Indian Digital Commerce Market to Touch $128 Billion by 2017: Study

Country's digital commerce market is likely to touch $128 billion (roughly Rs.8,53,238 crores) in 2017 from the current level of $42 billion (roughly Rs.2,79,953 crores) on the back of higher mobile and Internet penetration and mobile-commerce sales, says a study.

"Increasing mobile and Internet penetration, m-commerce sales, advanced 

shipping and payment options, exciting discounts, and push into new international 

markets by e-businesses are the major drivers of this unprecedented growth," a

 joint study by Assocham-Deloitte said.

The Indian digital commerce market is expected to reach $128 billion in 2017 from

the current level of $42 billion, it added.

However, Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said the supply chain and 

logistics in e-commerce business are highly complex to manage in a vast country 

like India where infrastructure is not well-developed to reach every remote and 

rural area.

It also said, the government's ambitious 'Digital India' project that aims to offer a
one-stop shop for government services will further bolster the sector by introducing
internet and broadband to remote corners of the country and increase trade.

This initiative through a targeted investment of nearly $17 billion (roughly Rs.

1,13,315 crores) will transform India into a connected economy, attract investment

in electronics manufacturing and create millions of jobs, said Rawat.

The study further pointed out that dedicated e-commerce laws are required to

address issues in the sector's legal and regulatory framework and banks must

play a leading role as 'facilitators' by offering cost effective cash management

solutions, secure payment gateways and other relevant banking services.

"The taxation policies for the e-businesses are not well-defined depending on

different business models and transaction type. The complexity has further

amplified with transactions happening across borders for online selling of goods

and services," Rawat said.

The e-commerce companies are building communities on social media networks

to better understand customer needs and drive effective marketing strategies, the

study observed.

Credits : http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/indian-digital-commerce-market-to

-touch-128-billion-by-2017-study-774771

Understanding content marketing

Content marketing is the art of corresponding with your clients and prospects without offering. It is non-intrusion advertising. Rather than pitching your products or services, you are conveying data that makes your purchaser more savvy. The quintessence of this content strategy is the conviction that if we as organizations, convey reliable, continuous important data to purchasers, they eventually compensate us with business and loyalty.

The content marketing has to be planned before planning any other strategy.

SEO:

The website is the face of the business. But just having website will not suffice the need of digital marketing. It has to be optimized for the search engines. The content presented on the website must be relevant, must have keywords and should be fresh. The page for the blogs will help the business to update the fresh content on the website and make it active on the search engines. It also helps to engage the customers. The content on the website may or may not be related to direct selling. It must be informational and relevant to the product. The important thing for the content marketing is that it must be original else the search engines may mark the website as spam and the real purpose of the website will defeat.

Social media: 

 The strategy on the social media follows the content marketing strategy for the same. The business has to carefully plan what needs to be posted on social media and when. How the content will look on the media and if the business ready to respond to the suggestions or the queries that may arise from those posts. The content must be posted on the relevant social media sites to fetch the maximum results.

          

Email:

The purpose of the email is not only to fill the inbox of the user. The content of the email must be well planned and presented that it can grab the attention of the user. The email must have the back link so that the user can go back to the site for gathering more information. The information available on the email can be tailor made according to the taste of the user to make it more appealing.

PPC:

 The effective advertisement can attract the organic buyers and will serve the very purpose of the campaign. The content presented on the advertisement must be short, crisp and clear to the user and it must have relevant keywords so that it is available on the page of the genuine searcher.

Video:

The content marketing applies to the video presentation of the advertisement. The content on the video has to be very clear along with the presentation so that the right message is passed to the viewers. The video available on the video sites like YouTube is searchable through keywords. The content on the video must have relevant keywords which can make it easily searchable.

These are just few examples of the use of content marketing. It is clear and evident from the importance of the content marketing is that the content is everything in the digital world and the whole business revolves around the quality of the content.

Popular social media sites for business

Social media plays a crucial role in expanding the business in the internet world. There are lot many social media sites which help the business to promote the business but not all of them are efficient neither choosing all of them in one go is a great idea to look for. Below are some major social media sites which have good reach and have proved useful for businesses.

 Facebook: 

This is the most famous and easily accessible social media site for both personal and professional use. It has the highest number of users and is not only famous in youngsters but the involvement of seniors is there too. The simple like or share of your web page on the Facebook can help you to mark your presence on the group of the person who has given that like to you. This can help your business to increase its reach with the people who may not known you.

