Seven Tips to Successfully Offshore Marketing Operations

Several weeks ago, I met a senior marketing executive from one of the world's largest brands. She was discussing the possibility of offshoring their marketing operations to.

As we got into the discussion, it was clear that there were three key drivers for their decision to offshore marketing operations -

    The brand had been asked to reduce spend by at least 20 percent. To put this in context, various industry reports state that 2009 marketing budgets were, on average, cut by over 20 percent compared to pre-recessionary levels. And the number of companies that cut marketing budgets was 25 percent higher than predicted in January 2009.

         As brands go global, maintaining brand consistency across geographies is becoming a huge issue for marketers. Consistency is important not just from a customer experience standpoint but also from the perspective of marketing efficiency. If you create standardized brand "templates," the local geographies can respond faster to market/sales needs.

         The marketing function is under pressure to deliver ever ROI much faster than before. Management is asking tougher questions of its marketing teams; the focus on metrics has never been sharper.

     I realized that the company had gone after the usual cost reductions such as the elimination of travel, training, new hiring and new campaigns. However, they were looking to further reduce cost and increase efficiency. This triggered the idea of outsourcing/offshoring marketing operations.

If companies are interested in offshore their marketing operations, what can they do to ensure that their plan is well-thought out and effective? My counsel to this particular marketing executive was to keep seven mantras in mind:

    Secure a champion - Ensure that the company has an offshoring sponsor or champion who can evangelize the need for offshore delivery, address any issues that come up and resolve problems.

         Charge the CMO to drive adoption - Make sure that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is fully supportive of the offshoring plan. The CMO's approval should be communicated to all brand managers else to combat resistance from the brand managers. One trick that I have seen work is to have the CMO ask each CEO during their monthly/quarterly/annual marketing reviews how they have leveraged the offshore unit to deliver marketing efficiencies. This will ensure that all the brand managers see offshoring as a CMO priority.

         Be clear about what can and what cannot be offshored - Draw up a list of functions that can be delivered from an offshore center. For example, offshoring event management can be costly and ineffective because it requires much client intimacy in terms of planning and last minute exigencies like booth set-up and brochure placement among others. While the designing of the booth can be offshored the logistics needs to be managed onsite. Therefore, draw up a list of what can and what cannot be offshored.

         Start with the low-hanging fruit to build credibility - The list of activities to be offshored must have the highest probability of delivering on metrics of efficiency, time and cost. To be credible, the offshore unit must first deliver low-hanging fruit, and then gradually scale up to more complex tasks. For example - start with parts of email marketing such as database creation and validation, design layout of marketing collateral, making brand-consistent PowerPoint presentations, website/portal development and maintenance, among others. Once these reach a certain level of stability, start to look at more complex aspects of marketing such as campaign design, or content creation.

         Keep all delivery options open - Offshore centers can be set up in several forms. These include a fully owned captive center, outsourcing functions to a third party service provider, or creating a hybrid model where some parts of the operations are outsourced to a third party service provider and some are retained within the captive center.

         Set up a robust governance structure - This is probably one of the most important but least understood outsourcing issues. A documented governance framework that details every process and workflow will help the delivery teams by making the task “process-oriented”. It will also put in place strong review mechanisms through steering committees to address any issues that the center or its client users may face.

        Publicize the offshore center’s successes - The company must ensure that the offshore center's successes and any client accolades received are publicized amongst top management and the wider marketing team. Perception matters.

Marketers have outsourced creative, right-brained activities as early as the seventeenth century. That was the genesis of the advertising industry. Since then, companies have evolved to a stage today when marketers outsource a majority of their functions - be it direct marketing, advertising, events, media planning, and even analytics which was hitherto closely held within the “ivory tower." Some have outsourced more than others. But today, an even broader adoption of outsourcing is underway - that of entire marketing operations. Marketers need to embrace this change and make the most of it to drive greater value for their business.

