Measuring Business Impact

Here's the number that should reframe every B2B marketing team's LinkedIn strategy: only 3% of employees share content about their company, but those shares generate roughly 30% of a brand's total engagement on the platform. A distribution architecture most teams are ignoring. Meanwhile, your company page is reaching about 1.6% of your followers. LinkedIn replaced its entire ranking system with 360Brew, a 150-billion-parameter AI model that reads content semantically. It's no longer counting likes. It's evaluating expertise, professional context, and whether engagement signals real value. Andddd Corporate broadcasting didn't make the cut. It gets more consequential. 64% of hidden decision-makers (finance, legal, procurement, compliance) trust thought leadership content over marketing materials... (yes, it's happening!!) These are the people influencing deals who never show up in your CRM. Employee voices on personal profiles are the only mechanism that reaches them at scale. As we see by the parade of people posting the same company media... most advocacy programs are breaking down bc they optimize for posting frequency when the real gap is having something coherent to say. Twenty employees posting in twenty different directions is noise. Twenty employees who understand the brand's point of view and can articulate it in their own voice The AI layer makes this urgent. LinkedIn is now the second most-cited domain across ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. What your employees post is becoming the source material for how AI systems describe your brand and your industry. No employee voice on LinkedIn means you're invisible to the AI discovery layer that B2B buyers increasingly use to build shortlists. Ten employees with brand clarity will outperform a hundred with a content calendar and a Slack reminder. The platform has already decided. The question is whether your team has. Full piece via State of Brand : https://lnkd.in/gwef6SWk

42% increase in cloud cost savings through use of carbon as a KPI alongside cost, saving an additional $7.6m in one quarter... This was achieved in split testing in a large AWS environment in a financial services organisation. The testing was conducted between two teams (A & B), with team-A given purely cost based metrics and team-B given cost and carbon metrics. Both teams identified similar areas of optimisation potential, the difference was the execution of those recommendations by engineering and delivery teams. Team B saw less resistance from the business when showcasing the potential savings in terms of carbon and climate impact. Team A had typical challenges in convincing their business users and colleagues in CloudOps to take action. The net result was a 42% increase in optimisations being executed upon, resulting not only in a substantial reduction in carbon, but also $$$$, with an additional $7.6m being saved in the first quarter of testing. It'll be interesting to see if the results continue or whether it was a blip. I'd also like to see whether there's similar outcomes across the FinOps spectrum (differing maturity levels of FinOps adoption). #sustainability #finops #greenops

How Sustainability Teams can make money. Ethical operating companies like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and Interface have proven that sustainable business practices aren’t just a “nice to have”. they drive profitability. It improves the bottom line of a company. Now, as corporate sustainability teams face growing pressure to prove their value amid deregulation and cost-cutting, it’s time for a strategic repositioning. Sustainability isn’t just policy work. It’s a core driver of business success that delivers financial returns. Here’s an approach that aligns impact with investment: High ROI + High Impact 👉 Priority Initiatives Low ROI + High Impact 👉 Strategic Investments High ROI + Low Impact 👉 Quick Wins Low ROI + Low Impact 👉 Low Priority Projects Impact How much does this project contribute to environmental and social sustainability? 💚 Carbon Reduction 💚 Circularity 💚 Water & Energy Savings 💚 Social Impact 💚 Biodiversity Protection ROI (Return of Investment) How much financial value does this project generate? 📈 Cost Savings 📈 Revenue Growth 📈 Regulatory & Compliance Benefits 📈 Brand & Customer Value 📈 Operational Efficiency Scoring System To prioritise projects, it’s necessary to have a scoring system in place—for example, a 1–10 scale for each metric under both Impact and ROI. Then, you weight the metrics according to the company’s priorities (e.g., carbon might be weighted more heavily). Examples Here are some examples for potential business cases: 💡 LED lighting retrofits 👉 Priority Initiatives Often has payback periods < 2 years with significant energy savings 🔃 Product redesign for circularity 👉 Strategic Investments Transformative impact but requires R&D and retooling 🚚 Optimising logistics routes 👉 Quick Wins Quick fuel savings but smaller portion of overall emissions 🌳 Carbon offsetting low-impact activities 👉 Low Priority Projects When direct reduction would be more effective »When you are led by values, it doesn't cost your business, it helps your business.« - Jerry, Greenfield / Co-Founder Ben & Jerry’s. This Matrix helps to prove it.

