The fancy little Internet of the past has become the biggest force in business today, powerful enough to topple regimes. What was a luxury has become a necessity. 

Image Source : businessinsider.in

The total Internet user base in India is estimated to cross 700 million by 2020; that’s almost two in every three Indians with access. And by 2030, India will have more than a billion Internet users! Google India’s Managing Director shared at their annual event in 2018 that every month about 10 million new Internet users get on the bandwagon.India’s Internet user base is skyrocketing and will soon beat China’s. Further, more than 80 per cent users access the web on their mobile devices. No fancy computers to purchase, no commands to learn, and none of that keyboard and mouse business. Mobile phones with their touch interface have changed the way we imagine the Internet. An entire generation of users completely skipped the desktop Internet era and is experiencing the Internet for the first time on their mobile devices.

Now, the streaming of content happens on tiny interactive devices and we are able to participate, like, comment, share and engage with it. Things are far more democratic, but also far scarier for big brands who are used to one-way communication.

By 2030, India will have more than a billion Internet users.’

The mobile-first generation

Everyone in India starting from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high does have internet. This is the new digital world.A report from Mary Meeker (a venture capitalist; her much awaited annual Internet Trends report gives an overview of the entire industry) in 2017 stated that Indians spend 28 hours on their mobile phones, four hours on TV and two hours on print every week.^* Internet speeds have reached 4G from 2G, and it has almost become a basic right to have connectivity today; so much so that in Delhi, ‘free Wi-Fi’ was a political promise made to win elections! If you check the top five most downloaded apps in the country, all five are social networking apps. Imagine millions of people, who have super cheap smartphones, which can run at least four apps, have social networking apps as their most frequented two apps. 

India has already beaten the US to become the number one country in terms of number of Facebook users. Our WhatsApp user base is already in the multi-millions, LinkedIn has become the Facebook of the business world and just check Twitter any moment to see how it is shaping public opinion. Powering this phenomenal growth is the rapid adoption of smartphones, with India having the second largest number of smartphone users in the world (and it’s only a matter of time before we become the largest).

Social media consumption on mobile devices is increasing rapidly across the country. Everyone is hooked to their phones, day and night, sharing videos, memes, articles, photos and breaking news. The mobile revolution is completely changing the way we reach out to our users.

The power of content

At the centre of this massive storm is the rapid consumption of content. From updates on Facebook to funny jokes and memes on WhatsApp, everywhere you look people are consuming and sharing content at a rapid pace. Social media provides an open and democratic platform, but content is at the centre of it all. Content is what you’re consuming when checking reviews of a product on Amazon, it is the content of a video that compels you to share it with your friends, it is content in an open letter that incites you to take action, it is content again that you forward to your school alumni groups on WhatsApp, and content that attracts users to share and like your article on LinkedIn. Social media has made content so powerful, that you hold the power to influence millions in the palms of your hands. With every smartphone capable of creating audio–visual content and distributing it far and wide through an app, all you need today is a story, and you have your own way of going ‘viral’.

Content marketing on steroids

With the whole concept of media being disrupted in the last decade, and social networking apps taking up most of the time in a user’s life, content marketing has become the new playing field for marketers. Wherever user attention goes, the marketing budget follows. And viral marketing is like content marketing on steroids. It’s about catapulting your content to reach and engage with millions. Posting something on social media is one thing, but when your users start spreading your content like wildfire, when shares and comments on your content start snowballing, that’s viral marketing. Any piece of content which attracts tons of engagement from social media users, gets its wings to go viral. It could be funny pictures, memes, articles or videos.

‘Achhe din’ for Internet marketing

‘Viral marketing is like content marketing on steroids, and videos are dominating newsfeeds everywhere.

No wonder India is attracting tons of start-up capital and is fast becoming the most exciting place to be in. If you’re a student worried about your career or a start-up entrepreneur looking for a growth hack, or if you work or lead marketing for any big or small brand, it is time you accept the reality that the game will be won on mobile phones and social media, and not on TV or print. With all this excitement about ‘achhe din’ for India, there’s a big challenge that comes with it. Something we at IDM are very mindful of every day, something we all need to be aware of, when creating content.

Let us plunge into these achche din now.

Trust is extremely important for customers to come to us. This is of course always necessary but more so in the digital age, as the customer cannot see us so do feel a little confused at times.

