Are you a leader or a follower?

by Austin Leonard, a FetchBack National Sales Executive

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” -Steve Jobs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As all great buzzwords go, many people have different ideas of what “innovation” means. Some people envision huge, game-changing ideas that become disruptive forces, while others believe that being innovative entails continuously releasing new bells and whistles to their existing products or services. It gets thrown out in a lot of sales pitches and marketing slogans, quickly wearing out the word, but I believe that you can tell if innovation is in a company’s DNA by its continuing body of work.

I also believe that Steve Jobs’ quote helps set the pace. The companies that we hear about are the ones that are always pushing the envelope. That trail of innovation builds a reputation that helps keep industry leaders at the forefront.

 At FetchBack, we understand the pace of the evolution of technology in not only the display space, but the entire online marketing space, as well. We work hard to try to balance the next level jumps in the retargeting and display world with the continuous improvements needed to keep our products fresh.

Not only do we continue to grow our extremely talented engineering team by recruiting world-class talent, but we also try to foster ideas from across the organization. The main initiative is a cross-channel team that includes members from account management, creative, sales and engineering. The team is tasked by our executive group with researching and developing projects from across the spectrum, from customer-facing to public-facing technologies. One example of this is our Dynamic Qualified Sequential technology, which was built specifically to help companies target and deliver the right message based on where their customers are in the purchase funnel.

We also have team members tasked with growing our integration capabilities with our sister companies, e-Dialog, the Pepperjam Network, ClearSaleing and MBS. One of our clearest strategic advantages is being part of eBay and GSI Marketing Services, and we work hard to deliver true multi-channel functionality to our clients.

 While innovation can lead you down a lot of rabbit holes, it can also get you to look at your business from the outside as you try to figure out what’s next. That’s why we also have an internal platform where any member of the company can make a product or service suggestion or idea. Team members can then comment or expand on the original idea, or anonymously vote on the ideas that they believe our R&D team should spend time on.

 Our goal is to be the leader in retargeting as it becomes the second most important innovation in online advertising and we know that our clients rely on us to continue to expand our capabilities to accomplish their objectives. If we don’t innovate, we will merely be a follower along for the ride.

How does your company foster innovation and growth internally and externally?

Comments

[online jobs]

I can be a leader, but I believe, a good leader is a good follower too.