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Expertise Marketing and Content Marketing - Is There a Difference?
We often get asked the question about how Content Marketing compares to Expertise Marketing. It’s ironic that still to this day many of our academic clients don’t refer to what they do as “content marketing.” But corporate customers are well acquainted with the importance of developing content to build reputation, relationships and revenue. Adding to the confusion are all the names that are bantered about by marketing departments and agencies - There’s inbound marketing popularized by companies such as Hubspot. And there are more bespoke “Thought Leadership” programs that are often developed by outside agencies such as Weber Shandwick and Edelman. While there are a lot of common elements to these programs there are some important differences that we focus on when developing and launching Expertise Marketing programs with our institutional and corporate clients. Here’s a deeper dive to help you better understand the value of Expertise Marketing. Introducing Expertise Marketing Expertise marketing is the practice of making the knowledge and skills of your human resources more visible to your partners and audiences. It draws attention to the value that your people can bring as brand ambassadors and strategically leverages the work your experts are doing to tell a more personal story. In many cases, expertise marketing can also be used to showcase your strengths in research and innovation. Creating a stronger digital presence, expertise marketing more effectively uses your channels to connect with audiences such as media, customers, partners and donors. It builds a sense of trust with your customers and above all else, it helps establish your reputation as an industry leader. ex•per•tise mar•ket•ing 1. The practice of collectively promoting an organization’s experts as brand ambassadors to demonstrate their skills or knowledge. 2. Best practices to publish and connect The Value of Expertise Marketing Reputation - Positions research, client work, thought leadership perspectives and achievements in the context of relevant topics that are in the news. Market Awareness - Expertise marketing makes it easier for key audiences to find expert content and people in search engines and on the organization’s website. Audience Engagement - Provides more intuitive search features for visible content which can be expanded to include assets such as video, social, and publications to drive richer conversations with audiences. Metrics on performance in areas related to expert development, content contribution and audience engagement page views and inquiries can be tracked. Demand Generation - Increased number of direct leads/ inquiries from audiences such as: Customers/Students Industry Partners Alumni Donors Media New Employee Recruits Conference Organizers Talent - Better engage stakeholders, researchers & subject-matter experts in the development and distribution of content while improving recruitment and retention of talent. Internal Collaboration - Better coordinate the knowledge and resources across internal communications teams and other departments as they engage experts. Provide a faster, more efficient way to generate content for breaking news and events. Content Contribution - Increase the size of the organization’s digital footprint by aggregating more content and distributing it contextually to multiple websites and third-party databases. Efficiency - Help employees get their jobs done faster and more efficiently. Enable them to find information faster, speed up internal processes and foster collaboration among people in multiple locations. Leverage Current and Future Infrastructure - Properly integrated, new technology investments should integrate seamlessly to leverage existing/proposed infrastructure such as content management systems (such as WordPress™) and marketing automation systems (such as Hubspot) How is Expertise Marketing Different from Content Marketing? A More Human Approach: People buy from people. That’s why content that is more personalized and attributed to specific experts who are well-identified as expert sources is far more trusted than most company-sponsored content. A More Collaborative Process that Engages Employees: A more structured “win-win” model empowers experts to contribute their knowledge. Expertise marketing is a proven way to build culture and celebrate diversity which assists with talent retention and recruitment. An Efficient Way to Create More Content to Boost SEO & Website Traffic: Engaging your experts creates a larger hub of “owned” content that is proven to boost PageRank in search engines and site traffic. Expert content is used by organizations to enhance their “About Us” page, staff/faculty/physician directories, newsroom pages, research pages and speakers bureaus. Optimized Content Formats Better Connect with Audiences: A variety of short format, long format and visual content formats (such as expert profiles, blogs, Q&A and videos) are designed to engage specific audiences at various stages of the customer journey. Improved Calls to Action & Analytics Boost Demand Generation & Leads/Inquiries: Experts become more approachable as “lead magnets” that generate measurable inbound opportunities, avoiding common issues of lost customer leads due to poor processes and workflow. You might be surprised at how much value expertise marketing can bring to your organisation. The chances are, that the time you are currently spending on ineffective content marketing strategies will be greatly reduced with a redefined focus on expertise marketing. By putting the focus back on the skills and relevance of your experts, as people, you're not only making them more visible but also establishing your brand reputation which will simultaneously generate more leads and increase efficiency.
