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Apps Technology

3 Mobile Apps that Help Businesses Save Time

/ Insights      / 3 Mobile Apps that Help Businesses Save Time

3 Mobile Apps that Help Businesses Save Time

A successful business mobile app is one that is easy to use and navigate whilst allowing a business to complete tasks in a more effective way.

The right apps can save business owners time, effort, and money. There are literally thousands of apps on the IOS and Android stores that are specifically designed for this purpose, with an almost equal mix of success and failure.

We have filtered this down to three that could instantly make an impact to your day-to-day business life.

Expensify

Whether you are self-employed or part of a limited company, monitoring and recording expenses is essential to ensure that you pay the right tax at the end of each financial year.

Expensify is a comprehensive expense report-generating app. It syncs up with your credit cards and bank accounts to log expenses, can scan paper receipts via phone camera, and creates reports and analytics.

Expensify allows you to do this, meaning that you can avoid the time and effort of keeping track of expenses, and receipts.

LinkedIn

Although it is a social media tool, LinkedIn is also the equivalent of an online rolodex of the business world that you can use to keep track of all of your contacts and the people you meet. In fact, rather than trading business cards at a networking meeting, you could add them on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn enables you to keep track of all of your contacts in one place, and stay in touch with them, and keep an eye on any changes in their status.

Invoice2Go

Admin is an unavoidable part of business, and invoicing is vital to ensure you get paid what you are owed in a timely manner.

Invoice2go lets you provide bills, credit memos, purchase orders, and estimates to clients as you complete the job. It then allows collection through PayPal and access to a reporting suite.

The problem it solves is being able to generate invoices in a quick and timely fashion without creating additional paperwork.

If you have a business problem you think an app could fix, or just questions about what apps can do, why not give us a call.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Technology

Facebook And Business

/ Insights      / Facebook And Business

Facebook And Business

Want to increase the visibility of your Business online, bear the following points in mind:

  • Target the right demographic audience,
  • Communicate with customers directly,
  • Personalise your web content,
  • Use the media channel to reach over 1 billion.

Well, there is an easier way to achieve all this at once – Simply use Facebook!!

Gone are the days when you thought social sites are personal, to keep in touch with your friends and couldn’t make an impact or affect your professional life.

Facebook has provided many features for ease of Business:

  1. Ads Manager – create, edit and analyse facebook ads.
  2. Measure performance of the ads using Performance metrics.
  3. Business Fan page for marketing, driving online Sales, increasing Local Sales and raising Brand Awareness.

More than 1.3 billion people use Facebook on a daily basis to connect with what matters to them.  Relevant and engaging photos, videos and links make Facebook Adverts a powerful way to find new customers and build brand loyalty and increase Brand Awareness.

As experienced Facebook advertiser Freddie Jansson said in an interview:

“A large part of companies’ potential customers are there. Therefore, in my opinion, all companies should have a Facebook page where they can interact with their customers … No other advertising channel, at least where you can communicate, can compete with those numbers.”

For all those sceptics out there, consider this – even if only one of your competitors launches a successful Fan Page, that competitor is likely to corner the market on Facebook and build a following long before you do.

The bottom line is – stake your free claim early to establish your business as the industry leader before the competition has a chance.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Technology web

3 Tips for Hiring a Web Design Company

/ Insights      / 3 Tips for Hiring a Web Design Company

3 Tips for Hiring a Web Design Company

If you are starting a business, the easiest and most effective means of gaining global visibility is a website. A website can even be built and put in place to generate awareness of your business before you fully launch.

Finding the right solution to building your website can be overwhelming: there are tens of thousands companies in the UK and across the world all vying for the opportunity to build and host your website.

We have put together a guide of three tips when hiring a web designer.

Define Your Digital Strategy

Whether you are a small company or a large corporate, the value you receive from your company’s website will depend upon your ability to define the purpose of the website.

Having a strategic business plan and realistic goals can help you to design a successful website. In general, if the business has a story to tell about its services, achievements, satisfied customers, and great team members, you can build an interesting and engaging website.

