by Elizabeth Hines | Aug 31, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Targeted content can help convince high-level decision-makers and executives to accept your sales meeting request.
There are many benefits to content marketing, but did you know it can help you land that next impossible-to-get sales meeting?
According to expert marketer Stu Heinecke’s new book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, top sales professionals use personalized content to target high-level relationships in what he calls “a shadow practice,” which has been extremely effective at reaching critical, hard-to-reach contacts.
In these campaigns, content is targeted to make the connection with the right people — without any obvious pursuit — and secure those hard-to-get meetings. This can be a game-changer for your business.
Heinecke’s book pools the advice of the top 100 sales thought leaders in the world. He recently shared some of his findings with Harvard Business Review.
Here are some key takeaways:
- You can use content marketing to combine marketing and selling, employing specific campaigns to connect with high-level decision-makers and specific C-level executives. Finding a few dozen of the correct high-level relationships can quickly elevate the scale of your business.
- When approaching connections derived from content, Heinecke found that response rates averaged from 60% to 80%, with some campaigns actually hitting 100%.
- The greatest success is associated with content that delivers something of value. Share the personality of your brand, but offer no sales pitch. “Your first mission is simply to create a connection, to establish yourself as someone they’ll want to listen to,” Heinecke states.
- You should offer something more, to be delivered at the meeting. The point is to continue to add value to the relationship. For example, offer to bring relevant research, a white paper, or a free audit of the executive’s business to the first meeting.
- Once face to face, continue to engage in conversation that provides insight to what the contact’s business challenges are. Refrain from a sales pitch, but share examples of other companies with similar challenges, which have benefited from your specific product or solution. Tell a story — similar to what your content marketing does.
Content can help you make important connections — just ask NoWait
The same HBR article also shares the story of the founders of NoWait, a mobile application which allows diners to put their name on the waitlist of a restaurant from a remote location.
With a minuscule budget, the NoWait founders used targeted content as the basis for their entire launch strategy. They sent personalized videos on iPads in custom packaging to the CEOs of the 30 top restaurant chains. Their highly targeted approach allowed the company to focus on the exact people who could do them the most good — the decision-makers of the biggest brands in the industry. The app is already used by more than half of their targeted companies.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Aug 30, 2016 | Blog, Internet of Things, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
New research shows how supply chain and logistics companies currently are using the Internet of Things and how they plan to expand use in the future.
The Internet of Things is already here — monitoring our footsteps, heartbeats, lighting, home temperature, and environment. And it will continue to expand at a rapid rate. Frost & Sullivan estimates that connected objects will total more than 50 billion by 2020. Morgan Stanley says 75 billion. Either way, it’s clear that the number of internet-connected devices is growing exponentially.
For the supply chain and logistics industries, this is exciting news The transparency and end-to-end visibility afforded by the IoT creates new opportunities that businesses can leverage in order to optimize supply chains and generate value.
Eft, a logistics and supply chain solutions provider, recently polled 600 supply chain decision-makers to understand their “existing and future plans for leveraging the IoT within their operations.” The results offer an interesting picture of the changing relationship between supply chain and logistics and the Internet of Things.
Key findings include:
- 41% have an IoT solution in place.
- 87% plan to expand use of the IoT.
- 61% are analyzing less than half of their IoT data.
What kind of information are companies looking to gain with the IoT?
- Location
- Security
- Temperature
- Speed
What are companies hoping to achieve?
- To improve customer service with better information
- To provide customers with more frequent updates on shipment pick-up or delivery
- To improve speed, delivery timeframes
What types of solutions are companies using?
- Bar codes
- Data logger
- IoT sensor and monitoring technology
In which area are you hoping to improve operational visibility the most?
- 80% land shipments
- 50% air shipments
- 33% sea shipments
What level of threat is cyber security to your IoT strategy?
- 17% major threat
- 47% moderate threat
- 32% minor threat
- 5% non threat
What is the primary purpose of your IoT network?
- 59% alarms and real-time monitoring
- 41% optimization and prediction
Read the full report to get even more insight into how the supply chain and logistics industries are engaging with the IoT.
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by Elizabeth Hines | 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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by Elizabeth Hines | Aug 25, 2016 | Blog, Data/Analytics, Leadership, Strategy
Forget tracking traditional metrics and focus on decision-quality data that helps front-line managers do their jobs.
It’s safe to say that the clients I engage with fall into two categories when it comes to business data: those that are drowning in it, and those that ignore it altogether.
The ones that are drowning in data know all the relevant facts that keep them out of trouble with their boards or their senior executives, but struggle to tell you what really drives their business costs or profits. The ones that ignore the data are the savvy veterans that rely on their historical win/loss records in their business, but ask them to change course or innovate, and they are like fish out of water.
