by Fronetics | Nov 20, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Finding, analyzing, and using the right metrics effectively is crucial to a successful content marketing strategy.
Accountability and showing a solid return on investment is everything when it comes to ensuring that your business is allocating adequate resources to marketing. And let’s face it, too many executives think that marketing is, at best, about supporting sales or, at worst, a department that exists to paste logos onto coffee mugs.
Writing for Marketo, Content Marketing Specialist Bryson Runser points out that as an “informed marketer, it’s your duty to infuse credibility into your organization by way of meaningful metrics that tie directly to your top and bottom line.” While the C-suite famously cares nothing about internal marketing metrics like Facebook likes or click-through rate, metrics are crucial to the success of marketing the supply chain. Not only that, effective use of metrics is the best way to establish the function and importance of the marketing department within your organization.
[bctt tweet=”Effective use of metrics is the best way to establish the function and importance of the marketing department within your organization.” username=”Fronetics”]
Numbers don’t lie
One of the main aspects of the “crisis of accountability” is a problematic view of what marketing is: “if marketing leaders insist that marketing is an art and not a science,” Runser writes,” then the department will remain isolated from other groups.” Establishing that content marketing is not only dependent upon data, but can also be measured, is key to changing that perception.
“Marketing must be able to justify their expenditures as investments in revenue and growth,” writes Runser. Of course, it’s partly a chicken-and-egg issue, since getting to the point of being able to talk about expenditures in this way does require investment from the top of your business.
We know that measuring the impact of content marketing can be tricky. But it’s not impossible. The first step is determining the right metrics to track. For more detailed ideas and analysis, check out this post, which details how to determine and use metrics to measure the impact of content marketing on brand awareness.
Why are you reporting?
Collecting and reporting on marketing ROI can feel like you’re spinning your wheels and collecting meaningless data. But it’s crucial to keep metrics focused on the main goal: to enable you and your business to make decisions that improve your marketing efforts. “This is the difference between backward-looking measurement and decision-focused management,” says Runser.
Data for the sake of data doesn’t do any good. Data should be used to shape insights, which in turn informs priorities and actions for your business. We’ve written before about the danger of vanity metrics, which have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of meaningless data collection, especially when marketers are often struggling to prove their worthiness to the C-suite. But using metrics to improve marketing’s performance will go a long way towards winning over executives. “[B]y aligning data measurements with your company’s strategic objectives,” Runser writes, “it will be easier to allocate resources by revenue impact.”
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by Fronetics | Sep 5, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
When your content marketing and sales forces align their efforts, they form a powerful symbiotic relationship that grows your brand and your bottom line.
There’s a big misperception out there that content marketing represents some kind of threat to the job security of sales personnel. It’s absolutely true that content marketing is an inbound approach, contrary to the traditional outbound approach of a B2B sales force. But make no mistake: Content marketing is not a substitute or replacement for an expert sales staff.
[bctt tweet=” It’s absolutely true that content marketing is an inbound approach, contrary to the traditional outbound approach of a B2B sales force. But make no mistake: Content marketing is not a substitute or replacement for an expert sales staff.” username=”Fronetics”]
In fact, it’s when marketing and sales work in tandem that they’re most effective. They can help each other out to generate more leads, nurture current leads more effectively, and even help close more deals.
Content marketing helps generate a steady flow of quality leads, and it provides targeted information to usher prospects down the sales funnel. But even quality leads don’t turn into sales on their own. This is where a sales staff comes in, to take those leads and cultivate them into new business.
Content marketing and sales: Division of labor
For content marketing and sales to work seamlessly together, it’s important to have a clear idea of the role of each. They provide different touch points for leads at each stage of the buying cycle. Here’s a quick primer:
1. Forming a relationship
In this early stage of the buying cycle, your content marketing efforts go toward opening up a dialogue with potential customers. Often, potential leads’ first engagement with your brand comes when they read one of your blog posts, come across your website while searching for product solutions, or see one of your social media posts through their network.
This is when your sales staff picks up the ball, keeping that positive contact going by developing it into a conversation. It’s your sales team’s job to cultivate an ongoing personal relationship with that prospect.
2. Providing information
Now that you’ve established a relationship and your sales team is continuing a dialogue with your prospect, content marketing can step in. B2B buyers report spending more time than ever conducting research, using expert content such as vendor websites, user reviews, and social media before making purchasing decisions. The content that you share with prospects at this stage of the buyer’s journey should be designed to answer informed questions and tip the scales in your favor.
