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Things to consider while securing clients of any e-commerce website

By 2015, over 2/3 of consumers admitted that they were concerned about identity fraud when purchasing online. That percentage has undoubtedly risen in light of the significant data breaches at Equifax and Yahoo, particularly as customers head into the 2017 season for holiday shopping.

Massive security breaches were prevalent throughout the year 2017. Cyber-attacks were estimated to have destroyed at least 500 million personal documents.
Hacking, whaling, and ransomware are far more dangerous than anyone can imagine. They have affected how people conduct business, handle money, and even interact with one another.
While starting a business online is quite simple, protecting it from hackers, phishing, and other cyberattacks is more complicated. For the majority of online entrepreneurs, it is a nightmare.
The risk is considerably greater for proprietors of small businesses since they frequently lack the resources to choose from among the security options.
It is feasible for any company to deviate from the norm and show their clients how to secure online buying can be.

Use the below suggestions to reassure potential clients for any business.

Consistently use a payment processor

Never have credit cards on hand. Always choose a payment processor, such as Stripe, that will assume the risk. Even though individuals do not appreciate losing their email addresses, they can survive with it. However, if a company lose someone’s credit card details, they will not be able to forgive that particular company. Some payment system companies will keep this data and handle everything for their customers, even if a company only offers periodic subscriptions rather than physical goods. As a young firm without the funding to hire internal IT security staff or acquire appropriate security tools, taking this step is very crucial.

Get PCI compliant first

To help firms prevent fraud, they have devised a set of rules described as the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Council Data Security Standards). Major credit card firms from around the world, including American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and JCB (Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council), formed the PCI SSC. It measures the security policies implemented by an organization using primary requirements and several supporting needs. There are several good reasons why these rules are carefully followed. Credit card security complies with these PCI-DSS recommendations to protect the online business store.

Apply HTTPS

One of the simplest ways to assist secure any e-commerce website from theft is to use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), the TCP / IP protocol for private communications over the internet. Since they have been approved, HTTPS websites are identified by a closed green logo in the URL bar as genuine and secure. This indicates that the website is actually, what it purports to be and is not a fake website set up online to trick people so that criminals can steal access privileges, credit card information, and other information.

SMBs must obtain a Secure Socket Layer like single domain, Wildcard SSL certificate or multi domain to activate HTTPS.
The first procedure is obtaining an SSL certificate; the next is correctly integrating it into a business e-commerce solution.
Although most servers for e-commerce websites will offer SSL certificates for purchase, it pays to compare prices with other vendors because some provide superior security features and lower costs.
Alongside reliability and safety, HTTPS has several benefits. Google ranks HTTPS security websites higher in search results, increasing traffic. Conversely, Google classifies unencrypted websites as “not secure,” giving them a deceptive and dangerous appearance. There are not many easy ways to convince a potential buyer to leave the website today.

Setting up an wildcard certificate

A document with encrypted data known as an SSL Certificate is installed on the website to protect and encrypt confidential communications between the website and its users.
The Validation staff verifies and approves the certificate request after an organization creates a CSR (certificate signing request) and buys a certificate.
An organization must install an intermediate certificate when installing an SSL on a host or SSL-capable application.
After verifying it, they release the SSL Certificate and email it to the business. In the DigiCert account, users may also download the Wildcard SSL certificate.
By linking the SSL cert to the Certificate Authority’s root certificate (the SSL certificate from DigiCert, the intermediate certificate, and the DigiCert root certificate), this intermediary certificate ensures the trust of the SSL certificate.

A Browser needs the intermediate certificate to be available to finish the certificate trust chain.

Secure credit card verification

The 3- or 4-digit Card Verification Value (CVV) number can be found on the reverse of credit cards. By requesting the CVV value, one may be confident that the buyer owns the card used to make the purchase. Thus, no purchases can be made even if thieves steal credit card information.

Demanding secure passwords from clients

Customers prefers e-commerce safety. They are the principal stewards of their private data. Strong passwords that are impossible to crack are the first line of defense for their security. A customer-focused online store will require its clients to create secure passwords with various letters, numbers, and symbols.

Select a secure online store platform

E-commerce platforms are typically chosen for their ease of creating storefronts, various design options, and usability, but security features must also be considered. Look for tried-and-true e-commerce platforms that offer secure online payments, SSL certificates, and reliable buyer- and seller identification procedures. The good news is that smaller and midsize organizations may now more easily access security thanks to cloud-based security technologies. Examine cloud-based safety options, especially those with integrated intelligence. It is essential to consider an e-commerce platform’s long-term profitability. In addition, how frequently updates and security patches are made to protect the company’s long-term safety. Scalable e-commerce systems that can expand and meet a company’s future needs should be taken into account by SMBs.

Avoid keeping sensitive customer data

Consumer privacy and private details are of utmost significance, and people are seeing significant technological businesses like Apple and Google unite behind their commitment to protecting and safeguarding users’ information.

In e-commerce, personal privacy is much more important. Businesses require consumer data to enhance customer communications, expand their product line, and make returns simple.
The risk is that these user details focus on website theft, scamming, and other cyber-attacks.
The first guideline is to gather the necessary information to complete the transaction. Avoid the temptation for businesses to collect more client information than is required. By doing this, the company can prevent annoying the clients and losing that data in case of a security breach or hack.
The rule mentioned above expressly applies to client credit card details. There is no requirement to keep them on servers that are accessible online, as doing so could be against the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which is intended to enforce customer data privacy in the payment card industry.
The guardian of the client’s payment information is a payment gateway. A payment gateway sends information from the business, the online merchant, to the acceptor and the financial institution utilizing data encryption to safeguard the confidential card data from outside threats. Continue and examine the operation of a payment gateway.
The customer selects the good or service they wish to buy before going to the payment page.
Users have a selection of choices for their payment page with most payment providers. The merchant pays payment gateway provides customers with the following options for the payment page explicitly created for the company’s needs:
- Hosted credit card page
- Integration between servers
- Client-side encryption
- Payment gateway working

1. The client provides their debit or credit card information on the payment gateway. The name of the holder, card expiry date, and CVV number is among this information (Card Verification Value). This data is safely transferred to the company-associated payment gateway based on the integration.
2. The payment processor executes fraud tests and tokens or encrypts the card information before sending it to the acquiring bank.
3. The acquiring bank delivers the data to secure card schemes (Visa, MasterCard).
4. The card schemes perform an additional fraud screening before sending the payment information to the issuing bank.
5. The issuing bank approves the transaction after conducting a fraud check. The acquirer receives the notification of the accepted or denied payment once it has been returned from the card schemes.
6. The payment gateway then relays the approval or denial notification to the merchant after receiving it from the acquiring bank. If the transaction is accepted, the acquirer will retain the funds in their merchant account while collecting the total payment from the issuing bank.
7. Settles the transaction by depositing the money into the merchant’s account; the timing of the settlement relies on the terms of the merchant’s contract with the payment platform.
8. Depending on the statement, the merchant may either provide a transaction confirmation page or request a different form of payment from the customer.

A payment gateway has advantages for both clients and merchants, even though most of its operations occur in the transaction’s background. The actions mentioned above can take less than three seconds or almost immediately.

Make multi-factor authentication available

Enabling multi-factor authentication for repeat visitors is one of the most acceptable methods to keep business consumers secure online.

Before purchasing from the website, companies always require new clients to log in with their email addresses or telephone number to verify their identity. This advice enables the company to determine who and where are accessing the website.
On a mathematical basis, the amount of security lapses and threats has risen with each passing year.
It has become essential to include many security features like SSL Certificate authorities, access control, two-factor verification, etc. Deploying e-commerce, authorization and security procedures seamlessly while maintaining consumer experience is the actual problem for all organizations.

Lastly, the easiest approach to staying worry-free is to follow all the security precautions and keep the software up-to-date. Even though going online might greatly benefit the organization, if any particular website is not careful, then it can also get them into problems. It only requires a proper implementation of e-commerce security measures to conduct business worry-free.

