1. An effective online content strategy has a significant impact on B2B business

Content shapes business objectives to reach the goals

Several conflicting opinions often appear, which leads to much suspicion about the actual benefits that content brings to businesses. The doubts possibly stem from different issues when implementing client research or positioning the development orientation. A B2B effective online content strategy results from a meticulous and thorough investigation of all aspects of the business, including the market, competitors, clients, entrepreneurial potential, and much more.

Those factors are the initial steps for the content strategy. When the letters’ sequence creates their miracles, businesses smoothly fulfilled the original objectives to reach out to the developing goals. As a result, content shapes everything that the industry puts out, prompting customers to take action with the services or products they desire.

SEO contribution for an effective online content strategy

In other words, SEO will have no result if supportive content does not exist. With a diverse and high-end content system built in advance, SEO specialists can easily optimize the website rankings and reliability on search engines with more strategic approaches. Besides, businesses can use BLOG to develop an abundant content base, attracting more users to visit the website.

2. Effective online content strategy, how to?

Identify target audience – well begun of an effective online content strategy

Business needs to research accurately and specifically about the target audience to implement an effective online content strategy. Content creators also need to determine who they are writing for, what they are writing for, and what value are they seeking?

First, find out information about businesses to identify audience target with the following fundamental questions:

Company size

• Is it a multinational, international, or domestic enterprise?
• The number of staff?
• Portfolio of projects?
• Portfolio of clients? Testimonials are highly appreciated.
• Business field and business status?
• How old are the decision-makers? Gender? Their position in the business?

The factors leading audiences to use products/services

• Figure out the pain points of productivity, working process, finance, and other related factors.
• Problems they want to fill?
• What are they happy with current products/services?

The buying process

• Who makes the buying decision? Role of every decision-maker in the buying process?
• The personal objectives behind buying decisions: measurable KPIs, productivity, revenue
• How long does the buying timeline take?

About the decision-maker:

• Personal information: name, portfolio, career motivations, demographic characteristics (gender, living area, interests)
• What are their emails or other accounts on Linkedin, Facebook, and something like that?
• Among those accounts, which do they often use?
• Which level of content do they prefer to read? (general information or specific topics)
• Is their work at the office or on the go?
• How do decision-makers seek new information?

Set clear sales goals for an effective online content strategy

Sales goals are also an important step to prepare for an effective online content strategy. These include business goals and content goals. In particular, business goals play as the direction for specific objectives and targets in businesses, including criteria on sales, market share, growth, revenue, and profit. Besides, the content target is a part of the marketing objective, a supporting factor for the business goals in developing the speed of goods/services distribution, brand positioning, value in use of the products, and loyal client creation base for the brand.

Specific content targets will create a solid foundation for a content strategy from the simplest and most basic targets. The following proposed targets will be:

• Increase traffic to the website
• Provide educational and training information
• Maximize SEO tool and search engine rankings
• Combine with other channels of marketing strategy
• Create loyal customers for the business in the long term

It is acutely worth reminding that simultaneously achieving all the goals is impossible. That is a greedy view. Instead, prioritizing the most important ones in the short/long term and dividing the targets according to each stage of business growth.

The S.M.A.R.T principle in an effective online content strategy

In the next step, concretize the above primary goals with specific factors based on the S.M.A.R.T principle. This process will help to set more oriented goals.

S refers to “specific”. The primary goals mentioned above need to be more specific. To specify them, ask some of the questions by using the “6W” formula, namely:

Who?

• Who is responsible for this plan?
• Who is the target audience?
• Who controls the strategy?

What?

• What to do to complete the plan? Which are the best solutions?
• What is the target audience seeking? Which of them are mostly priorities?

When?

• When will the content strategy take place?
• When does the strategy approximately end?
• When is content published?

Where?

• Where is the content distribute?

Why?

• Why are those types of content used?
• Why does this goal need to be completed first to carry out productivity for this content strategy?

M is “measurable”, which means the goals in detail. Those quantitative factors can be data collection, revenue, sales performance, customer satisfaction, and customer experience surveys.

A means “applicable”. No matter how specific the goals are, they need to be feasible and appropriate to the team-ability. Sometimes, to accomplish these goals, the staff need to improve their skills or undergo training processes. These are all essentials to approach closely to the previously measured goals. From that basis, marketers can estimate a suitable figure for the target. For example, if the sales revenue increases by 5% last month, setting a goal to increase sales performance by 10% this month. Oppositely, setting the 30% increase target would be unreasonable. Although there will be differences and characteristics of every single industry, measurable goals require a meticulous research process in general.

