Facebook IQ has commissioned Accenture to examine the buying habits and behaviors of online shoppers in following categories: Media & Entertainment, Apparel &Accessories, Household Staples and Health, Household and Personal Care.
Research has showed that Facebook family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp) is the top source of online discovery for shoppers in all the categories surveyed. Accenture research showed that 38% of Household Staples shoppers and 37% of Media & Entertainment shoppers find new products on the Facebook family of apps. This makes Media & Entertainment shoppers 2.4x more likely to discover a product on a Facebook app than on a retailer website (37% vs 15%).
Mobile devices are also proving to be an important discovery channel, particularly in Household Staples, Media & Entertainment and Apparel & Accessories. Pretty big percentage of shoppers dicover new products on their smartphones or tablet (38% of Household Staple shoppers, 35% of Media and Entertainment shoppers and 33% of Apparel & Accessories shopers). Nowadays, retail shoppers evaluate new brands and products in the way that they are turning to recommendations to research new-found brands and products. Shoppers consider recommendations from family and friends influential and they are turning to Facebook, Instagram and Messenger to discuss past purchases, ask for and give product recommendations.
How do Apparel & Accessories Shoppers most commonly buy?
In a mentioned research, in a category of Apparel & Accessories, 60% of shoppers discover product online, 45% of shopers who use Facebook use it for shopping activities 41% of shoppers who use Messenger, use it for shopping activities, 40% buy products online most commonly, 54 % buy products in-store most commonly. 18% of Apparel & Accessories shoppers say on mobile is the most common way they buy. Even when more purchases happen in store, 43% of Apparel & Accessories consumers like to look at products online before they buy in-store.
Source: Facebook IQ
What can online marketers do in order to attract and keep their online shoppers?
Create in-store shopping experience online. Allow shoppers to research and evaluate products as seamlessly as they do in-store. Consider offering speedy messaging responses, videos of products and 360-degree images. 83% of people surveyed in US message a business to ask about products or services . People said that in that way they get faster response, better advice and care and more truthful responses.
Make online purchasing easy. Create a seamless shopping experience for shoppers. Reduce friction points by offering direct and one-click purchasing options through your website or your business pages in the Facebook family of apps.
Source: “Motivations, Mindsets and Emotional Experiences in Messaging (vs. Feed)” by Sentient Decision Science (Facebook-commissioned survey of 8,156 people in BR, GB, IN and the US), Jun 2018.
Some ecommerce sites, like Shopify, are directly connected to the Facebook and Instagram Business Page. That makes life of many of the Shopify ecommerce sites much easier. Check out one of them here.
The secret to social media success is actually to use it as the start of your sales funnel. However, Social Media isn’t a place for hard selling. Social channels were designed for casual conversation and spontaneous interaction. That’s the main reason why you should pay a lot of attention to your website’s content and focus on your brand storytelling while engaging with your customers.
Network on social media like you’re at a social event
Here’s another piece of advice for a small business entrepreneurs. If you start a conversation on social media by telling people, ‘Hey, go to my website,’ you’re probably not the best networker. You would never walk up to someone at a networking event and hand them your business card without first striking up a conversation. Social media works the same way.
Social media allows you to connect with people one-on-one without paying for advertising. So connect! Once a follower is confident that there’s a real person on the other side of the keyboard, they’ll respond to your special offers, event invitations, or inquiries about their specific needs. Remember, it takes time to develop these relationships.
Create a landing page to capture contact information
Once you’ve developed a relationship on social media, it’s time to direct your potential customer to a landing page. Think of the most important action a customer can make once they arrive at your website. Is it signing up for your email newsletter? Downloading a free ebook? Registering for an event?
Ask for that one important action on a landing page. It might be the very first page a visitor sees when they arrive at your website, or it could be a prompt that pops up once a visitor has clicked around your site. A prominent landing page keeps your visitor on task and moves them into the sales phase of your funnel.
You don’t need advanced software to create a landing page. Google Forms are free, and services like Wufoo and Jotform offer free starter levels of service. These tools can help you set up a system to capture the most critical information about your leads, like their email addresses or phone numbers.
