From commoner to businessman everybody wants to earn money without much effort. One approach to earn additionally is via affiliate marketing. Everyone who owns and runs a website or eCommerce website in Trinidad and Tobago with regular customers and good traffic must give it a try. Apart from earning, it can additionally help you to increase the popularity of your site.

Affiliate Marketing and its Working Procedure

Affiliate marketing is a technique through which you promote products of other brands on your website and, by doing so, earn a commission on every sale. In addition to the fact that you earn via promotion, a little cut of the income is also generated through every deal completed via your site. Hence, it is a phenomenal platform for extra earning.

The exact primary method is through putting ads on your site. However, there are alternate approaches as well. In that case, you can suggest products that are like what you provide. But be conscious while doing so and always keep in mind that by doing so, neither your promotion creates competition for your business, nor it harms your brand.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing helps to enhance traffic on your website. In case you have no products to offer. However, with a massive following through affiliate marketing, you can earn easy revenue.

Additionally, there is no limit for the sign-up, and you can put ads relevant to your site and your brand. Further advantages of affiliate marketing are:

•           It assists in connecting with your target market.

•           It is performance-based.

•           Effective in terms of cost.

•           Provides your followers a feeling of trust and enhances your repute.

•           Helps to boost sales and traffic.

Read more: Eight best techniques to buildup eCommerce in Trinidad and Tobago by use of videos

Methods to Utilize WordPress for Affiliate Marketing

Below are some methods that show that how to utilize your WordPress website for affiliate marketing.

Understand What Your Website’s Focus is

Before connecting with affiliates, you need to know precisely about your website focus. Further, it would be best if you attracted some followers according to your specialty.

Make sure the promoted products and services on your site are helpful for your followers. Keep in mind your followers’ interests and the relevancy of the products. This will convert to sales utilizing your website.

To convert maximum site visits to potential sales, consider your follower’s interests, fears, and problems when buying an item. Also, try to offer solutions as this will help your followers; hence, they will buy your affiliates’ products.

To achieve this, communication is the key. Communicate with your followers straightforwardly. For this purpose, the usage of questions via your social media pages or even through forums is the best option. Additionally, the creation of surveys is another effective medium. It provides insight into what your followers want to discover on your site.

Put Resources in High-Quality Content

High-quality content will not only help to boost your website traffic but, additionally, will urge more affiliates to investigate your site and think about it for their advertisements. So, always put some extra resources while generating the content of your website.

To make sure that your followers click on your affiliate links, you need to ensure that your site’s content is of high-quality.

For this purpose, you can post original articles related to your affiliates’ businesses and likewise add their links in the text.

You can likewise add a call to action for each article of affiliate content. Actionable links must be incorporated not only in the ad but to the article or landing page.

See also: E-Commerce Strategies to Handle Duplicate Content for Higher Ranking in Trinidad and Tobago

Choose whom you Want to Associate Your Brand With

What you promote on your website will always be associated with your brand. It is not generally related to money – affiliation is like proposals, so you would prefer not to promote items you do not support.

Hence, it would help if you made target personas for your affiliates and check whether they relate to your audiences, and have the option to draw in the right partners. It would be best if you also characterized why they ought to consider working with you and their advantages. For instance, if your site is about wines and dining, a decent match is a houseware vendor.

Below are few most widely used affiliate programs worldwide today:

AMAZON ASSOCIATES

Amazon is the biggest online store has an enormous affiliates program. The Amazon Associates Program gives a chance to sites to adapt their traffic by selling Amazon products.

It offers an enormous number of items that you can decide to publicize on your site. As it has products related to almost every niche, so do not need to stress over tracking down the correct one to promote on your site. Moreover, it is simple to add the coding and gadgets into your WordPress site without utilizing a plugin. But it has one requirement: to have at least one sale within a particular time frame.

SHAREASALE

Another most famous affiliate platform today is ShareASale. It allows the site to interface with many dealers, chooses the one relevant to your niche, and sign up with them.

Whenever you have picked the organization that you need to work with, banners and links would be provided by ShareASale, which you need to put on your site. Though, you can likewise make your own if you want to link explicit products to your site.

CLICKBANK

It works like Amazon, as a gigantic online commercial center. Being a website owner, all you have to do is join their affiliate program and then promote ClickBank products to earn a commission. With an enormous number of brands and thousands of affiliate partners, you do not need to worry about finding a company that perfectly suits your niche.

Utilize Affiliate Tools on Your WordPress Website

WordPress offers an enormous number of plugins that you can use to enhance the working of your website. In case you need to gauge your affiliate programs’ success, which everyone does. At that point, you need the help of some plugins on your site, specially designed for affiliate business.

Following are some handy affiliate marketing tools and plugins:

THIRSTYAFFILIATES

ThirstyAffiliates comes with enormous features regarding tracking the success of your affiliate program. The most significant feature is the shortcodes. You can turn on no-follow links and even add banners and images to your advertisements. Its Pro version likewise permits you to focus on specific areas where your promotions are to be shown.

PRETTY LINKS

By utilizing Pretty Links, you can track your affiliate links and measure their statistics, especially the number of clicks and the area where they are coming from. Furthermore, it helps to create short and good links related to your domain and manage the affiliate links you may put in emails, social media, and your WordPress site.

Besides giving you basic information on affiliate link performance, this plugin helps expand the reach of your site via link building.

THRIVE LEADS

Thrive Leads can also assist you in link generation and building. It can help your followers click on your affiliate links. Additionally, it is widely utilized to create email lists, which is another effective method of promoting affiliate offers.

Check this: Eight most popular local SEO tools to boost business in Trinidad and Tobago

Carefully Monitor How Affiliates Perform

As the affiliate programs are based on sales commission, all you have to do is cautiously track and record how they perform. Always keep a record of the clicks of your links and the purchases made through these links.

Be flexible and adaptable to any situation, and never hesitate to revisit your strategies. Monitoring progress and providing assistance to your customers should be your ultimate goal.

Utilize the strategies mentioned above and do use plugins to maintain the smooth functioning of your affiliate programs.

Work on Promoting Your WordPress Affiliate Programs

Although you have the aid of the plugins mentioned earlier, promotion is vital for any business and particularly for finding partners for your affiliate programs.

You can begin by creating a landing page for affiliate partners on your site. After that, devise strategies to drive traffic to it. For this purpose, utilize all web-based marketing strategies to attract the targeted audience, for instance, promotion through social media pages.

You can acquire additional followers through paid promotions and targeted campaigns on social media.

Conclusion

Whenever done the correct way, affiliate marketing can assist you to grow both your business and website. But it has some prerequisites, and site suitability for affiliate programs is one of them. Moreover, you likewise need to keep traffic high to attract affiliates to advertise on your site.

Affiliate marketing nowadays a most popular method to earn additional income via utilizing your website’s traffic. If the tips mentioned above are appropriately followed, no one can stop your business’s growth and payment.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

“Social media is just for fun”. This might have been true in Trinidad and Tobago, a few years back. Now, however, social media has evolved to become a very potent tool for business growth, brand projection and of course, fun.

The huge business potential of social media is still far from its peak. Nevertheless, even in its present form, it is at a stage where businesses making its effective use are already in the process of becoming the future market leaders.

The future shape of eCommerce and the phenomenally growing number of online stores needs more and more online opportunities for projecting their digital presence and connecting and engaging with a rising number of customers for fast-paced business growth.

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Its popularity is not limited to fun-seeking users but businesses are also making use of Instagram to boost their customer base, digital presence, brand growth and sales.

Instagram has witnessed a remarkable growth rate in terms of active users. Besides, the popularity of Instagram stories has made this platform a priority choice for a wide variety of diverse user categories. It has become an important marketing and projection tool, which must be used in conjunction with existing best marketing practices.