Source:http://blogs.wns.com/Resources/Blogs/BlogTopics/tabid/93/Article/99/seven-tips-to-successfully-offshore-marketing-operations.aspx

Making Your Product Descriptions Ready For Business

How far would you have to go to find a poorly written product description or unclear, confusing content? There is a good chance that some of you need to go no further than your own website.

I guarantee that if you browse ecommerce sites selling multiple products, such as beauty items and electronics, you will find example after example of poorly written, confusing, unintelligible, even laughable descriptions of products.

Have you ever been confused by poorly written descriptions or bogged down in unintelligible information? The writers of this web content did not intend to confuse you. These writers no doubt intended to convey clear, interesting information. They simply did not have the skills to do so.

Your product descriptions should be written using what we call "product description grammar".

Don't worry, this grammar will be written in everyday English. Basically, you will find this grammar to be the same you learned in school, However, there are a few things removed to give it a professional business-like tone and style.

In addition to a business-like style, product description grammar also means the language in your description is:

• Crisp
• Clear
• Concise
• Accurate
• Appropriate for the intended audience

The grammar used in the descriptions of your products is basic and should be used for all your products.

When we start writing your product descriptions, it will be in a conversational tone. It is written as if you were telling a friend about the features and benefits that your products have and why a customer might want to purchase them from you. Since you are telling someone about your business and products that means your description is written in the first person.

Since your description is in the first person, the pronouns "I" and "we" will be the subject of most of your sentences. When the description is finished the first person pronouns, articles, helping verbs and being verbs are removed. You will find that your description will have a crisp business-like tone to it, all your tenses will be correct and you will have a great, readable version of your description. You will see that writing a description using this grammar will produce content that can be read and understood without effort.

Everyone marketing online needs content and anyone can make mistakes that lead to misunderstanding. Follow the rules of product description grammar eliminates most mistakes. Your descriptions will be clearer and you will prevent misunderstandings between the seller and the buyer.

First-rate product description copywriting is one of the most overlooked, underused and cost effective weapons in your online marketing arsenal. It has the power to stop you in your tracks or contribute to success beyond your wildest dreams. Have you considered a professional team? Maybe it's about time.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Making-Your-Product-Descriptions-Ready-For-Business&id=7412049

Increase Visibility of Your Business Enlisting it in Local Search Engine

In this global market it is very tough for the local businesses to attract new customers or retain their existing customer base. Every form of media is crowded with different advertisements and your effort to get noticed via media promotion will be lost in the clutter. Moreover, the local players have limited promotional budget in comparison to national or international companies. So, what a local business man will do to promote their business?

Previously, people refer to Yellow Pages to find a local business. Such days are quickly disappearing. Now people turned to internet for every sort of information. Therefore, the best way for the local businesses is to enlist themselves in the online directories.

When people think of search engines the first three names that come to mind are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Even when the term local is attached with search engine, the thought process moves in the same direction. It is true that these big players list local businesses also. If a person tries to search a thriving local business in Google he or she will have no difficulty to see a listing for that business in this big platform. Suppose that person, without any knowledge of the businesses of the area, is looking for a local service provider in Google. He or she will have a good number of business listings which will include many national companies. The information will be of no use to that person. It will be better if there is a local search engine providing location specific results.

Businesses that are struggling to gain an edge in the local markets can optimize their presence on local search engines. It is an excellent way to attract web traffic towards your site. When the online users will discover that there is a search engine meant solely for a geo-location, they will stick to it instead of referring to Google. There are several such local search engines satisfying the requirements of the customers. My Quick Search is one of them that specifically cover the local businesses of Chhattisgarh and satisfy every need of people located in that area. 

Benefits that you can enjoy listing your company with local search engine:

Reach your Target Audience: The target audience of a local business stay in their close proximity. The businesses that depend on local clientele like restaurants, salon, plumbers, carpenters, mechanic, dentists, lawyers, make-up artists, and several others aim to approach the these target groups. The businesses usually consider different media for promoting their business. It is true that local media is an effective way to make people aware of your existence.