Remember to keep your landing page simple. Add your landing page URL to your social media profiles to make it easy for people to get more information about your business.
Engage first, sell later
Once you’ve forged connections on social media and captured lead contact information, you can start to think about selling to that potential customer. Thank your customer for their interest and provide value, whether it be in the form of an educational email newsletter, free product download, or consultation offer. Continue to build relationships with consistent communication that will get your customers excited about doing business with you.
Your initial social media interactions can impact how smoothly your entire sales process goes. Don’t ignore these powerful, free tools — use them to your small business advantage!
Social Media and SEO
Social media is one of the main players in the game of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s the seven of the top 10 SEO ranking factors. People are talking about what you do on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. And, if they are linking to an amazing content on your small business website, it works wonders at getting your business listed on search results. That’s why the best small business websites integrate social elements.
How to add social media to your website to help grow your business?
Create shareable content
Keep this question in mind when you create content for your website: Will my visitors want to share this information? Every successful website has a great content – unique, relevant, trustworthy content. Text, video and images of your website and your website pages should exceed the expectations of your visitors. Infographics. White papers. Stuff they can’t find anywhere else and, that they feel compelled to share.
Make social sharing simple
Add a Click to Tweet button to pull quotes and other “tweetables” on a web page.
Every small business website can benefit from at leastadding a Facebook widget to the home page. But why stop there? You’ve probably seen product “shares” in your feed. That’s because people love to share images of things they think are cool on their favorite social platforms. Make sharing your cool stuff simple by placing social buttons on your product pages.
Showcase social feeds
If you use social networks like Twitter or Facebook to build your business, showcase your social activity on your website by incorporating social feeds. They can give viewers a glimpse of your business’s personality and entice them to connect with you. Embed Twitter timelines and Facebook activity feeds. It will boost your, more integrated, online business presence.
Offer social sign-in and commenting
Make it easy for visitors to sign in and comment on your website. They can simply select to log in via their Facebook account. They might need to enter an email address or similar – but they’ll likely find the more simplified sign-in process appealing. You can also enable visitors to leave comments on your site through social-based comment tools like Disqus and Facebook Comments (it allows users to comment on your content using their Facebook profile and show their comments to their friends in their news feed). If you’d like to learn more – Social Media Examiner provides a helpful overview of how social login works.
Install social media widgets on your website
It’s important to place your contact information in a prominent location on your website. However, you can make it even easier for people to find and follow your social media accounts. Social media widgets and embedded feeds pull your most recent Instagram, Facebook or other social media posts and present them in an area you choose on your website. Visitors can then preview your recent social activity and also like or follow your account right from their browser. These widgets allow you to connect with a potential customer on a second platform (your website plus a social media channel) without directing them away from your business website.
If you use a website host like Squarespace, Wix, or some WordPress setups, adding a social media widget may only require a few clicks. Otherwise, you may need to do some research to determine what HTML code you’ll need and where to place it.
If you’ve got a WordPress website, they have a great social media plugins available. Easy Social Icons plugin are a good option. Here’s a strong Top 20 list to start checking out.
Keep engaging
By adding these social media elements to your small business website, you’ll be well on your way to leveraging the power of social networking to share your awesomeness with the people who matter most – your customers and prospects. Schedule a manageable amount of time each day for meaningful social engagement, be authentic, be creative, and watch your business grow.
Want to increase your ranking on Google Search and other search engines? Here’s how you can do it!
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to get organic, free traffic from the search engine results page. SEO is important because pople are searching for your product online and when they do, your website should show up offering your products. However, that only happens when you rank better in a search engine. You can position your business to rank goood on search engines like Google, Bing and similar by a utilizing successful SEO. Better search engine ranking will bring you free organic traffic, i.e. leads and customers to your business. Online search has become the primary way for potential customers to find local businesses. A whopping 87% of people used a search engine to find a local product or service in the past month, the Local Search Association reports.
How to improve ranking on Google and other search engines with SEO?
