Improve Customer Loyalty Through Digital Marketing Services

Digital marketing is moving at a lightning speed. And why wouldn’t it? This form of marketing helps businesses of all sizes cater to a larger audience within a short span of time. Very frankly, digital marketing is nothing but personalised marketing. As against traditional marketing, which allows businesses to cater to only a specific number of people, digital marketing services helps businesses to reach a global audience with minimum expense. For instance, through a company website, your business can get a global reach. People from various parts of the world can access and view the site, thereby, allowing you to cater to a large number of people, from across the globe.

Also, digital marketing is measurable. That is, you can check and track the results of your online ad campaigns and accordingly formulate your strategies, depending on the results. Web analytics and different online metric tools allow you to measure these results. It makes it easier for you to keep a tab on how effective your campaign is and what else you need to do to improve your strategies.

If your audience base is linked to your company website, you can even keep a track of them and send them greetings with your targeted deals and discounts. The more your clients buy your services or products, the more you can understand their requirements and fine-tune your strategies.

With effective social media marketing, you can engage your audience even more. For example, if you have a business of furniture, you can come up with interesting pages, on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+, wherein you can showcase different types of furniture on offer through pictures and updates. Adding deals and discounts on different furniture and promoting them on social media, is highly important these days. Customers will immediately engage with your business and keep a tab on further developments. By maintaining the social media pages, you can increase your customer loyalty as well. Your audience will tend to follow your pages, in different social media platforms. And this way, you can get their attention towards your business too.

If you do not have experts to carry out digital media marketing in your company, then you can always hire a digital marketing agency. These agencies are equipped with experts who have the domain knowledge to market products and services online. This way, not only do you save time, you also tend to reach out to a larger audience with your product at affordable rates.

Digital marketing services increase leads significantly. As opposed to traditional marketing, where customers need to visit your store to purchase products, in digital marketing, your customers can purchase products online with the help of few clicks only. In online marketing, your company executives need not make phone calls to get appointments with customers and then attract prospects. The website itself can be custom-designed in a manner which can attract sales.

So, implement the best online strategies to get leads and enhance your brand image.

Sports Nutrition In 5 Easy Layers

Glamour Of Nutritional Supplements

Nutrition is a high tech business with millions of pounds of research being spent on the latest ergogenic aides, but for most people getting the basics of nutrition right will reward them with maximised sports performance, healthy weight loss and body, and a robust immune system. Unfortunately the basics on nutrition are often not met, being eclipsed by high tech products such as creatine, HMB, weight loss tablets such as Proactol, Zotrim or Alli, or the plethora of weight loss and fitness supplements that are marketed to us.

A common mistake made by those looking for improved sports performance, weight loss or health is to look for a supplement to do the job. People concern themselves with exotic products rather than addressing the basics first.

Hierarchy Of Nutritional Needs

Considering nutritional needs to be a hierarchy of needs is a good way to develop a successful nutritional strategy. You may be aware of food pyramids – the ones you learn in cookery at school, or the ones found on sites such as the Good Food Guide – but these have some fundamental flaws in them (for another blog post). Consider the pyramid to have a wide base representing the most fundamental of nutritional needs, and an narrowing towards the top representing nutrients that are gradually more specialist towards the top. The more specialist needs we see at the top should only be considered once the fundamental base needs have been met.

Base Layer 1 - The Fundamentals: The basic needs of nutrition can be met by including a balance of the macronutrients carbohydrates, fat and protein. The balance will vary with your lifestyle requirements and body type. Essential to get the system working is water and fibre, both soluble and insoluble. These will largely be met if you consume lean meats, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and fish. Limit your intake of sugar and refined grains which are considered to be anti-nutrients and actually contribute no nutritional value apart from energy, yet use up resources in the process. Add protective and micro-nutrient rich foods such as variety of colourful fruits and vegetables. Try to include raw or lightly cooked foods as the nutrient content may become denatured by intense heat.