R is the beginning of “realistic” or “relevant”. To set the goal of studying abroad in Australia, make sub-objectives such as studying IELTS, finding a study abroad counseling center, applying for a VISA. However, studying Korean is not related to the whole abroad goals; it can not join the study plan. That plan is an underlying visual instance for a better understanding of relevant and real goals.

T, talks about time. The limit of time is essential to proceed with the on-time plans and break down the goals into actionable tasks. Time-bound brings a consistent and effective online content strategy in all aspects.

3. Creative, unique and impressive content ideas are highly-appreciated

Unique and innovative ideas impressively contribute to an effective online content strategy. However, they are all a plus, not compulsory. In other words, creative ideas are supportive tools that help businesses grow faster, but more than a creative-content factor needed to accompany enterprises with long-term development. To do so is to gain the foundation of Marketing understanding that distributes creative content into suitable channels.

Generally, novelty can attract potential target audiences. Here are some of the suggestions to be more creative when brainstorming ideas to run an effective online content strategy:

• Make a list of inherent topics that can divide into specific ideas then.
• Search engines (Google, Bing) also help to brainstorm different opinions. It supports creating SEO-friendly content that closely approaches niche audiences.
• Try visiting competitors’ websites or reviewing customer feedback to find new customer insights that competitors have unfortunately missed.
• Review the earlier published content on the Blog page and pay attention to some of the not detail-clarified points.
• Develop ideas in new posts that help web content systems be more detailed and relative. The tight, accurate content system can easily slip into specific audiences. Besides, a connective blog-post system boosts SEO performance more naturally.

B2B enterprises do not just need only one effective online content strategy. However, the effective one produces a substantial range of benefits for business, from improving the website-popularity to increasing sales revenue.

SECOMM, with expertise understanding, always seeks prudent solutions in both web structure and content system for partners in the working process. With well-trained staff, we understand how an effective online content strategy impacts brands. We hope to convey new values from old platforms and build fresh ideas from the hybrid of information based on materials.

About TECH TALK 2020 – Magento Understanding

The first workshop of TECH TALK 2020, in other words, had a great sharing time making the team connect closely. Thus, Secommers not only have time together but also got new Magento knowledge. Thanks to the framework of Ms. Ivy, the team had the opportunity to share those foundation topics:

• Magento platform in brief
• Store hierarchy and configuration scope allow users to install multiple websites with multiple stores and store views.
• Introduce basic configurations in practice with the content menu and email setting.

1. Challenges for business process and model transformation

Given the characteristics of the current Vietnamese market, digital transformation has received positive attention from enterprises. However, this process still faces many cultural barriers, strategies, and implemented technologies that make the process and model transformation not entirely useful.

Cultural barriers in process and model transformation

The corporate culture foundation is a crucial determinant contributing to the model transformation progress. Culture concepts refer to quite large factors of human resources (HR) thinking and perception existing inside the business, including:

• Leadership thinking
• HR potential
• Connection between the two above

The most significant problem creating cultural barriers is the traditional business ideology that developed businesses cannot collapse by digital transformation requirements or any other peripheral factor. It was not until being trapped by the outdated technology that they found they significantly fell behind the bustle of a much more modern market.

For corporate culture, leadership is the core value creating a complete preparation process to start a digital transformation strategy. The leadership factor plays a decisive role in the business’s strategic changes, simultaneously helps all employees understand and adapt to these changes fully and quickly. In particular, key leadership positions such as CEO, CTO, and other decentralized management levels are the driving force behind implementing more micro changes for each employee. Finally, rely on individual conversions to shape the overall change-process in the digital transformation strategy.

To satisfy all the above conditions, an organization needs prolonged-vision leaders of the current business models. It is complacency and “resting on their laurels” that make the traditional models stumble into the old path and have difficulty maintaining the position they once had in the market.

The HR potential is the next factor in becoming a cultural barrier in the process and model transformation. A significant change often encounters many difficulties when it comes to impacting HR awareness.

