How to Detect the Pain Points of Your Blog Visitors

Problem plus solution equals sales. The math never lies.

As sellers of innovative products and services, we depend on the challenges our customers face every day – be that a business productivity issue or sticky fingers while slicing a watermelon.

Without these nuisances big and small, we wouldn’t be able to push the envelope of product design, nor to break exciting new grounds of quality service. We’d be stuck in existing markets.

Every person has problems that need solving, including your blog visitors.

Offer them the most viable solution, and they’ll keep returning for good. But, how do you know what to offer if you don’t know what they need? By learning to pinpoint their pain points, of course.

Though this may be easier said than done, there are effective techniques for detecting your visitors’ problems you can employ right now.

Take notes, for they might mean the difference between bouncing and staying.

Spend Some Time in Your Blog Visitor’s Shoes

Whether you’re blogging to increase your sales or to boost your influence, you certainly have some kind of an idea about who your audience is and what they like to read.

If you’re a businessman, this notion translates to ideal buyer personas. If you’re not, you should learn to create these audience profiles too.

In short, an ideal buyer persona is a “semi-functional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers”.

You’re not blogging to sell but to influence people? This strategy can help you attract more followers if you perceive them as buyers of your ideas, thoughts, and practical know-how.

(In one way or another, all successful bloggers monetize on their writing.)

If you get to know their age, level of education, professional background, and online behavior, you can easily determine their goals, objectives, and biggest challenges. Just put yourself in their shoes and learn to think as they do.

Conduct a Research to Discover Typical Pain Points

Let’s say you’re blogging about project management techniques and tools.
That’s not exactly a topic for kids and elderly, isn’t it? Common sense dictates that the audience interested in this subject would be aged 20-55, employed, and tech-savvy.

Now you need to narrow this down by defining their following characteristics:

Interests
Hobbies
Values
Attitudes
Lifestyles

Start with a person you know who fits this profile and then do some snooping around on social media to discover more people similar to them. Focus on their Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

With some luck, this research will lead you to other popular project management blogs – spend some time analyzing your competition and what they have to offer to their followers.

This will give you invaluable insight into pain points you still haven’t addressed.

Available resources such as Google Trends and Quantcast can also be of help. They collect data on current trends and customer interests and offer these insights for free.

After all this, you should have a general idea of what your target audience needs.

Engage Your Visitors in a Spontaneous Conversation

This is as much information as you can get without approaching your visitors directly.

Not only is it possible to determine their pain points by asking them about their problems but this is actually the only truly effective technique you can employ.

Why do research then, you ask?

Without any idea of who your blog visitors are, you won’t be able to approach them in a way that would make them want to share their problems and preferred solutions.

Now that you know the right way to address them, engage them in a spontaneous conversation using an on-site live chat tool. You can do this as soon as they arrive at your landing page.

A simple “Hello, how can I help you?” can go a long way in determining their pain points.

When you’re blogging to sell products and services, live chat can help you learn more about your visitors’ problems before they make a purchase and after they’ve converted into paying customers.

Send them a Survey Using Your Email Subscription List

If you still don’t have an email subscription form on your blog, install one now. That way, you’ll be able to collect email addresses of people who are interested in what you have to say and approach them with a survey that will reveal more about their problems.

Of course, you’ll need to ask them the right questions too.

The questions you’ll ask will depend on what you want to find out. They can be in regard to your blog visitors’ reading habits or in direct relation to your blog offer.

The main idea behind this strategy is to learn how satisfied your visitors are with your blog offer, what else would they want to read about, and what invention would help them the most.

Create a Quiz to Learn About Their Habits and Interests

Similar to surveys, quizzes work even better when it comes to encouraging followers’ feedback. Their biggest advantage is that they don’t rely on any external channel for distribution.

Instead of using email, you can deploy quizzes right on your blog.

Your quiz questions can be more or less the same as your survey questions, though you can make them even more engaging by adding images, presentations, and videos.

Consider BuzzFeed quizzes, for an example.

They may appear as aimless entertainment (“What Type of Burger Are You?” or “Which Celeb Do You Share an Astrological Sign With?”), but they generate a lot of data simply by being fun.

Besides, powerful quiz creator software can help you not only boost your on-site engagement but also analyze your visitors’ personalities, habits, and interests.

