FAQs

• Content marketing- Enticing leads to convert them into customers by adding value through content shared as blogs, vlogs, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.
• Social media marketing- Driving traffic and generating brand awareness through multiple social media platforms.
• Pay per click-The advertiser only pays when the user clicks on the ads displayed on search engine platforms.
• Affiliate marketing- Implementing a revenue-sharing model, affiliates help businesses promote their offerings in exchange for a commission.
• Sponsored advertising/ Native advertising- Promoting and sponsoring the content on digital platforms but giving a very subtle tone of advertising a product or service.
• Influencer marketing- Similar to affiliate marketing, executed by influencers- people with a colossal fan base across online platforms.
• Marketing automation- Automating recurring marketing activities using tools designed for the same. For example- Hubspot marketing automation tool, Mailchimp, etc.
• Email marketing- Sending out promotional messages via email.
• Search Engine Marketing- It is further classified into two types- 1. Paid ads on search engines like Bing, Google and more. 2. Search Engine Optimization to boost website ranking organically.
• Instant messaging- Promoting offers, building relationships and reaching out to customers via instant messaging. For example, WhatsApp for Business, Facebook Messaging, SMS, etc.

Omni-channel marketing involves executing marketing campaigns using a multitude of marketing platforms and channels to promote the offerings of an entity among customers and prospects. Streamlining the experience so that the marketing campaigns stay meaningful and consistent with the targeted audiences is core to omnichannel marketing. Every platform involved in omnichannel marketing works in synchronization to construct an integrated message and tone for the brand. It is fundamental to omnichannel marketing that any underlying data gets updated automatically, evenly spreading the brand’s message throughout all channels. Omni-channel marketing ensures a unified shopping experience from the first encounter to the very last. Let’s understand with an example- while shopping from a retail store. Customers receive a message about the ongoing promotion in the store. As soon as they make the purchase, they stop receiving promotional messages. Retargeting customers through social media platforms for abandoned products in online shopping carts is another example of omnichannel marketing.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO encompasses a combination of practices that enable web pages to enhance visibility and positioning in organic search results across search engines. Organic search is the most popular way for users to explore and access content online. A well-crafted SEO strategy strengthens website quality, which boosts and drives traffic to the website. High organic search rankings cannot be attained by paying search engines, hence the name organic. SEO experts have to put in efforts to analyse, understand and accommodate the multiple factors and requisites of search engines to rank well.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM broadly includes paid as well as organic efforts vested in improving a website’s visibility and ranking in search results of search engines. Most experts use Search Engine Marketing to describe Pay Per Click advertising; advertisers pay whenever a user clicks on their ad. Search engines like Google and Bing facilitate advertisers to showcase their ads as a result of queries that users make through keywords. Advertisers bid on the most relevant keywords by comparing them with the competitors. The strongest aspect of search engine marketing is that it helps advertisers display their ads with precision in front of customers willing to purchase.

When a website is SEO-friendly, it helps search engines crawl and index its web pages. This helps search engines learn about the structure and understand the web content. An SEO-friendly web design makes a website accessible and indexable. The mechanism is just like how books are indexed and placed in a library. The librarian can promptly guide a person looking for an answer to a specific question from a particular book. Search engines work similarly- they rank a website at a higher position in the search results if it finds your content meaningful and valuable to the search intent of the user. When the content is relevant for a user, they stay longer on the website, thereby boosting their ranking in the search engine results.

Blogs can dramatically help increase the probability of a website ranking high in search engine rankings.

• Consistent blogging keeps a website updated and fresh.
• Blogs make users stay on a website for a longer period. The longer they stay the better search engines rank the website.
• Blogs help add relevant long-tail keywords to web content.
• Blogs make it easy to internally link a website.
• Blogs enrich inbound linking; other websites link your back to the website keeping in view the high-quality content on your website.
• Good blogs help entities engage and connect with their audiences; audiences share quality content, which drives traffic to the website.

