ACT360, Author at ACT360

The ACT360 Experience: Bishrant Tandukar, Designer

Posted on Apr 6, 2017May 1, 2018 by ACT360

ACT360 is a digital marketing agency whose core purpose is to do awesome things.

We’re not worried about being the best, we just want to do our best in everything we do. And to do that, we believe our team member’s happiness comes first.

Bishrant Tandukar is one such member of our family of superstars.

How did you find out about ACT360?

I learned about ACT360 when I saw the vacancy for a Graphic Designer.

Why did you want to work here?

I wanted to work in an office where I could create designs in various styles and not just stick to one company’s design. I felt that ACT360 (being a digital marketing agency) would allow me to work on different projects as well as help hone my designing skills.

What was your first impression of ACT360?

At first, it seemed like a small and strict office but after the first week I started to understand the nature of the office and realized that people here were fun and professional at the same time.

How do you feel about working here?

I have fun while working at ACT360. The daily huddle and weekly meetings were completely new to me but it was a friendly addition to my everyday life.

I also like that we share good news in the daily huddle because it brightens up my day everyday. But what impressed me the most was that one day per week, mostly Sundays, was reserved for personal learning and building team relationships.

On Sundays we also have weekly meetings known as WAR (Weekly Action Review) and presentations done by at least two members of the team.

When I gave my first presentation, I was so nervous. The judges for that day were Tenzing and Cheteze who gave me positive feedback on my slides but said that I needed to work on my public speaking skills. I have come a long way since then. *smiles*

What have you learned from ACT360?

I learned a lot from this company, not only about designing, but also about SEO and UI / UX for websites. The Sunday presentations have also allowed me to learn new things and helped me build my public speaking abilities.

I think working at ACT360 was the best decision I ever made. The people here are very friendly and the environment is geared towards learning new things.

I see myself working here for a long time and becoming a better designer for myself and the company.

The ACT360 Experience: Jasmin Shrestha, Intern

Posted on Feb 21, 2017May 1, 2018 by ACT360

The first day at a new job is always nerve-wracking, even more when you’re the only girl, but I never felt out of place at ACT360 – from the very first day, they took me under their wings and made me feel like one of the team.

Including today I’ve been here for more than 2 months and have learned a lot during this time.

But wait, let’s start from the beginning…

Will I Get Rejected Again?

For someone just out of +2, I had accepted that I would not be landing any serious jobs. I still applied to a few places but they were not keen to hire and train an inexperienced girl like me.

All I was great at was written and spoken English, and that was not deemed a useful skill at these companies.

One day a friend told me about a vacancy at a digital marketing company called ACT360. I thought to myself, “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?” and applied while hoping for the best.

After a few writing tests, and a round of trials, one late morning I got a call asking me to come for an interview the next day!

Dun Dun Dun… The Interview!

When tomorrow finally came I set on my way to the ACT360 office in Hattisar, nervous about what they would ask me in the interview, and if I would be able to answer them or not.

To make matters worse, I got stuck in a traffic jam, and when I finally got to Hattisar I even got lost! I had to call Cheteze dai to ask for directions and by the time I made it to the office I was already 35 mins late.

As I entered the building, all I could think was, “I am going to be rejected.”

Thank god the interviewer, who was Tenzing dai, was very understanding!

Since I had no working experience he proposed I do an internship first and I agreed. This was Thursday and I would start on Sunday. He told me we have a weekly meeting on Sundays and I better not be late.

*cue nervous laughter from me*

Welcome To ACT!

My first work day started with a weekly meeting (we call it a Weekly Action Review, or WAR) followed by introductions by the team and a company orientation session for me.

Cheteze dai handled the orientation where he focused on ACT360’s core values which are the guiding principles we live by:

Fun and innovative
Family of superstars
Thirst for learning
Ensure customer success

During the course of my internship I have come to learn that these values are not just there for the sake of being there – we are constantly reminded about them and they are ingrained in our company culture.

In a nutshell, they are our core values that we believe in, and aim to live by.

What Is It Like Working At ACT360?

When I arrived for my first day at ACT360 I was expecting to see suits and hearing, “Sir” and, “Madam” but the office environment was not what I expected.

For one thing, the office environment was very informal and everyone was friendly and joking with each other. As the day progressed I also noticed that everyone was serious and professional when it came to working.

I also liked that ACT360 follows the same culture as Google which is based around having an open environment, sharing of ideas and opinions, and most importantly learning-focused.

The Journey So Far

During these past few months I’ve learned a lot of things, like how to play videogames and how to cut paper in a straight line (just kidding). I also went bowling for the first time during our First Year Celebration.

On a serious note, I did learn quite a lot from ACT360. Not only did I hone my professional skills, but I feel that I have developed on a personal level as well.

I like to think that I am learning new things each day and I have become better than what I was yesterday.

