by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 17, 2016 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Source: Library of Congress
This is a guest post written by Tania Seary, founder of Procurious. Procurious, the world’s first online social network for supply chain and procurement professionals, has acquired more than 12,000 members in less than two years.
I’m trying to use a baseball analogy here, but appreciate that my headline does have other connotations!
Another analogy might be to say that we’re “getting the flywheel spinning” here at Procurious – the world’s first online network for supply chain and procurement professionals.
Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the flywheel analogy, it is a metaphor created by author Jim Collins in his famous business manifesto, “From Good to Great,” to explain one of the key drivers for creating long-term success in business.
A flywheel is a heavy disk on an axle used to smooth a machine’s operation to generate momentum and maintain a constant rotational speed.
It takes much effort and persistence to get the metaphorical flywheel to move, but consistent energy in one direction over time helps build momentum and ultimately leads to a breakthrough. In the case of Procurious, as with Collins’ companies, there has been no specific event, decision, action, or lucky moment that single-handedly helped us to successfully break through the “beta” stage, to where we are today.
Over the last two years, we have remained committed to building something truly special for the procurement profession. Step by step we have stayed focused on our goal of building a very credible and content-rich community for our members.
Now with more than 12,000 members in 135 countries, Procurious has cemented its position as the secret weapon for professionals wanting to be part of the movement toward creating the new face of procurement.
Getting back to our headline analogy with baseball, I wanted to share some of the key decisions we have made along our journey to date to build Procurious.
Agreeing on the MVP
Just to confirm, we are talking about Minimum Viable Product here, not the Most Valuable Player. In the early days of designing this business, everything was up for grabs. Among a long list, we considered building a procurement news aggregator, a pure-play training repository called Procurious TV, and a procurement lifestyle magazine.
What we ended up with was a community platform that included a community feed, member profiles, discussions, eLearning, a worldwide calendar of procurement events, twice-daily blog, and private groups.
The end result was a powerful combination of career advancement, skill development, and professional networking opportunities to help propel today’s procurement professionals forward.
To have open or closed membership?
Once we had agreed on the core features and functionality of Procurious, we had a lot of heated debates over whether we should have an open or closed network. That is, should it be closed exclusively to highly pre-qualified procurement professionals, or open for the whole world to join?
Luckily my team convinced me to keep our network open… and it’s been an important part of our success story to date.
Of course, the major advantage to our members is that on Procurious, they gain access to a wide range of thought leaders and industry experts which then exposes them to diverse opinions on the hot topics in procurement.
Finding our fans
Every club, or community, needs a strong support base. We have been very fortunate to have a number of “early adopters” from around the globe support the building of the Procurious community. And, of course, we now have our “poster child” — Siddarth Sharma — who was surprised to learn he was our 10,000th member. Siddarth is representative of so many of the exciting procurement professionals around the globe — an MBA working for KPMG managing a small team of indirects buyers in India.
Securing our sponsors
Like a baseball club, we needed some big-brand sponsors to keep our operations humming. We have been fortunate to create partnerships with the profession’s leading institutes, associations, analysts, and technology companies. The Hackett Group has supported Procurious from the start, and The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has joined the team this year. These relationships enrich Procurious in many ways and, most importantly, provide our members with access to world-leading research and resources.
Fielding a winning team
Lisa Malone, Euan Granger, and Jack Slade have been a powerhouse behind building this community, covering all the bases, and getting runs on the board.
Handling the curveballs
The biggest threat to our success is the introduction of a fierce competitor. But we are fortunate that we now have a loyal community that has been built on a substantial foundation of trust and commitment. This will be difficult to shake.
Our next biggest hurdle to success is to overcome the procurement profession’s hesitancy to create social media networks.
Despite the well-publicized benefits, we still meet procurement professionals that tell us “they don’t believe in networking” and don’t accept LinkedIn invitations from people they don’t know. We need to convince the profession of the multiple benefits of using social media, and then provide them with the skills to leverage the opportunity.
One base at a time
Our plan is to continue building Procurious based on our members’ needs, one base at a time.
We will be hosting our Big Ideas conference in London on Thursday, 21 April, for which you can register as a digital delegate on www.bigideassummit.com.
