Nowadays, business is constantly changing, taking new forms every day. However, the problem with people is that it is getting hard to adapt to new business ideas and patterns, which sometimes become hard to adjust. Keep an eye out for recent market trends and adjustments. Take note of new investments made by firms in your industry and, most importantly, which sort of business has proven more successful.
Understand consumer desires
One of the main problems of any business is seeing consumers from our eyes, not from their eyes and perspective. We sometimes lose most of our customers, which is our mistake entirely, not the customers or consumers. Try to discover the requirements and aspirations of customers, what they are seeking, what they anticipate, and whether your proposal will match their expectations before you start an investment or business.
Identify a problem
It is a fantastic approach to spotting a potential investment. That’s because there’s always an opportunity to provide remedies that can develop into successful enterprises when there’s a significant problem.
There are several examples of successful entrepreneurs who spotted possibilities amid adversity. Post-it notes, for example, are a well-known notepad invented in offices to help many executives who had lost essential appointments due to forgetfulness.
Those startups that stand out are those that provide something fresh. VC Eric Vishria recommends investors seek new firms whose creators compel them to question their own beliefs about a market or issue. What begins as an out-of-the-box concept has the potential to become the industry standard.
It is an area you already know well
Don’t put money into something you don’t fully comprehend. A company might receive positive early feedback and appear to be ready to evolve, but it isn’t easy to know whether this is true if it doesn’t comprehend the purpose of its products or services. You can more confidently judge if a company strategy has promise when you understand the sector you invest in.
You might begin to specialize in less familiar areas as you obtain more financial experience. However, you should first limit your investments to those connected with your areas of expertise.
The startup is focused on an audience or area whose needs are unmet
Many startups strive to target groups who are currently underrepresented to take a novel perspective to an industry. Hiruy Amanuel, Gullt’s managing director, has experience in early-stage tech startups in East Africa. Venture investors and the tech sector have mostly disregarded this area until recently.
The African continent, according to Amanuel, has the potential for expansion. Because specific organizations and their target consumers have been largely disregarded in the past, those who are the first to give a sector the attention it deserves have the potential for tremendous development.
The company has solid fundamentals
You must ensure that the firm in which you invest has sound fundamentals. It is accurate at the business level and the individual level. While a well-defined business strategy is critical, the startup’s people are even more crucial.
According to investor Winston Ibrahim, Strong visionary executives are the most significant criterion in assessing whether a firm is worth investing in. The most successful entrepreneurs are humble, adaptable, and willing to delegate. They recognize that they don’t know everything and are eager to seek advice and insight from others.
This adaptable thinking aids them in recognizing when adjustments are required. These entrepreneurs are worth investing in because they always look for ways to develop and grow rather than grow complacent.
There are no assurances in the world of commercial ventures. The startup may appear to have all the elements to become a game-changing force in the industry, but an internal feud among the founders might send it all crashing down.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
The so-called retention of a backup indicates how far back you can go in the history of backups. It was essential to restore the deletion of a file a year ago. In that case, a backup with a one-month retention would not offer a solution.
Longer retention will require more storage, so unlimited retention may sound handy but can add up unnecessarily in cost. Also, pay attention to legal considerations; the law can sometimes prescribe how to store long data.
Location & Media of the Backup
Ideally, you set up a backup using the “3-2-1 Method”. This method states that you have at least three copies of your data, which you put on two different media and one stored in a different location.
Different media can be hard disk, tape, or cloud storage. The media type can help determine the location but often depends on the amount of data to store. Also, remember that the space a backup needs grows over time. It is highly dependent on the retention and frequency of backups.
Access & Backup Security
It’s essential to think about protecting backups in terms of access. If, for example, a backup media is stolen, you can save it using encryption to ensure that no one can view it.
It applies both physically and via backup software. Also, consider who within your organization may have access to the backups. If you usually have the classification of a right not to make all data transparent to everyone, someone could access this data through obtained access.
Backup Frequency
When determining the backup frequency, you must consider the data that can be lost in an incident. For example, if you are hit by ransomware at 4:00 PM and your backup runs at 3:00 AM, you may fail several hours of work. This trade-off is called ‘Recovery Point Objective’ (RPO).
Increasing the frequency could help reduce the number of work hours you could lose in such an incident. A higher frequency of the backup is not always possible due to the time it takes to create the backup or the delay that may occur while it runs.
Recovery Time
When an incident affects (critical) business processes, knowing how long it takes before your data and application(s) are available again is crucial. Several factors impact the recovery time, such as the amount of data, the technique used, or the speed of the backup media. You may have to consider what to recover and when to return to work as quickly as possible. You will sometimes have to prioritize repairing essential parts earlier than others within such consideration. This trade-off is called the ‘Recovery Time Objective’ (RTO).
Prioritizing can also help reduce costs because you may have determined that active projects should be available again within a few hours, but an archive, for example, only after a few days.
Monitoring
After establishing a backup, it is also vital that you monitor the backup. Ensure you have good reporting to check whether backups are running and errors have occurred, preferably daily. Even if you have entirely outsourced it, you must receive and review these reports as an entrepreneur. Any mistake must be corrected in time so you do not run into them when you need a backup.
