#798-1622868 © www.stockimagebank.com
This is a perennial question that I ask everyone. Each one has their own point of view. So I thought of putting it up to my fellow entrepreneurs. We can have a series of ideas that can benefit all.
To start with, let me share what we do at Stockimagebank.com.
We have not hired any professionals to do it for us. Most traffic on our site is organic. referrals. word of mouth. I have a few groups on Facebook, a company page on Linked in, we have a blog that auto tweets and increases impressions based on the articles and promotions we run. We send our mailers to all our existing clients, and they in turn share. Pretty simple and straightforward.
I am happy with the way things have progressed so far.But I am hungry. I need more people to come to our site and experience my products. I need businesses to benefit from the solutions we provide, by creating visuals that compliment each business.
A lot of our businesses are in niche spaces and In a b2b space. we wish to reach out to our specific TG and not to just about anyone. Google is good for general brand awareness. Being startups we are always cash strapped, aren’t we ?
I would love to know what each one of you does and I am sure we all will benefit for each others learnings.
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Hi Sugandha,
Great initiative to brainstorm some ideas. I would say also doing post on other established blogs to create an online presence for you, giving initiatives for key influencers in your group to talk to you, PR etc would serve you well. I am not sure about this blog that sends auto tweets. Twitter is about having a conversation with your customers not just sending out 140 characters into a black hole so I would say that it may be better if you craft these messages better on Twitter and really engage with influencers/photographers there as well.
Hope these help
asha chaudhry
hey sugandha…
i was really looking fwd to the responses here ‘coz it’s an issue faced by everyone.
as you know, social media engagement is hugely effective. since you are in a niche market you need to constantly make your presence felt there.
e.g. your first in the world “switch background innovation” – was this mentioned by media relevant to you (including the likes of afaq! etc?)
don’t know if you have seen alok’s presentation on PR for startups – pls go through it for some tips – might help you in some sort of way….
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/pr-for-startups-a-reference-guide
let’s hope we get some more insights here from the experts 🙂
p.s: sugandha – pls try and connect with akshay – https://www.therodinhoods.com/profile/IndianBackpacker
he’s done wonders with his SEO etc…
Dr Saurabh Bhatia
Hi Sugandha
1. SEO: perhaps one of the biggest hype in the internet is that your site is SE unfriendly and so it will never show up. Any idea about WHO created this hype? 🙂 Anyhow. One of the shortcuts is to put tags, key words, metadata etc. What I do is, I use google adwords’ engine to automatically suggest keywords for the sites of my competitors (not my own) and then I put those keywords in my sites. Cheeky but works. And never rely on Google search as it will show you your site on top invariably. Go check your Goolge rank from cybercafe or perhaps use Bing/ Yahoo to check your SEO friendliness. Remember SEO x=x Google
2. Email campaigns: They do have some value. We were initially ‘guided’ (?misguided) to buy a database of potential customers and then email them using PHPlist. 🙁 delivery was poor and response was 1.2% which is about market standard anyway. We don’t do it anymore. Now I have an app called Co-Book which synchronises my contacts in twitter/FB/LI/personal/gmail which reaches about 7000. I just mail these people periodically which does help.
3.Google+ is more active than you thought. It is worth about 20mins/week. Especially communities. I am a chess player of moderate standing and my chess community on google plus has 4500 people which anyway follow me on google plus. SO even my other posts get noticed.
4.Blog? age old method to sing your song. DOn’t ignore
5. Webinar: Tried conducting one? I suggest trying it since most of your clients are net consumers anyway and free Gyaan distribution sometimes help. (They suck when you do them but biz is biz 😉 )
6. Group: I own and moderate 2 very niche groups of my domain, one of whom is the official Indian rep in international forums, too. One post in these groups ensures that those who need to know, know
Mac out of battery. More later.
Sugandha Dubey
Asha, Thnx a ton for the note.
Let me respond to what you say one by one.
Asha : “as you know, social media engagement is hugely effective. since you are in a niche market you need to constantly make your presence felt there.”
Sugandha : ” True that and being a Branding Strategy and marketing and professional, cant help but think about other brands and its relevance to reach the right target audience, one, of course for brand awareness and brand building and two most importantly the tough word ROI. Yes. I keep thinking on how to innovate, how to sow it all together to get ROI and Social media married.”
Asha : “e.g. your first in the world “switch background innovation” – was this mentioned by media relevant to you (including the likes of afaq! etc?).”
Sugandha : ” Now this one is a sore point for me. But for Rodinhood and my own blog, Unfortunately no one seems to be interested. I wrote to The gentleman@ Afaqs, and though he is a good friend, the mail reply I received was that is does not make a story good enough for them to cover. However if I wish to file a press release I can. I guess they are happier covering Job-switch and ” Which agency grabbed which account ?” or who changed into a new role. I did not even bother with anyone else, as I felt that it does not matter if no one is interested as its an innovation for my clients and I am getting fabulous response on that ! “
I am happier at Rodinhood and have much more respect for Alok and all Rodinhooders 🙂
I am reading the responses so far and will reply and respond here. I hope too this becomes a truly engaging debate.
Pawan Deokule
Dear Sugandha,
I run a digital marketing company called digicat and building traffic is our business. Having said that, we do it for our clients who pay us a fee for our knowledge and not because they have less time to do the same things we do. Hence, I would strongly recommend that you hire a low cost freelancer to run your SEO program.
If you insist on doing it yourself then here are a few pointers:-
1. Google
Google is the largest search engine and is extremely partial to its own brands – youtube, adwords, google plus, hangout, play, android, etc.
If you want to be found on google, you would need to have presence and build on that presence over time on all of google. SEO is not easy and is better done by a professional. Check with Navneet from Pagetraffic, perhaps you could get a barter deal – photos for SEO!
2. Social Media
This may not be relevant to your business at this stage as you have a B2B setup and do not want people sharing your stock pics so they can find better rates or pics elsewhere! Besides, building social media contacts takes time and effort that is beyond the scope of its returns.
3. Email Marketing
Today email marketing is highly complicated if you want to get it right without getting blacklisted! Its a great technique to digitize your contacts and maintain a frequency of contact through email. After the third round you can be shameless in asking for referrals and float testimonials. Keep proding your clients for new business, a ‘we miss you’ email has worked wonders even for large brands!
4. Groups and communities like Whatsapp groups
Groups are an excellent way to engage audience of different cadres like photographers, graphic designers and ad agency staff. There are twitter groups, google / yahoo groups and fb groups and Digg Reddit groups. We call this affinity marketing where you touch upon a group which is affinitized by a certain common inclination.
5. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has several features stacked up for professionals to reach each other and is all about reaching the right audience with the right interest to buy your product/service. LinkedIn has a sales premium account for lead generation which is a beautiful method of building leads across the linkedIn network.
Wishing you all the best!
asha chaudhry
sugandha….
this just came in from abey – pls read!!!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/internet-marketing-traffic-generation-conversion-optimization
Sanchita Dutta
@ Dr saurabh Bhatia // co-book works only with Apple. is there something for normal users?
regds sanchita
Dr Saurabh Bhatia
Sanchita: An extension of your statement would be that Apple users are ‘not normal’ 🙂
One suggestion is to check this website https://alternativeto.net/software/cobook/
the other one is to use PLAXO online address book, but it does require more effort than cobook
All the best