However, when need arises they may not remember what you have once advertised. They will then search online to satisfy their requirements. The local listing plays a significant role at that situation. 

Extensive coverage: The small and medium companies are often absent from the listing of top search engines. Even if they are present, there are high chances that they will be lost amidst the big names. Contrary to it, the local search engine carefully includes all the existing service providers of a geo-location from where the customers can pick up the business as per their requirements. Since, in a specific area there is comparatively limited number of service providers, all the companies are visible.

Cost Effectiveness: An online listing is pretty cheaper compared to other kinds of advertisements. Spending only a little amount you can increase the visibility of your brand. Another benefit of listing on the major local network you have to compete with far lesser number of businesses.

Mobile phone friendly: Whenever, there is an informational requirement a person hardly awaits search them from their computers. They instantly connect internet from their Smartphone to access the required information. When you are using a Smartphone, it is very easy to scroll through the listings. Most of the mobile phone users searching information at first refer to business listing. A local listing gives adequate information whenever and wherever they require about the businesses in the vicinity just with the touch of finger.

Therefore, claim your listing in the local search engine and let it work in favour of your business.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/myquicksearch/Business/Increase-Visibility-of-Your-Business-Enlisting-it-in-Local-Search-Engine-bid-kR9y3q2740616186.html

Using Bulk SMS Services how the stock advisory companies increasing their sales volume?

BNI's philosophy is "Givers Gain" - members are expected to focus on giving referrals to other members to build relationships and receive referrals in return. Why I made this point here is the BNI is one of the World’s largest referral organization which works via referral networks. Even Stock Advisory firms are also working on the similar kind of model. What they do? They send the list of their targeted audience or prospective customers stating that i.e.) Buy “ABC Ltd Share” BSE Code: XXXX @ Rs. 142-145 for 1 Month Target 380-460 Huge Govt. Orders received buy 2000 shared for 2Lacs Profit in 1 Month. 10 Days Free Trail also Available.

One More Sample – How much did you earn in Stock Market?? Today our client earned 20,500 INR. To join and earn daily in Stock Market.

When the person read the above messages they are tempted to add few more savings to their bank accounts so they show much interest what’s is this and how to invest in a smaller way etc… so the stock advisory firms to ask them to sign up for 10 days free trail where they will get lot of messages from the stock advisory companies like what’s the Buy && Sell and Profit, etc… Especially every day EOD, you will get the report like what’s the profit made by the major customer, what’s the investment, profit, etc… You will also be amazing! With the small amount of money, how the customers are earning more money. You will be showing much interest to have few more earnings. You are start welcoming lot of messages like this i.e.)

Note: Of course the stock advisory company whatever gives you the statement like X is making so much of profit that’s 100% correct. There is one thing you forget to realize, the X is spending his dedicated day ONLY for STOCK’s business. NOT as Part time he is earning HUGE PROFIT.

Here it’s NOT the question of earning the profit or loss. It’s one of the Marketing Strategy how the Stock Advisory Companies are converting the business very nicely with their targeted customer. Most of the time, they are ONLY using Bulk SMS Services as Marketing Strategy to promote their business. They do use Promotional & Transactional Bulk SMS Services. To convert anyone into business they do periodic Promotional Bulk SMS to them regarding the service and daily gain by different customer. Once if the customer is signed for FREE TRAIL then start using Transactional Bulk SMS Services to send the market updates, market call, staring, mid day, closing status, exit rate, etc…

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/bulksmscompany/Business/Using-Bulk-SMS-Services-how-the-stock-advisory-companies-increasing-their-sales-volume-bid-fP9gkbI282792976.html

Tips to Use While Picking Online Data Recovery Services

Most of the businesses use technology every day and night to make their daily tasks easier and faster. Eventually, keeping technology at fingertips makes our lives simpler, and we can get the best opportunities to carry out business processes under smartest technology advantages. The gradually advancing technology will soon make it possible for every individual to virtually use comprehensive services within easy distance from their living or work place. Irrespective of the distance and type of technology services, every technical problem will be resolved in minimum turnaround time so as to not let work hamper. And similar concept goes for the data recovery solutions!