The goal of SEO is to increase organic rankings, traffic and conversions. In order to implement SEO in the right way, you’ll need to:
Definine your customer avatar (know your targeted clientele – determine clearly their demographics – age, location, income, profession, education and similar, as well as their goals, values, their pain points, their objections by buying…). Make a list of products or services that your customers are mostly searching for and their pain points – problems that you might solve with your product/service.
Perform keyword research to identify the best keywords. Use GoogleAdwords Keyword Planner or SEMRush for free. Advices: avoid general keywords – be specific; analyze competition; Keyword Value – optimize your website with keywords that your customers mainly use in their searches. When analyzing your competitors, analyze their traffic (from where they get traffic), rankings (what keywords are they ranking for), how is their website structured for the keywords they rank for) and what type of content they produce and how frequently (blog or other channel). When it comes to your website, you should check how much traffic are you receiving from organic search, how many indexed pages you have on your website (if you have more pages with more content, the higher possibility to rank better on a serach engine), website speed (you’ll rank better if your website is fast), mobile responsiveness of your website, website bounce rate (how long are people staying on your website), website sitemap (submitting all your website pages to Google so that they can crawl it and understand it, backlink analysis (what other websites are linking to your website to increase your website’s authority),tagopmitimization (optimizing your meta tags, title tags with the keywords you want to rank for), image optimization (naming your images with your keywords).
On-page website optimization. In order to rank better, you’ll need to optimize your website coding, meta description, HTML tags/title tags, keyword density(how often are your keywords used in your website), sitemap. One of the convient ways to do that is to install YoastSEO plugin which will literally walk you through the process of optimizing your website for SEO.
Increasing your ranking with SEO link-building – search engines like that. Now, let’s assume that you can be found on Google but maybe on the page 50. Well, the news is that noone will look at the page 50 on Google search. You have to be on page one or two. In order to rank better – you should use link-building i.e. creating backlinks. What’s a backlink? It’s simply a link to the external website. Google likes backlinks because more backlinks you have, you are more exposed to the internet, which in return shows that your website is relevant. So, advice is to have as many backlinks as you can but of a quality content. SEO link-building tips:guest blogging– write a blog post for free on a blog or website of a relevant party; if you sponsor an event – ask the website master to link to your website, create a link-worthy content (write what people like to read about). Other way to increase your ranking is also to write a blog around your customer searches and around your primary keywords.
Learn more SEO tips in one of my next blog posts. Stayed tuned.
Many of us are struggling to achieve success. However, success is individually percieved. What represents success for me, might not represent success for you. In brief, if you consider achieving one of your goals or dreams a success, then you’d probably feel kind of empty after a couple of days of euphoria. That’s why many people see success as a journey rather then achieving their goals. At one stage of my life, I’ve also realized that if I’m in a constant struggle, and on the road of achieving something better, then I’m happy. However, if I already have everything I’ve ever wished for, then I’d feel kind of empty. But, if you see success as a journey, then you’ll know that everything you experience in the process of reaching success is the reason for you to be happy. The reasons why many people don’t reach their full potential can be various. If those reasons are of external nature, on which you have none or little influence, then your road towards success is very challenging. On the other side, if you are blocked or stopped on the way to progress by your own self-limiting beliefs, than you’re the only one who can change that. In any case, if you want to succeed, try following these guidelines:
Believe in yourself.
Decide what you want.
Follow your dreams and don’t be afraid to dream big.
Follow your inner voice, your inner guidance.
Don’t forget to follow the signs.
Develop a habit that will bring you closer to your success.
Go out of your comfort zone if you want to grow.
Don’t be afraid to take risks.
Plan your route to success by setting a goal. (People tend to spend more time by planning their vacation then by planning their life).
Don’t procrastinate.
Be persistent.
Surround yourself with like-minded people.
Run as further you can from toxic people. They are negative, they see bad in everything and everyone, they often critize and complain…
If you want to succeed you’ll need to sacrifice something (time, effort, money…)
Have a positive attitude – expect the best!
Focus on solutions, not on problems.
Take responsibility for your own life.
Help others achieve their goals.
