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  • How to Build an Amazing Freelancer Portfolio That Will Stand Out (15 Tips)

    There can be a thousand reasons why you would want to make an impressive portfolio. You might be looking for a job, an internship or simply you want to update it to include all of your latest projects. No matter what your purpose is, it is too important to build your freelancer portfolio to land high-paying clients.

    As indicated by UpWork/FreelancersUnion, More freelancers accept their profession is more steady than a normal everyday job by having an expanded portfolio of clients than a job with one employer.

    As per the annual report of freelancer.com in the year 2016, they received a total of 10.6 million job postings from clients with a total of $3 billion in paid transactions. India has about 15 million freelancers and they have been significantly boosting the growth of startups. The survey highlighted that 23% earned in the range of Rs 40-Rs 45 lakh annually.

    So, what’s next? To get the job you want, you need a strong portfolio. To make your life easier we’ve discussed everything you need to know about building a freelance portfolio for your freelance work.

    What Is Portfolio in Freelancing?
    How to Create a Portfolio as a Freelancer? (15 Tips)

    What Is Portfolio in Freelancing?

    A freelance portfolio is like a professional introduction letter that contains all the relevant information about a person like his/her work experience, projects, skills, his all-around personality, and his contact information. It is also an important tool to show why you as a freelancer might be different and also better than others.

    Portfolio
    Portfolio

    Even students with practically zero work experience can build their portfolios. That can include their academic work, school or college projects, workshops attended, participation in competitions, photos or publications in magazines and newspapers. Here we give you 10 tips to build a good and efficient freelancer portfolio to showcase your talent and abilities.

    How to Create a Portfolio as a Freelancer? (15 Tips)

    1. Choose Your Audience First

    Your freelancer portfolio should be specific to the professional you aim to cater to. Take time to research what kind of services your clients need, which services are the most sought after and which ones are the highest-paid. See how much of those can you include in your portfolio.

    With so many fellow freelancers to compete with, India can prove to be a rather challenging market. Consequently, it’s smarter to seek clients with a portfolio that is tailored to their exact needs.

    2. Create A Website To Showcase Your Work

    As a freelancer in India, you are always looking for ways to stand apart from your peers, nothing will do the job better than by being just you. But how do you create your own brand identity? You don’t want to end up as yet another freelancer profile, your customer flips through.‌

    Consider building a website that not only showcases all of your work but also lets your client know a bit about yourself and your work ethic. It doesn’t have to be a fancy one with lines and lines of complicated coding. You can use no-code website building platforms like Pixpa, Squarespace, etc.

    Pixpa's website templates
    Pixpa’s website templates

    Pixpa is an easy to use, all-in-one website builder platform specially designed keeping in mind the needs of creative professionals and small businesses. With a host of built-in tools such as SEO Manager, Marketing Pop-Ups, Announcement Bar, and much more, you don’t need any extra plugins to start growing your traffic and converting more leads. It has a beautiful range of professional, mobile-friendly and responsive templates and an easy to use, and intuitive visual editor.

    3. Put Your Best Foot Forward

    If you are a freelancer, the main objective is to impress the person who is reading your portfolio. First impressions do matter because they help you get a good head-start. Make sure you show the best amongst your work. Create a portfolio of your personal works.

    Include photos and infographics that best illustrate your skill and style. Get good designer tools to make the pictures high-end and impressive. Add the elements that are most important, Make sure you choose a good presentation format that is comfortable to the reader, highlights your skills and best work and also gives an all-round idea about you. The digital format is one of the most widely used as it can be immediately sent and can also be easily edited and updated.

    4. Include Your Pricing

    You must include your charges and pricing procedure. Make sure that you let know your clients that you will take help of contracts so that no unfair means are practised on either side. Try to maintain a professional tone while you present this information.

    There are many freelancers who have to deal with clients that are unwilling to pay on time and at the correct time. Try to find a solution so that there are minimum chances of that happening.

    There are millions of online platforms that help you make an impressive online portfolio/website. One such platform is Jimdo. It offers services to a wide range of professions like bloggers, writers, designers, developers and more. It’s really easy to make a portfolio on this website.

    5. Use White Space

    Yes, white space also plays a very important role in your freelance portfolio. Don’t fill the portfolio with too much content because it will become difficult for the client to read or see your portfolio properly.

    If you are a graphic designer then you should use white space not only in your portfolio but also in your designs. Use this tip to make your portfolio two times better and more eye-catching.

    6. Rearrange and Tell a Good Story

    It’s always a wise decision to constantly change and update your portfolio. Rearrange what’s already there and tell it in a better way. This works particularly well with physical portfolios but you can also do this with online portfolios. Focus on the type of work you want and the people you’d like to work with.

    Always remember, the career-defining and your best projects go first. And it’s never a bad idea to also include a few of your independent side-projects. On the whole, the person who is reading your portfolio should be convinced that you have skills and you are sincere.

    7. A Bit of Show Off to Prove That You are Good

    Let’s start with a fair warning, don’t overdo this. You don’t want others to think that you are like the conceited man in “The Little Prince”. Your main aim here is to show that you are capable in your field of work.

    If you have some really happy past clients, a favourite professor then you can always ask them to write a brief but good recommendation for you. This is important. If you have done some good work then you deserve some appreciation for it.

    Keep a simple and sophisticated cover to present the portfolio. In the first few pages, you can include a brief and relevant description of yourself. Give contact information. Include an about section and make it engaging and conversational. Avoid adjectives and it’s best to stick to the conventional series of content: Home, About, Latest work, Blogs, Contact.

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    8. Easy Navigation

    You may have some really good things to add to your portfolio but it might all go to waste if you cannot arrange your portfolio in a way that the reader finds it easy to navigate through. Make it as systematic as possible. If it’s a physical portfolio then make sure to include page numbers, chapter headings, colour coordination.

    Arrange the content in chronological order. And then comes the background. You don’t want the artist inside you to let loose while you are writing your portfolio. Make sure that the background doesn’t distract the reader from the actual content. Use neutral colours to highlight the graphic elements. Order and simplicity are very important.

    9. Include Testimonials and Feedbacks

    Including testimonials and feedback will add more to your portfolio. It will also help to build trust because nowadays clients are looking for results. So, testimonials received from other clients will add more value.

    Don’t hesitate to include your short-term projects or the work you have done for free just as a project task. Everything that you have done in the past just to improve your career will add some value to your portfolio.

    10. Include a Photo of Yourself

    Just because we are talking about photos doesn’t mean that you go and take an artsy monochrome shot of yourself and put it on your portfolio. We are talking of a professional-looking and high-quality portrait of you that don’t go beyond your head and shoulders.

    You can use tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Adobe InDesign, Issuu and Calameo to get a high-quality image. Avoid white backgrounds. Online magazines hate them.

    11. Include Case Studies

    If your clients are ready to share their stories with you, don’t hesitate to include their case studies in your freelance portfolio. Even small case studies will also help you to get big projects.

    Your client’s success stories show that you can bring results and also shows the contribution and dedication you have given to the job. A screenshot of a recent or updated portfolio website links to newly published articles or add a logo with a link, each giving you a chance of winning some clients over.

    12. Value Your Work

    If you are a beginner then you have to include all the projects you have done in your portfolio. Many new freelancers don’t value their work or charge less. Always remember that only if you value your work then others will value it. You can include all the short-term and long-term projects you have done.

    Also, don’t hesitate to include the tasks you have done for any internship program. Many freelancers also ignore that the projects on which they have worked for free show their passion and love for the work. Include all the things that show your creativity and passion. It will enhance your portfolio more.

    13. Give a Call-to-action

    You are doing all these things because you want to grow your freelancing business. Right!? So, here you are selling yourself or the better word would be your skillset. But after all your efforts what if you are unable to close the sale. You will end up with de-motivation or failure.

    So what you can do to minimize this failure. By giving a Call-to-action, yes! You have to include a call-to-action at the end of your portfolio and of course! at end of each blog and sales copy.

    14. Stick to One Niche

    Don’t try to put all the skills you have or the work you have done in your portfolio. Just try to stick in one niche and update your freelance portfolio with a relevant skillset. No one can be an expert in everything so try to show your expertise only. This way your clients will be sure that you are eligible for the specific project and also you are the expert in that field.

    For example, if you are a web designer then you can add about your web development skills but if you have graphic designing skills too, don’t mention that. Be professional because your portfolio will decide everything in your freelancing career.

    15. Keep Updating Portfolio

    Do you update your portfolio too often? No!. You have to update your portfolio often because it will help you to tell your clients that you are always open to learning. When you update your portfolio it shows that you are learning new skills and improving abilities. In the future, it will also show your expertise and experience and also it will be easy for you to land a high-paying project.

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    Conclusion

    All of us want to bag that dream interview and live the plan that we sketched out in our minds. Well, that takes a lot of effort and some really good presentation skills. A good freelancer portfolio or resume is one of the most important tools that we need to succeed. Make sure that you give an adequate amount of thinking and time to create the right portfolio. It’s worth the hard work.

    FAQs

    What is a portfolio in freelancing?

    A portfolio is a compilation of materials that exemplifies your beliefs, skills, qualifications, education, training and experiences. It provides insight into your personality and work ethic.

    How to build a freelance portfolio?

    • Create a portfolio of your personal works.
    • Add the elements that are most important.
    • Don’t just show, tell it.
    • Focus on the type of work you want and the people you’d like to work with.
    • Include practice projects.
    • Say something about your education.
    • Add mentions, press and testimonials.
    • Give out free resources.

    What are some of the best freelancer portfolio websites?

