by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 25, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
B2B companies are creating more content than ever before. This is true too for companies within the logistics and supply chain industries.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors conducted a survey focused on the use of content within the logistics and supply chain industries. The survey found that companies within the logistics and supply chain industries are using content as a marketing tool and are realizing results. 79% of survey respondents reported that content is an effective marketing tool.
Survey respondents reported that their company uses content to:
- Strengthen overall brand awareness (96%)
- Generate leads (83%)
- Establish the company as an industry leader (74%).
To learn more about the role of content with the logistics and supply chain industries, download the report.
by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 28, 2015 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain, Talent
Strategies for attracting and retaining Millennials for the supply chain industry.
This is part one of two in a series examining the role of Millennials in the supply chain industry. Part one highlights strategies for attracting and retaining top Millennial talent.
For the college graduating class of 2015, Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair elections and disaster relief. Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road. American tax forms have always been available in Spanish. There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
Since 1998 Beloit College has released its ‘Mindset List’, giving us a look at the “cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college.” The List for this year’s graduating class represents a singular profile of students born in 1993 who are part of a larger, increasingly more influential generation – Millennials. With supply chain industry leaders lamenting a growing talent gap, tapping the Millennial generation may be key to filling that gap.
Who are Millennials?
To help us understand how to attract Millennials and why they could give new life to a graying profession, let’s examine who they are and what motivates them. Millennials, those born after 1981, are generally highly educated – though often saddled with debt and underemployed – digital natives who are decidedly collaborative by nature. They’re delaying marriage and parenthood and instead engaging in pursuits of higher education and travel, fueling their strong sense of optimism. Supply chain companies should be actively seeking to attract these Millennials and leverage their strengths to build a strong supply chain industry outlook.
Attracting Millennials
A growing number of university program offerings reflects a strengthening partnership between academia and the supply chain industry, a strategy many companies are relying on to attract and recruit top candidates. Joining existing programs and supporting the establishment of new programs, such as smaller supply chain certification programs, are effective ways to draw top talent. Further support of academic programs through joint curriculum building and offering internship opportunities help to build strong early relationships with students and will have a positive effect on recruitment efforts come graduation time.
Consider non-traditional channels to promote job openings. The frequent use of social media by Millennials has been well documented. Social media can be used to attract great supply chain talent. Furthermore, using social media for the promotion of job announcements establishes brand awareness and allows for more informal candidate engagement, something Millennials find particularly attractive. Similarly, creating visually appealing job descriptions will help to get more out of job postings.
Compensation plans should reflect motivations by which Millennials are incentivized. Different from their older counterparts, Millennials prioritize flexibility and work mobility over salary when considering a job offer. And, with total outstanding student loan debt topping $1 trillion in 2014, Millennials are favoring companies who offer tuition reimbursement programs.
On-Boarding and Retaining Millennials
Of importance to Millennials are an employer’s social values. They seek employers who they believe are endeavoring to accomplish meaningful work. The ability of a company to articulate, promote, and authentically operate by its core values will determine its success in retaining Millennials.
Millennials seek work environments that foster professional development and growth. In fact, according to the Young Entrepreneurs Council, almost a quarter of Millennials believe training and development to be the most valued benefit from an employer. Creating and implementing mentoring programs for Millennials allows companies to leverage the experience of more seasoned employees while creating growth opportunities for Millennials.
When asked about traditionally structured performance reviews, 80% of Millennials said they would rather receive feedback in real-time, making it clear they desire immediate feedback on job performance. Structuring projects in smaller portions and planning frequent check-ins on progress will keep Millennials on task and allow for more nimble operations.
The high percentage of Millennials reporting their desires to work abroad presents a notable advantage for international supply chain companies. Actively promoting and encouraging international work opportunities ensure the protection of human capital investments long after training ends.
The second part of this series will move beyond attracting and retaining Millennials to examining the supply chain application of Millennial skill sets and will paint the landscape for future significant Millennial contributions within the supply chain industry.
by Elizabeth Hines | Jan 20, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Content and social media are integral to business growth
Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog written by Kecia Gray, Vice President, Corporate Marketing & Communications, Transplace. Transplace is a premier provider of transportation management services, intermodal, truck brokerage, and SaaS TMS solutions. Transplace successfully leverages social media and content to expand the company’s brand awareness and thought leadership. The company’s LinkedIn page, Facebook page, and blog were named as “favorites” in a survey conducted by Fronetics.
At Transplace, social media has become an integral part of our marketing and communications strategy and key to expanding our brand awareness and thought leadership in the logistics and transportation space. Our marketing and communication team has had the opportunity to utilize multiple social channels, including:
While we consistently post content to all of these channels, what has been and continues to be important to our social strategy is creating our own original content and utilizing it within a more aggressive approach on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Sharing content on these channels has allowed our newest blog to achieve fast success in under a year’s time.
Content Is King…
Within any industry, there is always significant opportunity to create original thought leadership content that is informative and insightful. When developing a social media strategy, our foremost goal was to establish a thought leadership blog resource for the market, in addition to providing engaging and personalized content across social channels that was easily sharable. Our main objectives focus on connecting with customers, and creating content that resonates with the members of our industry and provides value to their businesses. By distributing this content across our social channels to foster sharing, conversation and engagement, we’ve continued to gain influence with our targeted audiences.