Consider who your target audienceis, and what you are trying to achieve.

Choose A Company With Design and Technical Skills

If you engage a professional website design and build company to develop the website for you, it is important to note that Web design and build are two separate skills: and a good web development company will use both graphic designers and programmers together to build your website.

Hiring a Web Design Company

With so many potential options in the market of web design companies, it can be hard to find the one that is the right fit for you, and which shares and can realise your vision.

Therefore, we recommend that you do your research and take your time. The first step for many businesses is speaking to companies with whom they work and getting personal recommendations.

Speak to more than one company, and choose the one that understands your needs the best. Of course, in order to do that, you must first identify, and be able to communicate your needs.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Marketing Technology

Why You Should Consider a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

/ Insights      / Why You Should Consider a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

Why You Should Consider a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

A full service digital marketing agency is designed to allow companies to outsource all of their digital marketing services to one company.

This is useful for many small businesses, who may find digital marketing a confusing industry: the huge amount of data involved makes it difficult for a layman to make an informed decision about the best course of action.

Therefore, small businesses need a resource that can guide them through digital marketing in a way that is tailored to their individual business situation and goals.

At Aspiring Panda, we know that what works for one company will not necessarily be applicable to another, particularly in the fast moving digital marketing sector. Taking this into consideration, we have built our business as a full service digital marketing agency so we can guide our clients through the digital marketing landscape.

Why Consider a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

There are many different aspects to digital marketing, from web design, pay per click advertising (PPC), social media, mobile app development, and search engine optimisation (SEO).

In order to be utilised effectively, each of these requires specialist skills. There are a great number of companies that can help with these individually. However, for many businesses finding and managing these resources independently is a costly and time consuming operation, and requires almost as much time and attention as doing it in-house.

Furthermore, by hiring these professionals individually, the onus for an effective strategy may lie with the company rather than with its suppliers.

A full service digital marketing agency will have access to professionals across these different platforms, and will be able to advise and apply these skill sets as required in line with a pre-agreed digital marketing strategy.

This allows the hiring company to deal with only one agency, which will help keep managing the project simple, maintain a focus on the overall goals of the project, centralise accountability, and save time.

Therefore, hiring the right, full service digital marketing agency is the easiest way for companies to optimise their digital marketing.

If you have any questions about digital marketing, do give us a call.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Marketing Social Media Technology

Why Email Is More Valuable Than Social Media

/ Insights      / Why Email Is More Valuable Than Social Media

Why Email Is More Valuable Than Social Media

Email marketing should be a key component of the modern digital marketing campaign; although not as trendy as social media, it has the potential to garner greater long term returns to the business.

This results from the fact that, although social media is a great way of building awareness of a business, it is transient. People engage with a message for a short period of time and then move on, this means that they can quickly forget about your business and will need regular reminding and interaction.

This is where email comes into its own. Email marketing is an opportunity to regularly contact people that have opted in to receiving regular updates about your business.

Therefore, many successful digital marketing funnels use social media as a driver towards the email list rather than to the company website or product pages.

Here are some of the factors that make email addresses more valuable than a like or follow on social media.

Build Relationships and Trust

The ability to build a relationship and trust with potential customers using email creates additional opportunities. This is because potential customers get to know your business over time and learn about what you do at their own pace.

Increase Revenue from Existing Customers

Email marketing can also be used to communicate with existing customers. This increases customer retention, and can in turn increase sales by promoting sales and other offers to existing customers.

Audience Segmentation

Email marketing also allows businesses to tailor their messages to specific sets of people that have shown an interest in a specific product or service. This tailoring of the message makes readers feel that communications are more relevant. This sense of personalised approach can drive sales.

Given the points above, we believe email marketing should be an important consideration when deciding the right digital marketing strategy for your business. There are many different pieces of software around that can help you run email marketing campaigns, we will cover these in more detail in future blogs.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Apps Technology

Why Mobile Apps Are Important Business Tools

/ Insights      / Why Mobile Apps Are Important Business Tools

Why Mobile Apps Are Important Business Tools

There are estimated to be more than 35m smartphone users in the United Kingdom, a figure that is predicted to rise to more 43.4m by 2017.