    Journo Portfolio, Muck Rack, WordPress, Behance, and Adobe Portfolio are some of the best freelancer portfolio websites.

  • How to Terminate Employee -Termination Guidelines

    Losing a job as an employee is traumatizing. It is a difficult task for an employer to declare to someone that their payroll is taken away and they are not a part of the company now. This has a lot of effect on people’s careers and lower self-esteem. It is also considered a loss of livelihood. In a workplace, people bond in such a way that when one of the team members goes, it affects the rest. How you handle the situation, how you fire an employee with an attitude from your company determines how people will judge you as the boss. It brings job security issues among other employees.

    IBM has terminated more than 100000 employees in the last few years & the same thing is happening in other big companies. As the boss, you don’t just enter into a working space, and make a shout to someone that you are fired. This is illegal, unprofessional and is against work ethics. Before terminating somebody’s salary, assess employees performance challenges, warn and document justification. The following are some of the basic procedures that can be used to fire an employee with a bad attitude from your company.

    Understand Employer’s Rights
    Define Clear Expectations
    Publish Set Discipline Policies
    Take Charge of Constructive Discharge
    Organize a Termination Meeting
    Conduct Exit Interview

    Understand Employer’s Rights

    Most employers ignore or think they are playing safe by not issuing employment contracts to employees. In this case, employment is considered as at-will terms (oral contract). Employers take this to their advantage and fire Employees with bad attitudes anyhow. Sometimes they fire with reasons and time with no apparent reason. Employees in such a case are at liberty to leave the company anytime. An employment contract provides job security to employees and stipulates clearly grounds for termination of services. An oral contract is based on the cause of dishonesty, position declared redundant, poor performance and insubordination.

    Define Clear Expectations

    When getting an employee on board, set the clear groundwork. Write down expectations right from the beginning. Job description highlights the tasks and might change based on the emerging needs of the organization. Pin Set policies and guidelines somewhere on how specific tasks should be done. You can easily tell when a certain rule has been broken. Where possible, document and let employees append signatures for adherence. Employers can terminate services based on this.

    Publish Set Discipline Policies

    Policies on progressive discipline should be set. Bosses should enforce and emphasize this as the court expects you to abide by them. Policies will help you to tell where there is a problem that needs attention. Employers have a right to terminate the contract as a result of gross misconduct or poor performance.

    Take Charge of Constructive Discharge

    Claims about constructive discharge can be a result of salary reduction, demotion, termination threats and agreed transfers. Employees may raise claims about poor working conditions and situations that have forced them to quit the job. Employers should be equipped with federal employment laws so they will not be accused of poor working conditions.

    Organize a Termination Meeting

    After evaluating all the reasons why an employee with a bad attitude should be fired, documented the right information to support the action. When it reaches the time to disclose this to an employee, be etiquette so they may leave in peace and dignity. This prevents employees from returning with a lawsuit. Respond to any query an employee might have. Summarize the employee documented grounds for terminating and don’t generalize. Give the employee a chance also to express themselves.

    Conduct Exit Interview

    It is not a waste of time for employers to conduct an exit interview. Feedbacks are important as they give you an overview and highlight areas that need improvement and necessary measures to be taken. Let the Employee with a bad attitude fill in the interview exit form that will act as a reference. If addressed seriously, it can create a better working place for other employees.

    Conclusion

    Labour laws protect employees from any form of abuse in the working environment. Traumatization and depression can occur as a result of the termination. Therefore, the termination process should be conducted in a careful and transparent manner after a serious discussion with the employee and taking necessary measures that are needed throughout the process.

    FAQs

    What are the reasons to terminate an employee?

    There can be many reasons one can terminate an employee, the most common ones are, incompetence, attendance issues and dishonesty towards the work.

    When can an employer terminate an employee?

    The employer should give at least a 30 day notice period before firing an employee.

    Does HR need to be present during the termination of an employee?

    It is better if a member of the HR department is present during the termination of an employee.

  • 50+ Tools for Freelancers Which They Must Know About

    Gone are the days, when 9-5 jobs were most preferred and termed as the safest option. People have started indulging themselves in freelancing more. Especially after Covid-19, when work from home becomes a common process. The work from home process supported the rise of freelancers as this is what every freelancer has been doing since the beginning; they were already adapted to this. While full-time employees took time to get adapted to this nature

    A report stated that 68% of workers who are working from home are showing their interest in freelancing. Millions of people lost their jobs when due to Covid the economy got hit. Plus the work from home setting gives a rise to people who show their interest in freelancing.

    Freelancing can be sure a tough job. Once you realize being ‘your own boss’ means putting the hats of the legal expert, financier, routine planner, and work manager, all at once. But there are always ways to help with that, aren’t there? We have crafted for you a list of 50+ such freelancer tools that come to your rescue whenever, wherever you need a virtual assistant.

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    Accounting Tools for Freelancers:
    ZipBooks
    Momenteo
    Harpoon
    Bonsai
    Xero
    Freeagent
    Freework
    Expensify
    Freshbooks
    Portfolio Creation Tools for Freelancers:
    Behance
    Prospero
    Bidsketch
    Pixpa
    Squarespace
    Project Management Tools for Freelancers:
    Asana
    Basecamp
    EverNote
    Writing Tools for Freelancers:
    Proposify
    Zen Writer
    Write Room
    Email Management Tools for Freelancers:
    Sanebox
    Inbox
    MailChimp
    Aweber
    Scheduling Tools for Freelancers:
    Productive
    RescueTime
    Remember the Milk
    Google Calendar
    Timely
    Cushion
    Tickspot
    Klok
    Ora Time and Expenses
    ToggI
    OfficeTime
    Timesheet
    MyClientSpot
    Focus Booster
    Streaks
    Azendoo
    Freedom
    Flow
    GetHarvest
    Backup Tools for Freelancers:
    iCloud
    DropBox
    Mozy
    Marketplace Platforms for Freelancers:
    Truelancer
    Upwork
    Fiverr
    Workana
    Social Media Management tools:
    Social Oomph
    Buffer
    Tweriod
    Other Important Tools for freelancers:
    Linkedin
    LifeHacker
    Plagiarism Check
    Termsfeed
    Pro Blogger
    LKR Social Media
    Contently
    Trello
    TinyScanner
    SlideShare
    Briefbox
    MindMeister
    Text Expander

    Accounting Tools for Freelancers:

    Different accounting tools compared
    Different accounting tools compared

    Bonsai

    Pricing-$19/ Month

    Bonsai is an integrated all-in-one software suite designed to help with all the admin tasks. Bonsai lets you create invoices, send contracts and collect payments without the least effort. Apart from its functionality, Bonsai is famous among the freelancing community for its efficient design layout. Here are some reasons you should go for Bonsai:

    • The interface is clean and easy to use.
    • Bonsai is affordable, offering multiple pricing plans.
    • Bonsai has you covered from proposal to tax season.
    • Bonsai Cash business account lets you manage your finances, save on taxes and get paid faster with no hidden fees or minimums.
    • The products are integrated seamlessly.
    • Bonsai’s products are automated.
    • Bonsai offers a massive library of free templates of contracts, proposals, invoices, agreements, quotes, scope of work, and briefs.

    ZipBooks

    Pricing- $15/Month

    ZipBooks Logo

    ZipBooks is founded by Tim Chaves in 2o15. ZipBooks is a free accounting tool that you can use to create invoices, manage clients, payments, and expenses and track your time. You can even set up late payment reminders for your clients.

    Momenteo

    Pricing- $3/Month

    Memento is founded by Chelsie Patterson in 2019. Memento is a pretty convenient invoicing tool that makes generating invoices a quick, hassle-free experience. It is a paid service though and it comes with a price tag of $200 per annum.

    Harpoon

    Pricing- $19/Month

    Harpoon is founded by Andrew Johnson, Ryan Battles in 2015. Quite a lifesaver, Harpoon is an extremely handy tool that lets you track your average revenue per project(or per month, day or hour), plan your schedules, check outstanding invoices and keep track of your goals.

    Xero

    Pricing- $13.50/ Month

    Xero is founded by Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards in 2006. A one stop destination for all your financial engagements, Xero is a paid service that offers online accounting, invoicing, billing, and banking.

    Freeagent

    Pricing- $24/ Month

    Freeagent is a money managing app that assists in bookkeeping and generating invoices. A well-designed app, this one is specifically designed to keep small businesses and freelancers in mind.

    Freework

    Pricing- Free

    This freelancing tool is designed to help you manage your day-to-day work, save time, send invoices, keep statistics, manage clients, take notes, and a lot more. It is built on a mobile platform and can be assessed by both android and iOS users.

    Expensify

    Pricing- $5/ Month

    With Expensify, you can manage your receipts better. All you have to do is photograph your receipts and upload them. It works on iPhone/iPad, Android, WebOS/Palm, and BlackBerry phones.

    Freshbooks

    Pricing- $13.50/ Month

    A boon for freelancers in the midst of a financial lurch, Freshbooks lets you create invoices and manage them and organise them with the click of just a button. What’s more, the service is free as long as you have three clients. After that, it comes with a price tag.

    Portfolio Creation Tools for Freelancers:

    Behance

    Pricing- $14.29/Month

    Behence Logo

    Behance is founded by Scott Belsky in 2006. One of the most popular websites out there, Behance is nothing but a boon for freelancers. Be it showcasing your creativity, or creating your online portfolio for work. Behance supports a variety of platforms from Photoshop to PDFs, allows you to view and appreciate other’s projects, and lets you collaborate and upload your work.

