Home » Posts tagged 'marketing'

Tag: marketing

6 Ways to Get People to Buy Your Product

25th June 2020 Tips

Most sales reps constantly contemplate: how can you get people to buy your product? What can you do to quickly close a deal that you have been working on for weeks? How do you convince prospects who are on the fence to make a purchase? What efforts can you make to ensure sales go smoothly?

How to Get People to Buy Your Product

Even though it’s hard to close certain deals, part of being a successful sales rep means not giving up. So, what can you do to get people to buy your product? Here is a look at the most common hurdles to closing sales and how you can communicate clearly to ensure your products get noticed and ultimately, purchased.

1. Avoid Using Heavy Jargon

Overly technical language can easily put a customer off. Instead of using jargon or commonly used industry cliches, make it easy for your clients to understand what your product consists of, what the benefits are, and how they can apply it to their needs.

2. Focus on the Benefits of Your Product or Service

Most agents or reps tend to list down all the features that come along with a product or service. However, while clients are interested in what a product does, they also want to know what it means for them specifically. Understand their needs and business so you can demo your product as a solution that helps them.

3. Keep Them Engaged with Email Marketing

Use email marketing to educate and inform customers, not just to remind them of your business. Why are prospects hesitating from making purchases? Can you offer more information about the product or service your company provides? Use email to continue the conversation in a productive, informative way.

4. Emphasize How Your Brand is Unique and Different

Get a prospect to pay attention to your specific product and brand by demonstrating how it is unique and different from others offering similar or the same product. Generic benefits and features may convince a client to purchase, but it does not guarantee that they will buy it from you. So show them how your brand is separate from the others, offers better features or functions, and why it’s important in the industry.

For example, our sales reps spend a majority of their time explaining how our international toll-free numbers are quite different from services offered by other providers. A focus on differentiation will surely help convince more people to buy your products.

5. Use Testimonials and Case Studies to Demonstrate Success

Include reviews, testimonials, and case studies on your website and social media platforms. You should constantly be asking your best customers for testimonials. Highlight how customers have already used the product so new customers can visualize it and see how it works in action. Include statistics and hard data to support your claims.

6. Create a Sense of Urgency for Difficult Customers

Sales reps have to deal with customers who do not get off the fence. Even though they are solid and promising leads, they need ongoing convincing. So how can you increase the urgency without using high-pressure tactics? Short-term offers or deals with an expiration date can help close these deals while triggering them with immediacy.

Close the Deal!

Now that you know a variety of inside sales tactics to get people to buy your product, start implementing these methods into your strategy to improve your sales record. Be patient and find maneuvers that will help you enhance your efforts; using the right tools and strategy, you will be converting sales successfully.

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing

5th July 2019 Learn, Tips

The truth is that creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing depend on appealing directly to customers, especially those who are located abroad. There’s nothing more off-putting than being unreachable by listing an out-of-country phone number, where callers will expect long distance fees, service blockages, and the hassle of dialing outside of the country just to reach your business.

There are a number of creative uses for virtual numbers in marketing, including:

  • Vanity Phone Numbers
  • International Appeal
  • Business Cards
  • Social Media

Virtual Numbers in Marketing: Vanity Phone Numbers

Vanity phone numbers are virtual phone numbers that contain a visually appealing set of digits that can be spun into your business’ advertising campaigns. By aligning your brand with a particular word or memorable sequence of digits, customers are more likely to remember what products and services you offer, as well as reinforce your brand’s message each time they are exposed to the vanity phone number.

One place that you’re likely to encounter vanity phone numbers is billboards. Large volumes of drivers can see your creative virtual phone numbers in marketing that other businesses might not be bold enough to attempt. By coupling billboard advertising with other forms of marketing, your brand will appear to be everywhere – which is the goal of every advertising campaign.

Creative Virtual Numbers for Marketing: International Appeal

If you had the choice of comparing two businesses side-by-side with all attributes being similar except for the fact that one had numerous phone numbers geared towards processing international customers, which business would you say has more of an international appeal?

virtual phonhe numbers in marketing
Source: Stockphoto.com O#100009599572 ID#100200144052

Virtual Numbers from Global Call Forwarding

Luckily, Global Call Forwarding offers virtual phone numbers in more than 140+ countries worldwide, with countless cities and regions at your disposal. These virtual phone numbers circumvent typical barriers to open communication globally, which means that your advertising efforts aren’t stymied by challenges of traditional telecommunications.

