by Fronetics | Dec 10, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Here are our most-viewed blog posts from 2018 about analytics and ROI, including articles about how to calculate your marketing ROI and competitive benchmarking.
Content marketing is increasingly popular in the B2B sector. In fact, 91% of B2B marketers used content marketing as a part of their strategy last year. But marketers still struggle with proving the return on investment.
Evaluating your analytics gives you valuable insight into what’s working (and what’s not) with your content marketing strategy. But 47% of B2B marketers reported not measuring content marketing ROI. And of those marketers, 86% sited lack of knowledge, time, and convenience for reasons why their company doesn’t calculate ROI.
[bctt tweet=”47% of B2B marketers reported not measuring content marketing ROI. And of those marketers, 86% sited lack of knowledge, time, and convenience for reasons why their company doesn’t calculate ROI.” username=”Fronetics”]
This year, Fronetics examined new analytics tools and numerous ways to calculate ROI — within the context of supply chain and logistics operations, as well as how these methods can be used to improve overall marketing performance. Here’s a look at our most viewed analytics and ROI posts in 2018.
Top 5 analytics and ROI posts
1. The Art of Measuring Podcast Success
Podcasts are an increasingly popular content medium, but measuring their performance is difficult. Here are some tips for measuring podcast success in spite of the challenges. Spoiler alert: it’s an art, not a science. Today’s busy professionals are increasingly driven to make their “down time” more productive and engaged. The popularity of podcasts rises every year, with more than 50% of American homes now classified as “podcast fans” by Nielsen. Read full post
2. Top 10 Social Media Analytics Tools
Analyzing your social media performance is critical to a successful marketing effort, especially in light of recent changes to Facebook’s News Feed. You need the tools to determine what’s working and what isn’t, as well as the best time to post your content for your target audience. At Fronetics, we use a variety of tools to measure social media success. Here are our 10 favorite social media analytics tools. Read full post
3. 4 Metrics to Measure the Impact of Content Marketing on Brand Awareness
A successful content marketing strategy strengthens the relationship between brands and their target audiences. And brand awareness is a key component to any successful content marketing strategy. Ultimately, the more aware audiences are of your brand, the more likely they are to buy your products or services. Read full post
4. Use These Metrics to Benchmark Marketing Performance against Your Competitors
Competitive benchmarking is the process of comparing your company’s performance against that of your competitors. You can use various metrics to benchmark what these businesses are doing better than you are and where you have the edge. Benchmarking marketing performance is an important step in the process of evaluating the success of your content marketing strategy. Read full post
5. Infographic: 4 Ways to Measure Blogging ROI
Why do you blog? It seems like a simple question, but the answer has a huge impact on the content you produce and the outcome of your efforts. As with all aspects of your business, you should give the return on investment of your content marketing efforts ample attention. That is especially true for blogging ROI, if generating new business is indeed one of the reasons you blog in the first place. Read full post
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by Elizabeth Hines | Dec 6, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
As content marketing continues to increase in popularity, here are six trends to consider when planning your 2019 strategy.
A recent article by Forbes on content marketing notes: “As recently as a few years ago, marketers handled content mostly as a side project. It was more of a bonus than an essential role — something you did when you had time because it took a backseat to more traditional marketing projects and responsibilities. That’s changed.”
Boy, has that changed. The content marketing industry is expected to be worth more than $400 billion by 2021.
The 2018 report from the Content Marketing Institute shows just how prevalent content marketing is, and how essential it has become to creating brand awareness, educating your audience, and building credibility and trust with your customers.
Supply chain & logistics marketers: Trends to watch
So, where is content marketing headed in 2019? Content marketing budgets are still on the rise, and supply chain and logistics companies are increasingly seeing the value in moving to an inbound marketing strategy driven by original content.
These are the six notable trends to consider when planning your 2019 content marketing strategy.
1. Video
Video is currently the most popular form of content being consumed online today, and video marketing will continue to have substantial value in 2019.
Smart supply chain marketers should start the new year by developing a visual storytelling strategy that offers consistent delivery of valuable content.