Start with the first step. (Chinese proverb asserts, “Be not afraid of going slowly; be only afraid of standing still.”)
If you are still not disconnected from your personal dreams, then I recommend this book for you
One of my favorite book authors is Jack Canfield. He’s a coauthor of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series and one of the most famous success coaches nowadays. My wholehearted recommendations are for his and Brian Tracy’s books. I’m glad to say, they are my mentors through the power of their books.
Today I will write about Canfield’s book – The Success Principles. The book is encouraging, resourceful and a great guide towards a better you!
30 most powerful success principles, on how to achieve any goal and live a meaningful, joyful and abundant life, are presented in this book.
This book’s content is a great GPS for leading you towards the achievement of your goals. The Success Principles are full of actual success stories as a real proof that these principles work. You just need to incorporate them into your daily life. The following are some of the advises written in a book:
Practice persistence (for example, read a book at least 20 minutes a day).
Step out of your comfort zone (when you do – you will grow, even though there is a risk involved).
Feel the fear and do it anyway (don’t let your fears stop you from achieving your dreams).
Create a dream board (know exactly what you want, imagine like you already have it and work on making it happen).
Turn your doubts into trust (create unshakable belief in yourself).
Take 100% responsibility for your life (don’t blame others for your failures, you make your own choices in life).
E+R=O (emotion, response, outcome). If you don’t like your outcomes, change your responses.
Give up from all of your excuses.
Everything you experience today is the result of choices you made in the past.
You have control only over three things in life: your thoughts, images you visualize and actions you take.
Dr. Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 Rule: When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you are 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.
Use the law of attraction (our thoughts are made up of energy , they can impact our physical world).
To spend more, first make more.
Create multiple sources of income.
Write down all the goal you want to achieve in your life.
Break your goals into smaller tasks.
Considerations, fears and roadblocks are not a stop sign in the process of achieving your goals. They are just part of the success process.
Utilize mind mapping technique to achieve your goals.
Make a daily to-do list.
Plan your day the night before.
Ask someone who has already done it.
Build your success team.
Commit to a lifelong learning.
Transform you inner critic into your inner coach.
Practice uncommon appreciation.
Empower yourself by empowering others…
Many empowering quotes are mentioned in the book as well:
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step”. – Martin Luther King Jr.
“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise”. – Robert Fritz
“If you’re bored with life, if you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals”. – Lou Holtz
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” – Mark Twain
“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” – Mary Kay Ash
I was living and working in Egypt – Cairo, from 2006 to 2009. At that time, real estate field in Egypt was booming. I used to work in Cairo for the American number one real estate agency – Coldwell Banker, and, one of the biggest luxury development companies – Damac Properties, from Dubai. In 2007 Damac Properties just entered Egyptian market and they’ve been recruiting seniorsales professionals from the real estate or similar fields of work, which had the same clientele. Those were the seven or five stars hotels and other leading real estate agencies. Our clientele at Damac Properties was only 2-3% of the total market share in Egypt (high net worth clientele). In this post I’ll share with you this challenging method of sale…
How we sold luxurious Damac Properties?
Selling for Results
I’d like to share with you a challenging method of sale that we used while selling luxurious Damac Properties. We were selling an idea in a project, a unit that is to be built in the next 3-4 years, nothing tangible. Basically, we were selling a “fog”. Start of the project construction was planned in the first year and project completion was expected within the next 4 years. The minimum price for a Damac property, whether it was a small retail unit, office space, or a villa, was around or not less that a million Egyptian Pounds (cca $250.000). Now, most of the sale was done within a pre-launch period. This was a period with the lowest prices and an excellent opportunity for a real estate investors to earn up to 25 % only by putting their trust in Damac and buying a property 3 to 4 years before it’s been constructed. What Damac’s sales experts had in their hands was Damac’s superior training called “Selling For Results”, conducted by a sales couch sent from Damac’s headquarters in Dubai, property info, sketched floor plans and an expensive project catalog. As a part of Damac’s marketing efforts, a pre-launching event in a seven star hotel was also organized, where we invited all of our qualified prospects. “Selling For Results” training lasted for a couple of days and it helped us strengthen our sales, communication, persuasion, negotiation and closing skills and techniques. After thorough preparation and a pre-launch event, our clients started visiting us in Damac’s offices spread out through luxurious Cairo suburbs. Now comes the peak of the selling challenge – clients were supposed to pay 25% of the property price on the spot. Namely, the procedure was to visit us at Damac’s office, bring a check and sign a reservation form. I can tell you, this kind of challenging sale I never had again in my whole life. That’s why I appreciate all of my ex Damac’s colleagues. They were really the best of the best sales professionals in the market. Not to mention, how challenging Egyptians are as clients. In the world of business, they are known as the best negotiators and they are also tricky and foxy in business. When they are buying something, it’s a common thing with them to give promises, schedule meetings, give their “words”, show interests etc., but, until they actually sign a contract, you cannot count on them actually buying.