Why shoppers are paying more for a fake Amazon discount
By Halle Burton According to new research by Jinhong Xie, a Warrington College of Business professor at the University of Florida, more than a quarter of Amazon vacuum cleaners sold have increased their prices while pretending to offer discounts. Xie’s pricing phenomenon research is joined with Sungsik Park at the University of South Carolina and Man Xie at Arizona State University, publishing their analysis in the Marketing Science journal. A product’s price increase is paired with a previously unadvertised listing price, which encourages Amazon shoppers to receive a deceitful false discount. This faux discount drove higher sales despite the price increase, and shoppers end up paying 23% more on average. “When you see this list-price comparison, you naturally assume you are getting a discount. It’s not just that you didn’t get a discount. You actually paid a higher price than before the seller displayed the discount claim,” said Xie. Regulations currently prohibit deceptive pricing by requiring truthful price comparisons from the sellers, but a list price can still be misleading under these circumstances. Shoppers are misled by the timing of price comparisons where retailers advertise a price discount that actually only gives the impression of a deal. “Current regulations are all about the value of the list price, and they don’t say anything about misleading consumers by manipulating the timing of the list price’s introduction,” Xie said. Xie and her colleagues followed more than 1,700 vacuums on Amazon from 2016 to 2017 gathering observational data on their prices. “We found that by increasing the price by 23% on average, the seller achieves a 15% advantage in their sales rank among all products in the home and kitchen category,” Xie said. Xie encourages consumers to be aware, not make assumptions about discount claims and utilize multiple websites to compare prices. “We think that consumer organizations and regulators should evaluate this new marketing practice to determine whether and how to manage it.”
#Expert Insight: Price Image Formation: When is HILO low?
When consumers choose where to shop, they often consider a store’s price image —does the store have a reputation for having lower or higher prices than its competitors? A store’s reputation for lower prices doesn’t happen by chance. Choosing a pricing strategy is one of the biggest pricing decisions a retailer makes. In “When is HILO Low? Price Image Formation Based on Frequency versus Depth Pricing Strategies,” a recently published paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, co-authors Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing, Ramnath Chellappa, associate dean and Goizueta term professor of information systems and operations management, and Daniel Sheehan, associate professor of marketing and supply chain at the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics, explore a gap in existing pricing strategy research. “Our research doesn’t threaten the validity of the previous research,” said Hamilton, “but what it does do is point to the limited generalizability of the previous research.” This is because previous pricing strategy research used the same research paradigm: It emphasized consumers’ perspectives as they compared prices simultaneously across multiple stores. Hamilton, Chellappa, and Sheehan wondered what would happen if they studied consumers as they compared prices of products within a store, instead of across stores. When they did so, the authors found that “many of the prominent findings of previous research are reversed,” they wrote. “We propose that when stores’ prices are evaluated one at a time, or in isolation, consumers will rely on the most salient contextual clues available—within-category price information—when forming a price image.” For example, rather than research the price of peanut butter across multiple grocery stores, shoppers often evaluate the price of peanut butter by comparing the prices of the brands on the shelf in front of them. To illustrate their point, the authors explore two basic pricing strategies: a frequency pricing strategy and a depth pricing strategy. Every Day Low Pricing (EDLP) is a frequency strategy where stores offer small price advantages over their competitors on many items. Walmart employs an EDLP strategy. A common depth strategy is a high-low (HILO) pricing strategy. HILO offers infrequent, but deep, price advantages over competitors. Macy’s utilizes this strategy. “The conventional wisdom is that EDLP equals low price,” explained Hamilton. But he and his co-authors argue that in a non-theoretical environment, the effectiveness of EDLP strategies is less clear. The trio hypothesized that the context in which consumers encounter prices has important implications. Specifically, that the frequency advantage of EDLP identified in earlier research was limited to those scenarios where customers were able to simultaneously compare prices across multiple stores. In contrast, they argue that a depth advantage, one resulting from HILO pricing, will be more likely when consumers evaluate store prices separately. “Without simultaneous comparisons across stores, consumers shift from using across-store prices as reference points to using within-category reference prices. As a result of this shift, deep price advantages are easier to evaluate than frequent price advantages and therefore more influential on customers’ formation of price image,” they write. “Because our theoretical account is based on within-category external reference prices, we predict that a depth store is likely to be evaluated as having a lower price image than a frequency store even when consumers are exposed to the prices of just one store,” they write. The authors tested their hypothesis using six separate experiments. All but one of the experiments studied national brands commonly found in grocery stores. (The other experiment used televisions.) In the experiments where participants saw store prices simultaneously, the experiment replicated the frequency advantage noted in previous research. But when participants did not have simultaneous price information across stores, the previous findings didn’t hold “What we found is that if you distance those prices comparisons even a little bit -showing a price on one webpage and then seeing a price on another webpage - that’s enough to completely reverse the findings,” explained Hamilton. In an isolated setting, “a couple of really low prices” will better communicate a store’s low-price image, said Hamilton. “That’s the big story.” While excited about the findings of their research, Hamilton is quick to point out the limits of their hypothesis, such as when pricing information isn’t readily available or when the consumer isn’t familiar with the brands of the product they wish to buy. “People want a simple answer that works everywhere, but it’s more nuanced than that,” said Hamilton. “This [hypothesis] is going to work better under certain set of circumstances than others because people process price information differently.” The insights aren’t only useful for retailers. While using a store’s price image to shop can be efficient from a consumer standpoint, assuming that the prices are low solely because the store has a reputation for low prices isn’t always the case. A retailer’s price image has vulnerabilities. Not everything at Costco is cheaper than it is at Whole Foods. Southwest Airlines may not always be cheaper than Delta Air Lines. “If you’re shopping for things you really care about,” advised Hamilton, “it might be worth doing more across-store price comparisons.” Chellappa is excited about how the paper addresses gaps in traditional economic models of pricing. “While much research in economics and information systems focuses on the availability of information for price comparison, the cognitive aspect of ‘how’ consumers compare and process such information is only explicated by studies such as ours. Looking at pricing through a behavioral lens, capturing consumers’ real shopping behavior reveals great insights that will be useful for firms,” he said. Interested in learning more about consumer behavior and Price Image Formation Based on Frequency versus Depth Pricing Strategies? Then let us help with your coverage and questions. Ryan Hamilton and Ramnath Chellappa are both available to speak regarding this important topic - simply click on either expert's icon now to arrange an interview today.
