by Elizabeth Hines | Nov 21, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
With a growing shift toward social messaging platforms, your business needs to find a way to incorporate these apps into your content marketing strategy.
Feel like giving yourself a pat on the back for finally getting a handle on how to effectively use social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Twitter in supply chain marketing? Well, you might not want to celebrate just yet.
In the constantly changing world of online connection, social messaging apps are the new social media. The top four social messaging platforms have overtaken the top four social media networks in terms of monthly active users.
The increasing popularity of social messaging platforms means your business needs to consider how to incorporate social messaging apps into your marketing strategy if you want to continue to best meet your costumers.
Here’s what supply chain businesses need to know about social messaging apps — and why to use them in supply chain management.
What’s a social messaging platform?
Social messaging platforms are exactly as they sound. They are applications that allow people to easily and quickly connect with friends, family, and businesses for personal and professional conversations. They are basically email’s hip, smart, stylish grandchild. Sending text, photos, multimedia files, and even making voice calls are all available options.
Let’s take a closer look at the top four social messaging apps to gain a better sense of what they can do.
- WhatsApp. The enormously popular WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is the most used social messaging app in the world with more than 1.5 billion users. Easy to understand and designed for smartphones and tablets, users can send text messages, photos, voice recordings and videos and even make voice calls over the internet. And guess what? It’s all free. In addition, WhatsApp lets users set a status for their contacts to see without having to message everyone, use the map function to communicate location info with someone, and share files from a phone or computer.
- Facebook Messenger. Facebook has its own messaging app too, and it’s just behind WhatsApp at 1.3 billion users. This social messaging app builds on Facebook’s user network but the message functionality was separated from the main social networking app a few years ago. Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, and audio files, and they can react to other users’ messages too. You can also make free voice and video calls through the app.
- WeChat. With nearly 700 million users, WeChat dominates in China and is making a serious push for global reach. WeChat provides users with free mobile instant messaging, video and voice calls, group chat, and multimedia messaging with images, video, audio, stickers, and more.
- Viber. Viber is another free messaging app that works between phones, tablets, and computers. It currently has 400 million users. Users can send texts, stickers and emoticons, photos, voice and video messages. Viber also has a feature called Communities, which are public chat channels where the user can like and reply to messages in group conversations. It also has a built-in QR code scanner and, like WhatsApp, the ability to share your GPS location in conversations.
Why move to social messaging platforms?
If you’re questioning why to move toward one (or more!) of these four social messaging apps, here’s the short answer: because your customers are.
[bctt tweet=”If you’re questioning why to move towards a social messaging app the answer is that supply chain businesses can use these platforms to deliver content, engage with customers one-on-one, and offer superior personalized customer service.” username=”Fronetics”]
The longer answer is that supply chain businesses can use these platforms to deliver content, engage with customers one-on-one, and offer superior personalized customer service, all of which result in high-quality relationships and leads. And with the successful rise of chatbots in supply chain marketing, this kind of interaction is more feasible than it may initially sound.
If you need more reasons, don’t just take my word for it. Consider these 10 graphs that show why your business should gravitate toward increasing your social messaging presence.
Social messaging apps for the supply chain
So, which social messaging app is best for the supply chain? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. These are the top 4 platforms where your customers and potential customers are spending time, so this is where you should meet them.
But we all know that “doing it all” isn’t always feasible. So, in order to get the most from your time (and budget!), make sure to take the time to choose the best social messaging app for your marketing needs.
Ask these important questions:
- Who is my target audience?
- How will the app add value to my target audiences?
- How do I want to deliver my content?
- Do I want to use more than one app?
- How frequently will I be marketing on the app?
These questions can help you find the social messaging apps that will work best for your marketing campaign and start connecting with customers in a more personalized way.
With the shift toward messaging apps, your business needs to find a way to do the same. But however you plan to incorporate a social messaging app, here’s a final word of caution: you aren’t a friend, and you aren’t family. Be engaging, be helpful, be available. Just don’t be intrusive. The 2018 Sprout Social Index shows that people are still using social media primarily for connecting with friends and family. As businesses consider how to use messaging apps to deliver content and engage with leads, it is very thin line between getting into your costumers’ hearts or getting under their skin.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Oct 18, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
The supply chain is increasingly seeing the value of moving to an inbound marketing strategy. Here’s what’s at the core of the change to inbound marketing.
Traditional marketing in the supply chain uses an outbound strategy. We’ve all done it. Taking out ads in trade publications. Sending direct mailings. Cold calling.