Layer 2 – Protection:

Part of life is oxidation, and this is part of exercise too. As a metal car rusts so do we, and when we talk of anti-oxidants we are usually considering ways of limiting or repairing the damage caused by the aerobic nature of our body functions – free radicals affect our health and well being. Once the fundamentals are established you can consider tweaking your micro-nutrient needs to include anti-oxidants that are essential in combating free radical damage to the body including immune system.

Consider the fruit and vegetables you do consume according to their anti-oxidant content. The richer in anti-oxidants the better able to combat the oxidative stresses placed on the body by air pollution and intense exercise, both of which place damage on the cells of the body. Taking a broad spectrum multivitamin may add to the daily protection from free radical oxidation, and a regular intake of omega 3 oils, through foods or supplement form will also help.

Below is a table of high antioxidant food types. Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities in biological samples. The higher the ORAC the more antioxidants are available. (US Dept. Agriculture; Brunswick Laboratories; JACS)

FOOD: ORAC UNITS PER 100G

70% cocoa solid dark chocolate 13500

Pomegranate 10500

Dried prunes 5770

Red delicious apples 4270

Raisins 2830

Kale 2410

Blueberries 2400

Garlic 2320

Blackberries 2040

Spinach 1700

Brussels sprouts 1580

Strawberries 1540

Alfalfa sprouts 1450

Broccoli flowers 1290

Raspberries 1220

Beets 1170

Plums 949

Red bell peppers 810

oranges 750

Corn 720

Cherries 670

Onion 560

Eggplant 510

Cauliflower 510

Cabbage 480

Potato 460

Sweet potato 430

Leaf Lettuce 410

String Bean 390

Carrot 340

Yellow squash 280

Iceberg lettuce 230

Tomato 195

Celery 130

Cucumber 110

Layer 3 – Fueling For Sport – Real Food

Now you have a good general diet, an availability of macronutrients and micronutrients and a consideration of how best to protect our body from free radicals for health and immunity, it is time to consider what and when is best to eat. Also an optimum hydration strategy will be useful for those performing exercise – whether for sports or weight loss.

Fluid needs are closely linked to air temperature and humidity, plus the intensity and duration of your exercise. If exercising aim to begin fully hydrated – a guide is to keep your urine a light straw colour, and re-hydrate immediately post workout. If you weight yourself pre and post workout, add the mass of the fluid you consumed during the exercise to the difference between pre and post workout weights. Aim to consume 1.5 times this figure.

Example; pre workout 75kg, post workout 74kg, drinks 500ml during workout = 0.5kg so a difference of 1.5kg. It is therefore advised to consume 2.25l fluids post workout.

Fueling your sports from food is also essential. I recommend making a daily 500kcal deficit if you are trying to lose weight. If you use 1000kcal during a workout it is therefore useful to eat accordingly, so you do not have too much of a calorie deficit, and you do not overeat.

If you are like me and love to eat carbohydrates it is best to consume them pre and post workout as you are highly insulin sensitive during and up to 2 hours post exercise, particularly if your training consists of high intensity intervals or resistance exercises. However for best weight loss I suggest you stick to whole grain and vegetable sources of carbohydrates, and avoid sugar.

For athletes my advice is different in that you are not trying to create a calorie deficit. More focus is on recovery for the next session. You should therefore consume your carbohydrates during and after exercise as this is when your body will best use it – absorbing it like a sponge and maximising your recovery and boosting your immune system. If you burn 1000kcal in training aim to replace this with real food during your session – cereal bars, flap jacks and dried fruit. Post workout try to include protein with your meal, whether it is in a milk shake, bowl of cereal or meat and veg meal. Aim to consume a proper meal within 2 hours post exercise and have a snack within 15mins of exercise.

Layer 4 – Fueling For Sport – Sports Nutrition

Firstly I have to say that if you are after weight loss avoid sports drinks at all cost. They are essentially sugar and will do your weight loss efforts no good at all, will make it difficult to create a calorie deficit, and will make it difficult for your body to access fat stores for energy if an available source of sugar is present to use.

