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Despite all the coverage around blockchain technology and the benefits it can bring to FSIs, these companies have been hesitant to adopt it, due partly to unresolved concerns about how well data can be protected on a ledger accessible to multiple users.

So far, data has been stored on blockchains using "cyberwallets," which have proven vulnerable to hacking, primarily because the "keys" network participants use to access them are stored digitally on software servers. Now, consultancy Accenture has partnered with Thales, a cybersecurity solution provider, to develop what it claims is a more secure way to keep data on a blockchain, Reuters reports.

The solution is built on the Hyperledger fabric, and uses Thales's technology to store digital keys more securely, via encryption and physical isolation from IT networks. In addition, the new solution claims to solve a second problem: Historically, legacy financial firms have struggled to develop effective blockchain security because the ability to do so lies with a small pool of experts, and is therefore expensive. By sourcing the technology from a third party, Accenture will let FSIs implement blockchain security without having to build it in-house, making the process cheaper. As blockchain technology moves slowly out of the experimentation phase, security will become a greater concern. As such, we can expect to see more solutions for securing these emerging blockchain products going forward.

Blockchain technology, which is best known for powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is gaining steam among finance firms because of its potential to streamline processes and increase efficiency. The technology could cut costs by up to $20 billion annually by 2022, according to Santander.

That's because blockchain, which operates as a distributed ledger, has the ability to allow multiple parties to transfer and store sensitive information in a space that’s secure, permanent, anonymous, and easily accessible. That could simplify paper-heavy, expensive, or logistically complicated financial systems, like remittances and cross-border transfer, shareholder management and ownership exchange, and securities trading, to name a few. And outside of finance, governments and the music industry are investigating the technology’s potential to simplify record-keeping.

As a result, venture capital firms and financial institutions alike are pouring investment into finding, developing, and testing blockchain use cases. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, have begun researching the technology in-house, or have helped fund startups with products rooted in blockchain. 

Jaime Toplin, research associate for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on blockchain technology that explains how blockchain works, why it has the potential to provide a watershed moment for the financial industry, and the different ways it could be put into practice in the coming years.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Spending on capital markets applications of blockchain is expected to grow at a 52% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019, according to Aite Group, to reach $400 million that year.
• Banks and major financial institutions are working both collaboratively and independently to develop blockchain tech. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, like R3 CEV or Chain. And many are investing in the technology on their own as well.
• Putting blockchain to use for real-world transactions is likely not that far off. If working groups' tests are successful, firms could be using it to transact real value as early as the end of this year and we could see widespread industry application within the next few years. 

In full, the report:

• Examines the funding increases that are pouring into blockchain
• Assesses why blockchain is becoming so popular and what factors are driving up increased research and development
• Explains in full how blockchain technology work and what assets make it valuable and vulnerable
• Identifies pain points in the financial industry and profiles how various firms are using blockchain to solve them
• Demonstrates the challenges to mainstream adoption and their potential solutions

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of blockchain technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

More and more marketers today are tapping into influencer marketing. Why? Because influencer marketing has the potential to act as a new, relationship-based channel to reach new audiences and build credibility with existing audiences.

From personal experience, influencer marketing can be a tough nut to crack. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing random acts of influencer marketing and not truly building a relationship or offering a value exchange to the people you identify as influencers in your space.

As influencer marketing becomes more commonplace amongst marketers, its evolution is something that marketers looking to innovate must track, understand, and keep up with. The latest report, Influencer 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing, from TopRank Marketing, Traackr, and Altimeter Group reveals the ways that influencer marketing is evolving, possibly into a field called influencer relations.

Here are four top takeaways from Influencer 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing:

1. For the majority of marketers, influencer marketing is seen as strategic (almost 75%) but only 24% of marketers have an ‘always on’ program, and only 5% have integrated influencer marketing into all of their activities.

This is an indicator of early maturity in influencer marketing. Brands, organizations, and marketers understand the power of engaging influencers, but may lack the resources to make it part of their overarching strategy. Instead, they often work in either as a grassroots effort from one organization or an extension of existing PR efforts. While this is a good start, working at a tactical/individual campaign level like this can sometimes hinder the evolution of a sustainable influencer marketing program as it’s difficult to prove the overarching strategic impact.

2. Influencer marketing does not sit in one function. In fact, more than two-thirds (80%) of survey respondents state that three or more departments engage with influencers now.

Influencers exist in different realms–leading brands, content and social media connoisseurs, analysts, and even customer advocates. As such, different departments work to strengthen influencer relationships within their space, so it’s important to have a holistic strategy as an organization. One way to stay aligned is to meet regularly to understand common goals and key responsibilities, perhaps in a committee with a stakeholder representing each department.

3. Marketers want influencer marketing to help them engage across the business and the entire customer lifecycle. The top goals and the future of influencer marketing focus on advocacy (94%) and awareness (92%).

This stat exemplifies how marketers are evolving their thinking and strategies for influencer marketing. Rather than simply seeing influencer marketing as a tactic to promote specific messages, marketers are looking across the organization and customer lifecycle to leverage the whole swath of benefits that influencer marketing can offer.

4. CMOs (34%) are leading digital transformation inside organizations, and that starts and ends with delivering true engagement.

Like our CEO, Steve Lucas, recently mentioned in his blog, the Engagement Economy is here, and it demands true, authentic, engagement. Digital transformation is not about processes, technology, or even sales and marketing—it’s about transforming your organization at its core to create experiences that feel real and human and are founded on trust and care. This report illustrates how influencer marketing is a key component of that change by sharing that, “the more human marketing becomes, the more digital transformation can also become human…”

As influencer marketing evolves, it will become more relationship-based and act as a strategic pillar for the entire organization—from content to customer retention to employee advocacy. If you are looking for more data on how influencer marketing is being practiced in organizations today, and where it could be most impactful in the future, make sure to check out Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing.

 

Health care. If ever there was a hot button topic that’s on everyone’s mind, this is it. But what may go unnoticed is how savvy marketers involved in this sector can actually use their skills to help the entire system deliver better care to its target audience: patients!

One such savvy marketer plying his skills for the benefit of others is Arra G. Yerganian, Chief Marketing and Branding Officer at Sutter Health. I met Arra through The CMO Club (he won the Officers award) and not only was he kind enough to share his thoughts with me below, he even agreed to rerecord our podcast episode after the sound quality proved deficient (stay tuned for my “9 Ways to Screw Up a Podcast” post!). More importantly, Arra is leading a massive transformation in how Sutter Health not only markets itself but also how it delivers patient care.

Drew: Tell me about Sutter Health.

Arra: Sutter Health is a remarkable organization. We are an integrated team of clinical and non-clinical pioneers who are deeply rooted in our not for profit mission. And we really work together to change how you and I experience healthcare. In fact, through an independent study in the last few months, Truven Health Analytics (which is part of IBM) recently recognized Sutter as one of the highest performers (top five) amongst healthcare system in America. This study looked at things like saving more lives, having fewer complications, spending less per patient on episode of care, etc. This is truly an organization that’s unprecedented. We’re about $11 billion in revenue supported by 55,000 employees. I call them ‘members of our tribe’ and nearly 7,000 providers. These are people who develop the product and care every day that makes a difference in people’s lives.

Drew: Wow. So what does your role as CMO encompass?

Arra: Well, it’s a multitasking role for sure. I feel like I’m steering a big ship and I think for me it’s really about walking the brand promise. It’s about how we tell powerful stories and how we translate that into something that the consumer can really relate to. I often talk about this relationship that we have with the people we serve, not the “patient” and you need to understand the distinction. As healthcare’s going through the transformation in America, it’s not about putting the patient first. It’s about putting the person first. During every stage of being a patient you’re still a person. So it’s about leaning in. It’s about helping them understand you know them intellectually and emotionally and about the support and access we can provide. How we change the conversation around them and I think that’s our secret weapon for the healthcare system in Northern California.

Drew: Interesting. How does marketing fit into this vision?

Arra: For me, it’s about operationalizing the brand. It’s helping my fellow leaders understand that investing in marketing is an important endeavor, not just an expense. It’s changing the way the organization thinks about the brand. We’re helping the organization see that marketing can really add value. In fact, we can contribute to creative growth within this organization. I tell people we don’t necessarily need one more person to care for; we just need to take great care of the ones we have now. I call this the “love the ones you’re with” approach and it is a big differentiator for us since so many healthcare companies are just trying to acquire as many customers as they can.

Drew: How big is Sutter Health?

Arra: We are one of the largest healthcare systems in America and we’re really just in the Northern California footprint today. We service a geography of 12.5 million people and each of those three to three and a half million people that we care for every day are in the amazing care of our provider who truly go the extra mile and provide what I’m describing as intellectual and emotional support, going beyond the physical. It’s not just getting in to see the provider when you want to see them. That’s a given. To differentiate in a ‘sea of sameness’, it’s about that extra effort that we as an organization can deliver. We need to be the brand leaning in when others lean away. Remember, we care for people when they are at their most vulnerable. We have an awesome responsibility.

Drew: Let’s talk about a specific marketing initiative you’re particularly proud of.

Arra: I think this is somewhat unprecedented within the healthcare field; however, I had a vision when I arrived 16 months ago to create a brand management structure along lines of services like cardiology, oncology, women’s health, neuroscience, pediatrics, primary care, etc. This meant bringing professionals into the organization or nurturing those who were already here in marketing roles and focusing them all on these product lines and creating partnerships with clinical leaders who can help inform the content.

Drew: Sounds like P&G?

Arra: Exactly. These brand managers would build efficacy around their “products” and communicate the benefits to the mass market. I really wanted to understand what we do uniquely versus our competition. Where do we stand-alone as we service the consumers in our communities? With this new structure, we can get really specific and surgical. I call it ‘precision marketing’. You know there’s this movement called ‘precision medicine’ that’s become quite common. I think it really is about getting super targeted. I think about creating one to one relationships with three and a half million people and addressing topics that are of specific interest.

Drew: Makes sense. So how did precision marketing actually play out?

Arra: Well, for someone who’s suffering from coronary heart disease in a particular geography we can isolate by age and really dive in specifically to those individuals with a targeted message. Very, very different from the way most healthcare companies approach the challenge. I realized when I first arrived that lowest common denominator marketing is alive and well within the healthcare space. People talk about things like quality and expertise as if they’re differentiators. Seems to me that everyone expects when they go to a doctor to get quality care and that their doctor is an expert in their field, right?

Drew: Well, I certainly do.

Arra: Right, so let’s take it to a whole new level. When we talk about intellectual access it’s about being able to easily talk to the healthcare professional. Get clear information about things like pricing. Get the healthcare professional to lean in and not appear rushed. When I think about emotional access it’s treating the people that we work with like humans. Having our healthcare teams work together toward collaborative care so you are not being treated like a statistic–not being treated like a burden. These are the things that we as an organization are striving to do every day that really separate us.

Drew: Getting back to the brand management structure…

Arra: So when I implemented this brand management structure at this highest level we can, for example, sit with a cardiologist and ask him/her lots of questions: What really makes the work you do different and unique? What are the research breakthroughs? What’s helping you do better care for the people that we serve? By the way, we’re the second largest non-teaching research system in the country. This is a not for profit organization that truly understands the importance of giving back. Part of the way we give back is through this philanthropic effort of doing research in the community.

Drew: This must be a complicated branding challenge given the Sutter Health parent brand and now these service-specific sub-brands.

Arra: It’s actually even more complex because we were previously federated model with approximately 24 hospital CEOs, all managing in many respects, legacy brands that have somehow come together over the last 150 years under the Sutter Health umbrella. So in order to pay homage to those strong and uniquely positioned brands, particularly in our ‘out of home’ creative and even the via radio campaigns, we’ve put Sutter Health on center stage while paying homage to our affiliated brands, i.e., Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Alta Bates Summit, or Sutter Gould, for example; then we highlight the line of service, like cardiology, pediatrics, or urgent care before we do any discussion about the work that we do.

Drew: That is complicated. So how do you hold all of these communications together?

Arra: We created a very light-hearted campaign to start building familiarity in the marketplace and that’s called the “Smile Out” campaign. The whole idea is we choose somebody, for example, with a sinus condition and would say literally, “Sniffle in. Smile out.” Or for orthopedics, we say “Limp in. Smile Out.” When we talk about cardiology, we say, “Flutter in. Smile out.” Each of these is connected to a line of service, Sutter Health and our local, very community-based hospital systems. So yes, we have multiple challenges but it is very exciting that we can actually break through and create this connection across the multiple brands, the lines of service and the geography in which we are in.

Drew: How are you measuring and charting the success of your marketing initiatives?

Arra: We’re doing brand research in ways we’ve never done before. We’re also utilizing the amazing amounts of data that we already had more effectively. For example, we have the largest single installation of Epic, the hospital records management system, in the country. But all this wonderful data without insight, as you know, is useless. So effectively understanding, for example, that there’s a difference between awareness, familiarity and consideration is a big transformational idea in an organization that hasn’t really thought about marketing the way I describe. And incidentally, I’m the first Chief Marketing and Branding Officer this organization’s long and rich history.

Drew: Let’s dive into the research more. What kinds of things did you want to track?

Arra: Not surprisingly, our awareness is high and we are a trusted brand. We need to help consumers better understand what we really stand for; that which makes us uniquely different. 23.5 hours a day people don’t think about healthcare. So we want to make sure that the moment when you do have to think about your personal care or the care of a loved one, you think of Sutter Health…and it’s in the most positive light. That’s why making an emotional connectional is so important. I want them to feel confident, I want them to feel as if they’re in control and they own their own destiny. Because at the end of the day the brand strategy for me is to increase physical, intellectual and emotional access to healthcare so people can more confidently and independently engage with their health.

Drew: How did you persuade the folks internally to invest in this research?

Arra: So interestingly we’ve already made that investment. We have all the data, it’s really about peeling the onion back to understand how the data can inform the way we think about communicating with different segments of consumer. So, customer segmentation and segmentation research is absolutely at the forefront of our new strategy. Doing panel research, understanding really what makes people emotionally tick so that we can do the right thing when, for example, they’re giving birth. I love to tell people because I found this out really by accident. At Sutter Health; we give birth to three kindergarten classes a day! Funny enough, one of every three consumers that I meet throughout our Northern California footprint introduce themselves to me as either having given birth or having being born at a Sutter Hospital. That’s a meaningful statistic. In fact, we take care of one out of every 100 Americans, one out of every 4 Northern Californians. These are truly remarkable statistics. We have in our DNA the spirit of doing amazing things for people every day – we just need to bring those stories to light.

Drew: What’s your advice for your fellow marketers?

Arra: It’s funny — about a week ago I was at an even at the Avaya Stadium in San Jose, we’re a partner to the San Jose Earthquakes, a Major League Soccer team they serve the same 100 communities that we serve. And it happened to be Saturday so we brought our ambulances, helicopters, and providers and it was great opportunity to activate the brand with the 10,000 people in the stands and generate some good will.