If I put aside all the stress related to this challenging process of sale, I can still conclude that I’m grateful for this valuable international experience. It has definitely increased my capabilities, my selling, negotiation and persuasion skills. Also, my driving skills have improved. Even though I’m a very good driver, it’s widely known that Cairo traffic is crazy and it’s very rare to see a foreigner driving there. I’m proud of being able to adapt to a new culture of this Northern African country and to get known with the Cairo real estate market within the first three months. At that time Cairo’s population was 18 million and I met a lot of Egyptians who would get lost if they moved from one part of Cairo to another. Being able to get known with the geographical area without a GPS was really something at that time. In order to achieve that I started driving in Cairo almost immediately after my arrival and I spent a lot of time by driving around and figuring out the region, city parts and its streets. This process was made even harder by the mentality of Egyptians. Namely, if I asked somebody on the street for a direction, they would mainly direct me in a wrong way. Later on, after I’ve been living there for more than a year, I’ve found out that it’s because they are ashamed to admit that they don’t know. Well, I don’t classify people by their income, education or similar, however, mainly a bit less educated people would act like that. On the other side, I’ve had a lot of positive experiences with Egyptians as well. They are, in general, very welcoming and they like to help others even if they don’t know them, especially foreigners. I remember once, something happened with my car. My tire was a bit flat, so I stopped aside in a street with a very busy traffic. A couple was walking by. As soon as I stopped, went out of the car and looking at the tire, this couple approached me and a man asked me if I had a spare tire. He then took it and replaced it in less than five minutes. They just went their way afterwards. It was like, they didn’t wait for me to ask for their help, nor they expected me to say “thank you” after they helped me. They just did it and went their own way. Amazing…
Want to learn Digital Marketing but feeling overwhelmed by so many sources, tools and new tech’s?
Hello there! Are you struggling to keep up with constant progress and innovation of the Digital Marketing and IT field? If that’s a comfort for you, the rest of us are struggling too. Well, what can I say. We definitely need to have some focus and learn from the best sources. My God, but what are the best sources to learn from? How to choose from so many of them? Well, this is the world we are living in now and we definitely need to adapt to it. You are in a bit better position than small businesses who are just switching from traditional to digital. There’s a long way to go, but with a help of an expert from this field you’ll definitely skip so many long steps in this process.
In order to help you, at least a bit, in choosing the right sources to gain knowledge in this field, I’ll share some suggestions with you. It might help some of you out there. I know how it feels to be stuck and overwhelmed by different sources of information, not knowing what’s your next move. Sometimes, all we need is a little support and some guidance.
So, here we go. First of all, remember – there is no other way to learn but by “step by step” method. Unfortunately, it really takes a lot of time, effort and patience to learn a new skill. Especially, when something you are learning keeps changing, almost on a daily basis.
Now, it all depends where are you starting at. Are you already knowledgeable in this field or you are just starting. Let’s assume you have a start-up company and you have no idea about how to market your product or service. If you did everything right, then you already have a marketing plan as a part of your business plan, and marketing strategy, as a part of your marketing plan. Now, digital marketing should be definitely incorporated in your marketing strategy. If you’re still not aware of it, your customers are searching for your product or service online and they will choose to visit and buy from those who have online presence, who are close to their homes or have some kind of special offers.