What’s the ROI of LinkedIn? For Refine Labs, it’s $50MM in HIRO pipeline and $14MM ARR in net new closed won revenue over the past 2 years since we implemented self-reported attribution in July 2021. I think most people would agree - pretty damn good ROI. But if we measured the ROI of LinkedIn using multi-touch attribution like most B2B SaaS companies do, it only shows $977k in closed won revenue (93% lower measured ROI). And that’s why most B2B companies don’t take LinkedIn or other forms of dark social seriously, while we’ve generated tremendous ROI for 5 years straight. And that's because most B2B companies still use the same underlying principles to measure the success of Marketing & content that they did in 2013 when B2B professionals went into the office, booted up their desktop computer, and consumed blogs & PDFs - based on tracked digital touches and form fills that were easy to track on a desktop computer from a company IP address. Basically everything has changed about the internet since then - including content formats, distribution, tracking & privacy policies, rapid evolution of social media, etc. Yet the way we measure success basically hasn’t changed. There's more tech and jargon around it, but the underlying tech & principles haven't changed. In today’s World, it’s time to focus on the bigger picture. STOP trying to prove the “ROI” of each individual piece of content using touchpoint-based digital attribution. Instead, understand that the results are built through the accumulation of tons of content & touch points over a sustained period of time - most of which never get tracked by digital attribution tools. START measuring the “ROI” of each channel overall by getting direct insights from customers about what they say is working in your Marketing. -Self Reported Attribution / How did you hear about us? Automate in SF / MAP -Sales rep asks on first call, use tags in conversation intelligence tools to automate  -Execute market research surveys to ICP buyers at target accounts that are not in-market  -Conduct win/loss analysis using primary market research interviews In a World where the most impactful programs & activities don’t get tracked by digital attribution, it’s time to be customer-centric and get insights directly from the market. #demand #marketing #b2b #sales p.s. To be clear, Attribution software, Salesforce campaigns, and UTM tracking are great ways to measure Demand Capture. But are definitely not appropriate to measure the entire marketing mix across demand creation, demand capture, and demand conversion. Step 1 in unlocking the next level of growth is changing the Marketing KPIs and Attribution models that keep Marketing teams stuck in the past.

America’s Robotics Challenge: Building Useful Robots Instead of Impressive Ones A former NASA robotics leader argues that the United States risks focusing on robotics demonstrations and technical showmanship while China concentrates on deploying robots that deliver strategic economic and industrial value. According to the author, the future robotics race will be won not by the most impressive machines, but by the countries that successfully integrate robotics into their broader economic and manufacturing ecosystems. The article points to China's highly publicized humanoid robot demonstrations as examples of technological signaling. While such displays attract attention, the author believes the more important story is China's systematic effort to scale robotics across factories, logistics networks, infrastructure projects, healthcare systems, and industrial production. The emphasis is not merely on what robots can do, but on where and how they are deployed. In contrast, the United States remains a global leader in robotics innovation. American companies have developed remarkable machines capable of advanced mobility, manipulation, and autonomy. Robots from leading firms demonstrate extraordinary technical capabilities, including complex movements, object handling, and operation in challenging environments. However, the author argues that technical excellence alone does not guarantee strategic advantage. The key concern is deployment at scale. The author contends that America may be investing heavily in breakthrough demonstrations while underinvesting in the industrial infrastructure, supply chains, workforce training, and commercialization pathways necessary to integrate robotics throughout the economy. Meanwhile, China is aggressively positioning robotics as a national competitiveness tool designed to offset labor shortages, increase productivity, and strengthen manufacturing leadership. Key Takeaways: The article argues that robotics success should be measured by economic impact rather than technological spectacle. While the United States leads in many areas of robotics innovation, China is focusing on large-scale deployment and industrial adoption. The author believes America must prioritize practical implementation, workforce development, manufacturing integration, and commercialization if it hopes to maintain long-term leadership in robotics and automation. The broader implication is that robotics is evolving from a technology sector into a strategic national capability. Just as previous industrial revolutions were shaped by the widespread deployment of transformative technologies, the next phase of economic competition may be determined by which nations can most effectively integrate intelligent machines into their productive economies. In that contest, deployment strategy may prove more important than impressive demonstrations. Keith King https://lnkd.in/gHPvUttw

Last year, I was speaking with a VP of Sales who confidently asserted: “Our buyers rely heavily on Gartner and Forrester reports, and LinkedIn is just noise.” That claim led us to a deeper look. So we ran a rapid social intelligence audit across their 10+ ideal enterprise target accounts and the reality was revealing: 👉 significant stakeholders actively adding connections in LinkedIn. 👉 a few of those routinely engaged on LinkedIn content. This wasn’t casual scrolling… it was conscious participation and relationship building. Some buyers were raising ‘purchase-intent’ questions as well. All transparently surfaced on LinkedIn - in public threads and peer groups. Data illuminating exactly where the research action happens pre-RFP. We scripted a custom GTM strategy: 👍 Enterprise Signal Posts: Engineered deep-dive, persona-tagged case studies, optimized to get clipped into internal research decks and circulated among architects, PMOs, and senior engineers. 👍 Dark-Social Authority: By engaging in high-value vendor comparison (and likes) threads, our client’s leadership profiles gained credibility and trust inside private channels invisible to traditional analytics. 👍 Decision-Stage Content: Launched proof-backed narrative video for "solution-aware" prospects, resulting in high-conversion SQLs. With consistency. The outcomes? 💪 Significant % of new enterprise meetings originated directly from LinkedIn-driven content touchpoints and network engagement. 💪 RFP win-rate increased, correlated to significant buyers explicitly referencing LinkedIn case materials. 💪 Sales cycles compressed because buyers entered conversations highly informed and confident. Why does this work in enterprise buying cycles? Vendor Validation: B2B procurement is increasingly cross-functional; live peer discussions on LinkedIn serve as a real-time, trusted “research layer” far beyond static analyst reports. Peer Proof: Enterprise decision-makers weight peer-shared insights more heavily than vendor-curated collateral, especially within their own secure collaboration channels. If you’re still dismissing LinkedIn as “just noise,” you’re strategically ceding ground during arguably the most critical phase of buyer evaluation. In 2025, enterprise buying journeys don’t start with vendor meetings… they start with social proof, digital authority, and dark social signals. And the winners are the brands that embed themselves authentically and intelligently in these ecosystems. #SocialSelling #DarkSocial #LinkedIn #RevOps #AIGTM

