by Fronetics | Oct 2, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Our infographic gives you everything from the basics to the specifics of using Reddit for B2B marketing.
Highlights:
- Reddit is a social platform made up of thousands of individual forums where users can post content and vote on its relevance and value.
- The first rule of Reddit: avoid overt brand promotion and sales pitches.
- Creating your own subreddit is the best way to make Reddit a high-value marketing channel.
Reddit calls itself the “frontpage of the internet.” And for good reason. The social networking site boasts over 300 million active users, as well as 140,000 active communities and a whopping 14 million pageviews per month. However, when it comes to using Reddit for B2B marketing, it’s still a relatively untapped channel.
Our infographic is your ultimate guide to using Reddit for B2B marketing. Read on to find out more about this platform and how you can put it to work for your business.
What is Reddit?
Since the site was founded in 2005, Reddit’s user base has skewed young. However, as millennials come of age and rise to positions of influence within the B2B purchasing landscape, Reddit is becoming an increasingly effective way to reach your target audience.
At its most fundamental level, Reddit is a social sharing website built around users submitting links, pictures, and text, which the community can then vote on. Similarly to Quora, the content that’s voted as best rises to top visibility, while downvoted content becomes less visible.
The structure of the site resembles an intricate message board, divided up into hundreds of thousands of subfolders, called “subreddits,” which function as specific forums. Imagine just about any topic you can think of, and there’s probably a subreddit for it. In fact, for thinking about Reddit for B2B marketing, the following subreddits could be of interest:
If you’re looking for industry discussion on a specific marketing topic, it’s likely you can find a relevant subreddit. While each subreddit has different moderators and regulations, there’s one common thread that runs through the entire site: there is a premium placed on authentic content and interactions – and a disdain for overt self-promotion.
(Made with Canva)
Using Reddit for B2B marketing in 5 steps
Now that we’ve covered the basics about what Reddit is and how it works, let’s talk about how to make it part of your marketing strategy.
Step 1: Determine your target subreddit(s).
In the same way that a good digital marketing strategy begins with identifying your target audience, determining your target subreddits is the starting point for successfully using Reddit for B2B marketing. While the massive quantity of subreddits can be overwhelming, consider the following three questions to zero in on the right subreddits for your business:
- Does the subreddit relate to your business’ brand or products, as well as any specific keywords that shape your digital marketing strategy?
- How large is each subreddit’s audience? (Note: bigger isn’t necessarily better. A larger audience has the potential to generate more traffic, but it’s easier to establish your brand’s presence in a smaller subreddit.)
- How much engagement does the subreddit generate?
Once you’ve determined a few relevant subreddits with various audience sizes and high engagement, you’re ready to begin posting.
Step 2: Post links… to websites other than your own.
Before you start wondering why we’re encouraging you to promote other pages, there’s another facet of Reddit to consider. The platform takes the idea of Karma to a literal level. On Reddit, your reputation is referred to as your “Karma score,” and it’s determined by your level of positive participation on Reddit, measured by the number of upvotes you receive. As your Karma score rises, your posts become more visible.
One of the most effective ways to boost your Karma score, particularly when you’re starting out, is to post links to content that the subreddit community finds relevant and generate conversation. It’s important to make sure you don’t repost content that another member of your subreddit has already posted, as duplicates can hurt your Karma score.
Step 3: Share valuable content… that’s not a sales pitch.
When posting content to your target subreddits, the path to success is quite simple. Post content that offers value to the community. This means engaging in discussions, asking and answering questions, and, at all costs, avoiding blatant sales pitches.
Sam Holzman of ZoomInfo explains it this way: “Sharing a link to a product page will signal that you’re a marketer who wants to promote products, not an engaged community member. On the other hand, a blog post about the benefits of a particular product will be more useful to your fellow community members and, as a result, is more likely to be upvoted and commented on.”
Step 4: Advertise on Reddit.
While blatant sales pitches on Reddit are a sure way to a low Karma score, the platform does offer its own native advertising. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, Reddit Advertising is a relatively inexpensive way to boost the visibility of your content on the platform. However, it’s important to note that Reddit doesn’t offer the type of analytics as Facebook and Twitter.
Sponsored posts on Reddit appear at the top of targeted subreddits for a specified duration. You pay for duration as well as the number of impressions you receive. Sponsored posts look like any other Reddit posts. Advertising on the platform isn’t necessary for success, but it can help establish a visible presence, particularly at first.