Twitter:

For the two way communication and short and crisp messages, this is the most favored social site. Not only famous amongst youngsters, but also among bigger names as well. It is definitely a good to go choice for the small business as well as big brands.

YouTube:

Isn’t it a good idea to promote business through videos? YouTube is popular for small videos. Every minute a new video is uploaded on the site and is good to send short and clear messages through videos.

LinkedIn:

For the b2b industry, LinkedIn has proved to be the right option. With millions of users in hundreds of countries, it is expanding its span at a greater pace. LinkedIn is popular amongst its users for peer networking and industry specific information.

Pinterest: 

Pinterest is a visual board-styled social photograph imparting site that was launched with the mission to join everybody on the web through shared taste and the things they find fascinating.

Google+: 

This stage is awesome for associating with individuals in view of intrigues and points outside of companions. There is no compose API for Google Plus, for auto post with the help of programming. This implies every one of the communications on the site are genuine. Each and every open thing you do on Google+ is indexed by their internet searcher, boosting your SEO or rankings in Google for your site.

Instagram: 

Instagram is a visual medium and is by and large a more easygoing. Use it as a chance to offer life to your little business. Individuals won't tag you or draw in the event that it's a restricted road of item visuals and nothing more. Draw in with your group of onlookers, show you're keen on your potential clients.

Tumblr.This stage is diverse structure numerous others in that it basically has micro-blogs for its clients. People and organizations, thusly, can fill their sites with interactive media The quick paced nature of Tumblr makes it perfect for pics, GIF's, and different types of fun or viral substance

Forums: 

To socially interact with the people and present yourself as an expert in the field, the forums are the useful place. IT is a place to understand people’s queries, issues and probable interests of the people, you can connect with various forums.

Why Blogging

Regardless of the size of the business, blogging has become the integral part of internet marketing. You may not find them as direct tool for promoting business or an advertising media, but they lead to better results in promoting business.

Help drive traffic to the website:

Whenever you update your blog post on the website, it makes the search engines to get a clue that the website is active and will help getting an opportunity to show up in the search engines. This results in organic visits. They also keeps your social media active and can act as a fresh post on the same.

Educate the visitors:

The educational posts that may not be the direct selling posts,

but are informational post according to your product can help to educate the readers. The interested readers may visit your blogs and site for regular information and can result in sales.

                                                                                 

Build relationship with the readers:

The open option of the comments in the blogs helps interact with the readers. The real-time feedbacks and suggestions from the users can help the business to make the changes in the strategies accordingly. The users may also connect to get solutions to certain issues which by providing solutions, business can build rapport with the customers.

Improves SEO:

The regular update helps improve the SEO of the website as the key to face the competitors on search engine is regular updates on the websites. A well-managed blogs with relevant keywords can boost the ranking of the website.

Generate leads:

  

Once you have the traffic moving towards your website through blogs, the possibility of turning it into leads becomes stronger.            

Present yourself as an expert:

Once you write a blog providing an information to the users,

you present yourself as an expert in the topic. The good quality of the blogs helps the users to gain the information and consider your business as credible source.

Keeps the website fresh:

The regular update of the post on the website keeps the site fresh and visible to the search engines. The links of the posts on various social media can boost the value of the site on different platforms.

Gives long- term results:

The advertisement once shared is available for a limited time of the promotion, however, the blog shared stays on the website for a longer time. Whenever the user search for the information, the link to the relevant post is available as a result. This keeps the views and leads on the blogs increasing. Some helps generate leads even after longer time since they are posted.

Mobile ads are fast becoming central to marketing strategy

New Delhi: Google has a new trick. The undisputed leader in the mobile advertising space has used its latest version of the Android operating system, Marshmallow, to deliver customized advertisements on the locked screen of a smartphone, silently pushing the ad while the device is being charged.

If you are an online shopper, you are likely to see ads from start-ups like Limeroad and Myntra pop up on your mobile. Similarly, if you like to read online, you will perhaps find yourself a target for news and content aggregator apps such as The Times of India and Tazzify.

Marketers have been targeting audiences on mobile phones for almost a decade in India. But what has changed significantly is the way they are doing it.

As cheap smartphones proliferated, Internet penetration increased and customers shifted to mobiles as the preferred medium to consume information, firms are spending more marketing dollars to chase those potential customers on their small screens.

Along the way, mobile advertising, too, has evolved from SMS and call-based marketing in 2006-07 into a more sophisticated phenomenon that includes mobile web and in-app ads, mobile search and social networks.