Testing Backup
In addition to monitoring backups, it is perhaps even more critical that you test them. Testing backups is sometimes only done when something needs to be restored. This is because testing often costs money and a lot of time. Some backup applications offer the option to run a verification test. Such a verification test checks whether the backup data is in order. This is good to set up, but it is preferable to go further and periodically test the backup by restoring it to check whether it works and the data is intact. You can do a restore test by randomly repairing some files or even restoring an entire system to test applications’ functionality.
Segmentation
Be aware that it is vital to use good segmentation for your backup. You can partly do this with the 3-2-1 method mentioned, where you use different media. In somewhat larger environments, where virtualization is also used, try to separate the backup and production networks. Recent targeted (ransomware) attacks show much energy is put into encrypting backups. In practice, insufficient segmentation apparently ensures you can quickly encrypt the backup. The only option to potentially get your data back is to pay a ransom.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Accounting has been around for a long time. One of its lesser-known branches is Forensic Accounting (or Forensic Audit).
Forensic accounting, or investigative accounting, is a unique professional field that combines accounting with information technology. A forensic accountant uses advanced computer programs to examine financial data and find evidence that would be valid during legal proceedings.
Forensic accountants are usually asked to review financial records for mergers and acquisitions. You can also serve as an advisor to a company’s audit committee or resolve shareholder disputes within the company.
The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is the first authorized document known to man. Some of its fragments hint at the basic idea of forensic accounting: to prove fraud or a lie with accounting documentation.
It was not significant until the historical event of the 30s when Al Capone was arrested. Al Capone was a famous Chicago gangster of the prohibition law and the author of innumerable murders. Still, they could only be jailed when agent Eliot Ness and his team of “Untouchables” could find all the receipts. The receipts linked Capone to illegal gambling income and tax evasion from that income.
In recent years, fraudulent bankruptcies and accounting scandals in the United States, for example, Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco resulted in the United States Securities Commission investigating hundreds of companies. It will create a body to supervise accounting and conflict of interest issues.
In the case of Europe, the Parmalat fraud case in 2003 led the European Commission to establish a directive on audits, which included a tightening of national supervision of auditors. It will promote close collaboration between federal authorities and third countries.
Forensic accounting has developed significantly during the last ten years, its base being the public sector. Our best practices in this field have been created. An example is the Government Audits that articulate investigation processes with auditing.
Therefore, we can define forensic accounting as a science that gathers and presents accounting, financial, legal, administrative, and tax information. It will provide an accounting examination that the courts will accept since it will form part of the basis of the discussion, debate, and opinion of the sentence against the perpetrators of an economic crime.
The relationship between accounting and auditing terms with forensics becomes close to criminal evidence. Therefore, a forensic audit is initially defined as an audit specialized in discovering, revealing, and attesting to fraud and crimes in developing public and private functions. It also studies the effects of events that may or may not be criminal to provide the judge with evidence involving accounting records.
Approaches to Forensic Accounting
Given the characteristics of economic crimes, the participation of the accountant is necessary for the previous stage to conduct the investigations and calculations that allow examining the existence of the crime and, as far as possible, its amount to define whether the initiation of a process is justified penal. The most common case is the one that has to do with a scam based on accounting records and supports. The intervention of the forensic accountant can vary, from the quantification of fraud and the gathering of evidence to participation as a witness. It is going through activities as diverse as systematized applications to present the evidence.
Corporate crime investigations
These investigations relate to accounting and corporate fraud by presenting intentionally manipulated, inaccurate financial information. Examples:
Business fraud
Counterfeiting
Money Laundering
Economic losses in business
Commercial disputes
In this field, the forensic accountant can function as an investigator to gather evidence to prove or clarify some specifics, such as:
Claims for breach of contracts
Disputes for the purchase and sale of companies
Claims for profit determination
Claims for breach of guarantees
Intellectual property disputes
Disputes over project costs
Discrepancies between partners and stockholders
Measurement and Arbitration
Insurance claims
When the responsibilities correspond to the administration of the companies.
Claims for the return of faulty products
Claims for damage to property
Claims for complex administrations and processes
Verification of alleged claims
Professional negligence related to:
Audit- Accounting
Morals
Quantification of losses affected by negligence
Covers all professions, including Accounting, Medicine, Engineering, Law
Evidence from professionals in Auditing and Accounting Standards
Advice to plaintiffs and defendants
Brand valuation
Intellectual property
Valuations of stocks and businesses in general
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
You have been working on social media for a while now. You have worked out your goals and managed multiple social media accounts. But are you already getting the most out of your social media marketing? Or can it be done even better and more accessible? How do you ensure that you achieve more efficient results? For this blog, we list the five most chosen tools of social media marketers. It would help to have this for efficient and effective social media management.
Inspiration Tool
Sometimes, you suddenly have a genius idea out of nowhere, but content creation can sometimes be a real struggle. Social media marketers, especially those responsible for the content, cannot do without inspiration. So, what should you write, film, or podcast about now?