Content Marketing Strategy: Quality or Quantity?

Posted on Sep 18, 2016Aug 9, 2019 by ACT360

A common Content Marketing Strategy upheld and advocated by many digital marketers and content writers is that creating quality content takes you a lot further than just creating lots of content of questionable quality. But is quality content still better? Is it better to focus on volume instead?

In 2013 Digiday, a media publication and events company claimed that “Winning in digital media now boils down to a simple equation: figure out a way to produce the most content at as low a cost as possible.”

We might have scoffed at Digiday then but a recent study from Buzzsumo may have just proved Digiday right.

1,200 posts a day

Take the case of the Washington Post – after Jeff Bezos (of Amazon) took over the news company they now produce 1,200 posts in a day. In a single day.

Let that sink in.

This new Content Marketing Strategy works and has seen their traffic grow beyond the other news giant, New York Times.

How much content is the world producing?

The number of pages Google has indexed from 2008 to 2014 has increased from 1 trillion to 30 trillion.
WordPress data shows that nearly 70 million posts were published using the WordPress platform (or any sites using their Jetpack plugin) in July 2016.

That’s a lotta content!

Why is the number of content created increasing?

There are many reasons behind the reason why so much content is being produced today and Buzzsumo suggests the following may be responsible:

The increasing number of Internet users
The decrease in the cost of content production and distribution
High volume strategies used by companies such as Buzzfeed

In today’s world anyone can create content just using their smartphones.

What does this mean for your company?

Do NOT start posting 100 posts a day.
Do NOT hire a monkey to bang away at a keyboard for you.
Do NOT rip off content from other sites.

This new idea of high volume content should not drastically affect your Content Marketing Strategy. Keep in mind that you first need to establish yourself in your own industry otherwise there will be no one to read your content.

Only once you’ve accomplished this then it makes sense to start creating more content. Even better if you’re the first in your industry to move towards this Content Marketing Strategy!

Challenging you to do better

In a way this news is better for you since it challenges you to be more efficient to produce content faster.

We also believe that it also challenges us to try different types of content such as videos, podcasts, infographics, and everything else we haven’t tried yet.

This shift in content marketing also challenges us to make our content distribution network even stronger to be able to compete with everyone else’s content.

Help, I don’t have a content marketing strategy!

If this article has you confused and wondering what your content marketing strategy is, leave a comment below and we’ll try to help. You can also speak to us or call us on 9801136042 if you’d prefer to talk directly.

4 Steps To Run A Successful Social Ad Campaign

Posted on Jun 24, 2016Sep 4, 2020 by ACT360

In our last blog post, we said that one of the pulls for digital marketing is better targeted social advertisements. Since then, we have had a lot of customers ask us about how they too can run a successful social ad campaign.

When executed properly social ad campaigns can be very successful as they can help you connect and communicate your value to your target audience.

It is however imperative that you spend time planning your social ad campaigns to get the best of your campaign instead of rushing through blindly.

So how do you run a successful social ad campaign? Here’s the 4 steps we go through to make sure our clients’ campaigns are run strategically and successfully.

Find out the objective of the campaign

The first thing we do is ask our clients the objective of the social ad campaign. This could be getting more leads, getting more website traffic, get more page likes, etc.

This is important because it helps us better design ad creatives since an ad designed for one objective may not work well for another. Even if our clients ask us to develop one ad for multiple objectives, we advise them that it is better to develop separate ad creatives for each objective.

Research the target audience:

Determining a target audience is very important as it helps us create an ad campaign specific to that audience. It even helps us determine the social media platform to run the campaign on.

One way of finding out about your target audience is to use tools like Google Analytics to see which social media platform is driving more traffic to your site. In Nepal, this is often Facebook, but we have seen some instances where most of the traffic was coming from Twitter.

Test Your Ad Creatives

The way we go about creating test ads for a social ad campaign is by looking at organic posts (unpaid posts) and gain insights into what kind of posts and photos are performing better.

Based on the objective of the social ad campaign and the target audience, we usually create at least two versions of the ad creatives which we then split test.

Measure Campaign Performance

The last and equally important step in running a successful social ad campaign is to measure your campaign performance.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have their own built-in tools to track campaign performance. At ACT360, we use these and other tools to track the performance of our clients’ campaigns.

In some cases we may use a combination of these tools if necessary, e.g. for web traffic ads we may use the social media platform’s reporting tools and Google Analytics.

You can also use special techniques like tracking URLs to get more information from your campaign.

What else can I do to run a successful social ad campaign?

Run the campaign!

At the end of the day you still have to run your campaign to actually know what works and doesn’t work. The only thing you can do is spend enough time planning the campaign so that you don’t make any mistakes and do everything you can to make it a successful ad campaign.

