by Fronetics | May 3, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
If you’re looking to grow brand awareness fast, here are 8 tricks to boost your efforts.
Have you ever noticed how some brands seem to have crept into popularity overnight? You’ve never heard of them, and then, all of sudden, they’re everywhere.
Their brand awareness has sky rocketed, and they’re achieving every company’s ultimate goal: Customers know about them. So what’s their secret?
Here at Fronetics, we don’t believe they have a secret. We believe that they took advantage of content marketing and its many benefits — growing brand awareness included. They were able to scale their growth in a short amount of time, a true success story for the digital era. Companies like Uber and Yelp have used these tips to implement small changes that yielded large results.
Remember, in order to grow brand awareness, you need to be proactive. It’s time to steer away from some of the traditional marketing methods, which don’t take into account how modern B2B buyers research vendors. Start putting your content marketing strategy to the test.
[bctt tweet=”To grow brand awareness fast, it’s time to steer away from some of the traditional marketing methods, which don’t take into account how modern B2B buyers research vendors. ” username=”Fronetics”]
If you’re looking to increase your brand awareness fast, there’s no better place to start than with content marketing. Check out these 8 tips for using content marketing to grow your brand awareness fast.
Infographic: 8 ways to grow brand awareness fast
(Made with Canva)
How do you grow brand awareness fast?
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by Fronetics | May 2, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
A new study shows that businesses that reply to customer reviews receive better ratings overall than those that do not respond.
I’ve written before about the rising popularity of B2B user review sites and how supply chain and logistics businesses can use them to increase organic traffic and lead-to-sale conversion rates. B2B buyers are increasingly considering user reviews when making purchasing decisions. That’s great for business — when the reviews are good.
But what if you get bad reviews?
[bctt tweet=”Bad reviews don’t necessarily spell disaster — but they do mean that you should incorporate a response plan into your overall marketing strategy. ” username=”Fronetics”]
A brand new study published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) shows that businesses that reply to customer reviews get better ratings overall. This means that bad reviews don’t necessarily spell disaster — but they do mean that you should incorporate a response plan into your overall marketing strategy.
Replying to reviews is an important part of online reputation management — which is especially crucial in the B2B space, where companies live and die by their reputation. So how does responding to reviews improve your online reputation?
A study in why to reply to customer reviews
To examine this question, Professors Davide Proserpio and Giorgos Zervas looked at tens of thousands of hotel reviews and responses from TripAdvisor. What they found was that “when hotels start responding, they receive 12% more reviews and their ratings increase, on average, by 0.12 stars.”
While 0.12 may not seem like a lot, in the scale of TripAdvisor’s 5 star system, where ratings are rounded to the nearest half star, it has a significant impact on customers’ perceptions.
Proserpio and Zervas found that “approximately one-third of the hotels we studied increased their rounded ratings by half a star or more within six months of their first management response.”
Improved ratings are related to management response
So why is it that the hotels started to get more and better reviews when management started responding?
The researchers examined every facet of the data to rule out other factors that would undermine causality, and found that in fact “improved ratings can be directly linked to management responses,” rather than improvements made to facilities or services.
To explain it, the researchers make the analogy of eating at your favorite restaurant and your meal arrives late. You complain to your dinner companions, but when the manager checks in seconds later and asks how everything is, “for a moment, you consider complaining, but instead choose to avoid confrontation and focus on enjoying the rest of your meal.”
Essentially, by humanizing your presence on review sites, you discourage potentially awkward online interactions.
The researchers conclude, “While negative reviews are unavoidable, our work shows that managers can actively participate in shaping their firms’ online reputations. By monitoring and responding to reviews, a manager can make sure that when negative reviews come in — as they inevitably will — they can respond constructively and maybe even raise their firm’s rating along the way.”
Do you always reply to customer reviews on user review sites?
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by Fronetics | May 1, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Use these three steps to calculate content marketing ROI to show the value of your investment.
As supply chain and logistics businesses are finally recognizing the merits of content marketing, many are looking into it. But it doesn’t take much research to realize what an enormous investment it is. And how difficult it can be to calculate content marketing ROI.
