QuoDeck’s gamified campaign #D2City has received over five million impressions in just two weeks
Leading brands are using gamified campaigns for engaging with consumers due lack of physical space where consumers can experience or see D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands after the Covid outbreak.
QuoDeck’s one-of-a-kind gamified campaign #D2City, which is used as an engagement strategy for over 28 brands enrolled on the platform, has received over five million impressions in just 14 days of its launch. Over one million engaged through videos, games, and other content.
Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO, QuoDeck said innovative brand communication is the key to capturing customer attention in this age of transient loyalty and #D2City has established a brand new high engagement marketing tactic for D2C brands across sectors to create brand affinity.
The campaign was designed as an interactive digital city that allowed visitors to experience, explore, play and learn about their favorite D2C brands.
Mobile-friendly gaming microsite
For the campaign, Quodeck hosted over 28 big and small D2C brands from industries such as Cosmetics, Electronics, Personal Care, Food, Apparel, and Baking Goods, among others, in a mobile-friendly gaming microsite designed as a city with buildings, key buildings playing host to brands and their games.
The D2City campaign leveraged the growing popularity of gamification to help D2C brands capture consumer attention from far beyond just tier-I cities. During the duration of the #D2City campaign, the platform received 80 percent hits from tier-II and -III cities across the country, correlating with the rising demand for D2C in these areas.
Launched in 2017 by Kamalika Bhattacharya and Arijit Lahiri, QuoDeck is a B2B SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform that enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage audiences such as employees, value chain, and gig workforces.
The platform is highly scalable and equipped to handle large user bases and extended ecosystems such as sellers, agents, vendors, distributors, partners, etc.
Today, QuoDeck is the market leader in its category, catering to over five million users across an enterprise clients, including Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, and Dabur.
As D2C brands take on established brand mammoths to capture consumer attention, with proven use cases of gamification and many well-known brands reaping its rewards, gamification has now become an essential weapon in any smart, new-age marketer’s arsenal
With the world undergoing unprecedented transformations since the Covid-19 pandemic began, enterprises across the globe are reimagining their branding and marketing strategies to adapt and realign with the changing needs of their consumers.
One sector that has stood out from the rest in the post-pandemic era has been D2C retail, which saw a significant uptick in demand during these times. At present, D2C brands have sprung up in multiple sectors, including fashion, FMCG, Homecare, Femtech, personal care, baby care, cosmetics, lifestyle, home décor, consumer electronics, among others. More than 800 D2C brands in India are carving a niche for themselves, with many more to join the ecosystem in the coming years. Such a backdrop points to an increasingly competitive space where only those who deploy the best brand strategies will survive in the long run.
The most significant challenge faced by D2C brands today is one of creating brand recognition among consumers. Given the lack of a physical space where consumers can experience or see the brand, digital mediums such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp etc., become the primary mediums through which consumers are reached. However, high clutter in these channels makes content differentiation a critical marketing need.
Gamification, as a strategy, is one such way in which D2C brands can strongly differentiate and attract new consumers.
There is a natural instinct in every person to compete, to be challenged, to have fun, to be rewarded, and to mirror. These five innate instincts can be satiated through games and gamified engagement. Furthermore, when people play games, they feel motivated and experience a positive ’rush’. Gamification in the context of marketing merely couples these positive emotions through game elements and game principles with a topic or information about a product.
Gamification is already widely used in a variety of contexts across sectors with the ultimate goal of entertaining, engaging, and educating audiences. Globally the Gamification market is expected to grow to USD 38.3 Billion by 2027, from USD 9.1 billion in 2020. The global gaming market is expected to be USD 268.8 billion in 2025, up from USD 178 billion in 2021. This is fueled by growing acceptance of this medium in the minds of consumers across the world. As younger populations enter the working age and with the advent of mediums such as VR, this trend is only expected to magnify.
In the context of D2C brands, tried and tested gamification methods can be a game-changer in many ways, some of which we’ve explored here.
Enhance reach and brand awareness
Brands can use games to create fun interactive content for people to discover and understand their brand and products. Using gamification elements incentivizes the interaction while creating hype for your product or services among consumers. This is also a great way to promote newly launched products or campaigns; there is a high likelihood that a consumer may participate or make a purchase with a game as a hook.
When you integrate a game into your brand content across different consumer touchpoints, you also encourage your consumers to share their gaming experience with their social networks, as gaming activities get a lot of shares.
