These events provide a unique opportunity for networking, brand exposure, and lead generation. 

According to Conference Source, companies can expect a 4:1 return on investment from their trade show spending. Among Fortune 500 businesses, 14% reported a 5:1 return on investment (ROI) from trade show presentations. This means they made $5 for every $1 spent.

However, your strategy will determine your level of success. We'll walk you through some methods and techniques in this post that will help you make the most of trade exhibitions.

Start With a Clear Strategy

To make the most of a trade show, you need a well-defined strategy. Ask yourself what you aim to achieve. Are you there to generate leads, close deals, or build brand awareness? Your objectives guide your approach. 

For instance, if lead generation is your goal, focus on creating engagement opportunities. If brand exposure is key, prioritize eye-catching branding elements. According to Fit Small Business, customers want brand consistency in addition to brand familiarity. Strategies that emphasize brand consistency can increase revenue by 20%.

Having a clear strategy ensures that your resources and efforts are directed effectively, ultimately contributing to a better ROI.

Budget Wisely and Plan Ahead

Trade shows can be costly affairs, so prudent budgeting is essential. Consider booth rental fees, travel expenses, promotional materials, and staffing costs. Ensure you have a well-planned budget that takes all these factors into account. 

By planning ahead, you can mitigate the risk of cash flow issues and make sure your trade show investments are financially sustainable. A well-managed budget allows you to allocate your resources effectively, optimizing your ROI.

Craft an Unforgettable Booth Design

When it comes to trade shows, your booth design plays a pivotal role in making a lasting impression. The competition for attention on the showroom floor can be fierce, with countless companies vying for the same audience. To stand out, you must consider incredible trade show booth design ideas that capture the essence of your brand.

Think of your booth as a three-dimensional representation of your business. According to Classic Exhibits, vibrant colours, interactive displays, and memorable aesthetics can draw a crowd. The design should harmonize with your brand's identity and message, creating a cohesive and compelling visual experience. This cohesiveness can encompass everything from the colour scheme and layout to the choice of materials and lighting.

Interactive elements are a great way to engage visitors. Incorporate touchscreens, demonstrations, or product samples to encourage interaction. The more engaged attendees are, the longer they'll spend at your booth, and the more likely they are to remember your brand.

Remember that your booth should not only be visually appealing but also functional. It should facilitate conversations with potential clients or partners. Consider the flow of traffic and ensure that your staff has ample space to engage with visitors comfortably.

Generate Buzz and Anticipation

Building anticipation for your trade show presence is essential. Leveraging pre-event marketing can make a significant difference in foot traffic to your booth. To educate your audience about your involvement, use social media, email marketing, and press releases. 

Teasers, countdowns, and sneak peeks may help you keep your audience interested and thrilled. Encourage your audience to visit your booth with the promise of exclusive offerings or experiences. The more people know about your participation, the more foot traffic and potential leads you can expect.

Leverage Lead Generation Strategies

While it's tempting to collect as many leads as possible, remember that quality trumps quantity. Engage in meaningful conversations with attendees, qualifying their interest in your products or services. 

Use techniques like surveys or interactive demonstrations to gather leads genuinely intrigued by what you offer. According to SmartBug Media, 57% of marketers utilize interactive content to generate leads. These leads are more likely to become clients, resulting in a larger ROI from your trade show participation.

Building Relationships

Trade shows provide a fertile ground for networking. Beyond the booth, make the most of after-hours events and breakout sessions to connect with industry peers, potential customers, and partners. 

Building relationships is essential for achieving a favourable ROI. Engage in meaningful conversations, share contact information, and, above all, follow up with your new connections after the event. These connections may lead to opportunities, referrals, and partnerships that directly affect your cash flow.

Measure Your Success

After the trade fair, it's time to assess your performance. Analyze the quality of leads generated, the number of conversions achieved, and the overall impact on the company. Use this data to determine what works and what needs to be improved. 

Analyze the event's ROI by weighing the benefits against the expenditures. The knowledge obtained will be essential in refining your plan for future trade exhibitions and assuring a consistent increase in ROI.

Final Word

The effective utilization of trade shows can significantly enhance a company's ROI and cash flow. A well-designed booth, a strategic approach tailored to specific goals, and pre-event marketing can set the stage for success. 

Quality over quantity in lead generation, coupled with relationship-building and post-event follow-ups, can translate leads into valuable opportunities. Careful evaluation post-event helps refine future strategies. 