    Prospero

    Pricing- $8/ Month

    One of the best-known tools for freelancers, proposal helps you to create a proposal for your client and price your projects. Prospero analyses your work, project deadlines, and your working rate to self-design an editable proposal that is relevant to the services you offer.

    Bidsketch

    Pricing- $29/ Month

    Bidsketch assists you to create client proposals with its wide range of customizable templates. Besides letting you create templates, this tool also helps you distribute them and offers related analytics about the distribution, like who downloaded it, who viewed it, and for how long.

    Pixpa

    Pricing- $5.09/ Month

    If you are looking for a space, where you can showcase the work created by you and sell them as well. This platform helps you create professional websites, where you can publish your own blogs, showcase your portfolios or set up an online store.

    Squarespace

    Pricing- $16/ Month

    Considered to be one of the best platforms for portfolio/ website making, as a freelancer, you can carve your own personal identity on Squarespace using its wide range of customizable templates.

    Project Management Tools for Freelancers:

    Asana

    Pricing- $10.99/ Month

    A popular people collaboration tool, Asana allows you to form groups of up to 15 people. You can start group discussions, and send tasks to each other. You can even send timely notifications to group members as reminders.

    Basecamp

    Pricing- $99/ Month

    A friendly freelancing tool, Basecamp is a popular project management tool that lets you keep track of all your projects and keep them organized. This online collaboration tool focuses on managing work and lets people communicate with each other.

    EverNote

    Pricing- $7.99/ Month

    One of the most popular apps out there, Evernote lets you store notes, receipts, and other miscellaneous files associated with each project and also sets timely reminders to keep you on track.

    Writing Tools for Freelancers:

    Proposify

    Pricing- $49/Month

    Proposify Logo

    Proposify is founded by Kyle Racki, and Kevin Springer in 2013. Proposify is a proposal writing tool that comes equipped with a host of templates and customizable features. It comes with a set of basic drawing tools and almost looks like a mini word processor to help you with the job.

    Zen Writer

    Pricing- $18 Onetime Fee

    ZenWriter is a full-screen writing app that comes with a serene, minimalist design and friendly layout. One of the best-looking apps out there, this one promises to not only get your work done but also give you a great working experience.

    Write Room

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    Designed only for Mac users, this tool comes to your rescue when you have big writing projects in your kitty. Write Room comes with a clean, minimal layout ( there are no distracting menu options or even toolbars) and a simplistic design that helps you focus on your work better.. Nothing will give you more focus than a full-screen writing tool, and WriteRoom is the original offering that is available for Mac.

    Email Management Tools for Freelancers:

    Sanebox

    Pricing- $9.99/Month

    Sanebox Logo

    Sanebox is founded by Stuart Roseman in 2010. This app helps you with one of your most important handles, the epitome of your professional existence, your mailing inbox. Sanebox helps you organise through stuff and keep your inbox clean.

    Inbox

    Pricing- $9/Month

    Call it a way better version of Gmail, this app lets you organize your mails, categorise them efficiently, have attachment previews, built-in snooze buttons, automatic labeling, and intelligent search. With its user-friendly design and easy-to-navigate layout, this one is sure to make your work easier.

    MailChimp

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    This E-mail marketing platform is said to be one of the best. A fantastic promotional tool, this one helps you send your email marketing newsletters, keep your clients updated about a new post or product and market your services.

    Also read: Tools for Email List Building

    Aweber

    Pricing- $19.99/ Month

    A networking and personal marketing tool, Aweber lets you build an email campaign, which can help to maintain relationships with all your previous and current clients.

    Scheduling Tools for Freelancers:

    Productive

    Pricing- $10/Month

    Productive is founded by Jan Varljen in 2014. This tool helps you form productive work habits, It comes with an easy-to-use interface that lets you plan and schedule habits for any time of the day, set smart reminders for each time of the day, and stay right on track.

    RescueTime

    Pricing- $9/ Month

    A time planner tool, RescueTime offers to save your time by keeping track and letting you know of the amount of time you spend on each of your tasks. It was founded by Brian Fioca, Tony Wright, and Joe Hruska in 2007.

    Remember the Milk

    Pricing- $39.99/ Year

    Remember The Milk is a reminder tool that was founded in the year 2004, it is an online to-do-list app, that lets you take care of important tasks so that you are never late again.

    Google Calendar

    Pricing- $5/ Month

    Google Calender Logo

    Google Calendar is an amazing planner tool from Google that lets you organise your schedule and plan tasks accordingly. It became available in 2009, one can create and edit events here and location can also be added.

    Timely

    Pricing- $15/ Month

    When you take up too many projects, it can be quite overwhelming. Timely is a time tracking tool Timely helps you to maintain a time log to track the amount of time you have spent on each of the projects undertaken.

    Cushion

    Pricing- $36/ Year

    The cushion is quite a reliable tool that helps you make an efficient work schedule for your freelancing ventures. It focuses on the time you spend on a particular project, highlights when you are overbooked, and helps you plan your time better.

    Tickspot

    Pricing- $149/ Month for Unlimited Projects

    This one allows you to keep track of your work hours as well as the time you spend on each project. In fact, you can even see how close you are to using up your client’s allotted budget.

    Klok

    Pricing- $18.99 Per Feature

    As the name suggests, Klok is a time management tool and it allows you track of your time. You can keep track of the time you spend on each project; just start and stop tracking by just clicking a button. You’re able to generate multiple reports based on this information.

    Ora Time and Expenses

    Pricing- $6/ Month

    The name says it all. Ora lets you track expenses, keep a list of your tasks, run a timer on your tasks and well, keep things organised. It is where you can work with your team and have everything the team might need during the time for work.

    ToggI

    Pricing- $10/ Month

    A productive time tracking tool, ToggI lets you track time the time you spend on each project. You can manage your own time as well as the time of your collaborator’s time to work out the total time spent on each project.

    OfficeTime

    Pricing- $69 Onetime Fee

    OfficeTime helps manage your time better. That being said, it allows you to see exactly how much money you are earning per hour and know who is really paying you your actual worth.

    Timesheet

    Pricing- $4.50/ Month

    Timesheet is a time tracker tool that makes it easier for you to record your work hours. With timesheet, you can calculate your estimated income, handle hourly rates, keep stats, generate time or expense reports and manage expenses, among other stuff.

    MyClientSpot

    Pricing- Not-known

    A very handy tool, this one offers to keeps track of your billable hours and helps you keep your work organized. It provides online project management functions and helps out with time management.

    Focus Booster

    Pricing- $4.99/ Month

    Focus Booster is a time management tool that allows you to break your tasks in segments and time them accordingly. All you have to do is start and stop the timer. Besides, the tool also makes provision for automatic 5-minute breaks after every 25 minutes of work.

    Streaks

    Pricing- $4.99/ Month

    This app follows the model of the popular “don’t break the chain method”, everyday. Use your goals, to track your per-day activities and progress and even set up goals. This to-fo list tracks every certain goal of yours.

    Azendoo

    Pricing- $10/ Month

    Another tool that helps you manage your workflow, Azendoo lets you view analytics, attach documents and work as your personal organiser. It also lets you add checklists, plan your calendar, send direct messages to team members, and set due dates.

    Freedom

    Pricing- $8.99/Month

    Freedom is founded by Fred Stutzman in 2009. This tool is designed to cater to just one unique purpose that is to stop you from wasting your time on your phone. It helps bar out unnecessary distractions by letting you set a work schedule on its platform, during which it blocks distracting apps and websites.

    Flow

    Pricing- Free

    This tool helps you to manage your workflow by letting you create workspaces and tasks, collaborate with your team members through inbuilt chat, and organise all your assignments and private tasks.

    GetHarvest

    Pricing- $12/ Month

    A time management tool, Harvest offers time tracking and invoicing services with pricing plans from free to premium. It works on iPhone, Basecamp, Beanstalk and has a WordPress plugin and more.

    Backup Tools for Freelancers:

    iCloud

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    The apple app, iCloud lets you backup and sync your devices using your Apple ID.
    You can store anything here, from photos, notes, files to other data. While signing in this, you get 5GB free storage at first.

    DropBox

    Pricing- $16.99/ Month

    DropBox Logo

    This tool lets you upload and transfer any files of yours and share them. IT is a great backup service, DropBox automatically backs up all the data of your computer, without you having to worry at all.

    Mozy

    Pricing- $10/ month for 125 GB

    While you are working on so many projects, you need a backup. Mozy is a backup tool that lets you do just that. It was founded in the year 2005 by Josh Coates. It can be used both in Windows and Mac.

    Marketplace Platforms for Freelancers:

    Truelancer

    Pricing- $50 or 5% of total project value

    Truelancer is founded by Dipesh Garg in 2014. If you call yourself a freelancer, you already know what a blessing Truelancer is. Truelancer not only helps you find more work but also helps you find and meet potential clients and build a network.

    Upwork

    Pricing- 20% for the first $500 project

    Upwork Logo

    Upwork is founded by Stratis Karamanlakis, Odysseas Tsatalos. Yet another platform for landing work, Upwork lets you make a free profile, crate and promote gigs, bid on projects, and meet clients.

    Fiverr

    Pricing- 20% of the gig fee

    Fiverr is a freelance haven that allows you to find jobs or ‘gigs’. The service sellers have the option to choose a starting price for their gigs, the quote starting from $5 (hence the name!). Consequently, one gets to offer different gigs at different prices.

    Workana

    Pricing- $4.90/ Month

    As the name suggests, this online tool helps you to find work on a variety of work genres. Businesses can hire freelancers from this site for their work. It is one of the finest places where freelancers and small businesses to big ones can get connected.

