by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 19, 2019 | Blog, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Supply Chain
In a highly competitive B2B landscape, AI can be the strategic advantage your brand needs. Here’s everything you need to know about AI for marketing.
Highlights:
- AI enables predictive analysis – the ability to look at a large set of data and predict what steps to take to reach a desired outcome.
- Social listening powered by AI gives marketers key insights into brand perception and audience reaction.
- When considering purchasing an AI technology for marketing, consider if it includes its own Big Data source.
When we think about artificial intelligence (AI), it’s often with a twinge of unease. Whether it’s pop culture telling us that robots will take over at their earliest opportunity, or fears of human labor being replaced with machines, AI is a complex, controversial, and even mysterious topic. But when it comes to the applications of AI for marketing, there’s actually a lot to celebrate.
It’s important for marketers not only to have a thorough understanding of the uses of AI for marketing, but to be aware of industry trends, and how to determine investment to maximize ROI.
What is AI for marketing?
While it’s not necessary for marketers to be artificial intelligence and robotics experts, it’s beneficial to have a functional understanding of the technology that enables AI for marketing. In a general sense, the term “AI” refers to the area of computer science that enables the creation of software and machines that possess what we think of as intelligence. That is, they are able to work, react, and learn without being specifically programmed for each task.
AI is enabled by data science, “the practice of organizing and analyzing massive amounts of data.” When it comes to marketing, AI can be thought of as an extension and development of marketing automation. Essentially, AI for marketing is software that collects, analyzes, and reacts to large amounts of data, with increasing levels of sophistication.
According to content intelligence expert Bart Frischknecht, of Vennli, AI for marketing can be categorized in one of two ways.
- Recommending: This type of marketing software “predicts which action will have the most positive outcome in order to recommend a next step in a series of events.” Frischknecht describes these recommendations as “stepping stones on the way to fully automating a given task.”
- Automating: Software that automates is a furtherance of software that recommends. For a task to be automated, it needs to be “routine and repeatable, the goal needs to be specific, and the steps to achieve that goal must follow an exact set of rules.”
Think of data as the fuel that powers AI for marketing. As we gather more and more data, and devise increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, the possibilities for intelligent automation in marketing will continue to expand.
5 examples of AI for marketing
1) Data filtering and analysis
At Fronetics, we’ve advocated for a data-driven approach to marketing since our founding. For marketers, data is the most powerful strategic weapon in your arsenal, and AI is sharpening it even further. AI software can consolidate large amounts of data, and analyze it to determine patterns and trends.
2) Social listening
Social listening, also known as social monitoring, is the process of observing and examining social media, to identify and access what is being said about your brand. Social listening gives marketers valuable market intelligence, prospect insight, tone awareness, and competitive advantage.
Current AI software lets marketers not only engage in sophisticated social monitoring, but it also enables “sentiment analysis,” automatically generating a report of the overall attitude of your audience and perception of your brand.
3) Predictive analysis
Beyond simply filtering and analyzing data, AI for marketing goes a crucial step further: predictive analysis, the practice of applying the information extracted from data sets to predict a future outcome or trend.
This revolutionary capability of AI can be used to analyze buyer purchase behavior, for example, and determine when and how to distribute certain types of content. Social media scheduling tools, for instance, use predictive analysis to suggest the optimal times to share content.
4) Audience targeting and segmentation
As B2B buyers increasingly come to expect personalization at all stages of the buyer’s journey, it can be a challenge for marketers to deliver. However, AI makes personalization possible at a large scale, drawing on data to segment and categorize audiences.
The limits of the specificity of this segmentation are determined only by the amount of data available. In other words, the more data, the more the AI software can instantly segment a contact list and deliver personalized correspondence.
5) Chatbots
One of the most ubiquitous examples of AI for marketing, chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation using auditory or textual methods. Chatbots communicate with buyers within a messaging app, like Facebook messenger.
3 questions to ask when considering an investment in AI for marketing
While the possibilities of AI for marketing are virtually endless, the reality for most companies is that marketing budgets are not. When considering an investment in any technology, including AI, maximizing ROI should be top of mind. Frischknecht suggests that marketers ask the following three questions when considering an investment in AI for marketing:
- Which marketing task will this technology automate, and will doing so alleviate a significant burden for marketing staff?