Even if a quiz doesn’t reveal their pain points (and there’s no reason it shouldn’t), it will still provide you with all the necessary information for determining their problems yourself.

Conclusion

Every person has problems that need solving, including your blog visitors.

Luckily for you, every person would gladly reveal their pain points if they were promised a solution in return. Your only task is to live up to your promise and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Until then, allow yourself to experience the pain your followers are experiencing.

Dive into your research and start walking in their shoes.

And, when everything else fails, simply ask them.

Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing for the consumer market in the areas of product research and marketing using quizzes and surveys. Having a knack for writing and an editorial mind-set, He is an expert researcher at a brand that’s known for creating delightfully smart tools such as ProProfs Quiz Maker

Original post: How to Detect the Pain Points of Your Blog Visitors

This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com

Business Mistakes to avoid as a blogger and a freelancer

How often do you find yourself stuck in an unwanted business situation?

Like, sending an accurate bill seems tough?

Getting unpaid for the hours you spent on the project but could not track?

These and many more business problems are common when you’ve just entered the freelance and blogging business.

Half of the time you’re struggling to put your business into the place than actually curating something creative.

As a freelancer you must have found out that clients do overlook or tend to take undue advantage of your work.

Most freelancers and blogger complain of being underpaid for their talents. Such forum discussions are common and people have different opinions to it. Some ask you avoid working with such people again. Whereas, others ask for legal actions.

But do you realise, all such incidents you would have easily skipped if you have avoided some business mistakes. In your conscious call of being highly professional with your clients, some holes were left uncovered unconsciously.

Let us have a look at the most common business mistakes that freelancers and bloggers commit without realising. And how you can intelligently avoid them:

Never take too many projects at the same time!
Earning money is a brilliant idea. And, when you see plenty of cash flowing in, you would want to grab all of it. But, taking too many projects at the same time will overfill your table leading to consequences later on. You will miss the deadlines, compromise with quality and miss details.
Hampering your business and reputation, ultimately! Taking up too many projects is a bad idea.

Never give false hopes.

Falls under your umbrella or no? Convey clearly! Just in order to grab a project giving out false hopes is a big no no. for example: if you’re a freelance content writer, tell only your client about your capabilities as a content writer. Do not indulge into their graphic designing requests too. That is not your niche. Avoid wasting your own and client’s time later in the project.

Do not get underpaid!

Nobody in the business can pay you less that your caliber until you allow them to take undue advantage. Many bloggers in the beginning just give their business a kickstart offer some of their best talents at dirt cheap prices. Avoid that strictly! Research the market well, check standard prices, set your charges and then negotiate.

It is important to value your activities and time as much you value your clients.

One man army- bad idea!

Are you planning to draw the entire line from the dot by yourself? Bad idea! A project has various tasks related to it. As a single army you cannot do all of it together. Just like yourself, contact other freelancers and outsource some of the work. This way you would be able to complete the task as well as earn some additional projects too.

Overlooking professionalism!
Staying professional with your business is a conscious call. Big or small, multi-staffed or a freelancer, realising the power of professionalism in the business can turn tables.

People who are more professional can never be taken for granted. Make sure your communications are professional, mails are well read, you invoice them right and have set methods of payment. To easily achieve all of this together opt for an invoicing software for freelancers. It is most basic need for any business. The best invoicing software for freelancers will fulfill all of your business needs under one umbrella, you can create professional looking invoices with pre-designed templates, send it to clients via mail, and accept payments online. Simple, quick and professional. Go, give it a try!

Don’t get hyper!
Do not get hyper if the client demands changes again and again. Try and creating a perfect masterpieces as per their desires. But, if you still feel the demands are getting bit irrational call, meet and talk them over the project calmly. Getting super hyper for pitty situations is not the right kind of attitude. Communication is the key! Remember always!

Never Miss Deadlines.
While you’re doing all of the hard work to keep your client happy and get paid superfast, make sure you’re never laid back from your end. Never miss the deadline that you have decided to complete the projects. As missing deadlines lead to frustration and delays and consequences later on.

It is okay to skip deadlines once or twice because of changes, but such incidents should never be repeated.

