Protecting Your Company from Digital Disruption

By David Mills
on November 19, 2019

(5 Minute Read)

What do Disney+ streaming, robotic automation and desktop video communication all have in common? We’re in an age of digital disruption. Entrepreneurs and savvy business owners alike are looking for competitive advantages and often find them in digital solutions. Your industry is no different with lots of disruption occurring now with even more to come in 2020.

What is Digital Disruption?

This is the effect of technology that changes the basic expectations and behaviors throughout our culture. Market disruption can cause whole industries to radically change and long-standing companies to disappear in very short periods of time.

Marketing that Actually Empowers Sales - Smarketing

By David Mills
on September 10, 2019

The longstanding tension between marketing and sales is no secret. One side (marketing) runs great campaigns and is disappointed by the way sales teams put those leads to use. The other side (sales) doesn’t think the quality of leads is high enough and responds to marketing generated leads with a less than enthusiastic attitude. Story Collaborative recently joined the elite group of “Sales Lions” after completing the transformative Pipeline Generation Bootcamp provided by our partner, HubSpot. We learned better sales-marketing alignment through smarketing.

The Word They Forgot to Add to the Dictionary - Hactics (and how to know if you are doing it)

By David Mills
on September 06, 2018

Def: hac·tic
ˈhaktik/
noun

1. Marketing tactics that create busy work instead of saving time or providing shortcuts to a growth goal.
2. Blend word from Hectic and Hack, i.e., Hactic: Hectic with Marketing Hacks.

Everyone loves a shortcut—but as you know from sitting in the back seat while people refuse to use a map—they don’t always lead you to where you thought they would. It’s easy to get busy with lots of tasks that others have used, or that have been suggested to us as shortcuts for growth. When you begin to dabble in marketing, you can start to get a dozen emails a week with “marketing hacks” (read that as quick shortcuts) with each one promising to address every challenge you are facing.

3 Video Ideas for Business Growth

By Chad Alexander
on May 10, 2018

Business growth is a difficult thing at times with so much to accomplish in terms of marketing, sales, and cash flow. One thing you can do with inexpensive equipment, a little know-how, and good stories is to create business growth through video. By 2019, most content consumed online will be video. Videos can help solve problems that crop in a person’s life (like the Dollar Shave Club intro video or the Chatbooks mom video). Videos can also tell amazing stories that people want to hear more about (think Red Bull’s Digging in the Carts series or Blendtec’s Will it Blend?).

Is inbound marketing alone adequate to create growth?

By David Mills
on April 03, 2018

In the beginning, there was only one form of marketing. This marketing focused on pushing out advertising that interrupted people (think TV commercials, radio/magazine ads). Called outbound marketing, it used interruption as the primary tool and placed a product or service in the way of the actual information or entertainment that people were consuming. This form of marketing began to shift with the introduction of the internet. In 1999, Seth Godin published a book called, "Permission Marketing," during the era in which search engine optimization (SEO) and inbound marketing began to take shape. But is inbound marketing alone, enough to create growth?

Agile Marketing Can Accelerate Business Growth

By David Mills
on February 27, 2018

The promise of technology for business is its ability to make big resources available for everyone. It’s an equalizer. The personal applications have changed entertainment, personal networking, finance, job hunting, and many other parts of our lives. In business, we look to technology accelerators in ecommerce, cloud services, software that is developed through broad crowdsourcing, and other systems that allow us to do more with less time and money.

Checklist - Why Your Website is Still Important for Business Growth

By David Mills
on December 24, 2017

You have many choices for marketing and advertising - social networks, digital ads, print ads, email, direct marketing. Which one rises to the top?  If you are in healthcare, technology, education or just about any industry, you may have thought your website was not that valuable because it hasn't been bringing you customers. If this is you, you need to think again.  2017 research reinforces the fact that people who are on their way to becoming customers because they want to expand their learning will go to your website more than any other resource.

How Are Home Care Agencies Doing Online with Patient AND Caregiver Recruiting?

By David Mills
on December 07, 2017

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” - Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos

A company's online presence has become vital to how its customers and potential employees perceive their brand. From the look and feel of the website, to its content, to where your company come up in their Google search results, people care how you present yourself. So just how are home health and home care agencies doing online? Numbers don't lie, so let's take a look at some statistics on the subject. Do you know where you stand as a company? The results might surprise you.

For Business Growth, Inbound Brings All Your Marketing Together

By David Mills
on November 23, 2017

There are more than 5,000 options for Martech (marketing technology).  Add that to what you need for customer service, CRM, scheduling and payment systems and it creates a dizzying array of options. Growing companies have large tech stacks and need a complex set of strategies to compete. But how do they integrate the technology and the information in a way that creates business growth?