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Cutting Costs without Reducing Your Team Is Indeed Possible

Costs

One of the things that many businesses around the world are notorious for is layoffs of their workers when they have to cut costs. It appears as though the least required asset for these companies is their workers. As brutal as it may sound, many businesses reduce their team sizes to reduce their costs every day. It is quite surprising because there are in fact dozens of different ways for businesses, especially small ones, to cut their costs without sending their employees home. Not to mention, small businesses aren’t in the best position to terminate their employees when they are already struggling with growth and expansion.

Let us first look at the circumstances and reasons why small businesses resort to firing their employees and terminating their contracts.

Reasons Why Businesses Terminate Their Employees

  •  Your Employee’s Performance is below Requirements

The biggest and probably the most valid reason for firing an employee is when they are not able to perform according to the set targets. Despite this being a valid reason, you should always follow the complete procedure and let go of your employee most ethically and professionally possible. Tell them that they also have the right to quit a company when a company does not pay them as promised and vice versa.

  •  Your Employee Isn’t Honest

You have noticed that your employee is not honest. They try to spend time doing nothing behind your back and are interested in things that they should not be concerned with. It is a risk to have such a worker working at the company.

  •  Your Employee Is Having a Hard Time Assimilating

One of the reasons why many employees are not able to give their best is because they can’t fit in the culture of your workplace. It’s either their religious, personal or moral beliefs that don’t let them feel being a part of the team.

  •  Your Employee Doesn’t Care

Believe it or not, some employees don’t care about the rules and regulations of your workplace and being at a professional place. They bully people around them, try to act pretentious, are not punctual and do not pay any attention to the dress code policy.

  •  Your Employees Cost You Too Much

This is quite an oxymoronic situation where the people who bring you business are the ones costing you money. Sometimes, companies become financially weak, and the only way they have to reduce their costs is firing employees. This helps them save money on employee compensation, bonuses, and incentives.

Is Employee Termination the Only Way to Cut Costs?

Not at all! There are many other ways for companies to reduce their costs without letting go of their employees. Here are some.

  •  Negotiations with Vendors and Suppliers

You can look into your current list of suppliers and vendors and look for opportunities to reduce costs. You have to realize that there are group purchasing organizations developed specifically for this purpose. Furthermore, there are online search engines designed specifically for businesses where you can find other businesses that can help you reduce your costs.

  •  Buy in Bulk

One simple way to reduce your costs is to purchase in bulk. Whether you are buying products or subscribing to software or online platform services, bulk purchases will always help you reduce your costs. As a business, you are subscribed to dozens of different online services and buy various items on a monthly or weekly basis. Buy them for several months or a complete year to save your costs.

  •  Reduce Lavish Expenses for Now

It is amazing that businesses offer their employees with refreshments, coffee, and teas for free, but there is a time when you can do this with ease. Until and unless you have reached a point where affording such luxuries do not bother you at all, do not introduce them.

  •  Invest in the Right Technology

Whether you are buying an electric generator for your office, bulbs and lights, ceiling fans, air conditioning units or machinery, you must invest in latest and energy-efficient technology.

  •  Market Wisely

Marketing can suck a lot of your capital out of business depending on the type of marketing you are doing. However, it will be rewarding for you if you use analytical data to narrow down only the marketing campaigns that are lucrative for your business. Spend on them and keep away from spending on marketing efforts that have not yielded any good results.

Similarly, you can find many other ways to reduce your costs without sending your employees home.

Risks Associated with Firing Your Employees

While firing your employees should be the last thing on your list of methods to cut costs, you must also know the many risks that come with employee termination. Here are a few.

  •  Sharing of Company Secrets with Competitors

When employees are not happy with your decision of firing them, they may not care about what action you can take against them. They may go for interviews with your competitors and share your trade secrets. This can be a big set-back for you if your competitor decides to take advantage of the situation.

  •  Lawsuits

When employees believe they have been fired based on unreasonable grounds, they may try to take you to court. If any wrongful termination is proved, it can be expensive for your company. Always be sure to complete the procedure of termination or make sure the termination is justified.