Step 5: Create a subreddit.
Creating a subreddit isn’t easy – it requires a significant time investment to start and maintain. However, doing so is the best way to turn Reddit into an extremely valuable marketing channel. Once you’ve established your presence, creating a branded subreddit gives your customers and prospects a forum to interact, with you and with each other.
Particularly at the outset, you’ll likely need to promote your subreddit on other platforms. Post links to it on your other digital assets, and you could even offer an incentive for engaging on your subreddit.
Your branded subreddit is also an ideal place to offer customer service. Holding exclusive Q&As, referred to on Reddit as AMAs (“Ask Me Anything”), is another effective strategy to drive traffic and engagement on your subreddit.
The bottom line on Reddit for B2B marketing
Reddit is a rich resource for marketers and a fertile ground for marketing your brand and products. The platform is best thought of as a place to share and engage with high-quality, valuable content, rather than as a place for overt promotion. Effectively using Reddit for B2B marketing requires an investment of time and energy, but the results can be well worth the effort.
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by Fronetics | Oct 1, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Consumers are more likely to trust content generated by their peers, which means higher conversion rates at a lower cost for your brand. Is your brand benefitting from user generated content?
Highlights:
- User generated content is content created by users of a specific brand or on a specific platform.
- Images and video of real people using your products or talking about your services will create trust and loyalty for your brand.
- Don’t be afraid to engage with your audiences over social media, respond to comments, and answer questions.
Video transcript:
I’m Katie Russell, a marketing strategist here at Fronetics, and today I wanted to talk to you about user generated content. Also known as UGC, user generated content is one of the hottest topics in digital marketing right now, but there are many businesses that don’t know how to use this tool to their advantage.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is UGC?
User generated content is content created by users of a specific brand or on a specific platform. It’s highly effective and comes at little or no cost to your business.
With that said, a lot can qualify as UGC including: comments on your blog, testimonials on your website, social media posts, blog articles, videos, Instagram stories, The list goes on and on. What it comes down to is that UGC is really any form of content that comes from a customer or a user.
So, what are the benefits of UGC?
Authenticity
We know that consumers are more likely to trust content generated by their peers, which means higher conversion rates at a lower cost for your brand. This also means the content is authentic and genuine reviews from buyers. Does it get any better than that?
Inexpensive
Since your brand is not generating the content, you don’t have to invest in the time and resources to create it.
What’s hot in UGC right now?
Visual content
Visual content is by far the most popular among audiences, so visual UGC is a no brainer. Images and video of real people using your products or talking about your services will create trust and loyalty for your brand.
Snackable content
We all know that the attention span for content is extremely short these days. When reposting UGC, focus on short, funny and positive content. Content that leaves users feeling informed and entertained will perform best for your brand.
Enlisting influencers
Whether it’s a famous celebrity or a micro-influencer that’s respected within your industry, brands involving influential people in their marketing campaigns can expect higher ROI from UGC.
Don’t forget to follow-up
Once you’ve grabbed the attention of your community with a successful UGC campaign, it’s up to you to capitalize on the momentum. Don’t be afraid to engage with your audiences over social media, respond to comments, answer questions. Have questions about starting a UGC campaign as a part of your digital marketing strategy? Visit us at fronetics.com.
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by Fronetics | Sep 24, 2019 | Blog
Although content is extremely important, it’s only effective if it gets in front of the right audience. Here’s everything you need to know about content distrubution.
Highlights:
- Content distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels.
- Don’t fall victim to the “spray and pray” strategy where you post every piece of content anywhere and everywhere to increase the chances of achieving your desired results.
- Kick things off by looking at how each channel you want to use matches with the audience, your goals, and the priorities outlined in your overall content marketing plan.
Video transcript:
I’m Katie Russell, a marketing strategist here at Fronetics, and today we’re going to be talking about content distribution 101.
Content distribution is a term that’s often thrown around in marketing circles without any specifics attached. Given the growing popularity of content marketing, brands run the risk of having content lost in the shuffle. Here’s what you need to know to start implementing a successful content distribution strategy.
What is content distribution?
First off, what is content distribution? Content distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels.