Prudent budgeting and advanced planning mitigate financial risks. Ultimately, these strategies can transform trade show participation from a costly undertaking into a sustainable and lucrative investment.

Some of it might contain sensitive or confidential information, like client data or financial records. 

You could spend hours shredding it yourself, or you could take a smarter route: mobile shredding. In a world where time is money and security is paramount, mobile shredding offers a perfect blend of convenience and safety.

The Dilemma: Busy Schedules and Stacks of Paper

If you're a busy professional, your calendar is probably jam-packed with meetings, deadlines, and a to-do list a mile long. The last thing you want to do is take time out of your day to shred papers. 

Worse still, if those papers aren't disposed of correctly, you could be risking data breaches, identity theft, and even hefty legal fines. That's a lot to juggle!

Time is Money: The Efficiency of On-Site Shredding

Let's get real: time spent shredding is time away from doing what you do best, whether that's managing your team, meeting clients, or strategizing for the future. Services like mobile shredding take the hassle out of the equation, allowing you and your staff to concentrate on your core job tasks. Just schedule a visit, and the truck takes care of the rest.

Dollar and Cents: The Financial Benefits

You might be thinking, "Sure, it saves time, but what about the cost?" The truth is, doing your shredding isn't free. 

Factor in the time employees spend, the wear and tear on your office shredder, and the costs of disposal, and you'll find that mobile shredding is a financially savvy option. Plus, many providers offer different plans, so you can find one that fits your budget.

Don't Risk It: Reducing Liability with Professional Shredding

Improper document disposal can lead to a world of trouble, including potential legal penalties. Mobile shredding companies adhere to strict industry standards to ensure your documents are securely destroyed. Many even provide a certificate of destruction as proof that your papers have been properly disposed of.

Flexibility Is Key: Catering to Your Unique Needs

Whether you need a one-time shredding service for a big project or a scheduled service to keep your document flow manageable, mobile shredding services are flexible enough to meet your needs. Plans can be customized based on volume, frequency, and type of materials.

The Eco-Friendly Bonus: Shred and Save the Planet

Think shredding is bad for the environment? Think again! Most mobile shredding services recycle the shredded materials, turning your unwanted papers into something useful while reducing your carbon footprint.

Making the Switch: How to Choose a Mobile Shredding Service

Choosing the right mobile shredding service is crucial. Look for companies with strong reviews, industry certifications, and transparent pricing. Remember, you're not just hiring them to destroy papers; you're trusting them to protect your sensitive information.

Let the Shredder Come to You

When it comes to managing your time and money efficiently while also ensuring top-notch security, mobile shredding is the way to go.

With the convenience of on-site service, flexibility to meet your specific needs, and a focus on security, the ROI is clear: Mobile shredding is an investment that pays off in spades for busy professionals and institutions.

With a 6.6% global inflation predicted for 2033, running a business is becoming more complex. One of the best ways to survive in the current times is to focus on investing in improvements and modifications that generate a high return on investment (ROI).

ROI is a financial metric that is used to measure the profitability and efficiency of an investment relative to its cost. ROI is used by businesses, individuals, and investors to evaluate the performance and viability of various investment opportunities. Here are three tips you can follow to increase the ROI for your business to maximize profits earned.

#1 - Focus On Customer Retention

Despite having good investments, marketing, and team members, some businesses fail, while companies with little investment and strategies succeed. This depends on your customers, so you need to invest in retaining your customers to increase your ROI. Increasing customer retention by 5% can result in 25% to 95% revenue. You can invest in loyalty programs and give your customers incentives to shop again by providing discounts or gifts.

99% of marketers say personalization increases customer relationships, so provide your customers a personal experience by giving them your time to answer prompt and friendly responses, queries, and questions and go the extra mile to exceed their expectations. Investing in customer relationship management (CRM) can help you manage customer interactions, track leads, and create relationships. This will show your customer that you are committed to improving their experience.

You can allocate a portion of your budget to marketing and advertising, including digital and paid marketing campaigns. To personalize your marketing, you can research your customers, leverage customer data, and understand their wants. Investing in marketing will attract new customers and raise awareness about your company.

Consider maintaining regular contact with your customers even when they're not purchasing by sharing helpful content, updates, new products, or even personal offers to remind them of your brand.

#2 - Improve Your Teams Performance

One of the best ways to increase ROI for your business is to improve the efficiency of your employees. This involves a combination of strategies focused on enhancing productivity, efficiency, collaboration, and skill development. Invest in the training and development of your customers to enhance their skills and knowledge related to their roles. Try fostering an environment that encourages employees to pursue further qualifications.

