Too busy? Don’t want to invest in-house? Here are 4 prime reasons organizations opt to outsource content marketing.
No other lead generation tactic is more important to technology marketers than content assets. The new Gartner research —trade shows come in second place — shows the importance of paying heavy attention to how your organization positionsitself online. If the Covid-19 repercussions left you no choice but to cut back on marketing or if you have been juggling more than ever, consider the case for outsourcing content marketingto stay competitive and excel.
At a time when some of the biggest supply chain trade shows have been either canceled or postponed, count on content assets to grow in significance.Is your organization up to the task?
In our work with both supply chain startups and multi-national corporations, we have noted a few returning reasons for outsourcing content marketing.
Do you recognize yourself or your organization in any of the following?
Outsourcing content marketing: 4 reasons organizations decide to seek outside help
Too much to do
When content marketing is the umpteenth task on an endless to-do list, the results will suffer. This scenario is particularly common among startups where everyone is wearing as many hats as possible in anticipation of the next round of funding.The haphazard approach to what is being published on social channels and on the blog does the company no favors and leaves the person in charge — frequently with limited marketing experience — feeling frustrated. Instead of letting keyword-optimized content carve out a brand niche and build website SEO, the effort goes nowhere although the will to succeed is strong.
The alternative:Partner with a content marketing agency and turn the focus on your core expertise.
No consistency
The effectiveness of content marketing relies on consistency.But being consistent is a major challenge for supply chain companies, especially when trying to recover from months of unprecedented disruption. As we explained in this post, consistency feeds SEO. Let it slip, and you lose in the online search race. In this case, sudden trade show cancelations may have forced the in-house marketing teamto a quick pivot, from executing the company marketing strategy to pouring all efforts into making trade show contingency plans. Add a product launch to the mix and chances are content production will come to a standstill.
The alternative:Keep SEO humming and your online presence strong with an outsourced marketing team invested in your success.
Desire to scale but costs are too high
Needs can arise quickly. There may be a trend that a company wants to jump on or a sudden change in the business environment that warrants the need to scale up content marketing quickly. Several of our clients have sought out Fronetics because they lacked certain marketing capabilities and did not necessarily wantor have the resources to make the investment in-house.That is particularly true under current circumstances when some organizations are battling budget constraints and disruption. If an organization wants to capitalize on video marketing, for instance, it can be both time-consuming and costly to train team members or go through a rigorous hiring process.
The alternative: Leverage a team out outsourced content experts to fill the gap without adding fixed costs.
Lack of analysis
The motions of content marketing are repetitive—researching, strategizing, executing, analyzing, revising— but they are so for a reason. Even the most well-intentioned content strategy can fail when an organization does not act on analytics. But for busy organizations, it is not uncommon for those last pieces of the puzzle — analyzing and revising — to be left undone.
What types of content worked well this quarter? How did the email messaging fare? What was the click-through-rate? During the past few months, when disruption ruled, it is hardly surprising if not every step was optimally performed. Yet, it can all the same be damaging to the overall success of the marketing effort if the metrics are allowed to go unnoticed for too long.
The alternative:Let content count with an outsourced marketing team that constantly needs to prove ROI.
Considering the significance of content assets, it pays to do it well. Is outsourcing content marketing right for you?
Automation can make your social media marketing more efficient and effective, allowing you more time to develop and execute other marketing campaigns. Here are 11 social media marketing mistakes to avoid.
Social media automation is quite a controversial marketing topic. The critics cry, “Social media is supposed to be social!” The supporters retort, “It’s all about efficiency!” Surely, there’s a middle ground, right? Just look at those adorable little robot eyes. Automation can’t be all bad, right?
We certainly agree. Social media automation can be done right. Just avoid the following 11 awful social media automation mistakes, and you’ll be good to go.
11 Awful Social Media Automation Mistakes Marketers Should Stop Making
1. You’re Scared of It.
Are you one of those social media automation critics we mentioned in the intro? Stop being such a fraidy cat … you’re missing out! When done right, automation can make your social media marketing more efficient and effective, allowing you more time to develop and execute other marketing campaigns and promotions. We’ve even developed a simple, customizable social media scheduling template and blog post guide to help you organize and plan your social media updates for the most popular social networks. Just avoid the rest of the mistakes on this list, and you’re golden. Guilty social automation conscience begone!