A tool that can inspire you is more than helpful for those moments. Such an inspiration tool gives you tips for content based on your organization, industry, competition, or product. It can be, for example, an overview of the content that is trending or performs exceptionally well on social media and may, therefore, be of interest to your organization. Then, you can build on this content, create your variant, or even share the content directly with your followers on social media.
With the intelligent use of this tool, you will never run out of inspiration, and you will always have current and catchy content to share with your target groups.
Social Listening Tool
A social listening tool is closely linked to an inspiration tool, and these tools are often integrated into one solution.
Unlike an inspirational tool, a social listening tool allows you to precisely monitor what is being said about your organization or brand. Not necessarily to gain inspiration for updated content but to better understand the context of your brand or company.
To what extent does our brand thrive on social and online media? What is the current sentiment around our brand? Is our content frequently shared? Is it currently wise to raise certain content or sensitive topics? Do we have to wait a bit with a social media post? Is this the time for funny web care responses?
These are the kinds of insights you gain with a social listening tool. They help you with a correct and complete picture of the environment to reduce the chance of missing the point.
Creating and posting a social media post may seem futile compared to all the other tasks in a marketer’s job responsibilities. However, the hours spent on this quickly increase if you manage accounts from multiple channels, locations, and sub-brands.
A planning tool can save you a lot of time (our experience shows this can go up to 75%). Some social planning tools also include workflows that allow you to create drafts, load calendars, approve posts, and view statistics.
This way, you have all your social media accounts in one well-arranged place, and you do not have to open ten tabs to manage your social media. Indispensable!
Community Management Tool
You can expect reactions as soon as you have scheduled your social media posts, and they are published automatically (which is handy). If the content appeals enough, that is. Then, you still must open ten tabs or make it difficult with small smartphone screens to start a conversation with your target customer. To prevent that, there are community management tools.
A community management tool should be a sizeable general inbox where incoming messages from all your accounts and channels arrive. That is brief because some tools support many more features, such as responding to notices not addressed to you. Costo also has possibilities for collaboration, extra channels (reviews and messengers), and countless other options.
It is a known fact that responding to social media posts helps to ensure that algorithms show your posts more often. But what if you do not use a community management tool and respond to comments? What if you do not build a real community? Is not responding an option at all? Not if you want to score a lot of reaches, interaction, and clicks.
Reporting Tool
Every marketer wants value for their work. So, if you wish to prove your achieved results or want to specifically look for points for improvement for the following social media post or campaign, you cannot escape a report.
A significant disadvantage of the fragmented social media landscape is that each social media channel has its way of presenting data and statistics. To avoid having to start transforming. Almost every social media marketer uses a unique reporting tool for CSV files or making crooked comparisons.
The principle is the same as planning and community management: all social media channels are combined under one roof. This way, you can easily compare results and justify your work.
A reporting tool also helps you answer questions such as: what have I achieved with my social media marketing? What is the ROI of my work? Which platform is the most successful for me? Which content catches on and which does not?
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
The holiday season is ending. Hopefully, your battery is charged again, and you can return to work with a fresh look. Because even though it still seems far away, the sprint toward the holidays has started. Would you like to boost your knowledge?
LinkedIn
LinkedIn use is still on the rise. But it is a bit complicated when it comes to organic reach. Organizations with few followers still see growth. Still, with larger company pages, the reach decreases, Sebastiaan Nagel and Judith Eversdijk found in their research into LinkedIn company pages at the beginning of this year. It also contains a handy benchmark to measure the success of your page.
Success on LinkedIn
Of course, you are not there with only a strong profile. Marjolein Bongers shares ten essential tips for business success and ten concrete tips for power posts on LinkedIn. Another tip: in our podcast HelloMasters, we spoke to LinkedIn boss Marcel Molenaar about the secrets of the platform.
TikTok
Whatever you think, TikTok is big. It became the world’s most downloaded app in 2020. In July, the platform became the first non-Facebook-owned, non-gaming app to reach three billion downloads.
In the Netherlands, the app is also one of the fast risers, as we saw in the social media survey for 2021. Both the number of users and the daily use increased enormously. Short-form video is hot. Although… TikTok once consisted of videos of fifteen and then 30 seconds, but since last month, it has also become possible to upload videos for up to 3 minutes. And it is evaluated with videos of 5 minutes (and longer). This logical step brings TikTok closer to the competition from YouTube and Facebook, creating more space for advertisements.
TikTok for Business
LinkedIn, move over! Are you considering including TikTok in your organization or company’s social media strategy? Then, it is helpful to go through these tips or read up on advertising on TikTok. The platform may also become attractive for recruiters and HR managers if job seekers with the ‘Resumes’ program can pitch their CVs in TikTok videos in the future.
Instagram
The Feed, Stories, IGTV, Reels, Guides, and Shopping… Kirsten Jassies mentioned it in her trend overview at the end of last year: Instagram has many content types and opportunities to profile yourself. Instagram shopping is unstoppable, but it was time to see if Reels would make it. For the time being, that seems to work, and the function is being developed further to keep up with the competition. Therefore, video is one of the app’s spearheads, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained this summer because he said: “Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app.”