Your finance team's expertise in financial analysis, budgeting, cost management, and performance measurement makes them crucial in increasing ROI. One of the best ways is to train your finance team to get maximum ROI through companies that provide virtual services like this one.

Try setting clear goals and expectations for your employees and communicate performance, and explain and align your employees with your business objectives. It’s best to regularly review your employees' progress and provide feedback to help them understand where they stand and can improve. Recognizing and rewarding your employees' achievements with incentives will create motivation and a sense of value.

You should regularly assess and solve any problems in resources that may affect employee performance. Dividing tasks and responsibilities evenly will allow employees to take ownership of their work and make better decisions. By investing in your employees' development and aligning their efforts with business objectives, you can enhance employee performance, increasing ROI for your business.

#3 - Automate Your Processes

Using the assistance of automation can help save up even an hour of your employee's time every day. You can use automation in departments with solutions like chatbots for common questions in customer support. Softwares are available to help customer support solve problems, and technologies like NLP can automatically categorize and route customer inquiries to a specific department.

Getting automation for marketing can get more done with less effort. You can automate email campaigns and software that uses analytics to create personalized marketing based on the customer's preferences. Automating a few time-consuming tasks for your employees will help them focus on completing the necessary work. It will be great for increasing your ROI without hiring extra people.

Endnote

ROI is used to measure the profitability and success of your business.  Focus on customer retention by giving them a personal experience and reminding them of your business and loyalty programs to make revenue. Train your employees and give them incentives for good performance to enhance employee performance.

Automating business processes like marketing and customer support will allow employees to focus on getting the important work done. Using these strategies can help your business make maximum profit helping it run in this inflation.

Their concern is the return on investment. With a small workforce, will they be able to get a good ROI? Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, an LMS is excellent software to have. It saves your time, money, and effort. Moreover, you'll be able to give your employees, customers, and partners a great learning experience. 

Whether you use the world's best LMS for entrepreneurs, a custom eLearning solution, or a cheaper LMS, there are ways to improve your return on investment. Let's learn four ways of improving the return on investment of your LMS. 

Choose a cost-effective system. 

A lot of people misinterpret the term cost-effective as cheap. Cost-effectiveness means getting more done with fewer resources or money invested. By lowering the investment, a cost-effective LMS increases your return on investment. When I say investment, I also take into account the time and effort that goes into it and not just the money. 

Here are some signs that your LMS is a cost-effective investment. 

Analytical reports 

If your LMS provides automated analytical reports, it is worth the investment. Analyzing the performance of your employees gives you a better understanding of their abilities, capabilities, and technical knowledge. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your employees is the first step toward better employee management. Moreover, it helps you improve your course. 

Integrations 

You want your LMS to be compatible with the systems you use in your company currently. Moreover, think about the software you might want to integrate into your LMS in the future. For example, an LMS-CRM integration helps you close more deals, is cost-effective, and gives you valuable data. It is one of the most important integrations. Figure out what integrations you'll need and find an LMS which offers that. Integrating databases saves a lot of your time and gives you a better chance of analyzing the results. 

Doesn't have too many additional expenses

Some LMSs cost less initially, but later, for every small update and additional feature, you'll be asked to pay a hefty amount. Such LMSs are expensive in the long run.  

Offers multiple payment options 

Find a good vendor that offers multiple payment options. If an LMS vendor is offering strictly pay-per-user, you should look for another. Having more options allows you to pick the one that is best for you. 

It makes your job easier 

If you are investing in technology, it should make your life easier. It shouldn't take you longer to do tasks than necessary; the system ought to be able to accomplish them automatically.

Use pay per active user

The best way to increase your LMS is by reducing the cost. There are many payment models, but out of all the payment models, the most cost-effective one is pay per active user. So even if someone enrolls in the course but isn't using it, you don't have to pay for it. 

Reduce in-person training 

In-person training is very costly. You have to invest a lot of money in venues, catering, electricity bills, learner stationery, instructor fees, etc. With an LMS, the need for in-person training is reduced. Most of the training can happen using on-demand videos and assignments. You can use micro-learning to make it easier for the learners to grasp new things. If you need to, you can include a few instructor-led sessions, but there is no need for such sessions every day. 

Increase employee retention 

Great resignation is what is disturbing all companies around the globe. It has become more difficult to retain your employees in your company. The two biggest reasons people leave your company are poor employee engagement and a lack of development opportunities. With an LMS, you can increase employee engagement by using collaborative activities. Moreover, since distributing courses is easy with an LMS, you'll be able to extend the learning and development opportunities to the entire workforce. 

