The post Better together: Five tips for remote content teams appeared first on Insights.

I always found it strange when people asked me the question “What’s your exit strategy?” We never started NewsCred to get out of it. In fact, my co-founders and I often used the expression “Let’s build an enduring, profitable company of real consequence.” To me, that kind of consequential company could take a lifetime to build. And I know for many of our supporters, especially family members, the last twelve years must have felt like a lifetime! That’s why I’m really proud to share that we have reached an exciting milestone in our journey today: we’re announcing the sale of our Content Studio, Marketplace and associated services business. NewsCred will retain its software products, and continue as an independent company entirely focused on our Content Marketing Platform (CMP) and Marketing Orchestration technology. But more on that in a bit.

First, I wanted to explain simply what’s happening, since divestitures are not that common. We’ve been operating as two separate lines of business (LOBs) for a while now. We had our Content LOB and our Software LOB. Over the years, we realized that our customers actually fit quite neatly into these two categories. Our Content LOB customers came to us because they valued our Content Studio (original content) and Marketplace (licensed content), or our marketing services. While all of these customers used and paid for the CMP, it was not their primary value. We also had a huge cohort of customers in our Software LOB who exclusively purchased our software, and standardized their marketing teams on our software.

A little over two years ago, we built a long-term (3-year) strategy to spin out the Content LOB as a separate company, so that both sides of the business got the right focus and investment. It turns out that with the right strategy, you can almost will it into existence. Like clockwork, not only did we spin it out, but we also found an amazing company and financial sponsor to acquire (and grow) this asset. As part of this sale, roughly 40 amazing employees will be moving over to Industry Dive (ID), and all of the customers in our Content LOB will become customers of ID. For those of you not familiar with ID, it’s because they are humble and understated (much like their CEO, Sean). But they are an incredible company. And to Sean, the Industry Dive team and Falfurrius Capital Partners, thank you for your belief and for persevering and getting a deal done in the middle of a pandemic!

To our employees moving over, thank you for everything you did to help build NewsCred into the company it is today. Your fingerprints are all over our business, and we could never have executed on our strategy without your tireless efforts. I’m so excited to see the business thrive and flourish at Industry Dive. We are so proud of you, and we will do everything humanly possible to make our software business a huge success so that we can make you proud of us. Under the guidance and leadership of Jane (who will be moving to ID to run this LOB as a standalone business unit) and Sean, you are in incredibly good hands.

To our content customers, thank you for believing in us from the early days. We built a category together, and it’s been such an honor to partner with you. We always gave it everything we had to make you successful, and you stood by us (mostly through the ups, but also some downs). I am so excited to see how all the resources and opportunities at ID will help take your content marketing programs to the next level. Of course, we are not going anywhere, and look forward to continuing to support you with your CMP needs. As part of the deal, I made sure that your team stayed intact, and I’m so happy that every single person at NewsCred (and all the new Divers) are being retained. So nothing will change except for the better!

To our software customers, this journey continues. Our software business was growing incredibly fast, and that rocket ship just got a lot of additional fuel! We will be investing tens of millions of dollars to execute on our vision to build the Marketing Orchestration Platform of the future. We’ve already been the 3- time leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CMPs. But our vision is bigger and bolder. We are also winning in the Marketing Resource Management (MRM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) categories.

Our belief is simple: if you can (thoughtfully) combine the best of these capabilities, you give marketers something they’ve never had before — a real chance to transform how they work through integrated, modern & purpose-built software. Specifically, by harmonizing marketing teams, the content they create, the channels they activate, the data they analyze and the technology that powers it all, you empower them to truly orchestrate marketing, and deliver amazing results.

We’re excited about increasing our investments in R&D, and continuing to build out a world-class product  as well as a fiercely intelligent and hard- working team. Some of the biggest companies in the world run their marketing teams on our software, and we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for some big announcements over the next few months…

Finally, to the NewsCred team, past and present, it’s been the greatest privilege of my life working for you. Thank you for the opportunity.

-Shafqat

The post Founder’s Perspective: What this Milestone Means for NewsCred appeared first on Insights.

The common thread among each of these is the intertwining of geopolitics and technology. Both continue to impact each other’s sphere of influence. With the rise of nationalistic sentiments, countries are increasingly scrutinising potential national security threats posed by data leaks, and are subjecting software and hardware companies, especially those owned and operated by foreign companies, to comply with stricter checks, norms and policies. In some cases we’ve seen outright bans.

At least, that appears to be the case with India’s Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s blanket ban on 59 mobile apps – all from Chinese companies – that it said were “engaged in activities prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of state and public order”.

Geopolitics and border disputes

China and India – the two largest Asian economies, both nuclear powers that share a border spanning 4,056 kilometres – have had frequent but low-intensity flashpoints amid geopolitical tension. They last went to war in 1962, when the Dragon had caught the Elephant off guard, securing de facto control of Aksai Chin in the Himalayan region, an area claimed by both countries. But to their credit, the two nations have jointly engaged in confidence-building measures and signed multiple agreements that have prevented the use of firearms at the border to prevent any escalations. No rounds have been fired at the Sino-Indian border in Ladakh since the war’s end 58 years ago.

An imbalanced economic tango

On the economic front, bilateral trade has rapidly expanded between the two nations to the value of $85-$95bn in recent years, although the trade deficit of US$50bn is largely in China’s favour (despite China being the third largest market for Indian exports in 2019). This has always been a point of understandable concern and contention for the Indian administrators. India imports almost 70% of its bulk drugs and intermediates, 37% of electronic components, 45% of consumer electronics, and 44% of air conditioner and refrigerator parts from China.