Georgia Southern recognized as top 100 degree producer for diverse students
Georgia Southern University has ranked in the top providers nationally for degrees conferred to diverse students among higher education institutions. For several years, Diverse Issues In Higher Education has produced the Top 100 Degree Producers rankings of the institutions that confer the most degrees to diverse students. The data was reported at the end of 2022 for the previous year of 2020-2021. Georgia Southern ranked highly in the following categories: #2 for international (temporary resident) students receiving doctoral degrees in public health #3 for African American and total minority students receiving doctoral degrees in public health #5 for African American students receiving bachelor’s degrees in the physical sciences #6 for African American students receiving bachelor’s degrees in communications disorder sciences #6 for African American students receiving bachelor’s degrees in parks and recreation “We are proud to be ranked in the top 20 in a variety of disciplines and categories,” said Dominique A. Quarles, Ph.D., associate vice president for inclusive excellence and chief diversity officer. "Along with our designations as a First-gen Forward Institution and Military Friendly School, this highlights the University’s success in providing education to students in our diverse state and region, and it reaffirms the importance of inclusion as a value at Georgia Southern.” The number of combined bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees awarded increased by over 55,000 degrees from 2019-2021 to 2021-2022 for diverse students nationwide. Underrepresented students of color received 35% of the combined degrees. The data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data system survey known as IPEDS, which are collected by the U.S. Department of Education. Georgia Southern detailed diversity rankings: Rank Category Degree Level Discipline #2 Temporary Resident Doctorate Public Health #3 African American Doctorate Public Health #3 Total Minority Doctorate Public Health #5 African American Bachelor’s Physical Sciences #6 African American Bachelor’s Communication Disorders Sciences #6 African American Bachelor’s Parks, Recreation, Leisure #8 African American Bachelor’s Engineering #9 African American Bachelor’s Marketing #10 African American Bachelor’s Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Sciences #13 African American Bachelor’s Finance #13 African American Master’s Parks, Recreation, Leisure #14 African American Bachelor’s Family And Consumer Sciences #14 Two or More Races Bachelor’s Communication Disorders #15 African American Bachelor’s Education #19 African American Bachelor’s All Disciplines Combined View the Top 100 Diverse Report Here For more information about the Top 100 Diverse Report or to speak with Dominique A. Quarles — simply reach out to Georgia Southern Director of Communications Jennifer Wise at jwise@georgiasouthern.edu to arrange an interview today.
AI-Generated Content is a Game Changer for Marketers, but at What Cost?
Goizueta’s David Schweidel pitted man against the machine to create SEO web content only to find that providing an editor with bot-generated content trounces the human copywriter every time. Good news for companies looking to boost productivity and save cash, he says. But could there be other hidden costs? In December 2022, The New York Times ran a piece looking back on the year’s biggest consumer tech updates. The review was mixed. Ownership shifts in the world of social media garnered special mentions, but hardware innovations had been largely “meh,’ mused the Times. There was one breakthrough area that warranted attention, however: AI-powered language-processing tech capable of generating natural-looking text, the same technology that powers familiar chatbots. And one such technology could well be poised to “invade our lives in 2023.” Earlier in December, AI research lab OpenAI, released the latest update to its Generative Pre-Trained Transformer technology, an open source artificial intelligence. It’s latest iteration, ChatGPT, immediately went viral. Here was an AI assistant that sounded intelligent. Not only could it answer any question thrown its way without supervised training, but when prompted, it could also write blog posts, as well as find and fix bugs in programming code. ChatGPT could draft business proposals and even tell jokes. All of this at a speed that beggared belief. Since its first release in 2020, OpenAI’s GPT technology has powered through a slew of updates that have seen its capabilities leap forward “by light years” in less than 24 months, says Goizueta Professor of Marketing, David Schweidel. For businesses looking to harness this rapidly-evolving technology, the potential is clearly enormous. But aren’t there also risks that industry and consumers alike will need to navigate? Schweidel is clear that the academic community and initiatives such as the Emory AI Humanity Initiative have a critical role in asking hard questions—and in determining the limitations and dangers, as well as the opportunities, inherent in tech innovation—because, as he puts it, “these things are going to happen whether we like it or not.” Man Versus Machine To that end, Schweidel and colleagues from Vienna University of Economics and Business and the Modul University of Vienna have put together a study looking at how well natural language generation technologies perform in one specific area of marketing: drafting bespoke content for website search engine optimization, better known as SEO. What they find is that content crafted by the machine, after light human editing, systematically outperforms its human counterparts—and by a