This increases a brand’s reach and awareness, thereby making it easy to attract new consumers. For example, a study by Gigya, a customer identity management platform, found that brands such as Nike, Dell and Pepsi, who used gamified elements in their content, saw a 13% increase in post comments, 22% more post shares and a phenomenal 68% content discovery rate.
Drive Engagement and Increase Brand Loyalty
Game principles can be used to achieve the holy grail of marketing – sustained engagement. According to Digital Marketing Forum, 60% of people admit that an appealing game from a brand may influence them to buy more from that brand. Similarly, a survey conducted by Ask Your Target Market found that 38% of people enjoy their shopping experience when brands include games or interactive features. This data indicates that gamification can enhance sales, brand awareness, and customer loyalty and help develop an emotional connect with the audience. This, in turn, leads to a longer relationship with consumers, as opposed to simple brand awareness. Brands that gamify to raise engagement find that games also tend to boost customer experience and satisfaction.
With the increased demand for consumer entertainment since the pandemic began, brands can leverage gamification to make the user’s engagement with the brand more enjoyable and dynamic. Bain & Company’s research shows that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
Grab new segments’ attention: Target Generation Z and Millennials.
While gamification for digital marketing works well across all ages and demographics, games perform exceptionally well with Millennial and Gen Z audiences, as indicated by the Consumer Insights research, which found that about 81% of Gen Z gamers reported playing games in the past six months. Millennials and GenZ make up the majority of the 600 million internet users in India, and they are driving online shopping like never before. As a result, D2C
brands are getting higher responses and witnessing a sharp rise in engagement and visibility from Millennials and Gen-Z, who make up the major share of online shoppers. This points to a huge opportunity for D2C to leverage the affinity of Millenials and GenZ towards games and use gamified elements to drive revenue and engagement.
Generate data for personalisation and user retention
With hundreds of D2C startups and traditional retail companies vying to take the D2C route, customer acquisition costs are rising. A data-driven understanding of the customer can help D2C brands deliver unique experiences across channels, thus, improving retention and increasing overall customer LTV. Games naturally lend themselves to capturing higher levels of data that can indicate consumer behaviour or preferences. This sort of data can be generated through gamification applied across multiple touchpoints in the consumer decision journey.
The data collected can help D2C brands optimise experiences across customer lifecycle stages while reducing overall marketing costs.
As D2C brands take on established brand mammoths to capture consumer attention, they may need to find innovative ways of appealing to consumers. What better way than to deliver a personalised experience to make consumers feel like part of something unique and niche. With proven use cases of gamification and many well-known brands reaping its rewards, gamification has now become an essential weapon in any smart, new-age marketer’s arsenal.
Want to increase both sales and engagement during the festive season? I got you! Here are 5 effective ways that work to engage your consumers.
The festive season is everyone’s favourite and that time of the year where brands record a rapid sales growth of more than 7.5%, even during the pandemic. For this sales rate, you need to create a strategy and organise your content schedule ahead of time to engage your customers effectively.
Do you want to know what strategy will engage your consumers for the upcoming festive season? Yes, you are reading the right page. QuoDeck has every solution for that.
Try to plan and create your content to ensure that you’ll be able to give your audience engaging content on a consistent schedule throughout the festive season. You’ll also get the best results for your marketing as the festive sales season approaches.
Here is a list of 5 creative tips to engage with your consumers by embracing content for the festive season of 2021:-
Use Engaging Push Notifications
Push notifications can provide a great experience and amaze users with useful content regardless of the device or browser being used.
Over the holiday season, your audience will be sensitive to content that helps them reach their goals. Use push notifications to notify users on their phone or desktop site that discounts, suggestions, or other resources are available to them.
Well-written and frequent messages on your website will result in higher engagement. Do you know how push notifications can boost app engagement by 88%?
Using push notifications to improve consumer experience by informing your consumers about shipping and discounts on pages they’re browsing would make festive shopping more attractive.
Create Giveaways
Isn’t the festive season the ideal time to host a giveaway? It highlights the spirit of the season, builds enthusiasm for the chance to win a great gift, and increases social media buzz for your brand.
Use e-newsletters, blog posts, and social media to announce the giveaway to your consumers. For example, you can create an email list by asking people to sign up to enter the game. Having people follow you on social media to join the giveaway will grow your social media following.