    Social Media Management tools:

    Social Oomph

    Pricing- $13.94/ Month

    Social Oomph was founded in the year 2008 and it comes with a set of some great social networking tools that help you market your services and stay at the top of your game.

    Buffer

    Pricing- $15/ Month

    BufferApp is founded by Leo Widrich. This one is a social media management tool, it helps you manage all the social media platforms of your business. This includes a number of articles that will help you learn and run your business better.

    Tweriod

    Pricing- Not-known

    Tweriod lets you handle your social media (especially Twitter) with ease, by constantly providing you with statistics, your campaign’s reach, their popularity, all the while, analyzing your followers, keeping reminders, and providing charts displaying the most popular hours on Twitter for your followers.

    Other Important Tools for freelancers:

    Linkedin

    Pricing- $29.99/ Month

    LinkedIn Logo

    LinkedIn is founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant in 2002. LinkedIn is a widely acclaimed platform that not only lets you establish your professional identity, but also build a network, find jobs and connect with possible clients with its built-in mailing and messaging service.

    LifeHacker

    Pricing- Not-known

    LifeHacker is founded by Gina Trapani. Just as the name suggests, this site helps you by keeping you updated with recent technology, lessons on innovative thinkers, and daily life hacks.

    Plagiarism Check

    Pricing- $39.95 Per Feature

    Plagiarism is a sin to any creator. Any content that is copied, this tool helps you detect the amount of plagiarism your copy contains by screening your document for plagiarism with 5 search engines- Google, Yahoo, Babylon, Google Books, and Google Scholar. You can also use other websites for it, there are tons of tools available for plagiarism checking.

    Termsfeed

    Pricing- $56 Onetime fee

    Termsfeed comes to your rescue when you need some legal assistance. This tool offers a range of templates to help you craft statements for a variety of purposes- return policy, terms and conditions, privacy policy, and terms of service. And all you have to do is answer a couple of questions to frame the right contract.

    Pro Blogger

    Pricing- $5.99/ Month

    Pro Blogger step into the market in 2004 and since then it has been the best bet for Freelancing, this tool helps you to curate content, organise ideas and create blogs to promote your online market presence.

    LKR Social Media

    Pricing- Not-known

    This is a blog run by social media marketing expert, Laura Roeder. The blog is a great source of learning, for freelancers looking to promote themselves online, covering a wide range of topics, from designing an effective sales page to top tools to organize your work.

    Contently

    Pricing- Not-known

    This platform is a SaaS content marketing platform that gives organisations an opportunity to create great content that helps them get the audience and build their brands.

    Trello

    Trello is a collaboration tool that lets you organise your work projects, invite coworkers to collaborate and create shared perspectives, add checklists, upload photos and videos, and a lot more. Trello does offer free service, open to one and all with some limited offers. if you want extra features, you have to pay.

    TinyScanner

    Pricing- Free

    A handy app for android and iOS, TinyScanner lets you scan your work documents from your device’s camera and turn them into PDFs. It even lets you customize page size and share the scanned PDFs.

    SlideShare

    Pricing- $19/ Month

    Slideshare helps you present your ideas in an organised manner and thus showcase your clients your skills, expertise, areas of interest, and competency. Any kind of presentation, infographics can be shared here by businesses.

    Briefbox

    Pricing- $9/ Month

    Offering a collection of hypothetical briefs or templates for a variety of genres, Briefbox allows you to simply pick one of the editable briefs and start designing, as per your need.

    MindMeister

    Pricing- $2.49/ Month

    Mind-mapping is the predecessor to great ideas and MindMeister offers you that by ditching the traditional pen and paper method. Create mind-maps on your electronic devices free or buy the premium plan and enjoy additional benefits.

    Text Expander

    Pricing- $3.33/ Month

    Text expander helps you send emails faster, by pre storing all the information, predicting content from the stored info, predicting pictures, and making sure the content does not sound too similar or contain duplicate info. You can also pre-program to fix typos you often, use different signatures for different clients, and auto-insert forms.

    Conclusion

    The freelance industry is going in a tremendous way and it is not going to stop anytime soon. With the different advantages of working as a freelancer, more and more working professionals are choosing this industry. All the above tools are to make the work of a freelancer a little bit easier.

  • A Complete B2B Marketing Strategy – B2B Lead Generation

    Today, a huge number of startups are setting their foot in the industry and are conquering the world with their innovative ideas. These startups follow different types of business models. A business-to-business startup, commonly known as a B2B startup, is a huge thing in the market these days. The whole idea of a B2B company is to establish a business that caters to the needs of other businesses. According to a report, 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.

    However, running a B2B startup is a tough task as owners of such businesses need to look for suitable clients who require the goods or services that the company is offering. Moreover, generating B2B leads for your startup can become a hectic job and cause excessive levels of frustration. So here is our B2B marketing strategy. It will help you to generate B2B leads for your startup and proceed with their work strategies.

    What Is Business-To-Business Marketing?
    Pre-requisites for a Business-To-Business Marketing
    10 Ways of B2B Lead Generation for Your Startup 2022
    B2B Success Stories on Social Media

    What Is Business-To-Business Marketing?

    Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing mainly involves the vending of one company’s products and services to another company’s products and services. The goods could be used for the production of some other goods, for reselling it to the consumers or could be used in the general operations of the business.

    Pre-requisites for a Business-To-Business Marketing

    B2B marketing requires products for other companies. You should not just start off without even a rough idea in your mind. This will only lead to unproductive outcomes and will take you nowhere. The first thing that one should do is think about the product, its merits, and its demerits.

    Several questions should come to your mind before finalizing anything.

    • Is my product beneficial for the company?
    • What would be the gain that my product/service would provide to the clients?
    • How much will my product/service help the clients to earn?
    • What are the main advantages of my product/service that make it better than the others in the market?
    • What efforts can be made to improve the quality of the product/service?
    • What is the price structure of a similar product in the market?

    Conduct a thorough analysis of your products and services. Customer feedback is the best way to do this.

    10 Ways of B2B Lead Generation for Your Startup 2022

    Diversity

    All buyers of a B2B company will have different needs and wants, so an entrepreneur must make sure that their content addresses all the needs and demands. The content should fit the shoe and not be focused on just one thing to attract buyers from all around the globe.

    Stand Out

    The capabilities of a startup are judged by the content that is posted on their blogs or social media websites. Hence, this content needs to be attractive with infographic inputs and strategically placed to allow buyers to find them easily. Moreover, it gives a boost up to the startup showing true data in their content which makes them trustworthy.

    Pricing

    It is not a common practice to post prices on the company’s website as it hinders the chances of getting many opportunities, but if the prices are not posted, most of the queries would be to know the cost but not generally buy the services. Posting prices would decrease useless traffic and allow more room to focus on potential customers. Furthermore, the pricing strategy should be decided with a thorough competitive analysis for breakthrough performance.

    Relationships

    Having a healthy relationship with the client’s company is extremely important for the business to flourish, thus, building a good connection will allow the business to grow through word-of-mouth marketing. Although, word-of-mouth has a different approach it has always had a high conversion rate.

    Marketing

    Marketing is the best way to generate leads. In today’s technology-driven society online marketing is the major contributor to an increase in sales. Services can be marketed depending upon the needs of various buyers using social media platforms, blogs, or a well-developed website. Creating an email database to send occasional newsletters to potential buyers helps in boosting the business. In other words, email marketing is a great tool to generate B2B leads for the business.

    Sign up forms

    Sign-up forms for the company website should not be very long as that irritates buyers. The easier the signing up process the more potential buyers will sign up and add to the business. They should contain the basic details like name, email, phone number and address but not a whole lot of information that can be asked in later stages.

    Optimize the Landing Page

    The homepage of the company’s website or the social media profile should be SEO-friendly. Articulating content that would attract people. Make your content in such a way that it is displayed clearly on top Google searches. Most people do not go to the second page while searching for something on Google to make sure that the website comes in the first page in Google searches related to the keyword.

    Have a Q and A section

    Have a FAQ section, which is clearly visible on the website, to answer the most common queries on the website for people to properly understand the services. Ask present clients about the issues they may have faced while registering on the website, collect the information and create a questionnaire with answers by the team.

    Buy Leads From Various Platforms

    Startup owners can also buy leads from various online platforms that are selling them. There are many sites that provide quality leads with accurate information. B2B companies should collect as many leads as possible from these sites to help them in progress.

    Hire

    Owners can also hire a company that specializes in lead generation or hire freelancers that can generate leads and do promotions. Hiring freelancers residing in different countries can be profitable and will help in getting leads from various different countries. It is also inexpensive in nature and provides a quality result to generate B2B leads for your company.

    B2B Success Stories on Social Media

    Approximately, 69% of the Indian B2B marketers agree, social media is one of the major tools to engage potential customers. Statistics regarding the success of lead generation for B2B companies using social media marketing are quite high. B2B buyers are much more attracted to brands that have a strong social presence. They prefer the companies to present the information via social media.

    Some of the successful social media campaigns implemented by a few companies are:

    iYogi

    iYogi being a technical support company faced many difficulties in generating leads and creating brand awareness for its new service; Digital Service Cloud. The company chose LinkedIn to focus on the key areas of interest and target audience. The campaign was a huge success and helped to achieve 62% of the follower base in the duration of just three months.

    Deskaway

    The company chose Twitter along with paid media and Adwords for the purpose of selling its web-based team along with the project collaboration software. Product announcements, news, and blogs were shared on a continuous basis and thus, generating leads.

