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StreetSmarts SM

Sell holistic experience with a side order of payments Want payments with that?
Marketing is also becoming invisible. In his book, Epic Content Marketing: How Credit card processing will endure
to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by as part of a complex set of variables
Marketing Less, Joe Pulizzi wrote, "We need to think of social media marketing that provide big data and influence
and content marketing less as two isolated options and more as interrelated parts consumer behavior.
of marketing's ongoing evolution. The Internet has unleashed a revolutionary
ability for every brand to communicate directly with its customers – without "Merchant services [are] no longer
the need for a media industry intermediary." a primary product – there is too
much competition with not enough
Does this mean advertising agencies will cease to exist? No, they will just have profitability," Jordan1880 wrote.
to up their game. The same goes for merchant services. Merchants will have cool "There is nothing anyone can do to
new digital tools to drive consumer engagement, but they won't necessarily keep the account – it doesn't matter
know how to use them. MLSs can drive process improvements that help how low you price, how well you
merchants reach target audiences or, as Pulizzi described it, "the marketing and service – there's nothing sticky
business process for creating and distributing content to attract, acquire, and about it. … I've adapted to the
engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of changing marketplace and realized
driving profitable customer action." that I needed a solution to sell as a
primary product where [merchant
MerchantNation added, "Advertising is [a] big market and one that merchants services] just comes along with it as
expect to pay premiums for. Savvy agents will start to move towards these a secondary product. I created www.
higher profit products, and this is the reason why I started the development of realtimemeal.com because years ago I
my own in-house loyalty and big data software several years ago. Competition saw the signs and realized that if you
has just started to swell, but hasn't hit critical mass yet." don't adapt, you become extinct."
MBruno envisions a future based
on an ever-broadening smart grid
that creates a kind of interconnected
utopia. "Considering 'smart homes'
with appliances linked to the web
(like refrigerators that tell you when
you should buy more milk and can
turn the oven on when needed) are
already coming into existence, I think
it's safe to say technology will become
more integrated into everything
we do – including how we pay for
products," he wrote. As we all become
more [accustomed] to various devices
linked to everything, the 'smart store'
will link everything from basic sales to
marketing and automated inventory
management and beyond back into
the POS system and ultimately on to
more portable devices."

Sell solutions not technology
Cool technology can become a
distraction. Let's not forget that
machines are only supporting actors.
The starring roles will always belong
to merchants, who use our platforms
to showcase their businesses, not
the other way around. Maketelinc
stated, "As we saw with the dot-com
bust, those ISOs who invest too much
in tech, may well regret it, for one, a
buyer who likely has [his or her] own

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