So my six-year-old son, my youngest with three of his friends clamored into Sutter Health mobile clinic and within minutes, they tried out a stethoscope and other cool tools. They then switch their roles; first doctor then patient. I watch their intellectual curiosity, their flexibility, and their focus and realize that they could change the world if given the opportunity. If we look at the world through their lens, we could change the world. And in this period of rapid evolution requiring great curiosity, determination and adaptability, we have the opportunity to do so. So I encourage marketers to have the courage to think way outside the box. It’s okay to fail. I tell people all the time, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I want them to really think differently; I think that’s paramount to success. Take some calculated risks; I think that’s super important.

The post How Marketing Can Improve Patient Health Care appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

   

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When you’re writing a brand story, good bones can help.

What I’m talking about is the structure that supports your story, whether it’s a press release announcing your new product, a thought-leadership blog post, or a contributed article for Forbes.

And while there are many story structures to draw on, two of them stand out, both for their effectiveness in drawing in your audience, and because they can be used by nearly any organization to produce professional-level content.

Content creation continues to be a pillar of many marketing programs. But if you’re having trouble telling your brand story, if it’s just not connecting with customers or reporters, that pillar could gain support from another architecture: pyramids.

Story structure #1: The Inverted Pyramid

If you’ve worked in PR, journalism, or communications, you probably know this one well. It’s a way to structure a piece of content so the most important information — the base of the pyramid — comes first. It’s followed by supporting information, and then interesting details or background information.

In the newspaper days of yore, it allowed editors to chop off a paragraph or two from the end of the article to make more room for advertising or other news without worrying about cutting important facts. It also caters to short attention spans — if readers abandon the article after the first paragraph, they still know the basics of the story.

The inverted pyramid often makes the most sense for press releases. Load the first paragraph of your announcement with the who, what, where, when, why, how – and most importantly, why it all matters.

Seems pretty straightforward, right?

There’s one catch: You have to know what’s important enough to make the first paragraph.

Take this made-up example, which while it’s imagined, is along the lines of press releases I see all the time:

Company XYZ, a leader in technology solutions, today announced it has released the 2017 edition of its benchmark research on what gadgets consumers are most likely to buy. The sixth annual report is designed to give retailers insight into what devices they should carry to maximize revenue.

The report covers three main areas of technology: wearables, smart home tech, and car tech. This is the only report in the industry to cover all three of these technologies, and its inclusion of historical data offers needed context for the current year’s results.

The report is now available on Company XYZ’s website. The top finding this year is that 85 percent of consumers plan to buy a smart home device in the next 12 months.

What’s the news?

If you said the release of the report, you’re wrong.

The news is the report’s findings. That statistic on smart home tech is completely made up, but the findings of a report are almost always what’s most important for the media, and this imaginary company’s customers and partners.

Reports are released all the time. That a new report exists isn’t news. What the report found, however, can be newsworthy. This is a classic example of burying the lede.

By following the inverted pyramid and developing a sense for the information most important to customers and journalists, you can write press releases that stand out from the many releases like the imagined one above.

Story structure #2: Freytag’s Pyramid

This is admittedly a basic structure, but in some form or another, nearly every movie, book, TV show, and story you know follows the ups and downs of Freytag’s pyramid. There are of course many variations and successful stories that ignore Freytag completely, but thinking about this structure can help punch up content like blog posts, bylined articles, and even your YouTube videos.

Gustav Freytag was a German novelist and playwright who set out a five-act dramatic structure in a pyramid shape that now bears his name. Here are the five parts:

1. Exposition: This sets the context: what are we talking about, who’s involved, what’s at stake?
2. Rising action: A series of events or ideas build on each other and advance the narrative.
3. Climax: A turning point, the big takeaway, a call to action.
4. Falling action: The hero prevails, growth and change have occurred, results are tallied.
5. Denouement (from the French word for “to untie”): The resolution, conclusion, a look to the future.

This structure is probably already hard-wired in your brain from the many movies you’ve seen and books you’ve read — nearly all follow it to some degree. Using it as a guide can give your content momentum that it might not have had before.

It works in contributed articles, blog posts, even YouTube videos. One example is Casey Neistat’s chronicle of his first-class Emirates flight from Dubai to New York. With more than 31 million views to date, it shows the power of having an influencer tell your story.

In nine minutes, his trip is neatly packaged into a Freytag pyramid structure.

1. 00:00 to 00:53: He gets the upgrade to first class.
2. 00:54 to 5:23: From the snacks to the TV to turning his seat into a bed more comfortable than his one at home, each feature of the flight gets bigger and more luxurious.
3. 5:23 to 8:15: Showering on an airplane. The highlight of the trip for Neistat.
4. 8:16 to 8:25: The plane lands in New York.
5. 8:25 to 8:40: Neistat summarizes the trip, arrives home.

A piece of content doesn’t have to be a narrative to use Freytag’s pyramid. Buzzfeed’s lists and quizzes have long sought to elevate themselves above the onslaught of content by building their posts around a narrative structure.

Buzzfeed’s Jack Shepherd has noted that “a list is just a scaffolding for a story. It’s just a way of organizing information. I mean, The Odyssey is 24 chapters. You could call that 24 Chapters About Odysseus.”

Quizzes can work in a similar way. Nieman Lab argues that “while quizzes are formally comprised of questions and answers, what you’re getting is content that interests you disguised as a narrative about yourself.”

Next time you’re writing a list post or a quiz, pay a little more attention to how it’s assembled. How the list is ordered? Could it be reshuffled so that each point builds on the one that came before? Ultimately it depends on the content you’re writing, but by tapping into the Freytag pyramid structure, your content can take on more urgency and tap into every person’s innate love of story.

Try some pyramids

Obviously each of these structures has its limits, but as general guidelines, they can give your content momentum, keep readers engaged, and elevate your brand story. Give them a try with your next press release or blog post and let me know how it goes.

At certain times of year, the sun bounces off of a glass skyscraper outside my window and illuminates my apartment from an unusual angle. And the room then looks dramatically different. The sun has to thread the needle to hit this position, and the phenomenon only lasts for a few moments.

Biotechnologist and bioinformaticist Dr. Diva Tommei has developed a literally brilliant way to capitalize on this reflection of sunlight. Check out her robotic, solar-powered invention:

While she refers to the device as "Lucy" in the video, the product's name has since been changed to "Caia." Look at the dramatic difference it makes in a room:

Caia was successfully crowdfunded last year on IndieGogo and is going into production, with the first units slated to ship this June. It is expected to retail for $299.

Four days into 2017, the employees of Medium came to work and were told that one-third of them, 50 people, were fired.

They were shocked. Their adored boss, billionaire CEO Ev Williams, best known as the co-founder of Twitter, seemed to care so deeply for each of them.

But he publicly told the world about the layoff in a blog post, even before all the people who lost their jobs were informed, a former employee tells Business Insider.

Some of them found out they had lost their job through industry buzz, one person told us.

"It comes down to how dysfunctional the place was," one former employee told Business Insider, who says that before being let go, Medium was a "dream job." 

Medium is a blogging and publishing site that gained instant fame when it was launched in 2012 because of its well-known founder. He said its mission was to fix what he viewed as the broken world of journalism and create a new model. But this massive change of business plans – the company's second –  burnt some people so badly that industry insiders have growing doubts about William's business judgment and are starting to accuse the company of being his "vanity" project.

In his post announcing the layoffs, Williams explained that the business model Medium had been pursuing, advertising, was evil and to blame for "misinformation" (aka fake news) and so Medium would no longer be selling ads, no longer be helping the publishers it hosted on its site with ad revenue and would therefore no longer need the people it had hired to work in those areas.

He was in search of a new business model instead.

Just like the lack of communication with employees, some advertisers weren't told in advance about the change of plans, either, and were upset.

I did not think he would just pull the plug on publishing and start f---ing people.

And the move downright infuriated some of Medium's publishers who were not warned in advance and had bet their livelihoods on Medium and the business model that Williams was ditching. This model involved Medium cutting them a check every month, a guaranteed minimum payment, as well as helping them sell ads. That was over. 

These people were now on their own to move to a new publishing platform, if they so chose. For publications not backed by venture investments or rich owners that could afford to lose revenue, this meant a bleak future.

"I like Ev. He’s persnickety," one publisher told us. "His ideas are interesting and he does surprise me with his thinking. He likes people who make things, including writers. I did not think he would just pull the plug on publishing and start f---ing people. But instead he’s like, 'Your contract is up in a while, and good luck. And I’m going to fire a bunch of people.'"

Business Insider interviewed six people for this report from all aspects Medium's business including former employees and customers. We sent Medium an exhaustive list of the information in this story. The company declined comment, did not respond to our repeated follow-up emails and declined to make Williams available for an interview. The people we talked to told us:

• The culture at Medium is wonderfully warm-and-fuzzy but also sluggish, with terrible communication.
• Williams is charismatic, imaginative and brilliant in some ways, particularly around products, but also impetuous and clueless in others.
• No one is declaring Medium dead, but people in the Valley are calling it a"sh-tshow" and a "vanity startup," a favorite label for a disorganized startup run by a rich and famous founder.

'Utter crap'

Medium launched in 2012 as a way for anyone to publish medium-length articles on the internet. Williams has been at this mission for decades. Before cofounding Twitter, he created a site called Blogger back in 1999. Although Blogger struggled financially after the Internet bubble burst, it was groundbreaking for its day and Williams sold it to Google in 2003 for an undisclosed amount (some say $20 million).

With Medium, Williams was on a mission to clean up the mess that blogging had become, the misinformation and drivel it attracted. He hoped to cure professional journalism of these ills, too.

"The state of tech blogs is atrocious. It’s utter crap,” he told Bloomberg's Brad Stone in 2013. "They create a culture that is superficial and fetishizing and rewarding the wrong things and reinforcing values that are self-destructive and unsustainable." And he said he was "pessimistic about the state of media, and that’s why I want to work on this problem."

His idea back then was an algorithm that recommended high-quality stories not based on clicks, but on how much time people spent reading them. He didn't know in 2013 how Medium would make money, as is common for early-stage startups, but he knew even back then he didn't want it to be advertising, which he viewed as one of the root causes of the mess.

Big vision, small promises

Still, after experimenting with business models, in April Medium launched an ad sales beta program to sell limited types of ads such as where one advertiser would sponsor a series of articles (i.e. Marriott sponsoring a series of travel articles).

The startup had also been wooing publishers to move to Medium, join the program and help grow Medium's overall readership.

At an Ad Age conference in April, Williams said, "The entire point of this phase of Medium is to pay publishers. That's what we see as our job." 

More than two dozen publishers bought into the pitch and moved to Medium including Bill Simmons’ The Ringer, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, ThinkProgress, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, and The Awl Network.

"To be fair, they didn’t really make promises. They framed it as an experiment," one publisher said. "We were like, 'This is a gamble and a weird lackey situation. It might go badly, we know that going in, and that’s fine.' The one thing we feared was that it would go so badly [it might] take our business down with it."

"But we went with them because they insisted: We are building a business, we do want to work with independent journalism and we have enough time and runway to do it," this person said.

There was reason to believe that. Medium has raised $134 million valuing the company at $600 million, including raising a $5o million round in April when the beta program was announced. This includes investment from Williams himself, as well as Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Google Ventures, according to Pitchbook.

But despite Williams public commitment, the company quickly ran into trouble fulfilling the promise.

Six months later, the company held a very serious discussion at its October board meeting about its future. Shortly after that, the guy running their ad sales team, Joe Purzycki, resigned.

The all-hands meeting in December did not have the usual "positive rah-rah" tone, an employee said. Instead, Williams told the company that things were not going as planned.

A billionaire's vanity project?

Ad sales are hard, but Medium had some early success. One of the sponsored ad series had generated over six digits in revenue all told, in part because Medium could run these ads on multiple publisher's sites, one person said. It gave the business side hope. But that didn't last. When the year ended, revenue fell short of projections, multiple people confirmed. 

"We were making money with publishers. We also made money with advertising. But the business we could have built, if we were to go all in, was not going to justify Medium’s valuation. That’s a trap of venture funding. If it turns out the market you find isn’t big enough, you are in trouble," one person told us.

But there were other problems: the teams responsible for ad sales, serving publishers and creating ad features didn't collaborate, and barely communicated, sources said. They were off in their own bubbles and fighting for resources. 

Williams was more concerned with other things.

"Ev is not that interested in revenue to be honest," one former employee said. "He’s driven by wanting to create this democratic space for people to have a voice, for the best content to rise on top. The problem that does not excite him is, 'How do I make money?' And he has the luxury in doing that." 

Another told us, “The work there felt meaningful, but yeah, we were subject to a lot of quick changes of mind. That’s fine in the first two years, when the platform is in beta and closed. But once businesses and others start to use it and depend on it, it’s not so easy to do. And that’s when some of the fracturing started." 

A publisher said that, with Medium's surprise change of plans, partners like them took big hits.

"Smaller publishers on Medium are in a bad way, and that’s the stuff I'm pissed about," this person said. "I get it and it's a startup, but it's also not because it's run by a f---ing billionaire. Ev's vanity project? It has become one now, for sure."  

Non-confrontational to a fault

All the people we spoke to agreed: They admire and like Williams. He’s a hard worker, first one in the office, last one to leave.

Employees who worked there said they loved their jobs. It wasn't just the perks, like free lunch and on-site meditation sessions. Their CEO also treated them like a doting parent. 

"He’s an amazing person to work with. He challenged me in ways I didn’t think were possible,” an employee said.

Williams listens carefully to ideas, then helps an employee look at a situation from a new perspective. He encourages experimentation and doesn't penalize failure.

But Williams and his right-hand strategy man, Ed Lichty, were also both described as “non-confrontational” to a fault. They didn't have the "hard conversations" or do ongoing course corrections to build a sustainable business, multiple people said. 

Their messages to the staff were so consistently upbeat, and the startup was so well funded, that employees felt complacent, people told us. (Lichty, who had been with Medium for four of its five years, was reportedly let go during the layoffs, multiple people said. Medium declined comment.)

Yet, this was the second time they changed business models. Medium had previously toyed with being a publication itself, hiring writers and editors. Then they shuttered that effort. Employees were asked to voluntarily resign or relocate to other jobs. 

Even if Williams finally gets the business model right, at this point he'll have to rebuild trust and credibility in the media world.

The Netflix of publishing 

The business model Williams wants to pursue next is some form of subscriptions, he's told people in the Valley. The idea is to become some version of the "Netflix" of publishing.

But he’s also fascinated by the idea of a reader-supported business model known as patronization, one person told us.

Williams enjoys hosting dinners at his house with people in the journalism world like Katie Couric and members of Medium's publications, one person said. At one dinner, Tim Urban, who hosts the blog "Wait But Why" on Medium, discussed his dislike of ads.

"There are no ads on the site cause ads are gross," Urban's blog says.

