by Fronetics | Jul 17, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Outsourcing doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing. Considering parsing off these marketing tasks based on internal resources and expertise.
Everyone needs a little help sometimes. That’s particularly true when it comes to B2B marketing. In fact, 52% of B2B marketers attribute stagnancy in success to not having enough time devoted to their marketing programs, and 49% attribute stagnation to content creation challenges.
Outsourcing marketing allows you to focus on insourcing your core competencies while delegating specialized tasks to external experts. And it’s important to note that you don’t have to outsource ALL of your marketing. Choosing several areas beyond your staff’s expertise or that are particularly time-consuming can help you improve your marketing efforts and take stress off an overworked internal marketing team.
Here are seven areas where you might consider outsourcing.
7 marketing tasks to outsource
1) Website development and design
Sure, you could build a perfectly functional website from a template, or have your techy nephew Chris put something together while interning with your company over summer break from college. But this is one area we feel strongly is best left to the pros.
A sleek, modern website that’s easy to navigate makes a big statement about your company. The overwhelming majority of buyers will visit vendors’ websites while researching and making purchasing decisions. The experiences they have while browsing contribute to their overall perception of the companies. Imagine how poor site organization, outdated functionality, or technical problems reflects on your brand.
In addition to creating a well-functioning site, the right developer/designer brings niche specializations to the table as well, such as usability engineering, search engine optimization, and more. Capitalizing on a professional’s knowledge in these areas can make a big difference in web traffic, visitor engagement, and, ultimately, lead generation and sales.
2) Social media management
Social media management sounds easy and fun. But if this task has ever fallen on your plate, you know the exact opposite is true. It can be one of the most time-consuming, frustrating tasks your business faces — and that’s before you realize you have to keep up with all the latest trends and platforms to be effective.
Outsourcing social media management to a knowledgeable partner can free up hours of your day and improve your social engagement and reach. These firms know what works and what doesn’t because they’re active every day on multiple platforms managing accounts for multiple clients.
And it’s not just posting every now and then. A good social media partner will craft and publish original content, but they’ll also curate great content from relevant sources, like industry partners. Outsourcing these tasks to the pros helps build a strong following and brand awareness for your company.
3) Content creation
Blog posts, emails, case studies, white papers, ebooks, webinars, marketing collateral, newsletters — how much content is your staff responsible for creating on a weekly, even daily, basis? Is it the kind of informed, quality material you’re proud of?
Content creation is one of the easiest marketing tasks to outsource. It will immediately give your staff back hours into their days. And the right outsource partner will produce high-quality, SEO-optimized content that will drive traffic, build trust with leads, and persuade buyers.
4) Videography
Video is the hottest content platform right now. I’ve written extensively about the opportunity supply chain and B2B businesses have with video, even if it’s just point-and-shoot iPhone video interviews with subject-matter experts. But professionally produced videos open another level of potential.
There are many firms and individuals that specialize in videography, and you’d be surprised how affordable and quick they can be. Or, some content creation partners also do video or can find a third-party videographer and manage the process for you.
5) Graphic design
This is one area where you really can’t fake it. Professional designers are worth their weight in gold, particularly when you need a professional document or graphic in a crunch. They can turn your documents into beautiful, easy-to-read brochures, or make dry technical data into eye-catching infographics. You may be savvy with Word templates, but they’ve got nothing on the pro designers.
6) E-commerce
Any sort of back-end system will work more smoothly if you are able to outsource the project to an agency already familiar with implementing and running specialized platforms. A smooth and well-thought out e-commerce process without any hiccups leaves customers happy and more likely to return.
7) Strategy and execution
Did you know you can leave marketing strategy to the experts? The right partner will work closely with you to develop a strategy that closely aligns with your business and marketing goals. They can even execute the strategy for you, as well, and then provide you with regular updates on how it’s working. This kind of results-driven approach will ensure you’re stretching your marketing dollars to the fullest extent and getting the kind of results that will grow your bottom line.