  •  Attack on Brand Image through Social Media

Today, people have a voice, and some people are ready to listen to their voice. Social networking platforms are great places for employees to discredit your brand and slander your image if they believe they were terminated by you wrongfully.

  •  Bad Performance of Existing Employees

It does not matter how much you care about your employees. They may have a stronger connection among themselves than they have with you. Therefore, when you terminate an employee and cause some dissention among the ranks.

So, it is highly recommended that you consider the many other ways of cutting costs for your small business before choosing to terminate your employees.

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10 Tips For Business Startup Owners

Owners

Every business owners can use some advice when it comes to making sure their business startup gets off on the right foot. From the best way to run your business to following your dreams, these tips offer sound recommendations that can help your business startup maintain its operations and find success at every turn.

Sure, your business may run into challenges, and you may make some mistakes along the way, but it is how you recover that matters. Use these tips to your advantage when it comes to ensuring you avoid the pitfalls that others have fallen into as a first-time entrepreneur.

1.      Be Passionate About What You Do

When it comes to business, the owners doing what you love makes it that much easier to do well. Find a business that you can excel at and throw yourself into. You should have an underlying passion for the market, product, service, or brand that you are selling. In order for it to succeed in the market place, you need to believe in it, and then your customers will follow suit.

2.      Believe In Yourself

Every business owners doubt themselves at one time or another, but you need to fully believe in your capabilities. Mistakes are inevitable, but understanding that you will fail at times can help you rebound and move forward with great resilience. Recognize that you have what it takes to make it and send that doubt packing as only when you truly believe in yourself and what you are doing will success come knocking at your door.

3.      Listen To Advice From Others

Many others have come before you with their own business startups. Learn from their challenges and heed their advice. They can allow you to steer clear of potential issues and make it easier for you to operate as a business startup. From finding funding to working with an angel investor, other entrepreneurs have experience that you can gain from and use to your advantage if you are willing to listen.

4.      Watch Your Overhead

Business owners need to realize that you are business startup out of the gate. This means watching the cash flow and setting up shop in that swank office building on 5th Avenue may not be a possibility at this time. Keep things simple and observe the cost structure. It may need cash down the road and being on the hook for high rents or loan commitments can make it difficult to spread the wings. Have patience and watch for the right opportunity to grow.

5.      Know Your Competition

Ignoring your competition as a business startup will get you nowhere. Be sure to thoroughly investigate everything there is to know about your competition and make your products and services better. Find out where your competitors are lacking and seize this opportunity to secure market share. Knowing your competition can give you that leg up your need to get ahead in the market and appeal to consumers in a new way. Do your homework and keep an eye on your competitors at all times.

6.      Practice Your Pitch

You are the greatest salesperson for your business startup. Whether you are looking to secure funding from an angel investor or looking to gain more customer loyalty, you need to have a pitch on the ready to tell anyone and everyone you come in contact with. Be concise in your approach and be sure to mention your goals, values, and vision. You never know who you’ll meet, and you need to be ready with a pitch that impresses.

7.      Get Out And Network

Networking is a key part of any entrepreneur’s success. Connecting with others in the industry can help you develop relationships that may come in handy for your business startup down the road. Plus, you will continue to learn from these individuals and a new opportunity with one of them may be just around the corner.

8.      Ask For Help

As much as you want to do it all, there comes a time when we all need to ask for help. There is no shame in getting someone involved in your business startup to help take it to the next level. You are going to need help as time goes on to evolve your company and reaching out to someone you trust may be the best thing that you can do for your business startup. You’ll be able to offload some of the burdens and free yourself up to focus on new projects that have been sitting on the back burner.

9.      Continue Learning

With the most successful CEOs reading four to five books a month, taking a page from their playbook can help extend owners business startup and move it forward in new ways. Keep the door open and continue to educate their selves by learning from others. Reading books that focus on self-help, business, motivation, leadership, and communication can continue to motivate them and their company. If keep their learning continuous, they’ll find plenty of new ideas just waiting to be realized.