Chances are you’ll fall somewhere close to those two camps, and for some time, I did as well. Then that I realized that tracking data for the sake of “tracking” was a waste of time for me and for my teams.
There is data, however, that should be tracked relentlessly and used in all of your decision processes. I call this “decision-quality” data. These are the numbers that drive your business strategy and execution.
What is decision-quality data?
Decision-quality data goes beyond the traditional profit/loss packages that are churned out every quarter and disseminated to your business chieftains. Decision-quality data sets are the building blocks and the levers of your business. Examples include areas of your business that can be affected by the execution of your employees.
Put simply, your sales employees may not be able to directly affect your finance treasury function, but working together with your finance team, they can affect cash flow by selling credit-worthy customers, cutting better financial deals, and, when necessary, helping in the collection process.
The same can be said of your purchasing professionals teaming with distribution leaders and finance team. This team can coordinate at the front line to cut costs and reduce inventory spend by developing inventory and financial metrics that matter to them and the company overall. By working in concert, they have the ability to solve the problems that arise and avoid pitfalls in real time instead of reacting when the quarterly metrics come out.
Quite frankly, if you are collecting and looking at data, but not taking action as the result of it, STOP. You won’t miss a thing, and your team will thank you for saving them time to spend on more productive activities.
Don’t fall into the data-cycle-trap dictated by data tracked on a calendar basis for the sake of tracking. Ask your teams what data they need to be effective, and simplify the way for them to get it in near real time.
Once this type of data is in the hands of a cross-functional team of front-line managers, task them with the needed improvement, and watch them make dramatic impacts in your overall business performance and customer experience and, in turn, your profits. The results will be better and more sustained than if you drove them with a mandate from the top because these managers live and breathe in the environment that created the data in the first place. Their cross-functional nature and familiarity with the issues are a winning combination.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Aug 24, 2016 | Blog, Manufacturing & Distribution, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
The Supply Chain industry is changing, while it’s becoming harder for companies to hire at the same time. These supply chain demographics provide a picture of the industry today.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
Everyone knows the Supply Chain field is changing. Recently, one of the best Supply Chain publications out of the U.S., Supply Chain 24/7, released a report that examines the demographic trends underlying the industry. The report, titled “A Portrait of the Supply Chain Manager,” used research survey data from Peerless Research Group and APICS to present a picture of the typical individual working in Supply Chain. The survey asked a number of Supply Chain and talent-related questions, such as:
- What percentage of Supply Chain professionals received a raise last year?
- What percentage of Supply Chain managers hold a degree?
- What percentage of companies are willing to pay above-market compensation for the right people?
And more. These issues are sure to be of interest, whether you’re looking to hire in Supply Chain or just to get a holistic picture of the field. So we put together this spiffy infographic that highlights the answers to these questions and some other interesting datapoints from the report. Check out the infographic below!
We hope you found the supply chain demographics infographic informative, and we encourage you to dig into the full report for even more insights about where Supply Chain professionals stand and where the field is going. And (as always) stay tuned for more info and perspective about Supply Chain and talent from Argentus in the coming days and weeks!
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by Elizabeth Hines | Aug 23, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
TotalTrax leverages content marketing to increase web traffic, generate high-quality leads, and, ultimately, grow business.
TotalTrax, Inc., is a provider of real-time vehicle, driver, and inventory tracking technologies for manufacturing and warehouse operations. Despite a decade of positive growth, the company knew it was missing opportunities for new business because of its lack of a clear digital strategy.
That’s why TotalTrax hired Fronetics Strategic Advisors. The firm created and implemented a multi-channel content marketing program designed to increase the company’s digital footprint and accelerate growth.
Content marketing can help a business elevate its brand position by producing content that demonstrates industry expertise, offers valuable information, and builds trust with their target audience. Example benefits include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Higher referral traffic
- Better lead generation and nurturing
- Improved customer loyalty and trust
- Decreased marketing cost and higher ROI
Fronetics evaluated TotalTrax’s existing digital assets. Leveraging extensive market research, the firm helped refine the company’s messaging and content distribution to better engage potential customers. Fronetics then implemented the customized content marketing strategy to help TotalTrax fully leverage its web presence to bring about new business.
The results
In a 24-month period, TotalTrax realized significant gains in web traffic, quality leads, and brand awareness. Key results included:
- 19% increase in overall web traffic
- 500% increase in traffic from social media
- 244 high-quality leads
- 30% net increase in new customers
To learn more about Fronetics’ strategy for TotalTrax, download the free case study below.
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