It's no secret that the days of free-flowing VC cash are over.
With the recent economic downturn, investors are carefully scrutinizing companies' financials and growth potential. As a result, profitability has become more important than ever before.
And European tech funding data supports this statement:
When we do a quick recap of the graph, we can easily see that:
- The investment amount in the third quarter of 2022 declined by 52% compared to the first quarter of the year
- When it comes to comparing with the previous year's Q3, the decline is 49%
For the past decade, the tech industry has been driven by a "growth at all costs" mentality. This has led to a situation where many startups focus on raising capital and achieving rapid growth rather than generating profits.
However, this approach is not sustainable in the long run.
With the recent downturn in the tech industry, there is a renewed focus on businesses that have profitable growth. These businesses are focused on generating revenue and achieving positive cash flow. They are also able to scale their operations without incurring excessive costs.
As a result, they are better positioned to weather the current economic conditions.
According to Sifted, investors say they are deploying cash more carefully, and so will be putting even more scrutiny on key metrics like traction and product-market fit, as well as team dynamics.
This leads to one main question 'how to accelerate profitable growth during an economic downturn?'
One way to accelerate profitable growth during a downturn is to focus on personalization. In today's hyper-competitive market, providing a personalized digital experience is essential for winning and retaining customers. Businesses can create a strong competitive advantage by tailoring their products and services to meet the specific needs of individual customers.
But before diving deeper into personalization, first, let's take a step back and define what profitability, growth, and profitable growth mean…
What Is Profitable Growth
Profitability
Profitability is a key indicator of a company's financial health. It is a measure of how much revenue a company generates compared to its expenses. A company that is profitable is able to generate more revenue than it spends, which means it can reinvest in its business and grow over time.
There are several different ways to measure profitability. The most common metric is net income, which is calculated by subtracting a company's expenses from its revenue. Net income can be further divided into operating profit and non-operating profit. Operating profit measures the amount of money a company makes from its core business activities, while non-operating profit includes income from other sources such as investments.
Profitability is an important metric for investors to consider when evaluating a company. A company that is profitable and growing will be able to generate more value for shareholders over time. If a company is not profitable, it may have to rely on financing from other sources, which can dilute shareholder value.
Growth
Business growth is the increase in the size, revenues, or market share of a company.
It can be measured in terms of the number of employees, the number of sales, or the market share a company has.
Business growth can be organic or inorganic. Organic growth is the result of a company's internal expansion, such as new products or new markets. Inorganic growth is the result of mergers, acquisitions, or partnerships.
Business growth can be slow and steady, or it can be exponential. Slow and steady growth is often the result of organic expansion. Exponential growth is often the result of inorganic expansion or new capital injection for faster user acquisition and more sales - for greater overall profitability in the long term.
Profitable Growth
Profitable growth is the increase in a company's profits year over year. This can be measured in terms of net income.
There are many ways to achieve profitable growth. A company may focus on expanding its customer base, penetrating new markets, or developing new products and services.
Profitable growth is an important metric for assessing a company's financial health - especially when the VC money becomes more expensive.
Despite its importance, profitable growth is not always easy to achieve. In fact, many companies find it difficult to maintain consistent growth over the long term. This is why investors monitor a company's profit growth closely and are aware of the challenges that it faces.
The Role of Personalization to Enable Profitable Growth
While it's true that the current economic climate is challenging, there are still opportunities for businesses to grow and prosper.
Companies can position themselves for success in the months and years by focusing on personalization and profitability.
By definition, personalization is the process of tailoring content and experiences to meet the specific needs and preferences of an individual.
In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, businesses must go beyond simply providing generic products and services - they must provide individualized, tailored experiences that are relevant to each individual customer.
4 Ways Personalization Can Accelerate Profitability During a Downturn
Personalization can be a powerful tool for driving profitability during an economic downturn. By tailoring messages and offers to individual customers, businesses can tap into new revenue streams and boost growth.
Here are four ways personalization can help your business succeed during tough times:
Create Better Customer Segments with First-Party Data
Data is the fuel. And first-party data is the more valuable fuel that can help you create better customer segments. By using first-party data to define how your customers should be grouped, you can ensure that each segment is well-defined and contains only the customers that you want to target.
Creating customer segments with rules based on first-party data also allows you to be very specific about the criteria that each segment must meet. This ensures that your segments are as targeted and effective as possible.
When creating customer segments, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Identify Buying Behaviour Patterns
First, you'll need to identify buying behavior patterns among your customer base. This information can be gleaned from data gathered through past sales, surveys, and customer interactions. Look for commonalities among your best customers and use this information to create new customer segments.
2. Start Running Personalization Campaigns
Once you have defined your customer segments, you can begin to use personalization to cater your marketing messages and offerings to each group. This type of personalization can be used to segment customers based on their location, demographics, past purchase history, and other criteria.