Instead, Urban is supported by patronization, meaning posts are free but he asks readers to make a small monthly recurring donation using a service called Patreon. Urban has successfully convinced over 4,000 people to donate more than $12,000 per month in total. That's enough to give him a paycheck, pay an employee and cover some business expenses. He's working on raising more money this way, too.

"Ev was so entranced by this idea," one person told us. "That’s great for Tim, but it doesn’t scale. Also, it’s a hard business. Ev doesn't like ads? Wait until he finds out what credit card processing is really like."

And while big questions remain as to how Williams will turn Medium into a credible business, not just for himself but for its publishers and employees, his investors are still in his corner, wanting him to try.

One of them, former journalist turned VC, M.G. Siegler, points out that Williams has been successful in the first important step, building an audience for the site: "2 billion words written on Medium in the last year. 7.5 million posts during that time. 60 million monthly readers now," Siegler writes.

"If the company can figure out a way to do what it’s attempting to do, it’s potentially a new lease on life for some current forms of content," Siegler says. "But more importantly, it opens up avenues for brand new types of content that might otherwise never have existed." 

SEE ALSO: Why Marissa Mayer's team is looking into getting fired by Verizon

Join the conversation about this story »

Ames Laboratory scientists Pat Thiel and Michael Tringides are explorers, discovering the unique properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials and metals grown on graphene, graphite, and other carbon coated surfaces.

Mike Kunkle is leading an important discussion about a new trend in Sales Enablement. Mike identifies the issue:

“I’ve been reading Sales Enablement leadership job descriptions lately. I find it concerning how many paint the enabler as responsible for working directly with reps to improve their performance. Not as an occasional field support effort, or a reality check on what’s happening out there, but as a main tenet of the role. And the front line managers are doing what, exactly”

Like Mike, I’m seeing the same trend. Increasingly, sales enablement organizations are being staffed up and given the responsibility to coach and develop front line sales people, helping maximize their performance.

But isn’t that what front line sales managers are supposed to do? Isn’t the job of the front line sales manager to maximize the performance of each person on their team? To develop and grow those people? Doesn’t the data show the highest leverage use of the front line sales manager’s time is spent in coaching and developing their people?

Reading the comments in Mike’s discussion gives clues to the problem, but also raises the issue, is sales enablement addressing the right problem by putting resources in place to coach sales people, rather than holding the front line sales manager accountable for doing their jobs?

Many say, managers don’t have the time, they don’t have the skills, they haven’t been trained to coach and drive performance of their people. Some say they’re spending all their time managing the numbers, hiring, doing pipeline analyses, or in strategy and other important internal meetings.

These are real issues, too many front line managers are not coaching and developing their people—or they do terrible jobs at this. As a result, many organizations have sales enablement professionals jumping into the void. They are investing in sales enablement resources to fill this gap, performing the single most important responsibility of sale managers: maximizing the performance of each person on their teams.

This raises huge numbers of issues? Who is accountable for the performance of the people on the sales manager’s team? Sales enablement or the sales manager? Who is responsible for setting performance expectations with each person, reviewing their performance, addressing poor performance?

Who are the sales people accountable for their performance? Sales enablement or their managers?

As a sales person, who am I to look to for support and development? Who am I to look to for help in winning deals, developing my pipeline and managing my territory?

As a sales executive, I start to look at issues like “Cost of Selling.” Why invest in two people doing the same thing? Aren’t I adding complexity and confusion, rather than addressing the core issues of manager and sales performance?

As the discussion of deploying sales enablement professionals into coaching roles percolates in sales enablement circles, there is the complementary discussion that seems completely absent from those discussions, Sales Manager Enablement!

It seems the focus of sales enablement is on enabling sales people, forgetting there are others in the organization that must be enabled.. Their biggest leverage point in driving organizational performance is actually through front line sales managers.

When I challenge sales enablement professionals about this issue, often the response is, “Well manager involvement underlies everything we do….” or “Manager involvement is implicit in every great sales enablement program.”

But if it really were, how do we explain this trend to displace Front Line Sales Management coaching with people from sales enablement?

If sales managers were at the core of sales enablement strategies, why would people be saying, “Sales managers don’t have the skills, ability, training, time, …. to do these things?”

Sales Management Enablement cannot “underlie” or “be implicit” in sales enablement priorities. It has to be explicit, it has to be front and center for everything sales enablement does. It’s the front line sales manager, working day to day with their people, who really understand the challenges to individual performance. It’s the front line sales manager’s job to address these issues, maximizing the performance of each individual in their organization.

Sales enablement exists to serve the front line sales managers in supporting their efforts, not to displace them.

Rather than providing the wrong solution to the issues of coaching and improving performance of individuals, why doesn’t sales enablement focus on the right solution of Sales Manager Enablement?

A few posts ago I went over how to create a social media content calendar and reviewed how you can fill up your calendar with content including using hashtag holidays. Now here’s another content time saver – repurpose old content! If you’re stuck in a content rut, want to try ramping up the number of posts you share, need a refresh or just to fill in a few spaces try to repurpose old content for social media.

Here are a few ideas on how you can repurpose old content:

1. Turn older photos into backgrounds for graphics and visual quotes

Got an amazing photo you used a while ago? Don’t be afraid to repurpose it! Get creative, hop on Canva, apply a filter and add a great quote – don’t forget to brand it, and Voila! A brand new post is ready for your social media channels. You can also repurpose popular photos into header images.

2. Re-write evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that remains true even if time has passed. If there are any industry facts, or a post with information that remains relevant put a new spin on it or add a recent case study to support the information. You can also simply refurbish the content by changing wording, and formatting or adding graphics.

If you’ve visualized a fact, just change the image and you’re ready to post it again!

3. Build upon a past post.

If you’ve had a seriously popular post you can use this as a base for a new post, or reference back to the older post with new developments. You can now share it on social media with the newer information as a concentration for messaging.

4. Turn survey results or stats into posts, or graphics.

Surveys can be a treasure trove of content. After you’ve conducted a survey you can take specific insights and turn them into visual content in the form of sharing facts, create new questions to ask your audience as audience engagement posts or you can even create a Slideshare of the results to share with your audience.

5. Create summary posts.

Summary or round up posts can be easy to put together and are a great way to get more eyes on popular pieces of content. Gather your best or most popular posts within a time period and present it to your audience as an “In Case You Missed It” (#ICYMI) or just a “Best of the Week/Month” compilation of good articles on a subject related to your business and audience.

6. Create an ebook or similar resource

If you have a series of posts, let’s say you share a recipe each week – create an ebook. You can also turn podcasts or webinar transcripts into ebooks. These kinds of pieces can be great email list builders.

7. Create a recap of the prior event

If you have a recurring event, a great way to create more content and to get people excited about the new event, is to share photos, videos, or albums from the prior event. I like to use Storify to create recaps of events using photos shared using the particular event hashtag. I can then create social media posts which point back to the Storify which holds the messaging and photos shared from the event.

8. Throwback

One of the easiest ways to repurpose old content for social media is to use old photos or videos as throwback Thursday posts!

9. Re-share content that has performed well with different messaging and images

Last but not least, simply re-share older content that has performed well – just switch up the image and caption. Twitter is the ultimate content repurposing tool. Get on Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Buffer or whatever you use your schedule tweets and share links to past posts with different messaging.

Repurposing content is beneficial in that it can save time if you have to create your own content, and drives new traffic back to content that has performed well with your core audience in the past. The new format may catch the eye of someone who may have dismissed it prior, or can motivate more people to share, in turn expanding your reach and audience.

Now that you have a few ideas on how to repurpose old content, which of your posts will you re-vamp and share?

This article was originally published here.

One of the hardest thing to do in sales, especially for early stage SaaS companies, is to disqualify customers. When a startup disqualifies a customer, they turn away a revenue opportunity, a chance to add $1k of MRR or $3k of MRR, and meaningfully grow the top line. But if the customer isn’t the right customer, that incremental revenue bears a hidden cost.

In the earliest days of the business, those potential customers waving checks promise an attractive revenue boost. Imagine a startup at $15k in MRR. A customer prospect worth $2k in MRR is a chance of growing monthly revenue by 13% in one shot. In addition, a seed stage or Series A startup typically has a narrow customer pipeline. Because the number of interactions is “rare,” each interaction with prospect seems precious. The business feels an urgency to grow, so the temptation to accept an non-ideal customer increases.

In addition to these doubts non-ideal customer interest creates, there’s a personal dynamic at play. It’s a challenge as a salesperson to turn down a highly valuable prospect if they are outside the ideal customer profile (ICP). More business means better quota attainment, higher compensation, and not having to defend the question, “why did we turn away that Fortune 500?”

A SaaS startup’s advantage is the speed of execution. Focusing on one customer segment, the ideal customer profile, reinforces the startup’s strength. Diffusing the customer focus negates it.

But focus isn’t easy. Even if you’ve researched the market ahead of building a product, developed an ideal customer profile (ICP), the challenge arrives when you take the product to market. A unexpected surge of interest from a customer type raises the question, “Should we serve that market segment too?” “Was our initial research correct?” Inbound demand from a Fortune 500 precipitates excitement about winning an exceptional logo. Will that logo lead to inbound interest from others? Managing that doubt is difficult.

Nevertheless, the hidden costs of non-ICP customers are real. Changing a product roadmap to suit the needs of one big customer divides an already small engineering team. Managing a marketing message to several distinct customer bases scatters the brand. Higher customer success costs and churn rates from supporting non-ideal customers. Internally, questions arise about priorities. Having two ICPs creates interference across every department.

Sometimes startups do need to change their ICP after they’ve launched and developed the product. Demand from an unexpected customer is real. If that’s the case, the decision should be deliberate and explicit to focus on that new segment in order to preserve focus on just one segment at the very earliest stages. The hard part is keeping the discipline of focusing on just one ICP, so the business doesn’t bear the hidden costs of non-ideal customers.

We’ve all been there — something goes wrong and you need the service desk to solve the problem so you can get back to work. Despite the effort organizations put into optimizing their service desks, things don’t always go smoothly. Many service desks still face challenges when trying to give customers the best possible experience. That’s why we present these 10 tips to optimize your service desk.

Be visible

Believe it or not, there are organizations where the service desk is nearly invisible and there are websites that only have a contact form with no phone number or email address in sight. We all know how annoying this is. If you need help, you want to be able to get it right away. Don’t fall into this trap. Make sure customers can get into contact with the service desk quickly and easily. Wherever and whenever they want; online and off.

An added bonus of this is that you can get valuable feedback that customers might otherwise have kept to themselves. Be sure to also promote your department properly.

Keep an eye on customer satisfaction

Proper metrics for customer satisfaction are essential. If you want the quality of your services to improve constantly, you need a constant awareness of said quality. So you always know how satisfied your customers are and what the effects of your actions are. Make sure you monitor customer satisfaction on a regular basis and set goals that you can work towards.

And make sure that the entire organization sticks to those goals. You could, for instance, put up a screen displaying information you think is important, like the number of calls and the average customer satisfaction and its development over time.

Standardize your services

It may sound strange, but offering standard services really works. There are obvious benefits to costs, but standardization also makes life easier for the customer and the service desk. Solving problems is no longer dependent on a single employee, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time and there’s time for more important challenges. Customers will also be happy that they know what they can expect from your department.

Embrace self-service

Does the best service always come from another person? Sometimes customers just want to look something up, or they may be looking for information outside office hours. In those cases it’s very convenient to be able to fix things from home, at any time. If it’s possible for online shops, why not for the office? We’ll go even further: if people can find answers to their questions themselves, they’ll be more satisfied. At the same time, a self-reliant customer is a big time-saver for operators. And they in turn can use this time to help a customer with a more complicated question, so in the end, that customer is more satisfied too.

Share your knowledge

As self-service develops, we see that the principle “knowledge is power” is shifting to “sharing knowledge is power”. Because if you share knowledge about optimal service delivery and help each other achieve this, everybody benefits. So it’s not knowledge, it’s know-where: it’s no longer all about knowledge itself, but about knowing where to find that knowledge. A self-service portal is an excellent tool to share knowledge, between departments as well as with customers.

Sharing is caring and sharing is shifting left.

Communicate

We all know of people who were sent from one person to the next by service desk employees. Prevent this from happening at your department by putting in place agreements on when, what and how you deliver your service. This means that it’s perfectly fine for you to tell a customer that you don’t know the answer to a question, as long as you also tell them that you will look into it and indicate when you’ll get back to them. Good communication is important in both reactive and proactive contexts: if a date has been planned for maintenance or a delivery has been delayed, let your customers know what’s going on.

Also don’t forget to communicate improvements that have been implemented after customer feedback. This lets customers know that you really use their input, so they’ll be more likely to keep giving you feedback in the future.

Keep records

Nobody (or almost nobody) likes to constantly record what customers are asking and what agreements are made. But the information is useful for colleagues and customers. After all, work shouldn’t grind to a halt if you’re absent. The accountant will also be happy that you keep an up-to-date record, because if he or she has to account for something, proper records make their job easier. Do make sure that you don’t require too much of your employees, though. Determine in advance what needs to be recorded and stick to that agreement so that the workload for recording doesn’t become too heavy.

Create clear reports

The information that’s recorded can be used to expose and prevent underlying problems of the service desk. A well-organized self-service portal can help with this, because many reports, such as a report about SaaS uptime, can be shared with customers. By sharing this kind of information, your organization becomes more transparent and improvements get more priority. Look at it as a chance to see what’s important in your organization.

If you want some tips on how to get more out of reporting and customer satisfaction metrics in particular, you can read our blog post about this right here.

Keep improving

Even after you’ve taken all of these steps, keep looking for opportunities to improve your services. There’s always room for improvement. An important part of this is to keep up with the times: keep track of what’s happening around you in terms of service delivery and pick up developments that fit within your organization. Accept the role of self-service in today’s society, for example. If you don’t accept such changes, business will soon start to demand you do, or worse: it will pass you by. It’s better to stay ahead of those risks with your organization.

Be human

The tips mentioned above are all useful to improve the quality of your services, but you should never forget the human aspect. Because in the end you’re not trying to please a tool, you’re trying to help people. One of the biggest pitfalls of service desks is that they stop engaging people to look at what’s best for the organization. Avoid this by involving employees and encouraging them to actively contribute to improvements to the department’s services.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

As consumer-facing digital investment products like robo-advisors proliferate and diversify, legacy players are finding more ways to incorporate them into their suite of offerings to remain competitive.

In evidence of this, UK high street bank NatWest and Merrill Edge, a brokerage services subsidiary of US-based investment bank Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), both launched online investment platforms this week, albeit with marked differences.