Not keeping a clear track of project!
Time is money! Remember to track time efficiently if, you want to get paid accurately. Use the same invoicing software for freelancers to track time and bill your client. It is easy, isn’t it?

Hope you’ve read that well. A good businessman is the one who follows lessons by heart.

I am Veronika Tandon, Sr. Business Consultant for Invoicera. It is the world’s leading online invoice software with a userbase of more than 3 millions. Invoicera has always been chosen by businesses all over the world because of its distinct features and value added services. Connect with @invoicera on Twitter.

Original post: Business Mistakes to avoid as a blogger and a freelancer

This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com

9 Steps to Optimize Images for SEO

Images are crucial to ensuring that your content is more accessible, attractive, and engaging to users, but they're equally important in terms of SEO. Follow these nine steps to make progress with your image optimization. Continue reading →

The post 9 Steps to Optimize Images for SEO appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

5 Powerful Push Notification Marketing Strategies You Probably Aren’t Using

Push notifications have become a common phenomenon for everyone with a smartphone, smartwatch or computer. You don’t need to know about them to receive one. If you are connected to the internet, you will receive a push notification every other minute from one of the apps installed on your smartphone or through a website browser.

However, despite this prominence, superior ability to penetrate a deeper section, and grander options for personalization, some marketers don’t get the precise ROI. Their investments on luxurious push notification services fail to even make up for the service rentals.

For instance, consider the following push alert screaming out an overwhelming deal on the Men’s fashion.

Now, if this limited time offer comes at the stroke of midnight, answer the following questions related to this particular event:

• How many people do you think would actually see this alert at the right time?
• How many do you think would be interested in checking it out when it’s clearly interrupting their good night sleep?
• What about those subscribers who have blocked notifications on mobile but have them allowed on computer browsers?

That’s the nucleus of the matter. If we see how push notifications work, despite having quite tempting and great deals, many of them fail to get the deserving attention. Either they don’t make it on time, or don’t get delivered to the right device. This notification clearly deserves immediate action, but due to wrong timing, it fails to get that attention, not only on mobile phones but also on computer web browsers.

You must understand that, if people have opted-in to receive the notifications, they are actually interested in what you offer. You have to plan a little to make things, rightly timed, relevant to specific people, and finally get those relevant things delivered to the appropriate people only.

This article will discuss examples of this in practice as well as several push notification marketing strategies that many marketers aren’t using. By missing these strategies, they are missing the array of opportunities that push marketing holds.

1. You are not planning for getting opt-ins

This is how push notifications work. You cannot deliver push messages unless users subscribe to them from your website or mobile app. Specifically, for website-based web push notifications, you need to ask every visitor to subscribe to your alerts.

Luckily, Android users subscribe to app-based push alerts by default when they install an app. However, iOS apps don’t get this liberty. They need to manually ask every user right after the app-install to subscribe to the alerts.

Now here is the thing:

• Despite subscribing to your push alerts by default, the Android app users can easily unsubscribe whenever they want.
• The iOS users can do the same, even after manual opt-in post-app-install, and
• Same goes for web push notifications subscribers.

It’s not easy to get opt-ins, and more complex is retaining the subscribers.

You need a plan of action that does not only entice the users to opt-in but also encourages them to stay subscribed. The only way to do that is getting opt-ins from a relevant audience.

How do you get opt-ins?

Except for app-based Android push notifications, it is very tricky to get opt-ins. A marketer with some beginner-level knowledge would simply choose to trigger the following boxes to get the opt-in:

However, if you are not a rookie, you would know that people don’t want notifications. They want information. The more they are informed of the consequences of making a choice, the more they would be encouraged to opt-in or opt-out, based on their comprehension of the choices.

If you are merely asking – “XYZ wants to send you notifications- Block or Allow”, it’s purely based on luck to get the opt-in. A notification could be anything. It could be a piece of relevant information or not relevant at all.

The best way to do this is customizing an opt-in box to make it as informative as possible. While designing the box, make sure that it is informing the potential subscriber about the consequences of making each of the two choices. Explain to them about the type of information they would receive if they allow the same.

See this opt-in box for a blog that posts regular health tips:

It offers a clear comprehension of what users would get after opting-in and what they would miss if they block the same. This tweak is not limited to health tips, depending on your domain, you can come up with many such fancy opt-in box ideas.

