In order to cope with many of the market challenges in 21st century, what business needs is to be creative and innovative. Creativity is needed at all levels within an organization. Creativity is the key to innovations and nowadays innovations are all around us. Being a true innovator is much greater than just simply improving on something already known, it’s the creation of something new that defines the unknown. True innovation is measured by the impact that a company has on the market as well as on the consumers. It defines the leaders and the followers in the world we live in. Do you know what the term `blue ocean strategy` stands for? It teaches the business how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. The rapid pace of innovations make experts look for a new way and that is the blue ocean strategy. For managers and entrepreneurs who try to develop a unique value-adding strategy, it fits perfectly, but keep in mind those four risks:

1. Ignoring relevant competition - when it comes to the blue ocean strategy managers and entrepreneurs come up with new ideas for products, services and strategies rather than mimicking those of competitors. That’s great but it is also pretty easy for a manager to believe that their product or company is unique which can be a crucial mistake.
2. Reinventing the wheel - it could happen when you do not know your competitors in details. In order to make the competition irrelevant, first you should know it - what your competitors do, how they do it, why they do it. If you know those things, the chance to reinvent the wheel is zero
3. Swimming too far - do not attempt to go too far off your own competences. Yes, the competition is irrelevant, but this does not mean that you should forget about the existence of potential competitors.
4. No fish - this is the worst that can happen and it’s up to you how you will react. But in order not to have to react, start your blue ocean  journey with the best reality check. Each successful business and company starts there.

Innovations require taking risks, but think in a perspective, strive for success and dare to dream. CEEDS’15 by Webit makes dreams come true, so book your ticket now.

Can you guess how many cryptocurrencies do exist on the market today? 50 maybe? Or 250? Stop wild guessing, here is the answer - more than 530 cryptocurrencies available for trade in online markets and more than 740 in total. However, only 10 of them had market capitalizations over $10 million. Bitcoin is far away from the competition with market cap of almost 3.5 billion dollars, Second place is for Ripple with 313 million dollars. Next to them we can see Litecoin, Darkcoin and BitShares. 740 cryptocurrencies in total. Dealing with cryptocurrencies is a win-win scenario for both sides involved as it can help boost the public status, reputation and legitimacy of the digital currency as well as the vendor. It means that when you and your company decide to work with a particular type of cryptocurrency, both parties benefit from the arrangement. Issuers of the currency are eager and proud to name the businesses that accept their product as a financial tool while you advertise in-store or on your company's web page that you accept a certain digital currency and it offers them more exposure. Virtual wallets and online banking as well have changed financial environment. What we have here is more freedom for the customers to manage their bank accounts than before. However, another benefit of cryptocurrencies is the anonymity of customers. When you use traditional currencies merchants can track your purchases and know everything about you in details - what you eat, what movies you watch, what you wear, etc. Digital currency offers an alternative. All cryptocurrency transactions are secure, but they don't carry any personal information at all. The main question “Can we trust cryptocurrencies?” stays open because everyone will answer for them. Have in mind that security is the most important part of dealing with cryptocurrencies and companies keep improving in this area. To learn more about the future of money, if we will stop using the well-known paper with certain value and some other tips and tricks, book your ticket for CEEDS’15 by Webit.  

Social media marketing is the toughest task marketing specialists are currently facing with. But why you will ask - everyone is on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, so all your target groups can be found on one place. And that’s why it is so difficult. Your business needs to make the perfect segmentation, to be creative and to innovate. Let’s take a look at some of best practices.

Plan in advance

This is how it begins. Make a content calendar so you don’t wonder what to post every morning and evening. Pay attention to days like Christmas, Valentine's Day, Black Friday etc. Your behaviour can be crucial in such moments.

Use data and analytics

Constantly you should analyze the performance of your brand’s name. Who mentions you? What do they say about your brand? How they say it. After you know this, you should adapt your behaviour towards it. You'll probably need to use some sort of tool, but you should try to determine things like who is regularly posting about your business and who made a one-time purchase from you.

Go local

If you have a physical store, use social media as a tool to reach nearby consumers with targeted content For example, you can reward customers who visit the location and check in on social media.

Be interactive

Post things like quizzes or polls to engage followers. You can also run a live Q&A or a competition.

