by Fronetics | Aug 21, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Here are three warning signs that you may be a toxic leader and how you can make changes to avoid these damaging behaviors.
Let’s face it: As the leader of a company, region, or even a team, you have the power to influence those that report to you. This can be a great asset to teams governed by leaders that pride themselves on hard work, respect, and open communication.
But what about a leader that does the exact opposite? A leader whose behavior creates a negative, possibly even hostile, working environment?
Toxic leader: who are you?
A toxic leader is defined as a person who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse condition than when they first found them.
It’s easy for toxic leaders to blame poor performance and low morale on individuals within the team. But, at some point, it’s important to see if the way employees are managed is a direct reflection of their leadership.
Here are three warning signs that you might be a toxic leader and how to fix the behavior.
3 signs you’re a toxic leader
1. Scattered priorities
This type of toxic leader is an expert in failed time management. Leaders that are unable to prioritize tasks and allow employees to focus on getting their work done are really working to waste their most valuable resources: their trained team.
A recent survey conducted by consulting firm RHR International showed that among high-performing leadership teams, 93% are able to prioritize the most important issues and 96% focus on the right issues. But in low-performing leadership teams, only 62% prioritize well and 53% are focused on the right issues.
Change: Leadership that calls meetings without a set agenda, leaves issues unresolved, and veers off topic when met with questions needs to sit down and start to focus. Toxic leaders that find themselves with scattered priorities can easily get back on track by creating lists that document daily, weekly, and even monthly tasks. Work with your team to delegate tasks and create solutions to issues, and then give them the space to work on their assignments.
2. Unhealthy rivalries
The overly competitive leader with an eye on perfection often has a ‘winning is everything’ attitude, even if comes at the detriment of their team. This toxic leader doesn’t mind leaving broken employees on the sidelines if it means getting ahead.
[bctt tweet=”The overly competitive leader with an eye on perfection often has a ‘winning is everything’ attitude, even if comes at the detriment of their team.” username=”Fronetics”]
In reality, instead of getting ahead, these toxic leaders create a hostile work environment, where employees lose interest in their jobs due to unobtainable demands and a lack of trust in their leadership.
Change: Leadership, and the rest of their team, must work as a unified team. “Shared goals must be accompanied by shared accountability,” writes Ron Carucci, co-founder and managing partner at leadership consulting firm Navalent, for Harvard Business Review. Remove the unnecessary competition from the workplace, and focus on dividing and conquering so everyone is doing their best and achieving their best.
3. Unproductive conflict
When conflicts arise, and they are most certainly going to, leaders need to step in quickly and efficiently to resolve the situation. When organizations have leaders that create or improperly handle conflict, the rest of the team follows their lead.
These leaders often have a reason or excuse for any issues that arise and rarely take responsibility for their role in the matter. With high confidence in their abilities, toxic leaders with unproductive conflict often believe they are right and surround themselves with people that won’t challenge them.
Change: Leadership needs to have certain behaviors that absolutely will not engage in: speaking negatively about team members or other employees or withholding feedback or suggestions that will positively impact their team. If you can relate to any of these points, sit down and write out behaviors that you will no longer engage in. Distribute this list to your team and regularly assess how you’re doing with your list and where you need to personally make tweaks.
What are some other sign of a toxic leader?
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by Fronetics | Aug 20, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Here’s a breakdown of the latest findings regarding the best time to send an email and what we recommend for getting the most of out of your email marketing efforts.
We are all inundated with daily emails. Whether it’s work emails, special offers from brands you love, or straight-up spam email, we all have inboxes full of emails – most of which will never be opened.
But, on the flip side, “email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind colleague recommendations and industry thought leaders,” reports WordStream.
So how do you get your emails to stand out in cluttered inboxes? How do you get readers to actually open — and scroll through — your thoughtfully crafted content?
At Fronetics, we believe there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to what works best for email marketing. In order to be successful, you need to take into consideration:
- Who is your target audience?
- What job titles do they hold?
- What kind of devices do they use?
- When are they commuting to work?
Taking a look at the schedules and habits of your target audience will give you insight into the optimal times for readers to engage with your emails. Here’s Jennifer Hart Yim, director of strategy at Fronetics, with a look at what we recommend when trying to find your optimal time to send marketing emails.
[bctt tweet=”Taking a look at the schedules and habits of your target audience will give you insight into the optimal times for readers to engage with your emails. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Video: When is the best time to send an email?
Takeaway: Trial and error
As with most aspects of content marketing, there’s no universal answer to the best time to send marketing emails. The only way to truly know what works best for your company is trail and error. You’ll have to test dates and times to find the best time to send an email your target audience.
But keep in mind that there are other factors, aside from date and time, that affect open and click-through rates. You’ll also have to play around with frequency, subject lines, length of emails, and the overall look and feel of your email.
Have you tested your best time to send an email? What worked for your company?
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by Fronetics | Aug 1, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
The Fronetics blog will be taking a brief summer vacation.