For example, if you own a webshop, one of the best eCommerce marketing ideas would be sending transactional as well as engagement push notifications. Inform your users about this with a notification alert like this:

Text: “We keep our users posted about latest offers and purchase details through push notifications”

Choices: “Keep me informed”; “Not Required”

Bottom line: This tweak is so fundamental that a majority of marketers miss it, considering as not very crucial. In fact, while writing this point, I was looking for some websites to show you guys as an example, but hardly found one. Most of the websites are still stuck with the generic opt-in boxes.

In other words, it is the best opportunity to make your notifications unique and stand out from the rest.

2. You are not planning for preference and behavior-based notifications

Many marketers track in-app behaviors of the users to trigger corresponding alerts. No doubt behavior-based triggering is crucial and it helps you to automate the notifications without manual intervention. However, sometimes, these automatically triggered alerts get insanely frequent. Moreover, they are one-sided in nature – from a business point of view. Mostly, they surprise the users.

Behavioral targeting is decisive for re-marketing and app-engagement goals but not as efficient when you rely entirely on them for all categories of information. In a survey by Localytics, 58% of people said that behavior-based notifications are harassing, annoying and make them feel nervous. On the other hand, 49% admitted that preference-based alerts are useful and they caused them to use an app more.

The bottom line is, if you are entirely relying on automated push alerts, 58% of your push alerts are likely being ignored by your subscribers. Push notifications favor markers only when they let the users make an informed choice. Right from the opt-in box to the extent of having a choice about which notification to receive makes your notifications relevant and less-intrusive.

For Instance, a user chooses to discontinue watching a movie on Netflix, as he or she did not like it. Now if Netflix sends its popular “resume watching “notification to this user it would only irritate him/her. The automation cannot judge if the movie session was interrupted because of circumstances or willingly discontinued due to disliking.

The gist is, stop over utilizing behavior-based alerts and give some attention to preference-based alerts too. Let your subscribers have control of what type of alerts they want to receive and what to block. For example, if you are a news app, you can let your users select the categories or topics of notification they wish to stay informed about. Eg- sports, politics, science, or anything else.

See how Facebook gives in-app options to let users choose which notification to receive and which to block. Doing so encourages users to stop receiving certain notifications without blocking the whole Facebook alerts in one go.

3. You are not planning for geo-fencing with push notifications

Location-based alerts are the next most popular category after preference-based notifications. The problem is, not every business is suitable for utilizing them. However, if you think there is any chance of deploying these alerts with your business, go for it.

Traditionally, marketers believe that geo-fencing is applicable only when your business is available in physical locations. For example, you might geo-fence your physical retail store and trigger offers and discounts to every subscriber entered in the fenced area.

However, in my opinion, even a business without physical establishments can equally utilize geo-fencing to engage their users. You just have to consider two things:

• Use geo sensing to track the real-time location of the subscribers to send alerts relevant to people in that particular location only.
• Use geo-fencing of popular physical areas to send relevant alerts to engage the users and boost app retention.

This is how Uber utilizes the first case to send location-based offers in only the areas where they are applicable. This also helps them to avoid irritating users with irrelevant alerts. Just imagine the scene if this offer was meant for users in New York, but would have been also sent to Uber users in London.

Image Source

Now, see this amazing example of how a travel app geo-fences an Airport without having a physical outlet there. It is engaging this particular user with a piece of important information. Would this user want to block the notifications like this?

Image Source

4. You are not planning for the best time to trigger marketing alerts

Push marketing is not just about delivering alerts but also aimed at encouraging conversions or engagement-oriented actions. If not timed properly, readers may simply see your alert and clear them out from the notification board without acting on it.

We talked about this at the very beginning of the article. We saw how a wrongly timed notification is of no use. They don’t bring any action and return on your investment. To make sure they are doing what they are meant to, it is crucial to trigger them at a perfect time and in perfect frequency.

The perfect time to trigger

You might have users from different time-zones. Based on each time-zone, different users engage with your alerts at different times. So the first thing you need to consider is the time-zones of your subscribers. Hence, do not just trigger a single alert to all of your subscribers.

Second, even if the users fall under the same time-zone, you must consider the correct time-frame. For example, triggering a notification at mid-night will not perform as well as the same notification would have performed in the daytime.