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by Fronetics | Mar 14, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Keep these best practices in mind when determining how often to post to social media.
Creating valuable, relevant content in a strategic and consistent manner creates demand for your products and services and drives profitable customer action. But as BuzzFeed’s Jonathan Perelman said, “Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants.”
It’s not enough to just create interesting and pertinent content; you have to put it out there to reach your target audience. Moreover, the content needs to be delivered consistently over time, at the right time, and in the right place.
With social media networks changing daily, it’s hard to keep up with where to distribute content, much less how often. Countless studies have attempted to solve the social-media-frequency equation. And while audiences vary across industries, best practices give us some general guidelines.
Here’s our assessment of social media posting frequency.
Twitter: 40 per day*
*Big caveat here: 40 tweets per day is what we’ve found works for us and most of our clients. Let me explain.
Socialbakers suggests that posting to Twitter three times per day is the ideal frequency for brands. Buffer posts to Twitter 14 times per day. Fronetics happens to tweet 40 times per day. So last spring, after seeing the Socialbakers and Buffer stats, we conducted a month-long experiment to see how dropping our posting frequency closer to their benchmarks would affect our engagement.
As we’ve written about before, it wasn’t pretty. We confirmed that our engagement, web traffic, lead generation, and other key performance indicators are at optimal levels when we tweet 40 times per day.
Your company, or your marketing partner, should conduct due diligence and determine what the right frequency is for your business. Yes, you may realize a significant decline in engagement in ROI during your experiment. On the other hand, you may realize an increase in engagement and ROI — captured with lower output in terms of time and resources.
Facebook: 1 per day
Most companies find that posting 1 time per day is their sweet spot for most social media networks. Facebook is no exception: The network’s algorithm values quality over quantity, so the more engaged your followers are with your content, the more likely they are to see your posts. This also means that posting content that does not facilitate engagement can actually decrease the likelihood that followers will see your posts.
One sure way to encourage disengagement is by overwhelming your audience. We all have that friend or company we follow that posts too much — don’t be like that person.
Remember that the lifespan of a Facebook post (about 5 hours) is significantly longer than that of a tweet. So you don’t need to provide a constant stream of content to get your audience’s attention. Your focus should be distributing the most relevant, interesting content you can, at a time when most of your audience will be on Facebook.
Instagram: 1-2 per day
There’s an unwritten rule among Instagramers that a user shouldn’t post more than once per day. We generally agree for the same reason we don’t think brands should post more than once a day to Facebook: Don’t overwhelm your audience because the lifespan of your posts is pretty long. In fact, a Union Metrics study found that many Instagram posts continue to receive engagement for days — even weeks — after posting.
Most brands end up posting 11-20 posts per month. If you focus on compelling images with strategic messages, that’s probably a good benchmark to stick with. It’s important to note, however, that another Union Metrics study suggests posting consistency is more important than frequency. Again, taking the time to test the Instagram posting frequency that works best for your business is a worthwhile endeavor.
LinkedIn: 1 per day
A more formal and technical social media network, consider LinkedIn a platform for business-related content. Don’t post here more than once per day — and consider posting only during the workweek. Many professionals don’t check LinkedIn on the weekends, and your content could easily be missed.
Buffer reports that posting 20 times per month (once a workday) allows companies to reach 60% of their audience. To provide the most value for your LinkedIn followers, content should be less promotional and more heavily focused on industry-wide trends and insights.
At the end of the day, optimal posting frequency for your company rests heavily on the audience you want to reach. Experimenting with different social media networks and posting frequencies will give you greater insight into your ideal distribution approach. With these best practices as a guide, let your own analysis be your guide. Maintaining a dynamic and fluid posting strategy will ensure that your social efforts drive followers to action, rather than drive them away.
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by Fronetics | Jan 16, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Keep these four trends in mind when planning out your marketing efforts in 2017.