Chinese hardware brands like Xioami, Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePLus controlled over 80% market share in India as of early 2020. Two of these brands are major sponsors of cricket in the country, a sport which more akin to a religion and one that binds the heterogeneous nation. The yawning deficits are not just limited to trade alone but also in categories such as foreign direct investments in startups and tourism – in both cases, China has an upper hand.

Why a blanket ban and why now?

It is important to have this geopolitical and commercial context as background when discussing the recent ban on Chinese mobile apps in India, when there hasn’t been any significant change to the way that these apps work in the last three months. Also, while TikTok India categorically denied sharing any information with China, if there was a genuine case against this particular app, as is apparent in other parts of the world, why punish the other 58 without a thorough investigation? It’s very likely this decision is a political one and a response to the current tensions between India and China – tensions which recently led to the first deaths along the disputed border in over 40 years.

Why not a larger ban, for a bigger signal and impact?

Whilst the jury is out on whether this blanket ban is legally tenable, if the objective was to send a signal to the folks across the border and showcase total economic self-reliance, why not be bold and go the distance? India could have banned major mobile apps and startups in India that have raised over $4bn from Chinese investors such as Tencent, Alibaba and Ant Financial, including Zomato, PayTM, Quikr, Ola, Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Dream 11, Rivigo, Udaan, Oyo, PolicyBazaar, Delhivery; some of the more prominent of the 18 out of the 30 unicorns in India that run on money raised in China.

What of the major Chinese smartphone and device brands that not only own 80% of the category in India, but are among the biggest sponsors/advertisers in the country?

While we’re at it, why not ban other American and European consumer goods that are manufactured in China such as Apple, Nike or Adidas?

How and where does one draw the line on ’Made in/by China?’ What brands deserve a ban or a boycott?

While I personally am not sure whether these kneejerk bans and boycott stunts will do anything to resolve the ongoing geopolitical tensions at the Himalayan border (they are better tackled diplomatically), they definitely help play to the jingoistic, nationalistic gallery and could have potential implications and ramifications for Indian creators, brands and the startup ecosystem.

Ban and boycott to copy and paste?

Given India’s dependence on Chinese imports in critical areas such as drugs, electronics and machinery as well as China being India’s third-largest export market, the Indian economy should be prepared for potential economic tremors should the Chinese government decide to retaliate with counter bans.

On the flip side, some Indian entrepreneurs believe that while it wasn’t the intended objective of the mobile app ban, the government has “actually provided a huge opportunity to startups to leverage the App ban [to] create new and innovative apps”, as Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chair and managing director of Biocon put it.

Read more at: https://yourstory.com/2020/06/indian-business-leaders-and-tech-startups-… this community, the ban serves to validate of prime minister Modi’s ambitious call to ’Make In India’, an initiative kickstarted four years ago to increase economic self-reliance through local innovation, manufacturing and development, recently bolstered through the $280bn Atmanirbhar Abhiyan Package in May this year as a way to help India recover from the impact of coronavirus.

If one has to go by the indications of the last week, all one has witnessed is the limited success of controversially developed me-too, copycat products. Several local TikTok wannabes had reported a massive spurts of downloads and usage in the immediate aftermath of this ban (Chingari enjoyed 300,000 downloads per hour, with 850,000 users viewing 2.2m video swipes per hour) but it is still a far cry from the massive success that the original app enjoyed pre-ban.

TikTok, which had 500m downloads (a quarter of its global install base) in India reached more than 40% of the total smartphone user base in India; post-ban that has dropped to about 10% whilst Chingari and Mitron have grown to 5%, Roposo to around 7% and Sharechat to about 15%.

In terms of usage and time spent, pre-ban, Indian users used to spend more than 50 minutes a day on TikTok. While that has dropped to about 5 minutes, usage on the Indian apps range between 5 to 22 minutes – still a long way to go before they emulate TikTok’s previous success.

For the sake of the 1.2m Indian creators that flocked to TikTok, I do hope that localized counterparts scale up and offer equivalent income-generating opportunities. The majority of these creators were non-English speakers from rural towns, who don’t have the privilege of having an acceptable cultural and economic background. TikTok provided them with an outlet to express themselves, and a unique income stream as influencers that collectively stood at about $16m.

These local apps may be spared from competing against China’s TikTok but they are likely to face stiff competition from Reels, Instagram’s “response to Tik Tok” (according to Adam Mosseri) and YouTube’s Shorts, likely to launch soon in India. The two global digital giants are likely to use this opportunity as a testbed to lure the Indian creators that had flocked to TikTok, before releasing at scale in other markets. 

In the meantime, Reliance Jio, which struck 12 deals in the last 12 weeks to raise over $15.6bn from some of the largest tech and private equity giants in the world, has launched two me-too products, JioMeet and JioChat. The user interfaces of either app (UI) seem to be very similar to Zoom and Whatsapp respectively and could potentially face legal actions – but with a war chest from heaven, I suppose that would be the least of Ambani’s concerns. 

Interestingly, my LinkedIn feed has been decorated with controversial chats about whether these copycat innovations are smart moves or shameless, desperate acts wearing the garb of ‘atmanirbharta’ (self-reliance) amid a nationalistic environment.

A chance to recalibrate through policy and competition-driven innovation

Whilst the early response points towards lazy, copycat innovation, notwithstanding the ban on the 59 Chinese apps there is a genuine opportunity for Indian startups to innovate in these unprecedented times as the world recalibrates itself – to not only solve local problems but to develop something that can be scaled and adopted globally.