No matter whether you are using a new PC or a hard drive, it is not going to work perfectly throughout your life. You might face technical errors in your machine that should not be ignored; instead, they must be diagnosed and fixed soon so as to avoid any work hamper and data losses. There are times when your bad luck brings computer viruses on your hard drive or some other external damage occurs to it causing data loss. In such a scenario, it is impossible to get back the original data on your own, and you surely need to rush to a professional who can handle the data recovery emergency. However, to acquire most trusted online data recovery services, it is important to hire a reliable data recovery provider.

Below are few helpful tips to find a reputed data recovery service.

•    Look for Recommendations

As mouth-to-mouth campaigning is considered as the most trusted conventional method of marketing, it is recommended to look for valuable suggestions from your business partners, colleagues and friends to find a reputed service company. If similar tragedy happened with some other business owner and they were successful in retrieving their data. What would you do? You will try getting the contact details of the data recovery company, if you can ever need to call them. This is how recommendations help you a long way in acquiring expert online data recovery services.

•    Perform Internet Research

As every data retrieval service provider has online presence today, it is easy to differentiate the good ones from all possible options through Internet. Type relevant keywords on the Google search box and look for the best search results. When you prepare a list of potential service providers, check out the offered set of services and their detailed description. This is how you will be easily able to shortlist the best data recovery companies without compromising your comfort.

•    Do Homework

When you are unable to receive any referrals, you need to look for more companies and check out which ones are offering services that fit well in your price bucket. Most of them might be in the industry for too long and others may have involved recently. Ensure you measure and analyze all the parameters before making the final investment and getting right data recovery solutions.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/Techvedic/Technology/Tips-to-Use-While-Picking-Online-Data-Recovery-Services-bid-FTE076KD72078993.html

Usefulness of Web Scraping Services

For any business or organization, surveys and market research play important roles in the strategic decision-making process. Data extraction and web scraping techniques are important tools that find relevant data and information for your personal or business use. Many companies employ people to copy-paste data manually from the web pages. This process is very reliable but very costly as it results to time wastage and effort. This is so because the data collected is less compared to the resources spent and time taken to gather such data.

Nowadays, various data mining companies have developed effective web scraping techniques that can crawl over thousands of websites and their pages to harvest particular information. The information extracted is then stored into a CSV file, database, XML file, or any other source with the required format. After the data has been collected and stored, data mining process can be used to extract the hidden patterns and trends contained in the data. By understanding the correlations and patterns in the data; policies can be formulated and thereby aiding the decision-making process. The information can also be stored for future reference.

The following are some of the common examples of data extraction process:

• Scrap through a government portal in order to extract the names of the citizens who are reliable for a given survey.

• Scraping competitor websites for feature data and product pricing

• Using web scraping to download videos and images for stock photography site or for website design

Automated Data Collection

It is important to note that web scraping process allows a company to monitor the website data changes over a given time frame. It also collects the data on a routine basis regularly. Automated data collection techniques are quite important as they help companies to discover customer trends and market trends. By determining market trends, it is possible to understand the customer behavior and predict the likelihood of how the data will change.

The following are some of the examples of the automated data collection:

• Monitoring price information for the particular stocks on hourly basis

• Collecting mortgage rates from the various financial institutions on the daily basis

• Checking on weather reports on regular basis as required

By using web scraping services it is possible to extract any data that is related to your business. The data can then be downloaded into a spreadsheet or a database for it to be analyzed and compared. Storing the data in a database or in a required format makes it easier for interpretation and understanding of the correlations and for identification of the hidden patterns.

