by Fronetics | Dec 13, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Get the tools you need to create and implement a content marketing strategy that drives profitable customer action for your business.
Content marketing can be an incredibly effective tool for attracting customers and growing a business. But it ain’t easy. In fact, logistics and supply chain companies report creating and executing an effective content marketing strategy as one of their top challenges.
That’s why Fronetics created its Guide to Content Marketing for the Logistics & Supply Chain Industries. Newly updated to include even more helpful tips, tricks, and ideas, the guide offers step-by-step instructions for getting an effective content marketing program up and running.
If you are a DIY kind of person or are just looking to learn more about how to develop a modern-day marketing strategy for your business, this guide is a good place to start. Templates, lists, calendars, and more will walk you through the process of developing a strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Included in this guide is information regarding:
- Buyer personas
- Keyword development
- Content creation and distribution
- Social media participation
- Lead-nurturing workflows
- And more
Click the button below to download the new and improved guide and to get started creating a content marketing strategy that works for your business.
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by Fronetics | Dec 8, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
How 2 new developments have changed the world of marketing
The year 2017 is about to dawn, and with it marks a decade anniversary of the birth of two seismic changes in how people view the world around them. No doubt you’ve incorporated both of these changes into your daily life, but have you fully absorbed them into the way you conduct your business?
In supply chain and logistics businesses, the general answer is “no.” That’s a significant problem for a company’s long-term success, but it can be remedied.
Let’s look at the two world-changing phenomena, how rapidly they’ve reshaped the world, why they are crucial to your company, and steps you can take to fuse them into your business.
A new website is launched
It was just 10 years ago that a new website poked its head up on the internet, offering to the general public an online social network so people could keep in contact with friends and family. Originally designed as a private forum for college and high school students to connect online, but its founders thought perhaps it might catch on with the public, too.
In late 2006, when Facebook opened its website to anyone who wanted to sign on, it saw its users soar by 33%, to 8 million. But that was barely a blip compared to the social and business marketing revolution it has created worldwide. Now over 1.8 billion people use Facebook, and hundreds of millions more use other social media channels that have sprung up in its wake — Twitter, LinkedIn, Snap, Instagram, and many others.
For businesses, social media has opened up an entirely new way to find and interact with customers. It’s changed the traditional ground rules of marketing and advertising. And it’s created a completely new and sophisticated tool — big data — that provides unprecedented amounts of information about customers and potential customers. That information is valuable.
A new phone dials in
The second revolution is now literally in the hands of one quarter of the world’s population.
Around the time Facebook launched, Apple came out with its first foray into the emerging field of cellular phones. The iPhone was an instant hit, selling a little over 1 million phones in its debut year, 2007. It combined the functions of a smart cellphone with intuitive ways to connect to the internet. Rival technologies quickly followed suit. Today, an estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide use a smartphone.
Mobile communication, via smartphones, is now the dominant way that people access the internet. About 55% of people use their phones to surf the web. And while a decade ago they spent less than 30 minutes per day using their phone’s functions, now it’s around 3 hours per day. Here’s another thing to consider — most people have their cellphones on their person during all their waking hours, and they check it over 100 times a day.
For businesses, having a mobile phone strategy and a well-managed mobile presence is absolutely essential. When it’s working at full throttle, it’s populating the social media apps that people are checking dozens of times per day. It’s providing compelling content that they want to read; it’s building up name-brand recognition; and it’s growing brand loyalty.
Looking toward 2017
Every year the boundaries of social media and internet marketing get pushed. It is hard to find a consensus on what the dominant trend will be. Will Twitter dwindle and other social media platforms take its place? Some think that companies will need to be faster and smarter about creating content linked to whatever the hot topic of the day is. Others don’t see a dominate change on the horizon; instead incremental changes to what’s already online.
For supply chain and logistics companies that want to establish a foothold or build on an existing beachhead, the solutions lie in the new evolution of customer interaction, called content marketing.
The landscape changes ahead are hard to predict, but there are some reliable existing strategies to follow. Fronetics has put together a guide on how supply chain and logistics companies can formulate tactics to take advantage of the opportunities that a content marketing plan and a robust social media presence can create. Click below to download the guide.