Here are the solutions' distinguishing features:

• NatWest Invest, set to go live February 20, will be available to both existing and new bank customers. Clients will be able to access the investment account 24/7 using their existing bank login details. The minimum investment is £500 ($628), and customers can choose from five funds with different risk levels, each with a maximum fee of 0.95%. The funds can be held tax-free in a NatWest individual savings account (ISA). In addition, NatWest plans to launch a robo-advisor product targeting the same demographic later this year. Given that NatWest previously offered an investment service only to clients with more than £250,000 ($313,000) to invest, it seems the bank is using technology to make its investment services more widely accessible.
• Merrill Edge Guided Investing, launched Wednesday, is an online advisory service for customers with $5,000 or more to invest. Clients specify their investment goals and give their financial details in a questionnaire. They are then presented with an investment strategy designed by the bank's team of investment experts and offered a range of options for opening and funding the account. Clients can work either via phone or in person with a financial advisor to further personalize the strategy. Fees start at 0.45%, lower than many legacy advisors' fees, which typically begin at 1%. Guided Investing is likely an attempt by Merrill Edge to attract a new demographic of people who are uncomfortable with self-directed investment.

Despite the solutions' differences, they both seem designed to attract new demographics. NatWest has a wide base of high street clients, few of whom have £250,000 at their disposal to invest. As such, its new product's low threshold is likely to draw in many more customers who want to invest but previously couldn't afford to. Merrill Edge also has only historically offered advice to wealthier clients, probably because serving customers with small asset pools wasn't profitable.

Now, however, digitization can cut down on staff and administration costs, allowing firms to cater to a broader demographic. This likely means that independent robo-advisors are about to face even stronger competition from incumbents, as they begin to target the less-wealthy clients whom robo-advisors most appeal to.

As technology continues to change the way people invest, it becomes increasingly clear that we’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs. No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo Advisors: Robo advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Sarah Kocianski, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Fintech investment continues to grow. After landing at $19 billion in total in 2015, global fintech funding had already reached $15 billion by mid-August 2016.
• The areas of fintech attracting media and investor attention are changing. Insurtech, robo advisors, and digital-only banks are only a few of the segments making waves. B2B fintechs are also playing an increasingly prominent role in the ecosystem. 
• It's not all good news for fintechs. Major hurdles, including customer acquisition and profitability, remain. As a result, many are becoming more willing to enter partnerships and adjust their business models. 
• Incumbents are enacting strategies to ensure they remain relevant. Many financial firms have woken up to the threat posed by fintechs and are implementing innovation strategies to stave off disruption. The majority of these strategies involve some interaction with fintech firms. 
• The relationship between incumbents and fintechs continues to evolve. Fintechs are no longer viewed exclusively as a threat, nor can they be ignored. They are increasingly viewed as partners, but that narrative alone is too simple — in reality, a more nuanced connection is taking hold. 

This exclusive report also:

• Assesses the state of the fintech industry. 
• Gives details on the drivers of its growth. 
• Explains which areas of fintech are gaining traction. 
• Outlines the range of current and potential models for fintech and incumbent interaction. 

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

While Facebook may have the highest profile of the current crop of social networking sites, smart marketers know that LinkedIn is an important part of their online marketing strategy. Did you know that LinkedIn’s visitor-to-lead conversion rate is actually 3 times higher than Facebook or Twitter? This infographic from QuickSprout gives the lowdown on LinkedIn’s vital statistics, and provides some handy tips on how to take advantage of the rich variety of tools and features that LinkedIn offers.

First, let’s take a look at the numbers. LinkedIn has:

• 259,000,000 users and 2,100,000 groups
• 184,000,000 unique visitors per month
• 172,000 new signups per day
• 200 conversations in groups and 7610 searches per minute

37.6% of businesses have used the site to build new relationships with customers, and 37.2% have used it to increase their branding presence. It’s actually been shown that 50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from companies that they engage with on the site! So, how do you make sure that you’re grabbing their attention?

1. When: Post your content in the morning, Monday through Friday. This will help you attract the highest number of eyes on your updates.
2. How Often: You can reach 60% of your unique audience by posting 20 status updates per month. Schedule your LinkedIn update into your workday.
3. What: Shape your content to match what people want. 60% of LinkedIn members prefer content related to industry insights. Including a link will double your engagement, and adding an image will net you a nearly 98% higher comment rate. You can expect 75% more shares if your content includes a video.

An important part of LinkedIn is making the right connections. QuickSprout suggests 3 main strategies for tracking down new customers on the site.

1. Use the advanced search feature, and specify the parameters for your target group. LinkedIn actually offers a pretty comprehensive list of criteria, including industry, title, location, years of experience, and many others.
2. Research your immediate network. The perfect customer may actually be just one or two degrees of separation away.
3. Use the Saved Searches feature to receive daily, weekly, or monthly alerts for potential leads.

Traveling alone has its perks: You get to do what you want, when you want, discover new and honest things about the world and yourself, and enjoy an uplifting, mindful traveling experience without someone else’s influences. But after a while, talking to yourself and eating another meal without being able to share…

Read more...

Quark Venture, a venture capital (VC) fund launched in 2016, has followed through with its promise of investing in prominent Vancouver biotech companies. The US$500-million fund — the largest of its kind in Canada — is expected to have a significant impact in the biotech industry both locally and nationwide.

With over two-thirds of academic research funding in Vancouver attributed to the Life Sciences, the city has been the origin for numerous innovative ideas and products in biotechnology. Upon expansion, however, many of these startups move south, leaving the Lower Mainland with a lack of mid- to large-sized biotech companies. While the arrival of Quark Venture brings new opportunities to the biotechnology industry, will its investments help improve the longevity of biotech firms in Vancouver?

Canadian biotech has long been plagued with a lack of capital to assist in the transition of promising startups to more stable, mid-sized companies. Unlike traditional tech companies that may reach mid-market status with seed funding of a couple million dollars, products under the umbrella of biotechnology require extremely expensive and rigorous clinical trials to transition.

Sean Lumb, director of new ventures at e@UBC, says, “when it comes to funding biotech, take a comfortable sponsorship from the tech world and multiply it by 10 — that’s what is often needed to push these products into Phase 2 clinical trials.”

While the Canadian government runs both the Scientific Research and Experimental Development and the Industrial Research Assistance Program initiatives to help soften the financial blow for startups in the first few years, most new companies rely on private funding to keep operations running. Such is the case for biotech companies worldwide. However, more population-dense areas such as the U.S. and the Europe have larger and more numerous VC funds that are more easily accessible.

Some U.S.-based VC companies like Versant do have Canadian offices, but most money lenders prefer to invest locally, leaving Canadian startups in the lurch. Lumb adds that, at present, it’s not possible to raise $40 million of seed funding exclusively in Canada.

The past 12 months, however, have seen a change in accessing capital for Canadian biotech firms. Bluerock Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine-focused company in Toronto, just acquired a $225-million investment from Versant and Bayer, the largest Series A investment in Canadian history.

The arrival of Vancouver-based Quark Venture has also led to subsequent funding of Canadian innovation with interests ranging from small molecules to medical devices. Quark Venture has announced partnerships with Aurora LifeSciences, Methylation Sciences Inc., Sitka Pharmaceuticals and most recently, Microbion Corp.

While the recent increase in financial interest toward Vancouver biotech is encouraging, strengthening the industry in the city isn’t without its challenges. Vancouver has long been a victim of ‘brain drain,’ or the relocation of promising talent to places such as the U.S. and Europe. The reasons are obvious: The cost of living in Vancouver is notoriously high and the wages offered can’t compete with similar companies in Toronto, Montreal or the U.S.

As a result, there is a lack of managers in Vancouver who have successfully taken a drug through Phase 2 clinical trials. That isn’t to say that experienced managers are absent, rather Lumb emphasizes that a “critical number” of managers is needed to stabilize biotech in Vancouver. He goes on to explain that newly successful entrepreneurs are generated through mentorship from previously successful entrepreneurs.

Blair Simonite, program director at e@UBC, adds, “In theory you get experts that have done this (sold a developed company) once or twice before and are able to do it again with naive entrepreneurs, who go on to sell themselves and add to the pool of experienced entrepreneurs.”

It’s a fine balance: A critical number of these mentorships generated at the same time is needed for growth in the biotechnology industry to be maintained.

Vancouver is already seeing an effort in addressing this issue with former employees of Canadian-based biopharmaceutical company QLT Inc. involving themselves in new startups. David Main, president and CEO of Aquinox Pharma, has also been touted for effectively mentoring his employees who have eventually gone on to start their own firms.

For young scientists seeking stable employment in B.C., Lumb suggests one of two paths: Jump into a Vancouver startup or gain expertise from working in a mid-sized company before returning to the city.

The former will open employees to all of the moving parts of a new company. Many startups hire business developers to manage company growth. As most of these new firms use the lean-employment model, employees will have direct access to the wealth of knowledge these developers possess.

Alternatively, working at a mid-sized company — be it in Vancouver or elsewhere in Canada — will provide insight to a business that already works and potentially connect you with mentors within the entire company network.  

It’s still too early to predict what the future holds for biotech in Vancouver, but the generous funding from Quark Venture will certainly act as catalyst for emerging medical innovations. 

Continued success, however, is reliant on keeping both naive and experienced talent in Vancouver and the rest of Canada. Focusing on training business-minded scientists (and science-minded business people) in the skills of resilient company growth is paramount for the effective translation of capital into a larger biotech industry on the West Coast.

Erika Siren is a Ph.D candidate in the Centre for Blood Research at the University of British Columbia. Thanks to Blair Simonite and Dr. Sean Lumb from e@UBC for their helpful insight and commentary.

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As we explored in my last article, The Martian, by Andy Weir, provides a dramatic parallel to some of our most challenging professional situations. We previously talked about empowering our teams and people. In this article, we’ll focus on the remaining two business questions we posed:

How important is our ability to solve problems and depend on our individual skills and strengths? And how critical is our investment not only in our teams but in each individual?

How important is our ability to solve problems and depend on our individual skills and strengths?

The title character in the book, Mark “The Martian” Watney, was well educated and seemingly pretty intelligent (though he hated disco, which defies thinking). And while his education and brains served him well, it was his problem solving ability that saved his life in the end.

He had the confidence to know that whatever was thrown at him, he could manipulate some solution. Like MacGyver, in space.

As professionals, thinking quickly on our feet is often the difference between gaining our clients’ trust and letting them down. Most corporate leaders place a premium on their managers’ and personnel’s ability to not just complete the task at hand, but more importantly, ebb and flow to the dynamic nature of the business environment.

Quick thinking, and being “in the moment” is something you can help your team work on. We use improv comedy as a way to put people in uncomfortable situations and have them practice the art of quick thinking.

How critical is our investment not only in our teams but in each individual?

One key concept The Martian touches on is the value of a single human life.

When you cut through the witty Sol entries, the ingenious problem solving, and the harsh reality of being alone on a different planet, this story is about individuals, teams, organizations, and countries all working towards the goal of saving someone on Mars.

Communications are near impossible, the schedule to supply or save him is laughable, and the technical hurdles are consistently daunting. But through it all, enormous sums of money, sleepless nights (weeks), and bureaucratic/political maneuvering, every last effort is spent to save this individual. His original crew even put themselves in dire straits, all for the opportunity to save his life.

Most of us don’t work in a corporate environment where so much is at stake. However, the story parallel does emphasize for us the criticality of considering how important our investment decisions are for our teams and individuals. Our capital resources, our human resources, and the planning investment we make are all considerations we face regarding our teams and individuals.

As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to take a step back and intentionally consider how our corporate stakeholders, policies, processes, structure — everything about our organizational context — affect our teams and individuals. If we’ve let this evolve over time and haven’t made careful and deliberate decisions about our investment in culture, we risk ineffectiveness and ultimately the loss of customers and personnel.

Ultimately, our titular character (spoiler) makes it home. And his opportunity to survive comes from the three business concepts we’ve explored over these two articles:

Empowering our teams to survive and thrive on their own.

Encouraging and seeking out problem solvers.

Making critical investment decisions about our teams and individuals.

Sol 57 – Houston, I’m coming home.

Creating a social media content calendar can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! With a little bit of foresight and strategic planning, you can create a content calendar that ensures you always have something to post. Read on to learn how you can create a social media content calendar for weeks, months, even a year in advance!

Decide What Networks You’ll Be Posting To

You don’t have to be active on every single social media network out there, just the ones that work for your particular brand or business. Knowing what networks you’ll be on can help you plan content accordingly. For example, Twitter has a poll function, but on Facebook only groups have built in polls.

Decide Post Frequency

How much do you want to post to your social media channels? This question doesn’t come with a clear cut answer as every account differs from the next. Some things to consider when deciding on post frequency:

• How much content do you already have?
• How much content can you handle creating?
• How much time can you dedicate to social media (if this isn’t your only function)
• How is your audience reacting to your current post frequency?

Be honest with yourself about your limitations and remember that quality beats quantity when it comes to social media – so don’t worry about not being able to post often. To keep momentum going and your account from going stagnant post at least 3 times a week.

Identify Main Content Themes

To make your life easier I suggest choosing content themes for your social media content schedule. This way you’ll know what kind of content to post each day, with the flexibility to use different forms of content. To make things simple I advise outlining the main objectives you wish to accomplish with social media, and then create one content theme per day that supports your objectives. For example, someone with a lifestyle blog can write about many different aspects of their life, with the objectives of building up an email list, growing their social channels and driving traffic back to their site. Content themes for them may look like:

• Monday – Blog post with link back to blog
• Tuesday – Post about local happenings
• Wednesday -Share from a related brand
• Thursday – Open
• Friday – Mailing list push
• Saturday – Lifestyle post or quote
• Sunday – Off

This basic plan will give the blogger a foundation where they can make sure they are covering all their objectives, while keeping a constant stream of content being published, which helps your social media presence grow. Remember to keep posts conversational, and try the 80/20 rule. Add value to your followers in 80% of your posts, and push your links (or any other call to action) 20% of the time.

Create A Spreadsheet

One you’ve nailed down your themes for the week it’s time to get organized! Start by creating Start by creating a spreadsheet where you can keep track of your content themes, messaging, links, and images or videos. Include your days of the week (along with themes).

Here is a super simple example with one post a day:

And here is a much more complicated one with multiple networks and posts per day

The point here is to create a sheet that works for your post frequency and needs.

Add Important Brand Related Dates/Initiatives

The first step to filling in your social media content schedule is to take note of important dates related to your brand or business. Make a note of these dates in your calendar spreadsheet. These can include:

• Milestones like anniversaries
• Recurring events like an annual conference
• Product features or launches
• Other upcoming initiatives you already have dates for and what to promote on social media
• Any social media related contests

Add Events/Holidays

This next part of creating a social media content schedule is kind of fun. There are holidays for practically every day of the year! These can be playful like National Pizza Day or real ones like Memorial Day. Make sure to mark off fun holidays that relate back to your brand, any cause awareness day (like WearRedDay for women’s heart health), and any real national or international holidays. Most of the time these will have hashtags you can use. Taking part is posting about these days can bring visibility to your brand, while giving you a chance to show some personality to your audience.

Sign up to my resource library for my free Hashtag Holiday 2017 calendar and more here!