15 tips to getting money for your business

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One of the biggest difficulties for entrepreneurs is finding funding to start a business. So where can you get money to start a business? Here are 15 tips on how to raise money to start a new business.

When you calculate the cost of starting a business and add to that the amount you need to cover personal expenses in the beginning, raising money for a business can seem like an impossible task. Figuring out how to raise money to start a business is one of the first challenges most aspiring entrepreneurs face.

Yet hundreds of thousands of individuals each year find the money to start a business. How do they do it? And more importantly, how can you raise funds for your new business? Consider these funding solutions for budding entrepreneurs. Some of them are almost risk-free. Others carry significant financial risk and should be used with caution.

15 tips to get money to start a business

If you have a good idea, but don’t have the funding to implement it, you need to get it somehow. So I’ve put together 15 tips on how to raise money for your project. I believe that you will definitely choose some of them and that your project will succeed!

Personal savings

When you need money to start a business, reach for your own savings first. Depending on how much money you need to start your business, you can use your own savings, an inheritance or part of your disposable income. However, make sure that any money you invest in the new business is actually “disposable”. There is always a risk that your business will not be successful, so it would not be advisable to invest all your savings for retirement or other money that you expect to need in the future. You should also be sure that you have enough money set aside to handle unexpected expenses such as repairs to household appliances, cars and the like. You should also devote your time to learning how to start a business the right way.

Do not live wastefully

By partially limiting your personal expenses, you can get some of the funds you need to start your business. Of course, you don’t have to live like a pauper or waste hours looking for minimum discount coupons to live frugally. A few simple changes can save you hundreds of dollars a month. Do you go out to lunch at a restaurant every day? Add up how much you spend that way in a month. Do you frequent coffee shops? No matter how much coffee you drink, making it at home or at the office instead of buying it at Starbucks can save you up to $20 a week. Bringing your lunch to work instead of ordering in can save you another $30 or more per week. Eating a home-cooked meal instead of ordering in, eating out, or carrying fast food home can save you an additional $30 or $40 a week, plus the tips you would have given to waiters or delivery people. By limiting impulse purchases and buying unnecessary items, you can save even more.

Credit card

If you have good credit, this is the easiest way to get money to start a business. You can use a credit card to buy equipment, supplies, advertising or even pay for postage. And if your credit card gives you a line of credit, you can take out an instant loan (up to your credit limit). Using a credit card to start a business, however, carries some significant risks. Interest rates on credit cards range from around 13% to 20% or more, so if you don’t pay off the balance each month, you can quickly run up a huge credit card bill. You will be responsible for paying off the debt whether your business is successful or not… So think carefully.

Part-time business

If you need a steady source of income to meet your financial obligations and provide for your family, set up a part-time business. Don’t quit your day job until the part-time business has a steady stream of customers and profits. This way you will find out if you really enjoy the business and are good at it, if not, you have nothing to lose.

Part-time job

If the business you want to start can’t be run part-time, or if it still requires more money than you have, take on a part-time job alongside your full-time job. Set aside your part-time income until you have saved enough money to start your own business.

Business from home

If you work from home and don’t have to foot the bill for renting office space, you can start a business with no money. According to the September 2019 U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy FAQs, 60.1% of all businesses without paid employees are based on working from home, as are 23.3% of small employer businesses. Running a business from home (if you can) can save you a lot of money that you can put to different and better use.

Don’t stock up

Money invested in stocks is cash you don’t have available for other needs. To minimize the need for initial financing, buy as few shares as possible until you know how quickly the stock actually sells. Depending on what you plan to sell, you can use a mail-order service that will custom-make your products and ship them directly to customers. For example, there are a number of drop shipping companies that will print your custom designs on t-shirts, coffee mugs, smartphone covers and other items and then send them to the customer under your business name. Using one of these can give you an inexpensive way to test and sell your products. If you have a different type of product in mind, check with the manufacturers to see if they will drop ship for you. Once you know what sells best, you can see if it would be more cost-effective to keep the inventory and ship it yourself.

Get advance commitments for work

If you want to raise money to start a business, secure one or two business resources before you start. Former employers, if they have left on good terms, are often a source of work for budding entrepreneurs or sometimes of funds. Large companies can also provide an initial supply of work and income by sending you their excess work or small jobs they don’t want to do.

Rent instead of buying

If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on tools and equipment – or you’re not sure how much you’ll need a particular item – look into renting what you need as needed. There are places where you can rent everything from power tools to excavators. Then, when cash comes into the business, only buy items that the business uses regularly. You can save a lot of money in the beginning, and you won’t have to stress about big investments.

Used instead of new

Sure, it’s nice to start a business with shiny new equipment, desks and filing cabinets. But buying used items can save you a considerable amount of money. Keep an eye out for advertisements on various websites and in local newspapers for closeout notices. Local garage- and “moving” sales can also be a source of inexpensive items to use.

Business loan

To obtain a business loan, you must provide the bank with information that includes: the purpose of the loan, projected balance sheet at the start-up date (new businesses), details of the lease agreement, the amount of the owner(s)’ investment in the business, projected income, expenses and cash flow, signed personal financial statements and your resume. You may also need a formal business plan. If you are applying for financing to expand an existing business, you will also need the business’s financial statements for the past three years and information on debts, liabilities and outstanding receivables. However, don’t be surprised if the bank turns you down. Banks are often reluctant to lend money to start-up businesses.

Borrow from family and friends

F&F are a common source of funding for small business start-ups. Remember, though, that you have to live with your family for a long time – and you probably want to stay friends with your friends. So don’t borrow unless you have a business plan and have done enough research to know that there is a market for what you want to sell. Present them with your business plan and convince them that it is a sound investment that may even earn them a little money.

Angel investor groups

If your business has real potential for significant growth, look for these groups in your area. Your local SBDC or SCORE office can advise you on how to contact a group in your area. You will need a business plan and you will need to be able to demonstrate that you have experience in running a business and that the business will make enough money to give investors a nice return on their investment.

Microloan

Microloans are small loans available from a variety of sources, including community sources, online lenders and peer-to-peer lending groups. Loan amounts, eligibility, interest rates and terms vary from source to source. For more information about micro-loans and lenders, visit our microloans page.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding sites allow you to raise small amounts of money from many people if you can get them interested in your project or business. One caveat: Remember that crowdfunding publishes an idea for a product or service for your business. If you need to keep your super-innovative idea a secret, don’t use crowdfunding. Consult an intellectual property lawyer before you publish anything that is unique and potentially patentable.

Tips I can give for launching a start-up

Know your purpose. What need does your startup address? Why do people care? If you can answer these two key questions, you’re already well on your way to success.

Do something you’re passionate about. If you don’t put your heart into it, the temptation to bail when times get tough will be great. If you manage to do something you enjoy, you will be much more motivated to persevere. Startups require more than a 40-hour work week – make sure it’s something you’re willing to do around the clock!

Trust yourself. Self-doubt can be crippling, so it’s important to believe in yourself. If you know that you are giving 100% to your business to be successful, you will find that confidence often follows.

Surround yourself with people who support you. While you don’t want to surround yourself with people who say “yes,” it’s also important that you don’t constantly have to deal with people who put you and your business down. Don’t waste time or energy on advocacy.

Learn from criticism. Relentless negativity doesn’t do you any good, but thoughtful criticism can be very valuable. Any opportunity to improve any aspect of your business should be warmly welcomed.

Challenge entrenched beliefs. Learn to recognize when helpful advice is merely a suggestion to conform to the popular paradigm of the times.

Keep learning. Think you know everything? Think again. There is always more to learn, so be careful not to become complacent. Everything you learn is an opportunity to improve your business. This goes for mistakes too – all start-ups face mistakes, but entrepreneurs who learn from them are likely to be among the successful 25%.

Choose a good name. “Good” can be a subjective qualification, so you should try to make decisions based on what would appeal to your target audience.

Serve your customer, not yourself. Although you should rightfully feel ownership of your startup, remember that it ultimately needs to serve your customer, not you – vanity projects don’t last long. Think of your customer in every decision you make and create a product or service that excites them.