The common perception is that smartphones and the mobile apps designed to serve them are primarily focused on the gaming, leisure and entertainment sectors.

Whilst these sectors are hugely popular, the potential applications for this technology and connectivity is not limited to personal or entertainment use: we should think more than just Angry Birds when we think apps.

The mass adoption of smartphone technology presents great potential for businesses both large and small to build apps that serve as tools to aid a business in its day-to-day operations and marketing.

Apps For Business Efficiency

Apps have the potential to increase efficiency by allowing businesses to send data whilst travelling. This is ideal for salesmen and tradesmen, enabling them to send job reports, quotes, and progress updates in real time back to head office.

These apps can range from generic solutions – such as project planning or calendar apps – to bespoke solutions that are integrated into the company’s business processes and operations.

Apps for Customer Experience

Apps have great potential to allow companies to engage with new and potential customers. Apps can allow customers to access information about a company on the go, as well as providing a simpler and improved customer experience.

A good example of this could be the Trainline App, which allows users to access train times and book tickets from their smartphone.

Is An App Right For Your Business?

Whether your business could benefit from an app is dependent on the unique nature of your business. The important thing is to analyse your business and to explore the ways in which an app can do any of the following:

  • Increase efficiency
  • Improve the customer experience
  • Create new sales platforms
  • Retain customers
  • Reach new customers

If you are unsure of how to go about this, then give us a call and we can talk about the best way to use mobile development to grow your business.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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Technology

Chips And Chips: 5 Ways To Market In The High Stakes Casino That Is The App Store

/ Insights      / Chips And Chips: 5 Ways To Market In The High Stakes Casino That Is The App Store

Chips And Chips: 5 Ways To Market In The High Stakes Casino That Is The App Store

The app world is a Las Vegas Casino floor, you’re playing against start ups, the people are the dealers… I’m going to teach you to count cards.

It would be easy and quite cliche, to suggest that launching an application on iOS and Android is a complex task. In all honesty it is. Just type in a few key words in an appstore search engine, scroll down to find the remnants of hours of thought, coding and hard work, initially thought to be a good idea by their inventor, to help make things easier for people, to be discarded by the public sent to the bottom of the pile, never to be downloaded. This game is high risk, there are no low stakes.

1: Meet people.

Go to shows, meetups, hackathons, but be vigilant, keep your eyes peeled, take a peek to see if you can see anyone else doing what you’re doing. People will try to keep their cards close, but you can always get an idea. You can do this through friends and family, twitter and facebook etc.

2:Make sure you app idea has a market.

It’s all very well creating the most complex card game ever conceived, but if people keep on playing poker and roulette instead, you’ll have no one to bet against and you’ll lose your money.

3: Diversify yourself from them, and be prepared for change.

As a marketer you are taught to focus on the positives, but the market is dependent on people, other companies, marketing and to some extent, though companies and gamblers alike like to hope that they aren’t; people are unpredictable, they can shuffle like a dealer switches his deck, changing the game.

4: Make sure your App doesn’t suck 

Even if you do follow these methods of app promotion, the app world is a knife edge. If the game isn’t fluid, fun or easy to understand, it will be deserted in favour of online black jack and poker.

5: Make sure you have a plan

When it comes time to win big at a casino, you raise the stakes that draws attention, it pulls people in. Raising the stakes in the app world depends on your market, but you raise the stakes in their favour, make them think they gain something out of having your app, you’ll cash out.

To do that, make links and connections, advertise effectively in areas where you know you’ll get traction, make functional memorabilia, (there are reasons why casinos brand their own chips!) and always be aware of how you can get the most out of your buck, it’s all well and good going all in when you’re holding a royal flush in a poker game, but pushing all your chips forward on a pair, will get your bluff called.

You are stepping into a highstakes casino on the San Jose strip, the pay offs could be huge. It always helps that you know simple math and how to count cards, but that never guarantees success.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

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