[bctt tweet=”A data-driven approach to calculating Content Marketing ROI lets you continually adapt to the needs of your audience, ensuring an ongoing, robust ROI.” username=”Fronetics”]
Many companies we talk to need help convincing management that it’s a worthwhile investment. To that we say, use data!
But what data should you use? How do you quantify certain benefits, like growth in brand awareness? And do you really have to keep track of all the hours you spend writing blog posts, managing social media, etc.?
Here are three basic steps for how to calculate content marketing ROI.
3 steps to calculate content marketing ROI
1) Set up your ROI measurement.
It’s important that you measure content marketing ROI at the initiative level. This means calculating the ROI of your blog, your webinar series, your Facebook marketing, etc. individually.
After calculating the ROI of each initiative, you can aggregate that data to determine your overall content marketing ROI for your business.
2) Know as much detail as possible.
“To measure ROI, you have to know, in as much detail as possible, the R (return) and the I (investment) of your content initiative,” says Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert. Baer walks his readers through the example of figuring out ROI for a podcast, including calculating total investment in the project (including preparation and execution), and calculating total return.
Content marketing is about creativity. By the same token, think creatively about every measurable avenue of return in each of your initiatives.
3) Calculate your ROI.
The formula for ROI is universal: return minus investment, divided by investment, expressed as a percentage.
And there’s some good news for supply chain and logistics content marketing: “Content marketing ROI calculations are indeed easier for B2B companies because they almost always have visibility at the transaction layer,” writes Baer.
Once you’ve calculated ROI for each of your major initiatives, it’s time to think strategically about optimizing your content marketing resources, in terms of allocation and timing. Having hard data helps you answer questions about which initiatives are most fruitful, what language engages your audience best, when your efforts are most likely to pay off.
Ultimately, this data-driven approach lets you continually adapt to the needs of your audience, ensuring an ongoing, robust ROI.
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by Fronetics | Apr 30, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
Also in social media news April 2018: Instagram shuts down API platform, LinkedIn’s updates aimed at helping B2B marketers, and Facebook expands split ad testing.
Facebook has been busy creating updates focused on user security in the wake of the Cambridge/Analytica scandal. Since the data breach, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has committed to protecting user’s information and outlined several initiatives in the works to “prevent abuse, protect personal data and privacy, improve security, and take down fake accounts.”
One of the key takeaways from the scandal has been the lack of regulations overseeing business practices, as it applies to user data. It is safe to say that new regulations are looming in the not-so-distant future.
[bctt tweet=”“Computer science is undergoing a ‘reckoning’ and an ‘ethics crisis’ not unlike what has happened in chemistry with dynamite, in physics with nuclear bombs, and in human biology with eugenics.” Yonatan Zunger” username=”Fronetics”]
Google engineer Yonatan Zunger wrote in the Boston Globe, “Computer science is undergoing a ‘reckoning’ and an ‘ethics crisis’ not unlike what has happened in chemistry with dynamite, in physics with nuclear bombs, and in human biology with eugenics.” These regulations could have major impacts for advertisers, who have been capitalizing on data collected by social media platforms. Regulations that limit the tracking and retaining of user data will especially affect target advertising that relies on capturing data from target audience users.
Fronetics is staying on top of these changes and will continue to provide social media recommendations and updates on regulations.
Here’s your social media news for April 2018.
Facebook Changes Include More Transparency Around Ads and Pages
Facebook is working to make important changes that are aimed at increasing transparency and authenticity. “By increasing transparency around ads and Pages on Facebook, we can increase accountability for advertisers — improving our service for everyone,” says Rob Goldman, VP, Ads, and Alex Himel, VP, Local & Pages, in a statement on Facebook’s website.
Last October the social media giant rolled out restrictions on electoral ads on Facebook and Instagram. This April, Facebook is expanding those restrictions to all “issue ads” — for example, political topics — so only authorized advertisers that have been approved by Facebook can run issue ads. These changes are aimed at preventing any additional user data and privacy issues.
Facebook is also enforcing a verification process for all admins managing pages with large numbers of followers. “Those who manage large Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post. This will make it much harder for people to administer a Page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies.”