Find out what your customers want. Blindly assuming you know what your customers want could prove costly. Fortunately, finding out first doesn’t have to be expensive – you can search forums, ask questions on social media, or spend some money on polling (and save yourself an expensive mistake!).

Get the right amount of capital. Although you need enough money to give your startup every chance of success, keep in mind that too much money can make you lazy and all too willing to part with cash. Of course, you may want to have access to emergency funds – you just need to make sure you can stick to a strict budget and define exactly what an emergency is.

Plan carefully. A business plan is much more than a necessary evil to help you raise funds – it can act as a guide and keep you focused on the task at hand. It’s easy to get bogged down in the small details and lose sight of the big picture.

Don’t plan endlessly. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if you plan, you are productive. Planning must make room for action – preferably sooner rather than later, so use your time wisely.

Keep planning. Once you get some work done, get back to planning. Constantly re-evaluating your business and the direction it is headed can help you find opportunities for growth.

Anticipate the future. No one can know for sure what tomorrow will bring, but if you keep yourself informed and learn to recognize upcoming trends, you’ll have a much better chance of successfully predicting the future.

Adapt. But no one can predict everything – you’re human, after all – so make sure you and your business are flexible enough to react quickly to surprises. Don’t follow the example of Blockbuster movie rental, which is the latest business to fail in recent years due to an inability to adapt to change.

Network online. Leverage the power of social media to help you connect with potential employees, partners, clients, vendors or people who can promote your product or service.
But don’t forget about offline opportunities either. Step away from the computer put down the smartphone and seek out people in real life at conferences and networking events. The connection you can make with a person face-to-face is inherently stronger than the connection mediated between screens. And of course, don’t forget a professional business card to turn the meeting into a relationship.

Surround yourself with the right people. Networking is a means to an end – you need to figure out who is worth your time and who is not. Don’t underestimate the value of someone who is helpful, and likewise don’t underestimate the destructive potential of someone who is not helpful.

Dedicate yourself to the work. Running a startup isn’t like having a regular nine-to-five job – if you want to avoid failure, you have to be prepared to fit your life around work. It may seem like working on yourself will mean better hours, but to be successful, you’ll most likely be working well beyond the standard 40-hour work week. On the positive side, everything that results from your hard work is yours alone.

However, find time to relax. While every entrepreneur has to account for an increased workload, you still need to find time to relax. Without the opportunity to rest occasionally, you will inevitably suffer from burnout syndrome, causing further damage to your business.
Negotiate everything. Whenever someone offers you a price, remember that a healthy portion of it is the profit margin. Can you reduce that margin to your advantage? You won’t always be able to negotiate a discount, but it pays to remember one of life’s most important rules: if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Work out the lift. Of course, if you want to convince vital people that you’re worth their time, you have to engage them within 30 seconds. If you can create an elevator pitch during that time that engages people and shows that your idea has potential, they will inevitably give you more time to discuss it later.

Start with marketing. If people don’t know you exist, you can’t expect positive results. Whatever your budget, there are a few things you can do to start getting the word out about your start-up now – tweet, contact blogs, and tell everyone who is willing to listen about your new venture.

Don’t give up. In many cases, start-ups fail – the people behind them give up. The most effective thing you can do for your startup’s success? Refuse to throw in the towel.

World Mental Health Day — 10th October, 2022

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Mental disorders are not something to be taken lightly. It is possible that you or your loved ones are suffering from it. World Mental Health Day was created to raise awareness of mental disorders, which claim around one million lives a year.

Why is World Mental Health Day named so?

World Mental Health Day got its name in an effort to promote the necessity of mental health. This day serves to educate about mental health problems, their consequences, and ways to prevent them.

When is World Mental Health Day 2022?

World Mental Health Day is celebrated annually on the 10th of October. This day is a reminder to take care of our mental health and the mental health of our loved ones. Mental health is not something to be taken lightly. It affects our daily lives, and it is in everyone’s best interest to be mentally well.

What is the theme of World Mental Health Day 2022?

This year’s theme for World Mental Health Day 2022 is ensuring mental health and well-being for all become a global priority. However, this daunting task begins within us. First of all, we have to think about ourselves, because only if we feel good, only then we will be able to help our surroundings. We should use this day to reflect on ourselves, whether we feel mentally well and whether we need help. Asking for help is not a bad thing at all. We don’t have to hide behind the mask of being a healthy person, and it’s okay to admit that we don’t feel the way we want to feel. It’s okay not to be okay, and realizing that is a necessary first step to feeling better.

History of World Mental Health Day

October 10 is known around the world as World Mental Health Day – the result of a global advocacy and awareness programme launched in 1992 by the World Federation for Mental Health. The World Federation for Mental Health, founded in 1948 in London, is dedicated to promotion and education to change the perception of mental illness. Each year, the World Federation for Mental Health selects a theme for World Mental Health Day and publishes awareness-raising materials.

Every year on October 10, thousands of individuals and groups come together to celebrate and support the only global day for mental health awareness. This annual program was created as a way to bring greater attention to mental illness and its impact on individual life, work, family, and the overall stability of communities and countries.

The importance of World Mental Health Day

The importance of World Mental Health Day lies in promoting awareness of mental health risks. Statistics indicate that over 10% of the world’s population suffers from some form of mental illness. Depression is the most common (around 3.5%), followed by anxiety disorder (around 4%), while bipolar disorder or eating disorders are less common but equally important.

Mental disorders have been part of our society since time immemorial. Unfortunately, in the past they have been seen as a defect of the individual and rather than being addressed, these people have been stigmatised. Fortunately, these days it is different, and a large part of the population now knows that a mental disorder does not mean that a person is dysfunctional and unfit for inclusion in society. Such people can be helped, and we should all try to help them.

That is why we mark World Mental Health Day every year – to raise awareness of the existence of mental disorders, and to keep learning how to prevent them and how to help people who suffer from them.

How to celebrate World Mental Health Day?

If you want to get involved in the World Mental Health Day discussion, you can do so on Twitter using the hashtag #WorldMentalHealthDay. During World Mental Health Day there are also many lectures and workshops giving advice on how to feel better, what to do for yourself, and how to help those around you who have a mental health problems. Use this day to educate yourself about mental health issues that are becoming more and more relevant in our society.

If you want to show your support for World Mental Health Day, you can buy a green ribbon to symbolise the fight against mental illness.

What can I do to feel better?

Admitting that you have mental health problems is not at all shameful. On the contrary, it is a sign of strength and determination to change the situation. If you are struggling with mental health issues, there are a few things you can do for yourself.

The first thing is to seek professional help. Seek the help of a psychologist, and choose one that you feel comfortable with and can tell everything that is bothering you. Only by opening up can you begin to address deep-seated issues that you may not even be aware of. If the Covid-19 pandemic has produced anything useful, it is that even psychologists have learned to work at a distance, and that’s if face-to-face meetings don’t suit you.

But you can also improve your mental health through lifestyle changes. Here are some tips from the experts:

Try to spend more time with people and make new friends. Making interpersonal connections can be very difficult for many people, but trust me, if you’re afraid to make a new friendship with someone new, you’re not alone. There are certainly many people in your neighbourhood and in the world in general who feel the same way. Plus, the rise of social media has made meeting new people all the easier.
Be more physically active. Deciding to do something for your body can be somewhat challenging, but both your body and your mind will thank you for it. All you have to do is go for a walk, bike ride, run, or play a sport, and you’ll feel much better. It may only take a little while, but it can kick-start a new hobby that will give you joy in your life. You don’t get anything for trying.
Be more mindful. It’s not easy, but if you try to think more about yourself, you can find out for yourself what’s bothering you and what you’re missing. That’s the first step to solving your problems. As long as you feel like a “stranger” in your head, you will never be “at home” and you will not feel as good as you could.
Learn something new. Try new hobbies, and expand your horizons with new knowledge. There’s plenty of that. Think back to your youth and try to remember what you enjoyed as a child. You may not have had the means then, but what about today? It may sound a bit far-fetched, but personally, I loved the Middle Ages when I was younger, so how about trying blacksmithing? I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll find something that might interest you.
Help others. It’s sometimes said that those who don’t feel good about themselves can’t help others. That is, in my opinion, nonsense. On the contrary, helping other people has a beneficial effect on us. Be helpful and kind-hearted, the world will reciprocate and maybe you will feel better.
Don’t be mad at yourself for doing what you enjoy. Many times I’ve encountered my friends being mad at themselves for doing something that was “unproductive”. It’s perfectly fine to lie down from time to time during the day, watch a TV show, or play a game. Our minds can only hold a certain number of sensations, and it’s okay if we regenerate with some undemanding activity. Take it easy.

