Introduction

Although customer experience is often confused with customer service, they are not the same. Customer experience refers to the journey a customer takes from their first interaction with your brand to completing a transaction at the end while customer service is how your brand supports customers if they get stuck or need help at any point.

Generally, customer experience looks at how the customer is able to navigate from the on-boarding process and how they feel at every point. Technology can help improve customer satisfaction, streamline processes, and foster stronger customer relationships.

The experience your customers have is almost as important as the product or service they’re buying, and in these modern days, people need not do too much thinking or leg-work themselves; they expect brands to make things as easy as possible for them. And that is made possible for brands with the use of outstanding technology. Below are several ways in which technology can be leveraged to enhance customer experiences:

1. Automated Chatbot and Virtual Assistant Services for Customers: Where possible, you should take steps to provide as much self-help as possible for customers, most especially customers who want to minimize contact with other humans where possible. Setting up Chatbot, FAQs, and virtual assistants on your website and messaging App can provide instant responses to customers’ queries, offer support around the clock, and free up human agents for more complex tasks.

2. Personalized recommendations for customers: Use data analytics and AI to understand customer preferences and behaviors, thereby making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for, and with the information, you can personalize marketing messages, product recommendations, and user interfaces. This will make customers feel valued and understood and will be held in high regard.

3. Integrated Self-Service Portals: They help to prevent downtime by keeping relevant customer data readily accessible and stored in a manageable way for customers to access account information, make changes, track orders, and find answers to common questions. This empowers customers to resolve issues on their own terms.

4. Data Analytics: You can use customer data to identify trends, preferences, and pain points. This information can guide product development, marketing strategies, and customer support improvements. Data is one of the most valuable tools you have to improve every aspect of your business, including customer experience.

5. Virtual Events and Webinars: Hosting online events and webinars to engage with customers, share knowledge, conduct training sessions, and promote products or services. Through screen sharing, you can give live product demonstrations and guidance to customers in real-time, providing them with a personalized and intuitive experience. Virtual events can be cost-effective and reach a global audience.

6. Feedback Surveys: The most valuable way you can improve customer experience is by asking your customers directly for feedback. Use technology to collect feedback from customers through surveys, social media monitoring, and online reviews. Analyze this feedback to make continuous improvements.

7. Cybersecurity Measures: Customers need to know that their personal information is safe with your brand. To protect customer data and build trust, invest in robust cybersecurity.

Conclusion

By maximizing these technologies, businesses can create a more convenient, efficient, and personalized experience for their customers, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

Introduction

Businesses today need to be agile, leveraging digital marketing strategies to meet the changing needs of customers, capture their attention and ultimately drive growth. At the core of any successful digital marketing strategy lies the bridge of the gap between what consumers want and what businesses deliver. Another critical facet of digital marketing lies in building a robust online presence.

Whether you are a small startup or an established enterprise, the power of digital marketing can significantly impact your growth path. We would dig into major digital marketing strategies that can help businesses reach new heights, including customer acquisition, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media marketing.

1. Utilizing Search Engine Optimization

One of the places that your users look for you is on a search engine and the best way to be in their faces is by optimizing your business to be search engine friendly. Search Engine Optimization involves adding as many keywords, phrases and content that better describe your business to your website, blog or social media posts to improve your services’ searchability. Doing this helps to attract organic traffic, provide value to your customers and establish your brand as an authority in your business. SEO is the foundation of digital marketing and it makes use of tools such as Keyword Research. While you optimize your SEO, ensure to also post quality contents that provides value to your users when they finally find you.

2. Build a strong online presence

With responsive designs, engaging content and seamless user experience, a compelling online presence can be achieved for successful digital marketing strategy thereby, enhancing business growth. Your website is often the first point of contact for potential customers hence it is essential to update it regularly with high quality relevant contents that educates and informs your audience.

Other media to ensure online presence are active social media accounts and blog posts. Additionally, you can engage an influencer or other blogs to do a post for you on their pages. That way, you’ll be leveraging their audience for more reach and traffic to your business.

3. Social Media Marketing

This offers a platform to engage with your customers in real-time, gather feedback and build a community around your brand. It provides you an opportunity to build brand awareness and drive customer acquisition, with major keys like; Platform selection, Consistent Branding and Engagement. Moreover, staying attuned to evolving market trends and technology advancements allow business to adapt their strategies and stay ahead of the curve. The advantages of marketing on social media cannot be overemphasized as it offers a better platform that you can record metrics and better target the kind of customers you need and what time of the day they are most active for maximum reach.

4. Email Marketing

Another way to grow your business the right way is by email marketing. Email marketing involves compiling constantly engaging your existing customers by sending regular newsletters to educate them and solve their common challenges. This way, you are able to build brand competence that will in-turn make them come back for more service/product and increase customer retention. On the other hand, you can also reach out to new users you gather from your social media accounts or online awareness and market to them via emails. These new users can further turn into customers.

Email Marketing is cheaper and more effective that other forms of marketing as you can get some email sending platforms that will allow you send thousands of emails for free. Emails also lets users take their time to go through your content as it is delivered in their emails.

5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

This digital marketing strategy involves submitting the advert of your product or service to an agency and subscribing to pay for every click a user makes on your advert, reason it is called Pay-Per-Click. This way, your adverts are given extra boosts on thousands of websites and search engines. It is also given priority of appearing at the top of search engine searches as long as the specified keywords match.

Some of the PPC platforms you can submit your adverts to are: Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Bing Ads etc.

Your PPC adverts can also be targeted based on user segment, location, keywords and age of customers. In this type of marketing, the more money you’re pay per click will determine how much appearance your advert is given on these websites.