Add Festive Spirit To Your Online Community
Do you realize that your brand image is dependent on how your consumers perceive you? With advertising, graphics, and other marketing strategies, you may influence how your brand is seen online, but engagement defines your brand image.
Establishing an online community is one of the most successful ways of generating meaningful and long-term engagement. It takes time, but it is well worth the investment.
Having a passionate group of interested people in your online community will always show your effective marketing and boost engagement during festive times.
Offer Festive Discounts People Can’t Refuse
What time will be excellent for great discounts than the festive season? Most of the country will be shopping for themselves or their dear ones. So now is a perfect time to offer discounts on products, services, or even delivery to increase engagement and sales.
Use your online community, such as websites, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to update your customers about discounts, essential for engagement and sales generation.
Create A 12-Days Drip Campaign
After the giveaway, you may put up an email drip strategy with 12 days of engaging content.
A 12-days email marketing campaign in which you draft emails in advance and schedule them to publish whenever the criteria are met. You might develop a set of 12 creative emails showcasing your brand offers which will appear in your consumer’s inbox daily throughout the festive shopping season.
Exclusive discounts, free content, tutorials, and gift vouchers, an offer such as this can help you quickly grow an email list. If you organise beforehand to share it with your community, you may experience increased engagement and conversion rates.
Conclusion
Isn’t maybe the first time in history we’re implementing a festive marketing strategy to engage consumers in the middle of a pandemic? Yes, you heard me right, businesses need to continue to market well and offer information that will assist consumers in making wiser buying decisions and building engagement with their brands.
We’ve got you covered with the above-mentioned influential tips to engage with your consumers. In 2021, use these guaranteed strategies to boost engagement rates during the festive season.
Looking for the best evaluation methods to rate and scale your employees? Well, here are a few best methods for employee performance evaluation.
Do your employees give their best performance? Do they meet the deadlines and excel in everything assigned to them? But with all this, are they really climbing up the success ladder?
To find your answers to the above questions, you need data analysis to evaluate their performance. You need a clear framework to collect, select, and interpret data on your employees. Performance evaluation methods can differ based on companies and their needs. You may even need a mix of two or three methods to have a better understanding of the employee. Dive right in and find out the best techniques to review employee performance.
Methods of Employee Performance Evaluation
There are three critical elements for evaluation:
The work one does: both qualitative and quantitative
The time taken
The actual contribution of the employee
Evaluation includes strengths, weaknesses, talents, skills, qualitative and quantitative data.
The company can come up with the best training methods based on the results. Quodeck is your destination for evaluation aid. Here are some methods you can implement:
Management by objective (MBO)
The company sets particular objectives for all the employees. At the end of the deadline, the outcomes can assess the employee’s performance. The management tracks every employee’s progress and corrects it at any point.
MBO cannot be very precise as external factors are not considered. This can backfire on the employees’ outcomes and eventually get a low grade on the scorecard. A sales quota is the best example of MBO.
Critical incident method
The critical incident method is quite famous in customer-service-oriented jobs. This method allows managers to get overall feedback on an employee from other employees, customers, and higher management. The feedback gives a clear picture of how the employee handled a crisis and issue during their service.
This method encourages managers to observe certain events to judge the employee’s reaction. It can be positive or negative and also give clear input on their situational skills. The feedback also aids the company in coming up with better methods of training for the employees.
Rating scale
Many organizations use this method. The list or the questionnaire contains specific questions based on behaviors, traits, skills, or others. The employees are made to rate on a scale of 5 or 10. This method can be biased as employees favor each other most of the time.
Either way, the rating scale helps to monitor all the employees on the same categories and elements. This method is also efficient when employees have to rate new implementations or employer’s practices. The rating can also be Likert scales.
Continuous feedback
Feedback is an ongoing process of growing. A company needs to take continuous feedback to establish new methods, rules, and better targets. It is designed to take place at regular intervals where employees get to write and give feedback on their team members and managers on their teams. It is a two-way process that helps everyone to grow together.
Continuous feedback helps allow managers or team members to take charge whenever one needs help or is underperforming. This intervention will help prevent the situation from going out of hand. This method assists the company in grooming its employees according to their needs.
360-degree feedback
360-degree feedback appraisal method provides a chance for all the employees to give their opinions and feedback. Here, every employee gets a rating from their colleagues, superiors, peers, customers, and management. The employee is evaluated from all sides: 360-degree feedback.