UX is an abbreviation for User Experience design on the other hand UI refers to User Interface design. Both UX and UI are integral aspects of any online product and work in synchronization. The roles of UX and UI are very different from each other as they highlight multiple facets of the process of product development and design. UX is more about strategizing user experience, wireframing, prototyping, testing and collaborating with designers and developers. UI on the other hand is about working on the graphic aspect of digital products- deciding on colour palettes, fonts, animation, interactivity and more. To put it simply, UI depicts screens, buttons, icons and other visual aspects that users interact with while they browse a website. UX on the other hand implies the comprehensive interaction that users have with a product, along with the feel the interaction gives to the users. Let’s understand with an example. If a beautifully designed e-commerce app with instinctive navigation powered by efficient UI has a poor UX, slow loading speed and requires going through a complex process, users won’t want to use that app. Therefore, any online product that users prefer demands both excellent UX and UI.

SEO acts as the path that leads to the destination which is UI/UX. The contribution of UX/UI towards SEO is quite relevant as Google Algorithm updates like Hummingbird, Penguin and Panda penalize the websites that ignore the UX/UI standards such as mobile responsiveness, good page load speed, user-friendly URL structure, etc. To accomplish the ultimate objective of conversion, both SEO and UX/UI have to work together. This relationship incepted the term SXO; a fusion of SEO and UX. When all the elements of SXO are on point, a website ranks better and offers excellent UX.

Good UI design increases user engagement with your website as it draws a clear path for users to interact with your products and achieve their goals. A coherent UX and UI enable building a strong link between the customer and your offerings. Therefore, when a website optimizes its usability, it leaves a strong impact on customer satisfaction. Following are some key points highlighting the implication for UI and UX for websites:

Boost conversion- A high-quality UI and UX reduces the bounce rate and prompts clients to take profitable action. It is likely to boost the conversion rate up to 400%.

Develops customer trust and loyalty- Customers are attracted towards a brand that prioritizes customer experience. It allows customers to leave feedback and emphasize any issues they face while visiting the website.

Cost-effective- Embedding high-quality UX and UI is a smart investment as it would prevent the need for frequent modifications and updates, which significantly helps you save time and money.

Compliments SEO- Factors like swift page-load speed and mobile responsiveness are some of the factors that search engines pay heed to while monitoring user engagement and assigning ranks.

The implementation of software to manage mundane and repetitive marketing functions is marketing automation. Tedious marketing work such as email marketing, ad campaigns, and social media campaigns can be easily automated through marketing automation. Efficiency is just one of the benefits of marketing automation. It is very helpful to offer a highly personalized customer experience. Some of the notable benefits of Marketing Automation are:

• It facilitates shortening the sales cycles by integrating and simplifying marketing efforts.
• Helps minimize the scope of human error by automating manual and monotonous marketing tasks.
• Businesses can utilize the data in the form of actions taken by prospects through marketing automation software. It helps gain an in-depth understanding of the customer needs and showcase the most relevant content at the right time and platform.

Lead generation involves initiating and rousing customer interest in the offerings of your business. The objective is to transform an interested prospect into a customer to boost sales and revenue for a business. Businesses capture and generate customer interest in their products and services to create leads. It is strategically done by using suitable platforms such as social media campaigns, google ads and more through which offers are given to generate inbound leads. Leads require nurturing. Some leads may qualify right at the beginning, but some may take time. Such leads are nurtured through consistent communication until they are willing to be approached by a representative of your business development team.

Retargeting campaigns also known as remarketing ads, help businesses display or text targeted ads to users that visited a website but exited without conversion. Conversion is any profitable action such as filling a lead form, making a purchase or downloading an app. It helps customize display ads and target prospects, retargeting them on other websites by showing meaningful similar ads. A retargeting campaign can be executed through Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads and several other remarketing advertising mediums. Retargeting ads have a high click-through rate which boosts brand awareness and thereby increases all types of conversion. Retargeting campaigns are cost-effective, simple to build and deliver an impressive ROI.

