4 Ways to Ethically Steal Customers from Your Competitors

Building a product or service that your customers want is just half the hurdle in your startup journey. Reaching out to your target audience & converting them into your customers is probably as difficult as building the product itself.

There are several ways through which you can target and reach your potential customers. But one of the best and easiest ways to get customers instantly is to target your competitor’s customers!

If you are entering a profitable market, you are sure to have competitors already. In fact, if you are trying to penetrate a niche where you have no competition, it could be a recipe for disaster.

Your competition has already done the hard work of convincing people that they need the product. They have created the market for you. Now you have an opportunity to beat them by creating a product or service that’s better than their offering. And when you create a better product at a better price point, your competitor’s customers are sure to flock to you.

Before the advent of digital marketing, it was not easy to reach your competitor’s customers without a huge marketing budget. But digital marketing has given us a lot of growth hacks that can help us achieve the same goal with a very small budget. Here are 4 top methods that you can use to reach and convert your competitor’s customers.

1. Target Your Competitor’s Brand in Google AdWords

Your competitors build brand awareness using ads and other branding exercises. A good percentage of the people who have heard about that brand would end up searching for that brand name on Google. These potential customers are closer to the conversion stage in the funnel because they are searching for a specific brand name or product name.

Google gives you an opportunity to tap into this market by running ads for your competitor brand keyword. For example, have a look at Hootsuite’s (a social media management tool) ad for its direct competitor’s (Buffer) brand name search.

This type of bidding in Adwords is a double edged sword, you have to follow the rules and guidelines by Google for using brand names as keywords.

One of the disadvantages of these type of ad is you are inviting your competitor to bid on your brand search as well. And also due to low-quality score, it will be costly to maintain the first ad position. You might have to pay a lot more than your competitor for their brand keyword. And note that it is a good practice to run ads for your brand keywords as well.

If you are advertising for your own brand, you will get a lot of clicks at a very low cost due to high-quality score and you also prevent your competitors from stealing your potential customers by advertising for your brand keywords.

2. Facebook Interest Targeting

Unlike other ad platforms, Facebook doesn’t allow you to target your competitor’s customers directly. But still, you can use interest-based targeting options to show ads to the audience who Like your competitors brand.

In the targeting section just type in your competitor’s name or domain name, most of the time it will show up. However, your competitor’s name won’t show up if they don’t have a big enough audience.

In the above example, you can see that the brand Shoutmeloud has around 50k followers. Though Shoutmeloud.com isn’t my competitor per se, their audience is similar to mine and hence I can use in my targeting.

How do you know that you are targeting exactly targeting your competitor’s Facebook fans? You can compare the interest-based audience size and competitor’s Facebook page followers.

The risk of this kind of advertising is you will never know how your competitors built their following on Facebook. It will be a total waste of campaign budget if your competitor built their follower base with poor targeting. The only way to find out is to monitor the conversion quality and taking a call accordingly.

3. Native Gmail Ads

Email is the best conversion channel for both B2B and B2C segments. That’s why most companies spend so much money to capture people’s email. But did you know you can send emails to people even without having their email ID? You can do that with native Gmail ads!

Gmail is part of the Google display ad network. Gmail ads are the expandable ads that will be shown in the Gmail Tab. You can target people based on keywords, topics, and demographics. Apart from this, you can target people those receive mail from a particular domain.

These ads look like an Email first. You can use any of the available templates or plain HTML to create the ads. All you have to do is add mail.google.com as a managed placement in your display network and your competitor’s domain name or brand name as a keyword. I will soon be publishing a detailed guide to running Gmail ads. Stay Tuned!

4. Twitter Ads

Studies show that “42% of Twitter users follow brands or companies”. You can get more followers and create awareness using Promoted tweets, Promoted accounts, and Promoted trends.

You can target people based on their Bio, accounts they are following, and keywords. Twitter provides username based targeting called tailored audience targeting. You can use any of the following tools to download your competitor’s account followers: Twitonomy, Audiense, Followerwonk or you can use this free Google spreadsheet.

Upload the downloaded usernames in the tailored audience targeting section and create the ad. You can use any of the 9 different types of twitter cards based on your campaign’s goals: Summary card, Large photo summary card, Product card, Player card, Audio card, Photo card, Gallery card, App card and Lead generation ad.