A study at MIT found that companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable than their peers! Therefore, you should be definitely taking advantage of this huge opportunity by digitally transforming your business!
Now that you are aware of it, you may want to learn more about it and once you enter the digital world, you’ll definitely feel overwhelmed by information from so many different sources and kind of stuck in defining your next move. Here’s a piece of advice for you. As a new business, you must have already chosen a name for your business. Let’s hope that you checked whether there’s a domain for your website available under your business name. Domain is the name you choose for your website and it’s either free or you need to pay for it. Now, there are a lot of providers of a web hosting service, but I would recommend as a reliable one, with acceptable price and 24/7 support – Bluehost. You can order your free domain through Bluehost and their affordable web hosting services by clicking here.
Remember, your website is a business card for your business. Next thing is your logo and slogan. If you already don’t have one, you should engage a graphic designer to create one or you can try to create it yourself. You can do that by downloading a free mobile app for Logo design. There are many of them available, like: Logo Maker, Logo Maker Plus, Logo Maker Pro, etc. Logo is a symbol made up of text and images that represents your company, your brand. It makes you recognizable on the market, makes you stand out from the competition and identifies key information about your business. A logo builds brand recognition. If you think of any famous brand, let’s say Nike or Amazon, their logos are instantly recognizable even if the name of the company isn’t attached to it. Now, there is so much to be told about logo. Let’s just touch one aspect of it – its color. Behind every color stands a psychological meaning. Colors impact our emotions and our feelings. If you choose the right colors for your logo, you can attract customers and vice versa. Colors can make us happy or sad. For example, yellow is cheerful, green is calming, it also symbolizes health, wealth and it relaxes us, blue is calm and spiritual, purple is associated with creativity etc. However, color is not completely agreed on universally and can appeal differently to individual countries. In brief, there’s a whole science behind it. Slogan is a catchy phrase or a motto that describes your company’s mission. For example, Nike’s slogan is “Just do it!”, BMW – “The Ultimate Driving Machine”… At the end, why do you need a logo and slogan, well, it’s because you want to build a brand – to be recognizable on the market and to keep building your company’s value on it.
Should you promote your products on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest?
Now that you’ve established your company, with a chosen business name, logo and slogan, you can slowly enter the digital world. Next step is to create a website for your business. As already said, it’s your business card. Nowadays, it’s unimaginable not be present online. Customers are searching for your online presence in order to check for your credentials. Your website is their first impression about you. Next step is to create social media accounts. Now, it also depends on a type of your business which social media you’ll use for promotion. For example, if you are focused on an end user of your products, you’ll use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter. It depends on your customers profile, their demographics, such as their age and similar. According to the eMarketer, Millennials (age range from 18 to 35) and GenX (38-53) are using more Facebook than Teens (age 12 to 17). Besides Facebook, GenX are using Instagram as well. On the other side, Teens number one social media platform is Snapchat while Instagram is on the second place. If you are a business to business oriented company (B2B) then you will most likely use LinkedIn etc. Baby Boomers (54-62) favor Facebook and Pinterest.
All set, now you have your website and social media accounts. Next step is to promote your business in the way that each of your social media platforms is serving as a lead generator for your business and can land your customers to your company’s website. More followers equals more prospects i.e. customers. You should, of course, pay attention on a period of day when you are posting on social platforms as well. I’ll write more about it in one of my next blog posts. You know what I think about when should you start your online presence? The answer is simple – YESTERDAY! If you’re already not there – you should definitely have a feeling of urgency to act now.
Since I enjoy networking and I’m also in the stage of getting known with the city, establishing new connections and figuring out how it all goes here, I’ve decided to start with my new networking adventures.
Last week I attended a gathering of a new networking group in Louisville. It’s established by two young professionals working in the field of real estate. Their vision and goal was to connect with potential prospects, people with similar interests and to hear other people’s opinions and business ideas. Finally, the master mind group is established to give each other support or advice related to our company start-up or a new business adventure.