Detail Individual Posts

Remember the themes you outlined earlier? Take a look at them and pick which ones you can schedule ahead of time. In the previous example I included lifestyle posts and quotes on Saturdays. These themes are great because you can gather and create a bunch of quote images and have them ready to go for weeks (or months) in advance. Reposts from other brands can also be scheduled ahead of time.

Remember to work in days to promote your pre-set recurring events, milestones and other initiatives to fill in content days as well.

Create A Content Bank

Now you’re ready to create a content bank for your social media posts. This includes all the images or videos you can create ahead of time along with captions for everything. Go ahead and pop what you can into your spreadsheet.

Get To Scheduling

You can now go ahead and use your favorite scheduling tools to schedule your posts my favorites are Hootsuite or Agorapulse. Keep in mind that you should constantly check your peak times and adjusts your posts accordingly.

Content planning can be such a time consuming task, but with the tips I’ve listed in this post you can get a bulk of it out of the way – leaving time to concentrate on creating killer social media campaigns, or community management. Creating you social media content calendar and scheduling posts out can also give you time to think about the initiatives you have coming up and how you can get the most of them without being frantic about other day to day posts.

As always leave any questions for me in a comment below

This article was originally published here.

Just because something does not post Wall Street growth, it does not mean that it is dying or no longer relevant.

This may seem obvious, but it doesn't look so obvious if you study the current marketplace and business climate. In fact, if you take a pure Wall Street perspective of things, we will wind up being in a place where it will be hard for all businesses to succeed. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. Put Wall Street aside. Put your brand's performance aside. Don't think about your quarterly earnings. Just stop and think about what the business of Wall Street preaches: each and every quarter we want your business to tell us how much you grew and how much more money you have made. That's it. Each and every quarter. Without fail. We take this as the only acceptable metric, but think about your life for one second in relation to this model. What if I told you that each and every quarter, you had to report to the world how much more money you made, how much weight you lost, how much better your mental wellness is, how much stronger you have become, how much better looking you are, etc... How would you perform? Could you do this? Could you improve (without fail) each and every quarter... repeatedly... forever. There are no margins for error. There are no moments in time, when you can adjust the business model, change things up and/or try something new. If you do, you will be punished by the markets. 

It's a tough place to be. This is where we are.

Twitter is having a rough go. There are a myriad of reasons why this is happening. There are a myriad of armchair quarterbacks who will tell you where Twitter veered off course. Many people will call for those in power at Twitter to give up their positions. The media and markets are claiming that Twitter is no longer a growth story. If you dig in, you will see that shares have dropped more than 10% as ad revenue fell by 7%. With that, its monthly user base increased 4% to 319 million, and daily users were up 11%. Still the money is not following (this is the headline), as revenue grew only 1%.

There is a business philosophy and new way of thinking that needs to be discussed.

Close to 320 million people use this platform. There is still - without a doubt - many people who know, like and use it. There is still - without a doubt - many people who might still join or use it for different reasons (Facebook is getting close to 2 billion users, so the market is open). There is still -without a doubt - things that Twitter can do (more than text, different marketing solutions, premium services, data and analytics plays, etc...). If you abide by the Wall Street world (massive growth, multiples and huge ad revenue), it looks like Twitter is in a death spiral. If you abide by a different philosophy (large media platform, strong user base, strong technology, a part of our cultural fabric, etc...), it's a relevant business that is not growing at the speed of Wall Street's expectations. And, that's the thing. Is Wall Street metrics everything? Think about your brand... think about your personal brand. Do you gauge each and every quarter by how much growth there was (money only), or do you also measure and value things like relevance, what your customers are doing with your products/services, etc...

It's not perfect. It's business. It's not just Twitter.

It would be easy to confuse this post as being about Twitter's performance, instead of the real focus: how do you define business success. Is success growth or relevance for a brand... for your business today. I think of relevance online all of the time. I think of quality brands like Quora, Pocket, Quartz, Medium and many more. Are they - quarter by quarter - driving massive growth or chipping away at relevance and a solid business model (for today and tomorrow). It's easy to say, "well, you can't compare a private company to a public one," or that "you can't compare a company that was expected to be huge, against ones that are taking a much more conservative approach." Are all fair and well-worth debating, but there is still a business philosophy that often gets clouded: being relevant is (and should be) as valued as growth in business today. Could you argue that the more relevant a brand is, the more growth they should experience? Yes, one could... but at what multiple and scale?

If you had to choose... what would you choose?... growth or relevance? 

Tags: ad revenue advertising advertising agency analytics brand brand performance business blog business climate business culture business model business philosophy business success culture data digital marketing digital marketing agency digital marketing blog facebook focus growth j walter thompson jwt marketing marketing agency marketing blog marketing solution marketplace media media platform medium mirum mirum agency mirum agency blog mirum blog mirum canada mirum in canada mitch joel mitchjoel personal brand pocket private company public company public market quartz quora relevance six pixels of separation success technology twitter user base Wall Street wpp

Sales and customer service reps face similar challenges. After all, the modern buyer is also the modern customer: Self-reliant, sophisticated, and eager to do her own research.

According to a 2016 HubSpot Research report, more than half of salespeople say buyers have become more independent in the past few years. 

Meanwhile, CEB found almost 58% of customers who call support try to first resolve their problem by themselves. 

One of the unexpected consequences of the similarities between sales and support? A sales rep can take inspiration from the most effective lines in a support rep’s arsenal. If you’re a salesperson, borrow the following five phrases.

1) “That sounds challenging.”

A customer typically contacts the support team when she has an issue or hard-to-answer question. By the time a rep picks up the phone or responds to her message, she’s probably frustrated.

If the rep treats the customer’s problem like it’s minor, her frustration will increase. But if he empathizes with her situation, she’ll feel validated -- which will improve her overall experience, not to mention make her more patient.

Along similar lines, prospects are usually sharing sensitive or private information about their business, priorities, and personal goals with salespeople. Showing empathy humanizes the interaction, boosts their trust in you, and positions you well to share advice.

Let’s suppose the buyer says, “The CEO has asked my team to double our output while maintaining or decreasing the current percentage of defects.”

You could reply, “That sounds challenging. What’s your plan for accomplishing that?”

In a mere three words, you show your prospect you’re on their side. They’ll feel comfortable enough to keep opening up.

2) “[Repeat question]. That’s an excellent question, I just made a note and will follow up [by X time].”

Support reps are trained never to say, “I don’t know.” After all, it doesn’t benefit the customer to hear about the rep's lack of knowledge. This response is unproductive and often irritating.

Instead of saying they don't know, great reps repeat the question and commit to resolving it as soon as possible. Salespeople should use a similar reply when faced with tricky questions.

For example, you might say, “Does our portal offer two-factor authentication? Excellent question. I’m going to check in with our product team and shoot you the answer by tomorrow morning.”

Because you’ve offered a clear plan of action and a deadline, the prospect will feel grateful rather than annoyed. You’ll also maintain your status as trusted advisor -- despite being in the dark.

3) “We’ll be offering [that product, service, feature, function, etc.] in [the future, X period of time, when Y happens]. I’ll make a note in your file that you’re interested.”

When the customer requests an unavailable item or feature, the support rep doesn’t use negative language. Phrases like, “That’s not currently in stock,” or “I can’t get that for you” are conversational dead-ends.

For that reason, reps usually flip their statements to sound positive. One might say, “We’ll be restocking that product in two months,” or “I’d be happy to get you that feature as soon as it’s out of beta.”

The same concept applies in sales. When your prospect asks for something you can’t provide at the moment, don’t shut them down.

Instead, give them a timeline for when you’ll be able to grant their request, offer a different way to achieve the same goal, or explain why their ask may be unnecessary.

Take a look at this sample dialogue:

Buyer: “Can you deliver shipments in two weeks?”

Rep: “We use a single manufacturer, which means our shipments occasionally take 12 days. The difference in quality makes up for that, however -- none of our customers have returned a unit in the past 20 years.”

4) “That’s a great question. So I can give you the most accurate answer, would you mind answering a few quick questions first?”

Support reps try to identify the “why” behind every customer’s inquiry. They want to address the customer’s ultimate objective or complaint rather than simply treating the symptoms. It might mean a longer call now, but the customer won’t need to call again in the future.

To get to the heart of the matter, reps have to probe. Similarly, salespeople shouldn’t prescribe a solution before understanding their prospects’ situations, desires, and needs.

Next time the buyer immediately wants to get down to brass tacks, say something along the lines of, “We can definitely talk about [pricing, that function, etc.] So I can provide you the best recommendation, would you mind giving me some context into [topic] first?”

5) “You’re not the first person with this question.”

It’s usually not enjoyable for customers to admit they can’t figure out an issue or find the information they need. With this simple statement, a support rep can restore the customer’s pride and ease their sense of helplessness.

Salespeople can borrow this line to help prospects feel better about their obstacles and challenges. For example, imagine the buyer says, “Our customer satisfaction rate was abysmal this quarter.” You’d reply, “I’ve worked with a lot of companies that describe the same thing. Zeron, who sells to a similar market, said … ”

As an added benefit, this type of statement gives you more credibility. Your prospect implicitly trusts you more when they know you’ve helped other companies in their space.

Use these five statements during your sales calls, and your prospects will respond favorably.

Amidst the frenzy of courting new customers, it’s easy to forget about the loyal customers you’ve already won over. In business, as in love, the old adage is true: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Most sources estimate that it costs between four and ten times as much to attract new customers as it does to keep existing ones. Plus, loyal customers spend more than new ones.

As Fred Reichheld writes in a report for Bain, “Across a wide range of businesses, customers generate increasing profits each year they stay with a company. In financial services, for example, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit. Why? Return customers tend to buy more from a company over time. As they do, your operating costs to serve them decline. What’s more, return customers refer others to your company. And they’ll often pay a premium to continue to do business with you rather than switch to a competitor with whom they’re neither familiar nor comfortable.”

If loyalty, like old friends, is gold, then what’s a great way to maintain loyalty? Customer appreciation.

Today’s consumer is a finicky creature. Influenced by social trends and empowered by technology and new channels (such as social media), buyers are better informed, less patient, and more demanding than ever before. High customer service standards established by one company influence the level of service consumers expect from all. The same holds true for customer appreciation. Consumers today see right through gimmicky marketing attempts to flatter them. Instead, they want true expressions of your gratitude.

So, what’s the best way to show customers what they mean to your business? Loyalty programs are a good start, and these exist in many forms. From a punch card from the local coffee shop to Thank You coupons from major retailers, an offer for return customers goods and services at a discount keeps them coming back. Events are another popular way for bricks and mortar businesses to thank customers for their patronage. These can be simple or lavish, depending on the brand.

Memberships and credit cards can lock in customers who value the perks associated with certain programs. Whether it’s free in-flight WiFi or fifteen percent savings on snacks from airlines like Virgin America, or special members-only sale event hours that gives customers the run of Nordstrom’s, there’s no doubt membership has its privileges.
The only problem with these perks is how universal they are and how easily they can be duplicated (read: one-upped). As customers get increasingly savvy about chasing the best deals, loyalty programs are under constant scrutiny. Sure, if you’ve built up 500,000 miles on one airline you’re likely to keep flying them, but a coffee punch card only works until the café down the street comes up with something better.

One way companies can maintain a more proprietary relationship with their customers is by opening the channels of communication to encourage feedback. It’s a simple truth that customers who feel heard feel appreciated. Even better than finding multiple ways to solicit feedback is actually using that feedback to make changes. Smart companies understand the feedback is a gift from their customers, especially the ones who have been with them for the long haul. Whether it’s asking about a recent experience with a product or service, or requesting information about what changes they’d suggest to improve the customer experience, soliciting and then acting upon customer feedback is a powerful relationship-builder.

Despite these, and other tactics, keeping customer relationships real increasingly demands that companies do more. These days, customers yearn for more than membership discounts or rewards points. They’re seeking out more authentic experiences from their brand relationships. This new reality is partly a function of the Millennial mindset. Millennials as a cohort approach brands in a very different way than do Boomers and Gen Xers. Personal attention is high on their list, and if a company can find a way to show that they “get” them, so much the better.

Translation? Companies that are creating lasting relationships with their customers–and nailing the appreciation game–are to offer them experiences and opportunities that reflect strong values. They’re creating a connection that goes beyond the product or service they’re selling. Frequently, they offer customers a shortcut to a lifestyle or value system they seek but can’t or won’t attain on their own. This form of customer connection is powerful. It’s not simple to create, it’s hard for competitors to replicate, and, it’s not something customers walk away from easily.

Patagonia sets the standard when it comes to tapping into a strong understanding of its customer values. Introduced in 2011, Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative allows customers to reduce their environmental footprint by participating in a program that supports repairing reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling Patagonia clothing. In the process, the company allows its customers to join them in reimagining “a world where we take only what the planet can replace.”

What works so well about Patagonia’s approach to customer appreciation is its strong values, point of view, and belief that its customers share that vision.

Chiaki Nishino, senior partner of the branding consultancy Prophet, has advice for companies who want to invest in their existing customers, and keep them for the long haul:

“First, stop thinking ‘programs.’ Think experiences instead,” advises Nishino. “That will help you with the second imperative: go beyond the transaction to find the emotional hook with your customers.” Nishino echoes a fact about today’s consumer: “Customers want to be recognized, not necessarily rewarded.” He goes on to make a case for ensuring that a company’s loyalty approach is “tied to the brand“ noting that “Too many are not positioned or communicated in a way that aligns with the brand and its positioning, blunting their effectiveness.”

“Fourth, while there are business frameworks for loyalty programs, don’t let their use confine your thinking as to how yours should be designed. Innovate! Get as much feedback from customers and practices of other businesses that are setting new standards. Learn what people think about what drives loyalty, and use those findings to help guide new ways to engage with customers’ hearts and minds. And look outside of your category to get these ideas.”

While looking outside of one’s category may lead to some unintuitive match-ups, the most relevant alignment from a company’s perspective is with their customers’ values. Truly understanding their customers and where they’re coming from increases the likelihood that a company can tap into a movement or rallying cry that attracts a loyal following. But that’s not all – those core beliefs need to be an authentic part of the company’s mission and business model, if it’s going to resonate with consumers.

Clif Bar is another example of a company that successfully taps into the core passions of their customers. The energy bar company does more than sell energy bars—it builds communities of like-minded athletes who share a passion for outdoor adventures. No matter where on the continuum their customers sit (from nationally recognized ultra-runners to weekend warriors) they find a place in the Clif Bar community. With programs for pace runners, nationwide events, and athlete sponsorships, Clif puts its money where its mouth is. Their corporate brand values are reflected in the high bar they set for responsible sourcing, fair trade and sustainability. Most importantly, those messages are communicated quietly, not as a marketing gimmick, but as a core company philosophy that their customers can feel good about supporting.