These are just a few tips recommended by experts. If you can think of anything yourself that helps you feel better, be sure to let me know in the comments. But most importantly – mental health is nothing to be taken lightly. Sometimes what happens is that no matter what you do, nothing helps you feel better. In that case, please reach out to your loved ones, confide in them, and confide in professionals.

Find out if your customers are on social networks

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When deciding on possible activities on social networks, there are several ways to verify that your target customers are using social networking.

Also, you should not miss the previous part of the article series about social media marketing – Involve social media in your B2B communication – Part 2. It is a must-read!

The presence of target groups is key when considering possible activities on social networks. During my activities in social networks, I came across several cases where this step had been underestimated or entirely omitted. As a result, communicating on social networks was not working and money was wasted on ineffective advertising and other related activities.

A communication strategy for social networks must always be supported by qualified information about the presence of the target group. If the service is not used by your customers (or anyone else you want to reach) not even the best strategy will work.

In my previous article, I mentioned several possible ways of gathering information about the presence of the target group. This article will present some of them in detail and will extend the list with additionalmethods.

Ask your customers

The most direct action is to ask your own customers. This way you come to a very specific conclusion and also get additional valuable information – for example, what content they want to watch. Collecting information this way may be challenging and, especially with large distribution networks, poses a problem. When using this method, it is also necessary to take into account that it is limited to a group of existing customers and does not cover anypotential customers. Usually this is not a problem within well established companies as potential customers tend to behave similarly to existing ones.

Another possible tool is the analysis of the competition, which is usually used in the preparation of the communication strategy. A competitive analysis involves searching for and viewing your competition’s profiles on individual services and specifically monitoring how they are being active from engaging their users to promoting their brand. It is also possible to take into account the number of subscribers and followers, but this figure is not very meaningful or reliable because fans can easily be bought (at a cost of low or negligible relevance).

Reach for your own data

An interesting source of data – by far not only for purposes of this decision – is remarketing, which is currently only available on Facebook. Remarketing represents a targeting tool which you can use in advertising to engage with users who have visited your website and completed a specific action (such as visited a specific page, purchased certain goods, left unfinished orders in the shopping cart, etc.). In technical terms, it just involves adding a bit of external code in the header of all your pages. This code then provides a data exchange with specific advertising systems. In addition to Facebook, remarketing is also available with Google AdWords, Sklik and some other providers.

The essence of remarketing is creating a database of very relevant users. A high relevance is determined by the fact that visitors must have found your site in some way (targeted queries in search engines, they saw the ad and responded to it, etc.). They do not get to your site randomly and they pursued a specific goal with their visit. This principle can be used to evaluate the presence of target groups without investing a penny in advertising. After Facebook’s remarketing code has been placed on your website, you can watch the growing number of users who visited your website while they were signed into their Facebook accounts.

All data are available in the advertising manager, it is always accessible, even if you are not currently advertising. If you divide this figure by the number of unique visitors to the website over a given period, you will get the information about the Facebook penetration in the group of your visitors. If you use your remarketing database for targeted advertising (and this service is not free of charge any more), you will also find the percentage of actually active users in your database.

Personally, I believe a penetration greater than 20% can be considered an excellent result in the B2B segment. In the B2C segment, the results vary widely depending on the age range of the target group, but situations where 70 or 80 percent of the site’s visitors are logged in to Facebook at the same time are not rare.

You can also upload a list of e-mail addresses or phone numbers into the advertising manager of Facebook and the service will try to pair them with the associated user accounts. This works very well in the B2C segment, where e-mail address or phone numbers that you have in the database are often used to log into Web services by their owners. In the B2B segment, email addresses are generally useless. However, you can at least succeed with the phone numbers. After uploading the data you can again see the percentage of successful pairings and consequently the data can be used for ad targeting.

Information about the reach of the advertising managers

If the target user can be defined at the level of ad targeting options, information about the potential reach from the advertising manager can be taken into account when making decisions. To define the target user on Facebook, you can use broad demographic classifications such as gender, age, location, but also quite detailed behavioral attributes, such as interests and relationships between users. In Facebook, you get rough, rather tentative figures than the exact results recommended to follow. As an example, we can use dentists that you would like to target on social networks. First, you enter Dentistry as your interest in the advertising manager. However, in the estimated range, you will see a number several times higher than the actual size of the market (even if you had included students and related professions into it). This is caused by the fact that it includes all users who, for example, started following the page of their or any other dentist who fits in this category, and by following it, they expressed a specific interest in Dentistry.

Advertising on Twitter is unusable for the purposes of this decision. However, LinkedIn offers highly accurate targeting users according to the field in which they work, their position or their specific skills (representing their interests). This accuracy is, however, compensated by a significant disruption as the LinkedIn users are not very active on the network, and advertising is more expensive compared to Facebook.

Survey on Twitter

On Twitter, only a survey may be used for the aformentioned procedures. You will find most information about people using Twitter if you join the environment of this social network for a while. The most active Twitter users are from marketing departments, IT specialists, independent entrepreneurs, journalists, and politicians. Quite a few users use Twitter just to passively watch selected users. They do not contribute to anything and usually do not respond to any other users.

Effort that pays off

Deciding on the benefits of social networking described this way may give the impression that it is a complicated process. In fact, it is especially important to select a combination of suitable methods and their correct application with the knowledge of their disadvantages and limitations. Spending a lot of time on a thorough consideration of the importance of social networks for your business or brand, you can work with realistic goals and expectations.

Involve social media in your B2B communication (next part)

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The second part of the article on the advantages of social networks in B2B communication focuses on the integration of this communication channel into the processes of an organization and puts social networks in the context of business goals. It also deals with success evaluation and the role of a web integrator in the integration of social networks into the communication mix.

Also, you should not miss the previous part of the article series about social media network marketing – Involve social media in your B2B communication – Part 1. It is a must-read!

Answers to questions:

How to Integrate Social Networking into your Organization’s Processes
What Objectives Need to be Determined?
How to Evaluate Social Networks
The Role of a Web Integrator in the Process of Integrating Social Networking into Communications
How to Use Social Networks for Internal Company Needs

The level of social networks integration into the processes of the organization differs depending on the company’s model – that is, whether the administration of the social channels is outsourced to a communications agency, or is managed by internal resources. In any case, a general communication framework and strategy should be established to determine what topics you communicate and how your company handles crisis management.

The communication strategies should be specified in guidelines for using social networks, laying out what outcomes they should meet, what context a logo or other company asset can be used or how to react to the users´ stimuli. Guidelines may also contain a section which regulates the use of social networks by employees. For example, their complaints and comments should be communicated entirely through internal communication channels and not through social networks, where the public can see them and where they can create a negative image of the company. For those who publicly represent the organization, guidelines may also require a statement that the opinions of these people do not necessarily represent the opinions of the company.

In cases where management of social networks has been outsourced, there should be a primary contact person designated in your organization who will be responsible for co-ordinating with the outsourced communications agency, approving content, and handling crisis management if the need arises. Individual competence may be delegated to more members; this applies especially to crisis management and answering questions. In some cases it is necessary to respond outside standard business hours. The Agency should guarantee a maximum response time which reflects the specifics of the sector and the anticipated severity of communication from the users.

If social networks are managed internally, the rules will be very similar. Management must be backed by one person responsible for the use of any social networking in the organization. This person will help shape the strategy and guidelines, approve content (if not directly creating it) and managing communications. When creating content, this person should use internal resources such as the DTP department, and so on.