10. Don’t Give Up

Above all don’t give up on yourself. Even when times get tough, and you feel like throwing in the towel. Take a step back and appreciate how far you have come. If you have the drive and motivation to succeed the potential to make it in the market is there. You need to believe that you can do it and push yourself harder than you have ever done before. With hard work comes success and you are most likely just on the cusp of winning.

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4 Ways to Impress an Angel Investor with Your Business Startup?

angel

Gaining the attention of an angel investor takes plenty of wit and charisma but getting them to sign the dotted line to fund your business takes a little more effort and preparedness. Knowing what will garner their focus and impress them to the fullest can make securing the funding you need to start your business easier and, of course, less stressful. Start with the following to get the nod of that angel investor you are looking to partner with.

Impressive Revenue Stats

Knowing the numbers is imperative to swaying an angel investor your way. You need to come to the table prepared to win them over not only with your knowledge but also with your impressive financials. You should have a revenue stream ready to go and know your overhead costs as well as your product costs and markup.

Industry Knowledge and Experience

Being a newbie to a market can be a challenge in itself, but if you have a strong background that shows you know what you are doing in this arena, you may have a leg up. Angel investors will take notice of your potential and see that your expertise is valuable to the market you are looking to serve and be more willing to fund your business startup as a result.

Sound Business Plan

It goes without saying that you should have a business plan for your startup ready to go. Angel investors want to know how you plan to operate once you open your doors and a business plan can help provide the details to many of their questions. Give your business plan some time and effort as it can be the defining factor for an angel investor saying ‘yes’ to funding your business start-up.

Niche Products and Services

If your product serves a niche in the market that is not currently being serviced, the interest of your angel investor will certainly be peaked by what you have to offer. Finding where your business fits into the marketplace can help separate you from the pack and make your product stand out from other “me too” offerings. Angel investors want in on these opportunities, and you are sure to impress them with you savvy and entrepreneurial spirit.

Finding the right angel investor doesn’t have to be a challenge as Funded.com provides a bevy of resources and helpful advice right at your fingertips. Visit Funded.com to access our network of angel investors or for assistance with the development of your business plan.

Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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InsideTracker Funded $15M to Innovate the Personalized Health and Wellness System

Health

InsideTracker, a Cambridge, MA-based. Developed a health analytics platform to analyze blood, DNA, and lifestyle habits and guide users to their health goals with actionable recommendations. The company’s platform analyzes and tracks vital biochemical and physiological markers as they change over time. It uses sophisticated algorithms and large scientific databases to determine optimal zones for each user’s attributes, enabling patients to get personalized nutrition and lifestyle recommendations and optimize their body performance.

InsideTracker was funded $15 million led by PeakBridge with participation from Cornucopian Capital, OurCrowd, BASF Venture Capital GmbH, and existing angel investors. The new investment enhances research and development efforts, expands marketing, and supports operations. To keep people living healthier, longer lives and systematically achieve their health and wellness goals.

InsideTracker integrates biomarker data from blood, DNA, activity trackers, and user-generated demographic information to create science-backed recommendations to optimize healthspan—i.e., help users live healthier longer—and systematically achieve their health and wellness goals.

Powered by a proprietary AI engine, InsideTracker combines leading-edge machine learning and computational biology with more than 60,000 hours of meta-analysis and curation from InsideTracker’s cross-disciplinary team of scientists and subject matter experts.

Nadav Berger, General Partner and Co-Founder, PeakBridge, said that the impact of nutrition on health is clear. Diet is a primary cause of the most prevalent chronic diseases in Western societies, while a growing body of research suggests that a ‘one size fits all approach to nutrition does not work. Again, InsideTracker stood out from the pack. They are excited to help InsideTracker reach new heights and support its mission to bring personalized nutrition to the masses.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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A Guide to Crafting the Perfect Startup Pitch

Pitch

As an entrepreneur with a unique business idea, your most difficult task is to make others believe in your idea as much as you do. Your knowledge of your business and the passion for its concept reflects in how you pitch your startup. While learning comes from failures, your target should always be to ace your pitch the first time you deliver it. The idea of pitching your business to the experienced investors can be quite daunting. You are standing in front of the people who can look right through you and your words. Any mistakes or misinformation can ruin the opportunity of a successful investment.