Of the many options available to companies to thank customers for their loyalty, the most powerful ones sidestep the quid pro quo dance (purchase/reward) and deliver an experience rooted in shared values. In this way, customer appreciation ceases to be transactional and becomes something far richer. Companies win by attracting and retaining customers who can’t get the same experience anywhere else, and consumers win by finding a community or movement that speaks to them as people, not just customers.

Learn how embracing conscious consumerism can lead to loyal customers

Oil and water. Fire and ice. Cats and dogs.

Too often, companies’ sales and marketing teams have a complex, disconnected, and sometimes even contentious relationship.

On one hand, both sides realize that they need to work together in order to meet overarching company goals. On the other hand, many sales and marketing teams can hardly find a way to communicate with one another, let alone work together. In fact, fewer than one in ten companies say they have tight alignment between sales and marketing, according to Forrester.

Alignment seems to be the shimmering prize that’s seemingly right on the horizon but somehow always a bit out of reach. Yet, it is indeed possible to attain this elusive harmony between the two departments ‒ and the benefits it provides are substantial. That’s why sales and marketing alignment is such a hot topic.

The numbers tell the story:

• B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and 27% faster three-year profit growth, according to SiriusDecisions.

• Highly aligned organizations achieved an average of 32% year-over-year revenue growth – while their less aligned competitors saw a 7% decrease in revenue, according to an Aberdeen Group study.

• Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoyed 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates, according to MarketingProfs.

• Companies with “dynamic, adaptable sales and marketing processes” reported an average of 10% more sales people on-quota compared to other companies, according to CSO Insights.

True alignment involves many things: shared goals, common milestones and metrics, smooth business processes, and smart technology investments. But, first and foremost, alignment is about one primary thing: communication. If sales and marketing can’t learn how to work together as a single team, speak the same language, and exchange information freely, then all the technology in the world won’t make a difference.

It’s clear that investing time and energy toward the goal of making sales and marketing mesh is a move that can potentially yield huge dividends. Let’s take a look at the seven essential foundational steps that will help move your teams toward the ultimate goal of working together smoothly, productively … and lucratively.

Step 1: Get your buyer profiles on the same page

Prospect and buyer profiles can be a tricky business. Chances are, your sales and marketing teams each have an established view of their “ideal” prospects, and a lot of their daily activities reflect that vision.

Here’s the problem: Marketing and sales teams often use radically different prospect profiles – and they may not even know it.

The first step towards solving this mismatch problem is to get your sales and marketing leaders together to compare their prospect profiles, focusing on where they overlap and where they don’t. At the same time, you should compare both sets of current profiles against what you know – based on intelligence gathered from your marketing automation, CRM, and sales systems – about your best (and worst) customers. What traits really define a long-term or exceptionally profitable relationship? Which ones could serve as a warning that some prospects might consistently present challenges?

Armed with this knowledge, you can proceed to build a single, mutually acceptable set of prospect profiles. In the process, you’ll build an important bridge between your sales and marketing teams that will facilitate better communication and cooperation and go a long way toward resolving entrenched conflict.

Step 2: Develop an integrated messaging strategy

Content is another area where your sales and marketing teams may not be on the same page (no pun intended!). Different groups may rely upon different and often mutually exclusive sets of content assets. Some of these assets may be quite valuable, but others might be outdated and in need of a refresh.

A comprehensive content audit – figuring out what you’ve got, how it’s used, and where to find it – can help to correct this problem. In the process, it’s likely that you’ll discover “lost” assets that could be valuable to other parts of your sales and marketing organization. It’s also likely that you’ll discover gaps where your existing content isn’t suitable for certain nurturing campaigns, buying stages, or prospect profiles.

Take the time to review current best practices for creating and sharing content. According to the DemandGen Report “Content Preferences Survey,” for example, 75% of respondents said that B2B marketers were too heavy-handed with the sales messaging in their content.

That should be a powerful incentive to make sure that your sales and marketing content strategies are aligned and integrated.

Step 3: Agree on common metrics and definitions

Ask your sales and marketing teams – separately – how they answer the following questions:

• How do they define a qualified lead?
• What rules do they follow for discarding or disqualifying leads?
• What demographic or behavioral traits do they associate with qualified leads?
• How do they define the various stages for managing leads?

Many executives are surprised to discover that their sales and marketing teams answer these questions in very different ways. As a result, the two sides speak different languages, even when dealing with critical concepts like “sales-ready” leads.

The process of handing off a lead from marketing to sales is critical to both sides. It’s the point where the marketing team proves its value and where the sales team gets the raw material for closed deals. So why do so many companies stumble over how they define a sales-ready lead? That’s usually the underlying problem when marketing complains that its leads vanish into a black hole – or when sales reps complain that the leads they get from marketing are a waste of their time.

Perfecting the “hand-off” stage is one of the most important things you’ll accomplish with a successful sales and marketing alignment initiative. Look at your metrics and pipeline data: What criteria do the best job of defining qualified leads? Then document your criteria in a formal definition, get sign-off on the results, and follow up with a solid Service Level Agreement (SLA).

It’s important to troubleshoot if you are experiencing difficulty in this stage. It could be, for instance, that solving the problem is simply a matter of agreeing upon a set of shared definitions. In other cases, prospect data from a marketing automation system can help you identify the most important metrics for tracking and analyzing your company’s sales and marketing performance.

Step 4: Establish SLAS

The Service Level Agreement isn’t just for technology providers. In fact, SLAs are an important way to define the relationship between your sales and marketing organizations and to hold both sides accountable for their commitments.

The idea is straightforward: Begin with a set of agreed-upon performance metrics, such as those identified in Step 3. Then set a series of targets such as:

• the number of sales-ready leads to be delivered by the marketing team;
• the minimum amount of information to be collected before a qualified lead is passed to sales;
• the maximum time for a sales rep to follow up on a qualified lead; and
• a timeframe for providing feedback to marketing on lead quality, especially regarding rejected leads.

Create separate SLAs for your sales and marketing teams, with each group making specific commitments to agreed-upon monthly or quarterly goals. The SLA you create will reflect your organization’s unique needs. Just remember that an SLA should be clear and simple; the goal is to encourage collaboration and maintain accountability, not to add a layer of bureaucracy to your business.

Step 5: Create a clear process for handing off leads

When you establish sales and marketing SLAs, you’ll also want to establish a process for handing off leads to sales, and also for sales to establish a closed-loop reporting relationship with marketing. Focus on questions such as:

• Who receives leads from marketing?
• Will there be a single point of contact, or will leads go directly to individual sales reps?
• How will the sales team report rejected leads back to marketing?
• Which team members will serve as points of contact for questions or concerns about the lead process?

Step 6: Create a shared pipeline

There’s a big issue here that we haven’t yet tackled: Many sales and marketing organizations treat their pipelines as separate processes. Leads get passed from marketing, and sales pursues those leads, but neither side really has much insight into how the other side gets things done.

Many of the steps that we described above – common definitions, shared metrics, SLAs – are far more useful when your company treats its sales and marketing pipeline as a single, continuous process. Both teams will still have distinct responsibilities, from prospecting and qualifying at the top of the funnel to closing and maintaining relationships at the bottom, but with a single pipeline they’ll also understand how each stage in the process works and why each is important to the business.

Marketing automation technology can help you accomplish this goal by giving your sales and marketing teams greater visibility into how prospects and leads move through the pipeline.

Step 7: Follow up, review, and refine your efforts

Alignment is a lifetime process for any organization. You’ll need to follow up on initiatives, track progress, create accountability, and ensure continuous improvement. With an emphasis on shared performance metrics and SLAs, your sales and marketing teams will have plenty of feedback on their efforts, as well as a lot of motivation to build upon their progress.

Start the review process by analyzing your teams’ performances against their SLAs – including average lead follow-up times and the number of qualified leads passed from marketing to sales. You should also review conversion rates at key stages in your pipeline, since these are an excellent way to gauge the effectiveness of an alignment initiative. Finally, a regular analysis of major customer wins and losses can indicate where to concentrate your future sales and marketing alignment efforts.

With an emphasis on shared performance metrics and SLAs, your sales and marketing teams will have plenty of feedback on their efforts – and a lot of motivation to build upon their progress.

And when both sides start to work together in two-part harmony, everybody benefits.

“Whoever owns your attribution model owns your budget” – Lars Hirsch, principal product manager, sponsored products, Amazon

In marketing, “attribution” refers to a set of user actions that contributes to a desired outcome, (i.e., a conversion) and assigning a value to each of these events. It helps you understand which combination of events in which particular order influences people to engage in a desired behavior. It proves your content is working. It helps marketing align with sales, determines your budget, and can improve your content quality.

But what does marketing attribution have to do with content marketing? Marketing attribution is integral to the success of content marketing because the vast majority of touchpoints (instances where potential customers interact with your brand in some way) happen online. They occur when someone reads your blog post, e-book, or infographic, or watches your video. Marketing attribution models enable content marketers to more accurately understand how their content is influencing buyers, and to get full credit for their work.

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#Marketing attribution models enable content marketers to get full credit for their work. @tweetsfrompawan
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However, marketing attribution is a topic of lively debate among marketers. Do you give credit to the content that initially generated a lead? Do you give credit to the content the lead responded to before the lead became an opportunity? Or do you give credit to the content that influenced the lead right before a deal was won?

Another way of thinking about the debate is to ask yourself who gets credit for your college diploma? Some of the options:

• Your kindergarten teacher
• Your high-school teacher
• Your college professor

You might answer that they all deserve credit in one respect or another, which is true but not particularly helpful. Should they all get the same credit? Should the credit you assign your teachers be the same as the credit someone else assigns their teachers? Similar questions plague many marketers when figuring out their marketing attribution strategy.

According to Bizible, 74.6% of marketers have an attribution model. Of those, 55.2% use a single-touch model, and 72.4% chose a model because it’s the easiest option or they didn’t know why they chose it.

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74.6% of marketers have an attribution model according to @BizableInc via @tweetsfrompawan.
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This article offers a better idea of what marketing attribution is, the kinds of marketing attribution that exist, which model is best, and tools that can help with marketing attribution.

What is marketing attribution?

The roots of marketing attribution can be traced to an attribution theory developed by Fritz Heider. The rise of the digital age has enabled a significant increase in marketing attribution. As digital marketing became more popular, marketers began tracking their success using metrics such as page views, click-through rates, and more. As technology advances, marketing attribution models have become increasingly varied, complex, and accurate. Econsultancy defines marketing attribution:

Marketing attribution is the practice of determining the role that any given channel plays in informing and influencing the customer journey.

Assigning attribution is tricky and one of the more philosophically contested areas of marketing. To understand the models, let’s consider this example of a buyer’s journey:

Marketing attribution considers all the touches a customer has with marketing before buying. The models can be separated into two overarching types: single touch and multi touch. Single-touch models give all the credit to an individual instance. They are simpler to implement but less accurate. Multi-touch models divvy the credit among several instances. These are typically more accurate, but also more complicated to implement. Here are some of the most popular kinds of attribution models, along with their pros and cons.

Single-touch attribution models

Single-touch attribution models are best for smaller companies with simpler marketing and sales systems. If your sales cycle is shorter (or you don’t have a sales team), you have a smaller budget, or you only use one or two marketing channels, then a single-touch attribution model might be the better option.

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Single-touch attribution models are best for smaller companies w/ short sales cycles, says @tweetsfrompawan.
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First touch

In first-touch attribution, all credit for a lead is given to the first touch taken by a lead. For example, if a lead is initially generated after filling out a form to download an e-book, that e-book gets complete credit for the sale.

Pro: Easy to implement

Con: Doesn’t account for further interactions by the buyer

When to use it: Extremely short sales cycle with typically single customer interaction; gauge for sources generating or driving leads

Last touch

In this last-touch attribution example, all credit for the sale goes to the webinar.

Pros: Easy to implement

Cons: Does not account for any prior interactions; can’t reveal content or channels generating leads or interest

When to use it: Evaluate how bottom-of-the-funnel content influences decision

Less common single-touch models

In a lead-conversion model, all attribution goes to the content that converted the lead. The last non-direct touch model ignores direct traffic to content when attributing last touch.

Multi-touch attribution models

Multi-touch attribution models are best suited for companies that leverage three or more marketing channels, have a longer sales cycle, or have a bigger marketing budget. If you use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that allows you to automate multi-touch attribution, it’s probably the best choice.

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Multi-touch attribution models are best suited for companies with 3+ marketing channels, says @tweetsfrompawan.
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Linear attribution model

Linear attribution gives credit to all interactions and touchpoints of a buyer throughout the sales cycle. In this example, an e-book, newsletter, badge scan at the trade show, and a webinar all receive equal credit for the sale.

Pro: Effectively captures all interactions

Con: Complex and trickier to implement because it requires advanced campaign tracking set-up (manual or automated); harder to analyze because it’s not easy to understand exactly what should get credit for a sale

When to use it: Ideal for extended sales processes with many buyer interactions; usually associated with a research process undertaken by a buyer (considered purchases)

Weighted model

Rather than giving equal credit to all interactions, a marketer can assign weights to different interactions. In the example, the marketer has given greater credit to the first touch and last touch, and less credit to the intermediary touchpoints.

Pro: Captures all interactions but proportionately values attributions

Cons: Challenging to properly value each touch; complex to implement; requires custom software development; could mislead if touches improperly weighted; harder to interpret results because it provides fractional results, not whole numbers

When to use it: Extended sales process; need to capture elements of first- and last-touch modeling as well.

Less common multi-touch models

Time decay is a weighted model that gives less attribution based on time away from purchase.

A weighted multi-touch model, U-shaped/position-based gives lead conversion more credit than other steps. The W-shaped/position-based model gives more credit to first touch, lead conversion, and opportunity creation.

Account-based attribution

How are marketers supposed to use marketing attribution when multiple leads came from a single account? Account-based attribution attempts to answer this question. If multiple leads at a company are consuming content, their interactions with content are counted toward the sale. Varying weight is attributed to each touch depending on the role a lead played in the purchase.

Which model is best?

The ideal model mainly depends on your sales cycle. More accurate attribution models are more difficult to execute. However, as the technology advances, a clear winner in attribution-model efficacy is emerging. Algorithmic attribution models are rated most effective by marketers. These models use machine learning and other artificial intelligence to compute the probability of conversion across marketing touchpoints.

The most accurate (and complicated) model is not necessarily the best fit for everybody. For instance, organizations with a short sales cycle won’t benefit from the increased accuracy of algorithmic attribution – a one-touch model suffices. For those who prioritize the accuracy of the model – and are willing to spend – algorithmic attribution may be the right choice.

Measuring attribution for content marketing

For all its benefits, there is one major drawback to marketing attribution. It’s difficult to measure all content-consumption touchpoints, most notably content that is viewed before someone fills out a form for gated content and becomes a lead.

We now have the world’s consumer information at our fingertips. This is why there is now a consensus among many analyst firms that the majority of a prospective buyer’s decision-making process – perhaps 70% – happens before they ever fill out their first form or speak to a salesperson.