To approve the created content, “traditional” methods can be used, such as text documents or spreadsheets, into which the relevant person adds specific comments and observations. Specialized solutions which allow the setting of specific workflows, allocating specific roles to the members of the approval process, and may also allow automated content publishing, are also available.

Regarding access to the profiles on social networks, it pays to be doubly cautious. In practice, this means not assigning higher level permissions to individuals than their jobs require. In cases where the social networks do not allow the delegation of access rights for the associated accounts, we recommend that you avoid sharing passwords between multiple people. This can be done by authorizing the client (application) for the social network for the appropriate people directly on their devices.

What Objectives Need to be Determined?

Setting out the communication strategy must take place prior to setting the goals. Goals can be of two types – defining the metrics to be used in evaluating social networks (number of watchers, engagement rate, outreach, etc.) or defining the business goals. While the objectives defined by these metrics are useful for evaluating the partial success and budget, business goals should fit the overall company strategy.

The common objective should be to create a long-term community of active, relevant users, who can be reached at any time and used for Lead Generation purposes. Lead Generation represents one of the measurable objectives, based on which you can calculate the long-term Return on Investment (ROI).

Further objectives are already definable on the PR level. As noted above, social networks can be used to build brand awareness or to communicate the moral values and social obligations which the organization has established and support. As in any kind of communication, the final image is always a sum of many parts.

Each social network offers its own analytical tool, allowing you to monitor development trends and obtain information such as demographics and user behavior. If your profiles are managed by an agency, you should require regular reports and agree on goals determined by the KPIs to be delivered.

Third-party tools that allow you to measure the performance across various channels are also available for analytics. In the future, it may even be possible to compare industry benchmarks (for now it is a domain of the B2C segment only). With data from social networks, you can also work in CRM systems, some of them already offer connections to social networks.

Having a web integrator as a co-ordinator of a web integration project ensures the implementation of social networks in synergy with the marketing department of any clients or external agencies.

When a project is designed, a web integrator considers the benefits of participating in social network communications, recommends the appropriate channels, and evaluates the potential risks and their severity, all in collaboration with the client. Along with the marketing department, a web integrator proposes the optimal communication strategy for individual channels and specific support activities such as advertising. A web integrator works with either the internal marketing department of the client or the communication agency, and deals with the actual content management and the communication management of the company’s social media profiles.

If a client or a self-service zone is a part of the web integration project, a web integrator can recommend using social networks as a secondary channel for customer care and takes this into consideration in both the design and the interface of these systems.

If development of any specific applications for social networks (such as competitions, microsites, etc.) after the completion of the project is needed, a web integrator coordinates the development with a creative agency, DTP department and/or an internal or external development team.

Social networks can also be used for internal company communication. In smaller companies, this is often accomplished by closed or secret Facebook groups. In larger organizations, it seems to be better to use specialized solutions such as Yammer. Be careful as to not discriminate against employees who do not have a Facebook account. On the other hand, do not give your employees a reason to go to Facebook during work hours.

Another possible use may be recruitment posts about current job positions which may be regularly displayed together with other content on the company profile. Open positions can also be promoted by advertising, which in comparison with the employers catalogs is usually much cheaper. From my experience, recruiting technical professionals works well on social media.

After all, social networking sites have become powerful tools for recruiters when reviewing their candidates, especially when reviewing their loyalty to their employer and in uncovering any further risk factors.

Do Not Hesitate, Start Now

If there is a potential for using social networks in your communication, do not hesitate to make the decision. Start using social networks through internal resources or seek an external partner. We will definitely come back to these subjects here at Web Integration.

You can now follow to the next part – article called: Find out if your customers are on social networks.

Involve social media in your B2B communication

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Social media is a standard communication channel for most of the companies from the B2C market. However, B2B companies have held some reservations in regard to involving social media in their communication – but the „B“ on both sides of this abbreviation also means people. When is the right moment for involving social media into B2B communication and how can organizations benefit from using it?

Also, you should not miss the previous part of the article series about social media marketing – Reach your visitors through remarketing. It is a must-read!

FAQ:

Why start using social media
Which platforms choose
How to find the audience
What to communicate

Unlike the B2C market, social media cannot be recommended to use for all B2B companies as a part of their communication mix. Involvement of social media might be inappropriate or ungraspable in some cases, sometimes it can be even counterproductive (chemical, weapon industry, etc.). Social media also should not be involved into communication just because the organization considers it as a necessity.

Involvement of social media has to be considered in deep communication strategy which puts individual outputs to into context. This matter also needs to be thought over in the chosen level of particular social networks and your typical customers.

Our experience from the projects of our clients has convinced us that the room for involving social media in B2B communication is surprisingly large.

Your motivation for the involvement of social media into your B2B communication should not be only you considering it as a necessity or just because your competitors are doing so. Social media entered B2C communication in this way few years ago. A lot of brands joined social media but a clear and defined objective was missing in their communication. Their social media communication wasn’t matching other channels they used.

Traditional advertising agencies, which have transformed to digital agencies, now added „social“ in their portfolios. They tried to apply to social media the same principles which worked somewhere else, but it hasn’t worked. The situation has changed with the mistakes of these agencies which has made a room for startups with this focus; with a clearer vision of social media, a large amount of articles and blogposts about it as well as with conferences.

Companies started giving higher priority to social media in their communication mix and creating special positions focused right on social media. The great example can be telecommunication companies which have dedicated entire teams for social media and manage a significant part of their customer care with it.

The meaning of this turnoff to B2C market is in the edification that it is not necessary to repeat the same mistakes or to discover what’s already been discovered. It is enough to understand the principles working for B2C communication on social media and put them into the context of your business, existing communication and your typical customers. If you will find an intersection among things mentioned above, then the thoughts regarding social media integration into your organization are appropriate.

The previous text describes the process of integration as very simplified. Social media integration is a complex decision which requires deep knowledge of the social media environment, risks (managing crisis communication) and much further consequences. If you are unable to manage this process within your organization resources, then you need to get in touch with a communication agency.

The agency has to have experience with B2B communication and ideally, directly from your market. It is possible to work together with agencies you already have a contract with – the basic assumption is that the agency has enough experience with social media. Working with an already contracted agency is the best away after using your internal staff. The agency could then coordinate communication among all of the channels you use.

The basic question you need to ask yourself is – are my customers (or partners, employees or people who are interested in any way and you want to influence them) there? The answer can be found by multiple ways. The most straight way is a questionnaire for your current customers, but then the results won’t include the group of potential customer.

Another way is utilizing data from advertising manager tools where you define your target user and get an estimated size of the group. It works only when you are able to define your current customers in the terms of demographical and behavioral data.

From the B2B point of view, the information can be the most easily found on LinkedIn where you can choose from particular industries and specific fields as well as from organizations or positions. Industries could be also chosen on Facebook, but with significantly less accuracy. The less accuracy needs to be compensated by using mentioned demographical and behavioral patterns.

The next option is estimation, intuition and knowledge of the business environment which can beneficial, but also distorted by personal attitude and opinion of social media. The best foundation for the final decision is the combination of all mentioned above. By the way, the questionnaire says a lot of about content which you should post; estimated sizes from social media show the potential size of audience and your experience puts everything together and gets it into real context.

Another aspect which needs to be considered are the types of content you are able to create. Some social networks have its specifics regarding the content form – especially Instagram and Pinterest where you have to be able to create enough visually attractive materials.

Facebook, Twitter (not considering limitation of the text length) and LinkedIn haven’t got specific requirements in the meaning of the content. Some types of the content are more successful, some are less. This is a topic of analytics which has been mentioned in many articles on the web.

How to find the audience

Building the audience is a close topic to content (see the next section). Presence on social media should be mentioned on your website and in printed materials. This information can be also included in promo materials at conferences and on business cards. A link to your LinkedIn profile can be added to signature of emails as well.

The organic growth of followers has a huge value in the meaning of relevancy of the users, but it is very slow at the beginning (and in B2B market in general). It might incorrectly lead to a negative evaluation and termination of the project. Especially at the beginning when the expectations are high and management is watching the performance. Therefore advertising and other activities need to be involved in the project from its start.