What’s your best bet? Be helpful and teach your audience something worthwhile to them.
2. Chatbots
The rise of chatbots – automated computer programs that simulate human conversation in messaging apps – is expected to continue in 2019. Business Insider recently reported that the number of people on messaging apps surpassed the number of users on social networks!
[bctt tweet=”Business Insider recently reported that the number of people on messaging apps surpassed the number of users on social networks!” username=”Fronetics”]
Chatbots are just one of the ways artificial intelligence will shape the content marketing landscape in 2019, but their ability to drastically increase customer engagement puts them on the short list for a major trend to watch in the coming year.
3. Voice search
Voice search is becoming an increasingly prevalent means of attaining information. Statistics vary, but it’s expected that anywhere between 30-50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. A recent report by NPR and Edison Research found that the rise of smart speakers is substantially changing consumer routines and purchasing behavior.
A good content marketing strategy for 2019 should consider how your customers might use voice search in your industry, and what you can do to maximize your content’s ability to respond.
4. Long-form content
I love this one, because it harkens back to humble beginnings of content marketing and the desire to put informative, quality content in front of a targeted interested audience.
Long form content – white papers, case studies, and lengthier blog posts e.g. – will have a resurgence of renewed appreciation in 2019. Why? Because many industries, including supply chain and logistics industries, are saturated with tons of mediocre short form content. People are increasingly looking to weed through it all for substantial quality posts from trusted sources. In addition, search engines will favor longer posts in results rankings.
Cheers to 2019 being the year of quality over quantity!
5. Brand ambassadors
We wrote about brand ambassadors as we headed into 2018, but they are worth mentioning again as we look forward to 2019. Brand ambassadors are employees that influence the B2B buying decisions of others, and they are an often-overlooked resource with more traditional marketing tactics.
Peers and colleagues are the third most influential source of information for business to business (B2B) purchasing, right behind online searches and your website! And there’s nothing more credible than a friend who speaks highly of their company’s product or service.
Definitely consider how you can help make brand ambassadors out of your employees in 2019.
6. Market Influencers
The final trend to watch in 2019 is influencer marketing, a form of marketing which focuses on influential people rather than the market as a whole.
Basically, marketers identify individuals who might have influence over potential buyers and create marketing campaigns and activities around these influencers. In many ways, this works similarly to a brand ambassador, where a single person influences their network of friends; in this case, however, the market influencer has a large network and a lot of “friends” who listen.
Influencer marketing will be a huge trend in marketing for 2019, and it would be worth considering who might be an influencer in your industry in the coming year and what your company might do reach them.
So, there you have it. As we head into 2019, these are the trends to watch and plan for in content marketing space.
The B2B buying climate is growing longer and more complex, and content marketing is so effective throughout the entire sales cycle if it’s done well. The end of the year is a great time to revisit your marketing strategy and make any necessary changes for the coming year.
Best wishes in the year ahead!
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Fronetics | Dec 4, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Repurposing content is an efficient way to reach a broader audience and build brand awareness.
You spent hours pouring over stats and interesting facts for a blog post. Don’t let all of that effort fall to the wayside. Breathe new life — and reach new audiences — by repurposing that content into engaging new formats.
Some social users like video, while others prefer pictures or podcasts. Taking content and changing its original format is just smart business. Repurposing high-quality content saves marketers time and money and helps to reach a broader audience.
Be picky
Not all of your blog posts and content get the same attention, and that’s ok. Some pieces will resonate more, increasing engagement and driving website traffic.
Run analytics on your content and see what pieces have performed the best. Use tools like Google Analytics to determine your most popular blog posts, your most engaged tweets, or your most viewed videos. This data will help you decide which content should be repurposed. The idea is to take one piece of content and gain visibility and expand your audience by turning it into multiple pieces of content.
The Rule of 7
Repurposing content isn’t just about cutting and pasting content. Have you heard of the Rule of 7? The Rule of 7 is a marketing principle that states your prospects need to encounter your content seven times before they take notice. That’s right, seven times.
