp.com/journaltimes.co.uk

Metaverse works in a way that is different from normal advertising. It aims at creating brand experiences that are more engaging and exciting and less invasive than what online viewers are experiencing with current digital advertisements.

All the traditional methods of placing online and offline advertisements such as the flagship shops, large billboards and advertisements on the web are turning out into a thing of the past.

Digitalization alone is not enough. People want it to be more interesting. For those looking to build relationships with customers from young generations today, the phrase “in real life” has taken a whole new meaning. People from every age group are showing interest in such innovations.

Although this is currently a fresh concept, many luxury brands are already creating avatar apparel since 2018, and various such brands have been collaborating with games for the last few years.

Other areas such as NFTs and collectibles have made dramatic progress, and the new technology is driving massive interactive live events (MILEs).

November 26, 2021January 26, 2022

Why Facebook is now called Meta?

Something big and extraordinary happened on 28th October 2021, something we will never forget.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s name would be changed soon to Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta in short.

The company makes a significant decision for millennials who grew up with Facebook and countless other similar platforms. Why change the company’s name? Will the company remain the same? What is Meta anyway? These are some of the questions popping up in our minds.

In this article, we shall try to uncloud the confusion and offer as many answers as possible.

Is Facebook still there?

Yes, Facebook is very much still there. Your favourite social media platform is not going anywhere. Nothing about the platform itself will be changing except the name. It will be owned and controlled by Meta Inc., which shall be its parent company.

What is a parent company?

A parent company holds together a conglomerate of various companies, of the same group, across industries or within a single industry. For instance, Alphabet Inc. controls Google and its other subsidiaries. Similarly, Meta Inc. will now control Facebook and other existing subsidiaries like WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus VR, and other upcoming ventures.

Why is Facebook now called Meta?

On 28th October 2021, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg spoke at a virtual and augmented live-streamed reality conference. This was to let stakeholders and users of Facebook know that a change was in the wind. He announced that the new name would be Meta. This change will reflect the work his company will focus on to develop and support the Metaverse.

What is the Metaverse?

It is a digital world where anyone can communicate virtually with others. Facebook or Meta Inc. has changed its name to signify that it is trying to set the stage globally for the advent of this technology in people’s lives.

However, virtual experience and communication have been around for many years now. For instance, there are many games and chat engines where people worldwide can communicate through their virtual avatars. Thus, it is not something new.

However, it is not something that is brought to the mainstream either. For instance, virtual world communication and communication in the Metaverse is not something that companies use.

How does one communicate on the Metaverse?

Easy! You have to use a Virtual Reality headset, VR Glasses, or any device that supports these. It will be a life-like video game and show you interacting with others in a “virtual environment.”

So, for instance, you can communicate with office colleagues and clients on the Metaverse. It will be a virtual environment, of course, but it will increasingly be realistic. Are you bored by working from home during the pandemic? It is one thing the Metaverse will solve.

This technology can also change the way we view education as well, as well so other fields like healthcare. Metaverse is a technology of the future, and Mark Zuckerberg is attempting to capitalize on the trend early on.

To sum up

Meta Inc. does not own rights to this technology. Other companies and industries will follow Meta soon. As for Meta, they expect to reach over a billion users within the next ten years.