Read also: Best Six Marketing Practices for success in Trinidad and Tobago

In this article, we will look at the eight best ways to initiate Instagram stories in such a way that they grip the user’s interest right away. These techniques would also help in making our Instagram stories more interesting for the contemporary audience and fetching more customers.

Do not drag, keep a fast pace

Social media users prefer fast-paced content. To keep their interest alive, build your Instagram stories on a speedy momentum. To achieve this, the following practices are helpful:

Keep your Instagram stories, videos or ads, short but clear and crisp message or entertainment value.

Frequently change the background or the colour of the background to avoid monotony.

Shoot the videos or pictures from different angles and use light and shades to get diverse and beautiful effects

Utilize the optimum potential of “Facebook Live”

Facebook live has evolved into a very powerful forum for businesses to engage with their customers. It is also being effectively used by businesses to boost their sales and digital presence. Utilizing the power of Facebook Live for posting and promoting Instagram stories is highly recommended. Proceed in the following two steps:

Step 1

• Create your Instagram story, keeping in view the following:
• Grab the interest of users by making a mention of your popular previous posts on the subject
• Make eye-catching and pleasant screen arrangements to make it attractive
• Aesthetically choose fonts and colours to highlight your content in a contemporary style

Step 2

• Post your story, ensuring that it amply covers the following:
• The time and date of the live broadcast of your Instagram stories on Facebook Live
• A well-articulated teaser can help catch the attention of your customers before the main event comes live.
• Mention the URL of your event. Smaller URLs are easier for the users to click

Mentally picture your brand on Instagram

The look of the Instagram story is very important. If properly deliberated and composed, the visual impact is stronger than any amount of running written text. Many popular design apps are also available to create a visually appealing story.

Following two kinds of requirements must be kept in mind while designing the visual and its content:

Requirement for Instagram

The story must get a good ranking and coverage on Instagram. To achieve this, keep the basic visual identity of your brand, consistent. This is a positive point for the Instagram algorithm. Consistency implies using a regular set of fonts, colours etc. so that they start representing your brand. Moreover, the use of trending hashtags and gifs also help in the better ranking of your story.

Learn more: Top Marketing Hashtags in Instagram to Use for Your Business in Trinidad and Tobago

Requirement for user

The user must be able to relate to your Instagram stories. Even before starting to read the story, the user must recognize your brand through the visual arrangement and choice of fonts, colours etc.

Take them Backstage

The Instagram stories can be made interesting and fun if they include still photos or video clips of how your brand does its daily business.

The users who are already familiar with your product or service would be interested in your behind-the-scene professional activities and routine. Make interesting stories about some of your processes and efforts to achieve user satisfaction and involve the users.

This trend is growing and is witnessing an increased user interest and participation, which benefits the overall business or service in the end.

Guide them through your stories

Your Instagram stories should guide the reader to your website or blog post. This can be an excellent method of promoting your content, blog or website.

How to choose the topic

Make stories about the main subject or field of your website or blog. When your story attracts the viewers, they must find a link or CTA (call to action) button that leads to your web page.

For example, suppose your business is about ‘Home Interior decoration’. Make short stories about new trends in home decoration or the latest furniture styles etc. and post them.

How to make a story

After the choice of a relevant topic, create a story about it. An attractive cover page is a good start. The Instagram users, attracted by your stories should prominently find the link to your website in your story. This link or button should provide all the relevant details.

To ensure the creation of a good story, use proper graphic design software or popular Instagram tools

Desirable features of a story

• The story should preferably have the following features:
• It is based on the interests of your target audience
• It is engaging throughout so that the user is compelled to follow your given link
• It should be presented interestingly. Short points or catchy phrases are used instead of lengthy running text.
• It is visually attractive and pleasing

Share your achievements

Any progressive business meets successes and accomplishments on its way. Share important milestones with the users through Instagram stories. This makes your customer a part of your success celebrations.

If conducted properly, this exercise benefits the business in the form of positive publicity. The clients come to know about your achievements, celebrate with you and may even post congratulatory messages and positive remarks in response to your Instagram stories. This, in turn, is not only good for your social media profile but also augurs well for your business as it may fetch you, new clients.

There are several ways to highlight your success milestones through your Instagram stories, some of which may be:

• Posting a summarized account of your major achievements
• Conversations with your staff about their experience with your setup and their share in the achievements
• An exciting countdown for any upcoming event
• Feedback by users regarding their experiences and user satisfaction with your brand

However, ensure that the focus of all your Instagram stories should always be your brand. The stories must carry your brand colours, logos and other brand-related visual optics. The aim is to familiarize the user with your brand in a way that they remember it and start relating to it.

Master the art of storytelling

Storytelling is an art. Be an artist. Make your Instagram stories interesting and captivating. You can tell multiple stories within your main story to highlight the maximum aspects of your business. Never the less, do not compromise on the momentum, flow and content of the main story and try to keep user interest alive.

The stories can take different shapes and formats to break the monotony. Add flair and colour to your stories by making them in the form of short documentaries, skits or other interesting formats. The purpose is to keep the user engaged and attentive to receive the message that you want to convey.

Maintain the critical balance

Creative stories are likely to get a larger Instagram audience. Any type of content, if presented creatively and uniquely can grab immediate attention.

For businesses, however, maintaining the balance between creativity and authenticity is very critical. Sharing of authentic information must never be compromised for creativity as it may damage the user trust.

Keeping this in mind, try to make your stories as appealing as possible. Two basic recommendations to do so are:

• Do not hesitate to employ professional services for creating and handling your Instagram stories. This can ensure wider coverage and quality content.
• If you plan to create and produce your Instagram stories yourself, try to make them more informative and exciting by using:
• User polls surveys
• Catchy, artistic and informative stickers
• Sketches
• Aesthetic effects for presenting the story content beautifully

Conclusion

Instagram stories have become a very potent source of identifying and engaging your target audience. An increasing number of businesses are making use of this medium to benefit their setups in a very cost-effective manner.

This is the future trend so learning to create and efficiently use Instagram stories is vital for any business to stay relevant in the time to come.

 bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience

With LinkedIn, you can interact with numerous brands, online stores, or experts and develop your business. You can use various eCommerce methodologies for dealings with your B2B crowd and convert them into your clients in Trinidad and Tobago.

Now, let’s investigate the top ten B2B methodologies that can lead to accomplishing eCommerce business development in Trinidad and Tobago.

Transform Your Company Page into a Powerful Lead Generation Tool

You might have heard that the first impression is the last. That is the reason you need to ensure that your company page is impressive.

Your Company’s Photo

To start with, pick a picture that is appealing and defines your organization in an ideal manner. Regarding your organization profile photograph, you don’t choose to be inventive as you need to put your logo there. Interestingly, you can improvise with the cover photo and use it as an attention grabber.

For some guidance on how it looks, you can check Slack’s company page. The title “Get ready for whatever work brings” is an attention grabber. Additionally, the call to action button diverting to their website directly over there is easily visible without any confusion.

Company Description

As far as the company’s description is concerned, it must be written in a way that incites interest. Try not to begin with the year when your company was launched, the number of workplaces you have around the planet, and the number of employees. This data matters; however, don’t begin with it.

When they open your LinkedIn profile, potential clients will only see your description’s initial two sentences. Utilizing Slack’s examples, you can write, “Set for simplifying your working life, more lovely and more beneficial.”

Publish Content Actively

While setting up your organization profile and interacting with your audience, you must consider transforming your page into a lead generation tool. The information ought to be structured in such a manner that this will lead to action. Provide link sharing leading to your website and add a clear call to action buttons.

After the creation of your LinkedIn profile, the process is not over yet. All you need further is its optimization and keep it up to date. Additionally, you post all the new data related to your organization.