Starting today, the Fronetics blog will be taking a little hiatus. Don’t worry — it’s only for 2 weeks! We are working on some exciting things behind the scenes and can’t wait to share them with you.
We’ll be back with our regular posting schedule beginning Wednesday, August 15. If you find yourself missing us while we’re away, feel free to check out our ever-growing list of resources for supply chain and logistics marketers.
Or feel free to browse through our recent posts. We’ve been covering some really interesting stuff lately. There’s a little something for everyone — whether you’re looking for industry marketing trends or DIY content marketing guides. Here are a few favorites:
We hope you have a safe, wonderful, and relaxing end of summer, and we look forward to having you back in two weeks!
by Fronetics | Jul 25, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Here are 4 components of an effective lead-nurturing campaign that will entice your potential customers and have them moving down the sales funnel.
Your content marketing objectives really come down to one basic goal: to generate a high number of quality leads. These leads will help drive tomorrow’s revenue and increase sales. In fact, 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.
[bctt tweet=” 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.” username=”Fronetics”]
As more and more buyers discover brands before they are ready to purchase, an essential function of any marketing department is lead nurturing. That is, moving leads through the sales funnel by leveraging what’s known about their needs and online behavior.
Marketo, a marketing software company, describes lead nurturing as being “personalized, adaptive, and able to listen and react to buyer behavior in real time.”
We know that marketers need to focus their lead nurturing strategy on multi-channel engagement. This includes utilizing email, social media, blogs, and video to interact with potential customers. A multi-channel lead nurturing strategy is essential for companies looking to optimize their user experience and bring in high-quality leads.
With so many variables contributing to a productive lead-generation campaign, it can be challenging to pinpoint what differentiates a successful campaign from a mediocre one. Here are four tools that will help you deliver a series of targeted messages across multiple touch points and platforms to help solidify your lead-nurturing strategy and increase your quality leads.
4 building blocks of an effective lead-nurturing campaign
(Made with Canva)
Takeaway
Successful lead nurturing is really about utilizing all the tools at your disposal to meaningfully connect with your leads in order to build trust and establish credibility. Using these four key points, marketers can start building on their lead-generation efforts as they guide potential customers on their journey to becoming a client.
And don’t forget: Asking for the right information is key! If you want to nurture high-quality leads, you need to make sure you’re capturing relevant, helpful information along the sales journey.
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by Fronetics | Jul 17, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
The first step in an effective lead generation campaign is creating valuable offers to convince website visitors to entrust you with their contact information.
Welcome to part one of my series on effective lead generation.
In this four-part series, I’ll guide you through the four most crucial components of the creating an effective lead-generation and lead-nurturing campaign. And I’ll help you tailor your strategic marketing objectives to generate a high volume of quality leads.
Today, we’re looking at how to create valuable offers, the first step in converting a website visitor into a lead.
Offering value
To generate a lead, you need to convince visitors on your website to give you their contact information — and this takes work. You can’t simply expect them to generously hand over their personal information. (Don’t we all get enough emails?!) This means you need to tempt them with something they really want, which you give them in exchange for their contact info.
You may be asking, what will my audience find valuable? And this is where your content comes into play.
[bctt tweet=”Well-written, high-quality content is always more effective at generating leads than an overt sales pitch.” username=”Fronetics”]
One of the fundamental principles of content marketing is that your expertise is just as valuable as your products and services. Well-written, high-quality content is always more effective at generating leads than an overt sales pitch.
Creating valuable offers
When designing your content, keep these three questions in mind:
1. What does my audience need?
It might seem like a basic consideration. But before you jump with both feet into creating an offer, take a step back and really consider the needs of your audience.
This is a good time to check out other industry blogs, social media, and online forums like Quora. What kinds of questions are your prospective buyers asking? What problems are they facing, and how can you help them?
2. How do I best serve the information I’m presenting?
Once you have a clear, well-researched idea of what your audience needs, think about what format best serves the content you’ll be offering them.
Depending on how your information should be structured, valuable content offers could be industry reports, guides, infographics, free consultations, product demonstrations, discounts, or webinars. You’ll often find that you can repurpose your existing content into an exclusive new, valuable offer.
3. How do I let my audience know that my offer is valuable?
So you’ve figured out what your audience needs, and created and structured a content offer to meet that need. Now it’s time to let your audience in on the secret.
The higher the perceived value of an offer, the more irresistible it becomes. And a big part of what we perceive to be valuable is about exclusivity and high demand.
To create this feeling of exclusivity and demand, use elements like:
- Limited-time offers
- Limited quantities
- X number of people have seized this offer
- Content that matches current trending topics
- A title that hooks interest
When you create an offer that your target audience perceives as truly valuable, your lead-generation efforts will begin to grow exponentially.
What tips do you have for creating valuable offers? Want to learn more about the crucial components of the creating an effective lead-generation and lead-nurturing campaign? Here’s the rest of the posts in our series:
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