Who knows what social innovations the next decade will spawn. If the past decade is any guide, another revolution is coming. Are you keeping pace?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Dec 7, 2016 | Blog, Current Events, Strategy, Supply Chain
Regardless of Trump’s campaign promises, global trade and trade agreements are complex issues that can’t be solved with the wave of a tariff wand.
Trade was at the forefront of the 2016 presidential race, with both candidates putting the United States on a collision course with China. President-elect Donald Trump, of course, made massive tariff hikes one of the defining issues of his campaign.
In stark contrast to traditional Republican rhetoric, Trump vowed during his acceptance speech in July — while also promising to bring jobs back to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, and “all of America” — “I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences. Not going to happen anymore.”
Although such language makes trade experts and economists balk, that line in particular earned the approval of both Democratic (72%) and Republican (61%) voters who listened to the speech as part of a focus group. If you have been directly affected by the manufacturing layoffs, it may be tempting to assume that waving the tariff wand and putting the screws on American companies will bring about a manufacturing renaissance in the United States.
The complex problem of global supply chains
The reality is, as countless experts caution, far from that simple, threatening instead to severely disrupt U.S. manufacturers that rely on global supply chains.
One of the bleakest assessments by Moody’s Analytics maintains hitting China and Mexico with tariffs of 45% and 35%, respectively — and assuming they do not retaliate with the same rates — would cause two million American workers to lose their jobs, throw the country into recession, and lead to another 1.5 million jobs never being created that otherwise would have been.
Besides the global implications of a trade war, imposing high tariffs on China, to which the United States sold $116 billion of goods in 2016 (including aircraft parts, semiconductors and automobiles) could have far-reaching consequences on the health of our high-value industries if China decides to hit back.
The law of unintended consequences
The law of unintended consequences was on display when the U.S. Commerce Department in 2012 slapped anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels after SolarWorld AG charged below-cost Chinese imports cost hurt the company’s U.S. production. In response to the 78% duty, China hit U.S. producers of polycrystalline silicon, the raw material for photovoltaic cells, with 57% duties.
As a result, a fast-growing industry gearing up to meet demand from Chinese solar panel makers took a significant hit. Hemlock Semiconductor in 2014 abandoned construction of a $1.5 billion new silicon plant, while REC Silicon in Moses Lake, Wash., halted production this year.
REC Chief Legal Officer Francine Sullivan commented in Fortune, the “necessity and value in putting on tariffs to protect solar panels in the U.S. was just not thought through. We’ve suffered enormous financial damage as a result of this.”
As I reviewed a variety of opinions for this piece, I came across two quotes that offer valid yet widely different perspectives on the issue:
First, here is Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, in Fortune:
“I don’t think [Trump] does our issue any favors by being so incredibly jingoistic and bombastic. But I believe there is widespread agreement. … There is something amiss with our economic relationship with China, and it’s past time that our government pushes back a little more forcefully.”
Secondly, Doug Oberhelman, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar and president of Business Roundtable, who has described higher tariffs as “very dangerous,” told the New York Times:
“We are 5% of the world population. Ninety-five percent of our potential customers are elsewhere. We’ve got to learn and figure out how to deal with that.”
Regardless of which viewpoint coincides with your own, it is safe to say trade and trade agreements are enormously complex issues that hardly fit into the narrative of populist appeal. An outright trade war will benefit no one.
What is your take on this issue?
This post originally appeared on EBN online.
by Jennifer Hart Yim | Dec 6, 2016 | Big Data, Blog, Data/Analytics, Leadership, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Transportation & Trucking, Warehousing & Materials Handling
Supply chain leaders must be ready to implement big data in order to continuously improve.
This guest post comes to us from Adam Robinson, director of marketing for Cerasis, a top freight logistics company and truckload freight broker.
Supply chain leaders are enthralled with the idea of using big data, but they tend to fail to understand how to disseminate big data in their organization properly. True, they may know how to roll out big data in a single warehouse, or they may have heard their competitors used branded systems for implementing this new technology. However, the fundamental problem remains.
Supply chain leaders must be ready to implement big data and leverage it to improve their companies without any delay or inhibition. This may sound impossible and frightening, but they must only understand how big data always goes back to these two, simple principles of measurement: review and action.
