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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by Fronetics | Jun 7, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Supply chain and logistics marketers need to incorporate social advertising into their content market strategy (and budget) to stay on top of marketing’s biggest driver.
The way audiences use social media channels is constantly changing. As marketers, we need to make sure we’re adapting to these changes. One of the biggest changes we’ve seen so far in 2018 is the increased use of social advertising.
Social advertising is a paid form of paid digital advertising on social media platforms. For example, the advertising platforms provided by Google, Twitter, and Facebook involve “targeting and presenting ads based on relationships articulated on those same services.” Oftentimes, social advertising is one part of a larger marketing strategy.
Sounds easy enough to implement, right? Well, there are so many options and so many more users. If you’re taking the time and money to invest in social advertising, you need to ensure that you’re using the right platforms and getting in front of your target audiences.
[bctt tweet=”With over 3.5 billion internet users worldwide, it’s easy to see the reach ads on social media platforms can have. Facebook alone has over 2 billion daily active users. 2 billion! ” username=”Fronetics”]
In Social Media Examiner’s new report, it’s hard to dispute that social advertising is anything but powerful. With over 3.5 billion internet users worldwide, it’s easy to see the reach ads on social media platforms can have. Facebook alone has over 2 billion daily active users. 2 billion! That’s a lot of opportunities for distributing your content and gaining new followers.
Here are some powerful statistics to prove the weight of social advertising and why it’s worth your time and pennies.
Infographic: A look at social advertising for B2B marketers
(Made with Canva)
Key takeaway
For the first time in years, Social Media Examiner’s report revealed that marketers are more focused on lead generation than cultivating a loyal fan base. What does this mean for you? The focus has shifted from engagement to metrics and automation.
As marketers, we need to watch for increased use of chatbots and other marketing automation tools that can help supply chain marketers become more efficient and more successful in earning and converting leads.
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by Fronetics | May 23, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
If you’re hoping to generate more leads on your website, you’re going to have to develop a holistic content strategy and create many strong calls-to-action.
You may have read part one of this mini-series about the importance of having a solid website if you’re going to invest in content marketing. Essentially, there’s no point in pouring a bunch of time, money, and resources into a robust content marketing program if the website that you’re driving traffic to stinks.
Be thoughtful about the role your website plays in the lead-generation process. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle that companies often overlook.
Consistently producing quality content and distributing it through various channels, like social media, will help attract your target audience to your website. But unless you provide them with a good user experience while they’re there — and give them plenty of opportunity to opt in to learn more about your business — you’re not going to move them down the sales funnel. And you’re not going to generate more leads on your website.
So how do you ensure your website is a lead-generating machine? Here’s what I know.
5 tips to generate more leads on your website
1) Create a holistic content strategy.
I can’t overstate the importance of creating a content marketing strategy, documenting it, and then designating someone to lead it if you want your content marketing to be successful. As part of that strategy, you should outline the role your website will play in assisting the conversion of leads.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do different pages of my website suit prospects at different stages of the buyer’s journey?
- Where do I want traffic to go from each page (so prospects move further down the funnel)?
- What calls-to-action can I add to each page to assist them in that move?
- Which pages are ripe for lead conversion, and which are better for providing information?
- If you’re using the topic cluster model (which you should be!), where are my pillar pages and corresponding topic cluster pages?
Also, make sure your messaging is consistent across your website and your regularly published content (like blog posts).
2) Think about the user and how s/he experiences your site.
Hopefully in creating a holistic content strategy that includes your website, you’re thinking primarily about how the user will be interacting with your site and each page. That means organizing pages in a way that makes sense for the prospective customer, rather than internal politics.
That sounds easy, but I have helped many organizations for whom this is incredibly challenging. Often, one department (or person) feels strongly that something very important to them deserves real estate on the homepage or in the main navigation. But, if it’s not something that is meaningful to a prospective customer, you’d best not cave. Doing some usability testing with prospects is a good way to collect data to support your reasoning.
Also to consider: think about the language your buyers are comfortable with, and avoid any overly jargony or technical wording. Make sure to lay things out in a way that is approachable for them. And aim to provide the information they seek, rather than trying to sell them at every step.
3) Publish original, quality content.
Along those same lines, the best way to convince today’s B2B buyer to choose you as a vendor is to win them over with your content. Content marketing is all about positioning yourself as an expert in the industry, after all, the business that knows the most about your product/service.
Instead of promoting your business on every page, use each as an opportunity to showcase your expertise. Create resources that will help buyers better understand how to solve their pain points. And make sure everything you publish is well-written, offers value to prospects, and is completely original. You want people to want to read what you have to say.
Consider incorporating various content formats to cater to different learning preferences:
- In-depth blog posts and articles
- Infographics for visual learners
- Short video tutorials or explainers
- Podcasts for those who prefer audio content
4) Strategically place strong, visible calls-to-action.
I’ve hinted at this one already, but it bears further explanation. Make sure your website is full of calls-to-action, or buttons/links/forms that ask visitors to do something further. After all, how do you expect someone to take an action (like providing their email address) if you don’t ask them to do it?
You can generate more leads on your website by asking visitors to become leads more often.