If you need help creating a successful social ad campaign, you can always speak to us or call us on 9801136042.

9 Reasons Why Nepalese Businesses Need Digital Advertising

Posted on May 22, 2016Sep 4, 2020 by ACT360

Nepalese businesses spend lakhs on traditional marketing but despite the clearly growing power of digital advertising many choose not to adopt a digital strategy.
Are you one of these businesses? If so then you probably want to read the rest of this post.

5.4 million Nepalese are on Facebook.

More than 5.4 million Nepalese are on Facebook (excluding non resident Nepalese) and out of these more than 2.8 million users live in Kathmandu.

Among the Kathmandu users:

1.5 million users are 18 to 25 years old.
1 million are from 26 to 35 years old.

It was reported in November 2015 that more than 11 million Nepalese have access to Internet with the majority in the capital. The number of Facebook and other social media users can only go up in the near future as prices go down and network coverage increases.

*Source: Facebook

Your customers are spending more time online.

It is still safe to say that the newspaper and radio are still the most commonly consumed media in Nepal (please correct us if we’re wrong) but is your target market reading the paper everyday or spending 3 hours on Facebook?

Digital ad campaigns provide a richer experience.

What can you do with a paper ad besides read it? What can you do with a radio commercial besides listen to it? Now compare that to what you can do with an ad being displayed on your phone or laptop – you can show customers a graphic, display text, make them watch a video, play music, open up a website, and more.

A good digital campaign is built around providing a user with a rich experience that will either guide them to making a purchase or at least create a strong impression that they will not forget.

Customers can give you instant feedback.

Do your customers hate your ad or love it? Just run a Facebook ad and see what people are saying about it, immediately! Better yet, they’re already on a social platform and you can communicate with them directly at the same time.

You can decide exactly who sees your ads.

When you broadcast a radio ad you pick a time according to when you think your target segment will be listening as well as the programs running at the time. Similarly with a paper ad, the best you can do is control what it gets published in and which page. Now you may reach most of your target segment this way, but can you guarantee that only the right people will experience your ad?

With most digital platforms you can select an exact target segment according to location, age, and gender. Some will additionally allow you to differentiate further by economical situations, family size, industry, job title, etc. based on the platform and your needs.

This allows you to create a much better targeted campaign that ensures that only the right people experience it.

You can drill down to the tiniest details.

Let’s talk about your last paper ad – what was your ROI (return on investment) from it? How many people saw it? How many people enquired and out of those how many actually bought something? How do you know if you ad was a success or if it was a failure?

Digital advertising platforms like Facebook allow you to see even the tiniest details about your campaign such as:

Who saw it?
What time did they see it?
How many times did they see it?
Did they click on it?
Did they share it?
How many people had a positive reaction to the ad?
Which location were they from?
Did they make a purchase 7 days after seeing the ad?

‘Nuff said.

You can make changes instantly.

So you’ve set up a month long Twitter campaign but 2 weeks in you decide to stop the campaign because you don’t see any sales OR your campaign is doing so well that you can’t handle the volume.

If this was a paper ad you would have no idea on what to do. Luckily this is a Twitter campaign and you can pause it at any time, make changes and either resume it or postpone it.
Speaking of scheduling it is even possible to plan your entire year’s campaign in one day!

Digital advertising platforms also allow you to create new ads instantly just in case you decide that one of your campaigns is not doing well or if you want to change some of the ad copy. With paper and radio ads? You need to spend another large amount creating a new ad.

You can run a Facebook ad for less than $10.

A paper ad will run up to Rs. 60 thousand or more. Can a small business afford to pay that much for a tiny advertisement that they have no idea of knowing will succeed or not? No!
Facebook and other platforms allow you to run smaller budget campaigns which combined with the right targeting will give you better returns.

One limitation here is that you need to have a credit card that will work online (no, not Nepalese ones) but you can always talk to friend or family to help you a bit. Failing that, there are tons of agencies who can do this for you for a fee (hint: us!).

Digital is the future.

10 years from now, we can expect more traditional media to die out as technology becomes more advanced and interwoven into society. McKinsey’s Global Media Report states that digital will account for than 50% of all media by 2019 and that digital advertising will be largest advertising category by 2017 – that’s just in one year!

Just recently Nepal Telecom finished laying down optical fibers from Kathmandu to the Chinese border.

Do we really expect Nepal to stay the same as it now?

So which is better, digital or traditional?

At ACT360 we strongly believe in the power of digital and recommend that any business in Nepal, big or small, start working on digital marketing strategies in order to stay competent.
How to start? Well, while there are many different ways you can go about it, we suggest that your digital marketing strategy first start with your business objective, i.e. what do you want from it?

If this article has you thinking or you feel like it’s time to go digital then maybe we can help. Give us a call on 9801136042 or chat with us on Facebook. We’re always ready to help!