Under this system, a questionnaire is created by the HR department. It contains questions on all aspects. It can be teamwork, adaptability, leadership qualities, goal orientation, motivation levels, and strengths. Relevant people are made to fill the questionnaire anonymously. The feedback helps the employee to grow. It gives a clear insight into how others perceive them and their work.
Self-evaluation
Self-evaluation is a vital process for both employee and company growth. This method offers an opportunity for employees to play an active role in their evaluation process. It helps establish better communication between the staff and management. The employees can test their strengths, weaknesses and abilities, and skills and work on them.
Conclusion
Employee performance evaluation is vital. It helps both the company and employees to grow together. They give a clear insight on how well the staff is working and where they are lacking. Performance evaluation also helps to recognize talents and provide appraisals.
What do you need to run a successful business? You can be anyone, from an entrepreneur to an influencer. But whenever you are online, you need something to grab attention. Of course, your content does that for you. But is that all? Can’t you just do better than now? Yes, we all can.
The main goal of any online business is to keep your audience active. It ensures their coming back to your platform and making some purchase. But, it is a job better said than done. So, are you looking for a tool that allows you to stay active with your audience? Look no more. Here is the list of must-have tools for any online business.
And how do you improve this social media presence? Well, being active on your accounts does not always help. Of course, you can go from one platform to another and check each engagement differently.
Or, you can simply use social media tools for better engagement. Tools like Hootsuite, Talkwalker, and Google Alerts are some social media analytics and monitoring platforms to name.
These platforms get to observe everything happening on social media related to your brand. For example, you will get to see all the comments on your different platforms in one place. It helps in replying and connecting with your audience easily.
And faster connection means a better experience. Using social media tools is way more effective and allows you to stay engaged with your audience.
Content Discovery Tools
You have to keep up with your competitors as well. Otherwise, you will see your audience going away to them. So, good competitor research is always important. But is it always possible to keep track of all your competitors manually? Most of the time, no.
So, the easiest way is to run a competitor research tool. These tools run a quick research on the given keywords and find you all related content on the web. You can use Buzzsumo for that purpose. This tool is a must-have for anyone running online content for their business.
Marketing Automation Tool
Marketing is a crucial thing to engage with your audience. However, digital marketing is more than that. You need to take care of a lot of things- from your customer’s journey to their reactions. So, a content marketing tool can be the most helpful in this case.
As a content marketing automation tool, you can consider using Hubspot. Hubspot lets you keep track of your marketing journey and helps you target your audience. Targeting is crucial and when you pass the stage, engaging with your audience becomes easier!
Live Chat Software
Have you noticed those pop-up messages you get when you visit certain websites? These are live chat support or chatbots. These chatbots are very much helpful in increasing your audience engagement. So, how do these work?
For live chat software, you can use ProProfs Chat. When someone has visited your blog or website, this chatbot keeps track of that. Now, after a certain time, if the person does not take any action on your site, a voice or chat pops up to grab their attention. By doing that, your audience feels like there is someone to help.
Interactive Content Tool
Interactive content is the future of content marketing. While an average blog post takes around 3.5 hours to complete, interactive content is easy to design and more engaging. In addition, people here get to interact, which increases the ROI. So, modern marketers focus more on interactive content.
Amplayfy is an interactive content creator tool. Here you can create a variety of content, from quizzes to polls and surveys within minutes. These help you keep your audience engaged and increase the conversion rate. Interactive content is also helpful for influencer marketing. So make sure you try it out as soon as possible.
Conclusion
Engaging your audience with your content is a very crucial thing to boost your online growth. And if you are serious about your online presence, you get to know every possible way to crack that. These are the best tools that you can use to stay active with your audience. We hope this discussion was helpful. We will see you with the next topic right here!
Sales Enablement can change the growth story of your company boosting revenue by at least 20%. Here’s what you need to know.
Sales enablement has been an integral part of growing companies, especially in the latter half of the decade. Organisations have been subscribing heavily to the concept of an enablement team purely because of its conversion potential.
Even though the idea is almost a buzzword nowadays, it’s still widely misunderstood. There’s a lack of clarity on what sales enablement actually is and how it impacts the overall KPIs. And believe it or not, this murky distinction hurts the potential that sales enablement could have.
We’ll be clearing the fog and shedding some light on what sales enablement in reality is & why it is an absolute necessity in today’s conversion-focused business environment.
How to define sales enablement?