Ask traditional questions, and let big data provide answers.
The most common complaint of newer companies using big data analytics capabilities tends to revolve around traditional questions of business strategy. Consider the following elements explains John Richardson of Inbound Logistics, that impact business strategy.
- Increasing order efficiency.
- Demand forecasts.
- The quantity of each product.
- Inventory location and management.
- Raw material suppliers and logistics.
- Transportation modes used in procurement and shipping.
- Distribution of goods prior to purchase.
- Demand fluctuations.
Each of these elements more traditionally handles by outsourcing analysis of processes to supply chain consultant. This is actually where the concept of third-party logistics providers involved. However, rapid growth and diversification of products are making shippers, manufacturers, and suppliers rethink their business strategy. In other words, consumers can get practically anything they want at a moment’s notice, and more consumers are expressing a willingness to wait for a product a few days if free shipping is a possibility. So, this need to adapt operations reflects the common concerns of traditional customers and supply chain entities. However, there is a distinction.
Previously, these entities only needed to focus on their local demographic for ensuring continued stability. But the rise of the internet has given consumers and everyone else the ability to access any product from any seller and any place on the globe. This is a traditional business strategy, and it is essential that the modern supply chain is willing to use big data all operations to create a more positive result than consumers, stakeholders or government organization ever needed before.
Performance measurement and management.
As explained in a previous blog post, continuous improvement in an organization can be achieved through the use of performance measurement tools via big data. Mostly, this reflects the skills and actual working capacity of employees. Since employees represent one of the largest expenses an organization may face.
Having the best staff members available can mean the difference between success or failure in a company. Furthermore, big data can help employees understand what they do and do not need to do in order to improve their performance scores. This will also help to prevent oversight from managers and keep all employees on track to complete their responsibilities as assigned.
Performance measurement does not have to be limited to the performance of employees either. It can be expanded to identify poorly performing machines, or it can be used to isolate inefficiencies in collaboration with suppliers or vendors. Ultimately, performance measurement is a metaphor for tracking any metric in the course of the supply chain, but it’s key to being effective is found in transferring the insights gleaned from big data into actionable results.
For example the operational efficiency of a given loading is directly related to how quickly pickers are able to fulfill orders and move them onto the dock. Obviously trucks can only be loaded so fast; what is the number of pickers appropriate for the current workload, or which route through the factory is adding an extra 20 minutes to each worker’s duties?
These questions illustrate that the most insignificant details can be driving forces of inefficiency in the supply chain. But they represent opportunities for continuous improvement. Changes in the design or layout of the warehouse or alterations to the truck schedule may require changing the duties of a certain worker at a moment’s notice. Essentially, the worker must be able to access continuous data measurements on all factors affecting his or her responsibilities.
Supply chain leaders need to focus on continuous improvement.
Continuous improvement is a complex notion. It is based on hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of individual metrics from various collection points and analyzed in real time. All of this reflects a very large volume of data. It can be digested and broken down into usable bits, much like the biological processes of the stomach making it essential to surviving the coming season.
This comparison is much more than a metaphor; it is the real issue being faced by supply chain entities and their leaders. Supply chain leaders must use big data to gather insight and create quantifiable measures of performance and functionality across their enterprises on a recurring, frequent and immediate basis.
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by Fronetics | Dec 5, 2016 | Blog, Supply Chain, Talent
Compare your company culture to the attributes of the four Hogwarts houses to determine where you belong.
Company culture is an integral part of who a business is. It affects the product, the kind of talent it attracts, and, ultimately, its business performance.
Company culture can also tell you which Hogwarts house you belong in.
Or, so say the folks at Venngage, a free infographic, template, and design tool. Venngage’s editors sorted their 54 favorite tech companies into the four houses that make up the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, of Harry Potter fame.
Companies like Twitter and Google fell into Gryffindor, Harry Potter’s house, for their best-in-class ambitions and risk-taking ways. On the other hand, the editors assigned Apple and LinkedIn into Slytherin, the house of dark lord Voldemort, because they are tactic-driven and resourceful.
Which Hogwarts house would your company belong in?
