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Business Basics: Customer Journey Maps

A customer journey map defines every step that customer goes through when interacting with a business. This lesson shows you how to develop a customer journey map that delivers positive results.

Recent changes in technology have made it necessary for businesses to adopt a customer-centric approach when marketing their products. 

Today’s customers expect to have personalized experiences and marketing messages tailored to them.

The most common tool businesses use to develop unique experiences for their customers is called a Customer Journey Map.

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows all the steps a customer must go through when interacting with a company. It applies to products, services, retail stores, and much more.

The video below walks you through the steps involved in creating customer journey maps.

Customer journey maps give companies an insight into the thoughts and feelings of their customers, and shows them what actions their customers take at every stage of their journey.

As a business improves its customer journey, it will understand how to relate to its customers on an emotional level and how to create targeted marketing campaigns. 

In the following cards, you’ll see three common questions that businesses need to answer about their customers when creating a customer journey map.

1. How can I increase loyalty among a particular customer group?

2. Why are we losing customers during a particular stage in the buyer journey?

3. How can technology and content marketing help alleviate some of our customers’ pain points?

When a business answers all three questions, they’ll be able to create a customer journey map that delivers memorable, simple and usable experiences for its customers. 

Business Basics: SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis framework is a must-know for any marketer. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to perform a SWOT analysis and use the results to inform your marketing strategy.

The key to a successful business lies in the ability to gauge its strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats. 

A useful tool for finding out this information is called a SWOT analysis.

SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s an analytical framework that helps businesses assess the internal and external factors affecting their objectives.

A SWOT analysis is usually represented as a square with four quadrants, with each quadrant including information about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the business.

For example, a SWOT analysis of Coca-Cola Company would highlight strengths such as its well-known brand name, and large distribution network as well as opportunities like developing markets.

When developing a SWOT analysis, it is important that an organization presents the good and bad points in a realistic way.

The overall analysis needs to be specific enough so as to avoid any ambiguity or grey areas in the information. It should also be short and simple, rather than being overly-complex.

The Strengths in a SWOT analysis refers to the areas in which a business excels. It’s what separates the organization from other competitors.

Examples of strengths include proprietary technology, brand recognition, strong customer base, and strong balance sheets.

Weaknesses refer to the areas in which the business needs to improve. For example, lack of capital, high turnover, and low customer lifetime value when compared to other competitors.

Opportunities are the external factors that a business can use to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. For instance, changes in tax rates or high income in the population.

Threats refer to all the external factors that could negatively affect business. These include natural disasters, political instability, and changing consumer behavior.

Should you need some more clarity, the video below will summarizes this lesson and shows you how to perform an in-depth SWOT analysis.

Business Basics: Value Proposition

A value proposition is what makes a business different from all other competitors in the market. After completing this course, you’ll know the steps and strategies involved in creating a compelling value proposition.

A value proposition is the first thing a business must create before marketing their products or services to the public.

It explains how the products or services solve customers’ problems, improves their situation and delivers specific benefits.

As a business, it tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from other competitors offering similar products or services.

Here’s an example of a good value proposition:

“We help large companies reduce the cost of building new software without impacting product quality.”

That’s a good value proposition because it’s simple, targeted and straight to the point. 

Value propositions should always be very easy to understand and include the main benefits of a product or service.

Businesses must always ask these three questions when creating a value proposition:

What is it?

For whom?

How is it useful? 

If they answer those questions, they’ll always end up with a clear and concise value statement.

Keep in mind that the way a company talks about their product or service is often very different from how their customers describe it. 

As a result, companies have to rely on interviews with their customers, or use social media to find the right voice for their products.

Businesses don’t need to be completely unique. They only have to be unique in the customer’s mind. 

Just remember that a value proposition is not the same as a slogan.A slogan is simply a short, memorable phrase that companies use in their advertising campaigns.An example of a slogan is “Nike. Just do it.”

Value propositions are often internal, while a slogan is used in marketing campaigns.

Business Basics: Niche Markets

Every mass market consists of several smaller sub-markets called niches. In this lesson, you’ll learn about niche markets and why they are so important for marketers.

In the majority of markets, there is one larger segment or mass market, and many smaller segments called niche markets.

An example of a niche market in the fashion market would be designer clothes for budget-conscious people.

An example of a niche market in the food industry would be healthy food for busy professionals.

The main advantage of targeting a niche market instead of a mass market is that there’s less competition from other companies.

Businesses that operate in smaller niches also gain specialized skills and knowledge that they can use to attract customers to their products or services.

These companies are usually able to charge a higher price for products because consumers are willing to pay premium prices for their expertise. As a result, they gain higher profit margins, revenue, and customer loyalty.

As a marketer, it’s important that you understand the difference between niche markets and mass markets.

You’ll also need to perform extensive research to understand the needs, wants, demographic, and psychographic traits of your niche market.

Business Basics: Target Markets

The ability to identify target markets is an important skill for any marketer. In this lesson, you’ll learn about the importance of creating a target market.

The more details businesses can collect about their target market, the more effective they’ll be.

In addition to demographics, companies also need to consider the psychographics of their target market.

Psychographics go beyond the personal characteristics of a person and include personality, attitudes, values, interests/hobbies, lifestyles and behavior.

A target market should be sufficiently large and precisely targeted. For example, if a business finds that there are only 40 people that match their criteria, then it’s better to create another target market.

A good place to find more information about a target market is to look for magazines, articles and blog articles that appeal to the target market. You can also search for blogs and forums where people in the target market communicate their opinions. 