From a $25 million market in 2011 in India, mobile advertising has expanded to $70-$80 million in 2015, growing at 60-70% annually, according to industry estimates. Firms are spending 2-4% of their overall media advertising budgets on mobile ads. The spend is expected to grow to 15-20% of the overall media exp-enditure by 2020, analysts say.

To be sure, the mobile advertising market is still minuscule. But industry experts say mobile is becoming central to the media strategy in India not only for the new breed of companies that are born digital, but also for large traditional conglomerates such as Unilever, Procter & Gamble Co., Nestle SA, among others.

According to a Groupe Speciale Mobile Association report, the number of Indians accessing the Internet over mobile devices expanded from less than 100 million in 2010 to nearly 300 million at the end of 2014. This is likely to double to 600 million by 2020, which presents a huge opportunity for marketers.

There are a number of factors which have come together that make the mobile such an effective medium, said Milind Pathak, chief operating officer, Madhouse South Asia, the unit that operates under the digital arm of WPP Plc’s GroupM.

“People are spending a disproportionate time on their mobiles as compared to other mediums like TV, laptop and tablet, which is the main reason for advertisers to put their money in there,” he said. GroupM, the largest media buyer in India, puts its mobile ad spending at 1.5-2% of its entire media advertising spending.

“Apart from scale and reach on mobile, you have a strong ability to personalize the content according to your target audience,” said Pathak.

For instance, online travel firm Yatra ran a campaign on Facebook earlier this year prompting users to install and use its mobile app. It placed mobile ads on the news feed of smartphone users, including those who showed an interest in travel. The campaign, which ran between January and May, saw app installs going up by five times and a 28x return on ad spending. Currently, Yatra gets half of its bookings through its mobile app.

Internet companies like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. caught on the trend in India early on—a move that helped them become two of the largest entities in the country’s mobile advertising space.

These companies conceived new strategies for India, which included customized and promoted search results, links, photos and videos, among other things. Facebook, for instance, is focusing on capitalizing on the shift to mobile, growing the number of Facebook marketers, and making its ads more relevant and effective, the company said in an email.

Indian companies like InMobi Technologies Pvt. Ltd and Vserv Digital Services Pvt. Ltd also got into the game early, which gave them a significant share of this market.

InMobi focuses on mobile displays, a category that makes up about 50-70% of the mobile advertising market. In 2013, InMobi bought Overlay Media, a company that delivers personalized content to mobile users.

Other companies chasing those ad revenues in India include Yahoo Inc. and Cheetah Mobiles Inc., the Chinese mobile app firm that made its debut in India in September. The latter uses big data analytics to understand the behaviour patterns of potential customers and target them with appropriate products. In August 2014, the former bought mobile analytics company Flurry, which tracks user behaviour on apps.

What Flurry does for Yahoo is similar to what Overlay Media does for InMobi. It creates a user profile based on the insights provided by data analytics, which, in turn, advertisers use for targeted marketing. A user persona could be that of a “tech enthusiast” or “new mother”, based on their online activities such as shopping or reading.

For Yahoo, one of the bigger focuses remains mobile, a key platform for advertising that has just taken off in the country, according to Nitin Mathur, Yahoo’s senior director of marketing for the Asia-Pacific.

Credits :

http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/NLyFWGO2OEZ0aIUjY5keqM/Mobile-ads-are-fast-becoming-central-to-marketing-strategy.html

Used-Car Marketing : Four Modern Strategies

The used-car marketing side of the auto business is changing fast, and you can’t rely on old strategies.

If you’re going to thrive, step it up and enter the new era of digital marketing. Here are four ways to do that.

First, your used-car operation needs a blog. The marketing value of a good blog is undeniable. It gets you traction on social media, builds trust, shows readers your knowledge and much more.

To get the most out of blogging, integrate content and social-media strategies.

Okay, so what does that mean in practice? It means you develop pages and profiles for your business on relevant social-media platforms, and then actively cross-promote them with your blog.

It’s a symbiotic relationship that helps develop a powerful digital presence. That ultimately provides more value to consumers.

Second, in the Internet age, creative marketing strategies can multiply relevant traffic to your site, and ultimately your lot, by a factor of two to three when done right.

But as more and more companies are jumping on the search engine optimization and content-marketing bandwagon, it’s important to stand out.

Set yourself apart, whether it’s with TV commercials, outdoor ads or viral online content. Get creative, innovative and even strange in promoting your business.