    Conclusion

    The above two examples show that social media is really an efficient tool for B2B marketers. It not only helps to increase brand awareness on a huge scale and target a bigger audience but also establishes a company as a thought leader. The company gets to connect easily with the clients and the prospects. Good relations are built with the people who can influence the industry. Social media and email marketing also trigger word-of-mouth conversations and help in optimizing the conversions for B2B companies. Keeping these important points in mind shall go a long way for B2B companies in creating a huge client base and gaining success in their business proceedings.

    FAQs

    What are 4 types of Marketing Strategies?

    Four types of marketing strategies are:

    • Market Penetration Strategy
    • Market Development Strategy
    • Product Development Strategy
    • Diversification Strategy

    What are the four types of B2B Markets?

    The four basic categories of business customers in B2B markets are producers, resellers, governments, and institutions.

    Is Amazon a B2B OR B2C?

    Amazon is both business-to-business B2B and business-to-consumer B2C.

  • How to Inspire Employees and Work-Retain Employees?

    A workplace is where we spend one-third (8 hours) of our day which is more time than we do spend at home. Every company focuses on productivity. There are some milestones that people have to go to make work successful and tangible. Deadlines are key areas that have to be met in order to measure success. Some managers put unnecessary pressure on employees like extending working hours. Ideally, this cannot be a parameter to measure success and effectiveness. Motivated employees always remain positive and the opposite is demoralizing.

    According to a survey, 75% of the reasons people quit come down to their managers. As the boss, you need to have the capacity to monitor each and every employee. When you realize some funny character in an employee, make a quick action and attend to their attitude. As an employer, have you noticed that your employees have started to withdraw? Reduce stress by observing the following tips on how to Inspire Employees to Work.

    How to Inspire Employees to Work
    How to Retain Employees in an Organization
    How to Keep Employees Happy and Motivated

    How to Inspire Employees to Work

    Flexibility of Work

    Flexibility in working hours should be encouraged to Inspire Employees to Work. Office time and personal time must blend. Keeping people at work throughout does not increase productivity at all instead employees get burnout. Flexibility makes employees work to achieve set targets within the specified time. After work, they get to attend to their personal issues effectively thus creating a work-life balance.

    Set time for Break

    Human beings are made to concentrate up to a certain period. Downtime for employees is very vital. Making employees work without break is unhealthy and production will be less. Burnout is eradicated when employees get time to be out of their desks for a cup of tea or water. Fresh ideas are conceived while being outside a normal work environment.

    Structured Meetings

    As an employer, avoid overwhelming employees with unnecessary meetings. It is a very terrible situation when people attend meetings just for the sake of culture. Meetings are made for updating and getting ideas from each other so organize an effective meeting only. Avoid wasting the time of employees, by organising unnecessary meetings.

    Transparency

    Information sharing is very crucial in a company. Employees are just like investors and they expect such treatment. Let them be at par with information, transparency makes employees attach and have passion with the company and also helps in winning their trust.

    Develop Work Schedule

    It is very tiresome to work blindly. This brings a lot of confusion when you’re trying to deliver the work. Work schedule helps in planning for activities. This is the only way to track and prioritize information. Allocation of tasks is done effectively. Teamwork is embraced, as people involved will understand work dynamics and work cordially and not based on fear.

    Work as a Family

    Despite the workplace bringing people together from various backgrounds, employees feel honored and respected when they are treated as a family. This is a place where we are driven by a common goal. Give employees your back just like any other member of your family. Stand with them and don’t let anybody abuse them. This is a very important point on how to inspire employees to work.

    Treat Employees Equally

    In a working environment, understand that no one is special than the other. Management should be concerned about everybody and not some hence productivity. When there is a difference in a workforce, teamwork will not be guaranteed and therefore the workforce will be split, which will in return be a hindrance. Favouritism brings discouragements among employees and brings division among employees.

    Capacity Building

    It is a very embarrassing situation when employees don’t know what to do. You always feel out of place and feel frustrated. It raises morale when you train employees to understand their work better. Proper work can be done with confidence only.

    Provide Right Tools for Work

    Most of the bosses demand much from employees while they know very well they have not equipped employees with tools. Employees feel harassed. Provide them with adequate and functional tools to facilitate their work. Tasks and deadlines will be met on time.

    Participatory Approach

    People are always allergic to changes imposed on them. Learn to engage employees in the decision-making process. For example, based on the kind of work that you do, get to know how people feel about the sitting arrangement. Get feedback from them, harmonize their concerns, and definitely this way, you will be able to address their needs better.

    How to Retain Employees in an Organization

    Every business or company needs employees to run effectively and meet its business needs. However, hiring new employees can become a tasking job causing levels of frustration to rise and hindering the progress especially when the company has just started. Thus, every company should learn Employee retention strategies in retaining its employee base.

    Here, we bring you employee retention strategies and how you can inspire your employee so that they are satisfied and content with their work.

    Create a Healthy Work Environment

    This is one of the best Employee retention strategies for any company. As a start-up, there is a lot of work pressure on the employee to meet deadlines and make faster progress; however, employees tend to make mistakes under pressure. When such situations arise, make sure to not criticize or pressurize the employee by reprimanding him; instead, help them to become more efficient in their work.

    Transparency

    Maintain an office policy where everyone works with a clear knowledge of all the things going on in the company and is treated equally on all fronts. This is also one factor in employee retention strategies. All employees should be able to put forth their ideas and suggestions regarding anything. This gives an employee the sense of being involved and the more involved a person is, the more likely he is to stay.

    Rewards

    Your workplace is like your second home, hence, treat your employees like family. Give them occasional rewards on their success or any big achievement that the company makes, this will help in Employee retention strategies. Give them yearly treats that are personalized for them like providing them with a paid holiday or some complimentary leaves and gifts that they would like. Incentives may also be a good way to encourage employees, although gifts have a better impact in keeping them happy.

    Do Leave and Staying Interviews

    If you are unable to understand, why employees are leaving, ask them. Your human resource team can arrange a leaving interview for every person that is quitting their jobs and you can take their feedback to improve your companies’ policies. It helps in Employee retention strategies for your startup or business. Apart from this, you can hold interviews of the loyal employees asking them the reasons for their stays and what did they like about the company and what would make them leave. Assess all the feedback and improve yourself.

    Provide Them With Small Perks

    Give your employees some facilities to improve their lives so they can work better. A complimentary transport service or free lunch would work wonders. This will give a boost to employees and help in Employee retention strategies. Some paid leaves can also be given in order to make the employees loyal. The money spent on these things will be way less than the money spent on recruiting and training new employees which is not only a waste of money but time as well.

    Hire smartly

    While hiring employees make it a point to know whether that person is actually suitable to work in the company’s environment or not. Every company has a different culture and discussing that culture with the employee can go a long way to get an idea of whether the person will be suitable or not.

    Keep a Tab on Everything

    Even though start-up co-founders get really busy after the successful take-off of the company they should take out some time to check how the company is working. Recruiting a management team is not enough, founders need to look at every department and know whether the work environment is good or not. Sometimes, this can bring unexpected things in the light which can be corrected only by the bosses.

    Respect the Work-Life Balance

    Your employees have a life outside work and that should be respected. The employee works for the company during office hours but working beyond that is their own choice. So don’t make employees do more than they have signed for. This is one of the most important factors for employee retention strategies. Yes, there can be times when you need them to work a little extra but that should not become a daily routine because an environment like that will drive people a way to look for jobs that provide flexible working hours.

    How to Keep Employees Happy and Motivated

    Are you a small business owner? Do you wish to improve the office environment? The key to a successful business is to keep employees happy. It has been proven that a person is most productive when they are happy. So if you have a happy task force chances are high that your company will make tremendous progress. Keeping Employees Happy is of the utmost importance to your company and here are some ways to keep them happy.

    Help Your Employees Feel Valued

    If your employee is doing a good job appreciating their effort is very important. Thank them for the work they have put in and make them feel that you value their contribution. There goes a lot into doing some work, and giving appreciation might not be a big deal for you but will surely make your employee’s day. This will make him want to work harder and better. If something goes wrong, do not punish or be harsh on them. They are adults and know that they have made a mistake. Help them correct their fault or give them some extra time to mend their mistakes. Also making efforts to know the employee and be humble to them. An occasional small talk about their family and their kids will make the employee feel as if they are important.

    Positive Atmosphere

    Try to create a positive atmosphere in your office. The workspace should enough room for your employees to walk and move. There should also be spaces for your employees to interact with each other or relax while taking a break. A dark and congested office will never improve the work environment. Place some greenery around the office. Let some fresh sunlight come in so that people feel recharged. Also, change your air filters and get the office cleaned regularly. A clean environment is sure to make a person feel more relaxed and will help in keeping employees happy.

    Involve Them

    Involve your employees in everything. Take opinions on every topic. They should know what business the company is doing and how their work is affecting the company. You can set up regular employees meetings for the exchange of ideas. The meeting should not be excessively serious and all work. It should have a light environment and everyone should be given a chance to share their thoughts and opinions any topics. This will make them feel more involved in the company matter and give them a feeling that they have a responsibility to hold. This is one of the most important points to Keep Employees Happy.

    Let Them Work at Their Own Ease

    With so much technological advancement you do not have to follow the old ways and lock your employees up in an office. Let them do their work at their own ease. If they have an emergency, let them work from the comforts of their houses. If they are completing their work, it is not necessary for you to constantly have them in front of your eyes.

    Give Them Time off Work

    If your employee has been doing a good job all year giving them an extended vacation is not bad. If they are a good employee, they will make sure that they complete their pending work on time. This has another advantage. The other employees will see this and want to work hard and earn their own perks.