My advice for athletes is to use sports drinks to enhance your sport. Although nutrition and hydration needs can be met through food and water such as dried fruit, cereal bars etc, there are benefits of using special sports drinks. They provide a ready source of easily assimilated energy which is essential if exercising for over 1hour in a bike or run race. The stress on the gastric system is minimised and in the case of electrolyte drinks the essential minerals lost in sweat are replaced. The lack of fibre in sports drinks is also beneficial in longer races such as marathon or long course triathlon.

Recently a series of protein:carbohydrate drinks for use during training have been launched. These are particularly useful for sessions or races over 3h in duration as the branched chain amino acids (BCAA) that are catabolised in muscle during endurance events are ‘saved’ by the available BCAA in the sports drink.

Recovery drinks are also a revolution in the quest for swift recovery. In the field, recovery drinks allow athletes to consume a meal within the 15minute window of opportunity bu drinking a 2:1 carbohydrate to protein drink, that often contains vitamins and minerals too. This 15 minutes post race or training session is so crucial due to the ability of the body to use the materials we provide it. We are highly insulin sensitive, and any protein we consume with the carbohydrate will have the extra insulin to deliver it to where it is needed – the muscle – where repair will take place and glycogen will be replenished.

Layer 5 – Ergogenic Aids

If you have the first 4 levels of the hierarchy of nutrition needs sorted then it may be beneficial to invest in some supplements such as creatine, beta-alanine, caffeine or HMB, and depending on your sport each of these may or may not be beneficial. However if you have not fully adopted the principles of real food and sports nutrition there is no way that you will be able to rely on a supplement to realise your potential. Unfortunately as with everything, there are no short cuts and although it may take time and effort the gains you will get from real food and hydration will far outweigh the gains from the specialist supplements mentioned – even if their adverts promise otherwise. It is essential to walk before you can run when it comes to nutrition, and to get the building blocks in place before trying supplements is the key to success.

E-Commerce – The New Frontier, Yes It’s STILL New

E-commerce is a relatively new invention as far as commerce is concerned and therefore has not completely stabilized. There is a vast amount that people do not know about e-commerce; it’s possibilities and it’s risks. There are also a large number of people that do not know about e-commerce at all.

The internet has grown by 215% in the last 7 years and even this growth through out the world encompasses only 17% of the total population.[Int] Considering the figures from [Int] the opportunity for e-commerce is astounding and at the same time the risks and destabilization factors are just as great.

Simply because we can cite a couple of companies that have survived the .com bust and prospered such as Yahoo, Google, and Amazon.com, we cannot say that e-commerce has stabilized. There is no way of knowing whether it has stabilized or not.

[Lev99] illustrates that it was the human interaction that drove the rise of civilization and eventually the internet and it is this very same force that will keep e-commerce from stabilizing completely. Some businesses will never be able to transfer all operation to e-commerce simply because of the human interaction factor that humans desire. You can send an email, but it will never be as effective as a phone conversation; while a video conference will never replace throwing back a few cold ones during a business deal. As long as every business is not able to completely operate on the internet without the bricks, e-commerce cannot be considered to be a stable operating medium for a business.

Nevertheless, e-commerce is essential for the success of modern businesses because of the pervasiveness of technology and the current drive toward automation. The internet enables e-commerce to span the globe and to give companies reach into corners of the world where access was impossible previously. To leave out e-commerce form a business model could be a devastating mistake.

E-commerce security also has a long way to go before it stabilizes. Firewalls and even biometrics can be defeated with clever exploits and social engineering opening the way for significant destabilization within e-commerce. There is nothing in ecommerce resembling the vault at Ft. Knox. Even NSA computers have been hacked and White House websites defaced. Until security on the internet is stabilized e-commerce can hardly be said to have stabilized.

[Int] internet World Stats

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

[Lev99]Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, “the cluetrain manifesto”, 1999,
http://www.cluetrain.com/

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