- Does purchase of the tech include its own Big Data source, or do I need to provide all the data? If the latter, do I have adequate data, and can I connect my data source to the tech?
- What evidence exists of the tech making good recommendations or automating one of my tasks.
AI is revolutionizing marketing. Investing intelligently in these technologies can provide critical market insights, data processing capabilities, and predictive analysis.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jul 9, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
LinkedIn a great place for businesses to make relevant LinkedIn users aware of their brand. However, there are common mistakes that companies make on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a powerful social network to connect with industry professionals, especially for B2B(business to business). People use LinkedIn to connect with coworkers and industry peers, get business advice, and even find new jobs. It’s a great place for businesses to make relevant LinkedIn users aware of their brand. However, just like Facebook and Twitter, there are common mistakes that companies make on LinkedIn.
Here are 9 LinkedIn for business strategies to avoid, as well as how to remedy them.
1. You Don’t Answer Questions.
The “Answers” section of LinkedIn, where people go to ask their business-related questions, is a place where businesses establish themselves as industry experts and even find new customers. These questions are categorized by industry; anything from finance & accounting to marketing & sales. Avoiding answering questions because you’re too shy or don’t want to invest the time is such a missed opportunity. Take a few minutes each day to look at the new questions in your industry, and see if there is a question you can provide a helpful answer to.
2. You’re Overly Self-Promotional when Answering Questions.
If you were in a bind and reached out to a community of peers for help, would you want the only response to be “Give me your money”? Of course not. You’d hope for honest and valuable guidance. The “Answers” section of LinkedIn is a fantastic place to find potential customers who have publicly revealed that they have a problem your service/product would solve. Instead of proclaiming that they should hire or buy from you to reach a solution, offer useful advice and let them know to contact you directly if they have more questions. This way, you’ll be building a relationship that will gain their trust, and then they’ll be more likely to turn into a customer.
3. You Don’t Join or Participate in Groups.
If you haven’t joined any relevant groups on LinkedIn, you’re missing out on a few things. First, being in a group lets you share links with that group, so you can share links to your own blog or site (in a very non-spammy fashion, of course). Second, you can find out the latest industry news, because other professionals post helpful links to groups constantly. Also, they’re a great place to find industry peers to connect with, whether to find new customers or even find fellow industry bloggers who could potentially link to you.
4. Your Profile is Blank/Incomplete.
Since you’ll be answering Questions and joining Groups with your personal account, you should make sure your own profile is complete so that you can gain people’s trust and establish authority. If people can’t learn anything about you in your profile, they won’t want to connect with you. Describe your role at your current and previous companies, and provide links to your website and any relevant profiles (i.e. Twitter).
5. Your Company Page is Blank.
Your company page has the potential to gain LinkedIn followers who will see your blog posts, company profile updates, and job openings appear in their LinkedIn newsfeed. But if your company description isn’t filled in, it might prevent people from following you, or even from finding you in the first place. Make sure you optimize your company page by including relevant keywords and links to your website.
6. You Don’t Promote Your LinkedIn Page on Your Website.
Keeping your company’s LinkedIn profile page a secret from your website visitors isn’t a good idea since these are the people most likely to actually follow you. Add a LinkedIn icon to your website to increase awareness of your presence on LinkedIn. Make it easy for your visitors to find out how to connect with you on social media.
7. You Ignore Connection Invitations.
Once you provide value in Answers and Groups, people will start inviting you to connect with them on LinkedIn. Don’t just ignore these invitations. Unlike Facebook, don’t feel like you need to personally know everyone that you connect with. LinkedIn automatically sorts your connections based on how you know them; whether through a current or previous job, or through a group, so don’t be concerned about having a network that’s too big to keep track of.
8. You Don’t Post Status Updates
It might seem like overkill to post updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But it’s not. LinkedIn is a more professional social networking site than Facebook and Twitter, so it’s likely that you’ll have different followers here who will benefit from seeing your updates. It’s ok to re-purpose content across all of the social channels, as long as you’re not duplicating the content.
What would be your #9? Let me know in the comments below!
This article was written by Diana Urban, marketing manager at BookBub and the former Head of Conversion Marketing in HubSpot. Diana is a results-driven marketer and content strategist who’s passionate about inbound marketing at startups.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Apr 23, 2018 | Blog, Current Events, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain
Google implemented a supplier diversity program to drive economic growth for small businesses and help boost Google’s innovative culture.