User-Generated Content
Finally, a reading tip: it is fantastic if fans of your brand express themselves positively about it online. And you want to reuse that user-generated content on your organization’s Instagram account. But can that happen? And how is it? In her article, Charlotte Meindersma shared the rules about sharing content from others on Instagram.
Facebook
No, with roughly 1.9 billion daily and 2.8 billion monthly active users worldwide in the second quarter of 2021, Facebook is still anything but dead. And they do not sit still.
From Social Media to Metaverse
Facebook plans to transform the company into a metaverse—a virtual social network to connect millions of people. You seem to be physically involved with other people in a different place. That may sound surreal and, as Jan Scheele describes it, ‘now mainly a sandbox for nerds and innovators to play in.’ But for those who find it interesting, his article is recommended.
Twitter
Amid the tsunami of social media updates, you would almost forget Twitter. And you could also draw your conclusions based on the erratic line in the 2021 social media survey that indicates the use of Twitter in the Netherlands.
But Twitter has other plans. The owner of Twitter wants to double its revenue by the end of 2023 and aims for 315 million daily active users. And so, the platform is no longer just about messages of 280 characters.
Getting Started with Your Social Media Strategy
Of course, trends are significant, and you want to stay relevant. And you experiment with new features and new channels. But not every direction or part will suit or resonate with your company. Moreover, developments follow each other faster than keeping up with your strategy.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Two of the four branches of accounting are financial accounting and managerial accounting (for example, tax accounting and auditing are others). Despite many similarities in approach and use, there are significant differences between financial and managerial accounting. These differences are primarily related to compliance,accounting standards, and the target audience.
Key Points
Management accounting is the practice of identifying, measuring, analyzing, interpreting, and communicating financial information to managers to pursue an organization’s objectives.
Financial accounting is the process of recording, evaluating, and conveying the transaction process and economic growth resulting from business procedures through time to the community and regulators.
Management accounting differs from financial accounting because the intended purpose of management accounting is to assist users in making well-informed business judgments.
Main Objectives of Both Counting Practices
The primary goal of managerial accounting is to generate relevant information for one company’s internal usage. Business managers gather the information that encourages strategic planning, helps them set realistic goals, and encourages efficient management of corporate resources.
Financial accounting also has internal uses, but it’s more concerned with informing a company’s outsiders: final accounts, creditors, and industry officials.
Past and Present Use
Financial accounting produces purely historical data, with financial statements containing data for a specific period. Management accounting examines past performance and creates business predictions. You should use this accounting to guide business decisions. Investors and creditors frequently use financial statements to make their projections. Financial accounting is not retrospective in this sense. However, no future predictions are allowed in the reports.
Adjustment and Uniformity
The most significant practical distinction between financial and managerial accounting is their legal standing. The reports generated through management accounting are disseminated only internally. Each company is free to develop its system and rules on management relationships. It means no centralized system adjusts the reports, and it can often take a lot longer to find what you need.
Conversely, financial accounting relationships are highly regulated, especially income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. As this information is released for public consumption and is highly anticipated by investors, companies need to pay close attention to how they do the calculations, how the data is reported, and the order in which such reports are written.
This uniformity makes investors and lenders compare companies directly based on their balance sheets. Furthermore, the financial statements are released regularly, establishing the consistency of external information flows.
Report Details
Financial accounting reports are typically aggregated, concise, and generic for various reasons. Information is both more transparent and less revealing at the same time. It isn’t always the case in management accounting, as each organization has its own set of reasons for doing things a certain way. For example, you may internally report lower bonuses to avoid upset low- to mid-level employees who might want to investigate the report.
Management accounting reports are highly detailed, technical, specific, and often experimental. Businesses seek a competitive advantage and scrutinize information that might seem pedantic or confusing to outsiders.
Bottom Line
The key difference between managerial and financial accounting relates to the recipients of the information. Management accounting information is meant to help managers make well-informed business decisions, while financial accounting is intended to provide financial information to parties other than the organization.
Financial accounting must adhere to specific criteria GAAP sets to maintain its public trading status. Most other corporations in the United States use GAAP to meet the debt covenants generally needed by financial institutions granting lines of credit. Because managerial accounting is not meant for external users, it can be customized to meet their needs. It varies significantly from firm to company and even from department to department within a corporation.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Future-Proof Your Brand: Strategies for Lasting Success
Future-proof your brand by developing adaptive strategies that maintain relevance, competitive advantage, and customer loyalty despite rapidly changing markets, technological disruptions, and evolving consumer expectations. This comprehensive approach combines strategic planning with operational flexibility, allowing businesses to thrive through uncertainty while preserving their core identity and values.
Over two decades of building Complete Controller into a cloud-based financial services powerhouse, I’ve witnessed firsthand how market disruptions can either destroy established brands or propel adaptive ones to new heights. The stark reality: leading global brands average 93 years old, with 43% exceeding a century of operation—yet 40% of rebranding efforts fail to deliver positive ROI. This article reveals the battle-tested strategies that separate enduring brands from those destined to become cautionary tales, offering practical frameworks you can implement immediately to build resilience, adaptability, and sustainable competitive advantages.
What does it mean to future-proof your brand?
