by Fronetics | Feb 24, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Putting together digital marketing pieces in a way that fully meets regulatory requirements can grow your business exponentially.
There is a misconception that companies within a regulated industry are denied the benefit of digital marketing. These businesses often hide behind their regulations, simply because it is easier than working with them to create new avenues into the digital realm of marketing and company branding.
Is your marketing antiquated and stuck in the past? Could you be using regulations as an excuse to avoid change and stepping into the digital age? Are you really restricted from having an effective social media presence?
The facts say that you are not.
Regulated industries, such as those in the financial management realm, can be creating a very personal connection and presence with their customers, and therefore developing a competitive advantage. But, they must be willing to take the initiative to change how things are accomplished, to re-organize, and to create a cooperative strategy within their organization. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tackle content marketing in a manner that fully upholds your regulatory standards.
It not only can be done, but the companies who successfully adjust can grow their businesses exponentially. In fact, other companies within your industry are probably already proving this to be true. A recent study indicated that that 77% of respondents from companies across industries planned to increase their digital marketing budgets in the coming year.
So, how does a business in a regulated industry — with restrictions on things like publishing, advertising, and even how interviews can be conducted — overcome these challenges and become a content marketing machine? How do you deal with the fact that every piece of content must be reviewed by an attorney or an outside compliance agency? How do you promote your business when there are even restrictions on customer testimonials?
First, marketing in today’s digital environment will require an overhaul of your strategic planning (aka, how you do things, and perhaps how you have always done things) and the release of any fear you have of digital marketing.
Creating an environment conducive to digital marketing
Here are a few tips to support this change:
- You must create a management environment where the swift development of rich content can thrive. In regulated industries, this probably means you need fast and effective access to an attorney, who can read and approve new content for public consumption within a couple of hours.
- You need to create a smooth, reciprocal interaction across these departments, with a focus on a more efficient operation and mutual support of the approval process.
- You need to invest financially in a solid strategic plan for your digital marketing. It takes money to make money, so to speak. Consider teaming up with a firm of talented individuals from outside your industry, who specialize in how to create digital content customized to your target demographic. This team should have the capability to analyze content performance metrics and to guide your digital presence to achieve optimal results. Their services should provide you a customized content plan, increase your customer engagement level, and develop a digital presence for your company that meets regulation standards for your industry.
- Your content writers and management team needs to be well-versed on the latest data and statistics, as well as your overall marketing initiatives, so they can produce content based on the latest facts and figures that will attract new customers. Essentially, they need to know what your new customers want and have the data available that will garner their attention.
Once you have paved the way, your company can begin to benefit from the creation of a blog, eBooks, and other digital presentations.
So how do you make it happen? How do you begin to access these modern marketing techniques in a regulated industry?
- First, your leadership team must be on board, ready to embrace change and to learn to communicate in new ways. If this is not something you can see happening because mindsets are stuck in the 1990s (pre-social media age), then you should educate stakeholders on how social media can impact a business’s growth and success.
- Redevelop the marketing department and provide the resources necessary to stay compliant and obtain necessary legal approvals quickly and efficiently.
- Befriend the legal department. They should be part of your support team, not a challenge you must overcome. Remove old paradigms and replace them with creative solutions, like an interactive spreadsheet shared between marketing and compliance to speed up the social posting process. Make marketing and compliance part of the same team, one that works together to seek solutions, alternatives, and compromises.
- Give it time. This is a big step in the right direction to align long-term strategies to better reach a new set of consumers. But it does not happen overnight. Plant the digital marketing seeds today and reap a crop of new customers tomorrow.
If you are in a regulated industry, the time to embrace change and step into the realm of digital marketing is now. Those who learn to evolve, to think creatively to find solutions, and to face new demands as a team are the ones that will rise to the top of their industry and experience a competitive advantage that supports future success.
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by Fronetics | Feb 23, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Responding promptly and effectively to negative feedback online shows your commitment to customer service and transparency.
“Don’t ever read the comments” is a well-known adage in today’s world of Internet trolls. It’s good advice for the preservation of your Internet psyche — negative online comments can be really draining. If you’re a business with a digital presence, however, it unfortunately doesn’t apply to you.
Blog comment sections and social media channels offer an open avenue for customers to discuss their thoughts about your company for all the world to see. And, unfortunately, one negative comment can be infinitely louder than one hundred positive ones. The potential impact it could have on business is scary.
But that doesn’t mean you should delete or ignore every unfavorable tweet, post, or comment that someone posts on your digital platforms. In fact, companies can use negative online comments as an opportunity to exhibit top-notch customer service and much-appreciated transparency in the way they do business.