It is important for the ecosystem in India to move away from the temptation to create the Indian version of western or Chinese successes but to create from within. And as Ronnie Screwvala, a successful Bollywood producer & co-founder of upGrad, said in a recent piece, “the only and long road to creating a culture of innovation is education, coupled with a robust soft-skilling ecosystem that is outcome-driven and accepting of failure as a probable outcome”.

To encourage this change in mindset and approach, the Indian government must go beyond creating chest-thumping, protectionist environments and focus on creating an environment that fosters healthy local and foreign competition; one that has investor and founder-friendly policies. It must create a regime that protects and respects intellectual property; encourage entrepreneurship within the education system and roll out the much needed and anticipated data protection bill that protects the nation, it’s companies and its citizens.

Bans and boycotts may be in vogue today in our increasingly polarized world and whilst it can amplify political posturing, it will not it serve as a long term geopolitical solution, nor can it be a long term strategy to drive innovation. Lee Raymond, the famous ex-chief executive officer and chairman of ExxonMobil said it well: “Without competition, the spectacular development of technology that we have seen in the last one hundred years in this country would not have happened.”

Prantik Mazumdar is the managing partner of Happy Marketer

This article was written by Prantik Mazumdar from The Drum and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The post What’s behind India’s TikTok ban? appeared first on Insights.

The 14th annual LGBTQ consumer research survey was sent out earlier this year, and more than 34,000 people responded globally (including 17,230 in the U.S.), evenly split between baby boomers, Gen X and millennials.

The report makes clear that multicultural marketing works: 80% of respondents in the U.S. said brands that support LGBTQ equality “will get more of my business this year.” And 73% had made a purchase over the past year at least partially because of a company’s LGBTQ-inclusive outreach, employment practices or supportive political stance.

The survey also showed that the LGBTQ experience in America is vastly different when the community is broken down by factors like race, gender and age. For example, Black LGBTQ respondents said they expected to experience the largest financial decline (19%) over the next year.

“The CMI demonstrates that LGBTQ buying power is on the minds of brands, and [we are] actively watching how they engage with our community and our allies in the Black community,” said Justin Nelson, co-founder and president of the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). “As the economy regains its footing in the months ahead, leading with a commitment to diversity can help supercharge our economy and ensure the $917 billion LGBTQ purchasing power rewards those who do what’s right.”

The report breaks down which brands are perceived as the most supportive of the LGBTQ community based on factors like gender and race. The No. 1 brand chosen by survey respondents year after year: Target.

Another write-in question asked which brands are doing the best job of outreach to the LGBTQ community. Respondents picked:

• Absolut
• Amazon
• American Airlines
• Apple
• Delta Air Lines
• Disney/ABC
• Google
• Nike
• Starbucks
• Subaru
• Target
• TomboyX
• Wells Fargo

Smaller brands that market to LGBTQ women and nonbinary communities were ranked very highly by them, with small queer-owned fashion brands TomboyX, gc2b and Wildfang cited more often than massive global names like Ikea and Amazon.

David Paisley, senior research director at CMI, said part of the reason smaller brands are showing up as leaders in queer women’s, nonbinary and trans communities is because the big brands don’t market to them as much.

“This is a function of great outreach by small businesses, but also the women’s and transgender markets have less outreach dollars directed at their communities,” Paisley said. “It is possible to make a bigger bang for the marketing dollar to LGBTQ women and transgender/nonbinary community members.”

Filling a demographic gap

While the LGBTQ Community Survey is an unparalleled wealth of information for brand marketers, it is also one of the largest demographic surveys conducted on the community, as questions about sexual orientation and gender identity are still not included in the U.S. Census.

Over 34,000 respondents across the globe participated in the 2020 survey, which was conducted in four languages (English, Spanish, French and Hungarian). An overwhelming majority of the respondents were men; in the U.S., the data came from 12,041 self-identified cisgender gay and bisexual men, 3,461 cisgender lesbian and bisexual women, and 1,728 transgender and nonbinary people.

As with marketing, community outreach also focused largely on gay and bisexual men because that’s who LGBTQ media partners typically market to, according to Paisley.

“Research respondents are recruited through CMI’s proprietary LGBTQ research panel (28% of all participants), and through our partnerships with about 150 global LGBTQ media, events and organizations (72% of participants),” Paisley said. “Unfortunately, these media tend to be more male-focused. It is harder to reach LGBTQ women as there are fewer LGBTQ media options for the women’s community.”

Out of CMI’s U.S.-based media partners, only three national publications are geared toward queer women: Autostraddle, AfterEllen and Tagg Magazine. All are independently owned, with few corporate brand advertisers or sponsors.

Other insights from the survey show that despite longstanding perceptions to the contrary, the majority of LGBTQ Americans do not reside in large metropolitan areas, but instead are scattered across smaller cities, suburbs and even rural towns.

Nelson said that tracks with NGLCC’s own research on the LGBTQ economy in America, and that as equality increases state by state, LGBTQ people are more likely to live in smaller but more inclusive communities. Developments such as this June’s Supreme Court decision making it illegal to fire an employee for being LGBTQ are fueling a community exodus out of the traditional safeholds offered by urban areas.

Still, said Nelson of the nation’s remaining patchwork of equality laws: “Brands must remember that the LGBTQ community’s income and opportunities vary tremendously depending ZIP code.”

“It is in a brand’s best interest to be an active participant in leveling the playing field and by supporting the Equality Act to bring social and economic equality to all 50 states,” Nelson said. “When coupled with inclusive hiring, marketing and procurement strategies, brands can help ensure that every LGBTQ American has the same chance to participate in the economy and generate community equity as any other citizen.”