In 2014, Google launched a supplier diversity program to ensure that its staff had the ability to search large and small vendors when purchasing products or services. The tool it developed has helped Google employees create relationships with small businesses, defined as U.S.-based companies with $15 million or less in annual revenue and 50 or fewer employees. Google felt these companies often have a specialized and innovative product or service but might never be discovered simply because of their size.
Getting started
The supplier diversity program was developed out of a company-wide “business inclusion” initiative, in which Google wanted to level the playing field for its current customers and decided to use the same principles for their suppliers. “We realized that if we want small and diverse businesses as customers, we should also want them as suppliers. We wanted to be open for business and have economic impact,” says Adrianna Samaniego, senior global program manager of Google’s Small Business Supplier Diversity program.
Chris Genteel, head of Business Inclusion at Google, attended the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) conference in 2012, and quickly understood the monumental impact Google could have on small businesses. The company had the opportunity to influence economic growth for suppliers that were under-represented online, while also gaining access to inventive products that Google users had yet to discover.
Supplier diversity at work.
Samaniego, Genteel, and Adam Gardner, a site program manager at Google, began devoting 20% of their week to developing a supplier diversity program. Genteel says their objective from the very beginning was “to build out a program that was meaningful and not just symbolic.”
The key objectives of the supplier diversity program are defined as:
- Create a program and technology tool that is easy to use by suppliers and Googlers alike.
- Communication is critical: Google commits to responding to suppliers within two weeks.
- Provide benefits for participation: discount on sites, faster payment options for suppliers, and training programs.
- Create an advisory board to add in guiding suppliers.
After laying out the foundational elements of the program, Genteel got to work on developing an internal technology tool for Google staff to search small and diverse suppliers with specialized and innovative products or services.
The result
In 2014, Google officially launched the Small Business Supplier Diversity program. The program focuses on two key components: supplier diversity and innovative skills development.
In collaboration with the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Google continues to discover, rank, and utilize small suppliers, helping them to successfully compete with larger corporations and increase product and service awareness.
“We now want to invest more in education. We’re digging into our data to understand where we are compared to our metrics of success. And we’re drilling down by community into the community of diverse suppliers to uncover the areas where we can improve,” Samaniego says.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Feb 20, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
One of 2018’s fastest growing marketing trends is influencer marketing. Companies will increase their influencer marketing budget to keep up with the competition.
You’ve probably heard the buzzword by now: Influencer marketing seems to be on the tip of every marketer’s tongue these days. Linqia’s latest report, The State of Influencer Marketing 2018, shows that B2C companies are already taking full advantage of this marketing trend. Their report shows that 86% of B2C marketers used influencer marketing in 2017, and 92% of marketers that tried it found it to be effective.
B2B marketers, on the other hand, have been slower to adopt this new marketing trend. Influence 2.0 – The Future of Influencer Marketing Research Report 2017 showed that only 11% of B2B marketers have an ongoing influencer program.
To understand why influencer marketing is becoming so popular and why B2B companies need to jump on the trend, let’s start with the basics.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people, rather than the target market as a whole. Marketers identify individuals that have influence over potential buyers and create marketing campaigns and activities around these influencers.
For example, Microsoft teamed up with National Geographic last year to launch an influencer marketing campaign, called “Make What’s Next.” The technology giant leveraged some of the most famous adventure photographer influencers on Nat Geo’s Instagram for the campaign. The objective was to bring awareness to young women with interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). By utilizing Nat Geo’s most heavily followed female photographers, Microsoft was able to access a built-in following.
Why influencer marketing works.
Influencer marketing is extremely effective because of three key components:
- Social reach: Influencers can reach millions of followers (and consumers) through their social media channels, websites, and blogs.
- Original content: Influencers work with marketers to produce original content for your brand.
- Consumer trust: Through their existing, strong relationships with their audiences, influencers have a built-in level of trust and can influence consumer opinions.
Content marketers are working overtime to update their content marketing strategies to include influencer marketing campaigns. Consumers no longer want to hear from brands about their products; they want someone they trust to recommend products and services. This is where influencer marketing comes in to play.
Marketers across industries found influencer marketing to be so effective in 2017, that 52% of are planning programs that leverage multiple types of influencers (celebrities, top-tier bloggers, micro-influencers) in 2018.