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A Prospective buyer’s decision-making process starts B4 they fill out form or speak to sales. @tweetsfrompawan
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The most popular means for tracking customers during the sales cycle in B2B companies is via the CRM, typically using Salesforce campaign influence tracking. But this method only measures touchpoints after someone fills out a form and becomes a lead, which only happens after the majority of the buyer journey has been completed. Certainly the vast majority of content that marketers produce and readers consume is ungated, and therefore, unmeasured.

While measuring and awarding attribution across multiple content formats and channels is challenging, it is now possible with various emerging technologies. But to summarize, a one-touch attribution model will suit most businesses with a short sales cycle. Businesses that sell to enterprise and those with longer sales cycles will find that a multi-touch attribution model better suits their needs. And all content marketers should prioritize technology that allows them to track the ungated content that makes up the majority of today’s buyer journey.

Want a daily or weekly touchpoint to expand your content marketing skills? Subscribe to the free CMI newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Editor’s note: We appreciate Curata’s support of Content Marketing Institute as a paid benefactor. This article was reviewed and edited independently to ensure it adheres to the same editorial guidelines as all non-sponsored blog posts.

The post Understand How Content is Influencing Buyers: A Primer on Attribution Models appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Would your B2B sales organization benefit from an account-based marketing strategy?

Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on marketing at the account level rather than just the lead level. But in reality, it’s about much more than just marketing.

ABM gets your sales, marketing, and customer success teams all on the same page by focusing them on the acquisition and retention of best-fit accounts and turning them into advocates for your brand.

At Terminus, we try to “drink our own champagne” with ABM, and it’s helped contribute to our phenomenal growth. Wondering if ABM would benefit your B2B sales team? There are seven signs to look for:

1. Your sales team hates marketing lead lists.
2. Your marketing team is currently nurturing one (maybe two) contacts per account.
3. Your marketing team’s primary goal is generating leads, not pipeline
4. Your marketing team runs campaigns without input from sales
5. Your company is using email as its primary marketing channel
6. Your marketing team creates content that your sales team can’t use
7. Your content and campaigns are not aligned with the stages of the buyer’s journey

Let’s take an in-depth look at seven tell-tale signs it’s time to get started with account-based marketing.

Sign #1: Your sales team hates marketing lead lists.

If your sales team is like mine, they hate having to sift through lists of countless leads from their marketing team because the percentage of leads that are actually qualified is really low. They feel they can find better accounts faster by doing their own prospecting rather than having to disqualify a large portion of every marketing list.

In part, this is because the definition of a marketing qualified lead (MQL) is still insufficient for many B2B organizations. There are two primary reasons this is true.

First, the quality of the account is more important than the activity of one individual.

Many times, the quality of the MQL is based on the activity and title of an individual instead of the quality of the account the individual comes from. As a sales leader, when I train new sales hires on how to maximize their outbound prospecting efforts, I train them to find accounts that meet our ICP (ideal customer profile) and pursue only those.

Based on our research, we know that the accounts that meet our ICP are much more likely to buy our product and to do so at a higher price point. These accounts in our ICP are the most efficient for the sales team to invest time in. We want our definition of what an MQL is to reflect the quality of account.

For example: a marketing coordinator at one of our best-fit accounts who had low activity on our website would be of higher value than a VP of Marketing at a low-fit account with a lot of activity. We may engage with both eventually — there can certainly be exceptions to the ICP — but our sales team would prioritize the high-value account.

Secondly, one individual cannot make a B2B purchase decision.

MQLs can also be deceiving because they focus on one individual. According to Gartner, it takes five to seven stakeholders to make a buying decision, and in large companies, it could take ten or more.

The activity of one individual in an account does not qualify that an account is sales-ready. When a salesperson receives a lead, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to engage multiple individuals in the account.

So many sales professionals would prefer to find and break into their own best-fit accounts than to do the same amount of work to pursue a mediocre marketing MQL. These actually require more work from the sales person.

I recommend instead a focus on MQAs (marketing qualified accounts) instead of MQLs because an MQA requires that multiple contacts be engaged in an account. At many companies, MQLs can actually slow the sales team down.

#1: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

Account-based marketing resolves both of the above challenges with lead generation. It requires that marketing works with sales to create either a named account list or very clear ICP that defines what a best-fit account looks like.

This alignment gets both teams on the same page about the accounts that your organization wants to target and how to best reach and attract those accounts. When both teams are working towards the same goal, rules around the lead or account qualification will reflect that purpose and will take into account quality of account and number of engaged contacts.

As mentioned above, an MQA is a marketing qualified account, and it’s central to account-based marketing. Instead of scoring one lead, this model includes scoring the value of an account. A high-value account would require less engagement to become an MQA than a lower value account.

Sign #2: Your marketing team is currently nurturing one (maybe two) contacts per account.

If your marketing team is only nurturing one or two contacts per account, they’re missing a huge opportunity to accelerate pipeline. As a result, your sales team has to do the legwork to identify and then win over the rest of the decision-makers at every account they’re working.

#2: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

“But wait!” you might say. “How can I nurture contacts I don’t have in my database?” Simple. You can use account-based marketing technology like Terminus to expand your reach within accounts to contacts that are not in your database.

In other words, if a curious intern at a target account attended your webinar, you can use ABM tools to automatically reach other contacts at that account. As a result, you can get your solution in front of the entire buying committee instead of one or two individuals.

This means:

• Your marketing team has already generated brand awareness across the account by the time your sales team reaches out to prospective buyers.
• Your company will stay top-of-mind as the account progresses through the buying cycle.

Sign #3: Your marketing team’s primary goal is generating leads, not pipeline.

According to a 2015 BrightTALK survey, 53% of marketers spend at least half their budget on lead generation. The problem is, less than 1% of B2B leads turn into customers (Forrester). That’s a huge chunk of your company’s marketing budget down the drain.

#3: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

When you adopt ABM, your marketing team will shift their focus to pipeline rather than lead generation. As sales leaders know all too well, a lead is only useful if it turns from a prospect into an opportunity — and eventually into a happy customer.

When shifting the focus from volume-based marketing to a targeted approach, it’s important to measure account progression instead of lead generation. In other words, how many of your target accounts are progressing from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the next, and how quickly is this transition happening?

With a good ABM strategy, both of these metrics should increase. Your sales team cares about account quality and win rates, so it’s time to get marketing onboard too.

Sign #4: Your marketing team runs campaigns without input from sales.

Prospective customers don’t distinguish between your sales and marketing teams. You have one brand. When marketing deploys a campaign without collaboration from your sales team, they’re leaving room for a serious disconnect.

If prospective customers Bob and Lucy are talking to a sales rep about your product and your marketing team sends them an email with mismatched messaging, they’re going to get confused or possibly lose trust in your business.

#4: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

Account-based marketing is all about complete alignment between the marketing and sales teams — AKA “smarketing.” Here at Terminus, we have a smarketing meeting first thing every Monday so all our team members start the week on the same page.

The most important thing here is collaboration. In order for your marketing team to support the sales pipeline, leaders from both teams must plan for a joint go-to-market approach. This often means you have take some time in order to plan ahead, but I can tell you from experience it’s worth it.

Important questions you can answer for your marketing team include:

• What activities drive engagement within your target accounts?
• What kind of content is most effective in moving an account from one stage of the buying cycle to the next?
• What common objections do you see from prospective customers?

Bottom line: your marketing team should sync up with sales before running any new campaigns, and your sales team should do the same before trying out new messaging or sales email cadences.

Sign #5: Your company is using email as its primary marketing channel.

If your marketing team frequently uses the term “email blast,” you could probably benefit from ABM. Whether they’re blasting the same emails to the entire database or they’re relying heavily on lead nurturing, they’re missing a huge opportunity to engage with prospective clients.

Emails can easily be ignored, and this approach requires marketing and sales to have contact information for each contact in an account, which is far from scalable for most companies. It’s important to use a multichannel approach to increase the likelihood of getting your prospect’s attention, and to maximize the number of contacts you can reach in the account, as some individuals prefer different channels.

#5: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

Account-based marketing allows you to engage your target accounts across multiple channels. For example, the Terminus platform lets you reach stakeholders not in your CRM across social, mobile, video, and display channels with digital ads, even if they haven’t been to your website. Other ABM technology can facilitate engagement and account progression at-scale via channels like:

• Direct mail
• Events
• Personalized videos
• Interactive content
• Your website and blog

Check out the Terminus Cloud for ABM to discover account-based marketing technology that will help you engage buyers on their own terms.

Sign #6: Your marketing team creates content that your sales team can’t use.

As our friend Graham McConnell from Obility says, “If we only cared about blog traffic, we’d write about Justin Bieber.”

But, of course, we don’t want just anyone to read our content. We want the right people to read it.

If your marketing team isn’t developing each piece of content with your company’s ideal customer profile in mind, it doesn’t matter how good the resulting work is. If your marketing team is creating content your sales team can’t use, they’re wasting their time.

#6: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

An account-based marketing strategy requires everyone to be laser-focused on your ideal customer profile, including both demographic and firmographic information. Personalization is key, and because account-based marketers have a deep understanding of their target accounts, it’s relatively easy to disseminate personalized marketing content based on industry or vertical.

With traditional digital marketing, it can be extremely difficult to ensure your personalized content gets in front of the right people, especially if you don’t have their email addresses in their database. But with ABM technology like Terminus, you can be sure you’re targeting the right individuals at best-fit accounts across all they channels they frequent.

Sign #7: Your content and campaigns are not aligned with the stages of the buyer’s journey.

When the focus is lead quantity, it makes sense that marketers would cast a wide net and release top-of-the-funnel content that will draw a large audience. But when your company’s goal is to turn high-quality accounts into customers, it’s important that your website has highly personalized content for every stage of the buyer’s journey, and beyond to a true customer experience.

#7: How Account-Based Marketing Helps

Imagine you’re evaluating a new product for your company. You’ve viewed demos and talked to sales reps, and now you’re in the process of choosing between two different vendors. Through the magic of retargeting, of course you’re seeing both companies’ ads everywhere. All other things being equal, which ads will be more effective?

• Vendor A’s ads promoting an upcoming thought leadership webinar on the state of the industry
• Vendor B’s ads highlighting a feature comparison of their product versus Vendor A’s product

Vendor B’s ad is more effective because they aligned their content to your stage in the buying process. Account-based marketing technology like Terminus allows your company to do this automatically. For example, when an account progresses from an MQA to an opportunity in Salesforce, they can automatically be served more product-focused digital ads to decision-makers at that account — and the same goes for every stage of the sales cycle and the customer journey.

This allows your prospective buyers to educate themselves about your product or service on their own terms. And as all sales professionals know, it’s easier to have a productive sales conversation when a buyer feels like they’re coming to you and not the other way around.

All Signs Point to Account-Based Marketing

Not doing account-based marketing will cost you – literally. (Read The Cost of Delaying Account-Based Marketing to learn how.) Fortunately, the ABM space is full of technology that will help your B2B company overcome marketing, sales, and customer success challenges. Click the banner below to explore dozens of ABM tools and build your ideal account-based marketing stack.

Author: Ellen Gomes

More and more marketers today are tapping into influencer marketing. Why? Because influencer marketing has the potential to act as a new, relationship-based channel to reach new audiences and build credibility with existing audiences.

From personal experience, influencer marketing can be a tough nut to crack. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing random acts of influencer marketing and not truly building a relationship or offering a value exchange to the people you identify as influencers in your space.

As influencer marketing becomes more commonplace amongst marketers, its evolution is something that marketers looking to innovate must track, understand, and keep up with. The latest report, Influencer 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing, from TopRank Marketing, Traackr, and Altimeter Group reveals the ways that influencer marketing is evolving, possibly into a field called influencer relations.

Here are four top takeaways from Influencer 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing:

1. For the majority of marketers, influencer marketing is seen as strategic (almost 75%) but only 24% of marketers have an ‘always on’ program, and only 5% have integrated influencer marketing into all of their activities.

This is an indicator of early maturity in influencer marketing. Brands, organizations, and marketers understand the power of engaging influencers, but may lack the resources to make it part of their overarching strategy. Instead, they often work in either as a grassroots effort from one organization or an extension of existing PR efforts. While this is a good start, working at a tactical/individual campaign level like this can sometimes hinder the evolution of a sustainable influencer marketing program as it’s difficult to prove the overarching strategic impact.

2.  Influencer marketing does not sit in one function. In fact, more than two-thirds (80%) of survey respondents state that three or more departments engage with influencers now.

Influencers exist in different realms–leading brands, content and social media connoisseurs, analysts, and even customer advocates. As such, different departments work to strengthen influencer relationships within their space, so it’s important to have a holistic strategy as an organization. One way to stay aligned is to meet regularly to understand common goals and key responsibilities, perhaps in a committee with a stakeholder representing each department.

 

3.  Marketers want influencer marketing to help them engage across the business and the entire customer lifecycle. The top goals and the future of influencer marketing focus on advocacy (94%) and awareness (92%).

This stat exemplifies how marketers are evolving their thinking and strategies for influencer marketing. Rather than simply seeing influencer marketing as a tactic to promote specific messages, marketers are looking across the organization and customer lifecycle to leverage the whole swath of benefits that influencer marketing can offer.

4. CMOs (34%) are leading digital transformation inside organizations, and that starts and ends with delivering true engagement.

Like our CEO, Steve Lucas, recently mentioned in his blog, the Engagement Economy is here, and it demands true, authentic, engagement. Digital transformation is not about processes, technology, or even sales and marketing—it’s about transforming your organization at its core to create experiences that feel real and human and are founded on trust and care. This report illustrates how influencer marketing is a key component of that change by sharing that, “the more human marketing becomes, the more digital transformation can also become human…”

As influencer marketing evolves, it will become more relationship-based and act as a strategic pillar for the entire organization—from content to customer retention to employee advocacy. If you are looking for more data on how influencer marketing is being practiced in organizations today, and where it could be most impactful in the future, make sure to check out Influence 2.0: The Future of Influencer Marketing.

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The Next Generation of Influencer Marketing was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Despite their best efforts, small business owners may face chaotic scenarios early in their entrepreneurial experience. This can come in a variety of areas. Just to scratch the surface, there’s securing funding, getting established as a reliable business, keeping clients and employees happy, and taking the right approach to marketing to maximize sales.

One key skill to dealing with these issues is composure. The ability to stay calm and make well-thought-out decisions will not only help the business stay on the right path, but will also help the owner’s leadership style, and potentially reduce overall stress.

In a story for Entrepreneur, psychologist and author Sherrie Campbell writes that practicing techniques related to composure leads to building “your personal excellence.”

“When you are composed, you seek respect, not attention, because you know that respect lasts much longer,” she explains. “Composure puts you on the path to strive to continually be at your very best.”

Here’s a look at how composure can assist a small business owner.

Self-confidence

This is a natural need for entrepreneurs, as long as it doesn’t veer into arrogance. Those who are unsure of themselves when it comes to innovation, management and leadership may struggle with the day-to-day fires that small businesses have to put out. As Campbell writes, “… You must feel sure of yourself.”