[bctt tweet=”The Rule of 7 is a marketing principle that states your prospects need to encounter your content seven times before they take notice. That’s right, seven times.” username=”Fronetics”]
Repurposing content is a great way to take high-quality content and continue to get it in front of audiences without seeming redundant. HubSpot reports that brands who blog around 16 times or more per month get 3.5 times more traffic and 4.5 times more leads than businesses that blog fewer than four times a month. Frequency clearly gets results, but it can also be incredibly time-consuming to create new content 16 times every month. Repurposed content can help your marketing team increase frequency while focusing on quality.
Infographic: 6 ways to repurpose content
(Made with Canva)
Takeaway
How much value does your company put on content? It may be even more important than you think. Use these tips to repurpose high-quality content or yet better, start creating content with these tips in mind. Thinking about a topic and how you can turn that topic into multiple pieces of content will help your hard work go further and perform better.
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by Fronetics | Dec 3, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Social media is a valuable tool for businesses, but only if they use it to their best advantage and avoid these three common mistakes.
81% of small and medium businesses use a social platform. And we all understand why. By 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe. That’s a lot of potential customers.
[bctt tweet=”There’s no disputing social media is an effective way to increase brand awareness and generate leads. But it can be fairly useless if your company isn’t doing it right.” username=”Fronetics”]
So, there’s no question as to why companies are jumping on the social media bandwagon. And there’s no disputing social media is an effective way to increase brand awareness and generate leads. But it can be fairly useless if your company isn’t doing it right.
Top three social media mistakes companies make
Mistake #1: Using objectives instead of strategy
Social media platforms are continually making changes and updates to improve the user experience. In order to weather these changes and keep your audience engaged, it’s imperative to have a clear strategy that includes types of content, frequency, and pillar topics.. Posts should reflect your brand, so make sure posts follow style guidelines and reflect your specific tone.
A strategy will also help prove ROI. Social Media Examiner’s 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report found that only 44% of marketers agree that they know how to measure social media ROI. That means two-thirds of marketers don’t know whether or how much their marketing efforts are paying off when it comes to the use of social media. A strategy that incorporates defined goals, tracking and measuring will help prove data-driven ROI and improve your social media presence.
Mistake #2: Using the most popular social media platforms
Not all social media platforms are created equal. In fact, all social media channels have a differentiating quality that makes them appealing to specific audiences. Start by identifying where your target audience is spending their time. For example, 81% of millennials view their Twitter account on a daily basis. If your company is looking to capture millennials as leads, your social media efforts should certainly include Twitter.
Once you’ve determined where you should be posting, concentrate on creating content that caters to those specific platforms. Lots of companies post the same content across all of the apps they use. We understand how easy that is for marketers, especially with automation tools. But the foundation of social engagement is authenticity, something that is hard to achieve when posts are the same across all channels. Work to create content — including video and images — that caters to specific platforms to build brand awareness and loyalty.
Mistake #3: Promoting instead of connecting
Social media is all about engagement. Users don’t want to engage with brands that are pushing their products and services. Users want informative, interesting, and yes, even fun content. Companies need to focus on creating content that leaves their users wanting more.
Companies that are succeeding on social media are finding innovative and creative ways to relate to users. When you engage and get users involved in your story, you create long-lasting customer relationships. Storytelling creates an emotional bond with your company and drives brand loyalty.
Greg Hadden, executive creative director of Motive Made Studios, sums up the power of connecting with users: “What often gets lost is the fact that good storytelling is potent stuff. It has the power to make people want to believe and to belong, which is the goal of all storytellers. We’re all selling something, be it an idea, an exploration of the human condition, or say, a vacuum cleaner. It’s no mistake perhaps that good stories often create products.”
Final thoughts
Social media platforms are a powerful resource that can help your business grow. But they have to be used correctly. Creating a documented strategy will help shape your brand’s social media presence and give you milestones to test and tweak your progress. Need help creating a social media strategy? Let us help.
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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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