Future-proofing your brand involves developing adaptive strategies that maintain relevance and competitive advantage amid constant change
Core brand identity must remain stable while products, services, and messaging evolve with market shifts
Smart brands anticipate technological disruptions and changing consumer behaviors rather than merely reacting
Financial resilience and operational agility create foundations that withstand economic uncertainty
Sustainable competitive advantages compound over time, making displacement increasingly difficult
Building an Adaptive Brand Foundation While Maintaining Core Identity
Creating a future-proof brand requires establishing foundations both rock-solid and flexible enough to bend without breaking. This paradox challenges modern businesses to remain true to their essence while continuously evolving to meet changing market demands.
Your brand’s core identity encompasses fundamental mission, primary values, and unique value proposition—elements remaining constant regardless of market conditions. These foundational elements serve as your North Star during change, ensuring every adaptation strengthens rather than dilutes your brand’s essence.
Establishing immutable brand values
Developing lasting brand values demands deep introspection about what your business truly stands for beyond profit generation. These values should reflect authentic beliefs remaining relevant regardless of technological advancement or market evolution.
Companies like Patagonia demonstrate this principle by building their brand around environmental stewardship—a value becoming increasingly relevant over decades of growing environmental consciousness. Their commitment transcends marketing messages, influencing every business decision from supply chain management to product development.
Creating flexible brand expression systems
While core values remain fixed, successful brands develop modular systems for expressing identity across different touchpoints and market conditions. This includes:
Brand voice guidelines adapting to platforms while maintaining consistency
Visual identity systems evolving without losing recognition
Messaging frameworks addressing different segments without compromising authenticity
Product offerings expanding while reinforcing core brand promise
Leveraging Digital Transformation for Long-Term Brand Resilience
Digital transformation fundamentally reshapes how brands create, deliver, and capture value in the modern economy. Forward-thinking companies use digital technologies to create entirely new ways of engaging customers and delivering value beyond simple efficiency improvements.
Statistics reveal sobering realities: between 70-90% of digital transformation initiatives fail, with only 16% of organizations successfully improving performance and maintaining changes. However, small organizations with fewer than 100 employees are 2.7 times more likely to succeed than companies exceeding 50,000 employees—proving agility often trumps resources.
Implementing AI-driven customer personalization
Artificial intelligence has evolved from buzzword to practical tool for creating personalized customer experiences at scale. Modern AI applications analyze behavior patterns, predict preferences, and deliver customized experiences impossible to achieve manually.
The key lies in implementing AI systems enhancing rather than replacing human judgment. Successful implementations create hybrid approaches combining technological efficiency with human insight, allowing brands to scale personalization while maintaining authentic connections.
Building data-driven brand strategies
Successful digital transformation requires sophisticated capabilities for collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer data. This involves creating systems tracking customer behavior across multiple touchpoints, analyzing trends and patterns, and translating insights into actionable strategies.
Data-driven brands use these insights beyond marketing optimization, informing product development, customer service improvements, and strategic planning. The most effective approaches balance comprehensive data collection with privacy respect, building trust through transparent data practices.
Cultivating Consumer Trust Through Authentic Brand Evolution
Trust represents the most valuable currency in modern business, yet remains among the most fragile assets any brand possesses. Research reveals a significant disconnect: 79% of business leaders believe customers trust their brand, but only 52% of consumers actually report that trust.
Maintaining trust during brand evolution requires careful balance between change and consistency. Customers need evidence of growth and improvement without feeling abandonment of qualities initially attracting them.
Developing crisis-proof communication strategies
Every brand faces crises, but preparation and response quality determine whether challenges strengthen or weaken customer relationships. Effective crisis management begins before problems arise through:
Established communication protocols for various scenarios
Trained spokespeople responding quickly and appropriately
Regular crisis simulation exercises testing response systems
Building transparent stakeholder relationships
Modern consumers expect unprecedented transparency from supported brands. This extends beyond marketing messages to include business practices, supply chain management, environmental impact, and social responsibility.
Brands proactively sharing information about operations, challenges, and improvement efforts often build stronger relationships than those communicating only when forced. Transparency builds trust through vulnerability, showing human sides of corporate entities.
Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantages Through Innovation
Innovation represents the lifeblood of future-proof brands, requiring more than simply developing new products or services. Effective innovation strategies focus on creating sustainable competitive advantages becoming stronger over time.
Apple’s transformation from failing computer company to global consumer electronics leader demonstrates systematic innovation combined with brand consistency. Their expansion beyond computers to create iPod, iPhone, and iPad maintained consistent brand identity focused on innovation and user-friendly design.
Implementing systematic innovation processes
Sustainable innovation requires systematic approaches rather than random experimentation. This involves:
Structured processes for identifying opportunities
Implementation systems scaling successful innovations
Feedback loops incorporating learning into future efforts
The most effective systems balance creativity with discipline, encouraging bold thinking while maintaining focus on customer value creation.
Building innovation-supporting culture
Innovation flourishes in cultures encouraging experimentation, tolerating failure, and rewarding creative thinking. Building such cultures requires intentional effort changing organizational systems, reward structures, and communication patterns.