Furthermore, Global Call Forwarding enables you to choose between a variety of phone number types, including toll-free numbers that work internationally. These include ITFS numbers and UIFNs, both of which project a professional image. Normally, when a domestic toll free number is offered, international callers are out of luck and must pay fees just for the privilege of calling your business. However, with Global Call Forwarding’s vast array of ITFS numbers and UIFNs, your business can fully optimize its marketing efforts worldwide.

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing: Business Cards

When you’re networking with potential clients in-person, every detail must be on-point and allude to the fact that working with your organization is the right choice for mutual success. That’s why one of the most important creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing is including them on your business cards. From staff members to your sales team, virtual phone numbers listed on business cards show that your organization is able to tailor its in-person marketing efforts for clients of any country and calling preference.

Because of the cost-effectiveness of virtual phone numbers, it is possible to subscribe to multiple phone numbers that appeal directly to your wide customer base and post them on your business cards as needed.

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing: Social Media

Global Call Forwarding understands how pivotal a social media presence is in your marketing efforts. In addition to obviously listing your phone numbers, Global Call Forwarding offers a popular add-on that bridges the gap between customers scrolling through your posts on their smartphones and actually contacting your business.

The solution? A popular add-on called “CallMe Click.” CallMe Click enables users a one-click option to initialize a phone call on their device, whether that’s a smartphone or any other Internet-enabled audio-equipped device. By placing this add-on via links on your websites and social media presence, your potential customers can immediately seize the opportunity of your efforts and speak to your company instantly. This immediacy can help take advantage of the reach of your social media content and build a customer base quickly.

As you can see, these creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing can help aid your business when it wants to reach a wider audience. Of course, with some imaginative thinking in your advertising efforts, you can adapt the power of virtual phone numbers in a myriad of other ways that can expand the appeal of your business.

4 Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business in the 2nd Half of 2017

26th July 2017 Learn, Tips

We hope that 2017 has been good to your business so far. But no matter what happened, there is still time to grow in the 2nd half of the year.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasted that global growth would recover from the slowdown in 2016. Halfway through the year, 2017’s outlook remains optimistic, particularly for emerging economies in Asia and the Pacific.

There are plenty of opportunities to grow your business, but you should be using the right marketing strategies. Here are our top 4 marketing strategies to grow your business in the 2nd half of 2017:

1. Mobile Advertising – Marketing Strategies

According to the independent web analytics company StatCounter, mobile exceeded desktop by internet usage, for the first time ever in October 2016. If you make no other changes your business in 2017, you should ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.

Websites benefit from mobile-responsiveness for two key reasons. First, conversions typically increase when mobile users can navigate more easily. Second, Google favors responsive websites in its mobile search results. Check out Google’s Mobile Playbook!

Not sure if your website is mobile-friendly? Test this by grabbing the right side of your browser window and dragging it to the left. Responsive websites will properly deliver your content, while content on an unresponsive website will look cut off or jumbled.

You can also test the mobile responsiveness of your website and view statistics for mobile traffic with Google Analytics. This can be a good way to gauge the responsiveness of your website and identify any necessary changes.

However, success in today’s mobile-centric marketplace requires more than just having a responsive website. New technologies and marketing platforms come out every day and there is great untapped potential as businesses start to adapt. We identified two trending ideas in 2017:

Mobile app: creating an app is more affordable than ever and the potential uses are unlimited. Sell goods and services or improve your overall mobile experience with an app.

Mobile payments: enable customers to pay you with a simple tap on their smartphone. Mobile payment services like Google Wallet, PayPal and Apple Pay are becoming more popular this year.

2. International Marketing Strategies

The global gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow 3.5 percent in 2017. The Asia-Pacific region in particular, is estimated to grow at 5.5 percent. Meanwhile, there are booming economies and lots of money to be made all over the world.

New technologies and marketing tools enable businesses to transact with foreign market like never before. International marketing can offer a huge ROI – when it’s done correctly.