React quickly

Normally you'll be receiving positive as well as negative feedback on social media (hopefully, the positive will be predominant). It is crucial that you act quickly and respond to all of it, especially the negative. Respect the fact that they have taken the time to complain and see this as a benefit for you. Personalize not only offers and tweets but also your business and give it character. Being authentic and recognizable is the key in successful social media. For more good and bad case practices come to CEEDS’15 by Webit. Book your tickets now!

Mobile Internet use will surpass desktop Internet use in a really short time. According to some statistics it has already done it. Customers become so dependent on mobile devices so it’s pretty clear that you and your business need to be there. If you still need some reasons why being on mobile is beneficial, here are 4: Reason No 1: You are responsive and no matter what kind of a device customers use they can reach your website. The main purpose of smartphones and tablets is to make life easier, so by making your website responsive for mobile you and your business are one step closer to the love of your customers. Just think about it - if a potential customer lands on your website via their mobile device and the user experience is bad they will never come back. Smartphones have made life much easier and users demand a pleasant experience. So, make sure that your website is responsive! Reason No 2: You are constantly connected and able to answer your customers’ questions and doubts. Except for being technically responsive, mobile makes your business fully present and close to the customers since you and your team can be in touch with them any time they need you. Reason No 3: More businesses are realizing that rather than requiring valued customers to carry yet another card either in a wallet or on a keychain, they can provide them with some rewards through simply presenting a smartphone app. Consumers are moving closer to being able to pay with a mobile device, with major players like PayPal and Apple Pay partnering with stores nationwide to enable mobile payments. Reason No 4: Mobile-based marketing is the future and even Google is recognizing that the world of search is changing. Users are more likely to ask a question into a mobile device than to type on keyboard Google is prepared to deliver those answers with its Hummingbird algorithm. For this reason, it’s important for each business to take a step back and ask themselves what questions a consumer would ask that would lead them to their website. The world is doing a gradual shift from PC to mobile, businesses have no choice but to adjust their own way of thinking, as well. To learn more about the benefits of your business being mobile, come at CEEDS’15 by Webit. Hurry up and book your tickets now.

Marketing specialists’ dream is to able to afford anything they need in order to realize every marketing campaign they can think of. Most of the times, though, they need to adapt and stick to the marketing budget no matter the dreams. Here comes the optimization and you need to know how to optimize your marketing budget. How you do it at the moment? Once you receive the budget, you divide the money among marketing activities as well as you can segment the budget by customers, products, geographic region, etc. What often happens is that marketing managers do the allocation of money with little statistical or financial data to determine the specific portion of funds for each activity or segment. Optimization of the marketing budget can be pretty easy if you use the next three concepts:

• Diminishing return market response curve - the diminishing return market response curve is based on the principle that the next dollar spent will have less impact than the previous dollar, and that no matter how much is invested, not every prospect will be converted to a customer. You can calculate your products' market response curves by using historical data or marketing experimentation.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) - it’s the worth of a customer over a specific period of time. A little more sophisticated but the most accurate definition of CLV is the current value of future contributions of customers using a discounted cash flow. CLV is even easier to be calculated by tech companies that are rich with data on their customers.CLV is on it’s way to replace the well-known ROI for main reason - CLV results can be considered long term, while the results you receive by measuring ROI are for much shorter period.
• Customer equity (CE) - the net present value of the contribution of all current and future customers. Maximizing CE is the best metric in order to increase long-term profits.

Companies that are rife with data will be very successful in the optimization of their marketing budgets. Optimization through computer modeling can be a competitive advantage, as well as a means to increased profits. At CEEDS’15 by Webit you will be able to hear and learn a lot about big data and the optimization of marketing budgets, so book your ticket now.