2. You’re Using Way Too Much of It.
Remember: too much of anything is usually bad, and the overuse of social media automation is usually what makes the automation critics cringe the most. First, you need to find the right balance of updates for each of the social networks you’re participating in. This involves testing and optimization to determine your ideal publishing frequency, and it usually involves pushing the limit a little bit. Try increasing the number of updates you currently publish and gauge your fans’/followers’ reactions. You might be surprised that you can update more than you thought and that you get a nice little lead bumps as a bonus!
Remember, the half-life ( the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak) of a link shared on Twitter is only 2.8 hours, which means it’s acceptable to publish fairly frequently. On Facebook, updates last a little bit longer, so you don’t need to publish quite as much. Our social media publishing template recommends starting with 8 tweets a day, 4 Facebook updates, and 3 LinkedIn updates. Which leads us to our next mistake …
3. You Leave No Room for Ad Hoc Updates.
Don’t automate so much content in social media that you’re really pushing it if something last minute pops up that you really want to post an update about on your social networks. Things come up. You’re behind on your leads goal and you just created an awesome new ebook that you want to promote via social? You shouldn’t feel guilty about popping in a tweet or two about it in addition to your scheduled, automated updates. Or maybe you did some awesome newsjacking and you want your fans and followers to know about it right away. Don’t overdo it with the scheduled updates that you have to sacrifice those last-minute opportunities that arise.
4. You’re Setting it and Forgetting It.
Schedule and automate your social media updates and there’s no reason to check your social media accounts until the next batch of updates needs to be uploaded to HootSuite, right? WRONG. Do this, and you should be subjected to the wrath of social media automation critics. Just because you’re automating some updates, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for monitoring the conversation — and participating in it. You still need to monitor the discussion happening around your content, answering your fans’ and followers’ questions, and, that’s right … engaging. In real time, or close to it. And with all the social media monitoring tools available to make it easier to do, there’s no excuse not to.
5. You’re Hiring an Agency to Manage It and Not Properly Setting Expectations.
Let’s relive the story of a former HubSpot employee who fell victim to some very unfortunate, poorly executed social media automation. What happened was, AT&T hired a marketing agency to execute its Ticket Chasers Twitter campaign for March Madness. The intent of the campaign was to target people who would be interested in the content of the program with personalized tweets: bloggers (who would get the word out about Ticket Chasers), people who live in the cities in which the Ticket Chasers promotion is occurring, and people who mention basketball or March Madness. Except what ended up happening was the agency targeting people that fit these criteria even if they weren’t followers of AT&T — and a very spammy Twitter presence.
The lesson is this: If you’re going to outsource any type of automation, make sure you set some very clear and specific expectations with your agency up front — both for what constitutes proper targeting and automation, and how frequently the campaign should be monitored so there could be a quick response if something goes awry.
6. Your Scheduled Updates Even SOUND Robotic.
Just because you’re scheduling automated updates doesn’t mean it has to sound like a robot wrote the copy. Spend some time carefully crafting your social media updates, and for goodness’ sake, infuse some personality into them! It should sound like a human took the time to craft the update because a human did take the time to create them, right?
7. Your Content Is Stale or Unremarkable.
Nothing indicates a low-quality social media presence like unremarkable content. Whether you’re manually updating your social networks or using automation to make your social media marketing more efficient, it’s all about the content of your updates. Share awesome content that your audience cares about, and they won’t mind that you may have scheduled it in advance. If you’re using HubSpot’s free social media scheduling template, keep your content repository tab stocked with a mix of awesome evergreen content that never gets stale and can be re-promoted over time, as well as new content and offers you create over time.
8. Your Timing Is Way Off.
Just scheduling updates all willy nilly without strategizing about timing? Think about it. Should that online coupon you’re sharing really get tweeted on the 12th when it expires on the 11th? Probably not. Be careful — nothing smells like stinky automation more than careless planning and timing. Should that offer, which just so happens to be targeted at your international prospects in Mumbai, be posted to your Facebook business page at 5 PM ET? Remember, it’s 2:30 AM in Mumbai. Be sure you’re scheduling your updates for times that make sense for your audience, and don’t be afraid to do some testing and experimentation to determine exactly what that optimal timing is.