How to keep your LinkedIn feed occupied? Try out these ideas:

• Job offers
• Company achievements
• Case studies
• Infographics
• Blog articles
• Curated content

Don’t hesitate to try different things with various configurations. You can share pictures, recordings, slides, archives, eBooks as PDFs, and the sky is the limit from there. You can likewise attempt LinkedIn to live for streaming and boosting your engagement.

Data shows that LinkedIn Live videos get on average:

• 7x more responses
• 24x more comments

Isn’t it worth a try?

Check Also: Location-Based Marketing Strategies in Trinidad and Tobago for Your Business

Try Publishing LinkedIn Articles

Talking about substance, you realize LinkedIn has an alternative to publishing articles, and that is within the platform. You can post your contextual analyses, statistical surveys, or anything that brings esteem to your target audience. Moreover, you can add links to divert your readers to the company site for conversion.

Are LinkedIn articles being different from regular blog posts you share on LinkedIn? In the first place, they are not restricted to LinkedIn clients. This implies they show up in Google searches and might trigger your clients’ interest.

Second, being search engine friendly, they can boost your ranking results. So, it is necessary to do proper keyword research before publishing your articles on LinkedIn.

Make a Showcase Page

If you are unaware of LinkedIn’s Showcase Pages, don’t worry, we will explain their purpose. They work as extensions or additions to your LinkedIn company profile. They aim to highlight individual brands, business units, or activities. When you make a Showcase Page, they will be shown as “Affiliated Pages” on your organization page.

Adobe is a case in point that offers several Showcase Pages about their various products and clients like Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Document Cloud, and more.

When you investigate substance on their pages, you will see diverse content custom-fitted explicitly for diverse crowds.

How Affiliated pages play a role in terms of lead generation and business growth? The Showcase Pages permit companies to encourage individual brands that are extensions of the same organization.

These extensions are an incredible instrument for lead capturing since you can make a business unit associated with a particular target audience. You can likewise formulate a community of followers around definite topics or subjects reacting to various audience’s necessities.

Optimize Your Page for Search Engines

Like optimizing your website with relevant keywords, do this for LinkedIn. By doing so, your company profile will rank higher when people are searching for specific keywords.

It’s pivotal to make your profile “understandable” for search engines. That is why your LinkedIn marketing procedure ought to be following your overall advertising procedure and the keywords your business ranks for.

The keyword yоu pick should be relevant and expressive оf уоur business and what yоu are prоviding.

Utilize LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are an extraordinary method that offers an interacting window with your audience and provides lots of networking openings. This can be achieved through becoming active in various groups or by creating a specific group for your clients in which you could connect with B2B delegates or entrepreneurs.

An ideal way to develop your business with LinkedIn marketing is by building a community of ready-to-buy prospects. Being the LinkedIn group owner permits you to share meaningful content with your audience and show expertise without being too salesy.

One way you can improve your group’s growth is by making an extraordinary encounter for the individuals who join. Here, you can urge individuals to put a more significant amount of their time into your group by beginning conversations or requesting input about your items or services.

You can likewise make a VIP list and give special offers to your customers. You can provide free trials or discounts, dependent upon your business.

Invest in LinkedIn Ads

Whenever you’ve built your LinkedIn profile and have top-notch content on your feed, it is the perfect time to invest in LinkedIn ads. On LinkedIn, you can target customers dependent on their professional attributes like occupation, abilities, organization, industry, etc.

Even though LinkedIn promotions can be very costly contrasted with the remainder of the social media mediums, they are compelling and worth trying out. You could connect directly to decision-makers which can save you time.

Retarget Your Website Visitors on LinkedIn

While talking about advertisements, we can’t neglect to refer to retargeting. If a visitor visits a particular assistance page or item page on your site and afterward leaves without converting, at that point, LinkedIn permits you to retarget them with paid campaigns that take them back to your site.

By executing this exemplary methodology, you ought to have the option to change over a considerable amount of your site traffic. You need to ensure that your remarketing content is identified with the guest’s previous communications on your site.

Learn from LinkedIn Analytics

Check LinkedIn Analytics consistently to improve your LinkedIn marketing procedure. Track present measurements to see what individuals have engaged with the most, what drove the most activities, and what should be improved. After you investigate your LinkedIn Analytics, you can change further your content schedule.

Utilizing LinkedIn Analytics, you can screen how individuals discover your page and which segments they have interacted with. You can likewise contrast the outcomes and your Showcase Pages and perceive how they perform.

Read More: Top Marketing Hashtags in Instagram to Use for Your Business in Trinidad and Tobago

Wrapping up

In contrast to Facebооk, Instagram and other social mediums, LinkedIn is a platform where your brand or online store is not characterized by the number of fоllowers yоu’ve acquired but the nature of cоntent and infоrmation yоu learn from LinkedIn Analytics share.

In this way, when you are making your LinkedIn marketing procedure, guarantee that your prospective clients are getting quality information about your item, services, and the business at each phase of the B2B marketing channel.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

Why You Should Create an Instagram Business Profile and How Hashtags Can Help It Grow

Instagram allows entrepreneurs to transform their profiles into business pages. This encourages them to appeal to the right audience as business profiles offer access to various features and tools that help entrepreneurs to build their online store, brand name and presence on Instagram.

To attract people on Instagram, one method that is widely used is adding hashtags to your posts. It is done, so users usually use hashtags or keywords while searching for a post, IGTV video, or story. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags for posts and IGTV video, while only 3 hashtags per story.

Social Bakers state that even by adding just one hashtag, chances of your post engagement increases up to 12.6%.

Instructions to Use Instagram Hashtags for Your Business

Although using hashtags is very simple; however, you use them strategically. You need to pick the correct ones while using them. Below are some tricks and tips on utilising them appropriately for your business and attaining maximum engagement in Trinidad and Tobago.

Be Specific

For targeting a specific audience, all you have to do is choosing particular hashtags. Adding the most popular hashtags will not work for you, as this would not attract the right people.

Also, you need to ensure that your post would not become mixed up in an ocean of hashtags that are not relevant to it. You ought to communicate in your clients’ language as this will urged them to follow you. Likewise, they will engage with you and your customers.

Instagram also offers a valuable recommendation engine that can be used to search for the right hashtags relevant to your business. Moreover, you can likewise utilise Instagram analytics tools to figure out which hashtags to use for your posts.

Generate Unique Hashtags

One approach to stand out your brand from the rest is creating unique hashtags and continue using them for every post, either it is a story, post, or IGTV video. Similarly, the followers or customers should be urged to utilise these hashtags while posting about your brand.

For the generation of unique hashtags, the expertise of your writers and marketing team should be utilised.

Be Cautious About the Number of Hashtags That You Are Using

As mentioned above, Instagram has a limit to the number of hashtags you can add per post. That is 30 for posts and IGTV videos while 3 for stories.

But keep in mind that adding too many hashtags can look ‘spammy’, or it may appear that you are using a bot for your posts. The ideal number of hashtags that help increasing engagement per post are elven.

Using Hashtags in the Comments Section

As mentioned above, adding too many hashtags to post looks spammy, so to avoid this consider using them in the comments section. After posting something, add all the hashtags in the first comment.

Ensure That Your Hashtags are Relevant to Your Photos

It is not a wise idea to use all the most popular hashtags in your post. It must be taken into consideration that the hashtags used are relevant to the photos or content. This is important as these people will find your brand, and hence you will be able to attract the right audience.

Searching for hashtags and posts that are similar to your content and photo is a good practice. But beware, do this only for inspiration, and refrain from totally copying the detailed caption and hashtags.

Join the Trend

Sometimes, joining the viral trend is an excellent technique. For this purpose, always look for trending topics and hashtags and check whether they apply to the content you will post.

However, you must be patient as you won’t generally see trending subjects relevant to your content. But try to look at the hashtags repeatedly to check whether you can utilise any of them with your post.

