Teknologi Digital sebagai Saluran Pemasaran

Dewasa ini, teknologi digital bukan lagi benda asing dalam kehidupan seharian masakini. Whatsapp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, hashtag, apps dan pelbagai lagi sudah menjadi buah mulut masyarakat. Malahan, ahli perniagaan masakini juga cenderung untuk menggunakan teknologi trending tersebut untuk tujuan pemasaran secara talian. Selain dari teknologi yang trending, ada juga teknologi dalam talian sepanjang zaman (evergreen gitu) yang tak harus dilupakan seperti emel dan SMS marketing. Berikut adalah beberapa inti-pati teknologi digital sebagai saluran pemasaran untuk perniagaan anda.

1. Laman Web dan Blog

Laman web adalah media yang utama untuk sesebuah perniagaan dalam alam maya. Website yang menggunakan domain antarabangsa ".com" atau ".net", mahupun domain tempatan seperti ".com.my", ".my" dapat mengekpreskan kewujudan perniagaan itu secara berkaliber. 

Sesebuah laman web tersebut tidak perlulah mempunyai teknologi atau animasi yang tercanggih, pada hemat saya lebih baik laman web yang kemas dan sedap mata memandang. Selain itu, kandungannya sentiasa di-update dengan maklumat-maklumat yang terkini.

Selain itu, fungsi terhebat laman web adalah e-commerce, di mana pelayar boleh membeli belah secara langsung di dalam talian. Ada pelbagai jenis enjin ecommerce yang boleh digunakan untuk menjual secara dalam talian antaranya WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, Shoppify dan lain-lain.

Acap-kali kita buka website, pasti ada pautan blog di-dalamnya. Ya, blog merupakan salah satu elemen dalam website tersebut yang boleh dikatakan agak penting. Dengan adanya blog, pelawat laman web boleh tahu bila tarikh akhir blog itu dikemaskini. Jika sudah bersawang, tentu pelawat bertanya-tanya adakah perniagaan tuan empunya blog masih hidup atau hidup di alam lain.

2. Emel Marketing

Emel marketing adalah teknik pemasaran otai-otai yang masih lagi terbukti berkesan hingga hari ini. Manakan tidak, orang ramai masih lagi menggunakan emel dan menyemak email sekurang-kurangnya seminggu sekali. 

Emel marketing dengan menggunakan khidmat emel blaster memudahkan urusan penghantaran emel secara lambakan. Antara perkhidmatan yang popular adalah aweber, getresponse, mailchimp, sendgrid dan pelbagai lagi.

3. SMS Marketing

Percaya atau tidak SMS marketing masih ada bisanya. Kalau Whatsapp atau email boleh di-block tapi SMS tidak. Jadikan SMS sebagai senjata marketing anda dengan menyimpan database nombor telefon prospek dan pelanggan. 

Ada caranya untuk dapatkan nombor telefon pelanggan ni, contohnya membership atau peraduan.

4. Facebook Page / Facebook Messenger

Facebook Page ini boleh kata wajib untuk perniagaan dari skala 0 ke 10. Mana tak nya, percuma sahaja. Manfaatkanlah teknologi yang disediakan oleh Mark Zuckerberg ini. Ingat, ingat, ingat, ini adalah laman sosial jadi perlu dalam mood 'bersosial' untuk tanya-tanya khabar. Kalau nak beli apa-apa ajak mereka ke 'rumah' atau website kitalah. 

Di Facebook Page boleh tulis status terkini perniagaan anda, muat naik gambar atau video aktiviti perniagaan anda dan boleh juga nak jual-jual di laman sosial ini.

Terkini ada fungsi 'live' dimana seseorang boleh buat hebahan secara langsung tentang detik hidup atau promosi yang dijalankan.

5. Instagram 

Instagram menjadi kegilaan pengguna smartphone. Asal ada gambar best je pasti nak upload. Begitu juga peniaga, offline atau online, asal ada benda yang syok (sendiri atau tidak) je mesti nak share. Tapi itulah realiti mobiliti hari ini. Boleh kata trend sama ada artis atau rakyat maheran untuk berkongsi gambar, follow sana sini, like suka hati.

Kepada peniagaan dalam Instagram ini, perniagaan yang sesuai adalah perniagaan yang ada elemen estatik yang boleh menarik minat pengguna untuk follow dan like banyak-banyak. 

6. Twitter

Twitter ni yang memperkenalkan kepenggunaan 'hashtag' #sukasangatkanguna. Hashtag ni digunakan untuk tagging sesuatu event atau topik yang ingin diperbincangkan. Sekarang semua benda boleh dihashtagkan. Selain dari Twitter, sekarang Facebook dan Instagram juga boleh menggunakan fitur hashtag.