To read the CMI’s full report on the 2020 LGBTQ Community Survey, send a request to research@cmi.info.

This article was written by Mary Emily O’Hara from Adweek and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The post What Marketers Need to Know About the LGBTQ Community in 2020 appeared first on Insights.

Even with this marketing spend cut, companies still want to develop campaigns that keep their products and services within the public eye. The only way for that to happen is to be more efficient in their advertising spend. Getting the most value for the smaller ad budget available should be the most critical of a business’s marketing goals.

These entrepreneurs from Ad Age Collective are familiar with making the most of a shoestring budget. We asked them to share their insights on how businesses can get the most value out of tiny advertising budgets. Here’s what they had to say.

1. Start with research.

You need to understand what your audience is going through before you launch any ad campaigns. Are they in a position to buy? Are all other systems such as logistics working? It only makes sense to advertise if people can still carry out normal buying activities. Learn about what’s happening with your audience so that you can make better decisions. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

2. Focus on results.

This is a crucial time for many businesses and it has never been more important to focus on advertising spend that is directly attributable to a result. This may mean temporarily reducing your brand spend in favor of investments in performance-oriented marketing. Keep an eye on cost per acquisition — it’s everything right now. – Michael Lisovetsky, JUICE

3. Amplify earned media.

Find positive articles written about your company or the problems your solutions solve for customers and amplify those articles via social media. This way, you combine the credibility of third-party media with the precision targeting of digital advertising to get the most bang for your buck. By combining them in this way, you’ll fully leverage your public relations efforts and your ad dollars. – Dan Beltramo, Onclusive (formerly AirPR)

4. Be flexible and listen.

During a crisis — and before — brands need to build in flexibility on their spend and be able to shift messaging quickly. Don’t do something off-brand, but show you are listening and have empathy. Turn to social or earned media in times of crisis to reach your audience quickly and authentically. And if able, realign ad spend and messages to address consumer needs at that time and as they change. – Maggie O’Neill, Peppercomm

5. Invest more in acquisitions and SEO.

With many advertisers pulling back on ad spend and customers spending more time online, now’s the time to invest in acquisition efforts. CPMs are down with decreased demand and increased inventory, so prioritize high- and mid-funnel messages to build brand awareness, recall and trust. Also consider investing more in SEO. A high-quality, relevant online experience will help maximize sales potential. – Chad Robley, Mindgruve

6. Do fewer things and do them better.

Focus on a few things and choose them based on areas where you have the highest propensity to succeed. Build in the industries you already have built a reputation. Finally, go for one call to action and pour your heart into it. Remember, if you went on a first date and liked the person, all you’d want is a second date. What is your call-to-action equivalent of a second date? – Arjun Sen, ZenMango

7. Tie advertising efforts directly to revenue.

Marketers and advertisers often despise sales, preferring to live in the world of ROI based on impressions, awareness and engagement. As antithetical as it may feel, in a crisis you need to make your peace with sales. Tying your advertising efforts directly to revenue in the short term will benefit your organization and give you resources to invest in longer-term initiatives as the crisis subsides. – Patrick Ward, Rootstrap

8. Send the right message to the right people.

With several industries decreasing or eliminating their media spends, budgets can now go further than ever, so without sophisticated audience segmentation brands run the risk of hitting the same customers over and over or delivering ineffective messages to the wrong people (while results look better than before). It is time to segment your audiences more deeply to make the best use of the budget. – Reid Carr, Red Door Interactive

9. Seize the competitive advantage and connect emotionally.

To win during and after a crisis, brands do two things: 1) As others cut ad spend, they seize competitive advantage to assure their brand’s share of voice is higher than its share of market; 2) They shift messages to connect emotionally at scale, displaying true commitment to serving communities and customers. The lift in brand affinity, purchase intent and, ultimately, market share gains deliver peak ROI. – Sean Cunningham, VAB

This article was written by Ad Age Collective Expert Panel from Ad Age and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The post 9 tips for getting the best value from your advertising spend during a crisis appeared first on Insights.

But what exactly are these tools? Which of them are helpful, and where do marketing leaders feel they have gaps? And most importantly, what kind of shift should we expect in terms of overall investment on point solutions, given the current economic climate and uncertain future?

We wanted to know, so we surveyed marketing leaders to get their take on the top martech trends we should expect heading into 2021.

Top Martech Trends #1: Martech spending will rise

The post Top Martech Trends for 2021 appeared first on Insights.

As modern marketers and leaders, how do we ensure our teams are equipped to operate in this new remote world? It requires reassessing what we’re doing — and how we’re doing it — in order to work better, faster, and smarter using different strategies and marketing collaboration software.

In this session, NewsCred CEO & Co-Founder Shafqat Islam will be joined by Marcia Trask, Principal Analyst of Marketing Operations Strategies at Forrester SiriusDecisions, as they:

• Poll the audience to understand common collaboration challenges & offer solutions to remedy
• Field your questions & discuss how COVID-19 has changed the marketing landscape
• Share insights on the marketing collaboration software, tools, processes & best practices leading teams are employing

The post [Webinar] Ask an Analyst: Marketing Collaboration Software & Driving Efficiency in a Remote World appeared first on Insights.

We all know that COVID-19 has had a transformative impact on content, marketing strategies, and the ways in which we work (in fact, NewsCred recently commissioned Sirkin Research to conduct a survey aimed at identifying the specific impact of the coronavirus on marketing teams).

But we wanted to speak with some of our best customers directly, in order to learn how they were leading their teams in these unprecedented times, and get a better sense of how we could help.