It’s usually not exactly 100% specific to what you are posting; however, it’s good to use them if they are relevant to your industry.

Switch things up

Sticking to a particular hashtag for months that is not increasing engagements is not a good idea. Instead, try to switch things with proper research and try some new hashtags.

Utilising new hashtags will likewise allow you the connect with new users and attract a new audience. Always track your Instagram performance to understand which hashtags are engaging people.

Investigate Your Competition

Keep an eye on your competitor’s Instagram page and check which hashtags they are using. Check their posts and hashtags to analyse how they are engaging users.

By doing so, you will be able to stand among the millions of brands.

Read more by about Eight most popular local SEO tools to boost business in Trinidad and Tobago by clicking the image.

Numerous Types of Instagram Hashtags

Hashtags are divided into eight different types:

Community or Industry Hashtags – Instagram has specific communities, and joining those relevant to your industry will acquire more followers. Know your community or industry and use similar hashtags that they are using.

Service or Product Hashtags – This type contains hashtags related to specific products and services. For instance, if you are running an e-commerce store that sells cosmetics, you can use the hashtags like #makeup, #lipstick, #eyeshadow, and other similar ones to your products.

Seasonal Hashtags – This type offers hashtags that are related to holidays or some special events.

Niche Hashtags – These hashtags are utilised to depict what speciality your business or brand has.

Phrase Hashtags – These hashtags are applied to define your post or photograph. It ought not to be long; however, two or three words in one hashtag are sufficient. It must also be relevant to your content.

Location Hashtags – You can subsequently label the area on your post, as Instagram offers that choice. However, it would likewise be a smart idea to add the location in your hashtags.

Abbreviation Hashtags – Abbreviation hashtags incorporate the terms #TBT, #OOTD, #YOLO, #FBF, and many more.

Daily Hashtags – These hashtags are utilised to address the days of the week. It is usually joined by something that depicts the day and the actual post.

Examples of the Most Popular Instagram Hashtags for Marketing Different Businesses

Since we have talked about the various approaches to utilise hashtags on Instagram, it is currently an ideal opportunity to examine which hashtags you can use for your brand.

General Hashtags

#love – 1,919,664,801

#instagood – 1,213,783,228

#photooftheday – 839,259,606

#fashion – 859,542,212

#beautiful – 688,659,766

#happy – 597,642,909

#cute – 589,431,636

#tbt – 549,703,301

#like4like – 522,791,739

#followme – 544,098,289

Digital Marketing

#digitalmarketing – 13,199,450 posts

#marketing – 45,660,210 posts

#socialmediamarketing – 12,143,783 posts

#business – 70,756,062 posts

#onlinemarketing – 5,2014,111 posts

#digitalmarketingagency – 979,262 posts

#digitalmarketingtips – 716,817 posts

#digitalmarketingservices – 187,081 posts

#digitalmarketinglife – 109,872 posts

#digitalmarketingtools – 103,766 posts

Fashion

#fashion – 859,544,585

#fashionblogger – 127,831,247

#fashionista – 109,562,358

#fashionable – 36,412,874

#fashionstyle – 49,541,699

#fashionblog -27,474,111

#fashiongram – 32,579,194

#fashionaddict – 23,950,609

#fashionweek – 24,132,173

#fashiondiaries – 26,627,054

Travel

#travel – 520,718,190

#travelgram – 131,089,145

#traveling – 76,611,016

#travelphotography – 130,668,002

#travelling – 67,672,061

#travelblogger – 59,832,657

#traveler – 42,941,462

#travelersnotebook – 4,032,348

#travelingram – 26,826,521

#traveltheworld – 29,964,880

Business

#business – 70,799,262

#businessman – 8,033,827

#businesswoman – 11,213,810

#businessowner – 11,444,586

#businessowners – 2,218,710

#businesscoach – 3,077,113

#businesswomen – 2,683,548

#businesslife – 2,259,984

#businesstips – 2,592,768

#businessminded – 1,590,554

Conclusion

Hashtags are a useful tool for increasing followers and engagement on Instagram. Though, you need to ensure that you are utilising them appropriately. Learning when, how, and which hashtags to use will boost your post and its performance. So, for this, chalk out a list of your best-performing hashtags and utilise them to their maximum capacity.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an eCommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

What Is Location-Based Marketing?

This is a form of marketing in which the audience is targeted based on their locality. It is confined to online marketing tactics, but in this, you utilise offline marketing approaches.

This form offers excellent insight into the potential customers’ buying behaviour and tells about their needs, desires, and the reason for staying attracted to your business. Hence, it serves a two-way function, drawing people in the near locality and others by providing the details of what you provide.

Reasons Businesses Should Use Location-Based Marketing

This marketing strategy can offer great help to your business, particularly by accomplishing return on investment or ROI. Another positive prospect is that it performs well for both small scale and large businesses. According to this survey report of 2018, companies utilising this strategy saw an increase of up to 89% in their marketing and advertisement campaigns.

After looking at all this, if you are still confused about using location-based marketing for your business in Trinidad and Tobago, below, we provide a few fundamental reasons why this strategy must be used.

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Segmentation Is a Lot Easier

When you group your costumers based on their personalities, interests, actions, locality, and characteristics, this is called dissection. As your targeted costumers are all within the same locality, this dissection becomes a lot easier.

It Helps Generate More Business

Attracting a whole state or country is not a good idea as compared to targeting a particular locality. By doing though the targeted audience is small, there are chances that you all attract potential costumers rather than those who have no interest in your business. 

While utilising this method, one thing must be made sure that the targeted costumers must be within the same zip code as yours. This is beneficial for those businesses that own a physical location. People of the locality will not bother to visit a farther away place. They will ultimately visit your place, hence increasing your sales.

Better ROI

A business requires smart, not hard work. As if you are looking to get your return on investment back, it is essential to rethink your marketing strategies.

Always examine your nearby audience.  Assemble their details and devise a mechanism by which they can get inclined to your business. The more you work on it, the higher are the chances that you will get ROI back.

Effective Location-Based Marketing Strategies

We have discussed in detail what is location-based marketing now; let’s analyse how it can be applied to your business.

Use PPC Geo-Targeting

Making use of your Pay-Per-Click advertising is the right thing to start for any online store. By doing this, you will get a filtered audience. Hence, you will be able to target a specific group of people in a locality.

Local SEO Optimisation

Use Google My Business as this tool aids you to connect with the customers in your locality. Not only this, but it also helps you to get the organic traffic for your eCommerce business.

You can improve your local SEO by inspiring customers to give reviews, creating location-based content and optimising your listing on Google My Business. This technique is helpful for small businesses has it helps them to attract new customers.

Also, always add a location-specific keyword while uploading your content, as this is a ranking factor on search engines. Your website would be visible to the customers while searching for similar products and services that you offer within the area. Target a specific and relevant keyword from customers’ viewpoint as once the keywords get ranked, your chances of attracting more customers get increased.

Good content is another factor as this boost your search engine rankings. It also attracts links and website traffic from blogs, newspaper websites, and sometimes, even on social media sites like Twitter.

Pay Attention to the Community

Paying attention to the community offers great insight, but this will also help you spend not much money. All you have to do is engage your local community by dedicating time instead of cash.

Spoken words have a significant effect. It is also a great marketing strategy to engage people through effective communication. This provides their experience with your business.

Apart from that community can be engaged when you participate in contests, community festivals, and seasonal events. Similarly, think about sponsoring local events like school performances or sports teams. Additionally, if possible, try to volunteer for local charity causes.

By doing all this, you will meet a lot of new people, but you will also gain support and trust from the local community.

Maximise the Use of Social Media

Start with attracting and engaging people in your locality and for this maximise the use of social media. Target the areas that are near your business.