Third, give out some neat promotional stuff, considering customer needs. What could really benefit someone looking to buy a used car? Maybe something to make the process more practical, like an e-book about the used-car buying process or a payment calculator. Or maybe just something to make it more fun, like a list of used-car jokes.

Fourth, use available marketing tools. There are several out there that can make an enormous difference in your online efforts.

These tools can help you find critical keywords to target with your blog and on-page content. They allow you to see what’s working and what’s not. These kinds of analytic tools are critical for any digital-marketing strategy.

Whatever marketing strategies you pursue, take creative risks and provide real value. When done right, you can’t go wrong.

What kind of innovative used-car marketing strategies have you implemented recently? What’s been working well? Let us know in the comments.

Eric Weisbrot is marketing manager for JW Surety Bonds, one of the largest, family-owned surety bond agencies in the U.S.

Credits : 

http://wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/used-car-marketing-four-modern-strategies

4 big digital marketing trends SA will see in 2016

As we all wind down (read: freak out, break out in hives) and skid into the much needed holiday season, it’s important to take time to reflect and prepare for the year ahead. Here are four key trends that will shape the approach to digital marketing in 2016.

1. Eschewing product-focused content

The ‘infomercial’ approach to branded content on social media and digital channels isn’t working for anyone. You cannot claim to be successfully mastering storytelling if your story is: “Our product is the best thing on the planet and is 10% more amazing than everything else. Everyone who bought it lived happily ever after. The end.”

Think about the way Dove went from generic soap ads to transforming their brand narrative through the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign.

To broaden your perspective on branded content, think of your brand as a person – consider what their interests would be and draw your content pillars from that. Compelling storytelling involves removing the product blinkers and looking at the broader context within which your brand exists.

Consider your scope of content as a series of concentric circles. The bigger the circle, the broader the appeal and the greater the potential objective value of the content.

2. Paid content distribution

As content marketing becomes the new normal for brands, the reality is setting in that publishing content and having it discovered online are two very different things.

Even the best content needs to be backed by spend to spark engagement and broaden reach. As a result, in 2016 brands will begin to see content distribution strategy as being just as important as content production itself.

Facebook has emerged unequivocally as the most successful paid content distribution platform for brands and publishers alike. With the right targeting strategy and the right content crafting, Facebook is the most effective way to put your content in front of the right people at the right time. And it doesn’t hurt that a quarter of all global web traffic is currently channelled through the platform.

That said, brands will also be experimenting with new opportunities for native advertising as publishers explore new mutually beneficial models.

3. Engagement analytics and ROI
As brands invest in creating higher quality content, they’ll also demand a higher standard of analytics to prove ROI. Looking beyond vanity metrics such as impressions and reach, brands will want to measure value by deeper metrics such as time spent on site (and specific articles), comments and, all-important, sharability.

In line with this, it will also be increasingly important to analyse the quality of referral traffic driven by paid content distribution platforms. All of these insights must be fed back into the content production and optimisation process in a constant feedback loop to ensure optimal ROI.

4. Influencer relationships and content co-creation
As content takes centre stage, it will become increasingly important for brands wanting to win at content marketing to partner with the professionals. This means working with video production experts when video is required, photographers for amazing imagery and professional writers and journalists for compelling articles.

(Hopefully) gone will be the days of influencer endorsement simply for a once-off fee. Audiences see straight through the one-dimensional ‘endorsements’ and influencers and brands alike lose credibility because of them. Brands will need to be thinking in terms of long-term, mutually beneficial relationships based shared values and the desire to create quality content.

Credits :

http://memeburn.com/2015/12/4-big-digital-marketing-trends-sa-will-see-in-2016/

How Companies Find You Online is Changing in 2016! Find Out How to Assure Your Company is Easily Found.

Every day, Google gets a little bit better at determining a website’s value in response to a user’s query. As a result, rankings fluctuate, and search engine optimizers like us spend a lot of time speculating on what SEO will look like next week, next month, and next year.

2015 is quickly coming to a close, and we’ve begun making plans for SEO in 2016. We’re reading between the lines, looking at what Google changed this year, and taking in the bits of information Google has given us in order to make predictions that will guide our work in January and beyond.

#1: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When I was first learning SEO in 2006, I read the words “content is king” more times than I can count. Ten years later, content is still the single most important element of search engine optimization, and publishing unique, relevant, useful content that real people value (and share) is the best way to succeed at SEO. This was as true in 2006 as it will be in 2016. Content marketing strategies change over time, but creating quality articles, guides, videos, infographics, and blog posts is the first step toward the top of Google’s search results.