We are also currently beta-testing our new app, which can be downloaded from the Apple App store.
We are asking as many procurement professionals as possible to sign up to the network at www.procurious.com to join this new era and — as we like to say — get involved and get ahead!
Tania is the Founding Chairman of three companies specializing in the development of the procurement profession – The Faculty, The Source and Procurious.
The Faculty is recognized as one of Australia’s leading advisors on procurement development. Established twelve years ago, The Faculty works with leading organizations to transform and elevate the role of procurement, build high performance procurement teams and create professional knowledge networks.
Under Tania’s leadership, The Faculty has instigated a number of “firsts” for the procurement profession in Australia, including the development of a Procurement Executive Program through Melbourne Business School, the establishment of a Procurement Roundtable which includes many of Australia’s leading organizations, creation of an annual Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Forum and attracting leading global procurement thought leaders to teach in Australia. She also initiated the Corporate Board for Social Procurement, which has created a foundation for leading corporations to dedicate appropriate areas of spend toward social enterprises.
Four years ago, Tania founded The Source, a specialist recruitment firm for the procurement profession. In 2013 she moved to London and founded Procurious, the world’s first online community for procurement professionals to connect, share and learn.
Tania’s fascination and commitment to procurement development started around fifteen years ago in the United States. After finishing her MBA at Pennsylvania State University, Tania became one of Alcoa’s first global commodity managers.
Prior to moving to the USA, Tania’s career was focused on marketing roles within Alcoa and Rowland in Australia, and the Walt Disney Company in the UK. Tania has an MBA and a Bachelor of Business.
by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 15, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Cultivating a lead is just as important as finding it in the first place
If you have a solid strategic marketing plan in place that is generating a high volume of quality leads, tomorrow’s revenue should be almost assured, right? Not necessarily.
A lead is only worth as much as the effort your company puts into cultivating it. The next vital step is to convert those leads into new sales or clients. In other words, getting quality leads is only half the battle.
Your business grows through a steady stream of quality leads being nurtured and developed. If you have these precious leads in hand, it is vital that you also have a sales team that knows how to turn them into customers. If you don’t, that brilliant strategic marketing plan was a waste of valuable time and money.
There many moving parts to an effective lead-generation campaign, and often there are many steps required to cultivate those leads into sales. Your sales team should:
Conduct consistent, quality follow-up on all leads.
Committing to expedient and professional follow-up provides better conversion of leads into opportunities. This means that when cultivating a qualified lead, you don’t want your sales reps to make one phone call and simply leave a voicemail. You want real conversations to happen. What works best is having someone whose only job is to reach leads in person, overcome objections (identify and present solutions that truly meet your clients’ needs), qualify them (determining whether a lead should move into the sales process), and facilitate any needed connection to your sales teams to complete the sale.
Realize that time is of the essence.
Studies show the faster you contact the lead, the better your chances of conversion into a sale. According to a study by Franklin Covey, contact ratios improve 900% if web leads are called within five minutes of submission. While your sales team may not be able to act upon a lead with that kind of velocity, it is vital that they utilize proactive sales strategies, rather than reactive. Reactive is leaving a message and, if they hear back, responding to it. Proactive is going after the sale with confidence and commitment to engaging the lead in real dialogue.
Target the best window of time to call leads.
This, of course, has many variables and will be relative to your particular business and potential-client demographic. But, one study suggests that Thursday and Friday offer the highest productivity in lead conversion, and the hours between 4 and 6 p.m. often produce optimum results.
Have the ability to listen and offer viable solutions.
Your sales team needs to be well informed about the products, services, and solutions that they are selling. They also need to remember that it’s vital to take the time to discover and understand the potential customer’s needs and wants first, then make the move to match and sell the appropriate solution.
Capturing successful leads is only the first step in generating greater sales revenue. Your sales team must be able to follow up quickly with proven fundamental steps that turn leads into customers.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
The other day a client called to express his frustration with content marketing. Not only was he disappointed with the number of leads that his company had obtained to date, he was also disappointed with the number of sales. He was ready to call it quits and pull the plug on all content marketing efforts.