You can use hashtags on social media for location-based advertising. Furthermore, add a location to your Instagram and Facebook tags, so people that are searching for your area can find it.

Apart from that, while posting on social media, always consider the interests of your audience.  To put it simply, before posting anything, ever think from the point of view of customers.

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Engage in a Loyalty Program

Costumers love when they are valued, so for this, think about designing a loyalty program for faithful costumers. As your business targets explicitly, the people within your locality, creating a loyalty program would be beneficial for your business and your customers.

For instance, if you are running a clothing business, offer “loyalty cards” to your customers. By availing of that card, they should be given a 5% discount on every purchase, and on their 6^th purchase, they should claim their 20% discount.

It’s just an example you can design your program as you like but keep in mind that the rules are not too complicated. Customers must be encouraged to take full advantage of this program.

Be Open About Your Business’ Story

Try to be open about your business story as, by this, your customers will feel a lot closer to you. Please don’t go into every specific detail but provide an overview of your area and its start. Only add components that are enough to keep them interested.

By doing this, your brand name will become more memorable. Customers will not only connect your story to your brand name, but even some might relate to it. Hence this will lead to the building of a sense of trust towards your brand.

This can also be done through blog posts, articles, online videos, your “About Us” page, or even through TV ads. While doing, always build a connection between your business, local community and the area. This will help to create a deeper connection of the locals to your brand.

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Ask for Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials always provide a better insight into new customers, and they work as a trusted tool. You can ask for them from your customers without forcing them to do so. But keep this in mind do not ever go for the paid reviews as they can easily backfire.

To get reviews, you can offer a freebie or discount in exchange for a review. Costumers love something free and; hence, this will inspire them to write a positive review of your business.

Always pay due consideration to the reviews and testimonials on your site and social media pages. In case of any negative reviews, contact the customers and see how you can help. Don’t hide any bad review; instead, make it public. Other customers can know that you are willing to help them if they have also had a bad experience.

Advertise in Newspapers

Though this is now thought of as an old way of advertising or marketing, this can do wonders. People in your locality most likely read the newspaper almost every day.

For this purpose, you can buy advertisement spaces or issue a press release to the editors. You can also try to get interviewed as this will ultimately advertise your name and brand on the local paper. Hence not only your business will get promoted, but the local community will trust your brand more.

By following these trends in your locality, you can help your business to grow.

Conclusion

By using location-based marketing strategies, you can expand your business within your locality. This method is more comfortable and helps create a community for both business owners and consumers.

eCommerce is affecting everything; get your online store now and start selling. You could sell your products in Trinidad and Tobago.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an eCommerce platform purely focused on the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature-rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you but also with its integration with social media, we can also deliver it to your audience.

On the contrary, negative user reviews or bad comments serve to dent these factors to some extent. As an online business grows, the number of its content, as well as dissatisfied customers, also progresses. This is critical for ecommerce and online stores in Trinidad and Tobago as we are just trying to build consumer confidence in purchasing online.

Feedback from both these groups of customers must be handled sensibly and discreetly to benefit the business and at the same time, bring a maximum number of unhappy customers to the satisfied customer bracket. With a phenomenal increase in online shopping trends all over the world, online user reviews become more and more significant for business growth. Google, by far, has emerged as the largest platform, used by the consumers to search for objective reviews against the product or service of their interest. 

Today, almost ninety per cent of consumers go through the existing reviews on Google before their final selection. Unfortunately, their decisions are influenced more by the negative comments. Businesses that delete or show selective reviews are thus viewed negatively by Google users. 

This article lists and elaborates eight rules or tips to effectively respond and benefit from negative user comments without deleting them. 

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Reply Promptly – Do not pend 

An organization’s response time amply reflects its business practices and level of professionalism. May it be its response to a business query or a bad review/comment. A prompt reply creates a positive impact, even on an otherwise displeased customer. 

Oberlo data quantifies that within seven days a response is expected by more than fifty percent of dissatisfied clients. A delayed response, however, is better than not responding at all because no response disappoints more than sixty per cent of the already discontented client. This is especially true for ecommerce.

It is highly advisable that before furnishing a reply, take a quick stock of your internal inefficiencies, resulting in customer dissatisfaction. If more time is required for this, an interim, courteous reply be forwarded to appease the customer. 

Give it a personal touch 

The element of a personal touch and concern can work wonders with even the most irate customer. Take the negative comment positively. What if the customer is justified? This means that a thorough investigation of the problem might reveal genuine incompetence that should be addressed to improve the system. 

This exercise would also help in the framing of an objective and convincing reply, based on facts. If the problem is at your end, do not hesitate to admit and apologize. This would be a good start. Show genuine concerns for the inconvenience caused to the customer and try to propose a solution. 

If the customer can see the reflection of your effort, concern and admission in your reply, consider him/her to be on your side, now onwards. There might be cases where the customer has been too irrational or has even distorted the facts, but a cool-minded, professional and courteous approach is always the right card to play. 

Consumers in Trinidad and Tobago love the personal touch.

Develop Customer Confidence 

People usually pardon unintentional mistakes if they are convinced that the same will not be repeated in future. 

Your response to an unsatisfied customer should be phrased to convince the customer that the problem at hand was a one-time mistake and arrangements are now in place to make sure that this does not happen in future. This resolve would seem more meaningful to the client if this message or communication is authenticated by a person of reasonably higher authority in the organization, e.g. a general manager etc. For online stores with online reviews this can go a long way.

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Show Gratitude 

Gratitude and thankfulness for a negative review? Yes, it is logical! Time is precious. If someone has taken some moments of his/her time to write even a negative review, their time and effort might benefit your setup, all successful ecommerce sites pay very close attention to this. 

Every problem, however minor, must be studied in detail to identify any inefficiencies and improve the system. Negative reviews must be taken in this positive spirit. A person, pointing out the weaknesses of our system at the cost of their precious time, thus deserves a sincere note of thanks. 

Politely shift communication channels 

Respond to comments and reviews on the public forum. If, however, the problem at hand requires intricate discussion with the customer, tactfully persuade the customer to switch to some private communication channel. 

The other channels might include email, phone or video call etc. The advantage of conversing on these private channels is that a candid discussion and data sharing can take place between both sides. Moreover, you may offer a solution or motivation for this particular customer only. 

The aim is to satisfy this customer and at the same time keep your solution or incentive, hidden from the rest of the public. Moreover, request the customer to delete or review their negative comments. After all, no one is listening or reading! 

Reward, Compensate or Reimburse 

One of the effective ways to pacify a displeased customer is to offer any sort of compensation for their inconvenience. 

It could be in the shape of a gift, refund or discount etc. Base the type and amount of compensation on the particular situation and mood of the customer. 

This is another form of persuasion. Make this offer on a private communication channel so that other customers might not take a lead and tend to write negative reviews to earn some bargaining advantage. 

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Pursue until a successful conclusion 

Stay focused. The aim is to achieve complete customer satisfaction. The conversation on any of the private or public forum should ultimately achieve this aim. This requires constant pursuance and frequent follow up with the customer. 

Make the customer feel elevated by your efforts. At this point, discretely make up the customer’s mind to delete his bad review or at least add some positive remarks that reflect your organization’s valuable efforts in the resolution of the problem. 

Can we remove a bad review from Google? 

Yes, it may be done. However, move systematically. First, make all-out efforts to convince the customer to remove the negative review. In case, the customer refuses to do so for any reason, make sure that your efforts for the resolution of the problem are amply highlighted on the public forum for the consumption of other prospective clients. 

There can however be a situation where the negative comments violate Google’s code of conduct or content guidelines, in any form. In this case, approach Google with a removal request after flagging the comment as ‘inappropriate’. The removal might take some time, though the deletion is not guaranteed since the decision to do so lies with Google. 