Twitter ni cara paling santai untuk menyebar sesuatu maklumat secara ringkas. Dan diperhatikan Twitter banyak digunakan oleh media massa seperti radio dan TV untuk mendapakan feedback tentang sesuatu perkara dengan menggunakan hashtag tertentu. 

7. Whatsapp / Telegram

Boleh dikatakan medium komunikasi zaman terkini, menggantikan penggunaan SMS secara total yang digunapakai dengan smartphone moden. 

Medium komunikasi untuk pelbagai keperluan, dari close sale hinggalah memberikan maklum balas terhadap produk.

8. YouTube

Kepada yang pandai buat cover lagu atau melawak macam Mat Lutfi, ini lah tempat anda untuk menojolkan bakat anda ke persada online. Dengan menjadi selebriti YouTube, dengan mudah brand anda akan dikenali ramai dan pelbagai produk ingin menjadikan mereka sebagai jurucakap mereka.

9. Web / Mobile Apps (online services)

Aplikasi online seperti mudah.my, ibilik, Airbnb, carlist.my dan pelbagai lagi adalah platform yang hebat untuk usahawan meletakan barangan atau perkhidmatan yang bersesuaian. Hal ini kerana, aplikasi web/ mobile tersebut mempunyai ribuan pengguna yang mencari-cari barangan yang ideal. Jadi kebarangkalian untuk dijumpai oleh mereka yang mencari agak tinggi, jadi cubalah untuk daftar list kan agar barangan / perkhidmatan anda dijumpai juga.

10. Mobile Apps 

Kalau jenama besar biasa mesti sudah ada mobile apps. Kalau belum tu mesti ada agency tengah bagi proposal. Jadi mobile apps ni sebenarnya agak mahal, tetapi demand nya cukup hebat. Tengok berapa ramai yang guna smartphone. Jadi brand-brand sederhana ke besar mesti nak brand mereka di dalam kocek pelanggan mereka.

Mobile apps ini fungsi asasnya macam website, cuma dia boleh function offline. Pelbagai maklumat tentang perniagaan ada di sini. 

Jadi apa kelebihan sangat ada mobile apps? 'Uber-ify'. Anda boleh mengetahui status perkhidmatan perniagaan tersebut, dan menempah barang yang terdekat. Anda juga tahu berapa minit barang itu akan sampai. Anda juga boleh bayar serta merta. 

Konklusi

Tak kira apa medium digital yang digunakan, ingatlah semuanya sama penting. Namun kena lagi ingat tentang apa mesej yang hendak disampaikan kepada pelanggan.

Tak tahu atau takut nak cuba channel mana nak pakai. Habaq mai kat whatsapp I. +60163373081 atau emel hijazi@irekasoft.com atau mujur terus ke halaman sesawang iRekaSoft.com.

Post diinspirasi dari page rakan developer di halaman blog DesaKretiv

Service vs Promotional Push

Not all push messages are created equal. It’s important to know the difference so you can send the right type.

There are two main categories of push messages – service and promotional.

Service push messages refer to ones that communicate real time, one-to-one information that is necessary to use your products or services or to notify customers of a change in process status. These could be anything from account balance notifications to package delivery status updates. In many cases, customers can even reply to share or confirm information.

Promotional push messages have a different purpose. They are used to promote your products or services. They include any kind of sales or marketing messages, like discount notifcations, digital coupons or promo codes. These are massively sent.

This distinction is important. Research has shown that your users are far more open to receiving service push messages. After all, one of the main reasons they use your app is to get information quicker or a better service. With service messages you are helping them do so.

On the other hand, your users are more likely to get annoyed by promotional push messages. This is especially true when the messages are unsolicited.
That means if you care about user retention, you want to focus on sending service push messages. You want to provide your users with valuable, timely information. That way you can help your users and build trust in your app, instead of bombarding them with promotions and sales. 

The important of push notification.

Imagine you own a business and need to communicate with your customers. They could be patients at a hospital, so you hire a receptionist. Or they could be clients at a bank, and you hire a teller. Either way, that person is the voice of your business.

That person talks to your customers all day long. These interactions are extremely important. If handled correctly, you can win customers for life. Otherwise, you could lose customers quickly. 

But you can’t directly control these interactions. You’re not always there to hear them. And you certainly can’t record everything or know what was said and to whom.

Now imagine your business has a mobile app, and you need to communicate with your customers. Push messaging is how you do it. 

Push messages are like a digital receptionist or a digital teller. They are the voice of your app, and they can lead the conversation with your customers. Just like a bank teller can ask your customer if they are interested in seeing transactions, so too can your app. Or like a receptionist, they can ask a patient to confirm an appointment.