9. You Treat Scheduled Updates the Same Way on All Social Networks.
Not all social networks are the same, so don’t treat your updates like they’re one-size-fits-all. Each has its own guidelines, tone, and different types of users, so make sure you tailor your updates to appeal to each social network’s nuances. For example, your Twitter updates need to fit within 280 characters, but snippets that accompany links you share on LinkedIn and Facebook can be much longer. And LinkedIn caters to a much more professional audience than, say, Facebook. And remember, you can reuse a lot of the same content across social networks; it’s how you frame and position that content that should be tweaked.
10. You’re Not Measuring Results and Adjusting Accordingly.
Trying to pick your best content for your automated updates? Attempting to determine the optimal timing and frequency of your updates for each social network? You’re probably going to need to rely on your analytics for all those things, don’t you think? Make use of your marketing analytics to identify the content and offers that tend to perform well in social media so you can promote more of the types of content that work, and nix the types that don’t. Track your leads and referral traffic from social media, coupled with qualitative data on how your fans/followers react to timing and frequency, so you can optimize those techniques as well.
11. You’re Not Adding Sharing Links to Your Content.
That’s right — think of it as social media automation enablement. Adding social media sharing links/buttons to all your content, whether it’s a web/landing page, blog post, within an ebook, in an email, makes it easy for your audience to spread your content for you, and expand your reach. It’s sort of like automating evangelism! It might sound sneaky, but your audience will probably appreciate that you’ve done some of the work involved in sharing content for them. People are always looking for social sharing fodder, and if your content is awesome, it’ll make them look like a valuable social media connection who shares great stuff!
Are you making effective use of social media automation? What else would you add to this list of social automation mistakes?
This article was written by Pamela Vaughan. Pamela is a Principal Marketing Manager, Website CRO & Copywriting at HubSpot. She is best known for introducing the concept of historical optimization, which increased organic search traffic and leads for HubSpot’s blog by more than 200%.
Digital marketing for the supply chain has become necessary to position your company to not only be found online, but also to be researched and to be compared to your competition.
Highlights:
Digital marketing uses your website, related social media, and other online industry channels to showcase your industry knowledge and experience.
Thought leaders are the informed trusted sources in their field of expertise.
Supply chain and logistics industries need content marketing to achieve confidence and relationship-building with buyers.
Today’s B2B buyers are researching, evaluating, and coming to conclusions about companies without a single contact with a team member or salesperson.
Digital marketing for the supply chain uses your website, related social media, and other online industry channels to showcase your industry knowledge and experience (rather than trying to convince people of it with a marketing message).
With inbound digital marketing, you publish relevant, informative information to adds value to every stage of a potential customer’s buying journey.
It is the content that you publish that walks them through the initial stages of the sales process.
What should you publish? A good content marketing strategy is about understanding the questions and concerns that are particular to your customer base, and offering quality information and analysis that answers those needs.
Showcasing thought leadership through digital marketing
Discovering and meeting the needs of your customers that go beyond your products and services will catapult you in their minds as a knowledgeable, helpful “thought leader” in your industry.
Thought leaders are the informed trusted sources in their field of expertise. They have innovative ideas, can showcase their thinking, and can replicate their successes again and again.
Consider it: Your business has so much more to offer than its primary product or service. You have a team of people with a tremendous aggregate of experience, expertise, and perspectives.
Allowing your customers this sort of access to your team’s experience and knowledge provides them with tremendous value outside the sales funnel, which builds trust and cultivates lasting, fruitful relationships.
Why digital marketing?
In this B2B buying landscape, supply chain and logistics industries need content marketing to achieve a level of confidence and relationship-building with buyers that used to come from face-to-face meetings. Potential and current customers will view your company as a valuable resource for everything related to not only your products and services but to the industry as a whole.
No time to execute?