Marketo recently revealed its predictions for upcoming marketing trends for 2017. It’s a list of technologies, strategies, and tactics that the marketing software automation company believes will be important to focus on over the next year.
We culled through these predictions to highlight what the supply chain industry needs to know. Below are four trends marketers should have on their radars.
4 marketing predictions to watch out for
1. Customer-Centric Marketing
For B2B companies, customer-centric marketing means buyer-centric marketing. Because the cost of switching vendors is increasingly low, and the buyer is faced with endless choices, it’s likely that 2017 will see “an aggressive shift in attention toward increasing customer spend.”
This means increasing your focus on building and cultivating relationships. Marketo suggests that companies balance their marketing spend to “invest in building engagement, brand loyalty, and advocacy with current customers rather than just finding new ones.”
It’s likely that technology will play a big role in this 2017 trend. Your company needs marketing team members who are tech-savvy and who know how to analyze and respond to customers’ digital signals.
Focusing on the customer also means building authentic connections and a move toward “giving as much as you get, if not more.” We’ll see more and more customer advocacy, which means that marketers need to focus on taking relationships beyond the transactional. Marketo recommends “providing them with opportunities to showcase their expertise and be recognized by their peers as leaders and innovators.”
The key takeaway: 2017 is the year of building quality relationships.
2. A New Generation of Marketers
We used to live in a marketing climate where specialization was the key to success — no longer is that the case. Your business needs leaders who are “full-brain marketers,” multi-talented generalists who are comfortable handling challenges from the creative design to demand generation — and beyond.
It’s time to abandon thinking in silos. Marketo recommends that your marketing team be in constant connection with other teams within the company. “B2B marketers can now use technology to ensure their sales team have visibility and participation in programs — versus being isolated from critical activities.”
This kind of structural shift requires openness and humility. Marketers need to be willing to take questions and ask them, and to be open to making changes based on increased intra-business collaboration.
Marketo predicts that 2017 will see the perfect storm hit the marketing world, bringing an intersection between fulfilling customer needs, storytelling, and digital interactions. Your company needs to look at its organization and build deep expertise across these three functions. “Any marketing organization that’s missing one of these three functions is destined for failure,” warns Marketo.
This new generation of marketers means that top-performing B2B companies will be making optimal use of technology and data. You need to be investing in resources and technology to drive data enrichment and data governance activities to set a good foundation for your account-based marketing strategy. This also means working closely with sales to understand their thought process for lead prioritization and acceptance.
Here, the key to success is open communication within your organization.
3. Techniques
Marketo has laid out a new equation for how marketers will incorporate techniques to engage buyers at every stage of the cycle:
Inbound + Broad-based lead generation + Account-based marketing + Paid media personalization + Direct marketing = Successful customer engagement
What does this mean for the supply chain? Your company can use a combination of these strategies to engage prospects. For example, combining account-based marketing (ABM) strategies with broad-based strategies will allow marketers to build long-term customer relationships, while bridging their advertising and marketing technologies to demonstrate ROI.
All this focus on ABM solutions will allow marketers to become more efficient, taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies. Marketo suggests creating a detailed ABM plan for all departments, which includes creative marketing ideas to test, as well as new technologies.
It’s time to harness the technology at your fingertips.
4. Content & Channels
2017 is likely to usher in a return to value over volume, both in content assets and in content distribution channels. It’s time to stop creating content for the sake of creating content and to shift toward “deeply listening to and understanding the customer.” This will allow you to cull some of the content and channels that aren’t benefitting your business.
It’s easier than you might think to put this trend into practice. Marketo suggests starting by “deeply understanding the content you already have, and taking the time to evaluate what resonates and what doesn’t.” Next, you can create a plan to keep your content strategy going forward in a meaningful way.
As far as channels go, user experience, particularly for mobile, is going to be increasingly important. You can prepare for this by adding structured data to your site, and by providing valuable content. It’s important to keep a watch on the changing user behavior and expectations, as it will be the biggest driver of change in SEO.