It was interesting to hear courageous and business minded people from different fields of work. In this session, four people interested in establishing their own real estate business participated, three of us are from the marketing field, one from the field of finance and one was an innovator.
Of course, we all have different reasons why we came to this networking event. One of them, owner of the marketing agency, was really struggling surviving in the market. According to what he said, he is in this business for twenty years now, but he constantly has only one or two clients that keep his business alive and he never knew what will happen to his business after the current client leaves. So, he doesn’t like keeping all of his eggs in the same basket and wants to find a solution. In my opinion, his challenge is that he’s not keeping up with current trends in marketing field. But, I can understand that. World today, in general, is changing very quickly. Therefore, lifelong learning is crucial for success of any of us. Other thing is that some fields of work are changing so rapidly that it has become quite a challenge to follow up with its constant progress. This is especially related to the field of marketing and IT. Actually, these two field have become so much related that today’s marketing guru actually must be almost an IT expert as well. Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing are the core of all marketing campaigns nowadays. I, myself, as a marketing professional, find it, pretty challenging, to follow up with this constant changes. I’m constantly learning new things, but sources from which we can learn are numerous and it’s all time consuming. No wonder that we often feel overwhelmed. This is one of the burdens that professionals in this field must count on. Another issue in today’s world of marketing is that people tend to misinterpret marketing. Nowadays, many think that marketing equals advertising. Others just jump-in in this field although they are technology, and not really marketing, professionals. Marketing is much more than being skilled in new technologies. It’s a science. An IT expert may know all digital tools to market a product but he’s unknown with creation of marketing strategies. And without the right strategy, tactics don’t make much sense.
The way I see this group is the way I’d want it to become… Namely, I read once in on of those business psychology books that it’s very beneficial for professionals to have their own mastermind group, where they will gather regularly and brainstorm on solutions of the problems any of the group member might have. I personally, find it fascinating and a great way to share our knowledge mutually and help each other with advises, ideas, information sharing and similar.
More on this topic is yet come… :). Till then, stay in a good health, happy and prosperous!
Since I’ve moved to the USA recently, three months ago – to be exact, I couldn’t help to notice some of the differences between Europe and USA. In this post, I’ve decided to share some of them with you. So, here we go:
Traffic lights – European countries have fixed traffic lights and the ones in USA are, kind of, hanging on some kind of wire. I’ve found this pretty strange when I first arrived here. For me, it looks like some kind of old fashioned traffic lights and it gives an impression of instability, read – danger.
Trucks – one of the first differences I’ve noticed are the truck shapes in USA. They are definitely much different from the ones you can see in Europe. Picture tells more than a hundred words. So, take a look at the picture bellow. Since this has intrigued me a bit, I did a little research on this topic. This is what I’ve found out: The main difference you see between American and European semi-trucks is the overall design of the tractor unit. In Europe we usually see cab-over trucks. This means that the cabin is situated above the engine. This allows creating flat front surface and the entire truck with its trailer has a cuboid shape. Meanwhile trucks used in US feature something called “conventional cab” design. This means that the cabin is behind the engine. Drivers are sitting further away from the actual front of the truck and look over the long engine cover when driving. In US there are many truck owners-operators. The trucks typically have big and more comfortable compartments while in Europe space is at premium. Conventional cab trucks are more economical because they can have bigger cargo and pull heavier loads and therefore use less fuel that two cub designed trucks. The engine in conventional cab trucks is easier to maintain and fix because it is very easy to reach. In Europe Semi-trucks are limited to 90 km/h, but in some places in US trucks reach 129 and even 137 km/h.
Bureaucracy in USA – no need to bring copies of the documents to the official agencies. Original documents are good enough.