YouTube Introduces TrueView Ads
YouTube’s new ad format, TrueView for Reach, is its latest update aimed at boosting engagement for advertisers. The format allows advertisers the ability to build ads from 6 to 30 seconds long, with the skip option available after 5 seconds. “Our six-second bumper ads were designed to drive more reach among the audiences you care about, especially as they become increasingly on-the-go. They showcase not only the fun of storytelling in six seconds, but also the benefits of adapting to consumer behavior,” posts Ali Miller, Product Manager, Video Ads, and Khushbu Rathi, Product Manager, Video Ad for YouTube.
Facebook Improves and Expands Ad Split Testing Capabilities
Last October Facebook gave advertisers the ability to create split tests in Ads Manager’s Guided Creation workflow. The new update this month allows users to create tests in Quick Creation flow, making it even easier to manage ads in bulk and test ads against one another. Quick Creation will also feature a dashboard that shows “standard KPIs for the ads in your split test, such as CPM, CPC, CTR and more, to inform your marketing strategy.”
Instagram Cuts Off Older API Platform
In light of Facebook’s data security issues, Instagram announced it is shutting down the API platform, effective immediately. They have also greatly reduced the amount of data developers can access per hour, dropping from 5,000 calls per hour to only 200. Tech Crunch reports Facebook’s bold action to reform its APIs shows it’s willing to prioritize users above developers — at least once pushed by public backlash and internal strife.
LinkedIn Rolls Out Native Video for Sponsored Content and Company Pages
LinkedIn introduced autoplaying native video ads that will appear in the news feed section as stand-alone posts, as well as the ability to include native video on a company page for businesses and publishers. These changes were developed to help B2B marketers grab the attention of their audiences and increase engagement. “While video is a proven and popular tactic to engage decision-makers, the challenge has been finding a quality environment in which to reach them.” The update will be available to all businesses in the next few weeks.
Twitter Expands its Official Partners Program
Back in 2015, Twitter introduced its Official Partner Program, a select set of companies aimed at helping brands increase their ROI on advertising, brand awareness, and scaling customer care. The program has been so successful, Twitter announced it’s expanding the program to include six new partners: Curalate, Jebbit, VidMob, Vidsy, Animoto, and Social Native. “Each provider offers a unique solution that expands the advertisers’ toolset and delivers high-quality creative for brands on Twitter.”
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Apr 26, 2018 | Blog, Current Events, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
With the rising demand for professionals in Supply Chain Management and Procurement, there’s a lot of employment activity, especially in short-term contracts.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
As a boutique recruitment agency, we at Argentus are on the front-lines of the churn in the job market. We speak with potential job candidates every day. Some of them are passive, interested in moving into new opportunities when we reach out to them. Some of them are active, reaching out to us because they want to make a move. With the economy experiencing a prolonged growth spurt, and demand for professionals in Supply Chain Management and Procurement – our area of specialty – going up, there’s a lot of activity, especially in short-term contracts where companies are onboarding talent for their change management and business transformation expertise.
There are so many reasons why people seek out a new job. Sometimes it’s based on major life changes: a geographical move, say, or someone getting back into the workforce after a maternity leave. But why do passive candidates seek out new jobs, particularly in Supply Chain and Procurement?
We speak to a lot of candidates, so we have our ears to the ground in terms of the subtler reasons that star performers in these functions get the desire to make a move. It’s not out of a desire for more money as often as you might think. More often than not, it’s the more intangible factors.
Because employee retention is so important from a cost-saving and culture standpoint, we thought it would be useful to lay out some of the most common reasons why Supply Chain and Procurement professionals become passive candidates:
1. They’re siloed
We hear this reason a lot from candidates, but it still isn’t considered by companies as much as it should be. We know that one of the best ways to grow your Supply Chain career is to gain exposure to diverse parts of the function – from Logistics and Distribution, to Procurement, to Inventory Management, to Planning.
In too many organizations, these functions are siloed off from each-other, and that stops candidates from getting the experience they want to move up into more senior roles. It also stops the Supply Chain from being as effective as it would be if it was fully integrated. Next thing you know, your top performers are taking calls because they don’t want to be pigeonholed.
