BBC, 2020. Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201023-coronavirus-how-will-the-pandemic-change-the-way-we-work
[Accessed 12 4 2021].

Bench-Capon, S., 2018. Niche Ranking Factors FAQ. [Online] 
Available at: https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/niche-ranking-factors-faq/
[Accessed 4 15 2021].

Kemp, S., 2020. Digital 2020 Global Digital Overveiw. [Online] 
Available at: https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview- MustardIT. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mustardit.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview- Netstar. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netstar.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview: Freestyle. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freestyle-it.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

Stemler, S., 2021. 30 Impactful Statistics About Using Testimonials In Marketing. [Online] 
Available at: https://boast.io/20-statistics-about-using-testimonials-in-marketing/
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

WordStream , 2020. 37 Staggering Video Marketing Statistics for 2018. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/03/08/video-marketing-statistics
[Accessed 12 4 2021].

Wyzowl , 2020. Testimonials Statistics 2020. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wyzowl.com/testimonials-statistics/
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

wyzowl, 2021. Video Marketing Statistics 2021. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
[Accessed 12 4 2021].

Zaboj, D., 2020. Key Chatbot Statistics You Should Follow in 2021. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.chatbot.com/blog/chatbot-statistics/
[Accessed 16 4 2021].

Nowadays, people want things instantly without doing many efforts. No one wants to wait for several hours. And that is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes to make that happen. AI-Powered chatbots have been changing the way a business interacts with its customers. Chatbots is the technology that is programmed with the data to provide users with quick answers in nanoseconds. Statistics show 74% of users prefer chatbots while looking for answers to simple questions.

It would have been better if Freestyle-IT incorporates chatbots based technology for their online social messenger as I personally tried to contact the business through my Facebook account on May 3^rd 2020 during the first lockdown, for which I got the reply on Sep 21^st 2020, which is almost after 5 months they replied me back. I mean they just lost their one customer.

So herewith chatbots the case is entirely different since they are automated to answer, a customer can ask anytime 24×7 and get a response instantly.

Tech-based solutions have always been immensely helpful to customers and brands and especially during the COVID-19 crisis, technology has played a huge role by offering solutions to businesses to continue working from home. Further adoption of remote work during the pandemic could lead to more digital transformation and innovation in the future. As Freestyle-IT is itself a tech-driven company offering both hardware and software solutions to businesses, there is a lot of opportunities to work upon and increase sales.

Overall, the things that we have discussed – Using video marketing to boost sales, social media to build brand awareness, optimizing the website to rank higher, building customer trust using video testimonials and finally using chatbots for an exceptional customer experience, all these will help the business to reach out to more and more target customers and further help the business to increase sales and expand their business.

Reference:

Zaboj, D., 2020. Key Chatbot Statistics You Should Follow in 2021. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.chatbot.com/blog/chatbot-statistics/
[Accessed 16 4 2021].

Today on the Internet, the majority of testimonials and reviews are text-based, however, research shows that video testimonials result in a fast and effective way to influence the customer purchasing decision. According to statistics, 79% of consumers have watched a video testimonial to know more about the company and its offering and 77% of consumers say that they are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video testimonial.

It’s proof that addressing users with your own personal message is just one way to both generate excitement about your product or service and create an emotional connection between you and your customers. Low cost and easy to create, a video testimonial can help to put a face on the offerings that will build customer trust and affirm the credibility of the business since video testimonials are harder to fake as compared to quote testimonials.

Creating a video testimonial is one of the best content which the business can take leverage of by sharing it on every digital platform such Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, as well as on business official site. Further by encouraging the customers to share our videos, we can turn our customers into our own personal marketing source, promoting our services throughout their own network of peers.

Therefore, it is clear how important a video testimonial role is for a business to promote and influence their brand perception, built trust and convince the customer to make a purchasing decision.

In the next final blog, we will talk about how incorporating AI in the business can enhance customer experience and further helps to achieve the future vision of the business.

References:

Stemler, S., 2021. 30 Impactful Statistics About Using Testimonials In Marketing. [Online] 
Available at: https://boast.io/20-statistics-about-using-testimonials-in-marketing/
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

Wyzowl , 2020. Testimonials Statistics 2020. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wyzowl.com/testimonials-statistics/
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

The website is the digital presence of your business. It is the home base online, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to promote your services and offerings. Therefore, to reach out to the customers, it is very important for every business to visible online on the fisrt Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERPs).

The Freestyle- IT site has a very poor website ranking. It is very hard for a user searching for “IT services” to find out the company’s site online, as the Domain score of the site is very low, i.e 13 compared to the top 2 competitors site identified through Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs), Mustard IT and Netstar, having domain authority of 40 and 47 respectively as of April 2021.

When it comes to a website, quality matters the most. To work on the same, first, it is the customers whom we need to make sure that we are giving a good experience so that they can spend more time and more likely to convert into paying customers. Secondly, the most important thing on the other side of this is all about Google. We need to work on the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Google in order to rank the business site higher. We can do this by creating a good quality of content and backlinks that helps both visitors and search engines to optimize the site.

According to Searchmetrics, the top-ranked pages in any given search have roughly 7 images in them. This keeps users more engaged and helps them to understand easier than just a simple text. We can use both images and videos to make sure that our visitors understanding is easier to grasp, especially the use of a good quality video, also discussed in our blog post 2, will be very effective and engaging for both users and the business. This will keep visitors stick around the website and allow them to spend a little longer time which eventually signals Google’s Search Algorithm to improve website SEO. And all together by optimizing the titles and tags of both images and videos, will help the site to rank higher in the Google SERPs.