As algorithms continually change, and chronological timeline updates increasingly being phased out, social media channels will put more focus on individuals over brands — this means an absence in brands showing up in feeds organically. You can rise to this challenge by making real-time engagement a priority.
We’ll also see ad inventory becoming tighter and more expensive across social platforms. This means you’ll need to become more specific about the audiences you target, and make your offers increasingly personalized and relevant. Marketo adds the hopeful prediction that “advertisers will benefit from more ways to track offline conversions and non-immediate revenue.”
As email technology advances, email campaigns will begin to predict the content you want and really need. The end result here is “targeted, personalized communications optimized for each person, based on their online and email behaviors.”
The takeaway for content in 2017 is: quality over quantity.
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by Fronetics | Jan 4, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Supply chain professionals should be following these eight blogs to keep up with the latest industry news and happenings in the coming year.
Fronetics is currently conducting a survey to determine which supply chain blogs you think are the best of 2017. (You can vote for that here.) But we also wanted to weigh in with some of the blogs we’re following.
These eight supply chain blogs are great resources for industry news and trends. They cover a range of topics, from technology to strategy, and feature thought leadership by some of the brightest minds in the field.
8 must-follow supply chain blogs
Here is our selection of blogs with timely content that supply chain executives need to read, in no particular order:
1) Supply Chain Management Review
This vast website includes trending articles on supply chain and logistics strategies developments, many written by university-level professors. Read this blog.
2) Logistics Viewpoints
This blog features think pieces from three leading supply chain and logistics analysts with the mission to provide clear and concise analyses of logistics trends, technologies and services. Read this blog.
3) Supply Chain Nation Blog
Interesting news bits from “around the supply chain horn,” this is JDA Software’s blog, a powerhouse in supply chain solutions. Read this blog.
4) Supply Chain Matters
The blog of Bob Ferrari offers his expertise on all aspects of supply chain business processes and supporting information technology. Read this blog.
5) Supply Chain Brain
A portal aimed at supply chain executives featuring original and aggregated content touching on multiple industries. Read this blog.
6) Supply Chain Shaman
Lora Cecere’s blog focuses on “the use of enterprise applications to drive supply chain excellence.” Read this blog.
7) Argentus Blog
Argentus is a boutique recruitment firm specializing in supply chain management and procurement. The blog offers insight into pressing issues in supply chain talent acquisition, career management, and more. Read this blog.
8) Cerasis Blog
The Cerasis blog covers industry trends, educates, explains rules and regulations, busts myths, and has awesome infographics. Read this blog.
Bonus/shameless plug: Fronetics Blog
Our blog covers topics of interest to the supply chain industry from marketing and social media to lead generation and strategy. Read our blog.
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by Fronetics | Aug 29, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain, Warehousing & Materials Handling
Fronetics designed a content marketing strategy that helped the logistics software company realize increases in new business and sales revenue.
Your company is doing pretty well. You have a nice website and a social media account or two. And you’ve experienced year-over-year growth. Why would you do anything differently?
Just ask TotalTrax, a provider of real-time vehicle, driver, and inventory tracking technologies for manufacturing and warehouse operations. Despite a decade of positive growth, the company realized there were many untapped opportunities for new business. So the TotalTrax team hired Fronetics Strategic Advisors to create and implement a new, data-driven marketing strategy that could increase web traffic, lead generation, and brand awareness.
After a comprehensive audit of TotalTrax’s digital assets, Fronetics was able to recommend a course of action and implement a multi-channel content marketing program. The program included such steps as:
- Creating a blog and posting regular targeted content
- Consistently posting on TotalTrax’s social media accounts
- Implementing paid search, email marketing, and other strategies
After just 24 months, TotalTrax realized significant gains in web traffic, lead generation and nurturing, and — most importantly — new business and sales revenue.
To learn more about how content marketing helped TotalTrax grow business, download our case study below.
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