Make money with your course.

You might have developed a course for your employees, but that course might help other people too. So why not sell it? Some LMSs have eCommerce tools that let you easily monetize your training course. This adds to your earnings, thus improving your ROI. 

Bottom Line 

I hope this article helped you understand how to improve your LMS's ROI. An LMS is a gift for small businesses. Whether you are buying the most expensive LMS or the cheapest, ensure you get the best ROI. 

As reported in the Financial Conduct Authority survey by Which?, the UK banking sector was hit by IT outages on a daily basis in the last nine months of 2018, demonstrating a higher frequency of major banking glitches than previously thought. Barclays alone reported 41 major incidents during those months, followed by Lloyds Bank with 37 IT failures and Halifax/Bank of Scotland with 31. Whilst TSB only reported 16 incidents, their week-long outage last year cost them around £330m as well as the longer-term impact of the clients lost.

Just minutes of downtime can significantly impact the financial sector, which holds the data and funds of millions of customers who are reliant on having access to these services and trust that their assets will be kept safe. To minimise the effects of a disaster and ensure business continuity in case of an IT failure or ransomware attack, businesses must invest in customised disaster recovery services which allow data to be brought back as quickly as possible in case of an outage. Diverting just a small proportion of the cybersecurity budget towards routine IT operations can deliver significant ROI in terms of increased operational resilience. Regular testing and optimisation of backup and recovery systems can deliver big rewards in terms of preventing issues and getting back up and running quickly should disaster strike.

As reported in the Financial Conduct Authority survey by Which?, the UK banking sector was hit by IT outages on a daily basis in the last nine months of 2018, demonstrating a higher frequency of major banking glitches than previously thought.

Safeguarding your data 

In the event of an IT failure or a ransomware attack, IT operators need a way to get systems back online and to do so fast. As noted by Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is £4,400 per minute. The implications of IT failures go far beyond financial losses however, as they also damage the reputation of the business as well as lead to massive amounts of operative time lost. When a cyberattack or an IT outage takes place, it is not the failure or attack itself that causes the most harm but the resulting downtime of operations affecting productivity and credibility of the organisation. To avoid such losses organisations must put appropriate recovery systems in place. But to do so, they must first understand the IT systems they run and know what data they hold.

To stop the nightmare scenario from becoming reality, a solution able to recover business-essential data and get the most crucial systems back online in minutes is needed. A zero-day approach to IT architecture can do just that, as it allows organisations to prioritise workloads, with a planned recovery strategy of making sure the most important systems are brought back to first in case of an outage.

A zero-day recovery architecture is a service that enables operators to quickly bring workloads or data back into operation in the event of an IT failure or cyberattack, without having to worry about whether the workload is compromised. With the so-called 3-2-1 backup rule – meaning three copies of data stored on two different media and one backup kept offsite – zero-day recovery enables an IT department to partner with the cyber team and create a set of policies which define the architecture for what they want to do with data backups being stored offsite, normally in the cloud. This system assigns an appropriate storage cost and therefore recovery time to each workload according to their strategic value to the business, as all data is not created equal in terms of business continuity.

A zero-day recovery architecture is a service that enables operators to quickly bring workloads or data back into operation in the event of an IT failure or cyberattack, without having to worry about whether the workload is compromised.

This recovery system will only prove useful however when set up properly and tested thoroughly and frequently. Approximately 25% of organisations’ nightly backups fail – yet few will be aware of this due to a lack of recovery testing, meaning most businesses will have no idea what data has been lost in the process. With this in mind, operators need to perform disaster recovery testing on their data. Without testing in a controlled and simulated environment, it is impossible for IT and security teams to fully understand their systems’ integrity. Figuring out the data backup and recovery systems have failed after an IT outage has already taken place has no value – this needs to have been done before the worst has a chance to take place.

IT outages in the financial sector are becoming more frequent. In fact, the number of such incidents reported to the Financial Conduct Authority increased by 138% in the first 9 months of 2018, and are showing no signs of slowing down, making them a question of when, not if. With a large portion of the infrastructure in the financial sector relying on IT, minimising outages and limiting threats to this infrastructure should be number one priority to systems operators.

However, previous deals show that the process has hardly been plain sailing – 40% of those surveyed by Deloitte claim half of their deals over the past two years have failed to generate expected value or ROI. From eBay and Skype to Microsoft and Nokia, the past 20 years have been littered with multi-billion-dollar mistakes. Here, Mike Walton, CEO and Founder of Opsview, delves into the important role that IT operations have when it comes to planning your M&A strategy.