These types of approaches fight to get your brand name in front of prospective customers, hoping to get a marketing message that resonates in front of the right person at the right time.
Inbound marketing is different
Inbound marketing is different. It’s, well, confident. It showcases your industry merit rather than trying to convince people of it.
With inbound marketing, you publish relevant, informative content where your audience already is – your website, related social media, and other online industry channels – to add value at every stage of their buyer’s journey.
Prospective customers come to associate your brand with industry expertise. When they are ready to buy, they think of you. That’s an inbound content marketing strategy.
Why the supply chain is shifting to inbound content marketing
The supply chain is increasing seeing the value of moving to an inbound marketing strategy. What’s at the core of the change to inbound marketing?
On a theoretical level, it’s recognizing that your business has more to offer than its primary product or service. This is so very important. You also have a team of extremely knowledgeable industry experts with unique and informed perspectives.
But switching to an inbound content marketing strategy is also about recognizing that your customers want much more from you than just your product. The business to busienss (BtB) buying climate is growing longer and more complex, and customers today are demanding value outside the sales funnel. Traditional outbound marketing accomplishes neither of these.
[bctt tweet=”Switching to an inbound content marketing strategy is about recognizing that your customers want more from you than just your product. Customers today are demanding value outside the sales funnel. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Why inbound marketing is better for the supply chain
If that didn’t convince you, put simply, inbound content marketing is just more effective for four main reasons:
- Cost. Inbound marketing is typically less expensive than outbound. Hubspot reports that each sales lead costs approximately 61% less for organizations that employ an inbound strategy versus those that focus on outbound marketing.
- Measurability. Measuring your success with inbound marketing is considerably easier. For example, you’ll never know how many people saw your billboard, but you can measure exactly how many people read your blog post.
- Longevity. Digital content is often evergreen – meaning it’s forever relevant – and older posts that need an update can be easily optimized. Essentially, content lives forever and continues drive traffic long after you publish it. In fact, at Fronetics, about 80% of our traffic comes from posts that are 6 months old or older.
- Targetability. With inbound marketing, you only expend resources on prospects that are already looking for information about your industry, products, and services, making inbound marketing a much more targeted approach for your lead-nurturing efforts. Less expensive, easier to measure, lasts longer, and represents a more targeted approach? Seems like a no-brainer. But what’s the catch? Well, executing a good inbound content marketing isn’t easy, and it generally takes at least six months to yield results.
Executing a good inbound content marketing strategy
Done well, inbound content marketing is extremely effective. A good content marketing strategy is about understanding the questions and concerns that are particular to your customer base and about offering quality information and analysis that answers those needs.
The role of content in the supply chain and logistics industries is to grow brand awareness and customer engagement, increase lead generation and nurturing, and establish your company as an industry thought leader in the minds of your prospective customers.
An inbound marketing strategy helps you become more than just another business to customers. You can become a valuable resource for everything related to your products, services, and industry as a whole. Which is precisely what your potential customers are currently expecting from your supply chain and logistics business.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 19, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Automation has two major benefits for supply chain marketers: it drives efficiencies and improves success rates in earning and converting leads.
When you think about automation in the supply chain, you probably don’t immediately consider marketing and sales. Perhaps you envision robots scooting around warehouse floors, or maybe you think of applications in billing, compliance reports, or order auditing. However, advances in automation have impressive implications for marketing and sales in the supply chain as well.
Automation has two major benefits for supply chain marketers. Like all automation, it drives efficiencies, allowing your team to devote more time to other core competencies. What you may not know, however, is that it also improves success rates in earning and converting leads. In fact, HubSpot reports that businesses using marketing automation to nurture leads receive a whopping 451% increase in qualified leads.
New trends in marketing automation – particularly those which function more like artificial intelligence – can streamline and improve your marketing and sales efforts. Here’s how.
Integrate marketing automation into your CRM strategy
Integrating marketing automation into your customer relationship management (CRM) strategy may not be the first thing that came to mind, but the two work beautifully in tandem.
An integrated approach will take all three of the following areas to the next level:
- Track behavior. Automation lets you go far beyond basic demographic data, seeing things like what pages your prospects are visiting, what types of content they’re interested in, and where they are in the buying cycle.
- Send targeted messages. You can use the behavioral information collected by your marketing automation tool to create and send targeted messages that are customized to your prospects’ interests and stage in the buying cycle. This means your prospects will find your messages more relevant and engaging.
- Establish clear ROI. Establishing a clear link between marketing efforts and sales is a constant thorn in the side of most marketers, but new advances in automation make measuring ROI a little clearer. Creating a campaign in your marketing automation system maps it back to your CRM, so you can correlate closed deals directly with the campaigns that created them.