#2: Mobile is going to matter more.

In April, Google rolled out a mobile-friendly update to its algorithm. This change was highly anticipated by SEO professionals, and so many sites had time to prepare (and avoid the consequences). The sites that didn’t bother to update to a responsive design or design for mobile stopped appearing at the top of Google’s search results on smartphones. SEOs speculate that we haven’t seen the last mobile-friendliness update from Google. In fact, we expect that responsive design will become even more important in 2016 as more and more users research, shop, plan, and interact on their smartphones.

#3: Google is going to tell us less.

We’ve already seen huge cut-backs in terms of how much information Google is willing to give us about our visitors. Google Analytics reports most keywords as “not provided” these days, making it extremely difficult to see whether or not our SEO efforts are paying off. Now Google is adding “Dark Traffic” to its “Direct Traffic” numbers. This means that any time Google can’t readily identify a traffic source, it shows up as Direct Traffic. As more and more people interact with various apps, messaging programs, and other tools, we can expect these numbers to grow – and we can expect to be in the dark when it comes to knowing which efforts are really driving traffic. 2016 may be the time to invest in a paid analytics service like Moz.

#4: We’re going to be competing with Google itself for placement on the SERPs.

If you haven’t already noticed, Google has spent this past year making their search results (and likely, their pockets) much richer. Today’s searchers often don’t need to leave Google to find the answers they’re seeking. Things like game scores, factual information like definitions or math equations, and other tidbits pop up at the top of the SERPs, keeping users right where Google wants them. Maps listings, carousels with local business information and images, and other rich snippets are taking up more of Google’s real estate, making it even harder for site to get found organically. As Google continues to give itself a bigger share of its own results pages, SEOs will have to seek out clever ways to achieve the ranks they need.

#5: Factors that previously haven’t mattered are going to make a big difference.

For a long time, Google’s official policy stated that click-through-rate (how many people visit your site after seeing it in their search results), social signals, and engagement metrics didn’t play a role in a site’s rankings. As 2016 approaches, Google has given us reason to believe that things may be about to change. Social signals like “likes,” “shares” and Tweets are a good indication of how much users value your content, and so they’re an obvious choice for Google to factor into its algorithm. Similarly, CTR and engagement (how long a user visited and how many pages they looked at on your site) offer a potential indication of how well your site answers a particular query. Google is all about developing an algorithm that mimics natural search behavior, and all these metrics will only further that goal. Once again, SEOs who want to succeed need more than just technical know-how. They need to be experts at digital marketing and content.

Credits :

http://www.business2community.com/seo/companies-find-online-changing-2016-find-assure-company-easily-found-01399948#t8dgeLIJe6GES0DW.97

This investment bank presentation helps explain the complicated digital marketing industry for normal people

The digital marketing industry is packed with big and small companies, as the LUMA Scape generates.

The digital marketing industry is a multi-billion dollar space. And it's a complicated one too - even people who work in the sector struggle to get their heads around the latest acronyms and trends.

Investment bank LUMA Partners famously created the LUMAScape which shows the myriad middle-men technology companies that sit between a marketer choosing to spend money on an online ad, and that ad reaching the consumer.

Now LUMA Partners has created a new presentation that aims to demystify the digital marketing landscape - and it's particularly useful for those who aren't immersed the industry.

LUMA Partners has kindly allowed us to publish the presentation and commentary, which covers topics including the huge amount of M&A activity in space, the limited number of ad tech and marketing tech IPOs, and the newest digital marketing trends.

Credits :

http://www.businessinsider.in/This-investment-bank-presentation-helps-explain-the-complicated-digital-marketing-industry-for-normal-people/articleshow/50078175.cms

LUMA's State of Digital Marketing

Growth Hacking Tricks: Turn your Difficult Clients into Real Brand Advocates!

I have to disagree to a mindset that growth hacking is just another buzzword. Growth hacking is a unique practice with its set of goals, and it often extends beyond digital marketing, per se, to include using branding and even customer service as marketing devices.

In the simplest words, growth hacking is adopting and adapting ideas, techniques and methods that allow you to achieve your goals for business growth. The idea is that in order to achieve significant business objectives today, modern online businesses need to look beyond traditional marketing ideas and dive into some highly creative practices to get clear results in terms of both sales and retention. And what better place to start than with your most difficult customers?

What is a Difficult Customer?