Even on platforms where you can choose whether or not to enable comments, opening the comments feature indicates that your business is interested in hearing from customers and engaging with them in meaningful dialogue. And while you’ll inevitably receive some negative feedback, you will most certainly learn about problems that you would never have known about otherwise. You may even win back customers if you handle things correctly.
Here are some tips for managing negative online comments.
1. Establish a written policy for comments.
When it comes to a forum like a blog, set clear boundaries with your readers about what you consider appropriate. Let them know that comments will be reviewed before being published and that hateful, derogatory, off-topic, or spam-y submissions will not be approved. That way, if someone complains about his/her comments not being published, you can point directly to your policy and how it is being violated.
Tip: Requiring commenters to use their real names (instead of initials, pseudonyms, or business aliases) is a good way to encourage an environment of mutual respect because people must own the words they post. Just make sure to include this requirement in your policy if you decide to go that route.
2. Distinguish between the purposefully hostile and the legitimately concerned.
Public forums, especially those online, are the ideal place for the disgruntled to vent their frustrations with the world. But that doesn’t mean you have to right all their wrongs.
Comments that seem to be particularly malicious just for the sake of being so probably don’t merit a response — you won’t be able to win with some people. For example, someone who tweets at you regarding the physical appearance of one of your employees or uses derogatory language does not merit your attention. These incidents should be reported, and you should not engage with them in any way. Your time and energy is much better spent on someone with a legitimate concern.
Tip: If you seem to have a recurring problem like that mentioned above, or if a troll’s comments seem to be getting some attention among your customers, it might be helpful to send (via whichever channel it is occurring) a blanket message that your business does not engage with hateful speech and point to your comments policy online.
3) Respond within 24 hours.
The advent of social media has drastically increased the speed of life. Customers now expect you to be open and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they will sit with hands poised over their keyboards, refreshing their Twitter feeds until you respond to them. And if you don’t acknowledge them within a (perceived) reasonable time frame, they’ll assume you’re ignoring them. Cue further dragging your brand name through the mud.
Even if you are a small shop, having a designated person on call to respond to all comments within 24 hours is a good idea. That initial response may be mere acknowledgement — “We are sorry to hear about your experience. We have someone looking into it and will get back to you when we know where we messed up!” — but letting that customer know that you heard them is half the battle.
4) Don’t be a robot.
Having designated scripted responses for certain problems may actually negatively impact your efforts. Since anyone can do a quick search to see how you have responded to people in the past, they’ll know when you’re copying and pasting, and it will come off as disingenuous.
Instead, respond as a person, rather than a corporation. Training customer service reps or your social media person to write back to commenters within your brand’s tone is a good idea, but ultimately you want to give them leeway to make a human connection in solving the customer’s issue. That means treating each negative comment individually — which is something your followers will notice. It shows that your business cares immensely about solving problems and taking care of its customers, which will build trust and loyalty with your followers.
Tip: Is this something you can outsource? Hiring someone to manage social media and blog comments could alleviate stress from your internal team and allow them to focus on doing their jobs well. It would also ensure someone can give their full attention to negative comments on an as-needed basis.
5) Move the conversation offline.
After you acknowledge that you have received the customer’s comment on the platform on which s/he sent it, your goal should be to move that conversation away from the public eye. Ask the commenter to send you a private message with a phone number you can call to talk things through. It may take some time to resolve a particular issue, so it’s best that the rest of the world not see the play-by-play.
6) Admit when you are wrong, and do your best to make it right.
Justifying why an employee treated a customer a certain way, making excuses for a late delivery, or other such explanations will fall on deaf ears. Most of the time, a negative commenter just wants to hear you say that you messed up. And that’s exactly what you should do. It’s refreshing, and it shows the rest of your followers that the commenter’s experience is not the norm.
And then you should try to make it right.
In the same way that a negative customer comment can adversely affect business, a favorable one can attract positive attention to your brand and build customer loyalty. Above-and-beyond customer service experiences go viral all the time — like when a Southwest Airlines employee drove a woman’s lost luggage three hours, or when online retailer Zulily refunded a customer for a coat that didn’t work but told her to donate it to someone in need instead of returning it. Imagine how that kind of exposure could impact your business.
How does your business handle online comments?
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by Fronetics | Feb 22, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Marketing, Strategy
Content marketing grew one real estate marketing firm’s sales by 300% in less than a year.
Consumers are increasingly going online to conduct research before making a purchase. And that holds true for even the largest investments.
The National Association of Realtors reports that a whopping 94% of Millennials who recently purchased a home relied on websites in their search process. And that’s not just a generational phenomenon — the majority of Baby Boomers (84%) and 69 to 89 year olds (65%) did online research while seeking a new home as well.