In this edition of “COVID-19 Q&A”, NewsCred’s CMO, Matt Malanga, sits down with Ellen Gerstein, Senior Director of Content Strategy Engagement at Pfizer to discuss some of the adversities her team is experiencing around shifting focus to digital campaigns and customer engagement.

• What are your biggest challenges with dealing with the coronavirus for you and your marketing team?
• How have your priorities shifted? Your budget shifted? Maybe the tactics shifted?
• How has NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform been helpful for you and your team?

Q: What are your biggest challenges with dealing with the coronavirus for you and your marketing team?

EG: When we think about how we are handling communications during COVID-19, I feel like we’ve been doing this for a really long time, but really we haven’t been. We started communicating in February, which is probably very early when we started getting signs that things were going on in Asia. We were paying attention. We were seeing what the U.S. was talking about in relation to world events. We started out very slowly with some content on handwashing that we had used for a previous, I think World Hand Washing Week, that’s what it is, awareness time.

We weren’t comfortable with responding yet because followers were looking for information about how we were responding to coronavirus, and we weren’t responding yet. So, we started out with the handwashing content, and we got a very good reaction to it. In fact, we had some members of senior leadership notice it and say, “We need to be doing more of this. We need to be a trusted source for information. And we need to show that we are a company that cares.” So, from the beginning we had a North Star to work towards. And I think that made it much, much easier. The biggest challenge that we found is the content hasn’t always been what we thought it would be, in terms of what followers are looking for.

Our audience has been looking for very straightforward content that answers questions. It’s as if they’re all going to a search engine at the same time and saying, “What is coronavirus? What are the symptoms? How do I know if I have it? Where do I get a test?” And when we’ve followed that kind of guidance, in both our feature stories that we’ve put on our site, as well as our social content and videos that we’ve done, that’s what’s gone over really well. And that’s been surprising to us and also somewhat of a challenge because we’ve wanted to do bigger communications, but really people need trusted guidance. The fact that they’re looking to a pharmaceutical company to provide it, that’s a big responsibility, and we were more than willing to take it on.

I will say that one of the things that we’ve really relied on, in that sense, is the Idea Lab on the NewsCred CMP. Because, very early on, I was putting in coronavirus when it was the novel coronavirus and it didn’t have a name. I was putting that in and seeing what the search terms were that were coming up, where the traffic was. And one of the things that we pegged early on, that we still kind of marvel at, is the search terms for coronavirus in cats and coronavirus in dogs ranked very, very high and they still continue to. But it was the CMP’s Idea Lab that brought it right to light and really did inform a lot of our subsequent content plays, and where we would go. Because again, to be a trusted source of information, you have to be able to answer the questions that people are asking. And that showed us what questions people were asking, and we were able to move from there.

Q: How have your priorities shifted? Your budget shifted? Maybe the tactics shifted?

EG: It’s brought the prominence of digital communication really to the forefront. I’ve said that one of the best things about this whole event, if you can say there’s a silver lining, is that silos have been breaking down. Whereas teams that normally wouldn’t look to us and kind of think, “Oh, there’s that internet thing. I don’t want to deal with that team.” All of a sudden coming to us saying, “You know what? The meeting that was supposed to take place in Frankfurt, in June, has been canceled. So, currently it’s all going to be online and we’ve got to live tweet. What does that mean?”

I would say our priorities have shifted to the degree where… Our followers are still looking for information on COVID-19. If we post something about Earth Day, which happened last week. We still get comments about, “You don’t have any treatments yet? And what are you doing here?” So, we understand that the audience still has that as a priority. At the same time, we don’t want to abandon those patient communities that we have worked for a very long time to develop relationships with. So, the prostate cancer community, the ulcerative colitis patient advocacy groups, we still need to provide them with content and connections wherever possible. We don’t want to just abandon them right now.

In some cases we’ve been able to talk about how COVID-19 affects those with underlying conditions. One of the things that we’ve done, that was really helpful, was to get our Chief Medical Officer and our Chief Patient Officer on very simple videos. Where they’re talking to the camera, and talking to the viewer, and answering those very basic questions.

We actually had an article written, and then we turned it into a script for our Chief Patient Officer. So she could answer those questions in real-time, which was fabulously received. And again, it’s these simple things that… I’m looking for these big whizzbang moments and there’s something so simple that we were getting phone calls from other organizations asking if they could share it, and use it internally, use it externally. So, it’s been shifting priorities, but at the same time, staying in tune with that North Star and really what we’re trying to do right now.

Q: How has NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform been helpful for you and your team?

Being able to keep track of what people are working on and know where things are with approvals. We’re a regulated industry. So, we can’t just publish anything. It has to go through medical, legal, and regulatory review, in most cases. So, if you have 20 or 30 pieces of content going around, having the CMP and being able to keep track of where everything is going, and who’s doing what, is very helpful.

In my fantasy world, someday, they will be a part of the platform, as well. We’re not dealing with the people who embrace tech. Let’s just say. Someday. Someday, Matt.

Interested in learning more?

Contact us to learn how global brands, like Pfizer, manage their remote teams and shift strategies during a global pandemic.

The post COVID-19 Q&A: How Pfizer Prepared Early For the Pandemic appeared first on Insights.

Maintaining Customer Engagement During Coronavirus

We all know that COVID-19 has had a transformative impact on content, marketing strategies, and the ways in which we work (in fact, NewsCred recently commissioned Sirkin Research to conduct a survey aimed at identifying the specific impact of the coronavirus on marketing teams).

But we wanted to speak with some of our best customers directly, in order to learn how they were leading their teams in these unprecedented times, and get a better sense of how we could help.