3. Test, Measure, and Adjust
As with any marketing strategy, it's important to test, measure, and adjust your efforts as needed. Personalization is no different. Try different messages and offers for each customer segment and track the results. Adjust your strategy based on what works best for each group.
By following these steps, you can create better customer segments that are more likely to convert into sales. Creating better customer segments with first-party data for personalization is a powerful tool that can help you accelerate profitability during a downturn.
Power Up Your Account-Based Marketing with Personalization
If you're looking to take your account-based marketing (ABM) efforts to the next level, website personalization is a powerful tool that can help.
By tailoring the content and messages on your site to specific accounts, you can deliver a more relevant and targeted experience that can improve engagement and conversions. These could be messages related to your latest offer, an upcoming event, or anything else that would be relevant to that particular account.
There are a few simple ways to get started with account-based marketing personalization:
- Have the right data strategy
- Choose the right tech stack
- Align the sales and marketing teams
- Segment your target accounts
- Uncover the customer journeys and intent
- Create use cases and hypothesis
- Develop personalized content
- Measure your results
Boost Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy with Ninetailed and Albacross
As the account-based marketing movement continues to grow, B2B marketers are under pressure to deliver more personalized and targeted content to their target accounts. However, only a few are able to achieve account-based marketing personalization at scale.
To truly personalize your ABM communications, you need a tool that can give you a detailed insight into each account and another tool that creates personalized experiences.
This is where Ninetailed and Albacross come into play:
- Albacross is a B2B intent data source that helps you to understand your audience and uncover hidden prospects
- Ninetailed is an experience optimization tool that turns customer data and content into personalized experiences
If you're looking to take your ABM strategy to the next level, consider using Ninetailed with Albacross. With our powerful combination of intent data and personalization, you'll be able to create a truly personalized experience for each of your accounts.
Sharpen and Personalize Your CTAs on Your Website
Your website's call-to-actions (CTAs) are critical in driving conversions. Whether you're looking to get visitors to sign up for your newsletter, download a white paper, or make a purchase, your CTAs need to be sharp and personalized.
Here are two CTA personalization tactics that you can start using immediately:
Hero CTA Personalization
The main purpose of hero CTAs are to get people's attention and entice them into taking specific actions such as signing up for a newsletter list, downloading an e-book, watching a video tutorial, or filling out a contact form.
CTAs are the perfect way to personalize your website and provide people with a clear path based on who is viewing your content.
You can create various CTAs based on different firmographic, behavioral, and psychographic data. Here are some examples of CTA personalization:
- Hero CTA personalization for customers and non-customers
- Hero CTA personalization based on customer funnel stage
- Hero CTA personalization based on customer’s location
In-Line CTA Personalization
In order to be successful in today's digital world, it's more important than ever to target your customers with relevant pieces of content. And one of the best ways to do this is through in-line CTAs.
In-line CTAs are links that are placed within the body of your content, rather than in a separate area such as the sidebar or footer. This ensures that they are seen by readers who are actually engaged with your content, and not just skimming over it.
What's more, in-line CTAs are usually highly relevant to the topic at hand. This means that they are more likely to catch the reader's attention and encourage them to take action.
Convert Interested Prospects Into Leads Faster with the Right Content at the Right Time
Website personalization helps you convert interested prospects into leads faster by showing them the right content and offers at the right time.
With website personalization, you can segment your audience and show them relevant content based on their interests and needs. This way, you can make sure that they see the information that is most likely to convert them into leads.
In addition, website personalization allows you to show different offers to different segments of your audience. This way, you can make sure that each group sees the offer that is most relevant to them.
By showing the right content and offers to the right people at the right time, website personalization helps you convert more prospects into leads. Faster.
Successful Growth Strategy: Is Profitability or Growth More Important for a Business
Personalization can be a powerful tool for driving growth. After all, when you're able to address your customer's needs and preferences directly, you're more likely to win their business.
But personalization isn't just about driving growth; it can also be a key driver of profitability. In fact, businesses that personalize their offerings are often able to charge premium prices for their products and services.
So which is more important for a business: profitability or growth?
There's no question that growth is important for businesses. After all, companies that don't grow eventually die. But is growth more important than profitability? The answer to this question is not so clear-cut.
On the one hand, businesses need to be profitable in order to survive in the long term. Without profits, businesses will eventually run out of money and be forced to close their doors. So in this sense, profitability is more important than growth.
On the other hand, growth is what allows businesses to generate profits in the first place. Without growth, businesses will eventually stagnate and their profits will start to decline. So in this sense, growth is more important than profitability.
So which is more important?
Ultimately, the best course of action for any business is to focus on both growth and profitability, in other terms, profitable growth. By growing their revenues and expanding their customer base, businesses can generate more profits. At the same time, by tightly controlling their expenses and maximizing their efficiency, businesses can ensure that those profits are as high as possible.
By taking a balanced approach to growth and profitability, businesses can put themselves in the best position for long-term success.
So personalization can be a powerful tool for both driving growth and increasing profitability.
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