Where do you begin?
Instagram should be your starting point. According to new research, influencer marketing on Instagram will have generated over $1 billion by the end of 2017, with significant annual growth going forward. With more than 700 million users, Instagram’s platform allows influencers to easily share photos and videos with their followers. Product promotion has never been easier.
Boxed Water turned to Instagram influencer marketing to market its philanthropic campaign, The ReTree Project. The company paired with social influencers, like actors Aidan Alexander and Jaime King, and YouTube star Megan De Angelis, to spread the word about their new campaign. These popular Instagram users asked consumers to post a photo with the hashtag #ReTree and, in turn, Boxed Water would plant two trees for every photo posted. Just one month after launching the campaign, Boxed Water generated more than 2,600 posts with the hashtag.
With 39% of marketers planning to increase influencer marketing budget this year, B2B companies are quickly seeing the leverage that influencers can have over their target audiences. By pairing your products or services with the right influencer, marketers can easily tap into thousands of potential consumers, increasing website traffic and leads.
Have you tried influencer marketing? How was your experience?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Feb 7, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
To be effective, your content marketing strategy should align with your sales goals. Here are three simple questions to ask yourself to make sure your documented strategy is on target.
I recently read an article on the Harvard Business Review that discussed pairing your sales goals with your marketing goals. This strikes at the heart of what we do at Fronetics: build a client’s content marketing strategy that will help advance their short- and long-term business goals. It sounds simple, but you have no idea how many organizations’ marketing goals are misaligned with what the larger organization is trying to accomplish
We need to make sure that — while we’re continuing to increase content production — we have a fundamental understanding of what we’re trying to create.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 88% of marketers use content marketing. But a mere 30% of B2B marketers say their organization is effective at it. What that says to me is that a lot of companies are dumping their resources into content marketing, but, without a strategy that advances their business goals, they’re throwing away their time and money.
A content marketing strategy outlines the methods by which you will target, reach, and engage your audience. Research and execution of these tasks can be quite complex. Writing out a plan and assigning appropriate resources can offer clarity and guidance to your organization throughout the course of your program.
Here are three questions to ask yourself to make sure that your content marketing strategy is complementing your sales goals.
3 questions to align your sales goals and content marketing strategy
1. Why: Why am I doing this?
This question should be fairly easy to answer. The reason you’re documenting a content marketing strategy is for your business. You’re looking to align your marketing efforts with your business objectives. For a lot of companies, this ultimately means increased revenue from sales growth.
When done correctly, content marketing can support sales goals, making it easier to generate leads and helping the sales team close business. But you need to continually ask yourself, why?
The constant demand for more and more content can have a great impact on quality. More isn’t always better. Make sure you’re checking in with your strategy to make sure the content you’re producing is in alignment with your business goals.
2. Who: Who am I trying to attract?
In order to get the ball rolling in content marketing, you have to understand who you are trying to reach. Your company’s sales goals will help guide this target audience. It’s important to think holistically when considering who you are trying to reach at a potential prospect’s company. Typically, your target audience falls into two categories: Primary (decision-makers) and Secondary (influencers of the decision-maker).
Going one step further, you need to identify your target audience’s needs and pain points so that you can direct your content marketing strategy at creating awareness around those needs.
Once you have a thorough understanding of who your target audience is, you can begin to identify the different social media platforms they use. Using analytics tools within social networks can help you identify trends in social media use.
3. What: What content is going to work the best?
You’ve discovered your why and who, but now you need to finalize what kinds of content you’re going to create. Create the kinds of content your target audience seeks, and distribute it through the platforms on which they seek it. How-to videos on YouTube? Thought leadership on LinkedIn? Optimize the material you distribute for each channel. Use the social channels that best suit your brand message, type of content, and target audience.
Valuable and relevant content is not a sales pitch, but can help the sales process. Create content that communicates valuable information to customers and prospects so that they have the knowledge to make more informed decisions. Moreover, concentrate on content that establishes your business as a reliable source of knowledge — as a thought leader within the industry. Be thoughtful when you create content.
Even though 39% of marketers expect their content marketing budgets to increase this year, that doesn’t mean you should continue throwing money at your content marketing efforts until you have a clear plan that will advance your business. To be effective, marketers should document a content marketing strategy that aligns with their business and sales goals. It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it should reflect the “why, who, and what” of your sales strategy.
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