Real estate marketers have an enormous opportunity to get their properties in front of more potential buyers through content marketing. With an inbound marketing strategy, customers who are looking for a property like yours will come to you through their own online research.
Take, for example, this case study about a prominent real estate marketing firm in one of the most competitive markets in the U.S. When traditional tactics weren’t bringing in the kind of business needed to sell 1,500 new-construction homes in a new planned community, the firm turned to a new content marketing program to increase web traffic and build brand awareness.
The results were almost immediate. The new digital and content marketing efforts drastically increased web traffic, conversions, and sales. In just 90 days, sales had increased by 37%, and in less than a year, a whopping 300%. At least one-fifth of buyers were sourced directly from the website.
Download this case study to learn more about how content marketing helped the real estate marketing firm drive traffic to their website and increase sales.
by Fronetics | Feb 18, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain
The health care supply chain could cut billions of dollars in cost by adopting practices well established in other industries.
Take the case of a typical Asian laptop manufacturer, for example. As a result of a top-notch supply chain, a European customer can place an order and receive a pallet of freshly assembled computers in just over a week. Ask a pharmaceutical manufacturer for a delivery, on the other hand, and the lead time stretches to 75 days.
The case is further illustrated by the difference in operational metrics between the health care supply chain and the supply chain for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Whether you look at days in inventory, obsolescence, or manufacturing lead time, the FMCG is invariably so efficient that the health care supply chain looks sluggish in comparison.
But such a significant performance gap also means even minor efficiency gains could have a big impact, according to a McKinsey report. An industry that spends in the excess of $340 billion annually on pharmaceuticals and medical devices would benefit from examining every part of its supply chain to not only speed up lead time and boost ROI, but also provide safer and more affordable products to end customers around the world, the consulting firm argues.
The shortcomings so far stem from an inability to tackle challenges that today add substantial cost to the health care supply chain. Big-ticket challenges include:
- Increased regulatory scrutiny
- Expanding product portfolios
- Drug recalls
- Drug shortages
- Counterfeiting
- Supply-chain security breaches
- Medication errors in the developed world
Although transforming a supply chain is an incredibly complex undertaking, McKinsey notes:
“…if the sector adopted straightforward advances well established in other industries, we estimate that total costs (from the supply chain and external areas, such as patient care) could fall by $130 billion.”
Industry research does indeed show every member of the value chain – from pharmaceuticals and medical suppliers to pharmacies and hospitals – that embraces opportunities to optimize the health care supply chain reaps the rewards in increased profitability. In most cases, the impact on profits ranged from 10 to 20 percent.
So which area of the supply chain offers the greatest opportunity for improvement?
Senior supply chain executives in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries overwhelmingly place improved collaboration at the top of the list. To overcome cultural barriers and make transactional relationships more productive, McKinsey suggests the following approach:
“…six essential steps can make the difference between a productive collaboration and a frustrating one: companies must collaborate in areas where they have a solid footing; agree on sophisticated benefit-sharing models; select partners for the potential value of the collaboration, as well as their capabilities and willingness to act as a team; dedicate resources to the collaboration and involve senior leadership in it; jointly manage performance and measure impact; and start out with a long-term perspective.”
Collaboration is still only a small piece in the supply chain puzzle that also includes better market, product, and customer segmentation; greater agility; improved benchmarking and measurements; and the establishment of global standards for data exchange. To put it all together, it is imperative for the health care supply chain to follow the lead of high performing industries.
You may also like: Improving Efficiency in the Healthcare Supply Chain
by Fronetics | Feb 16, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
Interim management is an opportunity.
These days there may be no such thing as “business as usual.” People no longer work for one company for decades and then retire with a pension. Most will work an average of 10 jobs before the age of 40, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that number is predicted to increase over time. Given this fact, it makes sense that, even at the high levels, job consistency is not a given for any one person or any company.
Interim management is an opportunity for companies to handle transition in an optimal way. There are numerous benefits that are cost-effective and efficient.
Organizational continuity
A company can hire someone to come in and specify exactly how they would like to progress in the interim. Demanding status quo, in many ways, may be what the company needs until assessments and next steps are made. The interim manager’s experience can help stabilize public image and alleviate some employee fears.
Choose for specific needs
If continuity isn’t the desired route, the benefit of interim management is that a company can seek specific needs in interim management that fill the holes and address the challenges of outgoing management. If a change is needed, that is possible, too.
Independent thought & experience
Interim management companies work to benefit you and you alone. Of course they gain in some ways, but they are independent from allegiance to other companies and are hired to keep your best interests in mind. It benefits them, in the long run, to serve your specific needs. You can be assured that they aren’t in for a long-term position.