staggering margin. Digging through the results, Schweidel and his colleagues can actually pinpoint an almost 80 percent success rate for appearing on the first page of search engine results with AI-generated content. This compares with just 22 perfect of content created by human SEO experts. In other words, the AI content passed to a human is roughly four times more effective than a skilled copywriter working alone. Reaching these findings meant running two real-time, real-world experiments, says Schweidel. First, he and his colleagues had to program the machine, in this case GPT 2, an earlier incarnation of GPT. GPT relies on natural language generation (NGL), a software process that converts manually uploaded input into authentic-sounding text or content—comparable in some ways to the human process of translating ideas into speech or writing. To prepare GPT-2 for SEO-specific content creation, Schweidel et al. started with the pre-trained GPT-2, and then let the machine do the heavy lifting: searching the internet for appropriate results based on the desired keyword, scraping the text of the websites, and updating GPT-2 to “learn” what SEO looks like, says Schweidel. We partnered with an IT firm and a university to run our field experiments. This meant creating SEO content for their websites using GPT-2 and actual human SEO experts, and then doing A/B testing to see which content was more successful in terms of landing in the top 10 search engine results on Google. So this was an opportunity to put the AI bot to the test in a real-world setting to see how it would perform against people. The results point to one clear winner. Not only did content from GPT-2 outperform its human rivals in SEO capabilities, it did so at scale. The AI-generated content scored a daily median result of seven or more hits in the first page of Google search results. The human-written copy didn’t make it onto the first result page at all. On its best day, GPT showed up for 15 of its 19 pages of search terms inside the top 10 search engine results page, compared with just two of the nine pages created by the human copywriters—a success rate of just under 80 percent compared to 22 percent. Savings at Scale The machine-generated content, after being edited by a human, trounces the human in SEO. But that’s not all, says Schweidel. The GPT bot was also able to produce content in a fraction of the time taken by the writers, reducing production time and associated labor costs by more than 90 percent, he says. “In our experiments, the copywriters took around four hours to write a page, while the GPT bot and human editor took 30 minutes. Now assuming the average copywriter makes an annual $45K on the basis of 1,567 hours of work, we calculate that the company we partnered with would stand to save more than $100,000 over a five-year period just by using the AI bot in conjunction with a human editor, rather than relying on SEO experts to craft content. That’s a 91 percent drop in the average cost of creating SEO content. It’s an orders of magnitude difference in productivity and costs.” But there are caveats. First off, there’s the quality of the machine-generated content to consider. For all its mind-boggling capabilities, even the newly released ChatGPT tends to read somewhat sterile, says Schweidel. That’s a problem both in terms of Google guidelines and brand coherence. Human editors are still needed in order to attenuate copy that can sound a little “mechanical.” “Google is pretty clear in its guidelines: Content generated by machines alone is a definite no-no. You also need to factor in the uncanny valley effect whereby something not quite human can come off as weird. Having an editor come in to smooth out AI content is critical to brand voice as well as the human touch.” Asking the Big Questions Then there are the moral and metaphysical dimensions of machine learning and creativity that beg an important question: Just because we can, does that mean we should? Here, Schweidel has grave reservations about the future of ChatGPT and its ilk. The potential of this kind of technology is extraordinarily exciting when you think about the challenges we face from productivity to pandemics, from sustainable growth to climate change. But let’s be very clear about the risks, too. AI is already capable of creating content—audio, visual and written—that looks and feels authentic. In a world that is hugely polarized, you have to ask yourself: How can that be weaponized? At the end of the day, says Schweidel, the large language models powering these generative AIs are essentially “stochastic parrots:” trained mimics whose output can be hard to predict. In the wrong hands, he warns, the potential for misinformation—and worse—could well be “terrifying.” “Shiny new tech is neither inherently good nor bad. It’s human nature to push the boundaries. But we need to ensure that the guardrails are in place to regulate innovation at this kind of pace, and that’s not easy. Governments typically lag far behind OpenAI and companies like them, even academics have a hard time keeping up. The real challenge ahead of us will be about innovating the guardrails in tandem with the tech—innovating our responsible practices and processes. Without effective safeguards in place, we’re on a path to potential destruction.” Covering AI or interesting in knowing more about this fascinating topic - then let our experts help with your coverage and stories. David Schweidel is the Rebecca Cheney McGreevy Endowed Chair and Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Simply click on David's icon now to arrange an interview today.
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Is the sun set to shine again on a rebounding Florida tourism economy?