If you have watched a few episodes of the Shark Tank, you would know how brutal investors can be with their probing and reprimanding. While their harsh words can be quite painful, the more disappointing part is when you are not able to get the investment you want.

Regardless of all the internal and external forces, favoring and non-favoring odds, it is your perfect pitch that can win the investors over. What you need to focus on is how you can craft the perfect pitch that has the thinnest chances of being turned down by potential investors. Here are the tips that will help.

7 Tips to Craft and Deliver the Most Successful Business Startup Pitch

1)    Keep Your Pitch Short

Do whatever it takes—hire professionals or spend hundreds of hours brainstorming—but come up with a shortened, succinct and most effective version of your pitch. Don’t make your investors yawn. Split your pitch into three to four different phases and transition through them smoothly. For example, split your pitch into four parts that could look like this:

  • Tell the story how it started.
  • Explain clearly what your product/service is.
  • Give out numbers i.e. revenue, sales, profits, losses etc.
  • State the size of the investment you are looking for and explain what the purpose for which you need the said amount.

So, you could give 2 and half minutes to every part and complete your pitch in 10 minutes. Increase the time for the section which you believe needs more attention.

2)    Be VERY Clear about Your Product/Service

One of the biggest mistakes that startup teams make is not being able to explain the idea they are selling. It can often happen when you divide your product/service into multiple sections with each section solving a different problem. If you are not able to explain your product/service clearly, it is an indication of one of the two problems or both: 1) you have not worked on your pitch and 2) you don’t know your service/products very well yourself. As soon as the investors feel lost during your pitch, consider the opportunity lost too.

3)    Know Your Target Market and Product’s Uniqueness

Many entrepreneurs’ pitches have turned into nightmares because of this particular point. It is like an interviewer asking you, “Why should we hire YOU?” There might be many other products similar to yours in the market without you knowing about them. What you have to know is what makes yours unique/different.

You must also know the market you are targeting with your product. Keep in mind that investors are often not interested in products that only target a niche market. Take the example of selling Christmas trees that only sell in the Christmas season—indicates a niche market, a limited product.

4)    Know Your Numbers

If you have not done your homework on your numbers, you have no chance of getting an investor interested in your product. It’s sad but true. In fact, some investors are only interested in numbers as they believe it’s the numbers that tell the real story, not the business owner him/herself. Know your revenues, sales, losses, incomes, etc. Make sure you know your profits and revenues regarding months, quarters and years. If they ask you how much profit you made in last three months, you must come up with an answer immediately.

5)    Be Clear on How You Intend to Spend the Money

This section is where the investors will gauge how trustworthy you are and how good you are as a person in the leading position for your business. Of course, if you want money for your business you must also know where you are going to spend it. A few things that investors are trying to find out by asking “how you are going to spend the money” are as under:

  • You aren’t asking for money just because you haven’t been able to take a paycheck from your business.
  • You are not going to use the money to pay for debts and old investments.
  • You are not going to use the investment money for a business process that will not contribute to business’ growth and expansion.

If your demand for money ends up being for any of the reasons mentioned above, you are likely to be rejected for your investment.

6)    Show Your Passion

Barbara Corcoran, successful businesswoman and investor, says that she looks at the enthusiasm and passion of an entrepreneur for their business. She believes that you cannot fake passion. Whether you are pitching through an online platform or live in front of the investors, your passion can get them interested in your business even if it is not something they have done before.

7)    Choose the Right Platform

In today’s digital world, you can gather funds from investors through an online platform, which is the most popular and successful way for entrepreneurs to gather funds for their start-ups. However, when it comes to choosing the platform, you must pick one that has a reliable network of investors, significant traffic, reputable online image and great exposure for startups. One that fulfills all these requirements and more is Funded. Funded is currently one of the best and most reliable platforms for startups, especially when it comes to angel investors.

Final Word

As a startup, the presence and preparation of your competitors might be intimidating at first, but that’s what you need to change about yourself. Your competitors might have reached to a bigger network of investors, more inventory and better technologies to support their mission, but what can make the difference is your passion and confidence in your startup pitch.

Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Wreno Funded $5M to Leverage New Markets and Technology for Home Evaluation Solution

Home Evaluation

Wreno is a Scottsdale, AZ-based provider of an end-to-end home evaluation and maintenance service platform for iBuyers, REITs, and Prop Tech companies. The company’s platform assisted with ML and computer vision. They are allowing gig-workers to upskill to provide faster and more accurate home estimations and information collection at ranking while optimizing fragmented local trade businesses. Additionally, it offers adjacent repair, maintenance, and renovation services, thereby providing technologies that allow real estate companies to recruit more efficiently and onboard, train, and deploy their own internal home evaluation professionals and vendors at scale.

Wreno was funded $5 million led by Lerer Hippeau with participation from Fifth Wall, Owl Ventures, and NFX, as well as angel investors such as Vikas Choudhary from Porter and Alexey Dubov and Sam Ruben from Mighty Buildings. They plan to employ the new funding to scale into new markets across the US, leverage new technologies, produce new service offerings for customers, and improve the platform’s current machine learning capacities.

Wreno launched in 2021 by Charlotte Schell and Mark Barton, two former Zillow workers with comprehensive experience in business and real estate. The company has operated with some of the country’s largest institutional real estate companies across five states, connecting them with skilled workers and trade partners to help maintain, repair, renovate, and evaluate tens of thousands of homes.

The workforce shortage has resulted in costly delays and unfulfilled projects, representing a significant pain point for institutional homeowners. The company is managing this underserved demand by skilling new labor supply and leveraging machine learning with end-to-end software solutions to deliver more precise home evaluations and data collection at scale. In addition, the platform optimizes fragmented local trade businesses to provide adjacent repair, maintenance, and renovation services.

Isabelle Phelps, Partner at Lerer Hippeau, said the rapidly growing iBuyer, REIT, and proptech markets had constrained by labor. Wreno’s end-to-end platform opens labor supply for those companies while bringing efficiencies and improved customer experience to the market. Wreno upskills gig workers and operates technology to provide quicker and more reasonable measures and services, pulling together the proper mix of software and vendors to support repair and maintenance for businesses at ranking.

By: K. Tagura

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Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Fair Square Medicare Funded $15M to Automate the Healthcare System for Seniors

Healthcare

Fair Square Medicare is a San Diego, CA-based developer of a personalized Medicare guide intended to aggregate healthcare insurance plans. The company’s guide provides programs per the client’s zip code, and the data is directly collected from the Center for Medicare Services (CMS), enabling users to choose the suitable insurance plan per their needs.

Fair Square Medicare was funded $15 million led by Define Ventures with additional participation from Slow Ventures, YCombinator (YC), and angel investors. The new funding intends to scale its platform to become a full-service healthcare navigator for seniors and to be technology-enabled to assist seniors with more parts of their healthcare journey.

Fair Square Medicare concentrates on enlightening instead of selling seniors and using algorithmic intelligence to sort and offer the most-relevant Medicare plans based on their budget and priorities, regardless of commission. Its platform also boasts a web portal that allows users to take advantage of their available benefits.

The company currently helps thousands of seniors navigate available Medicare coverage options. It has retained 94% of its customers yearly, compared to traditional brokerages, which may lose up to half. Fair Square also has a 95 net promoter score, compared to the national brokerage average, which can be as low as 10.

The company plans to launch new services that assist seniors with their healthcare journey. As well as devote resources to rolling out the digital services. Including seeing and scheduling appointments with select providers, setting up annual preventive health and dental benefits, finding the lowest available price on their prescriptions, providing access to digital health services to help them manage chronic conditions, and more.

They also seeking to partner with more healthcare-insurance carriers. It also intends to launch retention offers, giving them insight into what behaviors make members stick around.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Sofy Funded $7.75M to Expand the Testing Platform Capabilities for Mobile Applications

Mobile Applications

Sofy a Seattle, WA-based developer of no-code testing software designed to enable dashboard functionality testing for mobile application development. The company’s software operates artificial intelligence-based trainable robots. To concentrate on iterative applications expansion, manage a portfolio of applications and comprehend how to pile up against the competition. Stimulating mobile application developers to test, deploy and observe execution, dependability, functionality, and user experience.