No matter how strong the HR is, it will be disrupted in the beginning if employees don’t fully get preparation for a ready-to-change and adaptive mindset. Lack of staff training in digital transformation strategy is likely to face harsh objections from the inside if forcing them to suddenly change their working style while they do not have enough time to adapt to new workflows. Simultaneously, the HR potential will also be a dangerous weapon that demolishes the digital transformation results if it is not prioritized and used accurately.

Among the two human factors, the coherence and connection between them also play an essential role in corporate culture. Connectivity includes the spiritual values businesses build to promote consensus, cooperation, and trust to turn strategies into realistic actions. The discrete connection or the disparity in digital capabilities reduces both efficiency and progression of the whole process and model transformation strategy.

Technology challenge

There are two behavior tendencies in businesses making technology a barrier to process and model transformation strategies: being afraid of technology-changing mindsets that lead to obsolescence and technology-overusing that lead to wasting cost and time.

Up to 80% of SMEs in Vietnam use old technologies in the 1980s (statistics from the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry – VCCI) report. In addition to objective reasons such as lack of staff, skills, lack of a robust digital platform, it is much more significant that limited thinking and understanding in technology application are fundamental causes impacting the digital transformation process.

Indecision in adopting technology is also a negative factor. Technology overuse can create unnecessary conflicts with the process and model transformation. These techs will not bring optimal efficiency but a waste of budget and time to recover. Technology is a driving tool for digital transformation, and at the same time, it is also a rule-setter for businesses in the digital market. However, it is more important to decide which technology is suitable for which model instead of determining how many technologies to apply.

2. Solutions for process and model transformation

Technology orientation in process and model transformation

Technology solutions can solve lots of problems with data and process optimization inside a business. In the very beginning, they need to fully and comprehensively redefine existing processes, and at the same time, model them into maps and charts to identify:

• How specifically each of the whole process elements works,
• Factors need having a priority in that process,
• Interoperability, two-way relationship between processes when running concurrently.

Analysis and control of the entire processes help businesses find out weaknesses and facing-problems, then apply more appropriate technology solutions to optimize the process and model transformation.

At present, a business has hundreds of requirements with suitable technology-types for their concurrent process and model. However, companies can develop solutions based on combining the big-four technology platforms in digital transformation: Big Data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. These tech-types possess lots of outstanding benefits that businesses can apply to create the most suitable digital solutions:

• Big Data: A potential resource with a considerable data-amount that businesses need to exploit vital information to serve fully digital transformation requirements – optimize customer experience and maximize business performance.
• Cloud Computing: the ideal storage and analysis platform for big data and other digital transformation applications. Cloud computing possesses outstanding advantages that can meet varied requirements for more than 90% of businesses in the today-market. This tech-type can significantly reduce management costs, operating workforce while increasing automation, work-load velocity, and optimizing the resources-using inside the company.
• Artificial Intelligence – AI: It helps businesses perform intelligent automation functions that could substitute for humans in the future. Currently, AI is delivering positive results when businesses apply it to many different fields indeed, typically:
  • Marketing: search-engine optimization, sales system, building a customer-based personalization, and more,
  • Manufacturing: improving supply chain momentum using coordination robot systems instead of human resources, fully automated product quality control and monitoring systems, inventory-forecast software, and so much more.
• Internet of Things – IoT: The connection between hardware and software in a system, scalable and integrating customized-functions to suffice end-consumer requirements while ensuring data confidentiality and security.

Organizational culture re-creation

Human and cultural solutions will effectively address corporate sustainability, change, and develop a digital transformation mindset for all employees in strategies and initiatives products/services to increase advantages over competitors.

• Leadership thinking: plays a crucial role in building a specific vision and plan for the business process. This term is an unavoidable revolution for the lead-generation to proactively embrace innovations, be ready to perform new experiments, and make quick decisions to move businesses consistent with the market’s growth effectively.
• Empowering culture: forming rights and obligations in each of the tasks employees undertake. At the same time, businesses can build an open culture where every staff becomes an archetypal representative in all connections with customers and the market. Deriving from core value “employee-centricity”, the digital transformation culture will develop into a complete model including the following components:
  • Customer-centric orientation: to optimize the customer experience in the digital age,
  • Innovations: to continually examine new transmutations and eliminate unsuitable factors inside the business model.
  • Flexibility, understanding when making decisions based on digital data: to thoroughly and accurately exploit customer needs from a huge source of big data.
  • The spirit of cooperation based on a modern-and-open culture are two factors creating the spirit of proactiveness and agility in all plans and actions also.
  • Digital-first mindset: the ability to use and apply accurate technologies to produce appropriate and reliable digital solutions.