Marketing automation aims to pay attention towards potential customers through personalized content, nurture them into high-quality leads and transform them into loyal customers. The steps to implement marketing automation revolves around the same. Set your marketing automation goals by identifying the right tasks- It is primary for a business to set up meaningful, measurable and attainable goals. Along with it, shortlist and choose the most suitable tools out of the extensive options that can help your business attain its marketing automation goals.

• Specify your audience- Outlining the perfect or ideal customer base is important as they are easy to attract, retain and convert into loyal customers. The audience is often defined based on demographic and psychographic factors. Communication channels i.e. email, social media platforms, SMS, phone, etc also help in specifying the ideal audience set.
• Familiarize yourself with the customer base and their data- Going ahead of understanding your customers in the context of age, gender, beliefs and other psychological attributes, etc. When marketing automation is involved, the data in question is more detailed; the device customer is using, on which platform did they come across your ad, the touch-points they went through before converting and more.
• Map the customer journey- The customer journey involves a stream of customer interactions with a business whilst they move towards the marketing funnel. Marketing automation allows automation of customer journey and its inclusion in the omnichannel ecosystem. It makes sure that your customer gets the most relevant message at the right time.
• Build the content strategy around the customer journey and marketing objective- Customer loyalty comes when businesses make a conscious effort to make the customer feels special. Marketing automation can greatly help scale up your customer base in a personalized manner. How? By delivering ‘wow’ moments and again, such as birthday or anniversary wishes or offering the customers product similar to their recent purchase.
• Consistent monitoring and optimization- Constantly keeping a close eye on your data, monitoring consumer behaviour and staying abreast of the latest trends facilitate fine-tuning the customer journey. This is the ultimate goal of marketing automation- to gain meaningful insights and enhance and optimize the campaign outcome.
As one of the most bankable digital marketing agencies in the UAE, we can help your business have a smooth transition. Choose Etisalat Information Services as your guide in the marketing automation journey.

Email marketing helps businesses approach and familiarize the customers and prospects present on the email list with the latest products, offers and other services. It is a subtle approach to educate your audience regarding your brand value along with keeping them engaged somewhere in between the transactions. Email marketing takes the cake when it comes to the vastness of the user base; more than 4.5 billion people. In terms of ROI, for every $1 spent it delivers an ROI of $36, making it a must-have tool in your Martech stack. Etisalat Information Services can help your business create and optimize its email marketing campaign from scratch and derive lucrative ROI out of your marketing efforts. How email marketing can help your business-

• Nurture a close relationship with your audience.
• Channelize and drive traffic towards your social media handles, blogs or any other location on the web.
• Enables businesses to create bespoke email campaigns based on demographic, geographic, and psychographic segmentation so that your email reaches the audience that wishes to see it the most.
• Facilitate executing A/B tests for facets like subject lines, and CTAs to decipher the best-performing ones.

WhatsApp for Business or WABA is a free app available for Apple and iOS platforms. It is designed keeping in view the communication needs of small entrepreneurs. It simplifies and facilitates customer communication through tools that help with classifying, sorting, automating and swiftly replying to messages. The best part about WhatsApp for Business is that it looks, works and feels exactly like the WhatsApp that we use in our day-to-day life. WhatsApp for Business holds an edge over SMS as a marketing tool owing to the factor that it is directly linked to a unified phone number which gives a branded profile to a business instead of presenting it to customers merely as a contact number. When businesses communicate using WhatsApp for Business, they instantly identify whom are they talking to, hence it instils personalization. There is also the assurance of reliable delivery information i.e. businesses can identify whether the message has been delivered and even read. WhatsApp for Business significantly fulfils the needs for conversational commerce. It helps the sales and support team resolve business and customer service-related queries through relevant, text and media-rich messages that facilitate keeping customers happy and boost conversion.