This client was not the first to call and express frustration, nor will he be the last. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that as soon as a company incorporates a content marketing into their strategy, they will be flooded with leads — leads served on a silver platter and leads all boxed up and tied with a bow. I wish content marketing could do this — it can’t. That being said, walking away from content marketing is a big mistake — content marketing is an effective strategy that companies should employ.
The buying process for B2B buyers has become more complex and longer. The 2015 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report found that 53% of respondents reported their purchase cycle was longer than it was the previous year. The buying process has gotten longer because the majority of buyers (82%) are using more sources to research and evaluate products and services, and they are spending more time in the research phase itself. A full 80% of respondents reported they spend more time on research alone — this is up from 58% in the previous survey.
Social media and vendor-focused content are two key places where buyers turn to conduct research. More than half (53%) of survey respondents reported that social media plays in their research process, and 86% of respondents reported that content such as case studies and product data sheets influence purchase decisions.
The increased focus on research has changed when the buyers engage with a sales rep. Today, the average buyer progresses nearly 60% of the way through the purchase decision-making process before engaging with a sales rep.
Back to my client. I walked my client through these facts, and then we walked through the metrics we track on the monthly basis. Since my client had started using content marketing, traffic to his company’s website had increased significantly, visitors to the website were spending longer on it than they had before, and they were looking at more pages. Additionally the company’s social reach had grown and engagement — with customers, prospects, and others within the industry — had increased considerably. All of these things, I pointed out, were positive. I then reminded my client that the typical sales cycle for his company and industry was 12-18 months — far longer than the few short months that he had been using content marketing.
I spent the next few minutes going over the company’s content marketing strategy. We decided to make a few tweaks, and then discussed both goals and expectations going forward.
It is important for companies to recognize that content marketing should be a part of their strategy — more than ever, B2B buyers are looking for information and are using that information to make buying decisions. Companies need to be using social media. Companies need to be creating and curating quality content. It is equally important, however, for companies to realize that content marketing is not magic. Content marketing doesn’t shorten the buying process; rather it changes it. Moreover, content marketing doesn’t deliver sales — sales people still play a large role in lead nurturing and closing deals.
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This was originally published on Electronics Purchasing Strategies.
by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 8, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Social prospecting helps you identify potential customers outside your established audience using social platforms.
Social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy — we know it helps build brand reputation, gather market intelligence, discover customer problems, and influence purchasing decisions. But your lead generation efforts should also include the use of social platforms. It’s a practice called social prospecting that can be highly effective in identifying new prospects.
You’ll use your existing social handles to identify and pursue potential customers that may be interested in your business but that don’t yet know about it. HubSpot describes social prospecting: “It’s about scouring the social web, identifying potential prospects, and engaging them through content to get them to your site and move them through your funnel.”
Why does it work?
Think about the size of your established audience. Now think about the total number of active users on social media: As of the fourth quarter of 2015, Facebook had 1.59 billion active monthly users, Twitter averaged at 305 million, LinkedIn had 414 million, Google+ had 111 million, and Pinterest had more than 100 million. Those enormous numbers equal enormous potential for your business.
That’s because social media isn’t just for recreational purposes anymore. More than half (53%) of B2B buyers report using social media to research purchases, in fact. Social prospecting allows you to be proactive in finding all of the considerable number of social-media-using prospects who are looking for you, too.
How do you get started?
If you already have a social media presence, that’s step one. It gets a little more complicated from there.
Fronetics has developed a free social prospecting workbook to learn how to use social listening to generate new leads for your business. We’ve identified the quickest way to find potential customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. Every worksheet includes:
- Short preparatory work to make the actual prospecting easy
- Visual instructions on how and where to find prospects
- Pro tips that will help you get the best results
- Prescriptions (Marketing Rx) for success
- Take-home exercises for follow-up prospecting
Happy prospecting!
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 7, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Your content stinks. Here’s why.
Twenty-seven million pieces of content are shared every day — and most of it is crap. To attract readers to your content, you must stand out, and I mean really stand out, among the masses. That’s no easy feat.
You may be spending an enormous amount of time and money as part of a content marketing effort, but, if no one is reading what you’re producing, you’re definitely not achieving your ROI. Consider the following points, and ask yourself if any could be negatively impacting your readership.