Third, different types of notifications are meant to be sent in different time-frames. For example, if you are a blogger who posts daily articles on health topics, you might want to engage your readers with daily health tips. The perfect time to send such alerts is the morning time when people love reading news and other stuff. Same goes for a news and beauty tips app.

Fourth, bombardment of frequent notifications is likewise not a bright idea. Make sure to keep a substantial time-gap between two notifications to give your users enough time for thinking and reacting on your previous alerts. Irritating them with insanely frequent alerts will only encourage aggressive opt-outs.

Bottom line: These things should be understood and don’t demand hardcore stats to prove the best time-frames to send relevant alerts. However, on the marketing land blog, they have posted one detailed article about research from Localytics on the ‘best time to send push notifications’. You can check it out.

5. You are not doing audience research and segmenting subscribers

To make your notification perform exceptionally, relevancy is the key to success. And the best way to do that is by segmenting subscribers in distinctive groups based on certain aspects. You can create groups on the grounds of:

• Time zones
• Geo-location in real-time
• Purchase history
• Browsing behavior
• Browser type: Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc.
• Device type: Desktop web browsers, mobile browsers, mobile apps, TV apps etc.
• Traffic source: Direct or Referred traffic
• Visitor’s type: Frequent or inactive

You can target users on different types of devices with different push notifications too:

• Send in-app alerts to app users
• Trigger web push alerts to both Mobile and Desktop users
• Target Chrome users with dedicated buttons, which are available only in Chrome push notifications

You can also segment users based on the type of notifications to feed them information such as:

• Live scores
• A news flash
• Price drop of a product
• Weather forecast
• Change in flight schedule
• New Episode uploaded etc.

Ultimately, you can even set different frequencies of alerts for every kind. For example:

• You can send news alerts more frequently than a discount alert.
• You can fix a time to send daily news, health tips, or blog post alerts.
• You can segment certain alerts, which can be sent at any time of the day or night. For example, an alert for product shipment status, or an alert for deductions from their digital wallet. These are transactional alerts and should be delivered in real-time.

Wrapping up

Be it a transactional, engagement, behavioral, preference, or location-based alert, users appreciate the information that is relevant and interesting for them.

Always get to know your audience, understand their pain points, and trigger notifications that offer them a solution.

Get a push notifications software that allows you to do the stuff mentioned in this article. Doing so actively involves understanding what users want to see and what is meaningful to them.

Ultimately, it should be something that binds utility for the users with your marketing goals. This is how push notifications work.

Guest author: Marry Ann is a branding consultant for PushMaze, a service that lets you send trackable push notifications for users. She mainly passionate about building brands in all aspect of online marketing. Find her on Quora, Twitter orLinkedIn

The post 5 Powerful Push Notification Marketing Strategies You Probably Aren’t Using appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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How to Write Headlines That Get Your Brand What It Wants [Checklist]

Counting headlines is an antiquated skill. But the sentiment should live on: Writing a headline that best fits its environment is what makes it great. Follow this checklist for headlines that work for your audience and your brand. Continue reading →

The post How to Write Headlines That Get Your Brand What It Wants [Checklist] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

The Benefits of Cloud-hosted Log Management

Your application isn’t working the way it should. The first thing you’ll want to see in such an instance is the whole bunch of application logs. The two worst issues that can face a developer at such a time are to either lack the logs or to lack a means by which they can access the logs quickly. The problem with localized logging is that it just happens on your own workstation. You may want to, from time to time, access logs from a workstation other than your own or server. That’s where a cloud-hosted log management solution comes in.

The Problems With Local Logs

Usually, your applications are saved on disk drives where you developed them. The problem is that you will often have an application that runs on a lot more than one machine. Usually, it runs on many different servers, and each of those servers will do its own logging. You will find some common issues with such logs:

-These logs are harder to access because they stretch across many different servers and sometimes many different applications, some of which are still in production

-It can be hard to find the correlation between different log statements when you want to find the ones that relate to the particular transaction you are dealing with

-It might be hard for you to search through the logs to find the data which you are looking for

-The logs may not be stored on your disk permanently but may be there for a limited time

-If you want to archive the logs for the long term, you will have to find a way to get them from the server

A cloud-hosted log management solution should be able to solve all of these problems while offering many more features. There are several benefits to working with a cloud logging service.