“Choose to believe that you are capable of handling any problem placed in front of you,” she explains. “This belief is the foundation for your success. When you are self-assured, people get the vibe that you like, respect, appreciate and value who you are and what you bring to the table. Know your value, appreciate your talents, show a steady work ethic and you will be taken more seriously.”

Think before reacting

This isn’t necessarily easy for a small business owner to accomplish, especially in times of high stress. Developing the ability to take a step back, consider the options and weigh the pros and cons will serve them well. Campbell calls this “self-regulating.”

“When you neglect to taste the words you speak before you spit them out, you can end up creating irreparable damage in your relationships,” she writes. “To be effective with others you must be aware of what your triggers are, so you have the wherewithal to quickly refocus yourself on the bigger picture of what you’re striving for.”

Coping in crisis mode

All the composure in the world won’t prevent difficult moments. It can be helpful for small business owners to ponder stressful scenarios — not to dwell on potential dangers but to consider what solutions may be needed if that situation emerges. In a story for gusto.com, Kira Deutch writes that when tough times arise, some semblance of normalcy should remain.

“Stick to your regular routine even in the face of total chaos,” Deutch says. “Sure, at high-pressure times the workload may be hard to handle, but do what you can to maintain a sense of normalcy. Try not to jettison regular check-in meetings, town halls, or any week-to-week events that keep you sane and your business afloat. Important business functions, like hiring and partner relations, should always stay moving — even when things are crazy. Also, focus on the fact that the situation is temporary. Things will eventually swing back to a slower, more manageable pace.”

Avoid personal reactions

It’s wonderful when we achieve positive things in business. The good feelings can serve as a boost of self-confidence, which can then help innovation and decision-making down the line. But there won’t always be victories. Small business owners will need to understand that professional mistakes aren’t necessarily personal flaws. Glenn Llopis examines this in a story for Entrepreneur.

“Business decisions and circumstances don’t always play out logically because office politics and other dynamics factor into the process,” he says. “Don’t get defensive or think that you always must justify your thinking and actions when they do. When you take things personally, it’s difficult to maintain your composure and make those around you believe that you have things under control. In fact, when leaders take issues too close to heart, they allow the noise to suffocate their thinking and decision-making capabilities.”

Body language

This is one of those human quirks — when you say or intend to mean one thing but your body or face betrays those words. This can matter a great deal in business. Positive words won’t mean much if the facial expressions don’t match up. And outwardly showing frustration can lead others to feel that frustration, or to develop concern about the owner’s approach and stresses. Bruna Martinuzzi writes about body language for American Express’ OPEN Forum.

“ … We can all be mindful of our facial expressions when we find ourselves in heated negotiations or important meetings where maintaining a calm attitude is crucial,” she notes. “Raise your self-awareness about your habitual facial expressions. Do you frown a lot? Are your facial muscles tense? Catch yourself, and relax your facial muscles. Try it right now and see what happens.”

Accept responsibility

The owner sets the tone, even when things don’t go well. How owners handle moments when they stumble can have an impact on relationships with clients and employees. Campbell explains in her Entrepreneur piece that an important way to develop composure skills is “to accept responsibility for the outcomes, both positive and negative, which result from your efforts.”

“If you make a mistake, see it as a self-created learning experience,” she writes. “Figure out what needs to shift for you to be more successful going forward. Always be flexible when it’s necessary to change your approach. Composure is not about ego. It is about humility and a willingness to learn. When you’re composed enough to take responsibility for your outcomes, this will inspire in others the willingness to accept responsibility for the outcomes in their lives.”

Listen, don’t lash out

When dealing with employees and clients, small business owners should strive to develop the ability to truly listen to questions and concerns. Having a measured response, one that doesn’t go to extremes or add to the stress of the moment, can help to diffuse a problematic scenario. As Llopis writes, it helps “to act like you have been there before.”

“Leaders that make others feel they have been through the problem-solving process numerous times before are those … who approach the matter at hand with a sense of elegance and grace,” he explains. “They are patient and active listeners, and they will genuinely take a compassionate approach to ease the hardships that anyone else is experiencing. They give you hope that the problems will soon be solved — and they are affected as deeply as you are.”

I was sitting in the front row Tuesday morning. We were an hour into the 2017 sales kick-off meeting and there was plenty of energy in the room to start the day.

The 500 B2B sellers in the room were using a polling app to share their candid, anonymous feedback, so I was dialed in to the pulse of the room. The next question came up:

In one or two words, what does it take to be successful?

As the word cloud started to form in real time, there was a wide range of answers. But two words quickly stood out from the rest of the cloud as the most popular response. This was a world-class sales organization that knows how to win. They know exactly what it takes to be successful:

Hard Work

After nine months at my first sales job, I still hadn’t made a sale. That’s when Jim Rohn saved me. In one seminar, he set me on fire by sharing information that no school or company was going to provide.

The formula I needed to thrive?

Committing to continuing my education + investing a lot more time in mastering my craft.

Happy hour and softball leagues could wait. I couldn’t stomach the idea of getting fired and moving back into my parent’s house (that used to be considered failure) to sell baseball cards for beer money. I wanted to succeed. I got to work.

Jim shared timeless wisdom about decisions, discipline and delayed gratification. I was deeply moved. I still have my notes from that night.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgement, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgements that leads us either to fortune or failure.” — Jim Rohn

Truth be told, deep down inside, I wanted to be Jim. I knew then the kind of work I wanted to be doing someday. And who knows, if I’d been in that seminar today, with the internet in play and Instagram influencers to follow by the thousands, I might have taken a wild shot in the dark and made my move right then. I’m glad I didn’t.

Instead, I put in the seventeen years I needed to earn my opportunity. I got really good at something. When you get good at something, nobody can take that from you. The experience matters and it informs my approach to running my own business today.

Shortcut Culture

Ryan,

I am the National Training Director for XYZ. Basically, I position ABC to speak in front of audiences all over the world. I am curious about how you do that work?

This is one of the emails I received this week asking for a copy of the playbook. No problem. We teach people “how to do that work” all day long. In fact, we can provide a snapshot of the formula for sales success in 30 steps.

This rendition of my 30 Steps To Sales Success was taken from the wall inside the Dallas Cowboys sales organization. It informs how they go to market and it’s no accident that they’ve completely reinvented selling professional football and exist today as the most valuable brand in sports. They understand Step #1: Effort breeds results:

“You may not be the smartest or the most-talented person in the world, but you can certainly work the hardest. That has been my motto. In the classroom or in the workplace or on the football field, you can always outwork the person next to you.” — Charlotte Jones Anderson ,executive vice president and chief brand officer, Dallas Cowboys, (Reuters.com, 2017)

Of course, hard work isn’t the only factor contributing to success. However, it is the variable you can control. My concern is that the agenda behind the “how do you do this work?” question is a quest for the shortcut.

I’ll acknowledge that the world has changed and today we have unprecedented access and very new opportunities to impact the marketplace. The barriers to entry for entrepreneurs have never been lower and I personally benefit tremendously as a result. In the connected economy I can compete with anyone, anywhere on the strength of my reputation and relationships. Increasingly I can impact those relationships online. It’s actually the ultimate leveling of the playing field for the small business owner and my business probably doesn’t even exist two decades ago. However, it also means the world is constantly changing and a whole lot more competitive. The sage advice of Jim Rohn around discipline, commitment and delayed gratification has never been more relevant.

There Are No Shortcuts

Decide what you want. We each get to define success for our own lives. That freedom of choice is beautiful. Everyone is different.

However, that isn’t the case when specifically referring to sales success. To the contrary, all you get to decide is how much you are willing to put into it. Ultimately the marketplace will determine who succeeds. There isn’t any commission for second place. Selling is a zero sum game and losing sucks.

The most successful people I know work hard because they love it.

“People who think that hard work is about ego, escapism or money, do not understand the value of hard work. I do it because it gives me pleasure. I never want to look back, and regret that I wasted my time doing meaningless shit.”

The second weekend of March is typically when I celebrate my birthday. This year on that Saturday evening, I’ll be having dinner with one of my mentors in Phoenix, Larry Flick. We’ll both be doing what we love to do, working. Personally I cannot wait to break bread with someone who I respect so much that is a little bit further down the road of life and legacy building. When you have a mentor who’s traveled where you want to go, you receive an incredible gift of perspective. I asked him once why he’s still doing it.

“I like connecting the dots, figuring out where the future is and helping us to navigate there sooner than anybody else. And I like coaching, mentoring and watching people grow. And I like creating opportunities where people can achieve their dreams by working here.”

He isn’t waiting to leave a legacy. He is leading a legacy right now. It’s hard work.

But it’s worth it.

Have you heard the buzz lately about inbound marketing? Inbound marketing is the process of using marketing to bring potential customers to you, rather than having your marketing efforts fight for their attention. It seeks to attract new visitors, educating and entertaining them, so that when they’re ready to make a purchase, you’re the first company they go to. It may be right away, or may be months from now- inbound marketing is all about spending the time to be your industry’s thought leader.

You can read more about the inbound marketing methodology from HubSpot. As a small business owner, what you need to know is that it works. Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old “outbound” marketing methods of buying ad space, buying email lists, making phone calls, and hoping for new customers, this type of marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be.

#1 Consumers are Avoiding Sales People

Many people don’t like salespeople, and haven’t for a long time. What’s different now is that they actually have the option to avoid them. Decades ago, a salesperson could open a phone book, call a random list of customers, and have a reasonable chance of success to land sales. Customers no longer want to be interrupted and sold while they are trying to go about their daily life, if they can even be contacted at all.

People are taking measures to avoid this by filtering emails, blocking calls, and simply ignoring junk mail to make sure that they don’t receive any solicitations from marketers. A phone book doesn’t list cell phone numbers at all, so that method of trying to find new customers is basically gone.

#2 Information is Available Online

The reason customers are able to avoid salespeople now is that they don’t need them to find out about new products and services anymore. The reason for that- the internet. People no longer have to wait and hear information about a big sale coming up from a radio ad. Now, people can go online and find information direct from the manufacturer, as well as read third party reviews of the specific product. Because of this, the power in the relationship between salesperson and consumer has shifted to the consumer. Instead of being dismayed by this, use it to your advantage. When they do their research online, make sure it’s your company they’re finding!

#3 It’s Data Driven

It isn’t just guessing what people want to read about and writing a bunch of blogs. With the right inbound marketing team, your marketing efforts will be a data-driven strategy. Far more than just a new website, a proper inbound marketing strategy means you’re gearing your content toward the right people, collecting information on your Leads, and connecting with those most like to convert to being a full-fledged customer. This kind of effort will save you money and time, plus make your customers a whole lot happier.

#4 You’ll Want to Bring in Professionals

If you decided to remodel your office space, would you just add it to the list of things your current employees do? No way! You’d bring in a professional contractor and his team to get the remodeling job done right. That’s exactly what you should do with inbound marketing as well. The concept is fairly simple, but actually going about it- creating a strategy, researching keywords, writing new content, and filtering these Leads to your sales team- is something that’s best handled by an inbound marketing agency with experience. Keep you and your staff members focused on your day-to-day jobs and let marketing professionals handle bringing in new potential customers.

Too many small businesses today still rely heavily on blanketing the area with flyers, cold calls, and other forms of “outbound marketing” to drive their marketing efforts, despite many studies confirming these efforts are becoming less effective. Because these outdated forms of advertising cost so much and help you so little, the ROI on these efforts is downright dismal. Don’t waste your marketing budget on old fashioned efforts or try to do inbound marketing yourself. Bring in the experts!

Reach out to the Mariposa team today and let’s have a conversation about your marketing goals. We can help get you on the right track to digital success.

Email marketing is here to stay. It’s become a staple for most marketing strategies because brands and businesses can reach a very targeted audience with personalized messaging – all without breaking the bank, compared to other paid channels.

Predictions on the future of email marketing are constantly being made, with the top trends centering around using big data to create email content that’s much more personalized and relevant.

Here’s a question for you: Are you capturing every key piece of data needed to deliver email content that’s personalized and relevant? There’s one piece of data that can help get you there, but it’s often neglected by email marketers: the call conversion.

Why Email Marketers Must Pay Attention to Call Conversions

The 54% of emails are read on smartphones compared to desktop. However, it’s interesting to see that even though emails are ready on smartphones, they only account for 20% of online conversions. Smartphones are driving call conversions, so if you’re not accounting for them in your email marketing ROI then your email conversion rates are inaccurate.

Call data gives you even more data on your prospects and customers, which can be collected with call attribution technology. Here are 3 ways you can use call data to deliver more personalized and relevant email marketing.

#1: Generate Web-Based Reports on Email Marketing Call Volume

Marketers that invest in a call attribution technology can configure, schedule, and generate reports on phone leads and sales generated through their individual email marketing campaigns. You can create meaningful reports on how your email marketing campaigns performed in terms of driving inbound calls in addition to the standard conversions, such as opens and clicks.

By knowing all of your conversion information, you can not only get the true picture of your campaign performance, but you’ll be equipped with more data to target and engage your audience in new ways. For instance, break up your lists and target those more likely to call with call-centric messaging and images, or offers if they call within the next few hours.

#2: Include Call Attribution Data from Email in Google Analytics

Many marketers use Google Analytics to better understand visitor activity on their website. Let’s say a visitor doesn’t call from your email campaign, but they instead click through to your website. By using dynamic number insertion (DNI) and call attribution, you can track mobile visitors’ activity throughout your website. You can even give credit to the specific email campaign that drove any call conversions, even after multiple touch points are made throughout your website.

With call attribution you can integrate call data from your email marketing campaigns with Google Analytics to add the critical phone data piece to Google’s marketing analytics puzzle. Now you can view and analyze call data from email marketing alongside web traffic and other offline data to better understand a customer’s journey from lead to purchase and the role email played in generating the sale. And the more you understand your customer, such as what pages interested them, you can use that data to help personalize your email campaigns.

#3: Track Revenue from Phone Leads with CRM Integration

By integrating call data with your CRM system, you can track each phone call driven by your email marketing campaigns, and understand how they generate revenue. You’ll know how each of your email campaigns is driving opportunities and revenue from phone leads. You can then include that data alongside all of your lead types as part of your overall marketing reports.

Plus, when inbound sales calls come in, if you’re using a CRM like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, and integrating call data you can arm your sales reps with the caller information at the time of the call.

Without this important data, you could be dramatically understating the impact of your email marketing on leads, sales pipeline, revenue, and ROI. Plus you can’t tell exactly which programs are really working, and which aren’t, and optimize campaigns and spend to improve results.

Email will continue to be one of the most popular vehicles for outbound marketing. And knowing how each email campaign performs is not only critical to maximizing ROI, but it will help you gain additional insights into what engages your customers.

To learn more about how call attribution can help optimize your marketing campaigns, download The Digital Marketer’s Guide to Call Attribution.