Flexible assignments
A company can hire interim management for however long is necessary. The flexibility of the engagement works well for everyone. Interim management are prepared to work themselves out of the job, genuinely equipped to find the best people for the support role positions and/or an executive replacement. An interim professional can also help navigate unique challenges, act as a board advisor, or offer expertise on special projects and initiatives. They provide effective and efficient talent for the necessary amount of time.
Time to search for candidate
Time, if nothing else, is to be gained here. If an executive becomes ill or leaves unexpectedly, interim management can come in swiftly and deftly take over, allowing for time and space to search for the best replacement candidate.
In a Forbes article about interim executive models in modern management, the author writes, “[G]iven all these benefits, I think companies should be a bit more creative about the way they move people into and out of executive roles.” Interim management is smart. It’s the way of the future in a fast-paced job market.
Fronetics offers management and leadership solutions to organizations within the supply chain and logistics industries during times of transition. Our Fronetics Interim Retained Management Service (FIRMS) is designed to provide specific executive, management, sales or operational expertise when and where you need it, for exactly as long as you need it. By using FIRMS for your interim management needs, you will be able to fill organizational knowledge gaps, minimize disruption, and create positive change for your organization during times of transition.
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by Fronetics | Feb 15, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
When you are posting on social media could be as important as what you’re posting.
Timing is everything, and that statement especially holds true when it comes to posting content to social media. If you are sending out your message and nobody is there to see it, you are that proverbial tree falling in the forest; you did not make a sound. Your post had little to no impact.
So, even if you are putting in the time and effort to craft informative blog posts, tweets with just the right message, or Facebook posts that inspire more than just page likes, you still are not getting the most exposure you can out of social media.
Data that delivers results
According to research by social media scientist Dan Zarrella, when you are posting your content can be almost as important as what you are posting. Luckily, there is an ample amount of analytical data out there regarding optimal times to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.
For example, looking at broad-based Twitter engagement, research suggests that users go up by 30 percent on weekends, speculatively because more people are on their computers, smartphones, and tablets during their free time. On weekdays, this peaks at 4 p.m. EST, perhaps as people check into social media as the workday begins to wind down and they are seeking a diversion.
Some studies suggest that Twitter use often peaks slightly earlier, between 1 and 3 p.m. on weekdays, and this might be attributed to people who take an extended lunch break.
LinkedIn studies show that the optimum times to post content are Tuesday through to Thursday during normal work hours. Also noted: Tuesday 10 to 11 a.m. is known to get the most clicks and shares.
When it comes to Facebook, another marketing study suggests that there is quite a wide range of variables, and it is really based upon your audience. But, in general, the best time to post on Facebook is 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Other popular times include 1 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and lunchtime (12 to 1 p.m.) on weekends.
There are poor times to post on Facebook, too, such as weekends before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., according to SurePayroll’s research.
Research supports that B2B content generally performs 16% better during typical business hours, while B2C content performs 17% better on weekends.
Your (personal) optimal posting time
But, the problem with these suggestions is that they are just statistical generalizations of when might be the optimal time for posting content. What you need is analytics that are specific to your particular followers. Your audience maybe a different demographic than those represented in these studies, and when they are reading, sharing, or retweeting may actually surprise you.
You can access personalized data regarding the social media habits of your readers and followers through analytic programs like Google Analytics and sites like Tweriod. There are a wealth of available free tools, which provide valuable insight regarding your audience.
Here are a few to consider:
- Tweriod is a free Twitter tool that helps you know the best time to tweet. The free analysis will analyze up to 1000 of your followers. Tweriod is not part of Twitter but rather is something you may access to better understand your followers’ schedules and interests, like what they have retweeted.
- Followerwonk can help you to individuate your potential Twitter audience by learning not only who follows your competitors, but who commonly retweets their content. You can also look at your own personal audience and discover what content they like, share, and maybe even link to from other posts, as well as when they are most active on social media.
- Facebook Insights tells you the best times and days to post content by accessing your page’s insights in the posts sections. In the graph section for “When Your Fans Are Online,” you can see the days and times when your fans are using Facebook. This data is constantly updated.
- Google Analytics provides insights, analytics, and data regarding your website, and it lets you do more than measure sales and conversions. It also gives insights into how visitors find and use your site, what they are clicking on, and how to keep them coming back.
Many people still play a guessing game when it comes to deciding the best time to post their content for the most impact. But, studies suggest the average life of a tweet is only about 18 minutes. So, if you tweet something during an inactive period for your Twitter audience, you are probably wasting your time.
Posting the right content, at the right time, can make the difference between getting valuable comments, shares, and clicks on your links, and it can provide a myriad of valuable new leads.
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