IT Operations fuels business success

An increasing number of business execs cite ‘gaps in integration execution’ as the reason behind M&A failures. The process of combining two businesses, its operations, staff and culture is extremely difficult in both principal and practice, and, whilst it is certainly not a silver bullet, the importance of involving IT as early as possible in M&A proceedings would certainly make integration a smoother process. At the end of the day, IT sits at the very centre of any organisation, supporting all aspects of day-to-day operations and innovation-driven services, fueled by digital transformation projects. That makes centralised IT operations’ management and monitoring critical to any M&A process and involvement needs to start at the discussion stage so that experts can provide visibility into core systems to support successful M&A planning and integration.

Acquiring firms, therefore, need clear visibility into their own and the target firm’s IT assets and initiatives to drive fast, effective integration at this level and to reduce time-to-innovation post-acquisition.

According to Ernst & Young, the role of IT fundamentally underpins the strategic objectives of M&A activity, whether that’s increasing market share, entering new markets, gaining new customers or consolidating product ranges. Acquiring firms, therefore, need clear visibility into their own and the target firm’s IT assets and initiatives to drive fast, effective integration at this level and to reduce time-to-innovation post-acquisition. If not, they risk eroding value and could create a situation where inaccurate timelines and cost estimates are produced.

Yet, given the importance of IT visibility to M&A success, it’s disappointing that just half of the respondents to the European E&Y report said they typically involve IT in the transaction process, compared to almost 80% for finance. Even fewer — 38% of corporate execs and 22% of PE — said they put ‘significant emphasis on IT’ in M&A. It’s perhaps no surprise that almost half (47%) said that in hindsight, more rigorous IT due diligence could have prevented value erosion.

Centralised monitoring minimises downtime

Currently, many financial organisations do not have a centralised view across its entire infrastructure that would deliver the required IT due diligence needed for a successful M&A deal, and this can only effectively be delivered through centralised IT monitoring. Research from analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates has indicated that a vast number of organisations have more than ten different monitoring tools and it can take organisations between three-six hours to find the source of an IT performance issue. This approach is clearly unsustainable, especially when companies have the added complication of merging two businesses. The true impacts of downtime during M&A can easily be seen by looking at the catastrophic IT outage suffered by UK bank TSB in 2018, where its migration from IT systems operated by its former owner to its new owners’ platform resulted in weeks of outage for millions of customers. At the other end of the scale is technology giant EMC, which proudly publicises its dedicated IT M&A integration team, which is brought in straight after a letter of intent is signed by potential acquisitions.

Post-deal, best practice IT operations can also help manage IT performance to ensure the customers of both companies involved suffer no adverse impact as a result of key staff being diverted to focus on the merger.

Visibility through a single pane of glass  

At its heart, effective IT monitoring is, therefore, a key component of IT operations which are designed to “manage the provisioning, capacity, performance and availability of the computing, networking and application environment” (Gartner). As such, they can be used to audit and analyse the critical IT assets of firms on both sides of the M&A deal. This data can then be employed to ensure the company is accurately valued, and integration roadmaps and timelines are realistic. Post-deal, best practice IT operations can also help manage IT performance to ensure the customers of both companies involved suffer no adverse impact as a result of key staff being diverted to focus on the merger. They play a central part in identifying under-utilised assets for optimisation, reconfiguring systems and stripping away duplicate technologies once a deal has completed.

However, it is important to remember that modern IT operations are becoming increasingly complex as they are now usually comprised of a mixture of dynamic, cloud and virtual-based systems, often operated by third-party providers. On top this, many organisations still operate legacy IT monitoring tools that are inadequately suited to provide visibility into these hybrid systems. As a consequence, tool sprawl is prolific among businesses who operate with this outdated, reactive and siloed approach to IT monitoring.

In order to combat this, financial organisations must centralise and consolidate these tools to rid themselves of data islands, improve decision-making, and proactively enhance IT performance and strategic advantage. From this single pane of glass, IT and operations managers can then accurately plan M&A due diligence and post-acquisition integration. However, it is critical that senior business leaders understand the strategic importance of bringing in IT into the M&A process as early on as possible.

Website: https://www.opsview.com/

Derick Fiebiger from 0chain explains its key benefits for your business.