Conclusion 

A continuous and determined effort is required to keep your customer satisfied. Always stay positive and optimistic. Make sure that the quality of your product/service, ease of availability and other marketing aspects are fine-tuned to ensure complete customer satisfaction. 

Your interactive approach can timely guard against the raising of any negative reviews. It is better to expend your efforts and resources in improving and providing the best services rather than being bogged down in the hassle that follows one single bad review.

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 bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

Connecting to the right audience is the most critical step in setting up and growth of a brand. The communication with the target audience then helps to build the brand around this community.

All efforts must be focused on identifying, connecting and communicating with this group, which is interested in your product or service.

Ecommerce has taken a completely new shape in the post-Covid scenario. The phenomenal growth of online stores and online shopping culture has increased the importance of community building manifolds. The modern trend of growing a business and the community around it is with the help of social media.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube etc. have emerged as a very effective way to communicate with a brand’s community. The power of social media, if harnessed in the right manner, can help in the fast-paced growth of the brand community and loyal clients.

Advantages of community building

This article discusses seven reasons to focus and work and on community building. This will be followed by examples of some of the brands that succeeded because of their effective community building strategies.

More repeat order clients

When you take good care of your customers and your community management team proactively communicates with them, the faith of the customers and community grows and cements. A devoted customer tends to return to your brand instead of experimenting with other brands and services.

Effective community growth because of meticulous management thus enhances your orders and revenues with a little expenditure of dedicated but regular time.

Satisfied community members spread a good word about your brand. This positive feedback is even more effective than some paid advertisements.

Economical yet effective

Online ads cost money. Moreover, the reader generally tends to ignore these ads. The modern way of engaging the user through Webinars, live streaming sessions and social listing etc is not only much more economical but fruitful as well.

Earning the loyalty and trust of the customer takes time and patience. However, direct contact and communication with potential customers have a high probability of securing clientele.

It is, however, important to use and conduct the above-mentioned methods of engagement in the right manner to reap full benefits.

Better Customer Service

Nowadays, the customers immediately contact the online community, in the case; they face any issue regarding product or service. The comments and remarks of the community members are very significant in fostering the standing of the product or service provider.

It is therefore crucial to promptly and efficiently handle the issue being faced by the customer and win his/her satisfaction. Moreover, negative comments (if any) must also be dealt with tactfully. Efficient handling and response to negative reviews build the trust of the brand community as well as potential customers.

Read more: Smart Way to Build Strategy for Customer Engagement in Trinidad and Tobago

Develop a loyal and trusted customer base

If you are honest and candid with your community, its trust in your brand develops further. Moreover, contact with the community as well as individual customers on a case-to-case basis helps cultivate a faithful customer base.  

Try to communicate with your brand community as frequently as possible, preferably, daily. Work on a deliberated schedule and ensure to take some time for this communication session. Not every message needs a reply but all the messages regarding any issue must be replied to appropriately and promptly.

This helps in taking your customers along in a very economical manner. However, make sure that the customers get facts and authentic information from your side. The clients appreciate your efforts if they are satisfied that you do not hide anything and are genuinely concerned about resolving the issues highlighted by them.

This should form the core of your marketing philosophy and would be critical in your overall marketing practices

Learn more: Final Best Six Marketing Practices to Adopt and Succeed in Trinidad and Tobago

Provides you with the chance to become the industry leader

New innovative ideas and their successful implementation, in line with the business goals and ethics are what make an industry leader.

Listen to your community carefully. Most of the good ideas for your business might come out of their feedback and suggestions. Keep them involved and encourage them to communicate more frequently.

The brand that innovates and manages its community well is the ultimate industry leader.

It breathes life into your brand

The messages and posts created by your community management team need thorough deliberation. The phrasing and tone should be such that the reader feels like talking to a human being with feelings and not to a computer.

Avoid standard and run of the mill replies. The social media interaction by your team should reflect your brand’s priorities regarding customer care and efforts to provide excellent customer care. If the message fully gets across to the customer and experienced in your dealing, the client will be your unofficial brand ambassador.

Gives you a greater insight into your target market

A successful business stands on a solid foundation of knowledge. It is the in-depth knowledge of its target market and its preferences. Properly conducted community management keeps you updated about your target audience. The communication, down to even personal level (if possible) gives you a fair idea about the inclinations and likes/dislikes of your target customer.

This knowledge and the data, collected from social media channels are very useful in tweaking your products and services to make them more desirable and approachable to your clientele.

This, however, has to be a continuous process if far-reaching dividends for the business are sought.

Some successful community builders

Let us now take a brief look at some of the brands that take their community building and management very seriously. This is one of the main factors behind their success.

Hydroflask

A community of adventurers and outdoor activists follows this brand. This company is primarily a vacuum water bottle manufacturer.

The brand community members share their experiences as well as with the brand. This communication helps in the improvement of the company’s product line, not to mention a healthy digital presence.

Love Your Melon

The company is a proud donor of 50 per cent of its profits from product sales to non-profit organizations that are helping to fight against pediatric cancer.

This noble cause is a great motivational and binding factor for its community members who learn from each other and in the process, help boost the company’s sales also.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks

This site is built around the philosophy to help alleviate some degree of poverty. It provides hammock-weaving jobs to women who have some spare time and they want to help their households financially.

The company helps train them also. It is thus a close-knit community of both the job seekers, suppliers and the customers.

Conclusion

Community building and management will gain more and more importance in future e-commerce. Online stores and businesses with better community management and a larger community of satisfied customers will emerge as business leaders.

The key lies in proactive, candid and authentic communication, followed by prompt corrective actions aimed at improvement of the overall system.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an e-commerce platform purely focused on the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature-rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

Some businesses think it is too difficult and do not attempt it, and others will invest a lot
of money on a poorly advised or executed strategy, and then give up leaving them very
hesitant to attempt it again.

Every business will need to go online in order to survive, there is not doubt about this.
The only question is when they will go online, some will go online before others and
reap the benefits of moving first, others will follow the crowd and retain their neutral
market position and some will leave it too late and will lose market share, some may
become extinct.

The benefits of online business are :

1. You are open 24 hours a day : With an online store your website is open
   24 hours a day. As more and more and more people start to shop outside of the
   conventional hours, your website can offer services to your customers around the
   clock. The consumer can browse your products and services at their leisure and
   at their pace. There is no rush. If they get distracted they can leave and come
   back, its convenient without any pressure.
2. You can show your products to everyone anywhere anytime :
   You can have your product catalogue online, making it convenient for customers
   to browse your catalogue from the comfort of their home. A well designed
   website will allow users to create accounts and mark favourites or have cookies
   installed so that when the customer returns you know what they were looking at
   before and can assist in picking up from where the customer last left off.
3. You can provide quotes and information: Shoppers will often either go
   to a number of shops to get quotes/prices or even call around. You make it easy
   and efficient to handle those queries. The easier it is to get information from you
   the more likely you are to generate traffic.
4. You can take online payments : For those customers that want to
   purchase from home, you can offer online payments, allowing the transaction to
   be completed from the comfort of the customer’s home.
5. You can drive traffic to your website more competitively then
   bringing footfall into a physical store: Similar to traditional advertising
   of TV, radio and print, you can use online marketing and advertising to drive
   traffic to your website, it is much cheaper and you can specifically target your
   required customers.
6. You can grow your online store quickly with little expense: You
   can increase your catalogue or product range by x10 without having to increase
   your store front. Store fronts are normally expensive and prime property, but
   online you do not have that restriction.
   The benefits of online business are
7. You don’t need to pay a premium to be on the high street to get
   the traffic: We will discuss this below, but the cost of being at Trinicity mall or
   West Mall is much higher than being on a high street, which itself is much higher
   than being on a side or local street. The online real estate works differently.
8. You need less staff : As you have less customers coming to your directly
   needing in person assistance, you can reduce your staff account. Many of your
   processes and reporting can be automated, giving you a realtime picture of what
   is happening. Reducing inefficiencies.
9. You can work remotely/globally: You can work from home or from
   around the world. It gives you the flexibility to have a better balance between
   your personal and work life. Empowering you to do more.