It was a tough couple of years for the Florida tourism industry. With flights restricted, travel discouraged and theme parks closed or limiting the number of guests, Florida felt the full economic brunt of the pandemic when the tourists stopped coming. To put it in perspective: In 2020, Walt Disney World took a $7 billion loss. But with COVID all but a memory, the rebound already is in full swing with visitors and their disposable income returning to the Sunshine State. Florida tourism exploded to record numbers as the state has welcomed 104.5 million visitors so far this year, a 15.3 percent increase over the same time period in 2021, according to the offices of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Visit Florida. In the third quarter alone, Florida welcomed 35.1 million tourists – a 6.9 increase from the same period in 2021 and the fifth quarter in a row that saw overall visitation surpassing pre-pandemic levels. About 32.6 million domestic visitors traveled to Florida in the third quarter period of 2022. Islander News - December 2022 But still after such a slowdown, should we be cautious? What can tourism operators, hoteliers and the rest of the hospitality industry expect for 2023? With COVID no longer a deterrent, will a shaky economy be the next shoe to drop? Or, after being stuck at home for so long, will visitors help places such as Disney, Universal and LEGOLAND become recession-proof? These are great questions, and if you are a journalist covering the 2023 tourism season in Florida, let us help. Peter Ricci, Ph.D., is a clinical associate professor and director of the Hospitality and Tourism Management program in Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business. He is a hospitality industry veteran with more than 20 years of managerial experience in segments including food service, lodging, incentive travel and destination marketing. Peter is available to speak with the media about space-travel tourism as well as other topics, including the labor shortage in hospitality and tourism. Simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.
ExpertFile-powered “Our Experts” site makes health experts findable and accessible to media at a click of a button ChristianaCare and its collaborative partner ExpertFile have been recognized with a 2022 Silver Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for its "Our Experts" media database. Designed to easily and quickly connect journalists to subject-matter experts, this online resource has been recognized with the top prize – an “Award of Excellence” in the Communications Management, Media Relations category. The IABC Silver Quill Awards showcase business communication excellence and are acknowledged as among the most prestigious awards programs in the communications industry. “I’m proud to accept the Silver Quill Award on behalf of our organization and our incredible Communications team, including our ExpertFile partners,” said Shane Hoffman, communications director at ChristianaCare. “The ‘Our Experts’ platform has given us next-level ways to engage our experts and share our knowledge as a trusted source of health care information. It has also helped us re-imagine the traditional online news room experience and turn it into a truly new and innovative way to serve the needs of both journalists and our community.” IABC’s Silver Quill awards honor the dedication, innovation and passion of communicators on a global scale. Each entry is scored independently by evaluators who judge the award submission on factors that include: stakeholder analysis, strategic and tactical planning, quality of execution and measurable results. Since launching in March 2021, the "Our Experts" media database has received more than 20,000 online visits and has resulted in more than 200 news stories. “We are honored to earn this Silver Quill Award with our client, ChristianaCare,” said Peter Evans, CEO of ExpertFile. “Despite the pressures of the pandemic, their team collaborated closely with us to create a world-class program that continues to help a variety of audiences discover and connect every day with credible medical experts and groundbreaking research.” Powered by the ExpertFile software platform, the ChristianaCare “Our Experts” site provides a digital media toolkit with advanced search/digital content features to help journalists discover experts and access resources that make it easier for them to complete stories and meet their deadlines. Awarding top honors “with distinction,” the IABC judging panel provided a number of detailed comments on the “ChristianaCare Experts Program”: “Very well-done website. Nice content that is well organized and searchable. From planning and implementation to measurement afterward the program shows great work.” “Great work in the time of COVID. Your knowledge of journalists and their challenges. during COVID was spot-on.” “I liked the media advisories. Having been on both sides of the reporter/media relations thing, I like clear and simple. You achieved this!” “If I were a reporter, the advisory would be invaluable when I needed an expert.” “Very specific and focused on business-results. Great work here.” “Very comprehensive! You thought of everything without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.” Nearly 100 ChristianaCare experts are featured in the database today, and that number continues to grow. “As communicators in health care, it has always been important for us to provide timely, accurate, easy-to-understand information to the communities we serve so that people can make informed decisions about their health,” said Karen Browne, vice president of marketing and communications at ChristianaCare. “The COVID-19 pandemic added an entirely new level of urgency to our role as communicators, and it made it even more important for us to build strong relationships with our partners in the news media so that they can deliver compelling, actionable health information to the community—from experts they can trust.” The pandemic also highlighted the need to do more with less. ChristianaCare’s innovation was driven out of a desire to improve the reach, impact and efficiency of its media relations efforts—amid rapidly increasing demand—without the need to add additional resources. “With our partners at ExpertFile, we leveraged ExpertFile’s outstanding technology platform to create a database of our experts that helps reporters and news producers find the sources they need quickly, and it enables our team to nimbly manage their requests and facilitate interviews in a way that makes the absolute best use of our resources,” Hoffman said. “The ExpertFile team worked as our strategic thought partners throughout this process, and they’ve really embraced our desire for innovation that drives results. They’ve helped us to work smarter and do more without adding a lot of additional resources. Together, we’ve built a system and process that is helping us to communicate in new and better ways—and we’re just getting started.” About ChristianaCare Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, ChristianaCare is one of the country’s most dynamic health care organizations, centered on improving health outcomes, making high-quality care more accessible and lowering health care costs. ChristianaCare includes an extensive network of primary care and outpatient services, home health care, urgent care centers, three hospitals (1,299 beds), a freestanding emergency department, a Level I trauma center and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit, a comprehensive stroke center and regional centers of excellence in heart and vascular care, cancer care and women’s health. It also includes the pioneering Gene Editing Institute. ChristianaCare is nationally recognized as a great place to work, rated by Forbes as the 2nd best health system for diversity and inclusion, and the 29th best health system to work for in the United States, and by IDG Computerworld as one of the nation’s Best Places to Work in IT. ChristianaCare is rated by Healthgrades as one of America’s 50 Best Hospitals and continually ranked among the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek and other national quality ratings. ChristianaCare is a nonprofit teaching health system with more than 260 residents and fellows. With its groundbreaking Center for Virtual Health and a focus on population health and value-based care, ChristianaCare is shaping the future of health care.