Now that we have discussed some of the strategies for our top digital platforms, further, we will be looking at some of the ways to build customer trust and a good experience.

References:

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview- MustardIT. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mustardit.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview- Netstar. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netstar.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

SEMRUSH, 2021. Domain Overview: Freestyle. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freestyle-it.co.uk%2F&searchType=domain
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

Bench-Capon, S., 2018. Niche Ranking Factors FAQ. [Online] 
Available at: https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/niche-ranking-factors-faq/
[Accessed 4 15 2021].

The social platform plays a very critical role by helping the businesses to connect with the customers, increase brand awareness and further helps to boost leads and sales. As of Digital 2020 reports– 3.8 billion people around the world are using social media today, and the number of users and engagement on the social platforms just keeps increasing with each passing day.

We need to understand that the main purpose of the social platform is to be social, which means creating valuable and engaging content for our customers. It has been observed that the target business- Freestyle IT is mainly focusing on different social channels but not on customers. They are not creating enough content and responding to the customers’ query and hence not making efficient use of the digital social platforms. Now what the business should be doing to build brand awareness is first to respond to every single comment to get more user engagement. And don’t just reply to their comment but also encourage them to get into the conversation by asking a question in your response. This helps to build up the customer’s confidence in your business.

Secondly, the best thing to do on social media is to leverage the use of stories feature on Instagram and Facebook. Here you get a high user engagement rate compared to a normal post. And therefore, it’s good to keep posting stories on daily basis updating the customers about the offerings and services of the business. Showcase the benefit of your service to drive the conversions and also include Call-To-Action (CTA) or Swipe Up features alongside to divert the traffic to your website or landing page.

Going on with our vision to expand the business by reaching out to the target customers digitally, we will be looking at the importance of a website for a business.

Reference:

Kemp, S., 2020. Digital 2020 Global Digital Overveiw. [Online] 
Available at: https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media
[Accessed 15 4 2021].

As mentioned in the previous blog post about the use of digital platforms for the business to grow, we will be looking at some of the best marketing platform and strategies out there for our target SME- Freestyle IT.

It’s important to be updated about the developing trends in the digital world and hence choose the right platform and create an effective strategic plan accordingly to get the best ROI. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, according to research, 91% of marketers feel video marketing is more important for brands along with 74% saying the pandemic made the consumer more likely to use video. We all have witnessed this massive shift in consumer behaviour after the adoption of the work-from-home revolution. With services such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc., turning people homes into the videoconferencing platform for both work and socialising. Now as people are spending most of their time at home, research shows, a person watches an average of 18 hours of online video per week.

Therefore, It’s very important to focus on the video content, by creating a short story about offering services, past clients reviews/testimonials, business cultural values etc. The best platform to work upon the same is Youtube, from where we can also embed the video on the official business website which also increases the time spent by users on the website and further will also help to lead to higher ranking in Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Not only this we can leverage the same video for email marketing as well. By embedding a video in an email, research shows it increases the open rates by 5.6% and click-through rates by 96%. It is being observed a video can influence online consumer behaviour in their purchasing decision. According to a survey, 84% of people have said that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video.

Continuing with our vision for the growth of our business digitally, we will be further discussing some strategies to leverage the social media platform.

References:

wyzowl, 2021. Video Marketing Statistics 2021. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
[Accessed 12 4 2021].

WordStream , 2020. 37 Staggering Video Marketing Statistics for 2018. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/03/08/video-marketing-statistics
[Accessed 12 4 2021].

Technology has changed every aspect and the way businesses operate and never before in history has that change occurred so quickly as compared to the year 2020 after the spread of novel coronavirus. Covid-19 has changed everything virtually overnight, the way businesses work, collaborate and deliver service are not the same anymore. Today technology is playing the most important role by helping us to meet the challenges that come to light by the pandemic.

Freestyle IT, a tech-based solution company is doing its best by offering valuable IT support, solutions and services to clients and businesses in London, UK through these challenging times.

From office work to remote work, face to face education to online education, offline meetings to online meetings we all have witnessed the growing demand for products and services delivered by the tech industry to meet the requirement of both consumer and producer during the COVID-19 crisis. Today, every part of our life is digitally connected and technology can serve virtually. Therefore, Freestyle-IT has a lot of opportunities to survive and thrive in the digital field of business by reaching out to as many businesses and clients as possible. And to make this possible we need a proper digital marketing and transformation plan and strategy according to what our topmost competitors are doing and how they are doing. This is the only way we can work on our vision to expand the reach and growth of our business and gain a competitive edge.

It has been observed that the business focus is on digital channels but not on customers. That means they are not giving enough information or answers to the consumers for what they’re coming to look at digitally. Freestyle-IT should leverage the power of digital platforms to serve consumer’s demand for technology-based services.

In this blog post series, I will be talking about ways in which we can leverage the use of digital platforms to reach out to our target customers and to create a good customer experience and brand awareness which further help the business to increase sales.

Reference:

BBC, 2020. Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201023-coronavirus-how-will-the-pandemic-change-the-way-we-work
[Accessed 12 4 2021].