5. Bonus Tip: Stalk Your Competitor’s Unsatisfied Customers

For all the above-mentioned methods you need to have an ad budget. But what if you don’t have enough budget?

Did you know that around 30% of the companies having a separate twitter account for customer service? Customers believe response rate for any complaint is high on twitter and companies are more transparent than ever.

Now, this gives you an opportunity to stalk your competitor’s unsatisfied customers and possibly convert them into your own customers. People are highly likely to switch brands when they are not satisfied with a brand.

There are several tools that will help you monitor your competitor’s brand mentions. One of the best practices is to create a channel called #competition on Slack (or any other internal messaging tool that you use) and set up an automation in such a way that all your competitor’s tweets appear on this channel. This will help you monitor and respond quickly!

Source: http://digitaldeepak.com/customers-from-your-competitors/

This Type of Beer Could Actually Protect The Liver From Damage and Disease

A new study has found that drinking pale ale instead of lager might be more healthy in keeping you liver healthy. 

The study found that hops protect against the build up of hepatic fat, which is a way of explaining why people who tend to drink spirits are more likely to suffer from liver disease, rather than those who stick to beer, and beer with hops was found to be the best of them all.

The main danger of drinking, and the min reason that heavy drinkers develop liver disease is due to the accumulation of fat in the liver. In the study, mice were fed beer, beer with hops and pure ethanol to find out how the different types of alcohol affects the liver.

The mice were examined twelve hours after being given their specific type of alcohol. They discovered that the mice which were given either ethanol or hop-less beer had similar amounts of fat in their livers, while those that had been given beer with hops had much less fat stored in the liver. Their results were published in the journalAlcohol and Alcoholism.

From the study the researchers concluded that hops are the ingredient which protect against the accumulation of liver fat, which they concluded is part of the reason as to why spirit-drinkers are usually the ones who develop worse problems stemming from their drinking, rather than beer drinkers.

Additionally, they also discovered that the livers of mice that drank normal beer suffered much less damage because of a process called oxidative stress, which has hinted that hops may have an antioxidant effect. 

Although it is yet unclear as to how it happens, levels of an enzyme called inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) were found to be lower in the beer-fed mice than those fed on either ethanol or beer without hops. 

It is suspected that the presence of this enzyme has a positive effect on the overall health of the liver.

For the cost of an iPhone, you can now buy a wind turbine that can power an entire house for a lifetime

Indian startup Avant Garde Innovations has developed a low-cost wind turbine that can generate 3-5 kW hours of electricity every day.

For the same price as an iPhone, you can now buy a wind turbine that can power your house for a lifetime!

Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan kicked up a storm by publicly declaring his support for the Athirappilly hydro electric project, which environmentalists said, if it were to go ahead, would create ecologic imbalance in the area and destroy the Athirappilly waterfalls, the largest natural waterfalls in the state.

It's not that the government is blind to the impact that the project could make, but it says it there is no other option but to leverage existing means to check the growing power crisis in Kerala -  partially dependent on the private sector for electricity.

The same can be said for other states in India. While Kerala maintains almost 100 % electrical coverage, a vast area of India still remains in the dark.

For a large percentage of the Indian population, electricity still remains a distant dream.

Siblings Arun and Anoop George want to make India’s energy crisis a thing of the past. The duo has developed a new solution they say will not even slightly impact the ecological balance.

Avant Garde Innovations, the initiative founded by the brothers from Kerala, has developed a low-cost wind turbine that can generate enough electricity to power an entire house for a lifetime. The size of a ceiling fan, this wind turbine can generate 5 kWh/kW per day — with just a one-time cost of US$750.

The companies ‘What We Do’ statement reads:

Our goal is to eliminate energy poverty, reduce dependence on struggling state power grids and create energy self sufficiency for all the needy ones through distributed, localized and affordable renewable energy. In doing so, we believe we can collectively usher in our world a cleaner environment, new economic prosperity and social change

Our first offering is a highly affordable small wind turbine suitable for residential, commercial, agricultural, village electrification and other uses, which is aimed for a market launch during 2016.

Incorporated in 2015, Avant Garde claims to be a startup with a ‘green’ heart and soul.