SMS marketing helps businesses send out text messages to existing and potential customers. Over 6.5 billion people across the world use SMS, making it one of the most approachable forms of marketing tools to share your offerings. SMS marketing holds an edge over other forms of mobile marketing as it has an almost 100% open rate i.e. the probability of customers seeing an SMS is much higher than emails. The open rate for emails is 22%. The content body of the SMS is very brief and crisp which grabs customer attention instantly. SMS marketing is a great way to announce a sale, or special offers or to notify customers about your latest products and services.

API is the abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. APIs are tools that allow software elements to interact by implementing a combination of protocols and definitions. Application here could be any type of software that performs a specific function. The interface is an agreement of service between two applications. The interface determines how the software in question communicates with one another by utilizing requests and responses. For example, the online ticket booking app on our mobile phones. An API supports the interaction between the airline and the travelling company to book an air ticket from a third-party site. Another example is the weather app which communicates to the software of the weather department via APIs to display weather updates.

A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging refers to using text messaging as a communication channel between businesses and their customers or clients. A2P messaging can be used for a variety of purposes, including customer service, marketing, and notifications. In marketing, A2P messaging can be used to send promotional messages, discounts, and other marketing content directly to a targeted group of customers. This helps reach customers with personalized and relevant messaging, leading to increased engagement and sales. Additionally, A2P messaging can also be used to send transactional messages, such as order confirmations, delivery updates, and account-related notifications, which can help to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. A2P messaging can also be used for customer engagement, for example by sending a message to customers who have abandoned their shopping cart. Additionally, it can be used for customer retention by sending personalized messages to loyal customers.

Big Data Messaging utilizes big data to help businesses understand and recognize consumer behaviour across an array of digital platforms through details like tastes & preferences, consumption habits and engagement trends. Using this information, businesses can send messages to meaningful prospects that have a strong probability to convert. In big data messaging, messaging systems facilitate a communication channel between the applications of the big data ecosystem. Generally, it implements message queue systems.

A long-term and strategic marketing technique, content marketing emphasizes building a close-knitted and lasting relationship with your target audience by consistently delivering relevant and high-quality content. It involves crafting bespoke content depending on where a customer stands in its lifecycle. For example, if a customer is searching for information about a specific product, a relevant content offering would be offering an elaborate well-structured blog highlighting all aspects of the product or an eBook on the same subject. It is important to note that the goal of content marketing is to attract a well-defined set of audience and propel them towards conversion.

Content marketing helps in lead generation when it helps your audience tackle challenges and attain their goals. Good Content lies at the core of lead generation and nurturing. It is one of the most effective tools used by marketers for customer engagement. Being said that, it is immensely important that the content is meaningful, adds value to the audience and is compelling enough to be shared. Here are some key points that can help your business in lead generation-

• Identify and understand the needs of your target audience.
• Create excellent content and promote it extensively.
• Choose the right platform to promote the right content. For example, promoting bite-sized content on Instagram, prompting opening discussions on Twitter and educational blogs and videos on LinkedIn.
• Ensure the accuracy and authenticity of the content. The facts mentioned must be supported by reliable data.
• Personalize the content for your user base. This can vary from personalizing emails and messages as well as personalizing complete sections of your website.
• Do not underestimate the power of visuals. Meaningfully embedded infographics and videos add great appeal to the content.

pages and ranking better. Without a robust SEO strategy, your web pages won’t be visible. Although they will be present online, they won’t receive any visitors. A website can't rank well in search engine results without optimized content. High-quality, relevant and authentic content boosts the visibility of your website, drives traffic and stimulates them to convert. List of Google’s recommendations to create content:

• Useful and informative- The content must add some value to the users. Transparent information about business location, opening and closing hours, etc.
• More valuable and useful than other sites- The content on your website should be better than your competitors in every aspect.
• Credible- The content must be reliable and backed with citations, authentic links, reviews and testimonials for reference.
• High quality- Google prescribes that content should be crafted for users and not for search engines. The content should be unique, specific and free of errors.
• Engaging- It is important to humanize the content as much as possible. Engagement can be encouraged by boosting user interaction in comments, social media widgets and more.

Accommodating these aspects can enhance the value of content in terms of SEO.