Leaders must model innovative behavior while creating safe spaces for employees proposing and testing new ideas. This cultural transformation often proves more challenging than technological change but delivers greater long-term impact.
Adapting to Evolving Consumer Expectations and Market Dynamics
Consumer expectations continue evolving at accelerating pace, driven by technological advancement, generational changes, and shifting social values. Customer loyalty statistics show concerning trends: 69% of consumers report brand loyalty in 2024, down from 77% in 2022.
Future-proof brands develop sophisticated capabilities for identifying, understanding, and responding to changing expectations before they become universal demands. This requires combining quantitative data analysis with qualitative customer insight gathering.
Mastering predictive consumer analysis
Understanding future consumer behavior requires sophisticated analysis of current trends, generational preferences, and emerging social movements. Successful brands combine:
Social listening programs monitoring sentiment shifts
Predictive modeling forecasting future demands
Developing rapid response capabilities
Market conditions change quickly, requiring brands to adapt strategies and operations with minimal delay. This demands building organizational capabilities for rapid decision-making, flexible resource allocation, and quick implementation of strategic changes.
Companies developing these capabilities often discover competitive advantages extending beyond crisis response, creating organizational agility benefiting all operations.
Building Long-Term Brand Success Through Strategic Partnerships
Strategic partnerships offer opportunities expanding capabilities, reaching new markets, and creating innovative solutions impossible to develop independently. Modern partnerships extend beyond traditional vendor relationships to include collaborative innovation and shared platform development.
Effective partnerships align strategic objectives while combining complementary strengths creating value for all parties involved. Success requires careful partner selection, clear governance structures, and aligned success metrics.
Identifying high-value partnership opportunities
Successful partnerships begin with clear understanding of strategic objectives and honest assessment of capability gaps partnerships could address. This involves:
Analyzing your value chain for enhancement opportunities
Identifying areas where partners add unique value
Evaluating potential partners based on strategic fit
Assessing cultural alignment beyond transactional benefits
Creating win-win partnership structures
Sustainable partnerships require structures creating value for all participants while advancing individual strategic objectives. This involves developing shared success metrics, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, and creating governance processes facilitating collaboration while protecting individual interests.
The most successful partnerships evolve beyond contracts into true strategic alliances, creating competitive advantages neither party could achieve independently.
Final Thoughts
Future-proofing your brand demands more than predicting trends—it requires building capabilities and mindsets necessary to thrive regardless of emerging changes. After two decades helping businesses navigate uncertainty through Complete Controller, I’ve learned resilient brands share common characteristics: they maintain clear core values while embracing change, invest in relationships over transactions, and view challenges as differentiation opportunities.
The strategies outlined require commitment and consistent execution but create compounding advantages strengthening over time. Companies with strong financial foundations and adaptive strategies consistently outperform those focusing solely on short-term optimization. Your brand’s future success depends on decisions made today—choose wisely and act decisively. Connect with our team at Complete Controller to discover how comprehensive bookkeeping and financial management services provide the solid foundation every lasting brand needs.
Frequently Asked Questions About Future-Proof Your Brand
What does it mean to future-proof your brand?
Future-proofing your brand means developing strategies helping your business maintain relevance, competitive advantage, and customer loyalty despite changing markets, technology disruptions, and evolving consumer expectations.
How often should I update my brand strategy?
While core brand values should remain consistent, review and potentially update brand expression, messaging, and strategies quarterly, conducting comprehensive brand audits annually to ensure continued relevance.
Can small businesses effectively future-proof their brands?
Yes, small businesses often have advantages in brand future-proofing due to agility and quick decision-making abilities. Focus on building strong customer relationships and maintaining financial health while staying adaptable.
What role does technology play in future-proofing a brand?
Technology serves as both tool and disruptor in brand future-proofing. Smart brands use technology enhancing customer experiences and operational efficiency while staying prepared to adapt when new technologies change market expectations.
How do I balance brand consistency with the need to evolve?
Maintain consistency in core values, mission, and fundamental brand promise while allowing flexibility in expressing these elements through messaging, visual identity, products, and customer experience approaches.
Research World. “The Brand Scorecard Framework: Diagnosing Performance, Predicting Potential.” 8 Feb. 2022. https://researchworld.com/articles/the-brand-scorecard-framework-diagnosing-performance
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Jennifer BrazerFounder/CEO
Jennifer is the author of From Cubicle to Cloud and Founder/CEO of Complete Controller, a pioneering financial services firm that helps entrepreneurs break free of traditional constraints and scale their businesses to new heights.
Brittany McMillen is a seasoned Marketing Manager with a sharp eye for strategy and storytelling. With a background in digital marketing, brand development, and customer engagement, she brings a results-driven mindset to every project. Brittany specializes in crafting compelling content and optimizing user experiences that convert. When she’s not reviewing content, she’s exploring the latest marketing trends or championing small business success.
Since Six Degrees, the original social network, social media has gone a long way. Before 2005, everyone on Facebook and LinkedIn was enraged. Later, social media platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, Myspace, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google Plus, and others arose to accommodate the rising need for individuals to connect.
Companies then discovered that social media was also a good location for opportunities, and social media marketing was born. Most social networks improved their systems in 2017, adding new features, chances for brands, and customer preferences.