There are three main components in the process for enabling your brand to build (and grow) communities of loyal, engaged consumers:
- Evaluate your distribution options
- Develop and document your strategy
- Promote your content
Evaluate your distribution options
Let’s start with evaluate your distribution options. Don’t fall victim to the “spray and pray” strategy where you post every piece of content anywhere and everywhere to increase the chances of achieving your desired results. You want to make sure your content is getting in front of the right people, with the right messaging.
Whether you are new at content marketing or a seasoned expert wanting to make the biggest splash possible, you need to decide which channels make the most sense for distribution. Some channels are more appropriate for your content than others, so you want a clear understanding of the unique value proposition of each, and how strongly those benefits align with your audience, brand voice, and goals.
Develop and document your strategy
Once you’ve generated a list of the most viable distribution options, building a strategy is the next step. Kick things off by looking at how each channel you want to use matches with the audience, your goals, and the priorities outlined in your overall content marketing plan. Resources and content types will help establish your editorial strategy. Make sure to document the details of your distribution decisions, so the information can be referenced easily, updated as necessary, and shared throughout your company.
Promote your content
Simply posting your content and waiting for your ideal audience to magically discover it won’t cut it. Make sure you are:
- optimizing your content with keywords, backlinks and calls to action
- repurposing and repackage top performing content
- consider sponsored content on social media sites
Want more information on how to successfully implement a content distribution strategy? Visit us at fronetics.com.
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by Fronetics | 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 Fronetics | Sep 18, 2019 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing
Here are 15 social video marketing statistics that every supply chain marketer should be aware of in 2019.
Highlights:
- 87% of business use video as a marketing tool.
- 83% of marketers report that video gives them a good ROI.
- Social video marketing trends to be on the lookout for: live video and 1:1 personalized video.
If you believe everything you read, you might think that social video marketing has taken a bit of a hit in the past year or so. Largely thanks to Facebook’s well-publicized inflation of video view metrics, companies are naturally wary of investing in video creation and promotion on the platform.
But Facebook’s transgressions shouldn’t undermine marketers’ confidence in the future of social video marketing. Both expert analysis and hard numbers support the notion that video isn’t going anywhere. As digital media expert Michael Humphrey puts it, “All the major upward trends still wrap around video.”
According to Lux Narayan, CEO of independent social analytics company Unmetric, audiences “are longing for more interactive experiences as well as long-form storytelling that only video can best achieve.”
Here are 15 social video marketing statistics we think supply chain marketers should be aware of.
15 social video marketing statistics for 2019
- 47% of internet users have watched brand advertising videos on social media within the past 3 months. (Toluna)
- Of the social media users who have watched branded videos in the past 3 months, 43% watched on Facebook, 38% on YouTube, 18% on Instagram, and 13% on Twitter. (Toluna)
- 87% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, up from 63% in 2017. (Wyzowl)
- 55% of people consume videos thoroughly – the highest percentage of any content type. (HubSpot)
- 30% of users prefer video ads to text or still image ads, while 52% report having no preference. (Only 18% prefer text or still image ads). (Toluna)
- 83%of marketers say video gives them a good ROI, up from 78% in 2018. (Wyzowl)
- 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)
- 68%of people say they’d most prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video, over text-based articles (15%), infographics (4%), presentations and pitches (4%), and ebooks and manuals (3%). (Wyzowl)
- 48% of social media users have sought more information about a product or service based on social video marketing. (Toluna)
- 33% of survey respondents answered yes to having bought a product or service from a brand solely based on social video marketing. (Toluna)
- 88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media. (Animoto)
- 82% of social media users prefer live video from a brand to social posts. (Impact)
- 81% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads, and 84% say video has helped them increase traffic to their website. (Wyzowl)
- 61% of marketers have made more marketing videos in house in 2018 than they did in 2017. (Animoto)
- 67% of users said they would like to see more social video marketing in the future over other types of ads. The remaining 33% are indifferent, not opposed. (Toluna)
The future of social video marketing
Suffice it to say, the numbers bear out the fact that video marketing, and particularly social video marketing, is a trend that’s here to stay. Live video is increasingly popular, and savvy brands are incorporating it into their strategies.
In addition to live video, given the growing ease of shooting video on smartphones, another big trend is likely to be 1:1 video. Marketers can nurture leads via personalized video messages, rather than phone calls or emails, using video to offer additional content, product support, or simply to foster a relationship.
The bottom line is that video offers up the kind of engaging storytelling that users today want. And social media is the ideal distribution platform for video, making social video marketing a winning strategy.
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