Irrespective of what your opinion is, business executives have a duty to their organisations to assess relevant new technologies. Blockchain is an exciting new technology and companies the world over are evaluating whether blockchain offers a dependable, effective and valuable solution to their current challenges.

Seeing leading tech giants like IBM, AWS , Oracle and Accenture already on board and heavily invested in this new technology helps validate that blockchain is indeed more than hype and will transform many industries and systems in the years to come.

So what does this mean for me and my enterprise you may ask?

What are blockchain’s benefits for my business now and how will it help me innovate and stay ahead of the competition?

Blockchain’s advantages are many and as the underlying technology, applications and protocols evolve, more and more use cases emerge. At this stage though, the most important business benefits focus on increasing efficiency, agility, ROI, security, privacy and transparency.

The ability to easily access historical transactional data is particularly important for companies that have complex supply chains

1. Transparency and Traceability 

Lack of transparency leads to delayed transactions, financial losses and situations that could compromise important commercial relationships.

Blockchain plays a critical role in tracing transactions and operations. The ability to easily access historical transactional data is particularly important for companies that have complex supply chains. It also helps with confirming transaction authenticity and preventing fraud.

As each transaction is recorded sequentially and indefinitely, you can easily provide an indelible audit trail for each transaction, operation or asset.

This accelerates reporting dramatically and enables you to access data regarding any potential issues in real time so you can fix problems as soon as they arise.

Furthermore, the audit process becomes much more efficient, faster and non-disruptive for the business.

2. Security and Privacy

Security has become a massive issue for all enterprises and senior tech leaders are investing significant resources to prevent malicious attacks, stop data leakage and increase auditability and accountability.

Despite this investment, many companies only install low level security measures and pray solutions hold against malicious attacks. But, considering how many reputable global corporations have been victims of malicious parties recently, it’s becoming very clear that IT security not only has to protect confidential, sensitive data but there needs to be immutable records showing who did what, when and where in case something does go wrong.

Independently verified complex cryptography, definitive unchangeable records and decentralisation unite to make it far more difficult for hackers to compromise data. All these factors could revolutionise how critical information is shared, preventing fraud and loss of data.

With blockchain you can reduce data storage costs, store data in a more cost effective way and also eliminate many third parties that are now used for various transactions and trading processes.

3. Efficiency and Agility

In order to navigate an increasingly complex business environment and fully leverage blockchain’s benefits, businesses need services with ample transaction capacity, near-instant finality and the ability to scale, all without sacrificing blockchain’s core benefits.

Think how much data your company generates and what’s managed on a daily basis. Countless transactions and operations happen every day inside and outside the company. Data flows to and from different parties.

With blockchain and tokenisation, you can reduce costs by storing and verifying all this data in a more efficient, secure way but also - transactions and data queries can be validated and completed far faster than traditional methods.

Furthermore, many companies still use paper heavy processes which are time-consuming, prone to human errors and offer little transparency. Blockchain streamlines and automates all these processes, enabling organisations to become more efficient and agile.

4. Lower Costs

Reducing costs is a critical priority for many enterprises. With blockchain you can reduce data storage costs, store data in a more cost effective way and also eliminate many third parties that are now used for various transactions and trading processes.

This is increasingly important for companies with large IoT networks or business functions generating huge volumes of data every day.

Taking Control of Your Destiny 

Security, agility and efficiency are powerful blockchain benefits that businesses should be exploring. At the same time, there is an infinite number of tools, applications, and ideas that can be delivered through blockchains and it’s up to each enterprise to investigate how they can use the technology.

One thing to keep in mind if you’re considering implementing blockchain in your business is that this is not just an IT or R&D project. Blockchain, in many cases, is a fundamental business transformation operation which, if deployed and used properly, will significantly improve revenue and cost management. It will also cut across organisational silos and provide unique abilities for increased competitiveness and overall performance.

Regardless of whether you’re still on the fence regarding blockchain adoption or a passionate ambassador, one thing is clear - blockchain is here to stay and only the sky is the limit for the companies that are ready to take on board this new technology and leverage its full potential.

Derick’s Specialisms

• Deep knowledge of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, intersection of business and DLT
• Extensive expertise of the technical aspects of blockchain
• Plugged into blockchain and crypto’s ecosystems
• Moderates 0chain’s Telegram groups including 40,000+ strong main channel
• Manages 0chain Medium content (here)
• Highly responsive, available for fast comment with extremely short deadlines

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derick-fiebiger-4605a040/

Website: https://0chain.net/

More than a third of financial institutions (37%) find that legacy data platforms are the biggest obstacles to improving their data management and analytics capabilities, according to research from Asset Control. Whereas, for 31%, the cost of change is seen as the biggest hindrance to progress.