Expert Podcasts: In Corporate Valuation, Customers are King
From investors to managers, business leaders need to understand the true value of companies, but many of the traditional methods are outdated and incomplete. Emory University Goizueta Business School's Professor Dan McCarthy joins to discuss customer-based corporate valuation, including the critical role customer lifetime value plays in driving a company’s success. For more insight and if you're interested in knowing more, then check out Dan's conversation that includes why customer data points are most important to monitor and how investors and managers stand to benefit from this approach. It's right here on the Goizueta Effect podcast. Dan is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Goizueta Business School. His research centers on customer lifetime value, limited data problems, data privacy, and the marketing-finance interface. He is regularly featured as a key expert, with recent coverage in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The Economist, and CNBC. If you're looking to connect or arrange an interview – simply click on his icon now to book a time today.
It’s time to embrace it: We’re in peak fall mode. But other than Instagram photos of crimson foliage and shearling boots, how does mainstream society observe the season? Two words: pumpkin spice. AdAge reports that the seasonal flavor is now a $500 million annual industry. So, what gives? "Seasonal products or limited-time offerings have a long history in marketing," says Tyler Milfeld, assistant professor at the Villanova School of Business. "These products are designed to connect to a broader cultural context." And pumpkin spice is undoubtedly a part of Western fall culture. Candles, snacks, drinks, eye shadow palettes, dog treats… the list goes on. But what drives consumer interest? Is it the packaging? The taste? The coziness factor? "Because of their seasonal or limited-time nature, products like these inspire consumer urgency, brand connection and word-of-mouth, three cornerstone marketing objectives," says Milfeld. "For example, candy companies have a long affiliation with the holidays through seasonal packages and flavors." But let’s be honest, there’s no pumpkin spice without Starbucks. "Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte is a terrific example of an in-season tie-in. Starbucks has leveraged consumer demand for the product by creating a buzz around the latte’s debut," says Milfeld. "It's interesting how pumpkin spice latte fans made videos and posted on social media about the launch date! In this way, product marketing is delivered through influencers, social media, and popular press. This year's product debuted in late August, allowing the brand a long run-up to the peak period." And it’s no coincidence that we see seasonally branded items popping up the most in grocery stores and restaurants. "Food products are ideal for seasonal offerings because certain ingredients enjoy strong associations with certain times. For instance, consumers associate cranberry with the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons," Milfeld says. "These products become cultural touchstones because they connect to a specific flavor, ingredient, recipe or color associated with the season and become an experience—for example, picking up a peppermint milkshake on the way home from holiday shopping or getting a 12-pack of cranberry splash for an extended family gathering. Marketers reinforce these usage occasions to strengthen the association for subsequent seasons. The product then becomes a tradition itself and a seasonal icon." The anticipation of a product's return becomes a marketing event. Thus, the holiday and consumer product become inextricably entwined. So, here's to the "basic" PSL lovers amongst us. Enjoy your festive treat without that extra side of embarrassment. After all, we're just celebrating the season.
Building Your Own Expert Network - How Expert Personas Help you Organize & Develop Your Talent Pool
As business continues to evolve at an unprecedented rate, companies need new ideas and strategies that help them rapidly transform to keep pace and grow. This explains the massive popularity that expert networks are having as companies look to connect with subject-matter experts with specialized sector and functional expertise who can accelerate their transformation efforts. Expert networks now represent a multi-billion dollar industry, helping companies in a variety of ways. From helping build primary research to assessing new market or acquisition opportunities to conducting due diligence for new technology purchases or competitive benchmarking, expert networks provide a valuable service. While many companies are increasing their use of traditional expert networks, there is also a trend toward organizing and developing internal talent by implementing a "knowledge management platform" or "employee skills marketplace." These can also be extended to engage broader audiences when experts are listed publicly as part of an Expert Center, Media Room, or Speakers Bureau. Depending on the scope and market visibility organizations wish to commit to in sharing their expertise, such programs can yield the following benefits: Improved access to shared knowledge throughout the organization Faster innovation through an improved discovery of key experts available for project opportunities Higher amount of cross-functional engagement between departments A more collaborative relationship with employees through better knowledge engagement and skills development Less reliance on outside consultants and traditional expert networks Improved brand reputation by engaging experts in thought leadership activities Increased media coverage and speaking engagements Improved business development opportunities by engaging experts earlier in the sales process Improved connection with the local community Additional ways to foster Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout the organization What is an expert network? An expert network is a service that matches clients with experts who are willing to share their knowledge and advice via short conversations. These are usually in the form one hour long expert interviews conducted with the client. Expert networks such as GLG, AlphaSights, Guidepoint Global, Third Bridge, and Coleman Research help match the client's interest to specific experts in their private database of experts on call. They also look after logistics such as scheduling the expert interviews and have detailed processes for qualifying experts to ensure compliance with the exchange of information. And they handle time tracking and billing of interviews which are typically charged based on an hourly rate. They also handle the payment of fees to the experts following the interview. Building your own knowledge platform There is a growing trend towards organizing their expertise given the profound challenges organizations are facing. And these challenges didn’t just start when the pandemic hit. In a recent Deloitte survey, 63% of executives reported that work in their organizations is currently being performed in teams or projects outside of people’s core job descriptions, 81% say work is increasingly performed across functional boundaries, and 36% say work is increasingly being performed by workers outside of the organization who don’t have defined jobs in the organization at all. Yet fewer than half (42%) of respondents say their organization’s job descriptions do an “excellent job” of specifying the work that needs to be done in their positions. As work becomes far more fluid, packaging skills into rigid job descriptions leads to a lot of untapped human capital in organizations. It’s an issue that hasn’t gone unnoticed by leadership. Research shows that only 18% of executives strongly agree that their workforce is using their skills and capabilities to their fullest potential. 