Sales Enablement is a term loosely used in the context of an overlap between VP of sales & sales manager, which is somewhat true but not entirely.
By definition, it is a strategic placement that focuses on increasing the numbers and productivity of sales teams by providing tools, content, and resources across the buyer’s journey.
Of course, this is an immensely broad definition of sales enablement, presented just to give you an outline. It’s way more nuanced than this. Here’s what sales enablement teams do on an average day:
A day in the life of a sales enablement team
The role of Sales Enablement would be different for every organization. But the purpose is more or less identical. In most organizations, Sales Enablement bridges the gap between Marketing & Sales by:
Crafting sales assets & trainings
Leading new hire onboarding and continuous learning of the sales reps
Heading the evaluation of the reps’ product & user knowledge
Now that’s a bit tricky because this is not a traditional function. So it can be very contextual. The head of sales runs almost 40-50% of the functions, the rest being accountable to any of the executives from the management or marketing depending upon the organization’s needs.
You must have a fair idea by now of what to expect while building a sales enablement team. So let’s move on to the meat of the matter – does sales enablement actually impact the bottom line, or is it just another frivolous corporate jargon?
What makes sales enablement so crucial (and an absolute must-have in 2021)
In plain numbers, organizations have witnessed up to 15% more success in closing deals.
Companies like Ringcentral, a business communications SaaS, saw a massive revenue run rate of $775M. The stock shot up to $126 from $22 in about two years of the sales enablement settling in.
Other than that, some companies have also experienced stronger customer relationships & higher quota attainment.
Here are three direct practical benefits of sales enablement
Maximum Sales Potential at each touchpoint
An essential part of sales enablement is sales readiness. It’s the strategic orientation preparing reps with all the armor they require before going ahead and making a sale. The resources can be anything, from the intricate details of the product to the competitive positioning.
Usually, if done right, clients end up having memorable experiences even if the sale doesn’t go through. It’s potentially a candidate for word-of-mouth.
The process includes some strategic activities like:
Onboarding
Sales coaching
Materials for consistent & updated knowledge
Reinforcement
Engaged Salesmen are Productive Salesmen
The main goal of any Sales Enablement team is to aid sales reps in closing better. Subsequently, it also plays a crucial role in keeping them better engaged & equipped.
There was a report by SiriusDecisions that mentioned high-performing organizations having high rates of early enablement adoption, as compared to the low-performing ones.
Better pre-qualified leads, Increased conversions
Sales teams always complain about the quality of marketing qualified leads. According to Market Sherpa, most sales teams report that only 27% of b2b leads passed from marketing to sales are actually really qualified.
With transparent & consumer-centric resources answering all the generic questions ideal buyers have – the tedious part is cut in half. Now, salespeople have to cater to prospects that are pre-educated. This saves a lot of time & effort, leading to better conversion rates.
Best practices include:
Working in sync with the sales team to prepare the resources
Focusing more on the present-day immediate buyers’ needs than long-term traditional pieces
Moreover, your salespeople are allowed to focus on the meat of their job, i.e., selling, and the tedious parts of their job is taken away. This has a minimal but effective impact on the conversion rates.
These were the top three benefits that having a sales enablement team can incur. Here we conclude this edition on sales enablement.
Final Words
Conclusively, Sales Enablement is an efficient sync between the marketing and sales departments. It’s an absolute must-have in today’s tech-oriented times where the scope of marketing & sales has changed. They are codependent more than ever but still can’t function appropriately in sync with each other. That’s why you can’t miss out on sales enablement.
Gamification is a Meta approach to boost education & keep students sharp & engaged like nothing else.
Gamification is a buzzword that’s ringing doorbells in all the industries revolutionizing the way learning resources are created and distributed.
Here’s what it means –
Gamification is the process of breaking down complex learning elements in simplified fun versions using game design, making the resources super-digestible.
It’s far more effective than traditional ways of learning with a proven impact on comprehension and speed of learning.
Another industry that’s been heavily impacted or will be heavily impacted is education.
It’s been static and rudimentary for quite a while and technology is here to flip that over, making changes to the core for good.
Here are five ways gamification improves students’ education
Learning is fun, finally!
Gamification makes learning fun and more interactive. Students finally fall in love with learning, simply because it is served to them in a form they can easily chew.
It’s like mixing some chocolate powder into milk to give them some nutritional benefits.
The key is to make it relatable.