At this stage, your sales staff should be directly answering questions from prospects. When a potential customer reaches out with a query, it’s likely that he or she has done a fair amount of research. So your sales reps need to speak specifically to the customer’s needs in a way that content alone can’t do, to keep them interested and moving down the funnel.
3. Advocating for your brand
Content marketing increases brand awareness for your business. It helps elevate your brand position within the industry and keeps your business top-of-mind, even at a time when potential customers aren’t ready to make a purchase.
When a customer is preparing to make a purchase, your sales staff is the primary advocate for your brand. They should be proactive in pursuing business when customers show interest in your content or when they reach out with questions. They drive dialogue and get to know customers and how your business can help them.
A match made in heaven
When content marketing and sales work together, you’ll see the results hit your bottom line. Curating and creating great content will generate quality leads for your company. And it also empowers your sales force to build relationships with potential customers — and close the sale.
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by Fronetics | Aug 22, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Account-based marketing has traditionally utilized outbound marketing tactics, until now.
Account-based marketing has been around for decades, but it has been gaining a lot of attention in the past few years. More and more companies are starting to use account-based marketing to increase their brand awareness with specific audiences and work together with sales teams to close deals.
But what is account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a focused approach to B2B marketing in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers. Marketers and sales teams focus their efforts on specific accounts — companies, customers, target audiences — and work to get marketing materials in front of them.
Essentially, account-based marketing takes a potential customer and turns them into their own market. “[ABM] is to address the needs of organization by connecting with all of the stakeholders within it. That’s one reason why it works so well in B2B — oftentimes you have to work with five or more stakeholders in a given sale,” writes Sam Balter, HubSpot’s Corporate Marketing Manager.
So how can content marketing help with ABM, which has traditionally been a sales strategy?
Content marketing and account-based marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on audiences finding you. Instead of pushing a message onto buyers, inbound marketing allows you to establish your brand as an industry leader and let interested audiences come to you. This type of marketing attempts to draw in potential customers through interesting and engaging content.
Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing that uses blog posts, social media, infographics, and video to expose target audiences to a brand.
Merging sales and marketing efforts
There’s no reason that ABM and content marketing can’t work together. In fact, you’re missing out on maximizing your marketing efforts if you aren’t incorporating both of these marketing strategies in your overall marketing plan.
[bctt tweet=”Traditional sales pitches are no longer pushing buyers down the sales funnel. Instead, buyers want a personalized experience, where they feel they are getting to know a brand before they make a buying decision.” username=”Fronetics”]
Today’s buyers don’t want to be ‘sold.’ Traditional sales pitches are no longer pushing buyers down the sales funnel. Instead, buyers want a personalized experience, where they feel they are getting to know a brand before they make a buying decision.
What does this mean for your ABM strategy? It means that content marketing can help educate and inform the specific accounts your sales team has identified through valuable, interesting content.
“For example, if you approach any content you create as part of the strategy with both goals in mind, you can create a piece of content that is both incredibly useful from a keyword perspective (and drives a ton of traffic to your site) while also providing all the key information that you’d like to say to your ABM contacts,” writes Stacy Willis for Impact.
When creating content for any marketing effort, the key is to make sure that your content has value. Whether you’re trying to attract a specific account or looking to increase web traffic, content marketing focuses on value and not just volume.
Creating a cohesive account-based marketing and inbound marketing strategy will help maximize your marketing efforts. Though not traditionally used together, it’s time to think outside the box and start seeing the benefits of a joint marketing approach.
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by Fronetics | Jun 11, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
You have to take the long view with content marketing, allowing time for your strategy to develop, your brand to build authority, and your sales cycle to play out.
When you undertake a new content marketing program, you’re making a big investment. So it makes sense that you want to start seeing immediate results. But it’s important to understand from the get-go that content marketing doesn’t really work like that. Yes, you’ll start seeing incremental results within the first few months. But what we tell our clients is that things aren’t really going to start cooking with gas until the 12-18 month mark.
I’ve written before about why you shouldn’t give up on content marketing after a short period of time. While you’ll probably see growth in web traffic, improved social reach, and generally better engagement metrics like time on page, you’re not likely to see new leads or sales to speak of in the first few months after instituting a content marketing strategy.
And that can be hugely frustrating. But the key is understanding that content marketing isn’t a gimmick, and it’s not a short-term strategy. It’s a long-term solution that, if allowed to germinate and grow for the long haul, helps you build brand awareness, grow your audience, and generate new leads and sales. When it comes to content marketing, your goal is to be the tortoise, not the hare.
Content marketing is not a short-term solution
In fact, rushing your relationship with content marketing is one of the worst things you can do. Let’s talk about why that is.