Here are the top 10 reasons no one is reading your content.
10. You don’t have a strategy.
Only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts to be successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. And that number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy. Having a clear vision for your content and a plan for executing that vision is crucial to earning an audience.
9. Your content isn’t search-engine optimized.
Seventy-seven percent of today’s buyers use Google to research information about products. Search engine optimization (SEO) means writing copy for your digital assets so they will be prioritized by Google in web queries related to your business or products. Three of four people will click on the top five search results. So the further you move from those top five results, the less likely someone is to find, much less read, your content. If your content isn’t SEO-friendly, readers may not even have the chance to see what you’re writing because it is so far down in their search results.
8. You are using the wrong channels.
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, did the tree fall after all? Stop publishing in the empty woods. Who is the target audience for your content, and where are they active? Evaluate your audience (or lack thereof) in each of the channels where you publish, and see if something is amiss. This will vary greatly by business. You can access personalized information on your followers’ social media habits through analytic programs like Google Analytics and sites like Tweriod.
Also to consider: on lightning-fast platforms like Twitter, a miscalculation of timing could be to blame. (See The Best Time to Post on Social Media.)
7. You’re not publishing often enough.
Inconsistent content is one of the primary reasons readers become disengaged with a particular publisher. Even publishing one more blog post a week can significantly boost your readership. Try a little experiment for a few months by playing with the number of times per week you publish — say, three times per week one month, four times the next, and five the next. You’ll find the sweet spot where you get the most engagement but can also handle the production schedule.
The next reasons have to do with the substance of the content itself.
6. You’re publishing a sales pitch instead of content.
Imagine you’re looking to buy a car. Researching different options online, Site A, run by Dealership A, offers expert opinions about various makes and models, while Site B talks about how Dealership B offers top-notch customer service and a no-nonsense negotiation policy. You’d probably never come across Site B in the first place because the content is irrelevant (and trite… and annoying), whereas Site A has exactly what you’re looking for.
Content marketing is your opportunity to provide valuable, expert information to people who are seeking it out. Associating your brand with that sort of expertise attracts customers — not to mention, helps them find you via organic search in the first place. No one wants to read your sales pitch over and over again, and they won’t.
5. You are not telling the truth.
I am talking about two different definitions of truth here.
For one, are you being honest? Today’s consumers can smell b.s. from a mile away, largely because the Internet forgets nothing and forgives nothing. The prevalence of user-review sites and platforms like social media means customers will always have an outlet to share their experiences, both good and bad. If your business does not provide what you promise, people will be upset and take to these forums to complain about it. Trust and transparency are two key assets in earning (and keeping) readership.
Secondly, are you being true to who you are as a business? A recent Harvard Business Review article defines successful marketers as mission-focused, not consumer-focused. Don’t produce content based on what you think your customers want to hear. The beauty of content marketing is that when you put your business mission out into the universe through content, people who are seeking that information find you. In other words, build it, and they will come.
4. You’re not offering anything of value.
DigitalTonto says, “The first step towards engagement is creating value beyond the basic transaction of payment for a product or service.” This is the essence of content marketing: a related offer of value in the form of expertise, entertainment, etc. For example, L’Oreal Paris provides free makeup tutorials on its YouTube channel, Destination Beauty, and, Apple offers free classes, product demonstrations, and tech support from the Genius Bar for product users.
The question to ask is, what is your value to your customers? Can you offer expert advice on a particular topic through a blog? Is there something about your products or your people that would make for entertaining or informative videos? Do you have access to top-of-their-field specialists that could lead a webinar series? Find whatever it is that is unique to your company, and leverage that in your content marketing to attract readers.
Because there is so much content out there, today’s consumers can afford to be partial to publishers who provide information in a way that is pleasing to them. They also have shorter attention spans than goldfish. That means things like format, length, accessibility, and voice can majorly impact whether people read your content or not. Also, be mindful that different platforms should offer different experiences based on reader expectations (e.g., Instagram isn’t the place for lots of text).