Brand awareness is crucial. However, building brand awareness doesn’t necessarily require a major investment – if you have a website. Considering its massive worldwide reach, advertising on search engines and social media is relatively inexpensive. You might also want to try international SEO.

Accessibility is also important when doing business internationally. We wrote about the top reasons to get a virtual phone number for your business, and accessibility is the first reason. Customers feel more comfortable transacting with a business when the business offers a local phone number or support hotline.

Companies use international call forwarding to offer a contact point to customers and prospects in foreign markets. A local or toll free virtual number can serve as a sales or booking hotline or it can serve to let customers know that your business is reachable over the phone. Confused about international call forwarding? Allow us to explain.

Opportunities exist all over the world and there are new marketing strategies to grow your business internationally.

3. Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing isn’t a new strategy by any means, but it can still bring in new business.
The key to a successful email marketing campaign is providing relevant, valuable and helpful information (think DIY guides, industry news, and blog content). Email marketing should not be used to blast out unwanted sales pitches.

With the help of eMailmonday.com, we identified four top email marketing trends for the 2nd half of 2017:

  • Responsive emails
    It depends on your industry and target market, but anywhere from 20-75% of emails get opened on a mobile device. By sending mobile friendly emails, you can reduce barriers to engagement.
    Adapt to the mobile trend by attaching by attaching interactive photo sliders and image galleries to your emails. It’s also useful to include promotional offers and implement buy-it-now functionality in your outbound emails.
  • Deliver an omnichannel experience
    An omnichannel experience builds brand familiarity and helps customers connect with your business. It involves an integrated multi-channel approach that allows customers to easily transition from emails to shopping online, on a desktop or mobile device.Walgreens and Starbucks deliver a consistent experience through email, websites and mobile apps.
  • HTML5 video attachments
    HTML5 video attachments help companies build connections with their audiences through providing high-value content.
  • Automation
    14.2% of people surveyed by a 2017 Litmus study believe that 2017 will be the year of automated emails. There are some tools like MailChimp and Active Campaign to help with email automation.
    Welcome emails and abandoned carts emails can generate a big chunk of revenue for a lot of companies.

4. Digital Advertising

Advertising across several digital channels is one of the top marketing strategies in 2017. This is commonly referred to as cross-channel advertising, and it can be done through direct deals with publishers (think Google AdWords, Facebook for Business) and with cross-channel advertising software.

Top digital advertising mediums include paid search, social media and mobile ads. Paid search puts your product in front of a huge audience with high conversion rates, since visitors are already searching for similar products. Social media advertising is a fast-growing segment that can significantly expand your reach and boost brand awareness. We predict Facebook’s continued ascent as a major marketing outlet in 2017. Lastly, mobile ads like banner ads, mobile video ads and in-app ads are becoming more targeted.

No matter what your digital advertising strategy, here are some things to keep in mind:

    • Cohesive data: it is important to document all available data points to form a cohesive, integrated consumer database across multiple channels
    • Consistent message: it is important to deliver a consistent message to build familiarity with prospective customers.

What marketing strategies do you use to grow your business?

Things to Add to Your Marketing Strategy for the Hotel and Hospitality Industry

15th February 2017 Learn, Tips

Hotel and Hospitality Overview

There has been record-breaking growth in the travel and hospitality industry in recent years. In 2015, business travel grossed $1.2 trillion, five percent more than in 2014. In the US, the growth rate of leisure bookings was significantly better than that of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This was due to renewed consumer confidence and a shift in household spending from goods to services. Deloitte projects travel and hotel industry growth to continue through 2017.

Factors that are helping to reshape the travel landscape include global economic shifts, innovation, geopolitical turmoil, pandemics, and rising consumer demands. In 2016, major hotel groups, including Marriott, Hilton and InterContinental, reported steady earnings. However, online purveyors, such as Airbnb, will present significant challenges to sectors of the industry sustaining growth in 2017.

Cyber attacks and data breaches are expected to increase. Food safety incidents in hotel restaurants, will also be more common due to the demand for locally sourced, organic foods. Hotel personnel should expect consumers to have increased expectations in the coming year. Non-travel brands like Amazon, Starbucks and Seamless feature innovation and speedy services to consumers, and they will be expecting the same from their travel hosts.

