How to Choose the Best Videoconferencing Software for You

With the development of modern tech innovations like faster transfer speeds, bandwidth, mobile applications and 4G connectivity, today more and more people have access to affordable videoconferencing/meeting software than ever.

This growth is usage of videoconferencing software has skyrocketed with the onset of COVID-19 (see our earlier post on COVID-19 and the Future of Work) with an explosion of new and varied users who would previously never even think about using such software to begin with. 

Previously, only businesses and government agencies would consume videoconferencing technologies in order to arrange meetings of teams who were spread out remotely in different locations. These technologies would often be of a paid nature and may also be encrypted or tethered to a VPN software (see How to Choose the Best VPN for You).

However, after the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the impracticality of going to offices, more and more companies (including small businesses) decided to opt for virtual meeting applications out of necessity in order to arrange meetings with colleagues and teams to get work done. 

Soon after, a new segment appeared with schools and educational institutions also joining the fray and resorting to online videoconferencing and streaming in order to complete classes, labs and even examinations. Other new modalities emerged including doctor consultations, legal advising and even cases of marriages via videoconferencing making headlines over the past few months.

Most videoconferencing applications apart from having the standard audio/video streaming service, also provided features like video recording, webinars, API integrations and 3rd party functionalities, VPN and security options, cloud storage and multi-language support and transcriptions. 

Truly, the sky is the limit now for videoconferencing - especially considering the uncertain situation regarding COVID and how it may affect us further in the future. To make the decision easier for you, we have narrowed the best videoconferencing software down to 2 choices - one completely free and another paid. 

How to Rock Content Marketing

We've all heard of the age-old saying 'content is king.' As we've seen in our last few posts on developing sales funnels and developing effective leads, content marketing indeed plays a massive role in converting leads into paying customers and therefore improving the results of a business.

Content marketing is essentially a form of marketing focused on the creation of content online for a particular audience. Content marketing attracts leads and turns them into prospects and finally customers through the process of engaging them with valuable material which in turn provokes audiences to buy your company's goods and services.

The activity holds a number of important benefits including: creating sustainable brand loyalty, providing valuable information to audiences who will continue to revisit to consume more content and stimulate a willingness to buy your company's products and services. 

Probably, the most powerful differentiator of content marketing over older forms of marketing is the fact that it is a 'pull-based' strategy. This means that instead of going out of your way to reach out general consumers through ads, emails and phone calls (traditional 'push-based' methods), you are instead attracting consumers in your direction by sharing valuable content - Hubspot calls this inbound marketing (read more in our earlier post - The Wonders of Inbound Marketing). 

How to Develop Your Sales Funnel

As we've seen in our previous post describing lead generation, the first step to identifying leads and later converting them into prospects and then finally customers is to develop your sales funnel (in some contexts, also known as sales pipeline).

A sales funnel can be visually illustrated as an inverted pyramid where the biggest portion lies at the top of the aptly-named funnel. Like water pouring through, the current gets ever smaller and smaller until it peters out at the bottom.

In a similar way, a large quantity of general consumers in a market form the head of the funnel. It is up to the marketer to successfully guide the general consumer from awareness of the businesses product/service all the way down to the final purchase and staying with the business (customer loyalty/retention). In between, there are a number of steps that need to be taken prior to purchase including discovery of the product, evaluation of the product, intent to buy the product. 

More traditional marketing studies refer to the AIDA model. AIDA is an acronym standing for "Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action." It uses the same funnel shape as the diagram shown above with the main difference being that it is simpler to understand and contains fewer details. Also, there is no interlinking with the sales pipeline that can also be run parellel to the funnel.

How to develop an effective lead generation strategy

Lead generation is essentially all the activities relating to the identification and development of potential customers. Businesses use a range of tools through sales and marketing functions in order to generate leads and increase revenue for their enterprises. Without leads, businesses could not survive as their sales pipelines would eventually dry up. 

There exist distinct differences between B2C (business to consumer/retail marketing) and B2B (business to business/corporate marketing) lead generation. The most tangible difference is that B2C markets generally tend to be broad-based whereas B2B markets are more carefully segmented, with customers and competition tending to be more advanced and knowledgeable about products and services.

Lead generation encompasses a variety of different tactics include conducting detailed market research, developing the sales funnel (more on this in our next post), carefully managing your social media channels (through effective social media management), maintaining your website and pages (namely your landing page, product pages and call to action) and keeping your viewers hooked and wanting more through effective content marketing through blogs, social media snippets and e-mail newsletters.

In order to develop an effective lead generation strategy, you will have to have a keen understanding of how the sales funnel works and how to convert a general consumer in your target segment into a lead who steadily converts from a 'cold' lead to a 'hot' lead and eventually a customer of your business.

COVID and the Future of Work

The ongoing global pandemic has ravaged the way people work and do business. Previous public gatherings, meetings, office parties and social celebrations have all but been binned indefinitely owing to the disruptions caused by COVID-19. As businesses and workers scramble to adjust to the 'new normal,' we will explore what the future entails for work in the current environment as well as what is to come in the days ahead.

The previous 'normal' involved a great deal of social interaction and community. Business owners, managers and employees would make it a habit to spend as much time physically in their office rooms, desks and cubicles to show others their loyalty and dedication to their work. 'Working hard' meant putting in extra effort and time to the office in order to excel and climb the corporate ladder or scale the business to new heights.

After the widespread dispersion of the novel COVID-19 in January 2020, slowly but surely, businesses and society in general began feeling the adverse effects of the virus to not just their operations but how they go about their daily lives. Restrictions on when to leave homes, where you are allowed to go and what you are supposed to wear all became too much of a nightmarish reality for much of the global population which suddenly saw themselves locked under house arrest to try to contain the spread of the virus.

This resulted in a massive paradigm shift in the WoW (way of working) for most businesses and their employees. Now, stuck in their homes, people were forced to connect online and start working remotely using their laptops, mobiles and other devices to make sure they stayed up-to-date with the latest news and developments affecting their companies. Previously uncommon concepts like "work from home" and "remote working" suddenly became the rage and the expected standard for businesses large and small.