Through web scraping it is possible to get quicker and accurate results and thus saving many resources in terms of money and time. With data extraction services, it is possible to fetch information about pricing, mailing, database, profile data, and competitors data on a consistent basis. With the emergence of professional data mining companies outsourcing your services will greatly reduce your costs and at the same time you are assured of high quality services.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Usefulness-of-Web-Scraping-Services&id=7181014

Kimono Is A Smarter Web Scraper That Lets You “API-ify” The Web, No Code Required

A new Y Combinator-backed startup called Kimono wants to make it easier to access data from the unstructured web with a point-and-click tool that can extract information from webpages that don’t have an API available. And for non-developers, Kimono plans to eventually allow anyone track data without needing to understand APIs at all.

This sort of smarter “web scraper” idea has been tried before, and has always struggled to find more than a niche audience. Previous attempts with similar services like Dapper or Needlebase, for example, folded. Yahoo Pipes still chugs along, but it’s fair to say that the service has long since been a priority for its parent company.

But Kimono’s founders believe that the issue at hand is largely timing.

“Companies more and more are realizing there’s a lot of value in opening up some of their data sets via APIs to allow developers to build these ecosystems of interesting apps and visualizations that people will share and drive up awareness of the company,” says Kimono co-founder Pratap Ranade. (He also delves into this subject deeper in a Forbes piece here). But often, companies don’t know how to begin in terms of what data to open up, or how. Kimono could inform them.

Plus, adds Ranade, Kimono is materially different from earlier efforts like Dapper or Needlebase, because it’s outputting to APIs and is starting off by focusing on the developer user base, with an expansion to non-technical users planned for the future. (Meanwhile, older competitors were often the other way around).

The company itself is only a month old, and was built by former Columbia grad school companions Ranade and Ryan Rowe. Both left grad school to work elsewhere, with Rowe off to Frog Design and Ranade at McKinsey. But over the nearly half-dozen or so years they continued their careers paths separately, the two stayed in touch and worked on various small projects together.

One of those was Airpapa.com, a website that told you which movies were showing on your flights. This ended up giving them the idea for Kimono, as it turned out. To get the data they needed for the site, they had to scrape data from several publicly available websites.

“The whole process of cleaning that [data] up, extracting it on a schedule…it was kind of a painful process,” explains Rowe. “We spent most of our time doing that, and very little time building the website itself,” he says. At the same time, while Rowe was at Frog, he realized that the company had a lot of non-technical designers who needed access to data to make interesting design decisions, but who weren’t equipped to go out and get the data for themselves.

With Kimono, the end goal is to simplify data extraction so that anyone can manage it. After signing up, you install a bookmarklet in your browser, which, when clicked, puts the website into a special state that allows you to point to the items you want to track. For example, if you were trying to track movie times, you might click on the movie titles and showtimes. Then Kimono’s learning algorithm will build a data model involving the items you’ve selected.

That data can be tracked in real time and extracted in a variety of ways, including to Excel as a .CSV file, to RSS in the form of email alerts, or for developers as a RESTful API that returns JSON. Kimono also offers “Kimonoblocks,” which lets you drop the data as an embed on a webpage, and it offers a simple mobile app builder, which lets you turn the data into a mobile web application.

For developer users, the company is currently working on an API editor, which would allow you to combine multiple APIs into one.

So far, the team says, they’ve been “very pleasantly surprised” by the number of sign-ups, which have reached ten thousand*. And even though only a month old, they’ve seen active users in the thousands.

Initially, they’ve found traction with hardware hackers who have done fun things like making an airhorn blow every time someone funds their Kickstarter campaign, for instance, as well as with those who have used Kimono for visualization purposes, or monitoring the exchange rates of various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and dogecoin. Others still are monitoring data that’s later spit back out as a Twitter bot.

Kimono APIs are now making over 100,000 calls every week, and usage is growing by over 50 percent per week. The company also put out an unofficial “Sochi Olympics API” to showcase what the platform can do.

The current business model is freemium based, with pricing that kicks in for higher-frequency usage at scale.

The Mountain View-based company is a team of just the two founders for now, and has initial investment from YC, YC VC and SV Angel.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/kimono-is-a-smarter-web-scraper-that-lets-you-api-ify-the-web-no-code-required/