In this edition of “COVID-19 Q&A”, NewsCred’s CMO, Matt Malanga, sits down with Susan Campbell, Marketing Group Manager at Panasonic to discuss some of the adversities her team is experiencing around remote work, customer communication, and budgeting during these difficult times.

• What are the biggest challenges you and your team are facing as a result of the pandemic?
• Due to in-person event closures, brands are shifting their focus on digital events. Is your team experiencing an influx of work because of this?
• Is NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform (CMP) helping you manage your digital events? And how?
• With shifting priorities, are you still continuing to use the CMP for collaboration or are you finding other ways to get all that work done?
• What have you learned about your team and your work processes as a result of COVID-19?

Q: What are the biggest challenges you and your team are facing as a result of the pandemic?

SC: Well, a couple of challenges, clearly, remote working as the first one of them that we had to tackle and figuring out how to use remote platforms so that we could have video conferencing and team meetings remotely, so we had to all get through that adjustment. But I would say the biggest challenge for us is the impact on the business, the increased need for communication. So since our sales team can’t be out selling, we need to be creating more communication for them, with their customers.

I would say our biggest challenge is the increase in the volume of work that we’ve had come our way. The fact that the team that I lead is very much focused on the digital aspects of marketing that really all fell squarely into our laps. So working on the email channels, on the web channels, social media, trying to get sanitizing and disinfecting communications messages out through all those channels. That was really our biggest challenge as we started off, and now it still remains to be just a volume of requests. We support five different business units who all have their own independent sales teams. And so everybody wants to make sure that they’re communicating with their customers. A lot of our customer base is essential workers so that just further makes things more urgent.

Q: Due to in-person event closures, brands are shifting their focus on digital events. Is your team experiencing an influx of work because of this?

SC: Yep. So while we would normally support an event from the perspective of doing email invitations and registration pages on websites and that thing, we had not historically run a lot of webinars. And so we’ve had to very quickly, working with our trade show team, evaluate a virtual platform so that we could host webinars with video content and Q&A availability and all that stuff on reliable, stable connections. So getting that up to speed and then setting up an internal process, because now everybody wants a webinar. How do you go about requesting it and allocating the resources and prioritizing each of the different topics based on the priorities of the business at that given point in time? So we’ve been working through that and we’re actually going to be launching, or hosting. I should say, our first global webinar next week.

Q: Is NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform (CMP) helping you manage your digital events? And how?

SC: Absolutely. The fact that prior to everybody working from home, we already worked with a very geography distributed team. So we have partners in Salt Lake City, MRM McCann is our agency out there, Race Point Global is our PR agency, they’re based in Boston, my team based in Newark, New Jersey. So we already covered some territory and needed a place to collaborate. So thankfully working in the CMP, we’ve got all of our social and blog posting and everything campaigns there so we all know where to go to figure out what needs to happen and where things are in the process. So that has helped us tremendously.

Q: With shifting priorities, are you still continuing to use the CMP for collaboration or are you finding other ways to get all that work done?

SC: No…We work all of our social and blog posting is all done through the CMP and we rely on that for the ability to see across the team and even cross-teams, because I have two separate teams that use it. So if anybody’s looking to find out what the status is of a program or where we are in terms of views or analytics for something that we ran, we have that centralized information.

And that’s just the communication factor alone too. So anytime there’s something that’s posted that you need to review or approve, you get the notification, you’re not having to slog through all the email back and forth. Do I have the latest version? Has, so-and-so seen this? It’s all right there, you get the email notification, you click on it, you’re in the CMP, you see what needs to be done, you see who touched it last, you touch it, you leave your comments and you see where it’s going next. So that sort of takes a lot of the guesswork out of the process.

Q: What have you learned about your team and your work processes as a result of COVID-19?

SC: Well, I am very, very lucky, I work for a great company. Panasonic is very supportive of trying new things and innovating. And so we’ve got that going for us. But even within that, the team that I lead is so connected and we have not let the barrier from getting together, in a physical sense, keep us from being tightly knit group and a strong unified team. We have our weekly team meetings on Fridays. We use Microsoft Teams, so it’s always on video and we’re very creative. So we have a theme, we’ve had backwards day and favorite sports team day, and just keeping it light to get a little bit of that camaraderie, to keep us all motivated and connected. And I think really that feeling that you’re still connected to the team, you’re still part of the team is important.

And then we just have workgroup meetings also that… I have my web squad that’s on Tuesdays. And I have a guy in Colorado and then two guys who are located in New Jersey. And we get on just almost like a hangout, a virtual video hangout, where we just talk through some of the different issues that we’ve got, that maybe somebody solved for another product line. And we work on things across the board and then sometimes we just chit chat for a minute. So I’ve learned they’re a resilient, very creative bunch of people who I’m really looking forward to seeing again, live, but we still stay pretty close.

Interested in learning more?

Contact us to learn how global brands, like Panasonic, maintains customer engagement during difficult times.

The post COVID-19 Q&A: How Panasonic Overcame Challenges Around Customer Engagement appeared first on Insights.

To our Black community, we recognize the acts of injustice against Black Americans. We stand with solidarity to fight against racism, police brutality, and the historical oppression of the Black community. 

In response to the current events, NewsCred’s CEO Shafqat Islam shared a strongly worded message in his latest Sunday Night Thoughts email – a weekly, internal email shared with the entire NewsCred team. As we value transparency, racial justice, and human rights, we would like to share his message with you:

“NewsCred Fam – I wish I didn’t have to write this email. It’s going to make some people uncomfortable because I’m going to speak freely and use words that may make you feel awkward. 