The usage of storytelling, shopping, chatbots, and other artificial intelligence concepts are just a few of the clever updates that have made these sites more helpful. On the other hand, entrepreneurs find it harder to interact with their consumers as the number of customers on social media continues to fall entirely. Various tools are available to help you automate your social media marketing.
Systeme.io
While many social media marketing automation tools on this list help you engage and attract potential customers to your brand, most have no way of automating how you drive social media traffic. It is a valuable step in marketing, and with social media Systeme.io, it is an opportunity.
The solution gives an easy-to-use funnel builder that lets you build a funnel in a few minutes while it can rest. For example, you can integrate your payment system into your member website and your mailing list into the funnel. Automate your funnel steps and trigger email sequences to ensure that potential customers from social media traffic are sufficiently engaged and moved through a natural funnel.
Unlike most of the other options in this list, Systeme.io is a marketing automation platform that efficiently oversees the traffic aspect of your social media marketing campaign. For example, Systeme.io offers a website builder, email marketing automation, and sales funnel automation. Using the tool, you can even place automated rules for each element on your site. So, this tool manages the traffic conversion aspect of social media marketing effortlessly.
Sprout Social
Consider Sprout Social if you are searching for a comprehensive social media kit solution with many valuable features. You may use it to plan articles, track keywords, identify influencers, find mentions, and analyze data, among other things.
Those interested in social media marketing may find the tool handy as well. Unlike Buffer, Hootsuite, IFTTT, Socedo, and others, Sprout has fewer social platforms supported.
Sprout Social is a simple-to-use, low-cost social media platform that caters to small businesses, agencies, and corporations. Despite this, it is one of the most effective platforms for coordinating and distributing activities due to its multi-level access, including lower-level team members. Even individuals with content issues can assist in the printing of paragraphs that will spark online discussions. There is a free trial period, and no credit card information is necessary.
HootSuite
Hootsuite is a simple but effective social media management program that allows you to plan posts on time for distribution across many platforms. This application, which has over ten million customers, will enable users to manage their social profiles from a single dashboard.
Around 35 social media Services, including Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others, are fully integrated. Google Analytics is also supported.
This application gives you real-time information on your social media activity, such as when your business is referenced and precisely what was said. It can assist you in understanding what customers desire and avert a problem. The statistics area allows you to determine the optimal time to post content and provide detailed results.
Despite its many capabilities, Hootsuite is affordable and ideal for typical social media marketers. Even with a small team of marketers, you will be able to identify, plan, manage, and report on social media material far more quickly with it. Before selecting a plan from the available options, beginners can take advantage of the free trial period.
Buffer
Buffer is the best social media organizer for everyone who manages many social media accounts and a lot of material. This application works similarly to Hootsuite regarding scheduling, but the best part is that they have enough analytical data to recommend the optimal time to post content!
It does not end there, though: Its analytical technique gives you valuable information about how your social media efforts compare to those of competitors.
They also provide significant advantages in automation and user experience, making it simple to add material to it, especially when using a browser extension. A panel directs you on what to fill in next, such as a description, an image, which social networks to publish, and when to deliver the post.
The user interface is simple and contains only the toolkits that are required. Buffer is updated regularly to retain the ever-changing social media demands.
Customers can pick from different price packages based on their requirements. The Buffer is accessible for Windows and mobile devices (iOS and Android) and for individuals constantly on the move.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Calculate your conversion rate by dividing your total conversions by your total page views.
Collect and analyze page visitor data as a reference, looking for an area to improve.
Update an underperforming element of your page and test A/B in the new version.
Review it once you’ve collected enough data to determine if the change has improved your conversion rate.
Repeat this process to increase conversions continually.
Calculate your current conversion rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors performing the desired action on your page. It’s calculated by dividing your number of conversions by page views. For example, if a company’s conversion point is event registration, it is the proportion of how many people register for the event and how many visit the site. Let’s say a page gets 1,000 views or visits per week and 51 registers for the event on average. It equates to a 5.1% conversion rate.
Collect and analyze data
The first step in conversion rate optimization is collecting and analyzing visitor and page engagement data. To do this, you’ll need to set up website analytics, such as Google Analytics, which tracks the actions of visitors to your website. Once this is set up and a considerable amount of data has been collected, you will assess and analyze the data to determine which conversion elements need further improvement.
Choose a metric to improve and create a variation
After analyzing your website visitor data:
Determine which metric performs the worst and focus on initial conversion rate optimization.
Identify which features/functions are directly related to this metric – such as page design, messages, graphics, offer, or CTA – and select one to update.
Create a copy of the page and make changes to the document so you can test it in the original version and determine which performs best.
A / B test pages
In CRO, A/B testing is an experiment that runs two web page versions simultaneously to determine which captures the most conversions. You must test all updated pages against their original version, and only one element must be changed at a time to show its impact on conversion rates definitively. To run your own A / B testing, set up an A / B testing tool, define test parameters, and collect and analyze data.