The digital era we are living in is challenging for a few main reasons - a lot of information, lots of tools and endless opportunities. Challenges come from the fact that in most cases you don’t have the control, so staying ahead of the digital marketing game can be difficult. More and more of your customers are online looking for brands and products to fill their needs on social media. It can be true that digital marketing strategy is time-consuming and expensive, but in order to stay on the market and people to know you, your business needs this strategy. So here are 5 digital tools every (digital) business should have:

• Engaging Website - Online experience starts from the company’s website. This is how current and potential customers are going to find and connect with your business. Make sure that you build a site that is optimized for success. Wordpress is the universal tool that can help you and will let to customize the service to suit your needs.
• Hootsuite (or Social Media) - Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., etc. True social media madness. Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media accounts by cross platform message scheduling and extensive data tracking. Analytics across every platform ensures less time managing and more time growing your business.
• Google Search - Advertising on search results relevant to your product or service is powerful and productive. All you should know is what search terms (keywords) to focus on. Instead of bidding on competitive keywords try to focus on specific phrases or geographies and bid aggressively. What is important is not the numbers of views of your ad, but whether it was shown to the right people.
• Remarketing Tools - have you ever checked new models of tablets on the Internet and later when you watch a video on YouTube tablet ads start popping out? This is remarketing and it’s happening more and more often. Use remarketing tactics if your product or service has a long buying cycle.
• Analytics - you own limitless quantity of information and at first, this may scare you. Fortunately, lots of analytics tools exist, so you can transform just data into essential  and useful information.

Everything is changing so quickly and you should stay adequate to the circumstances. CEEDS’15 by Webit will give you new digital ideas and tools, so the event will inspire you to perform even better during the digital transformation. Book your tickets now!  

If you work in marketing industry, you know that marketing requires inspiration. All the time, for anything you do - a campaign, an article, brandbuilding, etc. So, here are 10 marketing quotes that will be your today’s inspiration and will give you food for thought even for a week ahead.

1. “If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.” – Jay Baer
2. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin
3. “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” – Scott Cook
4. "If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing." -- Guy Kawasaki
5. “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.” - Dan Zarrella
6. ‘’In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want?’’ Roy H. Williams
7. ‘’Advertising is not being broadly seen for what it really is, namely, the single most powerful tool to produce profitable sales growth and to increase brand value. The purpose of creativity is to enhance the ability of advertising to actually sell.’’ – Brendan Ryan, CEO, FCB
8. ‘’Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.’’ – Steuart Henderson Britt, US author
9. ‘’If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.’’ – David Ogilvy, advertising pioneer and founder of Ogilvy Group
10. ‘’Innovation is everything. When you're on the forefront, you can see what the next innovation needs to be. When you're behind, you have to spend your energy catching up.’’ – Robert Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel

However, it’s not only about the quotes, but also about the people who have said them. Come at CEEDS`15 by Webit to meet such inspirational people in person. Hurry up to catch the tickets.  

CEEDS by Webit is used to be associated with networking as any big event. At CEEDS'15 by Webit it is special because you have the opportunity to communicate with experts, C-level managers and this is a big opportunity for you since you do not meet such people daily on the street, do you? Hold on because it offers even more and it is not just networking, but a social experience. For the record, social is all around us - like how social media has been changing not only our lives, but the whole world. During the whole ‘social experience’ at CEEDS’15, feel free to work for expanding your network with 5 various events:

• Special Fashion TV Party - Work hard, party harder and this party is gonna be glamorous. Such a party is happening for the first time in this part of the world. In 2014, Webit Global Congress in Istanbul also had a party powered by Fashion TV and it was spectacular. Fabulous models and inspired attendees created an unforgettable night together. Now, it’s Sofia’s turn to have such an event for the first time ever.
• CEOs Lunch, Leaders Lunch - broad your professional network with leaders from the digital industry while having lunch
• Chairman's Dinner, Speakers Dinner - in the end of the day having dinner with all the inspirational speakers is a chance to spend some extra time with them and ask them whatever you need to
• Rafting Summit - time to make some networking while enjoying the beauty of Bulgaria. Once in a lifetime experience.
• 2 Signature Webit parties - Webit is famous for its parties: classy, stylish and and fancy.

So, as we started: it’s not just networking, but a social experience. We all need to socialize with people who we have something in common with. No matter how different we are we have to find this specific one thing. CEEDS’15 offers variety of social events which you should not miss and become a name in the digital industry. Buy your tickets now and begin with the preparation for your best social experience.

Beat Schwegler is part of Microsoft’s technical evangelism and development team (ted), where he architects, design and codes leading edge apps and services to showcase the Microsoft platform – with a special focus on cloud. He started to focus on cloud computing in 2008 and just loves the opportunities it provides to businesses of all sizes. Before joining Microsoft, he was an independent architect and developer and was involved in a wide variety of projects, ranging from real-time building control systems, best-selling shrink-wrapped products to large scale CRM and ERP systems.