2. You’re not heeding performance analytics.
The one certain constant in marketing is that things will always change. What works for you one year will certainly be irrelevant the next. Content marketing won’t allow you to rest on your laurels, either. You should stay on top of your analytics to monitor what kind of content is successful in the present moment, and you should tweak how you’re doing things as people, technology, and events change. Keep testing new ideas to see how they are received, and get rid of old standbys that no longer pull their weight.
1. Your content is bad.
While this seems obvious, it’s worth repeating. If the quality of your content is bad, no one will read it, regardless of what value it offers. The same goes for if you find yourself saying, “it works,” or “it’s fine!” If there are 27 million options, who would choose “fine?”
Do an honest evaluation of your content, or have a neutral outside party do so for you. Is it original, substantial, and well-written? Make sure that your content is edited, and that it is free from grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and awkward phrasing. And remember that you get what you pay for. Professional writers can be expensive, but there’s a reason for that — theirs is a specialized craft, and very few people can do it well. If you want people to read your content, you should make sure that it’s worth reading.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 3, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Here’s how marketers can launch a B2B social media program that grows business.
A recent Harvard Business Review article discloses that a number of B2B CEOs still believe social media isn’t right for them, that it’s a tool for the B2C segment. In reality, many B2B marketers successfully leverage social media to engage potential customers, gather market intelligence, build brand awareness and reputation, discover and intercept customer problems, and influence purchasing decisions before sales calls are ever made.
In short, if you are not in the B2B social media game, you are missing out on enormous business opportunities.
Getting started with social media can seem like an intimidating task, especially if your C-suite is skeptical of the benefits. Here are six steps to launching a B2B social media program that will grow your business to its full potential.
1) Speak in the right terms.
Convincing management that you want your team to spend more time on social media to gain “followers” or get “shares” might be a hard sell. To win support, focus your argument around the factors that are most important to them. Lead generation, lead nurturing, conversions, sales, ROI, profits: this should be the vocabulary with which you approach this conversation.
2) Create a strategy — and put someone in charge.
Only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts to be successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. And that number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy. Working with an experienced marketing consulting firm, like Fronetics, you can develop an inbound marketing strategy that aligns with your business objectives. And whether someone on your team heads up execution or you outsource that responsibility, the leader should continually monitor analytics and tweak the strategy accordingly. Which brings us to…
3) Determine which analytics to track.
In the B2B world, it’s not about shares, likes, or impressions, though those numbers speak to your brand exposure. (Read more about so-called “vanity metrics” here.) Leads generated, conversion rates, sales, and ROI are going to be the things you’ll want to track. If you have a good, flexible strategy in place, these metrics will help you adjust your efforts to ensure you’re achieving your business objectives.
See: The Six Marketing Metrics Your Boss Actually Cares About.
4) Develop quality content.
Twenty-seven million pieces of content are shared every day — and a large portion of it is crap. A social media presence could be pretty pointless unless you’re using it to push content that is original, high quality, and representative of your brand. One of the biggest mistakes B2B companies make is using social channels to push a sales pitch. You’ll quickly lose your audience, who is turned off by a strong sales pitch. Social media is about engaging your audience, building brand awareness, and offering valuable information.
See: Three Elements of Good Content.
5) Decide which channels are right for your business.
Who are you trying to reach, and what are you trying to tell them? These are good questions to ask when trying to determine which platforms will comprise your social media program. There’s a wealth of information out there about which channels are used by whom and when. You’ll also want to choose channels that you’ll be able to maintain regularly and which play to your strengths. As an obvious example, if you don’t have the capability to make videos, YouTube probably isn’t for you. Remember, you’ll likely want to work through several different channels to reach a maximum number of potential customers.
See: Which Social Media Channels Should Your B2B Business Use?
6) Follow your competitors.
Following your competitors is a great way to stay up to date on what they’re doing, especially if you don’t have a ton of time or money for competitive research. And when I say “follow,” I don’t mean “copy or imitate.” I mean subscribe to their blogs, engage with them on social media, and like and share their content that you find meaningful for your audience. This way, you become part of the industry conversation happening online, and you know exactly what your potential customers are seeing from (and how they’re reacting to) your competitors.
See: The Role of Social Media in Supply Chain Intelligence.
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