The Benefits of Cloud Logging

1. Searching Logs Becomes Easier
If you’ve ever tried to search log data, then you know how difficult it can get. Log data is unstructured, and plenty of useful metadata is not included in the log data. When you contract the services of a cloud logging service you get plenty of additional information in the log files, including such things as the logging level, web request details, thread hash, transaction ID, application logging, application name, environment, server name and so on. It is easy to search through all of these fields, which makes it even easier to find the kind of information you are seeking.

2. Logs Become Structured
This is a direct cause of being able to search the logs easier. When you use a cloud logging service, you can log additional data from your program code, which can be added as custom fields in log data, and you can search them after that. You could add client IDs to log actions and events that occur on the client side and many other things.

3. It’s Easier to Monitor Logs

When you contract a cloud logging service, you get all of your logs in one place. Having them in a centralized location not only makes it easier to search through the logs but also makes it easier to analyze them and find correlations between logs from different servers and applications.

Ultimately, logs are supposed to be used to give you insight into the performance of your system or application. You want to be able to perform a comprehensive analysis of the log data so that you can see little connections that will tell you even more about what is right and wrong with your system. Errors that pop up in one area may have a direct or indirect connection to errors that pop up in another seemingly unrelated area. You won’t know what that potential connection is if you don’t log your data.

4. You Track Errors in Your Application

It’s important to track all of the errors that are logged by your application. These are usually the first place to look when you want to find out what is going wrong with your application. Whether they are null references, database timeouts or whatever kind of error, they are important when it comes to finding out what is wrong with your system.

A cloud logging system will alert of all errors logged by your system and provide comprehensive reports of the same. You will know the first instance of the errors, the frequencies of their occurrences and much more. You won’t be able to know any of that by looking at the simple text files generated by your local logs.

Original post: The Benefits of Cloud-hosted Log Management

This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com

Digital Adoption 101: How To Reach Digital Marketing Nirvana With Your Business

If your business doesn’t adapt to the changes within its own industry, it’s destined to fail.

This is something we continue to see time and time again with offline businesses, that never fully make the move to online. For both B2B and B2C businesses, it’s important to make sure you aren’t just changing with industry trends and technology, but also making sure these advancements are working for you as well.

One clear observation that businesses of all types should be focusing their efforts on, is the automation of everyday tasks.

When this is done correctly, it’s almost like a ‘nirvana’ feeling for your business. However, there is actually a term for when digital tools are being used as intended and to their fullest extent – which is called ‘digital adoption‘.

With more businesses relying on automation and marketing tools to run their day to day operations, isn’t it time you did the same?

Before we get started…

If you want to reach digital nirvana with your business, you need to first know what it is and how to get there. In short, it’s the ability to look at your business and know that everything is running at max optimization and potential. This can be through marketing, lead generation, email marketing, and/or a conversion basis.

A perfect example of this would be if we were to look at our mobile devices. As bloggers, entrepreneurs and fans of technology, we pretty much use our mobile devices for everything. However, if you were to hand that same mobile device to your grandparents, they would likely just use it to make phone calls – and also probably be quite confused in the process.

From the grandparents perspective, this is the complete option of digital adoption. As a business owner or brand, you want to be using all of your technology and automation for everything it’s been created for.

While this is a very simplistic and minor example, the difference between having complete digital adoption for an enterprise level business could be the difference between several hundreds of millions of dollars.

Examples of how brands are utilizing digital adoption today

Every business wants to have the highest profit margins, productivity levels, and lowest costs, but it takes a lot of work to get there. Even if you are using the best automation and time-saving tools out there, they might not be getting used to their fullest potential or seamlessly across all platforms.

As reported by Business.com, every business has the potential to improve in all of these areas, as long as they have the following focus points in place.

1. Digital adoption training is flexible and personalized.
2. Digital adoption is a clear competitive advantage.
3. Digital adoption supports a wider audience base.
4. Digital adoption supports accelerated growth.

With all of these now in mind, we can take a look at some of the many businesses who are winning on a daily basis, thanks to the time, money, and focus they have put into the digital adoption efforts.