First off, content marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. You need to develop a strategy that works for your business, and that doesn’t happen overnight. When we first engage with a client at Fronetics, we generally take 30-45 days to do an in-depth dive into the company’s data to develop a custom strategy that aligns with the client’s specific business goals. It feels exhaustive at times, but it always ends up paying off.
[bctt tweet=”According to the Content Marketing Institute, 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Keep in mind that only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. And that number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy.
The bottom line? Skipping this step to rush to results will pretty much ensure that your efforts won’t be worth it.
Building trust
In addition to the time it takes to develop a strategy, becoming an authority — and earning the trust and loyalty of your audience — takes time. Your goal is to be a consistent source of information and value, building your brand as an expert in the area.
It goes without saying that this doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s extremely well worth the effort and the patience. Remember that the average B2B buyer consumes between two and five pieces of content before making a purchase decision. If you can position your business as the premier expert on the subject by having the best, most informative, most helpful content available, you’ll have a leg up in the buyer’s decision.
Let the sales cycle play out
Once your strategy is documented and in place, and you begin to create and curate consistent, well-researched, high-quality content, there’s also the process of letting your sales cycle run its course. You need to allow your target audience time to find you and complete thorough research about you and your competitors before making a decision.
After all, content marketing can’t shorten your sales cycle. But lead nurturing with content can keep moving your prospects down the sales funnel. And content can help your sales team close deals. But you can’t expect a buyer to read your first blog post today and make a big purchase tomorrow. That’s just not realistic.
I cannot urge you enough: Don’t give up on content marketing before you give it time work. Hang in there long enough for your initial investment to pay off, and don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy along the way. If you stick with content marketing, it will generate those leads and sales you’re looking for.
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by Fronetics | May 22, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
If you don’t give visitors many easy, attractive opportunities to convert on your website, content marketing won’t generate leads for you.
I’ve been noticing a trend lately that I wanted to share.
We talk with a lot of supply chain and logistics companies who are interested in the idea of content marketing. They’re catching on to the benefits, particular those involving lead generation. They know that creating high-quality, original content on a regular basis — mostly, timely blog posts on a weekly (or more frequent) basis — can drive organic traffic to their websites. And a lot of that traffic will be marketing- or sales-qualified leads.
[bctt tweet=”Content marketing won’t generate leads if you’re driving visitors to a website that stinks.” username=”Fronetics”]
That’s great! I’m glad supply chain and logistics companies are increasingly interested in content marketing. But there’s one problem: Some aren’t willing to take a holistic approach to this solution. Mostly, they aren’t willing to improve their websites.
I totally get it: Websites are a major investment — both financially and temporally. But so is content marketing. And you would be wasting a lot of time and money investing in a content marketing program if all the leads you’re going to drive to your website don’t convert or end up with mixed messaging about your business.
When content marketing won’t generate leads
Content marketing won’t generate leads if you’re driving visitors to a website that stinks. How do you know if your website stinks? Here are a few examples:
Your content is disorganized, unclear, or filled with jargon.
I see this most often. Companies create websites without considering a larger content strategy. Their company or products/services have evolved over time, but the website has not evolved with it (or someone quickly threw up a couple of extra pages without considering the site map as a whole). And, worst of all, web pages become filled with jargon and corporate speak because companies don’t take the time to strategize web page creation as part of that larger content strategy.
Messaging on your website pages serves internal purposes rather than helping customers.
So many businesses create their websites and fill pages with information about their company. “Wait, isn’t that what a website is for?” you might be asking.
No, I would argue. Your website, like your content, should service the customer first. You should design it with the user in mind, helping that prospect find the information they’re seeking and move seamlessly down the sales funnel.
Sure, you should include information about your company on your website. But too many times I see organizations forget about their customers in the creation of their sites. And when prospects visit, they’re caught in a web of the company’s self-promotion — an no closer to making a purchase than before.
There are no opportunities for conversion.
This one seems obvious. But, for some reason, companies frequently create websites hoping to generate leads but give visitors few (or hidden!) opportunities for conversion. If each page doesn’t have a clear call-to-action, specific to the page’s content, with the opportunity to submit contact information, how do you suppose visitors are going to become leads? I’ll say from experience, very few, if any, will proactively reach out and ask to join your email list.
Get it together
If you’re going to make the significant investment in content marketing — and lead generation is your primary goal — you have to think about your website, too. Otherwise, the traffic you’re driving to your site will never convert. And you’ll have wasted your time and money.
Want to make your website an effective lead-generating machine? Stay tuned for part 2 of this post tomorrow: 5 Tips to Generate More Leads on Your Website.
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