Image Source  fm-magazine.com

In order to help you in this aspect of your store, we need to follow 4 tips to have a safe WooCommerce store not only for your customers, but also to help you sleep better at night.

So if you really care about your customers and your business, it is already taking time to apply the following tips:

Tips for Woocommerce

Install a security plugin

There are several very powerful security plugins for WordPress that obviously also work with WooCommerce. They can be downloaded for free from the official WordPress plugin repository. Although they are free, their configuration panel is quite complete and both are really effective. Of course, you should only use one of them.

Use SSL certificate to encrypt the information

The initials of SSL come from Secure Socket Layer and it is a cryptographic protocol used for secure connections between client and server. Without going into technical details, when you install an SSL certificate on the server where you have your WooCommerce store, you guarantee that all the information or data that you exchange with the client has been encrypted to ensure that no one can steal it.

Download from the official repository or known marketplace

Download and install plugins or templates for WooCommerce only from the official WordPress repository website or if they are paid, always buy them in well-known marketplaces.

Mobile, another market place

The mobile is yet another market all marketers should master. We need to know how it translates into action in terms of presence and breadth of mobile strategy, mobile ad spend growth and ROI tracked through mobile channels by companies and brands. 

As of now, just 25% of brands claim to have a mobile strategy and some out of this sparse statistic incorrectly believe  that simply having an app or a mobile-friendly website suffices for a strategy. 45% of companies choose to exhibit their content on desktop sites only and not on the mobile.

Things are changing now. For instance almost everyone has a mobile now and even does shopping from there.

Corona and digital marketing

With Corona, the situation has changed even more. With Covid 19 truly capturing everyone’s attention across the globe, one can also see many people trying their best to control in the best possible manner. The aim of course is to end the suffering. Business is also doing its best to make it easier for people to work, whether remotely or with all measures in place for keeping welfare of the employees as the most important factor. The challenge of course is both economic and biological. The challenge therefore does need to keep both factors in mind.

Supply chain

All supply chains are becoming digital. Deliveries need to move quickly. Digital is becoming the new norm and companies are indeed adopting this approach. In fact, many companies are becoming even more efficient than earlier. This is surely because of the positive approach they have embraced. Global supply chains too are becoming a common norm in many places, now more than ever before. The market is indeed becoming more and more digital in all areas so the physical location doesn’t really matter at all.

Paraidigm shifts

Whatever the circumstances a company may face, paradigms are changing and therefore one needs to adapt and move ahead with this new perspective.

Using Data

Here, data is a great tool.

What could we do with this data

1. Site Tracking

A customer journey is the path that a customer takes on our website to become a paying customer or lead.

By tracking all the events that our current users are going through to reach conversion (e.g. clicking on to the page, reading info, filling form, etc.), we can understand how customers engage with our site.

2. Chat-based Data Collection

Another way to understand the customer journey is by using chat to source common user questions. Customers do feel comfortable sharing information and asking questions to a chat agent, whether human or artificial.

Leveraging this phenomenon on our website, we can add a chat widget to our website where customers can ask their questions about your offerings and then use that chat data to inform our website managers.

3. A/B testing

A/B testing is often recognised as the most important data-driven tool in any marketer’s arsenal.  

In this method is  we show half of our site visitors one version of our website, and the other half another version of our website (usually with a single change made to it) and see which performs better to decide on the final copy.  This is often used by many as the digital world does make it easy to implement. 

It is a slow and iterative process but well done well, the results are  truly rewarding.

4. User Segmentation

By dividing our customers based on attributes like location (users that visit your site from x location), analytics data (device type, number of pages per session, number of visits, etc) or CRM data (purchase history, company, vertical, etc.), we can create marketing strategies that are hyper-personalized to the preferences of our customers.

Conclusion

Marketing is a huge challenge for all in most businesses which is why many people do compromise on it. This is where digital marketing can step in and make a huge difference. We teach everyone how to do this using the following steps which is why we are proud to be recognized as thought leaders.

                                                                                                                                  

Not only does it make it possible to do mass marketing, it allows people to do personalised marketing also. One can address people by their names and know what they like as well through their choices. This is what is making it the marketing choice of the new generation.

2. Let us find our place in social media

As a new business owner, one’s aim should be to find one’s own  place on social media. This means that in the beginning you should focus only on, at the most, a few social media platforms that one is already feeling comfortable with, one should note how many interactions one is getting. For example, if Instagram isn’t giving us any engagement, then move on and focus on the platform that does!