Sofy was funded $7.75 million led by Voyager Capital with participation from PSL Ventures, GTMFund, Revolution, and other angel investors. The company will use the latest funding to expand the platform’s capabilities to serve web and API functions and its current ability to test mobile applications.

The thirty-five-person startup was co-founded in 2016 by Hamid and Hyder Ali, who spent most of their professions in engineering leadership roles at Microsoft. They are joined by Usman Zubair, another previous Microsoft engineer who created several software companies.

Sofy’s patented tech can run diagnostics on both iOS and Android apps. As a result, developers and quality assurance professionals can test the performance of their mobile applications, create automation, review performance results, and diagnose visual quality and network issues. Moreover, they can do all this without writing a single line of code.

Developers might start at Sofy’s analytics capacities, which attempt to quantify dev performance and productivity. But Hamid launches them as a net good because, in his eyes, they can lead to more rapid release cycles.

Sofy moves head-to-head with companies like BrowserStack, which offers a similar application testing platform. Autify and Waldo also compete in space. However, Sofy will look to stay ahead of the competition with new features, including the capability to test applications for augmented and virtual fact peripherals.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Small Businesses Must Understand What Marketing Means

Small Business Marketing

The success of a small business depends greatly on how effectively it markets itself, its products and its services. The real challenge with marketing is that it is one of the broadest concepts that any businessperson and entrepreneur have to deal with. Every business has its specific marketing needs, and yours does too. If you have a business, you must understand marketing in its depths and the many techniques that will help your business grow and expand. A lot of the business owners believe that having a website and doing some seasonal material marketing is enough for them, but they are wrong.

Marketing has completely changed in the modern times with “digital” being the main focus. A conventional approach towards marketing will not help you achieve the goals you have set for your business.

Understand the Concept of Marketing Mix

Before you start marketing your business, you have to understand the concept of the marketing mix. Marketing mix consists of price, product, promotion, and place. While many other factors have been added to the mix recently, these four Ps remain the strongest ones to date. If you can understand the concept of the marketing mix, you will ensure allocating strict budgets and still getting the best ROIs from your marketing campaigns. You must bear in mind that spending too much on marketing does not mean you will always be successful.

Your successful marketing strategy has to be a mix of the four Ps. Before you start promoting a product, you must know the product is complete and in an acceptable form. Once the product is complete and you want to promote it, you have to make sure you promote it in the right place. You don’t want to be selling air conditioning units to the people of Siberia. Now, even if you created a great product and are promoting it in the right place, you won’t be able to sell it well if you haven’t priced it right.

You understand at this point that you have to pick every “P” of the marketing mix one by one and see if your strategy touches all of them. An important point to remember here is that the concept of the marketing mix is not limited to the “planning” phase of your marketing efforts. Even when you have executed your marketing plans, you have to keep measuring these four factors. If your efforts are not yielding any profits or positive ROIs, look at the four factors and try to find out which one has not been executed properly. Maybe you are promoting the right product at the right place but to the wrong people.

Base Your Marketing on Data

If you don’t know already, the more relevant and popular term than marketing is data-driven marketing among marketers. It is clear now that marketing without data is less effective and less practical in the modern times. Today, you have dozens of different tools to collect data about your target audience. You use these tools because the data you collect gives you deep insight into your market, what your customers want and what puts them off. In the online world, the process of data collection starts from your website. On your website, the data you can collect include the demographics of your visitors, their recent interests, their path to reach your website, etc.

There are other means of collecting data about your customers. The thing is that you will collect data from many different channels and in many different formats. Being able to view this data in one place and taking effective action on it is what the real challenge is. Companies are now looking for solutions to manage their digital marketing campaigns in one place, regardless of the nature of those campaigns. Data-driven marketing also allows you to create more personalized campaigns that are more effective in persuading your customers to use your products/services.