Adverts will be targeted to defined groups of users and will inform them about your presence on social media. Multiple ways of promotion are available. Well-known brands can communicate through their brand „aura“, ads can show reasons and advantages of following you and your content could be shown to users who don’t follow you yet (promoted posts). The campaign should be running for a long-term period, but its intensity could be changed over time.

A very effective tool for building an audience is remarketing (available only on Facebook at the moment). A special piece of code is placed into your website and this code verifies if a person who came on your website is logged into a Facebook account. If so, the script adds its ID to a special list to which you can target your ads. This tool creates a database of highly relevant people which can be used anytime for targeting your ads.

You can upload a list of e-mail addresses (from a newsletter, etc.) to an advertising manager where these addresses can be paired with accounts on Facebook, then you can display ads to these users. However, utilizing this tool for B2B needs has two potential problems. The first one is that this type of usage is probably against your organization’s data policy. The second problem is that you have business addresses of users, but they use their personal addresses for logging in.

What to communicate

There is no universal advice for what you should post about, definitely not for the B2B market. However, few common attributes can be named. Your content should meet them on the premise of attractive content. Content should be actual, unique, short, cogent, visually attractive, informal. Your communication strategy has to define in which topics will these attributes be reflected. Based on my experience with B2B communication and companies I follow on social media, there are few content types which work well, regardless the industry.

It is actual information from the industry, case studies, innovations, concepts of the future, and industry-related humor. It is always true that posting primarily about your products and solutions leads to a significant amount of unfollowing your profile. Hardly any B2C profile could work primarily commercially, so this is definitely not possible on a B2B profile. The objective of B2B presence on social media should be building the community of relevant users which can be converted to leads.

Leads generation is not only the one possible objective for B2B presence on social media. I mentioned ir firstly just because I receive this type of question often right from clients from B2B market.

Social media can work for B2B companies as a tool for increasing brand awareness, brand knowledge or for communication of social values (sustainable development, ecology…).

The great example is Maersk’s Instagram profile. Maersk is a Danish logistic company which ensures container shipping around the world, so it is a clear example of a B2B company. Maersk posts photos of ships, colorful containers, and of course everything with hashtags. Maersk is followed by 30 thousand users; its page on Facebook follows even more than million users. The company’s objective for social media presence is to „get closer to their customers“. This goal is not measurable, but the company obviously achieves it. I found a nice definition of social media at their website:

Social media is about communication, not marketing. It’s about engaging, not pushing. And social media is definitely not just about the media side.

Before you decide for integration of social media into your communication, you have to realize that communication in social media works bi-directionally. Advice on how the communication can be managed and through which tools are offered in many articles on the web.

More important is handling crisis communication. Occurrence of crisis communication is higher as the social media supports a bidirectional way of communication. This fact needs to be considered as a project risk and processes within the organization have to be set according to it. Sometimes the presence of the organization itself is enough of an impulse for the start of crisis communication. This applies for example for industries that were named at the beginning of this article. Otherwise it is better to be on social media than not in general.

The second part of this article will get you an answer for remaining questions:

How to integrate social media into an organization’s processes
Which goals to define
How to measure social media
What is the role of a web integrator in the process of social media integration
How to use social media for internal communication

You can now follow to the next part – article called: Involve social media in your B2B communication – Part 2.

World Post Day — 9th October, 2022

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While post offices can be infuriating at times, without them our society would not exist and our lives would be much more complicated. World Post Day, celebrated annually on 9 October, is a reminder of this.

Why is World Post Day named so?

World Post Day was established to commemorate the founding of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1874. Every year on this day we commemorate the importance of post offices in our lives and in the running of our society.

When is World Post Day 2022?

World Post Day is celebrated annually on the 9th of October, the anniversary of the founding of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 in the Swiss capital Bern. World Post Day was proclaimed at the UPU Congress in Tokyo, Japan, in 1969. Since then, countries around the world have participated in the celebrations every year. Post offices in many countries use the event to introduce or promote new postal products and services.

What is the theme of World Post Day 2022?

This year’s theme for World Post Day 2022 is Post for Planet.

As the oldest logistics institution in the world, it is on post offices’ shoulders to raise awareness of environmental protection. So, this year’s theme brings out the question: in what ways can post offices contribute to a greener economy?

History of World Post Day

World Post Day commemorates the founding of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 in Bern, Switzerland. World Post Day itself was proclaimed at the Universal Postal Union Congress in Tokyo, Japan, in 1969. The Universal Postal Union, or UPU for short, has played a significant role in our lives, and we may not even realise it. Thanks to the work of the UPU, the operations of the various regional post offices have been unified, ensuring greater speed and efficiency. Universal Postal Union’s work includes, for example, the creation of postal codes.

The importance of World Post Day

The purpose of World Post Day is to raise awareness of the role of the postal sector in the daily lives of people and businesses and its contribution to the social and economic development of countries. The celebration encourages Member Countries of the United Nations to undertake programme activities aimed at creating wider public and media awareness of the role and activities of their post offices on a national scale.

Each year, more than 150 countries celebrate World Post Day in different ways. In some countries, World Post Day is celebrated as a working day. Many post offices use the event to introduce or promote new postal products and services. Some post offices also use World Post Day to reward their employees for good work.

Philatelic exhibitions are held in many countries and new stamps and postmarks are issued. Other activities include the display of World Post Day posters at post offices and other public places, open days at post offices, postal centres and postal museums, conferences, seminars and workshops, as well as cultural, sporting and other leisure activities. Many postal administrations issue special souvenirs such as T-shirts and badges.

How to celebrate World Post Day?

If you want to get involved in the World Post Day discussion, you can do so on Twitter using the hashtag #WorldPostDay. This year’s theme is the importance of mail in sustainable development. But there are other ways to celebrate World Post Day – try writing a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while! And don’t forget to thank your postperson for a job well done.

Reach your visitors through remarketing

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By abandoning the shopping cart in an e-shop, the story does not end, but rather begins a new chapter. Where the capacity of traditional PPC campaigns seems to end, the door of a remarketing campaign opens. It can be used to target advertising to your existing users based on what you know of their behavior.

Remarketing is a way of targeted PPC advertising, by which you can display advertising messages to users who have visited your site. There are more possible applications of this targeting method than it seems at first glance.

I introduce remarketing in connection with Web integration as an area which is usually covered by the integration mix of digital agencies. In our experience, the importance of this technology goes beyond the performance marketing and its use should be considered in a broader context.

Talk to people you know

Remarketing is characterized by its significantly higher relevance and effectiveness compared to other ways of targeting ads on the content network because it focuses on your past visitors. They must have learnt about your site somehow (they might have seen your ads, someone told them about it …) and then visited it. It is a great indicator of their interest in the given topic and, from an advertising point of view, proof of relevance. This obviously does not always apply, as irrelevant users are also visiting your website. Remarketing, however, counts on this and has a solution for it.

In other words, remarketing is the domain of the content network, which is one of the two essential ingredients of PPC systems, Google AdWords and Sklik, which are relevant in the Czech Republic. The second component is search, which can barely be compared with remarketing in efficiency. From the perspective of remarketing, I’ll only talk about the content network. It includes a large network of sites on which the ads appear within the advertising system.

Remarketing also has a relatively small application in search, to which we shall return to later.
In addition to the above mentioned advertising systems, Facebook Ads provides remarketing as well and adds a few interesting options to it which can´t be found in other systems.

Remarketing is not only a component of PPC systems, you can come across to it as well in RTB advertising (real-time bidding, auction ads in real time), and in general it can be described as an approach applicable not only in the online environment, where you address a known user based on his behavior in the past. Its most important application comes with cross-selling, sales promotion and increasing retention.

Majority of data you use on Facebook

Starting with remarketing from the perspective of an advertiser is simple. The advertising system generates the javascript code which should be inserted into all pages of the site. For the novice advertiser, it may be surprising that it only has one code for a single advertising account, especially when they need to distinguish between the visitors coming from various sections (for instance the e-shop and the product).