The poll of finance professionals, conducted through Adox Research Ltd., also revealed that for more than half of financial institutions (56%), the integration of legacy systems is the biggest consideration as they plan investment in future data management and analytics capabilities.

“What we’re seeing is financial institutions being held back by legacy data management platforms which they have acquired or developed over the years. These systems can slow down organisations as they are costly to maintain, miss audit or lineage information, often cannot scale to new volume requirements, and do not quickly and easily provide business users the data they require. While businesses recognise there is a need to update their data management systems they are sometimes reluctant to do so due to cost of change and perceived difficulties of integrating their systems with new solutions. Although I understand where these concerns come from, businesses also see the risks posed by inertia,” says Mark Hepsworth, CEO, Asset Control.

However, when it comes to considering new data management and analytics capabilities, firms remain focused on the fundamentals. More than a third (36%) of respondents cited ease of use and flexible deployment as their top business consideration, while 41% deemed ROI to be the biggest determiner.

“It is clear that while firms are currently being held back by the cost of change and legacy systems, they can see that both these challenges can be overcome with the right solution. While ROI is, of course, important in any business, these organisations must also consider how much their current data management systems are holding them back by delaying processes, lowering productivity and causing data discrepancies because they lack a clear and comprehensive view on their sourcing and validation process,” adds Hepsworth.

(Source: Asset Control)

Since the beginning of the digital age, the financial industry has gone through a shake-up, and it is now estimated financial services make up 14% of spend is invested in online marketing channels. However, attributing the success of these channels throughout the customer journey, whether online or offline, is proving to be a common challenge within this sector.

According a study by Experian, 51% of financial businesses are relying on simplistic, inaccurate forms of marketing attribution, while some are using none at all, meaning they have no clear, data-driven insights into which channels are driving the most conversions and ultimately the highest return on investment (ROI). Furthermore, considering it takes six to eight touchpoints before a sale, determining the success of each channel should form the foundation for allocating marketing budget to avoid wastage.

To achieve this level of understanding, the financial sector needs to start introducing multi-touch attribution (allocating credit to every conversion (a completed call-to action such as filling a contact form, accessing a live chat or picking up the phone within the customer journey) to evaluate their marketing success. However, getting to grips with this can be tricky.

Here’s exactly why multi-touch attribution is key to shaping the future of marketing for the finance sector.

Paid Search

Out of all the marketing platforms available, paid search is appearing as one of the most successful within the financial sector. According to research by Growthpoint, the finance industry has one of the highest paid search conversion rates at 7.19%; indicating that many consumers are using paid search throughout their journey. However, they also have the third most expensive average cost-per-click (CPC) at $3.72.

When looking into the most popular keywords for financial advisers in Google Keyword Planner (see above), it’s clear the average CPC increases substantially, with ’independent financial adviser’, ’financial adviser near me’ and ’financial advice’ appearing as the top three most expensive keywords. Considering that high cost paid search expense seems inevitable for those in this sector, staying ahead of the game and determining how much ROI paid search is driving for your business is crucial.

Instead of blindly throwing money at the most obvious keywords, the smart financial marketer needs to be thinking of how they can optimise their other keywords to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, whilst maintaining click and conversion rates. To do this they need to attribute how effective particular keywords are throughout the customer journey.

For example, although the digital presence of the finance industry has grown rapidly in recent years, it doesn’t mean that consumers are no longer converting offline, for example by picking up the phone. In fact, a recent survey found that consumers are 2.8 times likelier to call from a paid search ad for financial services than other industries when researching their options.

Let’s say you’re a mortgage adviser who is bidding on the term ’best fixed rate mortgage rate’. How exactly can you attribute the number of phone calls this keyword has driven throughout a customer’s journey?

Call tracking attribution software from Mediahawk, allows you to connect them all, and the activity that generated the call, together, enabling you to analyse the impact phone calls have during the customer journey to determine campaign success. It can also show the full value of the mortgages generated from this specific keyword enabling you to attribute your full ROI from paid search.

Price Comparison Sites

As we’ve already stated, digital marketing is proving to be a popular, yet expensive choice for the finance sector. However, the prospect of high-value conversions means being competitive in this market doesn’t come cheap and these channels include price comparison sites.