3. Influencer Marketing  

4. Don’t underestimate having an email list 

5. The 80-20 Rule for content

The 80-20 rule means that 80% of your success will come from 20% of our efforts. This rule applies to just about everything, including one’s content. The content can be created in a variety of different mediums.

6. Know how to build SEO

As we teach all of this, we are happy to have been recognised as as a Global Thought-Leader and influencer in Edtech by Thinkers 360, a portal that helps solve some of the current issues in the thought leadership “industry”.

Today, the thought leadership ecosystem is highly-fragmented and often closed to most outsiders. Once a specialized art, practiced by a few, thought leadership is now a widespread discipline practiced by many – beyond the current 1% that the “industry” currently serves.

Many upcoming thought leaders and experts aren’t yet social media stars, celebrity authors, influencers or speakers, but are leading authorities in their fields. Both established and emerging thought leaders need new ways to measure their expertise – looking beyond influence – and a platform to advance their audience and impact.

Microsoft Products and Services

 Microsoft is a household name. People with technical as well as non-technical backgrounds are familiar with Microsoft. Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft on the 4th of April 1975. Microsoft was a short form for "Micro-computer Software". 

What makes Microsoft stand out from others is its ability to recover quickly and learn from its mistakes. Some examples of their worst failures are the windows phone operating system, Lumia Smartphone line-up, and the most hated Windows 8/8.1 OS. But with all this failure, they learned quickly and bounced back strong. From windows 8/8.1 they created the Windows 10 Operating System that might still not be as stable as Windows 7, but there are tons of new features, UI revamps, and with the continuous updates of Windows 10, it will soon become the best Windows version ever. The failure in the Lumia line-up resulted in the premium and sought after surface line of products like the Surface Pro Tablet, Surface Book, Surface Laptops, and the upcoming Surface Duo.

In the world of Desktop OS, Microsoft still has almost 80% market share combining all versions of the Windows Operating System. Windows 7 and Windows 10 are the most famous versions of Windows OS, while we can argue the third spot for Windows XP. The reason behind the growth of Microsoft in recent years is its diversified business model. The Windows OS is not an open-source OS like the Linux operating system, so people have to buy licenses for use, which is a small source of earning for the company. Office products like office 365 subscription, gaming solutions like Xbox one console and Xbox Live Subscription, intelligent cloud solutions by Azure, search advertising on Bing Search engine, Surface Products, Holo lens, and social media premium subscription on LinkedIn and Github generate a large chunk of the company's net worth.

Despite being one of the first tech companies to have a major impact in the computing world in the late 80s and 90s, Microsoft has always managed to be amongst the top.

What do we learn from Microsoft

The primary lesson we get from Microsoft is to keep innovating to remain on top. Leaders never rest, they keep moving.

Video marketing tools are now an important part of marketing because of the power of videos for content marketing.

Videos can help you reach a larger audience, drive more traffic and increase engagement levels are brilliant at convert people into customers.

• Social video draws 1,200% more people than image and text content 
• Even in facebook, videos have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts
• It is said, consumer video traffic will account for 82% of all Internet traffic
• Fifty five percent people watch video online every day
• Many mobile video viewers, in fact more than ninety percent of them share videos with others.

There are many video making tools we could explore. With this, we shall indeed more forward soon in the new digital world for without this we would be left behind.

Tools galore

There are many more of course. The first step however is working towards changing our mindset to move digitally so that we could become more efficient. As it is often said, the first step is always the most significant and hence most important.

With 1.18 billion mobile phone subscriptions, 429.2 million internet subscriptions, 250 million social media users, India’s digital integration is one of the highest in the world.  The digitisation drive has fuelled the integration of businesses, industries and communities to create a digital ecosystem. It does look promising for the growth of this new sector  and suitable gifts in the near future.

All over the globe, the digital world is here whether we realise it or not. We definitely need to step in and also choose gifts that are appropriate for the new digital age.

New types of businesses

The new wave

 Conclusion

It would help if all of us logon to the online world and then move forward to become global success stories. This is surely possible with the internet being accessible to all of us. This would of course be beneficial for our personal growth as well as our careers. For, we are as good as dead if we cease to think and by extension, learn. The new world encourages and makes it possible for us to be eternal learners and move forward. We all, whether students or professionals can begin any time to remain relevant and add more value to our own selves and that of our organisation.