Answering this question is not as simple as it sounds as there are quite a few types of customers that come under this category. Aggressive clients, customers who don’t like to wait, customers who think they are the only people that matter.
I love this post by Eunisse De Leon in which she defines different types of difficult customers, in a very light and pleasant tone. But seriously, every business at some point comes across customers who seem like they will never be happy. They’re often the most vocal, too. My advice is not to learn from these customers and develop techniques to eventually turn them around and use their energy and comments to improve, promote and grow your business.

3 Growth Hacks with Your Most Difficult Customers

As Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Gates is a wise man. Learning is the key to growth hacking with your most demanding customers, and here are some proven ways to learn, adapt and grow with them.

Listening

In the age of social media, the chatter never stops. Why not take some time to listen to your customers instead of just responding to them (or ignoring them)? By listening, I mean considering the causes of their comments, not just the comments themselves. The way to turn this process into growth hacking with your most difficult customers is to give them a forum designed around improving your actual product or service, rather than just an open discussion (e.g., Twitter) where people sometimes feel the need to comment on everything all the time :)

UserVoice is an awesome tool for this type of growth hacking, where you essentially build a forum for (current and potential) customers to make explicit suggestions based on your actual product or service. Not only does this help you make a better product, but a lot of companies also see a growth in referrals. This annotated graphic from Neil Patel’s useful growth hacking primer illustrated the idea well.

Hint: If you aren’t able to develop a new feature that people have been asking for, explain why. Sometimes the issue is just that (like LinkedIn shutting down their public API). Your most vocal customers want to be kept in the loop, and they might even have ideas to hack around an issue and come up with an unexpected solution!

Social Proof

Another form of difficult customers is the brand-conscious. I mean people who either go for high-end brands only (“luxury” or “exclusive” brands) or will not try something new unless it’s already popular in their social circle. How are brand-conscious customers difficult? Isn’t brand consciousness exactly what all businesses strive for? Well, yes and no.

As a business owner, you know that every customer is just as valuable as the next. But some buyer personas don’t think this way–they want social proof. And they’ll keep asking for it, so why not just make it easy to find on your site?

The first way to introduce social proof is simply in the form of truly social proof from social media. Add customer comments from Twitter, Facebook, and other outlets to your site. Agile CRM does this nicely with a constant stream of Twitter testimonials that are easy to read and share.

The next step with social proof is to add logos to your site. If you have some “big name” customers or clients, why not let their social standing help your brand? Not only will your difficult “brand-conscious” customers stop asking for social validation about your business, but this will help to improve trust–and, therefore, sales–across the board. For example, when one of my freelance clients, the Workplace Depot, added social proof to their site, they saw an immediate spike not only in orders but in order value as well. If your customers are conscious of making decisions, then this social proof integration on your website helps them convert in your favor.

Some difficult customers are always looking for a discount. You might even think that discounts are the only qualities they see when they look at your product. I’ve even heard customers ask for a discount on new MacBooks at the Apple Store!

But I love this type of customer. Why? Because their needs can be easily fulfilled if you gamify your system a bit. Rather than offering them a significant discount for no reason, you can convert these difficult customers into brand marketers by letting them share their love of discounts with their social network.

Dropbox uses this idea to grow their customer base like a rocket. You can sign up for a 0.5GB free account with Dropbox, and they offer to move you to a 16GB account just by requesting your friends to join. And those friends can then invite more friends and get a discount themselves. Positionly, AirBnB, Gilt.com, everyone’s trying this gamification model these days, helping discount-savvy customers convert their network into dedicated brand advocates. It’s especially useful as a growth hack because it often doesn’t require moving outside of typical margins (from the business perspective, the “discounted” account is actually the standard account). And once the system gets going, growth happens organically and consistently.

Gamifying your system a bit can super increase your sales plus this will also allow you to continuously introduce you to the new audience. Nothing wrong with reaching a new audience automatically!

Conclusion

I hope that all of these tips will help you see customer service and branding as opportunities, not just goals. You might notice that all three growth hacks for challenging customers have something in common: they are all designed to increase customer happiness. And it’s a repeatable cycle that goes from Listening to Social Proof to Incentives and Referrals, then back again to Listening. Start building your endless growth-hacking loop today and you’ll find that it’s a win-win for your customers and your business. Not a bad outcome!

What growth hacking ideas are you using to turn difficult customers into brand advocates and reach a new level of success?

Credits : 

http://www.business2community.com/strategy/growth-hacking-tricks-turn-difficult-clients-real-brand-advocates-01393048#tolV1xuWLr2YSApU.97