Look at the Right Numbers

One huge mistake that many small business owners make is focusing on the wrong numbers. You might have a great website, a strong marketing strategy and a lot of data to target your efforts in the right direction, but you can’t get any benefits until you look at the right numbers. Looking at the right numbers means that you measure the success of your marketing efforts by keeping up with the most important KPIs (key performance indicators). For you to measure the KPIs, you must set associate goals and targets with your marketing campaigns.

So, when creating a landing page for your product and get a lot of visitors on that page, it does not mean anything to you unless you are measuring some KPIs. In the case of a landing page, your most important KPIs will be the number of visitors, number of converted visitors and the sources from where the visitors are coming. Now, focusing on the wrong number would mean you are looking only at the number of visitors coming to your landing page every day. The number of visitors is only telling you that your marketing efforts have been successful enough to bring the visitors to the landing page. But how does that benefit you in any way if you don’t earn anything from those customers?

That’s where you have to measure the conversion rate. The conversion rate will tell you how much you are making from the visitors that are coming to your landing page. By focusing on conversion rates, you will put more money towards marketing campaigns that are bringing the most potential traffic, i.e., the traffic that’s converting the most.

Now, no matter how benefiting it is to focus on your conversion rates, it is still only one side of the picture. The right numbers here are your acquisition costs. If you spend on every acquired customer is $100 but you are obtaining a value of only $20 from that customer, this type of marketing is not good for you. You always have to look at positive ROI, i.e., your returns on the investments must always be higher than the amount of money you have invested in a marketing campaign.

Conclusion

So, you know at this point that marketing is a profound concept and you have to understand it in its depths to it successfully. Large companies spend millions of dollars every year on just marketing. They must find some value in this activity to spend that much money towards it. On the other hand, small business owners can often ignore the importance of marketing. They are always focusing on short-term progress and return. If they don’t see any significant results quickly, they stop spending on marketing and start looking for faults and shortcomings of their products/services.

It will pay off in the long-term to start using the right marketing tools right from today. Keep in mind that marketing tools are designed to handle different phases of marketing. While some tools help you market your products and services, others are more analytical. Another category is of tools that help simplify the use of both the types of tools. If you are thinking of starting a business or have set the foundation for a startup already, be sure to give marketing the attention that it deserves.  

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Abridge Funded $12.5M to Automate the Medical System and Increasing Patient Satisfaction

Medical

Abridge is a Pittsburgh, PA-based healthcare application developer planned to bring context and knowledge to every medical conversation. The company’s application operates machine learning to offer an audio-based system to record and summarize medical discussions and bring context and meaning to them, enabling users to follow through with the doctors’ recommendations and stay updated.

Abridge was funded $12.5 million led by Wittington Ventures alongside participation from existing investors like Union Square Ventures and UPMC Enterprises. In addition, new investors included Whistler Capital, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, and other strategic angel investors.

Abridge plans to use the funds to have the structure of a seamless solution and summarize information from any medical conversation, making it easier for systems to reduce provider burnout while also increasing patient satisfaction.

The company founded in 2018, Abridge has offered a consumer-facing app that patients can use to record their medical conversations. Each recording transcribed, powered by AI and machine learning. The app also defines key medical terms for users and highlights the next steps of care based on the provider’s plan for a given patient. 

Dr. Shivdev Rao, CEO, and co-founder of Abridge, said, Abridge is the solution he always wanted for himself, as a physician and a patient. This AI-based service leverages conversations he had with his patients to draft not only his documentation but also the capability to send detailed care plans to them and improve the quality of their care.

Now, the startup is launching an enterprise solution for providers. It can combined with electronic medical records systems and used for telemedicine appointments via an API. Providers can record any medical conversation—whether with a patient or another care team member—and, within minutes, receive a transcript. The AI service also summarizes the most medically relevant information in a doctor’s note format that the provider can verify and input into a medical record. It can also share that summary with the patient.

The goal is to reduce provider burnout and increase patient satisfaction. The platform has been trained on more than 1.5 million medical encounters, the company says, and been used by 2,000 clinicians so far. In addition, Abridge has current and upcoming partnerships and pilots in place with other prominent health systems, including each of the top three hospitals, payers, and pharmacies, as well as a Fortune 5 healthcare company.

By: K. Tagura

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