    Encourage Them to Stay Fit

    A fit person is always a happy person. This does not mean that you need to tell your employees to go to the gym every day and lift weights. All you need to do is motivate them. You can build tennis or football or basketball court in your office. Or you can have an indoor gaming area where your employees can come and ease out the stress and also get some exercise. This will keep the endorphins in their body running and in turn, it will help Keep employees Happy.

    Conclusion

    As a leader, you should act as a role model. Employees would always imitate your actions. Show concern to employees by responding to their needs on time. Appreciate them by celebrating their achievements and where applicable give incentives. All this enhances production and inspires employees to work. Good employees are the backbone of the company and retaining them will go a long way in making the business a success, hence, keep these points in mind to maintain the smooth progress of the company.

    FAQs

    How you can motivate your employees?

    To motivate your employees, you should praise them, treat them with respect, don’t be impartial, and try to listen to their concerns.

    What are the best retention strategies?

    Provide your employee’s growth opportunities. Engage with your employees, reward them for their work and be impartial.

    What is the key to employee retention?

    The main points to do is to provide job satisfaction to the employee and keep them engaged, that is how you can retain your employees.

  • 10 Gmail Hacks for Entrepreneurs

    While being an entrepreneur, one needs to be very much of the things that they can utilise to make their business bigger and better. The invention of the internet makes the life of an entrepreneur a little bit easier. With various facilities, it is now possible to communicate with the customers more precisely and take the business to the top. Among those facilities one of them is Email. Email helps businesses faster and cheaper, not only that it has some amazing features that help an entrepreneur to carry forward with his dream.

    ‘Gmail’ is quite powerful and is a great option for individuals who need a great personal emailing service. Gmail has become a powerful business option, mainly because of the great features and integration with Google products. As a professional, we spend most of the time checking our emails and we always try to optimize our time. While Gmail alone may be great, there are, however, a few Gmail hacks that you can use to make the most out of THE world-famous Email.

    According to a report, Gmail’s market penetration in India stands at 62% which is the highest in the world. With these Gmail hacks, it is guaranteed that you will spend much less time following up on emails and more time focusing on your main business.

    Using the Chrome Extension Mixmax
    Making Use of Boomerang
    Manage Your Responses
    Scheduling the Email Checks
    Managing the ‘Unsubscribe’ List
    Using the Program ‘Sanebox’
    Labeling the Emails
    Setting up ‘Google Alerts’
    Tracking Every Email
    Integrating Rapportive With LinkedIn

    Using the Chrome Extension Mixmax

    It is one of the most useful Chrome extensions for professionals. Installing this extension will allow you to do many things, right from scheduling meetings from the email body to the creation of email templates to the merging of emails. It also helps you to track emails and send personalized emails in mass numbers.

    Making Use of Boomerang

    One of the best ways to prepare and send off bulk emails at the snap of a finger is by using Boomerang. Boomerang makes it very easy for the users to have the emails sent back to you along with scheduling them to be sent from your Gmail account.

    Manage Your Responses

    This is one of the best productive hacks as it allows the responses to be sent by adding in a few basic sentences, words, or even email bodies, that we are prone to using daily and that too, in the blink of an eye. To manage your responses, it is recommended that you should add Canned Responses from the Gmail Labs and then, go to the bottom and select the option of canned responses and then end it, by choosing the appropriate phrase.

    Scheduling the Email Checks

    Though it may look productive by looking at your emails several times during the day, just to stay ahead of the game, but in reality, you are wasting a whole lot of your day. Instead, what you should do is to schedule your timing in checking the email, say, two to three times a day and that too, in the times when there is very little activity. Getting your head out of the inbox will allow focusing on your other tasks more without having to waste your time in endless chat.

    Managing the ‘Unsubscribe’ List

    There’s a website named the ‘Unroll.me’ and with the help of this, it becomes easy for you to keep track of the email newsletters as well as the subscriptions that are cluttering up your inbox. It is through this program, that you can very easily get rid of those junk subscriptions that you may have but is not able to do so.

    Using the Program ‘Sanebox’

    You can also use the program ‘SaneBox’ in integration with Gmail. With this program, you will be able to ‘whitelist’ all the important emails, and as such, they will go directly to the inbox. And the others, which are of a low priority than that, will end up in the ‘SaneLater’ box. Pretty convenient, isn’t it?

    Labeling the Emails

    Okay, we may not admit this, but we all have our Gmails up during the day, and sometimes, we all get a headache by just looking at the sheer number of them. As it is not time efficient to answer each and every one of them, it is suggested that you should go through all of your Emails and label them as necessary by putting them in the correct folder. This will make it easy for you to go to that particular folder and respond to them at once without the chance of slipping away.

    Setting up ‘Google Alerts’

    One of the best ways to stay on top of the latest news is to let Google do it for you. Instead of having to go through all the news, articles, blog posts, and many others, it is recommended that you should set up Google Alerts for a variety of keywords so that it becomes easy to see what is important to read and what’s not.

    Tracking Every Email

    It is surprising to see that there are many entrepreneurs who doesn’t follow their Emails. It is suggested that you should use ‘Yesware’. It is a plug-in that will allow you to see when and where the Email that you have sent is opened. You also have the option of sending Emails in batches. Keep in mind that it is a must-have tool for growing businesses.

    Integrating Rapportive With LinkedIn

    Rapportive is in fact, a tool that is known to pull in the LinkedIn profiles of the Email contact. With this tool, you can easily see the whereabouts of the person, including their photo, company, plus the current position of the person that you are about to email. Apart from that, you also have the option of adding that person to LinkedIn directly from Gmail, and you can also click on their LinkedIn profile to read more about the person.

    Conclusion

    As an Entrepreneur, you might be using Gmail for business purposes daily. Thus all the above Gmail hacks will help you to increase your productivity and optimize your Gmail inbox.

    FAQs

    How do emails benefits business?  

    Emails helps in communicating with your customers quickly and cheaply and is a great method for business communication.

    What are Some Alternatives of Gmail?

    Some of the best alternatives of Gmail are Zoho Mail, Mail.com., Tutanota, Microsoft Outlook.

    Why it is Important to Use Email for Entrepreneurs?

    Entrepreneurs use emails to formally communicate and track all those incoming and outgoing communication.

  • 8 Best Time Management Tips For Startup Founder and Business Owners

    Running a startup is not an easy job at all. A startup calls for a lot of effort and time even before it is actually set up. The most critical skill for a startup founder is managing time.

    Successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg are excellent at time management. They know how to set the right goals and achieve them with intense focus and efficient time management. So, here are time management tips for startup founders.

    As a startup founder, managing time is important to accomplish business and personal goals. As they say “People are not busy, just they don’t know how to Manage Time”. Time is often referred to as the best resource.

    When you’re working hard to run a company, every second you save can take you closer to meeting your goals. It can also make the difference between having a life and lacking one. So, managing time well helps you balance work life and personal life.

    Here are some of the best time management tips for startup founders and business owners.

    1. Maintain A Calendar
    2. Assign Task To Colleagues
    3. Find Your Productive Time
    4. One Task At A Time
    5. Save Time
    6. Avoid Distraction
    7. Utilize Time
    8. Peace Is Important

    1. Maintain A Calendar

    One of the most effective time management techniques is maintaining a calendar. It is most important for a founder or business owner to always maintain a calendar.

    Every activity that has to be done for any particular day must be included in a calendar or a journal. This makes sure that nothing is left undone. Maintaining a calendar will help you to prioritize the tasks for the day.

    Moreover, the calendar helps you set a morning routine. Although everyone has their own specific routines, having a morning routine that works for you set the tone for the day. When you think about it, this totally makes sense.

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    2. Assign Task To Colleagues

    Being a founder means a huge workload. This might create pressure on you. Assign tasks to your colleagues, will save you a lot of time and also finish off work much quicker.

    As a founder, the best way to manage time is to do only those things that will help you reach your goal. Telling ‘no’ sometimes is a good practice because this reduces unnecessary pressure and saves a lot of your time and will teach you efficient time management.

    3. Find Your Productive Time

    Every person is productive at a particular time of the day. For some, it may be early mornings and for others, it might be late nights. You should try to utilize this time to get more output with less time.

    4. One Task At A Time

    Focusing is more important for a founder to achieve any goal in a startup. It is always good to focus on one thing and get it done right than doing multiple things and not getting any result. This saves a lot of time for discharging any duty.

    5. Save Time

    Unless and until it is very necessary to meet anyone in person, try and have most of your meetings through calls. This will save a lot of your commute time from your place to others and you will the importance of time management in business.

    6. Avoid Distraction

    Try to avoid distractions at the workplace. We all know that is not necessary to always pick calls or respond to that random mail in your inbox.

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    7. Utilize Time

    Utilize your breaks in an effective way to connect with colleagues and people that might be of some help for your startup. Get involved in other activities with your colleagues like some game or walk to know each other well in person.

    8. Peace Is Important

    Get some ‘me’ time for yourself. In this time do things that make you feel relaxed. A relaxed mind can wonderfully affect your work. Start your day early than usual. This will give you some time for self-care and help you plan your day ahead.

    Well, even after using all the above techniques Things may not work out so take a full break from the work and go out for a vacation!

    Conclusion

    Good time management improves the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of your business. Time is an absolutely crucial asset that cannot be bought and there is no exact science to manage it. But, You own your time. Consider managing it thoughtfully so that you get significant results without stressing out more. These time management tips might also help startup founders and business owners to better manage their time and focus on their goals.

    FAQ

    How many hours do startup founders work?

    Usually, startup founders work for 8 hours a day but every startup founder is different and hours of work depends upon the time management of founders.

    What are examples of time management skills?