Venngage came up with attributes of each of the four Hogwarts houses that could also reflect company culture. Here are the descriptions for each house:
Gryffindor
Companies with a Gryffindor culture want to be the best in their niche (and maybe even the industry as a whole) and aren’t afraid to take risks to get there. Generally, they are the most likely to use competitive incentives, like sales targets, to drive productivity. Companies with a Gryffindor culture pride risk taking, determination and competitiveness in their team members.
Hufflepuff
An environment of community, collaboration and working towards shared goals is at the base of companies with a Hufflepuff culture. That’s why nonprofits and companies targeting education often align with this house. Companies with a Hufflepuff culture pride trustworthiness, loyalty and a strong work ethic in their team members.
Ravenclaw
Companies with a Ravenclaw culture put a lot of thought into every aspect of their business. They pride themselves on creating the best product and on refining that product through rigorous testing. Companies with a Ravenclaw culture pride creativity, innovation and thought leadership in their team members.
Slytherin
Companies in Slytherin are resourceful and tactic-drive and are always looking for new and better ways to achieve their goals. They may see the value in more traditional hierarchical structures, with a more rigid chain of command. But that doesn’t mean people in a Slytherin company culture don’t take care of their own — they simply regard experience as an important factor of authority. Companies with a Slytherin culture pride ambition and cunning in their team members.
I compared our company mission and values here at Fronetics, and I believe that we’d fall into Ravenclaw house. We are driven by data; we constantly evaluate our clients’ strategies for effectiveness; and creativity and thought leadership are our bread and butter.
What house does your company fall in?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Dec 1, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
Consumer expectations of expedited, free shipping come at a cost to e-commerce businesses — but is it worth it?
The race to deliver orders at an ever-increasing pace — free of charge — is raising the stakes for shippers and retailers. Everything from the size of packaging to the selection of the right carrier has to be examined to prevent e-commerce ventures from becoming financially unviable.
While Amazon, the uncontested super power of e-commerce, has been known to rack up big losses to gain market share, smaller players are battling to meet consumer expectations of two-day, next-day, or even same-day delivery. The Amazon effect also means consumers are less willing to pay anything at all for shipping.
As free shipping is becoming a prerequisite for building customer loyalty, retailers know that charging even a minimal amount to deliver the product can break the deal. If the cost of shipping is perceived to be excessive, 63% of consumers surveyed by Jupiter Media Metrix will cancel the purchase.
In addition, consumers have grown accustomed to adding on smaller items to qualify for free shipping. But those items — one-ounce face creams, eye shadow, ear plugs — frequently arrive at their destination at significant cost. Jupiter found, for example, 45% of companies lose money on shipping.
Shippers also pay the price as small items do not necessarily come packaged in small boxes, consuming valuable space at a time when U.S. trucking tonnage is at record highs. FedEx and UPS both made headlines early last year when they, despite low fuel prices, raised shipping rates, partly as a result of dimensional weight pricing.
Now standard industry practice, dimensional weight pricing is estimated to have increased parcel shipping costs by as much as 20%, an additional expense ultimately passed on to consumers as well as small business owners. And with e-commerce forecast to grow from $392 billion this year to $491 billion in 2018, according to eMarketer Projections, demand will remain high at the same time as the shortage of drivers appears to have no real solution.
Pressure is likely to mount further as Amazon seems to be preparing to launch its own global package-delivery service that could rival those of competitors such as UPS and FedEx. With space on pallets a hot commodity, Amazon kicked off the year by adding thousands of trailers to its fleet, which is transported by third-party carriers. The online giant also hopes to build its own U.S. cargo operations to guard itself against delivery delays that affected some shoppers this past holiday season.
So what is the small business owner with a burgeoning e-commerce business to do?
Since it may be nearly impossible to rival the speed of Amazon Prime, focusing on keeping shipping costs to a minimum should pay off, advise several experts interviewed by Entrepreneur.
Steve Strauss, author and founder of www.smallbiz.com, a small-business consulting site, recommends businesses offer at least one express service and one standard service. “In this competitive environment where there’s very little customer loyalty, things like shipping matters. Look at it this way: If you don’t have a store location, you’re saving on rent and employees. Eat the shipping. It’s a small cost to you, and customers will respond,” he said.
What do you think is the key to staying competitive in the e-commerce space?
This post originally appeared on EBN online.
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