For instance, if your target market is antique car collectors, you can find forums dedicated to this niche.

Businesses can also conduct surveys and ask current customers for feedback to define a target audience.

Once a business identifies a specific target market, they’ll be able to create better marketing messages and get a better return on investment on their marketing efforts.

What is SEO ?

SEO – Search engine optimization: the process of making your site better for search engines.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO takes place before you publish a blog post to your website or social media profiles.

Keyword Research

Finding the right keywords for your content is the first step to creating an effective SEO campaign.

SEO URLs

The structure of your URL has a significant impact on your search engine position. 

Title Tags

Search engines use the keywords in your title tags to determine whether you can rank for certain keywords. 

On-page Content

Creating high quality content is one the best ways to increase your SEO rank in a short amount of time.

Anchor Text

Using the right anchor texts throughout your content can help you boost your search rankings and generate more traffic back to your site.

Website Speed Optimization

Search engines typically use your website speed as a ranking factor on search results.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to all the search optimization activities that take place outside your website.

Link Building

Link building can be a time consuming and complicated process if you don’t know where to look for links. 

Forum Marketing

Participating in forum discussions is a great way to build your reputation and increase the number of links to your site. 

Link Bait

Link baiting is the process of creating valuable content that generates a massive amount of clicks and traffic. 

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a highly effective way of getting backlinks to your site and increasing your search position.

Marketing Basics

Marketing terms

Marketers use specific terminology to describe different activities.

Return on Investment (ROI):

Return on Investment (ROI) is an important metric for calculating the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Marketing mix:

The marketing mix will help you determine how to position your business’ products or services in the marketplace.

Types of Media:

There are three main types of media businesses can use to reach their online and offline audiences.

SMART Goals

SMART is a popular acronym marketers use when setting goals for their marketing campaigns.

Measuring data

When collecting data on your marketing campaigns, you need to make sure your numbers are accurate and relevant to your goals.

Conversion funnels

A conversion funnel is a very useful tool for organizing your marketing campaigns.

Business Basics – Small Businesses

Small Businesses

Small businesses are the backbone of local economies. This article gives you an insight into the inner workings of small businesses.

This article will give you an introduction to critical small business concepts and help you understand the role marketing plays in the growth of businesses.

Before we dive in, it’s important to note that the definition of a small business depends on where you live and the local laws in your area.

Typically, a small business refers to any privately-owned corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship that doesn’t have as many employees or annual revenue as a medium-sized business.

In the United States, a small business is any business with 500 or fewer employees. However, this number is usually lower in other parts of the world and most small businesses are under 5 employees.

For example, a small business in Canada is any organization with 5-100 employees, whereas businesses with more than 500 employees are considered large enterprises.

Up to 80% of all new job creation comes from small businesses. They are the backbone of every economy.

Helping small businesses grow creates more jobs and more wealth dispersion rather than helping large enterprises grow.

Small business owners are much like yourself. They started out like you and progressed from being an employee to self-employed, and for some into business owners.

Small businesses range from bakeries, restaurants, small grocery stores, small-scale manufacturing, and even Internet-based businesses such as web design and computer programming.

Anyone who decides to start a small business is called an “entrepreneur”. An example of a well-known entrepreneur is Bill Gates.

In 1975, he started a company called Microsoft alongside fellow entrepreneur Paul Allen.

Microsoft initially started out as a “small business,” but it quickly grew into the multinational technology company that you know today.

As of June 2019, Microsoft has an annual revenue of more than $125 billion and over 100,000 employees around the world.

Although Microsoft is an excellent example of what happens when a small business becomes successful, it’s not the norm. In fact, as much as 96% of small businesses fail within the first five years of operation.

Many of those entrepreneurs end up opening new businesses when one fails. Like many things in life, failure happens and the key is to keep moving. 

There are many reasons why businesses fail, but the two most common reasons are a lack of marketing and bad financial planning.

Marketers play a vital role in helping businesses succeed. Without marketers, it’s impossible for businesses to grow – no matter how great their products or services are.

Business Basics

business basics binshadme

(Understanding how small businesses work is the first step to becoming a successful marketer. In this course, you’ll gain valuable insight into the inner workings of small businesses.)

Small Businesses

Small businesses are the backbone of local economies. This introductory course gives you an insight into the inner workings of small businesses.

Target Markets

The ability to identify target markets is an important skill for any marketer. In this lesson, you’ll learn about target markets, demographics, market research and psychographics

Niche Markets

Every mass market consists of several smaller sub-markets called niches. In this lesson, you’ll learn about niche markets and why they are so important for marketers.

Value Proposition

A value proposition is what makes a business different from all other competitors in the market. After completing this course, you’ll know the steps and strategies involved in creating a compelling value proposition.

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis framework is a must-know for any marketer. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use a SWOT analysis to discover new opportunities for your business.

Customer Journey Maps

A customer journey map defines every step that customer goes through when interacting with a business. This lesson shows you how to develop a customer journey map that delivers positive results.

Business Growth

Every business goes through a series of distinct stages before becoming successful. This lesson walks you through the five critical stages of business growth.

Who Am I

Hello! I’m Binshad, Digital Marketing Expert based on Kerala. Started My career back in 2007 as a blogger. Iam Engaged in Digital Marketing which will help the talented entrepreneurs and professionals to thrive and stand on their own feet. I can implement effective strategies at local and global levels. My greatest strength is business awareness, which enables me to bulding campaigns and brands from scratch as well as revamping outdated web presences. Researches on digital media marketing with passion of social media, surpassing quarterly goals and fresh promotion strategies.