Google Ads is a product of Google that allows paid online advertising. It works on the pay-per-click mechanism i.e. the advertiser pays every time the ad gets clicked (PPC) or is viewed by the user (CPM). It allows several targeting techniques to approach relevant prospects and customers at the right time. Google Ads can greatly help a business drive qualified traffic and leads as the ad is shown to customers searching for offerings similar to your business. They can help you accomplish an array of objectives such as lead generation, awareness, retargeting, conversion tracking, and more. Google offers a variety of ad campaigns such as Search campaigns, Display campaigns, Video campaigns, App campaigns, Shopping campaigns, Local campaigns, etc. You can choose the campaign type based on your objectives. Google ads can help you increase your web traffic, get more enquiry calls and even amplify in-store visits. Eventually, Google Ads can help businesses analyze the different aspects to enhance their reach and help businesses achieve all of the paid campaign objectives. Some other benefits of Google Ads for your business are:

• Targeting prospects based on geographical location, demographics, tastes & preferences, keywords and more.
• Businesses can control ad spending based on their budget.
• It allows close monitoring of campaigns and fine-tuning them whenever required.
• Google also provides plenty of tools to conveniently manage your campaigns. For instance, the Google Ads editor can help you edit your campaign offline and upload the changes later.

SEO and Google Ads play important roles in helping your website become more visible, but their objective and execution are entirely different. Search Engine Optimization involves making the site engaging and attractive for users. It encompasses creating relevant content that adds value to the customers and prospects. SEO is onsite and offsite. Onsite SEO is all about striving to improve the different components of a website such as creating better content, and enhancing the UX, design and overall layout so that the site is user-friendly and simple to navigate. Offsite SEO as its name suggests is about all the efforts you make off the website to improve the SEO. For example, building backlinks, guest blogging, social media marketing and more. Google Ads is advertising in the purest sense of the word and is executed differently. It is paid online advertising that helps businesses create PPC and CPM campaigns. When a user searches for specific keywords you bid for while creating your ad campaign, Google displays your ad to them. Google Ads enable you to target users based on their interests in particular topics, products and services. They help you boost visibility for the keywords that you feel represent the essence of your offerings. In a nutshell, SEO is a long and extensive process that takes time to rank your website at the top of the Search Engine. On the other hand, Google Ads can help your business gain exposure and visibility for the targeted keywords swiftly.

Social media marketing involves utilizing social media platforms to connect with users and develop the brand, augment sales and attract traffic to the website. It acts as a platform to publish engaging content across social media handles, interact with followers, execute social media ads and analyse results. Social media enables marketers to meet and engage customers and prospects where they are. A robust social media strategy and the potential to develop appealing content are key to a successful social media marketing strategy. The leading social media platforms are Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest. Listed below are some key aspects of how social media can help your business:

• Amplify brand awareness
• Giving your brand a human feel
• Lead generation
• Customer service and customer support
• Measure and grasp the sentiment around the brand
• Positively influence SEO through link sharing across platforms
• Execute well-targeted campaigns

• Disperse and cross-promote across social media profiles.
• Schedule the posts through a well-planned social media calendar.
• Keep a check on the trends that are relevant to your audience and leverage them.
• Construct a social media appeal for your brand and stay consistent with it.
• Adapt and curate user-generated content.
• Utilize social media to provide customer service.
• Identify relevant micro-influencers and collaborate with them.
• Ensure to make attractive and eye-catching visuals.
• Regularly execute giveaways and social media-centric discounts.
• Harness on the social media paid advertising tools.

Influencer marketing capitalizes on the social following of influencers. Influencers are people that have a rich social media following and expertise for a niche. They help businesses promote their offerings through endorsements and product mentions. Influencer marketing is effective, keeping in view the magnitude of trust in the opinions and views of influencers among their followers. Followers take the suggestions given by influencers very seriously. Hence, when influencers recommend your brand, customers take consider it to be authentic. The impact influencers have on the perception of a brand is a premier example of herd mentality or social proofing.