CEEDS: How will you explain cloud evangelism with one sentence?

B.S. Helping companies of all sizes to understand how to benefit from cloud computing – both form a technology and business perspective.

CEEDS: What qualities needs the successful cloud evangelist?

B.S. A technology evangelist must have a strong technology background combined with the passion for public speaking and writing. It is a cycle of doing innovative projects with customer and partners, turn the outcome into reusable assets and then talk and write about it.

CEEDS: What is the opportunity of cloud computing in the CEE region?

B.S. Cloud democratizes access to computing and is a key enabler for applications of global reach. I see a big opportunity in CEE to take advantage of the strong technology skills to create innovative applications and services which gain adoption not just in CEE but worldwide.  The opportunity is global!

CEEDS: What are your expectations from CEEDS’15? What is your motivation to be a speaker at CEEDS’15 by Webit?

B.S. I’m looking forward to learn about great solutions from participating startups and to help them to explore areas where new technology can help them to deliver even more innovation. I hope my session will help attendees to better understand the power of machine learning and predictive analytics.

CEEDS: Whom you will recommend to attend CEEDS’15 by Webit?

B.S. Everyone who wants to learn about what’s hot in technology!

We talked about Rule No 1: Build a brand and Rule No 2: Increase your sales, so the time has come for Rule No 3. It says that loyalty is the key and it actually shouldn’t be third because it come before anything else. True customer loyalty is perhaps the greatest asset a company can develop and it’s the loyalty that builds a brand and increase the sales (Rule No1 and No2). Loyalty gives you security but at the same time it should make you cautious.

‘Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction…you must improve.’ Horst Schulz.

Customer loyalty is difficult to build as well as it is to measure. Some business owners assume that all repeat customers are loyal customers, but that may not always be the case. Some other factors like pricing or convenience may contribute to repeat sales. What is more important for you is to determine why customers come back before you conclude that they are truly loyal. Remember that there are huge business benefits to creating loyal customers. How do you look at your loyal customers? As customers or as partners? It must be the second. Treat them like partners because:

‘Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.’ Chip Bell

It’s this what you want, isn’t it? Here are several simple steps that will help you to build customer loyalty: Act quickly to resolve problems - mistakes are not the problem, the problem is your rejection to react to these mistakes. Something went wrong with your product? Fix it, it’s simple. If you react quickly to the customer’s complain than to say ‘No, it’s your fault! My product is perfect,’ then you win from the situation. Do not be afraid to compensate customers when you have made a mistake. Respect  your customers so they will respect you as well and turn to loyal customers.

‘Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.’ Zig Ziglar

Be consistent in the follow-through in every aspect of your service - no matter if it is a big or small purchase follow your customer’s behaviour. Never ignore customers with small purchases for anyone who make a big one (big ones).

‘Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.’ Kevin Stirtz

Ask your regular customers, “Would you recommend our product or service to others?’’ or ‘Have you recommended us to others?’ Avoid the temptation to develop a longer questionnaire in order to learn more. One question is completely enough and its answer is all you want and need to know. If more than 1/3 of respondents say ‘No’ and they would not endorse your company, you need to dig below the surface, understand the reasons, and take immediate corrective actions.

‘There is a big difference between a satisfied customer and a loyal customer.’ Shep Hyken.

Reward customers who makes referrals - if you own a travel agency, give the customers who make referrals a free weekend somewhere or a half-price plane ticket, for example. As it has been said few paragraphs before, respect your customers - this way you will obtain new customers, and you’ll have a convenient way to measure the effect of word-of-mouth advertising.

‘Loyalty cannot be blueprinted. It cannot be produced on an assembly line. In fact, it cannot be manufactured at all, for its origin is the human heart-the center of self-respect and human dignity. It is a force which leaps into being only when conditions are exactly right for it-and it is a force very sensitive to betrayal,’ Maurice R. Franks.

Loyal customers will be sticking with your business even if your price is not always the best, because they believe you offer the best value for the money. Think this way - loyal customers are the most effective sales team you could ever build. Webit has its loyal attendees as well, because we always offer the most relevant content. If you want to learn more about loyalty - how to build it, keep it and use it, CEEDS`15 by Webit is the place. Book your tickets now!