2. They’re tired of working with outdated technology
Supply Chain and Procurement technology is becoming more digital, just like the rest of the economy. And updating your technological profile can be a massive undertaking, with lots of risks. But the most forward-looking and high-potential candidates want to be working with the latest Supply Chain technology, keeping their skills relevant for the future. If you’re still working only with Excel, you might risk losing candidates to companies that have taken the plunge and invested in continuing technological improvement.
3. They’re not getting support from senior leadership
As we wrote about recently – and we received a ton of feedback on that piece – ineffective leadership in Procurement and Supply Chain can have huge ramifications all the way down a business. If leadership doesn’t have the people skills to help build buy-in for the function across the business, if they micromanage instead of letting managers and sole contributors shine, those people are going to start picking up the phone when a recruiter calls. But it goes upward too: effective leaders in Procurement and Supply Chain will get the itch to move if they don’t have support from C-level executives in a business.
4. Work/life balance isn’t up to snuff
Work/life balance is a hot topic in the talent world, to the point of being a cliché, but it’s worth mentioning: people who don’t have support from a work/life balance perspective will start to seek companies that have work from home policies, flexible schedules, educational opportunities, and other benefits. In 2018, companies can no longer see these programs as “perks” or “throw-ins.” Having solid, articulated work/life balance policies is vital to winning the war for talent.
5. They’re uninspired in the workplace
While Supply Chain and Procurement have historically been seen as “dry” functions, this reputation is changing fast. With the rise of digitization and globalization, they’re becoming more fast-paced, with more strategic potential and impact on a business’ long-term structure and profitability. But some companies still treat their Supply Chain and Procurement employees as purely transactional workers whose jobs are only to fill out orders and put out day-to-day fires. If you’re not being strategic, or not offering opportunities for advancement into more strategic positions, your best Supply Chain employees will, quite frankly, get bored and leave.
6. They’re realizing how indemand they are
As we’ve written about a lot, the retirement of the baby boomer generation as well as greater expectations placed on Procurement and Supply Chain are creating a deficit of talent in the marketplace. With the economy approaching full employment in 2018, this is even truer than it was before. But many companies still aren’t realizing the huge demand for Supply Chain and Procurement talent in this marketplace. Too many companies still have assume their employees are “just happy to have a job,” but take it from us as a company that speaks with dozens of candidates in the field every day: they’re realizing their worth, and fielding opportunities to meet their full potential. If your company isn’t providing those opportunities, they’ll go somewhere that does.
Sometimes it’s a combination of the above factors that causes a top performer to want to leave, and sometimes it’s even other factors we haven’t mentioned. So what does your organization do to retain star performers? As a candidate, have you ever left a role for one of the above reasons, or another that we missed? Let us know in the comments!
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by Fronetics | Apr 25, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Supply chain leaders should use these 5 social media tips to grow brand awareness and increase your company’s profile as an employer.
Like most busy executives, it’s hard to find time for your daily tasks and projects without adding social media into the mix. But having a presence on social media is no longer optional for leaders. It’s a necessity.
Though branding might not come easily for some supply chain management executives, it is key in today’s digital world for positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry, as well as gaining positive traction as an employer.
We’ve talked a lot about the supply chain talent gap. Here’s where a consistent, informative social media presence could help you and your company.
Millennials in the workforce are more likely to apply for jobs with companies that have a strong social media presence. They want to work for leaders that are openly posting about industry trends, collaborating with competitors, and working toward innovative products and services. What better way to highlight your role as an industry leader than through social media?
Getting started can be intimidating. There are lots of different social media channels. And even more options regarding content within those channels. Do you start a blog? Post on Twitter? Upload videos to YouTube? It’s not as easy as just writing a few blog posts and throwing them up on Facebook.
So how do you get started cultivating a social media presence? Here are 5 tips to help any supply chain leader.
Infographic: 5 social media tips for supply chain leaders
(Made with Canva)
Don’t let the hype of social media deter you. A strong personal brand is a major asset to any executive or aspiring executive. It doesn’t have to be a chore. It can become a fun and fulfilling part of your work routine, and it pays off. We hope these tips are useful even if you’ve been active on social media in a professional capacity before!
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