Hotels need to harness the power of mobile for their guests to remove pain points and improve their travel experience. Streamlining business processes will help in that regard and result in reduced operating costs. In addition, hotels should shift to enabling technologies to benefit from the Internet of Things (IoT), which is the internetworking of connected and mobile devices, smart devices, sensors, electronics, computers, machines, etc.

Stay Connected to Your Markets

Stay connected to your markets using virtual phone numbers. Virtual phone numbers are local phone numbers and toll free numbers. Your customers call these numbers, and international call forwarding services connect those calls to your virtual call center or virtual phone number.

Global Call Forwarding provides its core service to various luxury hotel brands. One particular subscriber has two toll free numbers in North America and six local phone numbers servicing the following areas around the world.

  • Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America
  • Europe, Middle East and Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • China
  • India
  • Japan

When club members call local phone numbers or toll free numbers, they feel they are dealing locally. However, they may be connecting to virtual call centers or virtual phone systems halfway around the globe, through the “magic” of international call forwarding.

Global Hotel Rankings by Rooms

In 2016, Marriott acquired Starwood Hotels giving Marriott the largest number of rooms in the world. The following table shows the top 10 hotel groups worldwide at the end of 2016 and their respective number of rooms.

Hotel Group Number of Rooms
Marriott + Starwood 1,108,852
Hilton Worldwide 751,350
IHG 744,368
Wyndham Hotel Group 678,042
Jin Jiang + Plateno + Vienna Hotel Group 572,340
Accor Hotels + & FRHI 554,517
Choice 507,483
Home Inns 321,802
Best Western 311,870
Huazhu 278,843

Tourism Outlook for Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and the United States

Here are the latest projections for these hot tourism areas.

Philippines

Business Mirror projects an upward trend of the hospitality industry in the Philippines until 2018. A vibrant influx of foreign investment is partially fueling this trend. According to the Department of Tourism, foreign tourist arrivals have been rising since 2015. Much of the increase is due to Korean and American travelers.

Business and domestic market travel are also increasing. The business portion is due to meetings, conventions and exhibitions. The gaming industry is also generating growth. For example, Entertainment City in Parañaque City by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation is helping to make the Philippines a top tourist destination in the world.

Foreign hotel brands are moving into the country to capitalize on this business increase. The aggregate supply of rooms may reach 18,000 in 2017 and 20,000 by 2018.

Indonesia

Indonesia has 12 major hotel markets: Bali, Bandung, Bintan, Bogor, Jakarta, Lombok, Makassar, Medan, Palembang, Semarang, Surabaya, and Yogyakarta. Market performance varies from market to market. However, from 2015 to 2016, Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) had been declining because room supply was outpacing demand.

However, HVS Indonesia Hotel Watch 2016 predicts that demand will surpass incoming room supply in the leisure and upscale market segments. For Jakarta and Bali market segments, the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in RevPAR was 5.1% and 5.8%, respectively. Secondary markets (Bogor, Makassar and Surabaya) will suffer a RevPAR performance dip due to the addition of branded midscale and budget rooms. Bandung, Lombok and Palembang will become hot markets due to their short-term demand outlook. Considering all Indonesian markets, room supply in 2015 was 71,970 rooms. In 2018, there will be 93,930 available rooms. That is a 14.2% increase in CAGR.

Thailand

According to the US News and World Report, Thailand ranks high in the following categories: Business Opportunities, Heritage, Best Country for Investment, Adventure, and Rising Economy. Thailand is Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy because of tourist spending mainly from China. The six major airports in Thailand are handling a record number of travelers. Furthermore, for newcomers to Bangkok, Ritz Carlton Residence Bangkok, Waldorf Astoria, and Novotel Bangkok Sukhumvit 20 will be adding 5,500 additional rooms to the city.

United States

STR Hospitality Net sees slower growth for the US hotel industry through 2017. Projections suggest a drop in occupancy but increases in demand, supply, RevPAR, and Average Daily Rate (ADR) for rooms.

Have you had good experiences traveling to these countries? Any travel plans for 2017? We would love to hear your thoughts.