Basically, combining CRM with marketing automation can give you more organizational bandwidth, more precision in your messaging and lead nurturing, and more measurable value in your campaigns.
Create targeted messages with email workflows
There’s no area in which marketing automation is more helpful than in the creation of automated but extremely pertinent email workflows to your sales leads.
Based on the information you have about your leads and/or their engagement with your website, email workflows trigger a series of pre-determined highly-relevant emails at designated intervals, inviting them to take action and helping them to move down the sales funnel.
Email workflows do require considerable work upfront as you consider individual buyer profiles, their place within the buyer’s journey, and what timely and relevant information will advance them. But thoughtful well-designed email workflows can translate to substantial time savings and increases in lead conversion later.
More marketing automation: Social media scheduling tools & chatbots
Two other areas in which automation is making a big splash in marketing and sales are social media scheduling tools and chatbots.
The targeted approach of email workflows increases their chances of being read, but I don’t need to point out that – no matter how perfect your email might be – people are still buried in emails. On average, office employees receive 121 emails per day. Only around 20% are opened, and click-through rates are even lower.
[bctt tweet=”On average, office employees receive 121 emails per day. Only around 20% are opened, and click-through rates are even lower.” username=”Fronetics”]
So, in addition to email workflows, the newest trends in automation are social media scheduling tools and chatbots. Both of them can make your job much easier — and improve your bottom line.
Social media scheduling tools
Social media scheduling tools, like those offered by HubSpot and Hootsuite, let you plan and schedule content across your social networks.
For example, HubSpot’s comprehensive CRM and marketing platform includes the ability to automatically post to social media when you publish content, as well as in-depth analytical tools for determining the best time to post to social media platforms. You can also monitor social mentions and link your social media activity with larger marketing campaigns to determine ROI.
Hootsuite lets you keep track of various social media channels at once. It also helps you perform brand monitoring, letting you know when you brand is mentioned, and what your customers are saying.
As you can imagine, using a social media monitoring tool can greatly improve efficiency, cutting into the sometimes-seemingly-endless manual hours spent on social media monitoring and posting.
Chatbots
A chatbot is s a computer program that simulates human conversation using auditory or textual methods. It communicates with your customer inside a messaging app, like Facebook Messenger, and is similar to email marketing without landing in an inbox.
Chatbots are the latest trend in marketing, and their increasing popularity is making it harder to ignore how artificial intelligence is helping shape the content marketing landscape. It’s certainly timely. Business Insider recently reported that the number of people on messaging apps surpassed the number of users on social networks!
Messaging automation is the new email automation, and it can work for supply chain and logistics industries too. Chatbots currently allow for increased customer engagement through messaging app technology that isn’t yet saturated with marketing, and your brand will also appreciate the ease of tracking and segmenting your customers through chatbots.
Marketing automation is for the supply chain
Automation isn’t just for the warehouse or the finance and billing department. It’s also for this crazy constantly-changing world of marketing in supply chain and logistics industries. Marketing automation can make a big difference in your marketing and sales efforts.
Integrating automation with your CRM strategy, creating targeted email workflows, and the newest advances like social media scheduling tools and chatbots can all add up to major time savings and substantial increases in lead conversion rates.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jul 24, 2018 | Blog, Current Events, Data/Analytics, Internet of Things, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Supply Chain
Automation in manufacturing can help create more, better paying jobs. But two leading economists have examined real-world data and concluded that the robots may be winning after all. Is it true?
Last year I wrote about artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential loss of American jobs. At the time, I thought; “Yes, people will lose jobs — that is inevitable. Automation, however, will create many more.”
Automation would create leaner, more efficient operations. Efficiency facilitates new market opportunities and business growth, which in turn would allow for expansion and job creation.
It felt like a good argument! And I wasn’t alone. If one looks at media coverage from last year, one can find plenty of references to “beating the robots.”
There was a palpable feeling, an energizing hope, that automation would, in fact, ultimately create more, better paying jobs. And these new jobs wouldn’t be the low-skill positions of their pre-automation predecessors, but rather higher-paying opportunities operating new technology and supervising automated processes.
In a paper last year, two of the most respected researchers on the subject said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels.
It all seemed positive.
This year’s news
But wait. The same researchers — Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University — published an updated study that has gained a tremendous amount of attention. It was covered in-depth by the New York Times, with the title: Evidence That Robots are Winning the Race for American Jobs.
Sadly, their study appeared to be the first “to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.”