Minimise downtime, reduce energy consumption and counter cost pressure: three tasks on almost every industrial agenda moving into 2026. When it comes to cutting CO2, it’s often the little things that make a huge difference. At Klüber Lubrication, we are experts in these small changes, as the right lubricant can have a substantial impact. I want to illustrate this with a business case from the tyre industry: An internal mixer in the tyre industry with about 7,680 hours operating time, a filling amount of 1,400 litres and an average power consumption of 766 kW. The one-time investment of 10,430 Euros in a high-performance lubricant led to yearly savings of nearly 15,000 Euros – through energy savings and increased efficiency. Payback period: 8 months. But that was only the financial assessment. The environmental impact is equally relevant: Energy consumption reduced by 165 MWh/year. CO₂ savings: over 100 tonnes. A seemingly small change led to measurable impact for both financial return and the environment. As we are all getting ready for 2026, let me ask you this: Do you know the small levers in your business with the biggest impact? #TogetherBeyondLubrication

Building ESG: Small Business, Big Impact: How Carbon Accounting Can Boost Your Brand & Fight Climate Change ________________________________________ In today's world, consumers are increasingly interested in supporting businesses that prioritize sustainability. Demonstrating your commitment to environmental responsibility cannot only help you attract and retain customers, but also play a part in the fight against climate change. - What is Carbon Accounting? Carbon accounting, also known as greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting, is the process of measuring and tracking your organization's greenhouse gas emissions. This includes both direct emissions from your own operations (e.g., energy use, fuel consumption), and indirect emissions from your supply chain and the use of your products (e.g., purchased materials, transportation). - Why is Carbon Accounting Important for Small Businesses? * Customer Demand: By implementing carbon accounting, you can demonstrate your commitment to sustainability and gain a competitive edge. * Regulatory Compliance: As environmental regulations become more stringent, carbon accounting can help you stay ahead of the curve and ensure compliance with future regulations. * Cost Savings: Reducing your carbon footprint can also lead to cost savings. By identifying areas where you can improve energy efficiency or reduce waste, you can lower your operating costs. * Brand Reputation: Taking a proactive approach to sustainability can enhance your brand reputation and help you attract and retain top talent. - Getting Started with Carbon Accounting There are a number of resources available to help small businesses get started with carbon accounting. Here are a few steps you can take: 1. Educate Yourself: Familiarize yourself with the basics of carbon accounting and greenhouse gas emissions. 2. Inventory Your Emissions: Start by identifying and quantifying your organization's direct and indirect emissions. 3. Set Reduction Goals: Once you understand your baseline emissions, establish clear goals for reducing your carbon footprint. 4. Develop a Plan: Create a plan for how you will achieve your reduction goals. This may involve investing in energy efficiency measures, switching to renewable energy sources, or reducing waste. 5. Track Your Progress: Regularly monitor your emissions and track your progress towards your goals. What steps are you taking to reduce your small business's environmental impact? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below! Please click on the link below and feel free to share (Disclaimer: Views are personal, should not be related to organisations view) #buildingEsg #circulareconomy #sustainablefinance #esgreporting #esgstrategy #esgrisk #climaterisk #climatechangeaction #climaterisks #india #emissions #esgratings #esg #cop28 #greenertogether #SDGs #sustainability #business #csr

Climate change has become a financial equation 🌍 Companies are beginning to quantify what inaction could cost, translating climate risk into direct revenue impacts. The data show that addressing climate impacts through mitigation and adaptation measures represents about 8% of FY24 revenues, while the cost of inaction reaches 15%. This means the financial exposure of not acting almost doubles the investment required to act. The chart shows how this varies across sectors. Energy, materials, and building industries face some of the highest projected costs of inaction, driven by physical and transition risks. In contrast, the real estate sector stands out with a cost of action near 96%, reflecting the capital needed to protect assets from floods, fires, and hurricanes. Financial asset owners and managers estimate the cost of inaction at 120% of FY24 revenues, the highest across sectors, signaling a growing understanding of portfolio-wide climate risk. These figures show that climate change is now treated as a balance sheet issue, not a sustainability add-on. They also reveal that value protection depends on early adaptation and strategic investment. The financial logic is clear. Acting today reduces the future cost of disruption, regulation, and loss of assets. The next step is to internalize these insights into decision-making, linking climate risk directly with business strategy. How prepared are companies to make that connection before the cost gap widens? Source: EY Global Climate Action Barometer 2025 #sustainability #esg