For the startup, opportunity is massive. India is the world’s sixth largest energy consumer, accounting for 3.4 per cent of global energy consumption. Federal governments in India, and the central government for that matter, are unable to bear the huge infrastructural cost required to bring electricity to remote villages.

Erecting electric posts and electric lines require huge investments that could cost millions of dollars.

This is where Avant Garde comes into picture. “When small wind turbine generating 1kW energy costs INR 3-7 lakh (US$4,000-10,000), our company plans to sell it at less than NR 50,000 (about US$750). Costs will decrease further through mass production,” Arun said in an interview to The Times of India.

The company launched its pilot project at a church in the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram in January this year. The small wind turbine prototype that it has developed is highly scalable for power capacities of 300 kW or even higher, Arun told e27.

“Our passionate aim is to introduce innovative, affordable and sustainable solutions that take renewable energy self sufficiency and energy empowerment to the next level through a distributed and decentralized approach using pioneering strategies the world has not witnessed yet,” the company says.

They won a spot in the Top 20 Cleantech Innovations in India with this revolutionary product.

The company has also made it to the list of 10 clean energy companies from India for the “UN Sustainable Energy For All” initiative under the one billion dollar clean energy investment opportunity directory.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA RAISES THE BAR OF INDIAN CINEMA

Which business is surviving over a 100 years and also takes our country on the worldwide map? No one will hesitate to answer it’s none but our very own Indian Cinema. Bollywood-it’s one of the largest business that produces around a 1000 movies in a year.

There was a time once billboards and film advertisements accustomed be painted by Indian artists. Aplenty has been already advanced since then. This can be a sneak peek into however movie industry has shelved off its ancient approach and has adopted digital across varied bit points, during a huge means.

Production homes and their huge budgets are now well known to all. It’s another truth that the rising share of the overall selling budget allotted to digital, from just a 2 to 5 % of the erstwhile days, it currently goes as high as up to 20% for large budget movies.

Savvy marketers have adopted the ‘digital-first’ strategy that sets the ball rolling for pretty much every activity. Social campaigns are generally crafted in 3 sections – the Pre-release phase, also referred to as teaser section, the release section and also the Post-release section. Every section incorporates a charm and a technique of its own, aimed to woo fans across all social bit points.

The Shift

Bollywood may be a game of numbers – if a trailers successful on YouTube, a motion picture is gave the impression to be a possible hit at the Box-Office. Social contests, motion picture specific hashtags, overwhelming content through apps, mobile voice chats and live video chats with the forged and crew not solely change direct interaction however conjointly type an outsized a part of community engagement.

Production houses have started shooting mobile and internet friendly extended content outside the quality picture assets to particularly cater to the digital audience. To fulfill the new age demands, content is additionally created accessible and served on second screens. Video-on-demand and music-on-demand has witnessed a surge in quality and is synonymous to motion picture content like full songs, deleted scenes and even full length movies.

Over time, everything regarding our watching movies expertise has modified and can still evolve more, during a direction that is digitized and we can sum-up the whole process of development with the tickle of “picture abhi baki hai mere dost”…..

ON TREND Green Wine Exists and It's Made Out of Weed

A few months ago Spanish startup Gïk received quite a bit of attention for itsnaturally colored blue wine. It's no surprise, then, that other colorful wines would also receive equal affection from the media. For example, a trendy new green wine, Canna Vine, has garnered quite a bit of attention since it was written up in the Los Angeles Times. This green wine, however, is more than just its color — it's essentially the love child of wine and weed.

Creating a brand is developing a product that can not be duplicated. Vino OG aka It's It is exclusive to creation of Mary Jane Wines. Now off to day two of the Cannabis Business Summit in Oakland. #original#maryjanewines #vinoog #cannabis #merryjane #hempxxx #patientsfirst #cannabisnowmagazine#fogcitycollective #growyourown #cannabiscommunity #gateway #marijuana #wine #winemaking#infusedwine #dopemagazine #cannabisculture #riseandgrind #cannabisbusinesssumit

Don't expect to find it at your local Trader Joe's wine shop anytime soon. California is the only state where this green wine is commercially available with a medical marijuana card. Canna Vine certainly isn't the first one to create weed wine. As theLos Angeles Times reports, "Pot wine, also known as green wine ... has probably been around almost as long as there has been pot and wine." Melissa Etheridge, for example, has her own label called Know Label.