    Some of the important time management skills are Decision-making, Goal setting, Prioritizing, Delegation, Multitasking, and Scheduling.

    What are the tools of time management?

    Some tools for time management includes the Calendar app, Task manager, Time tracker, and Note‑taking apps.

  • How to Start Affiliate Marketing in India

    Affiliate Marketing is the next big thing in the Indian market. With the maximum amount of scope in India, it can make you earn big bucks by not investing much. With the world moving forward people now want something better and new with each passing day. Affiliate marketing in India is a revolutionizing step towards a different kind of marketing.

    What is Affiliate Marketing?
    How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
    How to Start Affiliate Marketing in India?
    Scope of Affiliate Marketing in India
    Top Indian Affiliate Networks
    How Affiliate Marketing can be Useful at the Moment?
    Future of Affiliate Marketing in India
    FAQ

    What is Affiliate Marketing?

    Affiliate Marketing has been a new involvement in the Indian market as all the conventional ways have started to become a thing of the past. It is a type of marketing that is based on the performance of the person in which the person acts as a mediator between the consumer and the company selling the product to the consumer. The affiliate earns a commission on each and every sale he sells to the customer by different companies. Flipkart, Amazon, Godaddy, Bigrocks, etc. are big companies in Affiliate marketing in India.

    People can earn a good source of income at the comfort of their home. More and more people are trying to become a part of it and earning a good amount of income through this new concept.

    Increase in the digital buying sector in the past 5 to 6 years
    Increase in the digital buying sector in the past 5 to 6 years

    How does Affiliate Marketing Work?

    The whole process consists of:

    • Merchant
    • Affiliate Network
    • Affiliate
    Process of Affiliate marketing
    Process of Affiliate marketing

    Just with the help of your laptop and a good internet connection you are ready to go for this course. So, if a person likes some product on any of the online platforms you have referred to him you will get a certain amount of commission for that product. The best part of Affiliate marketing is that if you suggested one product and the person ends up buying more than one product all the commissions will go into your pocket.

    For example, you suggested a mobile phone to a person on an E-Commerce site like amazon but the person also ended up buying earphones back cover, and a screen guard along with the phone. You will be getting the commission on all of the products the customer has bought.

    How to Start Affiliate Marketing in India?

    You just need to follow these simple steps to become an Affiliate Marketer.

    Step 1– First of all, search up the internet and find which product you want to promote. It would be better to find a product which is in demand according to the situation of the market at that moment.

    Step 2-Then, search for any affiliate program for example Amazon affiliate, Flipkart affiliate, and sign up for it. Most of them are free of cost.

    Step 3– After signing up, you can generate your unique affiliate link from the Affiliate Area.

    Step 4– Now after the generation of link, you have to start the promotion process of that link and also the products you want the customer to buy.

    Step 5– If a customer buys a product with the help of your link then you would be earning a commission on that product. The best part is that if you have recommended one product and the customer ends up buying more than one product you will be getting the commission on all of the products.

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    Scope of Affiliate Marketing in India

    Growing Affiliate marketing
    Affiliate Marketing Scope in India

    A very bright future is expected in the Indian market and people are looking forward to it now. It has been a growing market for the past 5 years and is expected to rise more. With increasing demand, it can create a great market all over the world and not just in India.

    With a lower amount of risk and chances of getting higher rewards, this is a very great field that has been untouched in the Indian market.

    The competition in the Indian market is very low at this moment and this can be so much helpful to boom up your skills in this field and earn a hefty amount of money.

    Top Indian Affiliate Networks

    Indian affiliate markets
    Indian affiliate markets 

    Amazon Affiliate

    Amazon in India has been one of the leading E-commerce giants in India and it does offer a great opportunity in this field. This is the most widely used nowadays in India and will help you earn in the easiest way. People are earning a commission from 0.3% to 12% through the Amazon affiliate program. For beginners it is the best platform to develop the skills in this field.

    Affiliate Marketing For Beginners in India

    Flipkart Affiliate

    Flipkart has been in the Indian market quite before Amazon and has been an early player in this game. Offering the same services as Amazon and with no fees just by generating a large number of traffic in your from other websites to the Flipkart and earn a hefty amount with the help of the commission. People can earn up to 15% of commission with the help of every purchase a customer is making.

    eBay Affiliate Program

    This program by eBay is the most perfect one for the person who is looking for quick money. Anyone can subscribe it and earn money without investing any money.

    People can earn a commission of up to 12% and it allows both the person and the seller a good amount of money which can be high and real quick.

    GoDaddy

    Providing 100% commission and providing other plans to GoDaddy affiliate program is a good option to join. People can easily earn by sending their customers to the website and asking them to place their banner with the contact of the person who has referred this to them. It will help to earn with every single sale made through the help of the person’s advertisement.

    Nearbuy

    Nearbuy is a platform providing easy dine-in solutions to people with pre-booking system and giving a good amount of discounts in restaurants and cafes. It just creates a link and you just have to share that link among people and with each sale through that click, the commission is yours.

    Bigrock

    Providing a large amount of commission as compared to other affiliate programs Bigrock is one of the top-rated domains in the Indian market.

    By simple steps of just signing in and referring the customers, you can be earning a good amount of money. For people who are interested in blogging and web designing, it’s a great platform for them and provides to get big in their field.

    How Affiliate Marketing can be Useful at the Moment?

    With the current situation of Covid-19 working from home has been started to get more emphasized as compared to going in offices for work. Developing skills in Affiliate marketing is very easy and can be learned by anyone. Also, people preferring online services more as compared to going outside will also help you to provide a good amount of sales and earn a large commission. This is a great time to learn and pitch up your skills in this department and make this a great opportunity at the moment.

    Future of Affiliate Marketing in India

    The future of Affiliate marketing in India seems bright as people are making lots of money through it every month now. Companies are spending lots of money to market their products and services through affiliates already. To buy products and services people are getting more into online, so naturally, businesses find affiliate marketing more useful to them. For those who want to make money through this, companies are willing to pay a lot as commissions. It is already a hit way of marketing and with time it is only going to get bigger in the future.

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    FAQ

    Which affiliate program is the best in India?

    Here are the top 6 affiliate programs of India:-

    1. Amazon Affiliate
    2. Flipkart Affiliate
    3. eBay Affiliate Program
    4. GoDaddy
    5. Nearbuy
    6. Bigrock

    The payment depends upon the content and network of the Individual, so if you are having both, you can earn up to $1000 only with 20-40 hours of monthly work.

    Does affiliate marketing work in India?

    Yes, affiliate marketing is legal in India.

  • 9 Ways to Find A Perfect Startup Mentor to Grow Your Business

    Entrepreneurs having big visions and dreams are looking for ways to make them happen but don’t know how to do it. For successfully running a startup, an entrepreneur needs a positive mindset and a huge responsibility. However, the major problem of every entrepreneur is that they are inexperienced when they start a business. And it is found that 90% of Indian startups fail within the first 5 years, mostly because of inexperienced founders. There is only one way to overcome inexperience quickly and that is by engaging in an advisor program or mentorship.

    Startup mentors are extremely critical but how do you go finding them. Do not look for a mentor but mentors who are experts in different fields. Cause a single mentor cannot solve all of your problems. You’ll need one mentor for handling finance, one for personal guidance, one for startups and so on.

    Now the question comes – There are many business mentors in India but how can you find the right mentor for your startup in India? So, I have prepared a list of places where you can find a mentor but before that let me tell you the key traits of a perfect business or startup mentor.

    Key Traits of a Perfect Mentor
    How to Find a Perfect Mentor for Your Startup or Business?

    Key Traits of a Perfect Mentor

    Mentorship is an important factor that shows the way for startups to reach heights. A perfect mentor provides tried and tested ideas, fills your knowledge gap, and helps to reach your goals with less stress.

    There are so many important factors to the success of a business. It includes the cohesive force of your employees, the timing of the company, the strength of the idea, the cumulative experience of the team, the entrepreneurial experience of the person in charge, etc. Startup mentors help to maintain focus on business problems. Also, they provide alternative solutions to the problems.

    Given below are some of the important traits of a perfect startup mentor.

    1. Problem Solver

    Entrepreneurs face so many problems while starting a business. So it is important to find a business mentor who could provide a solution to your problem besides being able to reduce the pool of difficulties. A mentor can help an entrepreneur to create a better business by overcoming the barriers. They help you to understand the different possible pain points of the startup.

    2. Knowledgeable

    A perfect mentor must be aware of the industry to which the startup belongs. An entrepreneur can overcome all difficulties if they have a mentor who gives advice and generic ideas. So getting a mentor from the same industry is more suitable. They can help you to learn the different nature of the market, the complexities of the business, the processes, and the novelty.

    3. Strong Networking

    A good mentor should succeed in maintaining a strong network of appropriate people in the startup ecosystem. Being a mentor with good connections in the industry gives you the ability to work without interruption. For example, investors are more likely to invest in your startup if their inner circle of network mentions them. A smart mentor helps you to get customer trials, potential investors and customers, strategic engagements, etc.

    4. Entrepreneurship

    A mentor, who has gone through the same processes of creating a startup and leading it to success, knows all the entrepreneurial activities required. They are validating your startup idea and leading the company into profitability. A mentor with an entrepreneurial background can help you to avoid barriers and identify all the possible options to prevent the problems.

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    How to Find a Perfect Mentor for Your Startup or Business?

    Finding the right startup mentor is hard, but not impossible. A right mentor is a fundamental factor for having a successful startup. As an entrepreneur, mentorship is an important resource for growth. Some of the places for finding a perfect mentor are given below.