This is sorted by the URL filters, where you create the individual remarketing lists to target your ads. Individual remarketing lists can be either grouped or mutually exclusive, which gives you the opportunity to build very interesting and detailed marketing combinations.

In case of Sklik (Seznam.cz) you only have the basic filtering options, Google AdWords can also work with its own parameters. Facebook can target the ads by their own lists of e-mail addresses and phone numbers, which are paired with the user accounts on Facebook, however, it can´t handle the parameters used in AdWords. The most advanced remarketing options, from a technical point of view, are in Google AdWords, and the largest possibility of using their own data, is on Facebook.

On top of specific parameters from outside the scope of the URL, Google offers dynamic remarketing. It saves huge amounts of time for the e-shop operators which they would have to invest in preparing a specific creative for each product and deploying the ads in the system together with their management.

It allows creating a template into which the information (including images) are automatically inserted from the feed within so-called Google Merchant Center service. The ads are then automatically displayed in the content network within the dedicated budget. Remarketing data can be also collected into AdWords through Google Analytics and based on them you can target different devices, in accordance with chosen web metrics, such as the visit length, or the users who provided a specified sequence of actions.

Use detailed marketing combinations

The second dimension is the durability of remarketing data. The maximum durability of each service is different. An expiration date is set for each remarketing list separately and it ensures that items older than a specified time are automatically removed from the list. Thus, if there is a remarketing list with a durability of 60 days, the site visitor is saved in this list. If the user is not included in the list within 60 days after the visit again, he gets removed from the list.

An example of this may be an e-shop offering printers. If a user purchases a laser printer, in three months he will need to buy a new ink cartridge. In this case, you have created a list that will contain all users who bought a laser printer in the last 180 days.

Next, you create a list of users who have purchased the laser printer in the last 90 days. When targeting the ads you then select a list of 180 days and exclude lists of 90 days. Your ads will be displayed to users who bought a laser printer only in the last 3-6 months, which is, based on your knowledge of the field, theperiod when they will most likely be looking for a new cartridge. Likewise, you can create a lists especially for cartridges, and regularly remind the users to buy new ones.

Be careful with the terms of use

Remarketing obviously has its limits and those are given by addressing to the individual users. You can´t use it (in the above mentioned PPC systems) to target one particular user. Meaning that, personalized ads saying “Hi Dominic, we have just created a special offer for you!” can’t be displayed to any user.

The advertising systems determines the minimum size of the list which should be used for targeted advertising. For Facebook, the limit is 20 users, with Google it starts at 100 users. The personalization option for the individual users is not possible due to the limitations and therefore it continues to remain the domain of e-mail marketing.

In addition to this technical limitation, it is necessary to take into account the relatively extensive rules on how remarketing can be used. The rules claim that by remarketing it is not permitted to collect any sensitive information that could lead to identification of any unique user. On top of that they define a range of remarketing usage which is forbidden. An example (as mentioned by Google) may be the end customers who visited the site with information about diabetes. It is forbidden to display ads that could indicate their state of health to such users.

Use remarketing in search engine

Using remarketing is usually offered in the later stages of the buying cycle, especially in the phases of the purchase and retention. However, it can be also used in the moment when a potential customer is researching information for making a decision on the purchase. The key is to make the user visit your website during their research. Based on this visit, you can keep offering him the product until the moment he purchases it. I usually describe this approach to our clients as “haunting holiday syndrome”.

At this stage, remarketing can especially be used well in search engines (till now it was only the content network). Here you can display your ads to users who are in your remarketing list and also entered the specific keywords that you have in your campaign. Keep in mind, remarketing is completely unusable for getting new traffic to your website as it only focuses on previously known users.

Increase retention of your customers

Utilization of remarketing in online remarketing campaigns strongly supports the retention of existing customers and allows working with undecided shoppers. This fact, when more and more companies are realizing that a small increase in retention may contribute to the business many times greater than increase in the number of customers, plays a very important role.

You can now follow to the next part – article called: Involve social media in your B2B communication – Part 1.

Omnichannel marketing – what is it?

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Omnichannel marketing represents a strategy, a comprehensive approach that aims to communicate effectively with the customer through all available channels. Sharing information in a unified, interconnected way, while at the same time allowing them to reach us. In a way that suits them. The history of interactions should then come together to form a coherent whole. Omnichannel assigns work to agents in real time. It routes objects, such as chats, cases, leads or social media posts, as units of work to agents based on configured criteria.

Advantages of omnichannel marketing

Most brands today agree that an omnichannel approach can deliver the best results. Implementing an omnichannel approach is far from easy, but if done correctly, it offers a number of benefits. Today’s consumers are used to being bombarded with messages from different brands and are therefore increasingly selective about which brands they choose to work with. Creating multi-channel customer engagement can act as a brand differentiator and deliver the following benefits:

Better customer experience – Because omnichannel focuses on individual experience across devices, not channels, the customer experience (CX) is better. By focusing on the customer instead of the platform, companies can achieve higher sales and better customer retention rates.
Cohesive strategy and brand identity – Creating a unified strategy across channels means building an easily identifiable brand image and tone. Organizations should base this image on the core needs and values of the audience. Focusing on the overall experience and working within brand principles across channels will lead to a more comprehensive brand strategy that translates into greater loyalty and more targeted communications.
Increase revenue – An omnichannel approach encourages customers to engage with the brand across multiple touchpoints and channels. This increased and varied engagement at every stage of the buyer’s journey can help increase revenue, as research shows that customers who engage with multiple touchpoints typically experience 30% more value. This more targeted communication also builds loyalty, making it more likely that a customer will purchase from your brand again. Repeat customers make up 40% of revenue on average, even though they make up a smaller portion of your consumer base.
Better attribution data – Truly Omnidirectional communication shouldn’t just be about the user’s experience with your brand, but also about data analysis. By tracking engagement across channels, brands can better understand what the customer journey looks like, when and where consumers engage most often, and which campaigns have created the most value. All of this data can be fed back into strategy to create more targeted campaigns and optimize media spending.

List of Country Codes

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Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes developed to represent countries and dependent areas for use in data processing and communication. In this article, we will briefly describe why the codes are used and list the codes for all the countries of the world.

What are country codes used for?

The data reported in the Intrastat returns, which is a statistical system for collecting and processing data to monitor trade in goods between the EU Member States, includes, among other things, information on the country of destination, dispatch and origin. Two-digit alphabetic country codes are used to record these. The country of destination refers to the last Member State to which the goods are to be delivered in the relevant transaction. In most cases, the consignment is directly addressed to this State. The indication of the State of the destination shall be entered in the dispatch note. Whereas the information on the State of dispatch and the State of origin shall be entered in the statement of receipt. The State of dispatch is the Member State from which the goods are directly dispatched to the place of destination. And the State of origin, when the goods are received in the country of destination, is the State in which the goods were produced, processed, extracted, grown, etc. If the goods have been processed in different countries, the country of origin is the country in which the goods have acquired their final form.

The difference between the Alpha 2 code and the Alpha 3 code

Two- and three-letter country codes are embedded in ISO 3166. While two-character country codes are more commonly used, three-character codes have their merits. In fact, two-letter country codes can be confusing – just consider how many countries start with the letter M, for example.

List of country codes

Below you will find the Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 codes for all countries in the world. If you want to make your search easier, I recommend using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F (for Windows) or Command+F (for Mac).