Old traditional ways of learning, though proven effective in the past, lack a very important element that can change the whole game i.e. Interest.
The classic broadcasting and rote-learning methods are boring and unengaging.
Gamified learning beats that focusing on all-round development of a student while they are focused on collecting points, choosing avatars.
It’s a win-win, finally
More visible hands-on learning
Number of challenges, percentage of progress in the game or levels unlocked. Every visible aspect related to progress is a dopamine booster for the students pushing them to work harder.
This is one of the major problems that the traditional education system has – there’s no visible progress and students don’t really know what’s ahead of them.
Gamification solves this mystery by making learning very visible with the use of the points system, the journey map or the levels unlocked and yet to be unlocked, progress bars & goal-setting elements.
Students are more proactive & less afraid to make mistakes
Making mistakes and failing are a crucial part of the learning process. But traditionally, it was taboo and students went through periods of embarrassment and ridicule in front of every other student.
It’s not the same when it comes to games. Students don’t resist a second to ‘play again’ once the game is over. Moreover, they are self-motivated to play harder the next time to beat their previous scores.
Gamification takes the embarrassing part associated with making mistakes (a fundamental part of learning) out of the equation and empowering students to work better the next time.
Students are self-motivated to learn
The same set of students that resist studying & finding ways to skip school every now and then are found to be excited and self-motivated to learn.
The impact is sometimes so massive, that kids even get addicted to these gamified versions of lessons & in a sense, they just can’t stop studying.
According to a study around a decade ago, video games were told to have three factors that made people play them again and again:
Points: Students or players want to achieve more points and finish as many challenges as possible.
The multiplayer: The team building factors and being the best in the competition drives them to work even harder the next time. And there always is a next time.
Something new: Players discover new aspects and exploration helps them work for more.
Creative & Critical thinking unlocked!
Creativity and critical thinking can’t be taught. But it sure can be unlocked by setting up familiar environments where students have no choice but to engage and get their creative juices flowing.
A study in 2013, revealed that problem-solving games have a massive impact on the overall cognitive development of a child.
Gamified learning can explore these areas benefiting students by:
Increasing their info retention power
Impacting their focus & attention allocation speed
Making them more aware of the surroundings
Giving them the ability to look at things from different perspectives
It’s already happening
Math blaster & Treasure mountain were the earliest evidence that validated the gamification concept.
Now games like these have taken over the gamification revolution and are making studies fun:
Minecraft (Education Edition) – lesson plans & installable worlds that integrate the game design to the classroom making it super creative and fun.
Google’s read along – google speech tech to encourage elementary school students to read and follow along with stories. The assistant Diya makes it more fun and interactive for the kid helping them all along
Amplayfy- Create multiple-choice quizzes. Students will be using their phones and that creates a fulfilling and exciting experience for the student. It’s one of the most direct and tangible examples of game mechanics revolutionizing the classroom.
Education is changing. With different, more soft-skill oriented demands of the future, the old ways to education might not be sufficient enough. Gamification crunches the old paper ball of a broadcast education making it super-interactive & way more preferable to students. It might be the push that current outdated education structures need.
Podcasts aren’t just entertainment, but also informative. We summed up a 3 minute write-up to explain how these mini audiobooks can affect your overall sales. Few things might surprise you.
A podcast is an audio/video transcription of information that can be downloaded and played anywhere and anytime—it’s like satellite radio, but in pre-packaged and time-limited format.
Podcasts are recorded using certain software online recording programs, exported to a digital warehouse like Spotify, and then downloaded/streamed by anyone who searches for that topic or anyone who has a direct link to the podcast itself.
The popularity of podcasts have exploded and are now considered a conventional mode of media, easily accessible to everyone. You have podcasts available for every topic under the sun, from gardening to mental health to project management. The ease and mobility of podcasts make it a perfect medium for conducting sales trainings.
Sales professionals are usually exposed to a lot of content, sometimes too much. Yet, finding accessible and correct content to read can be struggle. Especially if you are an incentive driven sales professional, every second not spent on a deal could feel like a useless second. Apart from being incredibility popular among the current generation, podcasts are turning out to be an effective way for sales trainings. The 5 top reasons to use podcasting for sales training are listed below:
In most companies, sales professionals don’t have a stationary office job in-front of a computer or at a desk for most part of their day. Creating secure mobile podcasts can make it easier for the field sales teams to have access to the content on their phones, away from their office and home networks. Podcasts allow representatives to have access to the trainings offline, on the road, or anywhere they can multi-task.