85% of HR and business executives say organizations should create more agile ways of organizing work to improve speed and swiftly adapt to market changes. These issues underscore the need to better organize and develop internal talent by implementing a "knowledge management platform" or "employee skills marketplace." This is for a variety of reasons. With vast amounts of acquired knowledge pooled across various departments and teams, it can be difficult for other employees to access this knowledge when it is outside their area of expertise - as the old saying goes, “people don't know what they don't know.” Organizing your expertise for external audiences also can provide huge benefits for building reputation, relationships, and revenues. How to position your experts as industry thought leaders More and more organizations are looking at employees who can advance their innovation efforts internally, often as part of a cross-functional team or special project. And there are also important revenue-generating activities, such as sharing research and perspectives through content generation (blogging, webinars, podcasting) or speaking (at internal events, industry conferences, or as an expert source for media interviews). Determining how to best identify and put experts to work isn't a simple process. That's because to do this right requires a more disciplined approach to assessing and developing the talent across your organization. One that goes beyond linear career paths and traditional job titles we assign to employees. It also requires a more progressive approach to diversity and experience. One that is not simply correlated to seniority or authority in an organization. Given the current state of the talent market, most organizations are also recognizing the importance of managing their talent, listening more to employees, and helping them achieve their goals - both professional and personal. And that extends to how best to tap into their skills that can benefit the organization both internally and externally. That's why we developed a talent framework that helps identify opportunities where subject-matter experts can best contribute as well as potential options for professional development. To make this process more intuitive, we have developed a model that outlines 4 "expert personas" that detail the various characteristics related to experts in an organization along with a potential development path. Level 1: Experts in the "Practitioner" persona group can offer their organizations a wide range of skills. Our research and in-field experience with companies focused on innovation reveals that organizations can realize significant gains by tapping into this broad pool of talent. To better engage practitioners, we have helped universities better engage their Ph.D. candidates who are approaching graduation to conduct research and writing content that promotes their work and institutional brand to prospective students or donors. This also extends to corporate innovation. A recent example of this was our collaboration with a Fortune 500 company in the CPG sector, where we completed the build of an internal expert network. One of the key challenges this organization faced was the inability to quickly engage with “practitioners” - subject-matter experts across the organization who could help with specific R&D and innovation projects. While this organization had legacy HR and intranet communication platforms, they had experienced a number of challenges engaging their researchers. To make things worse the pandemic forced many to work from home, creating the need for more opportunities to engage online. They needed the ability to conduct simple searches to find other researchers relevant to their work who could help them with projects. Our research/writing team started the process by taking an inventory of experts and then developed profiles for each researcher in collaboration with the company’s research/innovation team using the ExperFile SaaS software platform. With the unique data structure used to categorize this broader set of biographical information, we then enabled advanced search capabilities to build a private, SOC2 (security) compliant expert network which was easily integrated into their existing talent platforms. With thousands of researchers across the globe, they now have the ability to quickly search for experts on areas such as skills, topics, work experience, research publications, company/industry experience and IP/patents. It’s important to note that activating all this hidden expertise not only lays the groundwork for faster innovation. It also can reduce the fees associated with outside expert networks and consultants, maintains tighter internal control of proprietary research information and forges stronger collaborations between experts across the globe. Level 2: The "Ambassador" category represents experts with a more developed set of skills and a reputation both inside their organization and within their community of practice. Working with them to generate more exposure through internal speaking engagements and within their local community is a great way to create market visibility. For example, we have worked with a number of professional services firms to make experts at this level more visible in their local markets. Building reputation and generating new client opportunities with thought leadership activities such as blogging, webinars and speaking at local business events or on podcasts is a proven way to tap into this talent. These activities have allowed organizations we have worked with to bring in new clients and increase revenues across various practice areas. Ambassadors are also perfect for involvement in on-campus recruitment events where competition for talent is high. Particularly in fields such as engineering, law and accounting. One way to make these experts more approachable to a wider audience is by creating a speaker’s bureau. Remember that not all your experts will be comfortable speaking to the media, however, they can still meaningfully contribute as a keynote speaker or panelist at an event. Organizing your experts on key topics enables local event and conference organizers to find you more easily in Google search results and on your website. In addition