Make sure these calls-to-action stand out on the page so that visitors’ eyes naturally go there. Be very clear about what you’re asking for and/or what the user will get in return when they complete the action. And, again, be strategic about what you’re asking people to do on which page. You won’t have much luck, for example, asking visitors to call a sales rep on a page that is designed to assist them with initial information-gathering.
Pro tip: Use A/B testing to optimize your CTAs. Try different colors, copy, and placements to see what resonates best with your audience.
5) Offer value with your calls-to-action.
Sometimes it might take a little convincing to get visitors to provide their contact information. The best way to persuade them? Give them something they want in exchange.
We call this high-value content. Examples might include:
- Case studies
- White papers/industry reports
- Webinars
- Tutorials or how-tos
- Demonstrations
- Sneak peaks or previews
- Guides or ebooks
- Podcasts
Ask visitors to download your high-value content by completing a form, which asks for their email address. Set up your marketing automation to email the content to them, then send a series of lead-nurturing emails following up at strategic intervals to keep them moving down the sales funnel.
If you want to generate more leads on your website, follow these five steps. Above all, just be thoughtful about the role your website plays in the lead-generation process. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle that companies often overlook.
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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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by Fronetics | May 14, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Here are 4 ideas for measuring podcast success, including downloads, audience, lead tracking, and intangible benefits.
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.
Why podcasts?
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.
[bctt tweet=”Podcasts are essentially blogs in audio format, and — like blogs — they are relatively cheap to produce, making them an excellent high-value offer.” username=”Fronetics”]
Podcasts are easily downloadable on a phone or mobile device. They allow the user to listen to a topic of interest while commuting, exercising, or cleaning the house. Podcasts are essentially blogs in audio format, and — like blogs — they are relatively cheap to produce, making them an excellent high-value offer with which to generate or nurture leads.
If you’re already creating podcasts as part of your content program, good for you! But, you’re probably running into a familiar challenge: It’s really hard to measure podcast performance.
4 tips for measuring podcast success
ROI calculations for podcasts are notoriously elusive because users download them on their devices. Producers won’t know whether a user ever listened to any or all of a particular podcast.
But measuring podcast success is possible, at least for those that don’t mind a little more nuance than numbers. Here are 4 tips to get you started.
1) Track unique downloads
With podcasting, the best measurement is something called a “unique download,” which tries to capture how podcasts are generally obtained. It measures a progressively downloaded file by a single user at a single IP address over a 24-hour period. Third-party tracking services like PodTrac or tracking/hosting services like Libsyn or Podbean can give you this information.
Is this perfect? Nope! Users can download and never listen or download and only partially listen. Multiple users can listen to one download, and one user can download twice (or more) onto multiple devices. There is nothing exact about tracking the number of unique downloads. But based on the way podcasts are consumed, it’s not a bad metric, and frankly, it’s all we’ve got.
2) Estimate your base audience
Determining the approximate size of your subscriber list — or at least your committed and consistent listening audience — is also helpful. This isn’t exactly the same as unique downloads. Subscribers are people that have gone out of their way to make sure to be alerted when you publish a new podcast.
To do this, examine two trends: the consistency in unique downloads across multiple episodes and, more importantly, the number of downloads in the first 48 hours after a new release. Those first few days are when your consistent listeners will grab the industry-fresh (you hope!) info, and it will give you sense of how big that segment is.
These subscribers are your bread and butter. And you can use this number, albeit approximate, as you would other marketing metrics that measure engagement.
3) Get creative (without getting annoying)
If getting a better sense of lead generation from your podcasts is imperative, try thinking creatively about how to access that information from your audience. But beware! The more you require of your listeners, the more annoying you potentially become. That said, here are some ideas.
- Create a page/section on your website where visitors can access the podcast. If you’re using a marketing software like HubSpot, you’ll be able to tell if leads access this via your site.
- Add an optional question on the lead-generation forms on your website, just a simple checkbox like, “Have you heard our podcasts?”
- Check the previous page path from your homepage on Google Analytics or your referrals sites report from software platforms like HubSpot for traffic coming from podcast websites.
- Create a special landing page and mention it as a call-to-action in your podcast several times. This way, you know any traffic visiting this page must have come through the podcast.
All these can offer a rough (but low) estimate of leads that have consumed podcast content.
4) Remember the value of intangibles
Here’s the part where we remind you how important it is to remember why you are podcasting. Lead generation? Of course. But why else? We’d venture to say building relationships, like all of your content marketing. Podcasts are wonderful for this!
Invite your current customers or best business relationships to join you for a podcast. There’s a lot of power in a really good interview on a podcast: You get some fresh and new content; you deepen a potentially very useful business relationship; and you gain their network of listeners, too.
Learn from the inconsistent
Patterns and consistency can give a broad sense of the success of your podcasting. But don’t forget to abandon them sometimes, particularly if there is one podcast that’s an outlier.
If one was wildly successful, that’s fantastic. Chances are you hit on an extremely timely topic, or perhaps did something better in your efforts to share outside of your base subscriber list. Great news for your lead-generation efforts!
That said, if you have one or two that garnered lower interest, don’t assume the opposite is true. And don’t let them skew your broader analysis. Sometimes it only has to do with how niche your topic was, and niche topics can still be highly successful lead-generation tools, particularly if yours is a niche business with niche clients. In fact, these niche podcasts may end up being some of your most successful.
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