Businesses can complete the process and model transformation with technology and cultural solution-orientations. Therefore, technological solutions will maximize their business operation efficiency. They also contribute to stimulating businesses to be always requirement-active in the digital age. And these positive results are based on a sustainable digital culture possessing robust and responsive leader-generations combining with high-quality human resources.

1. Highlight functions of Magento that reign the ecommerce Market

A huge range of Magento functions not only conquers the interest of the web developer community but also reigns the world as one of the leading ecommerce platforms. Talking about its various highlight power, the ecommerce market is probably the place to get benefits from this platform.

1.1. PWA Studio of Magento (Progressive Web App)

With the amazing benefits of PWA, Magento developers cannot afford to miss this special opportunity. Then, Magento PWA Studio was born as an interface solution for ecommerce websites based on the Magento platform. With fast page load time, optimal performance, Magento PWA Studio has provided the best user experience, making ecommerce web pages more reliable and consistent across devices.

1.2. Great scalability

One of the salient advantages of Magento is the ability to add more extensions depending on specific user needs flexibly. That highlight makes Magento very suitable for different online businesses with various commerce activities. With this feature, website developers can integrate most extensions, including free or paid versions, to customize Magento with the best performance.

1.3. SEO maximization

One of the important functions of the open-source platform is to integrate features supporting SEO maximization. Magento is considered to be a platform that implements SEO tools completely from product catalogs to independent products.

2. Recollecting the Magento timeline

Let’s take a look at the timeline of Magento from the very first launching in 2007 to the new upgraded versions during 2011 – 2018.

2.1. Magento timeline: 2007 – 2010

2.2. Magento timeline: 2011 – 2015

2.3. Magento timeline: 2016 – 2018

3. Facts about the Magento platform

Still, the platform is constantly being improved to meet the Magento user community’s diverse needs around the world. Truly, Magento has brought a lot of convenience and breakthroughs to the ecommerce website development industry. Below are magnificent facts about Magento you may not know.

With 8-year-experience in Magento, our SECOMM team has used Magento effectively to create solutions for partners/businesses. Magento timeline includes a huge amount of needs for the user community: beautiful and diverse themes, UI/UX design, security, effective cost, and so on. Especially in Vietnam, Magento is exactly the perfect tool to help ecommerce businesses control most of the features for online stores.

1. SECOMM Day 1

Said hello to Phu Yen at 7:30 a.m; we had gorgeous moments to enjoy the crisp, fresh air at the railway station, then followed the way leading to Mang Lang Church. The church stayed about 30km far from Tuy Hoa City to the north, was a Roman catholic construction built-in 1892 with two bells at the peak and the cross in the middle. Classic scenery created a fantastic background in many photos of us.

We continued moving to Da Dia Reef (or Ganh Da Dia in Vietnamese) on the same route. Everybody needed to walk along a small path from the entrance gate to see the basalt rock area.

As the Phu Yen natives, rock structure seemed like a giant beehive with stacking pillars from various shape-rocks, from circular looks to polygonal appearances.

In the next stopping-place, all the Secommers chose to walk together at the famous coastal land that appeared in the film “Yellow flowers on the green grass”.For ending the day-one-journey, we went to Nhan Tower in the evening. There was no particular expectation for that place, but its beauty truly caught our eyes. The tower looked mystic and fanciful under the warm light by night and was shining in the middle of the high land.

We went back to the hotel then joined an exciting SECOMM game show. It was a puzzle game for the three teams. However, what made it challenging to play was that the topic focused on everyday work and other areas of life.The atmosphere was getting more intense towards the end, and the winner finally came out to gain the worthy prize. Above all, the award could not be as crucial as the memorable moments we spent together.

2. SECOMM Day 2

On the second day, we spent the whole morning discovering the easternmost of Vietnam – Dai Lanh Cape. Walking on a small path leading to the Cape with lots of stairs, we also caught Mon Beach’s view. It was a small beach surrounded by mountains, white sand, and clear water. What a picturesque view!

It was then lunchtime. We continued to drive to the eco-floating rafts at Vung Ro Bay to eat all kinds of seafood.

We traveled around the city at night and bought some souvenirs, then took time to relax and prepare for the flight back to Sai Gon the next morning.

Goodbye, Phu Yen, SECOMM will be back!