In a podcast episode, business guru Tim Sanders says that our capacity to understand information when reading text is 7% but increases to 38% in an auditory setting. This would mean that shifting from an email-based culture to an audio-based culture, would improve the understanding by almost 500%. For sales representatives, or anyone for that matter, this jump in efficacy is critical.
Mobile training methods for sales reps don’t just improve accessibility to content on the field, but are also a good way to generate quantifiable productivity gains. According to research, sales reps spend at least eight hours per month in transit. Extrapolate this number to all the sales representatives, and the company loses a huge amount worth of productivity every month. Mobile training methods easily engage the reps to continue learning, especially in the field, or even behind the steering wheel. Hence, this makes podcast trainings an exceptional choice to turn the wasted downtime into productive opportunities.
You can’t deny the fact that podcasting is already incredibly popular and has seen a sharp growth due to the pandemic. After the US and China, India happens to be the third-largest podcast market in the world, and the estimation states that the country would see 17.61 million people listening to podcasts by the year 2023.
Highly successful organizations usually provide its sales representatives with ongoing training throughout the year. This can become extremely easy with 5-minute daily/weekly podcasts in keeping the sales representatives up to date. The minimal effort required in the production of these podcasts, makes it an even easier tool to work with.
Podcasts are proving to be efficient micro-learning solutions as they produce bite sized episodic content which are short, information heavy and engaging. And although podcasting for training is still at an early stage, this could be the perfect time to initiate and experiment with it.
BONUS READ
How to Record a Podcast from your Mac
1.) Open Garageband. Click on “Podcast” when it asks what to record.
2.) Click the record button to record your voice. Click it again to stop recording. To playback, click the rewind button.
3.) To add artwork, just select “Artwork” section on your podcast. Then, from the right sidebar, select “Photos”, pick one and upload.
4.) Select the “Jingles” section on your podcast to add them. Then, from the right sidebar, select “Audio” and find a sample you’d want to use. Shorten it by selecting the track.
5.) After you’re done saving, go to the top and under “Share”, click “Export Song to Disc”. Now, you can upload the exported file to your platform.
Mobile apps have been seen to increase sales team productivity and efficiency over the years. Sales reps should consider your clients’ schedules. The faster your clients can get the information, the better it will reflect on you and your company. In this scenario, it’s critical to leverage mobile sales enablement within your sales team. One option for sales teams is to use a mobile learningsystem.
A mobile learning system is an application that can be accessed from any device at any time to help with the sales process. When face-to-face relationship management is not possible, these tools and sales app solutions house customer information and relevant, up-to-date content to engage prospects, allowing for accessible, fast, and convenient communication. Following are the reasons why sales teams need a mobile learning system:
It’s accessible, fast, and flexible
Whether your sales reps are connected or not, they can complete their work from any location at any time. Up-to-date marketing collateral also makes it simple to share content with the entire team in real-time. A Mobile learning system functions as a central “hub,” allowing quick and flexible access to all marketing content and CRM data. Sales and marketing executives, as well as sales reps, can input and syndicate content with great ease and flexibility from a single source that serves as an information repository.
Generate Sales Pipeline
Customer inquiries and concerns do not always occur during normal business hours, and schedules or locations may preclude sales professionals from meeting in person. Mobile salesenablement tools enable marketing and sales leaders to provide excellent management, allowing them to keep buyer conversations going while supplementing or even substituting live meetings and phone calls. Buyers can use mobile learning software with a mobile platform app to reach out with questions, and reps can respond instantly, whenever and wherever they want.
Increased efficiency
Your clients’ days are just as hectic as yours. The faster your clients can access the information, the better it reflects on you and your company. A mobile learning system will save time for both your clients and the sales team. Your customers can access complete information at the touch of a button and for further doubts; they can contact the sales team. It saves your team time as they don’t have to answer trivial inconveniences, hence increasing their productivity.
Data is easily accessible
One of the best practices of this system is that it collects information about orders, products, and clients. This information allows you to learn which products are the most popular when certain orders are most common, and so on. Having up-to-date information helps increase order efficiency and reveals your clients’ purchasing habits. This allows you to suggest more relevant products and expect the client’s next move, which increases trust between the client and sales rep.