    Social Media platforms

    Social media is another good platform for finding perfect mentors for your startup. You can search for mentors through professional platforms like LinkedIn and public platforms like Twitter. There you can find professionals according to your requirements by using keywords for searching.

    A good alternative to LinkedIn is the Intch app, where you can post your request to find a mentor and AI will match you with the right person. The Intch community mostly consists of startup founders, so it’s easy to discuss your idea, get advice and find first clients here.

    One can determine the reputation of a person and their willingness to talk with others by monitoring the engagement level and followers. Firstly, get to know your hoped-for mentor instead of going with an outright request. Also, try to offer something of value to start the relationship.

    Online Mentorship Networks

    There are so many online programs dedicated to pairing potential mentors with professionals. MentorKart is an online mentorship network that connects the mentors and mentees who look for professional guidance. With typically a small or no cost, you can sign up and find upcoming advisors in your area of ​​expertise. Also, you can chat with them or meet in person to start a partnership.

    Small Business Development Centers

    Small Business Development Centers are independent organizations that offer advice, expertise, and resources for emerging entrepreneurs across the country. You can find free consultation from small business development centers by using state and local government funds, Small Business Administration federal funds, and resources from the private sector.

    Volunteer Events

    Volunteer events are another good place for meeting people. You can meet like-minded professionals. They may be looking for ways to use their knowledge and experience. You can use the online platform named Volunteer Match to get volunteering opportunities in your city. You can find opportunities as per your interests. Attending these volunteer events helps you build contacts in the industry.

    Industry Meetups

    Industry meetups are the best place for finding mentorship in a specific industry sector. These events include networking events, conferences, speaking events, informal meetups, and trade shows. It can be advertised through meetups or classified ads.

    Score

    SCORE is an organization that works for helping individuals begin, run and grow their own businesses. Currently, there are more than 11,000 volunteers included in the program along with 320 chapters across the country. An entrepreneur can request a free face-to-face meeting with a mentor to discuss the business idea and also be able to create a more lasting partnership with them.

    Social Media platforms

    Social media is another good platform for finding perfect mentors for your startup. You can search for mentors through professional platforms like LinkedIn and public platforms like Twitter. There you can find professionals according to your requirements by using keywords for searching.

    One can determine the reputation of a person and their willingness to talk with others by monitoring the engagement level and followers. Firstly, get to know your hoped-for mentor instead of going with an outright request. Also, try to offer something of value to start the relationship.

    Fitness Classes & Groups

    Business-minded people usually like to spend their time hitting the gym to relieve stress and maintain health. You can frequently find them in fitness-related groups and fitness classes. This could be a good platform to connect with people, get to know them and their businesses. Who knows, maybe you will end up finding a perfect mentor for your startup.

    Networking Events

    Networking events are designed to make connections by bringing together groups of professionals. Try to talk to as many people as you can through these events and don’t be too direct with your goals. Business leaders look for new contacts as they can be prospective partners, employees, or clients in the future. They attend these networking events to meet professionals in many various fields and expand their personal network.

    Friends and Family

    It is inevitable to say that you can find a perfect startup mentor only at the above-mentioned places. You could potentially find them anywhere and anytime. Talk to people, your acquaintances, family, friends, or even strangers. You never know who could help you to choose the right path. Maybe the people are present in your surrounding but you’re looking somewhere else for them.

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    Conclusion

    We all want to lean on somebody, someone who can guide us shows us the right path when we are unable to see it clearly, help us grow, and be a torchbearer for our business or career or life for that matter.

    People are lucky who have mentors in their life, a person who constantly pushes them when they are distracted shows them the light when they’re in dark, and always remain by their side.

    Be it business or career or life, having the right mentor is very much helpful to sustain in this competitive world. A mentor is an experienced person and wise enough to calculate the risk while taking decisions.

    FAQ

    How to find a business mentor?

    Find a mentor match on Ten Thousand Coffees, Meet experienced entrepreneurs at Meetups, Hop on a Clarity call, Ask around in forums and online communities, Connect with potential mentors on LinkedIn, and Form a Mastermind Group.

    Who are some of the best business mentors in india?

    Gururaja, Vijay Johar, Anand G Pai, and Dr Hemalatha. J.N are some of the leading business mentors in India.

    How much should you pay a mentor?

    Sessions (virtual, telephone, or in-person if the expert agrees) start at $50 an hour, though a quick look at the site tells us that many folks charge more than $100 an hour.

    Is a business mentor worth it?

    The long-term cost of not finding a good mentor far outweighs any short-term costs. Mentors can help you to become the best possible version of yourself. They can also guide you through difficult patches when you’re struggling to make decisions or lacking the experience to know in which direction to take your company.

    Who is a good mentor?

    A good mentor is someone who can guide you when you deviate from your path. They take in what’s happening, assess the path the mentee is on, and then guide the person onto the right track. Mentoring is as much about counseling as it is transferring knowledge and leadership skills.

  • Brand Strategy Checklist for Building a Successful Brand

    We all realize how tough it is to start a company or a brand, but letting the rest of the world know about it and promoting it in a positive manner is much more challenging. With the industry being so crowded and competitive, you’ll need to develop a brand strategy so you can work accordingly and supply all of the tools you’ll need to expand your business.

    A well-thought-out brand strategy may be extremely effective and profitable to a company, but it takes time and effort. With your approach, you must be patient and logical, and you must trust the process. But the most difficult element is figuring out how to create a strong brand strategy and how to implement it in the business.

    So, first, let’s discuss what a brand strategy is and how it works, and then we’ll talk about how to create one later in the article.

    What is a Brand Strategy?
    Importance of Brand Strategy
    Brand Strategy Checklist

    What is a Brand Strategy?

    A brand strategy is a plan or collection of tactics devised and implemented by a company in order to project a positive image of the company to the customer base. Image matters a lot. When a customer buys your service, they will look into the brand’s reputation since it gives them confidence in the purchase they are making and ensures that the service or product provided by the business is of high quality.

    So to make your brand look more legitimate and have a positive image for the customers, you must have a good brand strategy to perfectly build your brand. Customers will form an impression of your brand as a result of this, and your brand will stand out in the competition.

    What is Brand Strategy and How to do it?

    Importance of Brand Strategy

    An effective brand strategy emphasizes your brand’s message while also promoting a positive picture of your company. It will be difficult to track your company’s development and set goals for the long run if you don’t have a brand plan in place. If you want your firm to expand consistently, having a solid brand strategy and plans to implement it can be really beneficial.

    Following are some benefits of Brand Strategy:

    1. When you have a proper brand strategy and you are following it strictly, then you do not have to worry about all the useless advice people will give you to grow your company or make a profit.

    2. As you now have a solid brand strategy, assist you in focusing only on the plan and strategies you have mapped out for your business. You will save a lot of time and money now that you have a strong plan and know what to do.

    3. You will see an increase in the number of clients if you have a clear strategy and plan in place to improve the company’s image and generate an appealing brand. Positive branding and a good reputation are known to attract new customers and keep existing customers coming back for additional purchases.

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    Brand Strategy Checklist

    A solid branding plan should help spread the word about your company. An effective brand strategy should make people aware of what you’re offering and that you provide the best service, at least better than your competitors. But the difficulty is how to construct one and which tactics should be used and which should be avoided.

    Following are some steps one can follow to make a successful brand strategy:

    Understand Your Business

    If you want to build a strong brand strategy, you must first understand your business, what you want to get out of it, and how you want people to perceive it. The most important thing is to be aware of your competitors. Know your staff and how they may contribute to the company’s and their own personal growth by working more efficiently.

    Set Realistic Goals

    Set Realistic Goals for building Branding Strategy
    Set Realistic Goals for building Branding Strategy

    When you’re starting a business and don’t have a lot of devoted consumers, you should create clear goals and numbers for yourself and your company, and try to make them reasonable, as setting realistic goals for yourself and your organization is the main challenge.

    Know What Your Business’s Major Offering Is

    One should have a clear understanding of what their company has to offer and devise strategies for getting the information out to the public. It will be the best opportunity to build a dedicated fanbase if the company has a core offering and the quality is guaranteed.

    Having a Solid Brand Strategy That Attracts Investors

    It raises the value of your brand and confirms the legitimacy of your company when you have a sound brand strategy and present it to investors in a clear and simple manner. So, if you want to attract investors and grow your firm, you’ll need a brand plan. Your investors may not take your goals and opinions seriously if you don’t have a brand strategy.

    Know about the Target Audience

    It’s possible that your business may suffer if you don’t know who will buy the service you’re selling or what their purchasing habits are. Work hard to understand your target audience so that you can create a strategy and marketing plan around them.

    Conclusion

    The success of a brand is determined by its effective brand strategy and expertise in the industry. If you don’t have a clear brand strategy in place, you may find yourself making hasty decisions. Know your brand and the message you want to send through it, as well as the primary service you’ll provide to your clients. Branding strategy aids in the development of a better image and general validity. This is advantageous if you want investors to approach you and invest in your company.

    FAQs

    Why is brand strategy important?

    An excellent brand strategy aids in the development of a great reputation. It establishes who you really are as a company and concentrates your long-term objectives.

    Who invented brand strategy?

    Neil H. McElroy’s memo at Procter & Gamble is credited with launching the contemporary field of brand management.

    Why do you need a brand strategy?

    Maintaining a regular brand strategy makes it easier to connect with its customers. The more constant your advertising is, the more probable it will be successful in attracting and keeping customers’ trust.

    What are the three main types of Branding?

    Three main types of brands are:

    • Company Branding
    • Product Branding
    • Personal Branding