When it comes to finance, no consumer wants to feel like they’ve overpaid for a policy for instance, or a mortgage or loan; which is why 60% of consumers are ’very likely’ to use a price comparison site when researching or buying a financial product.

Considering that they’re playing such a crucial role in the customer journey, financial services should certainly advertise on price comparison sites to drive desired results and profits. But this is a rather saturated market and future growth can depend on any changes that might occur to the comparison sites themselves. Therefore, the most successful financial marketers will be those who can hold their position on price comparison sites whilst optimising other channels to achieve growth.

By optimising other channels, such as social media, remarketing and PPC (pay-per-click) whilst maintaining efficient price comparison site coverage, financial businesses can prevent themselves from becoming too reliant on a singular advertising outlet, compensate the costs created from the comparison sites and continue to drive traffic through less costly methods. Determining the success of these campaigns can be a difficult task when financial businesses are using their current marketing tools. With the extensive digital competition that financial marketers are facing, an effective marketing measurement solution is essential for staying ahead, which is where multi-touch attribution comes in.

By making a correlation between actions and revenue, multi-touch attribution can paint the full picture of marketing effectiveness and highlight opportunities to optimise campaigns further. This is essential for finding an even balance between advertising on price comparison sites and external marketing activities.

Paid Social Media

Although it might not appear as an obvious choice, social media is becoming a popular marketing platform for the financial services industry with more and more companies using various platforms for consumer retention. According to research conducted by Community Rising on social media within the financial sector, 87% of respondents said their business uses Facebook, while 52% are using Twitter and 47% are using LinkedIn. The advantages of paid social media are clear and, although it won’t drive as many last-click conversions, it plays a crucial role in portraying a positive image of your company and building brand identity.

In a world where competition is significantly fiercer for financial services, and where it is considerably more expensive to obtain new customers than keep existing ones on board, paid social media is providing a clever, new way for financial businesses to market themselves. However, it isn’t without its issues. Typically, social media platforms play a more nurturing role within the customer journey and lack any real influence at the beginning or end of path to purchases. This means that when it comes to measuring effectiveness, both first and last-click attribution models have become obsolete.

To really understand the vital role paid social media platforms play in financial marketing, a data-driven multi-touch attribution model is essential. By incorporating, into your reporting, exactly how often social media is used during the customer journey you can obtain real insights to aid decision-making over strategy and spend. Furthermore, you can home in on specific channels to maximise your optimisation efforts.

Now that CMOs have a seat at the revenue table, there is also pressure to prove ROI. Since the only true measure of ROI is sales, it’s imperative that the marketing and sales leaders are aligned around key objectives and goals to truly prove their contributions to the bottom line. Here Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet, talks Finance Monthly through the matter.

While sales and marketing teams have made great strides in recent years to better align their outreach to customers, there is still a huge disconnect between the teams and, more importantly, between sales and marketing and the customer. Our recent study showed that, despite increases in new technologies and a proliferation of data and insights, 57% of marketers still find their biggest challenge to be identifying their target customer and the average sales person spends over two hours researching a prospect before making contact. Why are those numbers not improving in lock step with the growth of sales and marketing enablement technologies?

One reason could be the lack of alignment between the sales and marketing departments. And I don’t just mean the age-old disagreement of what’s a good lead and what is considered an opportunity. While those things are important, businesses in this digital world really have to consider aligning around the most foundational element the companies have – and that’s data.

Especially in an environment like Fintech, where we’re dealing with a vast, untapped or underserved community of small businesses, it’s crucial that marketing and sales are aligned on the definition of the B2B prospect – who are our best customers, and where will we find more of them. It’s not just a lead list of businesses and locations: it’s crucial to understand the key factors that will drive a positive sales and marketing engagement, and increase the chance of sales conversion. Factors such as:

• Target profile (age, size, line of business);
• Risk / credit worthiness;
• Changes in behavior (growth, decline, event triggers, etc.);
• Business family relationships.

In the best of circumstances, using analytics, existing customer profiles based on known behaviour, and unknown behaviour from alternative data sources, all brought together to the business entity level, can be used to create advanced marketing models that will target best prospects with precision.

Businesses can also ensure alignment by implementing a master data strategy across the organisation. This may sound daunting, but all it really means is making sure the data you have is structured, cleansed and connected across the company so that insights can be surfaced to the right people at the right time in order to make better business decisions. And, you can start easily by cleaning one app, like CRM, and growing from there.

With a connected view of all customers and prospects, sales and marketing teams are able to make better holistic decisions about each account- decisions which can lead to revenue growth – the ultimate proof of ROI.