In referencing the difference in prognosis from last year to this year, the NYT article noted that the older paper was “a conceptual exercise” and the new study “uses real-world data — and suggests a more pessimistic future.”
I thought, I’m going to have to write a new article. It was tentatively titled, “I Take It Back: The Data Says the Robots May Be Winning.”
But as I sat down to write, something just didn’t add up. How did all this jive with the latest employment news? Only days ago, unemployment rates hit 3.9%, a rare low, mimicking rates we haven’t seen since 2000.
Taking in the whole picture
As I looked further into the study, I found that it covered 1990-2007, a lengthy but rather unique time in our economic history. The years from 1990 to 2007 saw a dotcom boom and burst. (Just for reference, unemployment rates rose sharply in 2009 and 2010, but have been on a steady decline since then.)
The robot vs. man study said that robots were to blame for up to 670,000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007. I’m not arguing with the study.
But they then go on to conclude the following: The numbers will rise because industrial robots are expected to quadruple. And from where I sit in 2018, I simply don’t see the facts to support that assumption.
Let’s look at manufacturing specifically. Are machines and automation blowing up the manufacturing sector? Well, yes and no.
Certainly manufacturing jobs have had a sharp decline over the last 20 years; that’s undeniable.
But since 2000, their percentage of the overall job market has held generally stable between 8 and 9%. And current employment statistics for 2018 show increases in the manufacturing sector.
Now, I’m not suggesting manufacturing jobs are “roaring back” by any stretch. But a positive trend line is … well … positive. The prognosis of a “pessimistic future” just doesn’t seem widely supported yet by the facts. Time, as always, will tell.
Of course, economists warn that employment rates aren’t the whole picture. While they may mimic that of 2000, they warn that the economy isn’t the same and that it is concerning that wages have been slow to rise even though unemployment has fallen.
From what I see now, however, I still feel optimistic that AI and automation will create leaner, more efficient operations that will, in turn, create new (even if different) jobs. To me, it still looks like the ones winning from the increasing technological advances in the manufacturing industry are, in fact, we humans.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jun 25, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Aiming to deliver value outside the sales funnel allows your business to build long-term relationships with customers, rather than focusing on a single sale.
Congratulations! You closed the deal. You hammered out the terms and set up the billing. But, according to marketing experts Mark Bonchek and Vivek Bapat, now the real work of growing revenue begins.
Successful 21st century businesses focus on what happens after they close a sale, not the transaction itself. That’s because consumers — and B2B customers — have higher expectations than ever before. They read reviews, listen to webinars, and download white papers before they buy, and they expect a better experience after.
Purchase brands vs. usage brands
Bonchek and Bapat describe two types of brands: “purchase brands” and “usage brands.” The usage brands “focus on the moments of truth that happen after the transaction, whether in delivery, service, education or sharing.” As a result, they command greater loyalty and higher prices than competitive brands that are content to end their relationship with an invoice.
[bctt tweet=”Suppliers need to shift focus from persuading people to buy, to persuading them to become a committed advocate for their brand.” username=”Fronetics”]
What does that mean for you as a supplier? You need to shift your focus from persuading people to buy, to persuading them to become a committed advocate for your brand.
“Be” the B2B customer
B2B accounts are complicated. They have many decision makers and many points of contact. You may have a sales team with multiple reps and sales support people on one account.
With so much going on, it’s important to “be” the customer. Try to identify and understand the people who depend on your product or service to get their work done every day. Those are the people you need to impress.
“What is the likelihood that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?” According to Bain & Company, this is the one question that most closely correlates to customer satisfaction. “High scores on this question correlated strongly with repurchases, referrals and other actions that contribute to a company’s growth.”
And what makes people recommend a product or service? Success while they’re using it.
Social media: An important part of the B2B relationship
Bonchek and Bapat say, “The purchase and usage mindsets are equally, or even more, relevant for B2B brands. Business solutions tend to have longer life cycles than consumer products and there is an even greater opportunity to deliver value outside the sales funnel.“
So yes, you may have to tweet. And stay present on LinkedIn. Because your customers look there to follow trends and find good information to help run their businesses. Industry forums, YouTube, and Instagram are also great places to provide value beyond the sale.
Don’t worry if you’re not a creative genius. Most of us aren’t. Do try to talk about issues that are relevant and maybe even unsettling to your industry. If your customers are having a problem, chances are other businesses have the same concerns and vice versa.
You probably have an opinion, maybe even a solution. Use social media to share it with a larger audience, your users will thank you for it.
How do you deliver value outside the sales funnel?
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