Increases customer engagement
Mobile salesenablement provides one-on-one interactions with clients which establish trust and dependability. This strengthens the business relationship and speeds up the sales process. Clients can see orders being placed in front of them and make changes based on their requirements with immediate results. Involving the client in the process of selecting products and placing orders is the most effective way to build closeness and trust.
Conclusion
Sales representatives must be prepared for face-to-face interactions with customers, as well as the process that occurs before a lead is passed on to Sales, as well as the follow-up process. Mobile Sales Enablement helps sales reps get up to speed faster by delivering content that reinforces training directly from their mobile device. Mobile learning systems provide a unique customer experience. Mobile Sales Enablement raises the bar for the sales rep/customer relationship by providing real-time access to the right information to advance the sale process. Staying ahead of the competition necessitates the adoption of new technologies, and when it comes to customer engagement.
Micro-Learning can be defined as a skill-based approach in education as well as training that delivers the information in small, ‘bite-sized’ chunks. This is useful as the learners can quickly assimilate the knowledge that they need to perform a particular task without having to spend long hours learning about it. Thus, it creates an opportunity for the learners to engage with the content exactly at the moment they need it.
In recent years, Micro-learning has supplemented and in many cases, even replaced the traditional method of learning which was time-consuming and primarily focused on theory. Microlearning, on the other hand, focuses more on the application and is largely self-driven, thus, producing effective and measurable results.
This is why many training programs are now utilizing the micro-learning principles to generate rapid learning and make the process engaging and successful.
Let us look at the 6 tips to integrate micro-learning in your courses for rapid learning:
1) Gamifying Learning Content-
Learner engagement is one of the most important aspects of any training program. Without effective engagement, content retention or recollection is not possible. Micro-learning principles can be utilized to create a game-based learning scenario that is interactive and interesting. Gamifying the learning content makes it visually appealing and engaging which can help the learners better understand and remember it. Incorporating gaming mechanics like compelling narratives, characters, badges, etc proves to be useful in making the entire learning process fun and effective.
2) Using Interactive Training Tools-
Using micro-learning principles in creating Interactive training tools like simulations and scenarios can effectively and rapidly teach a particular skill-set. Simulation, in particular, can be really helpful in creating a virtual situation where the learners can apply the knowledge they have gained to solve a problem or achieve a certain goal. Thus, focusing on the content application instead of theory can help increase its intake and retention. A time-based decision-making scenario is also helpful in testing the learner’s capability in handling work pressure. Thus micro-learning principles offer a unique experience in a training program that may not be possible by following the traditional way.
3) Creating Instructional Videos and Podcasts-
Instructional videos can be a great way to give information as they are engaging and brief. Micro-learning can be used to create short videos about a particular product or developing a needed skill-set, which can then be shared across a variety of platforms like the company’s website and Youtube. This is convenient as the learners can access it whenever required.
Similarly, educational podcasts make it easier for the learners to gain information from the comfort of their own house or while traveling, without taking up too much of their time during work hours. It makes the process more learner-centric as they have control over their learning and can easily set their own pace for receiving the necessary information.
4) Writing Blog Posts-
Micro-learning principles can be used to create something as simple as a blog post which can keep the learners informed about various topics. Blogs don’t take much time to read, and a large chunk of information can be easily condensed in the form of points which the learners can easily remember. Blog posts can also be easily accessible from any device and can be published on various platforms which makes it handy for the learners to read them as and when required.
5) Creating Self-Assessment Tools-
One of the most effective ways of using micro-learning principles is by creating self-assessment tools which can include online quizzes, questionnaires, puzzles, case studies, etc. They provide an excellent opportunity to gauge the level of the learner and quantify their progress and understanding. Instant feedback that is given, helps the learners in identifying knowledge gaps which they can then rectify. As the evaluation is quick, the learning also progresses at a rapid pace. Self-assessment tools are also helpful in judging the effectiveness of a training program as they test the learner’s understanding and retention of the content.
6) Using Multimedia Resources-
Micro-learning makes it easier to condense information into various multimedia resources to provide a variety in learning and make the process interesting and enjoyable. Online slideshows and presentations are a great way to deliver information in a few minutes as the learners can easily absorb the content. Micro-learning is also used to create infographics that provide a comprehensive overview of the subject in a way that the learners can quickly understand and recollect.
Thus, integrating microlearning into the regular courses is a great way to boost the productivity of the training program and generate rapid learning and better content engagement, involvement, and retention.
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