Amazon is always evolving

Amazon has completely changed the way shopping takes place in the world today. Not only have they knocked out thousands of retail businesses along the way, but they’ve also continued to master their business and learn from the failing competition as well.

What seems like a B2C business to the average person, is actually fully catering to the needs of B2B as well. This is both through their shopping portal at Amazon.com, and through their other wide range of services like Amazon AWS and more. Daily features and data management of Amazon include free shipping, Prime subscriptions, shared payment methods, discounts, tax payments on purchasing and much more.

With hundreds of millions of products being ordered, paid for, and shipped, Amazon must absolutely have digital adoption running through their business at all times. In fact, their business is now more automated and computer/robot driven than ever before.

Without digital adoption in place for a business the size of Amazon, their day-to-day operations and growth would simply not be attainable.

McDonald’s makes winning online/offline formula

When you look at a company like Amazon, it’s no surprise that they are using technology and automation to make a big difference. You might not think the same when seeing a localized retail-focused business like McDonald’s, but they most certainly do.

McDonald’s has been one of the most successful businesses in the world over the past century, but if they were to relax and only focus on their ‘offline’ business, they would likely fail like SEARS and Toys ‘R’ Us, who never fully took advantage of what the internet and personalized data had to offer.

A perfect example of this can be seen in consumer behavior. McDonald’s is well-known for its golden arches, drive-throughs, and getting your food pretty fast. Their menu is also small, which makes the decision process easy and fast. To speed this process up even faster, McDonald’s started to implement kiosks into their locations back in 2015.

This ultimately leads to an increase in orders, lowering employee costs and usage, and also provides the company with valuable customer behavior analytics as well.

As noted by Datum Strategy, all of this proved quite useful when McDonald’s ran a Super Bowl commercial in 2015, while also using social media to offer giveaways to their audience of customers. Being able to manage and measure the audience behavior, actions, and orders at stores while all of this was taking place was extremely important.

The effort drew over 1.2 million retweets and was just another proven example of digital adoption at it’s finest.

Under Armour fights for prime position

If you are going to jump into a competitive industry and fight for your place alongside the ranks of companies like Nike, Reebok, and Champion – you better be good at whatever it is you have to offer! Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to have Steph Curry as your brand ambassador.

It seems like just a few years ago, not many people were aware of Under Armour and what they had to offer. What’s another ‘fitness’ type of company to offer that hasn’t been done and recycled a million times over? “Connected Fitness” is the answer.

Jump forward to today, and Under Armour is now the world’s largest digital health and fitness company.

How did that happen? Digital adoption of course.

While other brands were selling shirts, shorts, and shoes, Under Armour was working on a platform that allowed them to track, analyze, and share personal health data with their customers right through their mobile devices.

This isn’t just about user stats and offering something new, it also helped Under Armour to discover new industry trends before the competition, and even before they knew what they were looking at! A perfect example of this is how the company is based in Baltimore, yet they were able to recognize a walking trend that started in Australia – all the way across the world.

Through the use of innovative technology and seamlessly integrating digital adoption into their business, Under Armour has been able to beat out the competition and launch localized marketing campaigns based on their customer stats and behaviors.

Look to the leaders of today, for the answers of tomorrow

It’s easy to look at some of the biggest brand names and businesses in the world today for innovation. After all, they seem to have an endless amount of money and resources to advance technology and get work done.

However, these same business trends can be adopted by bloggers, entrepreneurs, and brands of all sizes. You might not be working with customer data at the scale of Under Armour, or have the massive volume of orders that Amazon deals with on an hourly basis, but you are still likely working with both of these components.

Take a moment to pick from any of your favorite entrepreneurs or technology gurus and see how they have transformed the world we live in today. Jeff Bezos changed the way we shop with Amazon. Steve Jobs brought innovation to the world with Apple. And Elon Musk is changing global and outer-space travel and transportation for all of us.

The common theme among all of these entrepreneurs is that they’ve continually pushed the envelope and inspired others to do the same.

Don’t just look at these brands and leaders as mentors and organizations that have changed the world and got rich in the process. Instead, look to them as inspirational examples and for ideas on how you can implement similar methods into your own brand, business, and personal goals.

Guest author: Zac Johnson is a world-renowned blogger and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space and has helped his readers generate millions of dollars online. He shares his story and guidance at ZacJohnson.com

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