Conclusion

The primary goal of digital marketing is to acquire and retain customers. Various strategies to tap into consumer insights are: Data analytics, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, to discern customer behavior preference and needs. Continuously monitoring and analyzing your digital marketing efforts are sure ways to build business growth.

For businesses, digital marketing remains the foremost bedrock for growth and success. The digital landscape is a dynamic entity, so stay up to date with industry trends and not just implementing these strategies but continually refining and assessing them for long term success.

Thank you for reading thus far. Reach out to us for your technologies needs

We are a digital technology service provider that transforms dreams into tech-driven realities. Our services include:

• Website Design and Development
• Software Development
• Mobile application development
• Solar, Inverter and Batteries sales and installation
• Digital Marketing
• IT Consultancy and Training
• CCTV Installation

Contact us via our Website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Email

Following the current lockdown due to Corona Virus pandemic, it has become necessary for everyone to learn a new skill and add to their knowledge base.

We have curated a couple of free online courses you can learn. Some of these courses come with certifications.

They vary in different fields namely:

• Programming
• Photography
• Web Development
• AWS
• Machine Learning
• Business Development
• IT Learning
• User Experience
• Content Marketing

… and more

FREE Online Courses:

• Become an Android Developer from Scratch by Udemy
• Web Applications from Everybody by Coursera
• Content Marketing by Hubspot Academy
• Machine Learning by Coursera
• Google Analytics by Google
• Email Marketing by Hubspot Academy
• AWS Concept by Udemy
• Business Foundation Specialization by Coursera
• Management Leadership by Saylor Academy
• Excel Skills for Business Specialization by Coursera
• Artificial Intelligence for Everyone by Coursera
• Principles of Marketing by Saylor Academy
• C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners by Microsoft
• Introduction to Photography by Udemy
• Introduction to Data Science by Alison
• Google IT Support for Professional Certificate by Coursera
• Digital Marketing Specialization by Coursera
• Business Statistics and Analysis Specialization by Coursera
• Starting an Online Business by Oxford Home Study
• Python for Everybody by Coursera

Feel free to take any of the above courses and finish each of them. Imbibe the knowledge gained and make use of them.

Share this post with your friends and family too.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook

It is no news that most blogs and few websites are making use of the Wordpress platform, hence the need to write this post to enlighten users of the risk and take proper actions in protecting their online assets.

Because Wordpress is open-source (meaning its codebase is free and open to anyone and everyone who wants to access it), it become vulnerable to hackers.

The point is: no one wants their website/blog to be hacked.

But the good news is: There are various ways to ensure your online website (built on wordpress) is secure. Here are a few but important steps to take to ensure online safety.

1. Secure the entry-point of your backend — Your Login

For optimum protection to your site’s content, plugins, and codes, there is a free WordPress plugin that can ensure this. It is called iThemes Security (Formerly Better WP Security). It currently has over 800,000+ installs. You can use it for free, and if there are additional Pro features you want, you can pay for the Pro version. iThemes plugin does the following:

• Scan your site to instantly report where vulnerabilities exist and fixes them in seconds
• Prevents brute force attacks by banning hosts and users with too many invalid login attempts
• Strengthens server security
• Enforces strong passwords for all accounts of a configurable minimum role
• Detects and blocks numerous attacks to your filesystem and database

…and many more

2. Change your default Admin Login URL

By default, to login to a wordpress admin backend, you visit <yourSiteDomain>/wp-admin. All WordPress users (including hackers) know this and it makes it easier to gain access using SQL injection or other means.

Careful study of the iThemes plugin can help you change this default URL.

Another means of changing this URL is using the .htaccess file. This is a file at the root of your site’s FTP. It contains configuration settings for your website.

3. Change Your Password Frequently

Most sites say this and its effective. Changing your password frequently ensures a level of security. It prevents people with current access to it to be banned out after a while. Prolonged access is dangerous.

4. Secure Your Password and Do not Write It Down

We always tell people this. Never ever write down your password. The human brain is enough to recollect over a thousand passwords (if not more). If you must coin your password, replace letters looking like numbers with numbers. E.g Use “Nomb3rz” instead of “numbers”. You can also include special characters like dot, comma, !, #, $, ^, & and so on.

5. Use SSL to secure Your Site

There is no harm in installing a Secure Socket Layer on your website. This ensures that all queries sent to the server and responses are encrypted, thereby making it difficult to decrypt when intercepted.

Contact your website administrator or provider for this solutions. It might cost you a few cash but its worth the security.

6. Backup Your Site Regularly

Backup is good. It gives you some fresh air when you think you have lost all your content either mistakenly or as a result of attack. Some wordpress plugins you can use to ensure regular backup are: VaultPress, BlogVault and Backup Buddy. What you really need to backup is your database as this is where most of your site’s content are stored.

7. Disable Directory Listing

If the index file of a directory on your website is missing and that directory is visited in the browser, it lists all the files and folders inside that directory. This is risky. To ensure this does not happen, you need to write/add a single of code to your .htaccess file. Here is the line:

Options All -Indexes

It is advisable to place the .htaccess file in the root of your website. This ensures folder-deep level of security. It takes effects in all folders and sub-folders on the entire website.

Conclusion

The issue of security cannot be over-emphasized. Security is a continuous process. Ensure to always keep your website, cpanel, webmail and other accounts passwords secret. Should you suspect your password has been compromised, change it immediately.

Dont hesitate to contact us for further guides and if you would like us to implement this for you.

We offer other services like mobile application development and support services.