Due to the fermentation process these wines undergo, the wines are less potent than you might expect. "The result is a mellow, physical 'body high' rather than a more disorienting mental high," the Los Angeles Times explains. As you might expect, weed wine doesn't come cheap. A half-bottle of the green liquid might cost you anywhere between $120 to $400.

This Photographer Did A Genius $160,000 Audi Shoot With Just A $40 Toy Audi Car

You might have heard the phrase that “Appearances Can Be Deceptive”, not everything that our eyes see is true. We see a lot of wonderful, amazing, magical things around us with our eyes, and sometimes we get deceived by what we see.

The famous miniature photographer Felix Hernandez Rodriguez used his genius to capture a set of photos of the Audi R8 Sports car. He captured the realistic pictures of R8 using his signature techniques, he used a miniature model for this purpose, very intelligent camera angles. And let me tell you, he didn’t use Photoshop, you won’t believe me, but it’s true.

Audi R8 Sports Car costs about $160,000 and this photographer did the shoot with a miniature model which costs around $40. That’s why it is said that photography isn’t simply about taking pictures, it’s an art, it’s about capturing something special.

You must see these images shot by Felix Hernandez Rodriguez. You will be amazed after looking at his work. He used intelligent proportions, lighting, in camera effects, and his creativity for this photo shoot.

Take a look at some of his pictures.

The very first step to create the magic!

Abracadabra, here we go!

Isn’t that awesome?

This is not Photoshop, this is real!

This is the room where he created the magic.

It is a toy car, can you believe your eyes?

He is truly a genius! Hats off to you sir for creating such a wonderful magic with your talent. So guys do share your views and opinions in the comments.

Nobody Wants To Set Foot On This Island Which Was Abandoned For 75 Years

There are many such places where humans don’t dare not enter or step foot. There are many abandoned buildings, numerous uninhabited islands, many places which are restricted for the people. Many islands are forbidden to enter, unlivable due to its remote location, presence of dangerous wild animals, presence of toxic gases in the atmosphere, and various environmental reasons. But there is one place in particular, this place has a very dark past and a strange history associated with it. That is why no human would ever dare set foot on it. That island is Gruinard Island.

Gruinard Island is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. It’s located approximately 0.6 kilometers away from northwest Scotland.

During World War II, it was the site of a biological warfare test by British military scientist. The British feared of the chemical warfare. So they decided to develop a chemical weapon, they tried using ‘Anthrax’ as a weapon to attack the enemies. In 1942, a highly virulent strain of Anthrax known as “Vollum 14578” was tested by filling “bombs” with the deadly bacteria. Gruinard Island became the site of a biological warfare test by British forces.

Eighty sheep were taken to the island by the researchers, bombs filled with anthrax strain named Vollum 14578 were dropped on the flock. The sheep became infected, died within days of exposure.

Many of these experiments were recorded on 16 mm colour movie film. After the tests were completed, the Scientists concluded that large release of anthrax virus won’t kill the densely populated german cities, but would render them uninhabitable for several decades.

In 1945, after the war ended, the original owner wanted to buy the island back, but the government denied saying that it was too contaminated. Government said that the island has to be cleaned up and declared safe first. The owner or her heirs and beneficiaries would be able to repurchase the island when it would be declared Fit for habitation by man and beast.

In 1981, a team of microbiologists from two universities embarked on a mission called “Operation Dark Harvest” demanding that the government decontaminate the island. They landed on the island with the aid of local people and collected 300 lb (140 kg) of soil and placed the soil packages in government facilities. A sealed package of soil was left outside the military research facility at Porton Down. Tests conducted on the soil revealed that it contained anthrax bacilli.

In 1986, the government began cleaning up Gruinard Island by spraying down the entire place with a solution of formaldehyde and seawater. The island was decontaminated for four years and was declared anthrax-free on April 24, 1990, almost 50 years after its initial quarantine.

However an archaeologist named Dr. Brian Moffat is still not convinced that Gruinard Island is entirely free of anthrax bacilli.

So what do you think guys? Do you wanna take a trip to Gruinard Island?