to getting your experts on the podium, it’s a proven way to get your expert's guest appearances on webinars and podcasts. Given the growing importance of these channels, we recently formed partnerships with the leading marketplaces for webinars and podcasts - BrightTalk and Podchaser to help our clients promote their experts for speaking opportunities. Level 3: Experts in the "Authority" category have developed a strong reputation as an expert in their field, often speaking at academic or industry conferences. At this level, they have also developed a degree of proficiency in speaking as an expert source with the local or national media. They can be found speaking as a guest on podcasts to share their knowledge and are often active on social media. In higher education, these people are critical to helping media relations and other departments generate media coverage that is essential to building a reputation. We have worked with many organizations that effectively engage their Authorities by staying connected to their research and publications and collaboratively creating regular content with them to reach a broader audience. You will find regular opportunities to boost coverage with local and national media by utilizing this group of experts. We work with media teams to conduct Google Search (SEO) analysis to identify what topics their target audiences are searching for. This allows them to more strategically focus on key experts to promote. They are also focused on delivering more engaging content formats such as video interviews and Q&A to boost Google PageRank and audience engagement across their website. And they are working collaboratively with their faculty to post media advisories and a regular stream of content that contributes to higher rates of discovery by journalists looking for expert sources. Level 4: Experts in the "Evangelist" category are those go-to experts that you often see in the media as key spokespeople representing a certain topic. They are seen as notable authorities with deep domain expertise within their community of practice which has often been earned through heavy research and publications. Chances are they have also authored books that provide a path to speaking engagements at conferences and media interviews. These are also the people who have developed a regular audience through blogging or by hosting a podcast and have a well-established social media following. Ultimately, what separates this group from the others is the significantly broader market profile they have earned as a thought leader. These individuals have an intuitive sense of how to communicate complex topics in a relatable way that both educates and engages. That makes them particularly valuable to the organizations whose brands they represent. Given the degree of qualifications required to operate at this level, it’s to be expected that you will find far fewer “evangelist” category experts in any organization. Many are naturally found within the ranks of the executive team. These are the people who are comfortable in interviews, and most have extensive public speaking experience appearing on a large stage and on radio and television. At this level, organizations need to be far more strategic about how they utilize this talent pool to build a reputation and reach a wider audience. We have seen first-hand how strategic thought leadership programs can build a platform for these experts that can pay huge dividends. One healthcare system we have worked with recently forged a relationship with ABC News to feature one of their medical experts (a medical doctor) on a weekly segment related to important Covid-related health topics. Given the frequent appearances this expert has made on television, this was an earned media home run and a great way for this healthcare system to build visibility and trust within the community by providing accurate medical information. Their commitment to making their medical experts more discoverable and approachable online has also helped them promote their strengths in areas such as cardiology, neonatal, cancer, and genetic research. And the results are impressive. Over the past year, they have doubled their national media coverage and are currently outperforming much larger healthcare systems in their area. How to organize your experts Personas by their very nature are designed to provide a more standardized approach for planning using "clusters" of talent that are grouped against common characteristics. However, we're very aware that they cannot possibly capture all the nuances you will find within your organization when it comes to talent. But our experience helping leading organizations in knowledge-based industries to better manage thousands of experts shows that having a more methodical approach pays off. It optimizes the internal/external contributions and the development paths of experts to create win-win opportunities. but it also helps forge a stronger connection with employees who feel their organization is taking the development of their professional skills more seriously and more actively creating avenues for them to engage and contribute. With an understanding of these personas, we can then focus on another important consideration - where can we best engage our experts to more effectively tap into their skills inside and outside the organization? To help answer that question, we developed a "Talent Assessment Grid" (TAG) that helps you identify key areas where each of these personas can contribute. As a planning tool, it's meant to provide a more organized approach that helps you assess your bench strength and create a more tangible system for measuring progress over time in areas such as skills development or contributions to cross-functional innovation projects or outside industry consulting. Playing to the individual strengths these experts have while moving them out of their comfort zone to develop additional skills also yields additional marketing benefits. Contributing content; speaking at conferences or community events or to the media are proven ways to build market visibility, establish trust and generate revenues - and experts play a vital role in this process. A thriving network where knowledge is easily discoverable inside an organization and strategically shared outside in the community and beyond can make a huge difference in boosting innovation and culture. When properly promoted, these experts will also help you grow your reputation, relationships, and revenues. Although this process requires commitment, it positions you to be more agile and outperform your competition by ensuring you are optimizing every employee’s true potential and making them more discoverable both inside and outside the organization. How are you putting your expert talent to work? Do you have a process you use today for identifying and engaging your experts? We would like to hear from you. For more insights on how you can organize your experts online to support your internal knowledge management or promote them to a wider audience, visit us at https://expertfile.com/resources to learn more.