The downside? Content marketing requires significant time, labor, and resources, and it can take quite some time to start reaping benefits. Feeling overwhelmed and like you and your team can’t possibly add on more marketing? Outsourcing certain key marketing tasks allows insourcing your core competencies while delegating specialized tasks to external experts.
Too many supply chain businesses are devoting inadequate resources and personnel to social media management.
Let’s be honest. It’s time for the supply chain to start taking social media management seriously. Even when we think we’re embracing the future, too may supply chain companies are stuck in the past when it comes to the way they think about marketing — and particularly the role of social media.
[bctt tweet=”A robust and effective social media strategy needs to be just that — a carefully designed and well-thought-out strategy, rather than simply something that an already overworked marketer adds to his or her plate.” username=”Fronetics”]
Case in point: the latest Social Media Marketing Industry Report indicates that for nearly two-thirds of marketers, managing social media marketing for their business is just one of their jobs.
Let’s think about that for a moment. That means that only one-third of the 5,700 businesses surveyed are prioritizing social media management to an adequate degree. For the other two-thirds, the vast and time-consuming task of social media management is squeezed into someone’s job description essentially as an afterthought.
If your business falls into that 64%, this is your wakeup call. Used to its fullest, social media is an immensely valuable set of tools for supply chain marketing. These platforms help brands increase visibility, establish themselves as thought leaders, attract new leads and customers, and much more.
If you’re not convinced (and you should be), take a look through Fronetics’ recent survey report on the benefits of social media for supply chain and logistics industries.
Social media management is no easy task
The thing about social media that so many businesses get wrong is that it’s not an easy task. Maybe you’re a marketer who’s been tasked with managing your brand’s social media efforts — on top of the rest of your responsibilities. It might have sounded like fun at first, essentially getting to scroll and post on Facebook for a few minutes out of the day. But chances are, you’re realizing that it’s a much bigger task than you thought.
A robust and effective social media strategy needs to be just that — a carefully designed and well-thought-out strategy, rather than simply something that an already overworked marketer adds to his or her plate.
For your business to truly take advantage of the benefits that social media can offer, you either need to devote adequate resources to it, or consider outsourcing it.
Is outsourcing right for you?
Supply chain companies are increasingly reaping the benefits of outsourcing their marketing efforts, particularly social media, as it allows them to focus on core competencies and improve productivity. As you consider trusting a professional with your social media, consider these 6 signs that outsourcing might be right for you.
The bottom line: if you’re frustrated that your social media management efforts are not as fruitful as you would like, chances are, you’re not giving them a chance. For social media to work for you, you need to devote the resources it demands — whether in house or out.
Focus on what you do best — and save time and money — by parceling off these 6 marketing tasks to outsource.
If you’re anything like me, you’re busy — not-enough-hours-in-the-day busy. We find that supply chain and logistics marketers are some of the most overworked professionals in the industry. One person (or a very small team) is often responsible for all marketing and sales efforts for an organization. So I want to let you in on a little secret: Outsourcing is your solution to being too busy.
[bctt tweet=”Outsourcing marketing tasks allows you to focus on insourcing your core competencies.” username=”Fronetics”]
Outsourcing marketing tasks allows you to focus on insourcing your core competencies. In other words, you can start focusing on what you do best and delegate specified tasks to external experts.
The content marketing landscape is constantly changing. There are more and more marketing tasks to cover: social media, videos, blogs, emails, etc. How can you truly focus your attention on any one area when you have so many balls in the air?
Don’t work harder. Work smarter.
Outsourcing marketing gives you the opportunity to remove some of the time-consuming and laborious tasks from your desk, so you can get back to the core of your marketing efforts.
That doesn’t mean you have to outsource all your marketing tasks, or even half of them. Choosing several areas beyond your staff’s expertise, or tasks that are particularly tedious, can help you improve your marketing efforts and take stress off an overworked internal team.
Here are six areas you should consider outsourcing.
Video: 6 marketing tasks to outsource
Final thoughts
Finding the right partner is key when you choose to outsource marketing tasks. You have to trust the people to whom you are delegating tasks, so that you know the work is getting done the way you want while you focus your attention on other tasks.
The right partner will work with you to develop a strategy that closely aligns with your business goals. Your partner can even execute the strategy for you and provide 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.