Repeat the CRO process
Conversion rate optimization should be repeated to increase your conversions continually. Start the CRO process again after selecting a variation with a higher conversion rate. Analyze the page based on a new metric, create a new interpretation to test, set up an A/B test, and examine the resulting data. Finally, deploy successful changes to the live site, discard failed tests, and start again.
The Best CRO Tools
The best CRO tools allow companies to increase their conversion rate quickly and cost-effectively with little effort. It includes comprehensive data and testing platforms like Freshmarketer, landing page creators like Leadpages, and website speed tests like Google PageSpeed Insights.
Here are the top CRO tools:
Google analytics:
Google Analytics provides free visitor data, including the number of website visits, page views, bounce rate, visitor location, and more. It is available for free and is the global standard in website analytics.
Mixpanel:
Mixpanel is another analytics tool often used in conjunction with Google Analytics. It breaks down data, making it more digestible and easier to understand, allowing users to get quality information from complex data.
Google pageSpeed insights:
It is a free tool from Google that tests and ranks websites based on their loading speed. Speed matters because if your page loads very slowly, many users will leave before seeing it.
Leadpages:
Leadpages are landing page builders that allow companies to create effective landing pages with optimized conversion elements such as forms and buttons. Plans start at $25 a month. Learn more about Leadpages.
Freshmarketer:
Freshmarketer is a complete CRO platform that allows companies to optimize conversion rates with CRO-specific tools, including data analysis capabilities, dynamic heat maps, and A/B testing modules. Learn more about Freshmarketer.
Lucky orange:
Lucky Orange is a conversion funnel tool that allows businesses to track website visitors and their journey through the sales funnel. It automatically logs site visitors’ journeys from the first visit to the final purchase, creates heat maps to show where they click and provides analytics on specific page elements, such as form analytics. You can try Lucky Orange with a seven-day free trial.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
Your service or product can be excellent, but the number of deals you close or the number of items or services sold determines the success of your business. The quality is irrelevant if no one is ready to pay for it.
A Free Business Page on Facebook
Have you just set up a business, or are you considering doing so? One of the things you then need to think about is marketing your new business and how you should be seen online.
You should get a free business page on Facebook. You get the company page on Facebook via your private Facebook page. You will then administer your new company page on Facebook just as you can with your profile. Be sure to share your new page with all your friends to get a good start on Facebook.
Own Website
Of course, you should also have a website so potential customers searching for you on Google can find you. You put the information on your website to have the best possible position to rank well on Google keywords your customers are looking for. Feel free to read this content marketing guide if you want to delve a little into making it appear on Google.
There are 50 million searches per day on Google. If you do not have a website about your company, you will be missed by potential customers looking for your online business. Instagram is another “new media” besides Facebook that may be worth seeingis. It is free to start an Instagram account, and you market yourself by publishing photos you suggest taking with your mobile phone.
The Market For You on Facebook and Via Google Adwords
If you have a small marketing budget, it may be worthwhile to try advertising via Facebook or Google Adwords. On Facebook, you can choose whether you want more visitors to your website and your Facebook page or if you want to build knowledge about your startup company by getting as many views of your ad as possible. On Adwords, if you buy keywords like your ad, you end up in one of the places 1-4 above the organic search results.
In other words, you will be at the top of the results when someone Googles for a keyword you are advertising. At Adwords, you pay per click. The prices vary depending on your area’s industry, competition, and profitability. You can set a limited budget with Facebook and Adwords so that you do not waste any more money you have set aside for advertising.
Reward Customers Who Bring New Customers
To set up a reward system that provides consumers who promote your service or product some form of an award as a thank you for your assistance. It does not have to be expensive, but I guarantee the buyer will enjoy it. There is an alternate approach for continuing the track of delighted customers who refer others to become customers.
Contest Organization
It is a highly cost-effective method for marketing your service or product. The cost you have is what you spend for the prize you offer the winner, and it did not become that expensive when you beat it on the number of consumers who came into your store or visited your website. Ensure the award is appropriate for your target audience and appealing enough to encourage participation in the competition.
For example, a contest may also be a fantastic approach to persuade people to come to your business during a regular advertisement in the local newspaper. Customers are encouraged to compete, and they should have purchased something by the time they return. There are plenty of platforms available over the internet to arrange such contests.
Market Other Products During a Sale
It is an intelligent technique to generate additional sales if you can fit in a suggestion of equivalent items during a product or service sale.
It may be as essential as having items that the consumer can view readily at the checkout in your business or displaying additional products on your web store that suit the current product.
Sometimes, it is as easy as making a payment offer: “You can buy three pairs of gloves for the price of two,” the gloves are conveniently situated immediately to the client’s right. Not everyone will purchase, and they are not obligated to answer yes, but some will, and the extra sales will be well worth the brief sentence.
Sometimes, as a salesperson, you must simply open the customer’s eyes.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual bookkeeping, providing service to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud platform where their QuickBooks™️ file, critical financial documents, and back-office tools are hosted in an efficient SSO environment. Complete Controller’s team of certified US-based accounting professionals provide bookkeeping, record storage, performance reporting, and controller services including training, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, process and controls advisement, and bill-pay. With flat-rate service plans, Complete Controller is the most cost-effective expert accounting solution for business, family-office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.