Name of the state	Alpha 2 code	Alpha 3 code
Afghanistan	AF	AFG
Albania	AL	ALB
Algeria	DZ	DZA
American Samoa	AS	ASM
Andorra	AD	AND
Angola	AO	AGO
Anguilla	AI	AIA
Antarctica	AQ	ATA
Antigua and Barbuda	AG	ATG
Argentina	AR	ARG
Armenia	AM	ARM
Aruba	AW	ABW
Australia	AU	AUS
Austria	AT	AUT
Azerbaijan	AZ	AZE
Bahamas (the)	BS	BHS
Bahrain	BH	BHR
Bangladesh	BD	BGD
Barbados	BB	BRB
Belarus	BY	BLR
Belgium	BE	BEL
Belize	BZ	BLZ
Benin	BJ	BEN
Bermuda	BM	BMU
Bhutan	BT	BTN
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)	BO	BOL
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba	BQ	BES
Bosnia and Herzegovina	BA	BIH
Botswana	BW	BWA
Bouvet Island	BV	BVT
Brazil	BR	BRA
British Indian Ocean Territory (the)	IO	IOT
Brunei Darussalam	BN	BRN
Bulgaria	BG	BGR
Burkina Faso	BF	BFA
Burundi	BI	BDI
Cabo Verde	CV	CPV
Cambodia	KH	KHM
Cameroon	CM	CMR
Canada	CA	CAN
Cayman Islands (the)	KY	CYM
Central African Republic (the)	CF	CAF
Chad	TD	TCD
Chile	CL	CHL
China	CN	CHN
Christmas Island	CX	CXR
Cocos (Keeling) Islands (the)	CC	CCK
Colombia	CO	COL
Comoros (the)	KM	COM
Congo (the Democratic Republic of the)	CD	COD
Congo (the)	CG	COG
Cook Islands (the)	CK	COK
Costa Rica	CR	CRI
Croatia	HR	HRV
Cuba	CU	CUB
Curaçao	CW	CUW
Cyprus	CY	CYP
Czechia	CZ	CZE
Côte d’Ivoire	CI	CIV
Denmark	DK	DNK
Djibouti	DJ	DJI
Dominica	DM	DMA
Dominican Republic (the)	DO	DOM
Ecuador	EC	ECU
Egypt	EG	EGY
El Salvador	SV	SLV
Equatorial Guinea	GQ	GNQ
Eritrea	ER	ERI
Estonia	EE	EST
Eswatini	SZ	SWZ
Ethiopia	ET	ETH
Falkland Islands (the) [Malvinas]	FK	FLK
Faroe Islands (the)	FO	FRO
Fiji	FJ	FJI
Finland	FI	FIN
France	FR	FRA
French Guiana	GF	GUF
French Polynesia	PF	PYF
French Southern Territories (the)	TF	ATF
Gabon	GA	GAB
Gambia (the)	GM	GMB
Georgia	GE	GEO
Germany	DE	DEU
Ghana	GH	GHA
Gibraltar	GI	GIB
Greece	GR	GRC
Greenland	GL	GRL
Grenada	GD	GRD
Guadeloupe	GP	GLP
Guam	GU	GUM
Guatemala	GT	GTM
Guernsey	GG	GGY
Guinea	GN	GIN
Guinea-Bissau	GW	GNB
Guyana	GY	GUY
Haiti	HT	HTI
Heard Island and McDonald Islands	HM	HMD
Holy See (the)	VA	VAT
Honduras	HN	HND
Hong Kong	HK	HKG
Hungary	HU	HUN
Iceland	IS	ISL
India	IN	IND
Indonesia	ID	IDN
Iran (Islamic Republic of)	IR	IRN
Iraq	IQ	IRQ
Ireland	IE	IRL
Isle of Man	IM	IMN
Israel	IL	ISR
Italy	IT	ITA
Jamaica	JM	JAM
Japan	JP	JPN
Jersey	JE	JEY
Jordan	JO	JOR
Kazakhstan	KZ	KAZ
Kenya	KE	KEN
Kiribati	KI	KIR
Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of)	KP	PRK
Korea (the Republic of)	KR	KOR
Kuwait	KW	KWT
Kyrgyzstan	KG	KGZ
Lao People’s Democratic Republic (the)	LA	LAO
Latvia	LV	LVA
Lebanon	LB	LBN
Lesotho	LS	LSO
Liberia	LR	LBR
Libya	LY	LBY
Liechtenstein	LI	LIE
Lithuania	LT	LTU
Luxembourg	LU	LUX
Macao	MO	MAC
Madagascar	MG	MDG
Malawi	MW	MWI
Malaysia	MY	MYS
Maldives	MV	MDV
Mali	ML	MLI
Malta	MT	MLT
Marshall Islands (the)	MH	MHL
Martinique	MQ	MTQ
Mauritania	MR	MRT
Mauritius	MU	MUS
Mayotte	YT	MYT
Mexico	MX	MEX
Micronesia (Federated States of)	FM	FSM
Moldova (the Republic of)	MD	MDA
Monaco	MC	MCO
Mongolia	MN	MNG
Montenegro	ME	MNE
Montserrat	MS	MSR
Morocco	MA	MAR
Mozambique	MZ	MOZ
Myanmar	MM	MMR
Namibia	NA	NAM
Nauru	NR	NRU
Nepal	NP	NPL
Netherlands (the)	NL	NLD
New Caledonia	NC	NCL
New Zealand	NZ	NZL
Nicaragua	NI	NIC
Niger (the)	NE	NER
Nigeria	NG	NGA
Niue	NU	NIU
Norfolk Island	NF	NFK
Northern Mariana Islands (the)	MP	MNP
Norway	NO	NOR
Oman	OM	OMN
Pakistan	PK	PAK
Palau	PW	PLW
Palestine, State of	PS	PSE
Panama	PA	PAN
Papua New Guinea	PG	PNG
Paraguay	PY	PRY
Peru	PE	PER
Philippines (the)	PH	PHL
Pitcairn	PN	PCN
Poland	PL	POL
Portugal	PT	PRT
Puerto Rico	PR	PRI
Qatar	QA	QAT
Republic of North Macedonia	MK	MKD
Romania	RO	ROU
Russian Federation (the)	RU	RUS
Rwanda	RW	RWA
Réunion	RE	REU
Saint Barthélemy	BL	BLM
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha	SH	SHN
Saint Kitts and Nevis	KN	KNA
Saint Lucia	LC	LCA
Saint Martin (French part)	MF	MAF
Saint Pierre and Miquelon	PM	SPM
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	VC	VCT
Samoa	WS	WSM
San Marino	SM	SMR
Sao Tome and Principe	ST	STP
Saudi Arabia	SA	SAU
Senegal	SN	SEN
Serbia	RS	SRB
Seychelles	SC	SYC
Sierra Leone	SL	SLE
Singapore	SG	SGP
Sint Maarten (Dutch part)	SX	SXM
Slovakia	SK	SVK
Slovenia	SI	SVN
Solomon Islands	SB	SLB
Somalia	SO	SOM
South Africa	ZA	ZAF
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands	GS	SGS
South Sudan	SS	SSD
Spain	ES	ESP
Sri Lanka	LK	LKA
Sudan (the)	SD	SDN
Suriname	SR	SUR
Svalbard and Jan Mayen	SJ	SJM
Sweden	SE	SWE
Switzerland	CH	CHE
Syrian Arab Republic	SY	SYR
Taiwan (Province of China)	TW	TWN
Tajikistan	TJ	TJK
Tanzania, United Republic of	TZ	TZA
Thailand	TH	THA
Timor-Leste	TL	TLS
Togo	TG	TGO
Tokelau	TK	TKL
Tonga	TO	TON
Trinidad and Tobago	TT	TTO
Tunisia	TN	TUN
Turkey	TR	TUR
Turkmenistan	TM	TKM
Turks and Caicos Islands (the)	TC	TCA
Tuvalu	TV	TUV
Uganda	UG	UGA
Ukraine	UA	UKR
United Arab Emirates (the)	AE	ARE
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)	GB	GBR
United States Minor Outlying Islands (the)	UM	UMI
United States of America (the)	US	USA
Uruguay	UY	URY
Uzbekistan	UZ	UZB
Vanuatu	VU	VUT
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)	VE	VEN
Viet Nam	VN	VNM
Virgin Islands (British)	VG	VGB
Virgin Islands (U.S.)	VI	VIR
Wallis and Futuna	WF	WLF
Western Sahara	EH	ESH
Yemen	YE	YEM
Zambia	ZM	ZMB
Zimbabwe	ZW	ZWE
Åland Islands	AX	ALA

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