…And Metrics Are Key
Because of the rapid pace of developing content, it’s important to track and report on levels of engagement to optimize and repurpose information. We created a social plan that included a comprehensive calendar to capture the topics and content items we’d be working on throughout the year. For maximum integration, we purposely aligned new pieces to marketing campaigns and corporate objectives such as events, transportation services and current industry issues. In addition, we established benchmarks and metrics that were important for us to track, such as followers and level of engagement. Analyzing the data allowed us to regularly monitor and evaluate our program, maximize what worked and adjust areas that did not meet expectations.
Incorporating Talent for Quality Thought Leadership
We have also taken advantage of the significant opportunity for Transplace employees at all levels to contribute quality thought-leadership posts across a number of channels. We’ve learned that the best place to utilize this content is on the company’s logisticallyspeakingblog.com. Some of the posts we’re most proud of turned out to be the most popular of 2014, including:
- A motivating guest blog post highlighting our dedication to our customers – from George Abernathy, our president and CCO.
- An insightful commentary on the growth of Transplace in light of a recent acquisition – from Frank McGuigan, president of transportation management at Transplace.
- An informative infographic recap of our signature event, the annual Transplace Shipper Symposium, highlighting some amazing speakers.
To ensure we always stay up-to-date and focused, our team holds quarterly meetings in which we share key highlights, metrics and snapshots of the program quarter by quarter. The time is used to plan for what’s coming up in the future, brainstorm new ideas and make changes as needed. We always make the utmost effort to continually update our program and assess our short and long term goals – an important aspect to any social program!
How is your organization utilizing social media and thought leadership content?
by Elizabeth Hines | Dec 30, 2014 | Blog, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
I wrote a guest blog for freight logistics company Cerasis in October which discussed how companies within the manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, and industrial industries can increase their B2B visibility on LinkedIn.
The catalyst for writing the blog were results from a recent survey focused on the supply chain and logistics industry. 58% of respondents rated LinkedIn as “very impactful,” and 37% rated LinkedIn as “somewhat impactful.” At the same time, respondents reported challenges associated with strategy (33%) and a lack of understanding about the application of social media (24%).
Leveraging LinkedIn
There are over 3 million LinkedIn company pages. Being present on LinkedIn is critical, but is not enough. To maximize your LinkedIn presence you need to take steps to increase your B2B visibility. Here’s how:
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Create a compelling company page
Your company page is an extension of your company. Make sure that the page is compelling, informative, and presents your company as a leader within the industry.
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Be active
In addition to keeping your company page up-to-date, you need to be active on LinkedIn on a daily basis. LinkedIn groups are great. Actively participating in LinkedIn groups will allow your company to: 1) gain business and market intelligence; 2) introduce you to new, interesting, and relevant topics; 3) help you increase brand awareness; and 4) position your company as an industry leader.
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Distribute content
If you want your content to be seen you need to get it out there; you need to distribute your content. Distribute your content and curated content via your company page and (when relevant) within the LinkedIn groups to which you belong.
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Employee engagement
Your employees are your brand ambassadors. Empower your employees to be active within LinkedIn groups as representatives of your company. Encourage employees to share your content and industry content with their connections. Additionally, encourage employees to share open positions with their LinkedIn connections, and to identify great talent within their network.
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Prospect for leads
LinkedIn is an effective prospecting tool. Use LinkedIn to prospect for leads and to build your sales pipeline.
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Optimize your profile
Every employee is a reflection of the company. Encourage employees to optimize their personal LinkedIn profiles.
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Don’t be annoying
You will fail if you take a “me, me, me attitude.” Constantly self-promoting is bad for business.
If your company is not using LinkedIn you are missing out on opportunities and revenue.
by Elizabeth Hines | Nov 13, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Founded in 1997, Cerasis is a top North American third party logistics company offering logistics solutions with a strong focus on LTL freight management. For 15 years the company utilized traditional marketing strategies – placing ads in glossy industry publications (print) and relying heavily on referrals. This strategy was effective. The company acquired new customers, retained current customer, and realized positive growth. However, Cerasis was not attracting larger and more sophisticated shippers, and brand awareness was low. Moreover, Cerasis was not perceived as a leader within the industry. The company recognized that in order to catch the attention of their preferred customers, increase brand awareness, and be perceived as a leader within the industry they needed to make substantial changes to their marketing strategy. To overcome these challenges Cerasis decided to shift from their traditional approach to an inbound marketing strategy.
Strategy matters
Understanding that strategy is critical to success, Cerasis took the time to put a strategy in place. Taking a research-based approach to strategy development, Cerasis studied internal company data, trends, and metrics and conducted market research. Using this information Cerasis determined the type of messaging it wanted to share, identified their target audience (buyer persona), and identified the platforms it felt would be the most effective.
Adam Robinson, Director of Marketing at Cerasis, notes that the company took a measured approach:
“Once we had a strategy in place we needed to execute it. We started simply – we posted one piece of content each day.”
Revenue matters
Cerasis’ strategy paid off. Within 25 months Cerasis realized a 14% increase in revenue. This increase was directly attributable to inbound marketing. In addition this stream of revenue, the company’s sales team was able to generate revenue totaling $20 million during this period – more than double the previous two years combined. This can also be linked to the company’s inbound marketing efforts as they increased the company’s brand awareness and positioned Cerasis as a leader within the industry.
To learn more about Cerasis’s approach to inbound marketing and the results realized, download the case study: 3PL Cerasis acquires 98 new customers through inbound marketing.