How to get online

Having covered some of the benefits briefly, let’s discuss how to get online. There are two ways
to do it. We will use the parallels from the physical/traditional way of doing things so to better
explain the options.
You can either build your own shop or you can rent a shop on the high street or a shopping mall.
Both of these options have their advantages and disadvantages and which one makes sense
will depend on your business and strategy.
In the same way in the online world you can either build your own website or you can rent space
in a marketplace (shopping mall).

The first option is to build your own website, this way you are in full control of what you will get
but it is a much higher risk.

Build your own website

1. Purchase a domain name
2. Purchase a web hosting package
3. Configure your name servers
4. Configure your email
5. Develop your website
6. SEO
7. CMS
8. Social Media and traffic drive
9. Updates and changes
   

Benefits

1. It is your website, you have full control to build exactly what you want.
2. Build the features and functionality that you require
3. It’s the same as purchasing land and then constructing whatever you need.

Disadvantages

1. Huge amount of capital investment is needed
2. You need to builders/developers, who will ask for down payments and then may not
   deliver
3. Budget increases as deadlines pass
4. You may need to change the developer
5. If you make a mistake and get something wrong, or forget something important, changes
   will be expensive
6. Also once developed the website will require ongoing maintenance
7. You require technical IT staff to manage your business website and that can become
   single point of failure or reliance

Market Place

1. Signup and register
2. Pay monthly for the service
3. No maintenance or technical skill or investment
4. No contract
   Benefits
5. Quicker, you have your store up within 10-30mins
6. No capital investment needed. Some market places will give you free trials
7. No contracts. Many do month to month contracts, although annual contracts are given
   discounts
8. Quik ROI. With minimal capital investment your ROI is much quicker.
9. No maintenance or technical expertise required. It’s like using Facebook. Infact
   facebook is also a marketplace (a social marketplace)
10. No investment needed to generate traffic. Although you can advertise to increase traffic,
    it’s like a shopping mall, buyers go to shopping malls and market places because they
    will find variety and hence you need to do little marketing to drive extra traffic

Disadvantages

1. You are limited to the features and functionality of the marketplace
2. All your competitors are in the same place

Which way you decide to go will depend on your business. As a general rule, if you are a small
business then I recommend you go to the marketplace. The cost of developing and maintaining
an effective website will be too much. You may be offered a website for $20k-$30k or even
$100k but it will NOT be a full ecommerce site, it will lack functionality and will cost much more
when you look at the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Many small businesses find themselves in
this situation and in the end give up, cut their losses.

If you are a large business, with sufficient internal IT then you could consider this, but we are
even seeing larger businesses going to marketplaces. There are very few if any businesses in
Trinidad and wider caribbean that are large enough and IT advanced enough to be able to
compete with a marketplace. There may be some short term gains, but in the long term I
believe the caribbean is a marketplace led economy.

One of the advantages an online marketplace has that a traditional shopping mall doesn’t is the
cost of replication. If a retail unit costs $100k to build in a shopping mall then 10 units will cost
close to $1million, there are some economies of scale saving, even if you say 20%-30%, it is
nothing compared to the savings in the digital world. If the cost of developing a single store is
$100k in the digital world then the cost for 10, 100 or 1000 is also $100k or maybe an extra
$10k. Hence the rental/monthly subscription cost for the marketplace will be much lower. You
can get access to a huge amount of rich technology for extremely cheap price.

Also the marketplaces are constantly investing in improvements, and when they are rolled out
everyone on their platform benefits, sometimes it may require additional costs, but that is small.
E.g a portal with 1000 businesses introduces a new feature that costs $100,000 to develop, they
only need to charge $10 a month extra and within 1 year they will have recovered their costs
and start to make extra profit. An independent portal will not have that power or scale.

Other options are to do both, the cost of running your own website is very high, and if you decide
to go that way, then you could also consider having a dual strategy and have presence on the
market place. Another strategy could be to quickly start on the marketplace and over time you
can develop your own website.

Many businesses use Facebook for their businesses and do not have their own websites, and
some do both.
This is a very simplified analysis, should you wish to speak to us please contact us at
info@taurus.one.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

If you would like to have an online store go to bizibi and signup here.

Lets get started, first lets set the scenario. Imagine you are small business owner, involved in a traditional retail business based around brick and mortar. You may be small with a single store and 1-2 employees, or a multistore outlet with 5-6 stores and 4-5 staff per store. You may have a POS (point of sale) system, but you have no real online presence except for Facebook or Instagram, you may have a social media marketing person or most likely you are doing the marketing yourself.

You want to build my own website.

This is where the fun/challenges start. We will use some analogies, so that you can better understand and relate to what you may expect in the process. We will use the analogy of building a house where you don’t know anything about construction.

The first step is to find a developer. You need to find a website developer, like house construction, there are many different types of skills and techniques you will need. Are you building a single story or double, do you want a pool, security, what type of foundation, are you going up 2 stories and then want to go up a third in the future. It is the same for websites, there is a lot that goes on in the background, and no developer will be an expert in all technologies, they will claim to be but they are not. They will specialise in a particular area and at best will know enough about the other areas to get by.

So how do you know what skills you need ?

You don’t ! chances are you will not even know what you want in your website. This is first issue, the requirements or technical specifications. Usually this is not done, or is vague at best, the developer will lead the businessman into a specification that he can deliver and not necessarily what is best for the situation. Based on this flawed design specification, a price and time line is negotiated, down payment made and the work starts.

In general, I would say, that the website development skillset in Trinidad and Tobago is still in its infancy, there are some very talented developers but they are rare, the main reason is that we are just starting and developers do not have a lot of experience with diverse projects, this will change in time but for now we have a limited skill set.

At different stages of the development the business man will get to test/play with the site, but as he plays and tries to use the website, he will start to playout his own business process and workflow in his head, and will start to raise issues or lack of features and functionality, this is where variations come in and the developer will say, yes we can do that, but it will cost a little more and I need to redo some code and also it will add another week or two on to the time line.

If you are lucky, the developer can actually do the functionality you want to implement, otherwise they will try to figure it out and end up creating bad code. This will most likely play out a few times, and each time the code becomes less structured, and both the developer and business owner will get tired. The business owner will start to fatigue in testing the same site, especially when they are busy running a business. They may find some bugs, the developer tries to fix them and ends up creating more bugs, some of the blame may be put on the extra features that were requested.

Many projects will fail at this stage for this reason. The developer and business owner get frustrated with each other, in their minds, they blame the other, the developer want to finish the product and get out, the business owner has spent a lot of money and is not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel. At some point the business owner may give up and cancel the project.

This scenario is very common, and neither party are to blame, this has happened for years and even happens in larger companies who have much more experience. One way to mitigate against this is to do a very thorough requirements analysis and mock UI/UX, the problem with this is that it is time consuming and will add a lot to the cost of the project.

Let’s say you get passed the first stage and you end up getting your website delivered, now you are presented with a new set of challenges. Where do you host it, domain name, DNS entries, security patches, backups, recoveries, etc… these are all operational matters, most developers may provide these services to you, as their business plan will be based on recurring support revenue after delivering the website. Sometimes this can become an issue, especially when it comes to updating the website with content. If your website is static then it will not serve much purpose, but if you have an ecommerce website then you need to upload the products.