I really really don’t want to write it. In fact, I didn’t want to write it the past four or five times I addressed this topic on SNT. It’s been four years since I first wrote about Black Lives Matter – SNT 14. We’re at SNT 210, and things have gotten worse, not better. I’ve sent nearly 200 weekly emails and the situation in this country has not changed. I’m tired and sad and angry. But that doesn’t matter. Because I’m not Black in America. No amount of tiredness or sadness or anger will compare to what being Black in America feels like.

Let’s talk plainly. We live in a racist society. We do not live in a country (or world) where all people are treated equally. If you’re Black in America, you are treated differently from birth. And we’re not just talking about systematic inequality when it comes to opportunity. Or pay inequity. Or lack of diversity in the workplace. Or the fact that Black people represented a hugely disproportionate amount of COVID-19 deaths. Those things all exist and are problematic, of course. 

But being Black in America means lack of basic civil and human rights. Hell, it means your life means less than the lives of white people or even other people of color. Just think about that. It’s 2020 in America, and we live in a society where the color of your skin does not afford you access to life’s basic freedoms or liberties. In fact, if you are a Black man in America, you are not guaranteed a life. I thought mass incarceration was bad. But Black boys have no guarantee that they will grow up to be men. And Black men and women are still being lynched. In 2020.

And so people are angry. I don’t condone violence, but I can empathize. We didn’t listen to Black people when they protested peacefully. We didn’t listen or change when they marched. When they sang. When they kneeled. So, of course they’re angry. How many more Black men and women need to be lynched before we’ll listen or do something about it?

So what do we do? Firstly, we can’t be passive. Willful ignorance is racist. Paying lip service to these issues is racist. Not speaking out is racist. Not calling out ‘socially acceptable’ racism (i.e. jokes, hiring discrimination, and all of these examples) is racist. “I’m not racist” is not a thing. You’re either racist, or you’re anti-racist. And as a people and a company, we need to be anti-racist. If we are silent on matters of injustice, we are on the side of the oppressor. I truly believe that whatever affects one of us directly, affects all of us indirectly.

1) That starts with listening and understanding. And learning. And we should not make it incumbent on Black people to educate us. We need to do it ourselves. Start at the list at the bottom of this email.

2) Secondly, we must take action as individuals. Speaking out and taking action every chance we get. Whether it’s joining peaceful protests, to doing the small things – calling out any subtly racist remarks or jokes that we used to let slide. Calling out every inequality we see. How many of you cross the street when you see a black man or a black homeless man at night and then convince yourself “that wasn’t racist.” Well, it’s racist and we must stop. There are subtly racist things we do in our everyday lives because we have been brought up and live in a racist society that has racism institutionalized in every aspect of society. So let’s personally note all of these things and stop, and call out others.

3) Thirdly, as a company, we need to do better. If you’re Black at NewsCred, we acknowledge your pain and suffering. We don’t expect you to come to work on Monday and go through your day as if things were normal. They are anything but normal. Please take as much time that you need – and don’t feel like you need to cover up your pain or anger. You should be angry.  And as a company, we need to do better to aggressively hire a more diverse workforce. We’ve talked about it, but our results simply aren’t good enough. We said we’ll go and recruit from historically black colleges, but we haven’t done it proactively. We’ll fix that. As a company, we should double and triple-check that we have no pay inequity based on race. And as a company, we should and will make material donations to the initiatives that are trying to fix the systematic issues in our country. Black Lives Matter. Equal Justice Initiative. Black Girls Code. I’ll commit that for every dollar NewsCred gives to any other cause, we will always match it 1:1 to one of these nonprofits fighting for equality and justice. This is on top of our direct donations to these causes. I’ll commit the direct amount next week once I know, but it will be more than any other cause we’ve donated to because it’s the most important.

4) If you are White, acknowledge your White privilege. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have hardship or haven’t faced hardship in your life. It just means your skin color isn’t the thing making it harder. And for those of us who enjoy other kinds of privilege, it’s the same. We are lucky and have the odds stacked in our favor – often for years or decades (really its hundreds of years). We must all use the privilege for good and for change. No time for passive prayers. It must be active and we must lead in the dismantling of the racist society we have built and lived in.

5) Finally, we must show love. Everything listed above is about the truth. Learning the truth, admitting the truth, and then doing something about it to change the truths of our society. But combatting those truths requires love. Love that is active, driven by action, relentless, and equal for all peoples.

It may feel daunting. How can I personally create a more just and loving and equal society? But I do know that I can play a more proactive role in creating that society. It starts with me. And my family. And our company. We have a responsibility and an obligation.

To my Black brothers and sisters reading this: I am so, so sorry. I cannot begin to imagine what it feels like to walk in your shoes. But I am sure it hurts. And I will walk with you and carry you when your feet hurt. And until we can walk side by side, completely equal, we will not relent or stop fighting for you and with you.

Much love to every single one of you at NewsCred.

Shaf”

In an effort to support the Black community and combat racial inequality, NewsCred will be collecting and matching donations for 10 organizations ranging from the ACLU to the Equal Justice Initiative from members of our community. Please support our efforts by donating through our BrightFunds’ Racial Justice Fund link.

The post To Our Black Community… appeared first on Insights.

Marketing Challenges Created by Coronavirus

We all know that COVID-19 has had a transformative impact on content, marketing strategies, and the ways in which we work (in fact, NewsCred recently commissioned Sirkin Research to conduct a survey aimed at identifying the specific impact of the coronavirus on marketing teams).