Self-service at retailers – As of Q2 2018, 95 percent of American consumers had encountered at least one form of self-service retail and 49 percent used them on a weekly basis at the supermarket. Recent studies show that 29 percent of self-service users pay with credit card, 28 percent of shoppers would frequent a non-grocer more if it had self-service checkouts, 87 percent of self-service store users do so because it’s faster. Self-service at retailers, in all other countries in Europe, except of UK, France and Sweden, is not present at all, or it’s present at a very low percentage. When it comes to Germany, as one of the biggest and economically most developed EU countries, strange enough, only in January 2018, a self-checkout was introduced into the shops in Hamburg, well developed city and a harbor on the north of Germany. In the last two years there’s been a slight increase in this new technology in Germany but it’s still very much in its infancy stage. While there are roughly 200,000 cashiers in food stores across the country, there are still only 1,450 self-service terminals. Supermarket Rewe is considered a trailblazer in Germany because it started trialing self-service checkouts way back in 2012. It now has a grand total of 62 self-service terminals across its 3,500 stores. This is how Martin Fassnacht, a professor at the WHU business school in Düsseldorf, explains on Germans being so slow in picking up on new technology: “Germans find it particularly difficult to get used to new things. Many Germans simply don’t see the point.”
Most common cars to be seen in USA: Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet, Honda, Dodge, Nissan, KIA. And, let’s not forget to mention that they simply love pick up trucks. It’s no surprise to see some German car brands too. BMW, Mercedes, Audi and some VW cars can also be seen on the streets of USA, however, in a smaller percentage. According to the data compiled by Kelly Blue Book and Business Insider, the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram Pickupare are the top three best-selling vehicles in America through the first half of 2018. Pickup trucks and crossover SUV’s dominate the American market right now. Jeep Cherokee, Jeep Wrangler, and Toyota Tacomaall saw major year-over-year sales increases compared to this time in 2017. Most common car brands in Europe are: VW, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Volvo, Peugeot, Fiat, Ford, Porsche and Opel-Vauxhall.
Some of the differences when it comes to schools in US and Europe. Schools in USA are more focused on instruction (teaching basic Math, Science, English, etc.), less strict in regards to discipline and respect, more strict regarding dress code or smoking cigarettes, more focused on standardized testing. Schools in Europe are much more focused on education and culture (Philosophy, Art, History, Geography, Languages, etc.), are more strict in regards to discipline, respect and studying requirements are much higher, less strict regarding dress code and smoking cigarettes, more personal environment (no changing of classrooms)…
Driving culture: Although it’s regulated, you can still get your driver’s license in US by age 16 while required age in Europe is 18. True, a 16-year old first needs to obtain a permit for the first six months in order to get a driving license after that. Overall, it’s pretty easy to obtain a driving license. As in Europe, you need to pass a written and a road test. However, the cost of it is as low as 20 dollars, while in Europe it can cost even 700 dollars. Road testing in Europe is far more strict than the one in US. In some European countries, especially SEE, road testers – instructors, are doing their best for the new driver to fail the test. Opposite to that, US driving instructors – testers, are supportive and patient while testing a candidate. More like, if you fail, nobody’s happy, if you pass, everybody’s happy. One other thing I couldn’t help to notice in US is that Americans tend to form orderly car queues in one line of the road, even though they have one more lane available, which goes or turns in the same direction. And, finally, something very uncommon for European countries is driving through the red light. In USA, when vehicle is turning right, can turn on red if there is no ongoing traffic, or if there is, he should yield on them and then turn right. In Europe, it’s strictly forbidden to pass on red traffic light and is punished strictly by revoking drivers license or similar.
Measurement units: miles vs kilometers, feet vs meters, ounces vs g, pounds vs kilograms, Fahrenheit vs Celsius… Well, it takes some time for a European to switch from ones to another.
Unemployment rate historically low 3.7 %, and wages rose 3.1 %!
According to the the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.gov), the U.S. economy added 155,000 non-farm jobs in November, the unemployment rate held steady at a historically low 3.7 percent for the third month in a row, and wages rose 3.1 percent for the second month in a row.
Job gains were seen in industries such as health care (32,000), professional and business services (32,000), manufacturing (27,000), and transportation and warehousing (25,000).
The major uncertainties include the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China, low oil prices, and the Fed’s potential rate hike spurred on in large part by continued wage increases, some of those in response to Amazon’s $15 minimum wage increase which took effect on November 1.
One certainty is tight job market. The number of open job opportunities far exceeds the number of qualified workers needed to fill them.
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