The difference is that you can control push messages. You choose what to say, when you say it, and to whom you say it. You can also keep track of all of these individual conversations you have with your customers. Then you can optimize to best serve your customers. But just because your customers are moving to mobile, doesn’t mean they will auto- matically use your app. Their phones are crowded. The average person has about 65 apps on their device. That means your app is easy to forget. 

It is the most effective way to reach the consumers who downloaded your app but either have not yet opened it or are not using it when you send them a message.

Whether you are ready for it or not, your customers are moving to mobile. After all, the average person spends nearly 140 minutes on their phone every day. That’s how they want to interact with your business. the ways to do that is through onetoone service push messages.

Entrepreneurship Journey

I am an enabler, finding how thing can be done technically. And I also networker, finding and know people that can possibly work on something.

But what trully what an entrepreneur should possibly do? I have read from senior entrepreneurs' guru, said that an entrepreneur should do is to grow the business, see the big picture, see the potential of where it should go. Then with leadership, lead himself and the team toward the vision, mission and objectinve. With charismatic personality could tell investor, clients and customer to understand what they offer, what they can give benifit to people them, and also sell the idea (read: communication). And also to have strategic plan for integrated marketing, to make sure many people can heard the idea or products, thus make them to reach the business. And not to be forgotten about how strategically to build brands.

Entrepreneurship is ultimately about making money. Because without it, entreprenuer will go back to work for someone else's vision, mission and objective, to earn money. That's the result of this work.

So running the entrepreneurship journey, is tiring, but somehow rewarding. I learn a lot, for being collaborative with business people, and have chance to join technical circle from many companies.

As enabler, I also learn more and more about technical. How things work. Many of them on the internet, and with vibrant communities many source codes are opened, help to make software easier, faster and better quality. Take classes also help, weather online or offline, it is increase your knowledge and workskill.

And lastly, your drive. Why really you want to do something. Are you inspired. Are you depressed, are you want to change the world, are you want to make lot of money. What is the state of emotion that can drive you to achieve it.

Wheather easy or hard. Making things are our passion. Helping people to solve their problems. Design a better future, for you and me is our dream.

Hijazi
iReka Soft Enterprise

iReka as Mobile Services

This our promotion right now. We offer mobile app development for your business at an affordable price. We understand that business people want the benifit of having mobile apps not the technologies. We will leverage the technology costs by having more people on board to share the app development costs.

It only gets better time to time. When people start using it, we will have a lot of work to make it run smoothly.

At start we offer AppBiz for Android. We will also provide the app back-end where app admin can logged in and manage the content of the apps.

Well, what so different with website you may ask, which if you have already mobile friendly. Mobile app specifically is offline-ready. Unlike web, we need a constant data to access to the information, by having the app, the data is cached, and user will see the last data they have accessed. It's not only faster loading, but also important when the data needed when there is no internet connection. The important data we store on the app are : contact information, events, photos etc.

Another important feature is push notification for the app. And it's tightly integrated to app's messanging or news system. Admin can send push notifications for the latest news or app support. What benefit the customers are they will have the latest news from your business, and have the proper Call to Action for the right link. Well, this is another marketing channel besides SMS or email which equally important.

Admin can control this on the admin panel on the web, which has the control about the information to show on the app. This part is on heavy development iteration, where we have to think how to scale up to support multi-clients with multi-apps with multi-platform. It's really how hard to think about the technical difficulties that we have to solve.

But to make it clear, for our clients, you can login to admin website, and you can see the core features that avalaible to you now.

And we hope we got the great drive to deliver the best for our clients and customers.

p/s: We love to have early adopter because we usually give more support, and some special help like to make marketing banner for the apps.

Android Development

Currently we are working on a news app. We pull the data from the server. So there is of iteration to make the app run more stable and faster.

• make the page view avalaible for 3 pages
• reduce API call
• save the JSON file.

It's important to know how to debug, and fine where is error in the code.

Learning Handling Copy from ResearchKit

As previous post, I did concern how to manage copy inside the app. So I did download ResearchKit and learn something about managing copy or string that display in your app.

Here is how they code a string

`ORKLocalizedString(@"CONSENT_NAME_TITLE", nil)`

The ORKLocalizedString is defined as follows.

#define ORKDefaultLocalizedValue(key) \

[ORKDefaultLocaleBundle() localizedStringForKey:key value:@"" table:@"ResearchKit"]

#define ORKLocalizedString(key, comment) \

[ORKBundle() localizedStringForKey:(key) value:ORKDefaultLocalizedValue(key) table:@"ResearchKit"]

And of course they translate the copy for these languages.

This are the most professional code for doing translation and copy.

Separating User-facing Text from your code
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPInternational/InternationalizingYourCode/InternationalizingYourCode.html