But we wanted to speak with some of our best customers directly, in order to learn how they were leading their teams in these unprecedented times, and get a better sense of how we could help.

In this edition of “COVID-19 Q&A”, NewsCred’s CMO, Matt Malanga, sits down with Amy Newman, Senior Director of Content Operations at Kaseya to discuss some of the specific challenges her team has experienced — and how they’re overcoming them.

• What are the biggest challenges you and your team are facing as a result of the pandemic?
• Are you seeing a shift in investment?
• How has NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform helped your team collaborate and manage and get more visibility into all your campaigns?

Q: What are the biggest challenges you and your team are facing as a result of the pandemic?

AN: Reading through the survey responses, one thing that struck a chord was the fact that so many companies had to pivot to have remote workforces and getting their marketing teams working from home. We are a fairly geographically dispersed marketing org. I’m based in New York. My manager who oversees all of the demand gen org is based in Phoenix. We have our design team in Phoenix, Arizona. Our web dev team is in Phoenix. And we all have teams and employees in Bangalore. My entire team is based in Bangalore and my video team is in Miami. We have marketing ops folks in Tampa. So we’re all used to working different times zones. We have a marketing team in Europe. We have a marketing team in Australia. So we’re used to shuffling, brainstorming, collaborating over digital communications. Moving teams to work from home was not challenging; it was fairly smooth as far as that goes.

What was a challenge was changing the messaging that we were working with. It’s hard to get folks to pick up the phone when they’re concerned about their health, their loved ones, the very survival of their business. Fortunately, Kaseya’s line of products speaks well to a remote workforce and we realized that pretty much right away and we were able to get a campaign out the door that kind of said, “Hey, how are you making the transition to working remotely? Do you have what you need? Are you secure? Do you have a backup? Do you have a remote RMM or endpoint management in place?” And our product lines, quite honestly, even in the best of times, speak well to a remote workforce.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, it’s more challenging in some ways because we are back on track with the campaigns that we had in our back pocket and we need to factor in the messaging that comes with the fact that times are not the same. Security concerns are a little different. Backup is a little different. Folks need to back up from home, not necessarily the office, so we have to kind of interject that as well as other cornerstone marketing campaigns we have. We do an annual benchmark survey to where managed service providers are at. That data was gathered pre-COVID, so while some of it’s relevant, other pieces of it have changed and we need to make sure that we’re noting that. We need to make sure that when we do a webinar on that data, that we’re speaking to those facts. I think this is going to be a little bit of an ongoing challenge over time, as we all acclimate to the new normal.

Q: Are you seeing a shift in investments?

AN: So we’ve obviously put the brakes on in-person events. A lot of events have gone digital, at least for this quarter, so we’ve made changes in that regard. The first week or so, it was like webinar, webinar, webinar! I mean, we all have Zoom fatigue at this point. There are only so many webinars you can sit through. We’ve been experimenting with things like Facebook Lives and LinkedIn Lives and those seem to garner pretty quick and solid audiences. Obviously, there are issues with those because they’re a little tougher to gate. We’ve been working on some training videos. It’s a little bit of a longer curve on building them out than on building a webinar but the idea is that folks are home. Folks have more time. They’re spending more time in front of their computers. It gives them a shorter snapshot, a shorter piece of content than a full-on webinar. They can digest it in five to seven minutes. We’re looking down that path. We’ve been experimenting a little bit with more interactive tools. I think the most interesting piece at this time is there’s a whole lot of “why not?” as opposed to “no, we can’t do that.” So that’s been very exciting to be part of.

Q: How has NewsCred’s Content Marketing Platform helped your team collaborate, manage, and get more visibility into all your campaigns?

AN: So, at a broader level, NewsCred keeps us organized and keeps us aligned. It keeps us accountable. It allows us to leverage content. We have multiple lines of business that my team supports and a few other lines of business that are in NewsCred as well, and to be able to have that visibility into what everyone’s doing is tremendous. We learned a valuable lesson about the value of NewsCred with the COVID-related campaign. As we were building out this quick touch campaign and pivoting, we thought, “Oh, let’s just do it over email. Let’s use Dropbox. It’s fine. It’s quick. There’s only four or five of us involved with it.” Ironically, of the four or five of us that were heavily involved with this campaign pivot, three of us were the NewsCred evangelists, if you will, selling everyone on the value of it. And we were no strangers to CMPs either because we had a CMP prior to the NewsCred and we know we live or die by what’s in the management platform. But we thought we’d build it out and that was great and we were good for about four days. And then we realized that there was no record of anything and we had to backtrack and plot everything in there. So lesson learned. It definitely is a valuable tool, and we need to follow our own advice.

Interested in learning more?

Contact us to learn how global brands, like Kaseya, manage their marketing campaigns globally.

The post COVID-19 Q&A: How Kaseya Maintains Visibility During Remote Work appeared first on Insights.

Cultivating a truly harmonious marketing environment — one that enables teams to move quickly, efficiently, & effectively — means having the right tools & processes in place for all types of marketers to do their best work.

In this webinar, Matt Malanga, Chief Marketing Officer at NewsCred, will be joined by guest speaker Scott Brinker, creator & editor of Chief Marketing Technologist, as they:

• Share the top & tech challenges cited by today’s marketing ops leaders
• Dissect the 4 personas of “The Marketing Technologist” — and the importance of each
• Discuss how to blend process & technology to deploy a modern marketing team

Interested in learning more?

Contact us to see how NewsCred can help with your marketing strategy.

The post [Webinar] How to Orchestrate MarTech Harmony: The Who, What, Why & How Behind Better Marketing Ops appeared first on Insights.