Usually you will be given a management interface to upload the products, and you the business owner has to do this. The developer can do it, but will charge for their time and that will be expensive, so the responsibility will lie with you, and again most business owners are busy with limited time, and will not be able to keep the website updated. They may be active on social media, telephone calls, other marketplaces, emails etc… and to then fit in and find more time to manage a website may be too much, this can also be a common reason why an online strategy will fail. It is very time consuming, similar to a traditional store, you may not have physical stores, but you have other challenges that you need to overcome and that takes a lot of effort.

If you have your products in a POS system or some other software, it may be possible to integrate with the software so the online product uploading can be automatic, this will cost you but also if you have a basic small/old software it may not be an option, you may be able to export your products in a CSV format (excel sheet) and import them into your system. The common issue you may find regardless of having to do it manually, CSV or API is that you do not have the data, you don’t have high quality images or good descriptions of your products and as the purchaser doesn’t have access to the physical product, the images and description are absolutely critical, get this wrong and you will not sell anything.

Let us say make past this 3rd challenge too, and get your products online. Now you sit back and relax, the answer is no, now you need to let your purchasers and customers know you are online, you need to market. This is similar to normal marketing, but you may want to focus on online marketing because that is where your customers are. This can be expensive, especially in the initial stages when you are not generating any revenue from the site. You also need to think about SEO, otherwise you could end up spending much more for the same marketing effect then if you had employed a good SEO strategy.

These are the main areas where an online stores/ecommerce fails :

1. Incorrect design specification
2. Maintenance and ongoing costs
3. Products/descriptions and content upload and keeping it updated
4. Marketing your website

Well, do you still want to develop your own website ? What are your options ?

To answer that you need to checkout our next blog on websites vs market places.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

If you would like to have an online store go to bizibi and signup here.

There are so many opportunities available to run an advance business on internet, whether it is about prospects interaction their reach or even their security.

In order to avoid influential data gathering, some of the individuals and developers have sorted out impactful ways. Therefore, it is an imperative thing to understand that there are so many VPNs advantages of different types that we can get with internet proxies. It is important for digital marketing agencies in Trinidad and Tobago to be aware of this.

Introduction to Proxies

At its core, there are so many correspondences in the functionality of internet proxies, which makes them a friend of businesses. Also, it is interesting to know about internet proxies, like what are these actually?

The performance of internet proxies is more like an added layer of security. It indicates that whatever exits or enters the business’s web space, is being directed using the proxy. We can consider it as a gatehouse. The proxy does not let every visitor use your website via IP address of the system; instead it creates a mask over everything that comes in between.

To execute these technical tasks, the first thing that gets done is internet traffic. In this regard, the one who does internet surfing would be you. By creating its own IP address, the true IP address of yours gets proxy masked.

The very clear advantage of inter proxy can be considered the security and safety while using the web. Moreover, it is not limited to this particular advantage; it has a lot more features to surprise with.

Once you get used to the elementary level, then you can make a choice between IPv6 proxy and IPv4 proxy. There are some semi-dedicated options comes with IPv4, which are rotating and dedicated.

 Also Learn About: FAQ Page Creation for SaaS Product

While on the other hand, automatic replacement and cycling gets difficult while using the proxy IPv6. Also the proxy may take more time in getting changes is IPv6, in comparison with the proxy IPv4.

5 Ways for Marketing Manager to Take Advantage from Proxies

In this blog, we have catered some important points that can make you understand more precisely the advantages of proxies if incorporated in your business’s marketing strategies. We anticipate that these points will make you understand whether the proxies are fine choice or not for the growth of your business.

1. Gather the Useful Information

If you are a professional of marketing then you are already familiar with information’s important that it is sheer a priceless asset. Whatever technical activities happen, there are solid grounds of information behind the, through which your business plan can come up. Did you ever wonder like how your specific needs get catered by some websites? There could be many of these, such as:

• Recently searched products by you
• Your area or region’s famous products
• Your area or region’s intended products

The browsing has become easy using the website, and ultimately you get what you have been looking for, even faster.

Regrettably, there are chances that your attempts get blocked while trying to gather useful information from the customers. There are many networks and servers with enabled sets of protocol to avoid information access by crawlers of data. This blocking activity is judged by a quick digital audit, in which it is analyzed that which IP address is performing shadily and then it straight away gets blocked.

This problem can be overcome through cycling or creation of IP addresses specifically for the crawlers. It is because the crawlers have power to access the required information from the site you want fearlessly and with getting blocked.

If you are good at luck and find the correct proxy provider then you can also be given access to get information from many other proxy servers. It means that you will be able to spend on the prospects that you would choose by yourself, even the website will be of your choice.

• Internet Navigation Anonymously

Often, a tiny sneak peak is mandatory. While doing the research, it then happens a lot in businesses. It does not happened because of any sever or suspicious activities by it might happened because of the savvy features of websites.

Know More About: Learn to Create a Video Landing Page for More Conversions

Most of the times the IP addresses are being noted by the websites itself. A relevant and recent example of such could be shoe stores i.e. have you ever noticed how top notch shoe brands make per customer purchase limited?

• Optimized Speed of Page

Spacing out the website data, is an ability that a business gets though internet proxies. Over different servers, the partition of the site gets placed by the webmaster through cloud’s access. This process is known as peering.

The huge benefit of it is, you can host more users on your website, because different servers would be providing additional bandwidth.

Before selecting the proxy server for your business, it is important to keep in mind that server with unlimited bandwidth are the best servers. The efficiency of site increases with optimized speed if the speeds of all efficient networks combined, since you get the permission to boost these important elements.

• Overcome the Challenge of Code Restrictions

If we talk about the restrictions, then it could be a usual observance that websites tend to avoid users to grant them access coming from other regions to your website. This is the same strategy that Netflix follows and also your competitors.

By making use of some proxy services which are professionals in nature, only then the users can access the websites being hosted in other proper regions. If you want to get an access of website that is only operation in Sweden, no need to worry about it, you only need to select a profession Sweden proxy server then you will be able to access the website right away.

Also, it is important that the proxy providers that you have selected must be professional enough to grant you that region’s full support. You must have a professional by your side for the time when you need someone’s assistance.

• Make Security a Priority

In any business, there should be a top priority of security. The activities that are being performed in your business and other confidential data could be saved on your website. And above all, the information of your prospects will definitely be saved there in database.

Whatever the case is, security of the data should be the priority in every business. These days there are so many privacy invaders present over the internet, these invaders attack can be of following types:

• Counterfeit Schemes
• Phishing Scams
• Malware Attacks

All the above mentioned scams and attacks are definitely harmful for the businesses. In fact, if any of these scams get successful in invading your business’s security then your business could see very bad experience of lifetime as such things can severely affect the development of brand in not time that had built in years.

Therefore, you need to have a proxy provider who is professional and complete every processes carefully and safely.

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• Proxy Providers Selection Criteria

Few points can be considered while choosing an appropriate proxy provider who actually is a professional. Below are those points to be considered:

• Capability
  The proxy provider should have real skills to prove by securing the website, despite of just bragging about it.
• Expertise

That professional should have good rotation in current market or industry and commits the fastest service time.

• Customer Support

They should be able to solve the issue at run time, whenever required.

• Conclusion

Summing up the detailed article, below are the benefits that you can get by having a professional proxy provider:

• Addition of Security Layer
• Page Speed Optimization
• Overcome the Challenge of Code Restrictions
• Internet Navigation Anonymously
• Gather the Useful Information

While dealing the above proxies separately, you need to be careful which is best for your business. You can benefits in many ways by wisely using proxies.

bizibi is a full turnkey solution for an ecommerce platform purely focused to the Trinidad and Tobago market. A feature rich multivendor platform that includes delivery and payments as well as a fully powerful marketing engine that not only generates a whole portfolio of marketing material for you, but also with its integration with social media we can also deliver it to your audience.

If you would like to have an online store go to bizibi and signup here.