Use these strategies to help your business generate revenue with content.
One of the biggest challenges inherent to content marketing is measuring how writing blog posts and posting on social media equals a revenue stream. I know I write over and over again in this space about how content marketing is one of the most effective strategies for growing business and generating revenue. But many in the supply chain industry still struggle to understand the connection.
I highly suggest listening to this podcast interview with Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi. He talks about monetizing content. In summary, businesses need to be about more than just their products and services — they need to be a valuable resource for their customers. This is why content marketing works. It’s a move away from the promotion of products toward branding oneself as a source of knowledge.
But back to monetization. Here are some key takeaways from Joe’s interview about how to generate revenue with content.
Revenue models
Once you’ve established your outlets for content distribution (blog, podcast, YouTube channel, social media platforms, or other publishing outlets) and built an audience, how do you go about generating revenue? According to Joe, there are 10 different revenue opportunities.
The traditional opportunities that most companies think about are:
Selling products
Selling services
Keeping customers longer
Increasing yield
Selling different products
But Joe says that there are five additional revenue-generating activities:
Sell advertising on your site
Create a sponsorship deal
Launch a conference or event
Sell premium content
Ask for donations
Joe advises that business new to these ideas not try everything at once. “Try one revenue model every six months,” he suggests.
Rethink your marketing department structure
Chances are, your marketing department is set up far less efficiently than it should be.
Joe sees a trend of businesses setting up their marketing departments primarily as an opportunity for the sales team — in other words, they are leading “product-first.” “Yes,” he says. “Selling products is important. But you can’t lead product-first anymore. The only competitive advantage people have today is communication.”
It’s time for marketers to refocus on making markets and creating opportunities for organizations. It’s about creating and developing trusted relationships with your audience, and monetizing those relationships by doing more than selling products. Adopting a new vision for your marketing can turn it from a cost-center into a profit-center, with marketing being “profitable in and of itself.”
I repurposed some of our popular content into a video using Lumen 5, a video automation tool.
Have you heard of Lumen 5? It’s a cool website that turns your blog posts into videos in a matter of minutes. You simply enter a URL of an existing post, and it automatically selects text and creates slides with relevant photos. You can edit the text as necessary and swap out photos from a vast library, then select music to go along with the slideshow. And you can even swap colors and add your logo for a little bit of branding.
Super user friendly. Really quick. Did I mention that the most basic functionalities are free?
Video and automation: Two of my favorite words!
I’m always looking for ways to repurpose some of our best content or just present it in a new way. So when my colleague came across Lumen 5 the other day (true story, they are not paying me for this plug), it seemed like an easy tool for doing so.
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I believe all businesses — even supply chain and logistics businesses — should be considering video as a part of their content marketing strategies. Most don’t have the time or budget to do something professional. So automation tools like Lumen 5 offer an interesting opportunity to delve into video without a big investment.
Something else we’re big on at Fronetics? Automation. It’s tricky with marketing because marketing requires a lot of strategic thinking, analysis, and creativity, which really can’t be automated. So any tools that do help automate any part of your creative or editorial processes are a good find.
All this being said, I did do quite a bit of editing and perfecting of the video below. But I was pretty impressed with the original video that Lumen 5 created from my post before I started working on it, too. Features like the text select and image suggestions speed up the editing process, so all in all, I probably spent 20-30 minutes making a video. Not bad!
Video: How Often to Post on Social Media
For our inaugural Lumen 5 video, I decided to use one of our most popular posts, This Is How Often B2B Companies Should Post on Social Media. It’s a question that we get all the time, and I felt the content worked in both the more robust blog post format and the hyper-shortened (about 1 minute) Lumen 5 video format.
Here it is:
What do you think? Do you use any video tools that are free/cheap and fast?
Marketing can help sales close deals by providing targeted content that demonstrates the business value of the product or solution.
Sales and marketing often exist in separate corners. The marketing team works to create lead opportunities through content, and the sales team tags in to turn those leads into deals.
But a new survey report shows how this missed connection is having a real effect on businesses’ bottom lines. In fact, 49% of respondents cited a lack of communication as their biggest misalignment between sales and marketing.
But simply sharing marketing content with your sales team isn’t enough. Another new study shows that one of the 3 biggest mistakes salespeople make is not clearly explaining how their solution helps the buyer’s business.
“Buyers amass information that helps them justify their strategic decisions,” says author and University of Southern California Marshall School of Business instructor Steve W. Martin. “In other words, a product’s strategic value comprises the reasons and arguments that buyers provide to senior management and others in the company about why they should purchase a product.”
Let them have content
Strong communication between sales and marketing can help achieve big-picture goals, including:
mutual understanding of the buyer’s journey
updated prospect insights that can affect future marketing content
brainstorming solutions to bottlenecks in the sales funnel
When your company begins to view sales and marketing as a joint unit, you’ll see a wave of data and resources flowing in both directions. While sales can provide deeper insights into audience relationships, marketing can use that data to provide sales with a wealth of targeted content.
Leverage sales reps as industry leaders
Studies continue to show that sales reps are most successful when they are viewed as experts in their field. A 2016 sales optimization report found that 92% percent of buyers engage if the rep is a known industry thought leader.
As thought leaders, members of your sales team should actively engage in discussions on social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with guidance from your marketing team. Rather than trying to sell, they can use those social spaces to share expert information and to be genuinely helpful.
Arm a sales rep with targeted content to share with prospects during specific moments in the purchase process, and it will advance his or her reputation as a source of knowledge. That can be the key to getting a foot in the door, advancing through the final stages of a purchasers’ decision, or closing the deal.
Find the right marketing outsource partner for your business by asking specifically about strategy development, industry experience, and more.
More and more supply chain companies are choosing to outsource their marketing, giving them the flexibility to focus on their core business, while leaving marketing to trusted experts. But before you jump into a partnership, it’s important to remember that not all marketing firms are created equal.
To help you decide if a marketing firm is right for your business, here are 10 questions you should be asking potential marketing partners — and what to listen for in the answers.
10 questions to ask marketing outsource partners
1) How do you develop a strategy?
The word you should be listening for is: individualized. Your marketing partner should build a strategy specifically tailored to your business, based on data, analytics, and your company’s goals.
2) What would my account team look like?
When you outsource your marketing, look for a team of experts that work together to improve the various aspects of your marketing strategy. For example, the person running your social media presence should have specific social media expertise.
3) Do you know my industry?
It’s vitally important that your marketing partner has a deep understanding of your company, your industry, and your customers. Don’t be satisfied with a surface knowledge, or with a marketing firm that doesn’t have personnel that specializes in your industry.
4) How do you measure success?
Your marketing partner needs to have a plan in place to provide you regular and frequent reports showing designated metrics that match the goals of your strategy. For instance, if one of your business’ goals is to increase brand awareness, web traffic and social impressions are two metrics you should be getting reports on every month.
5) What other services do you offer (even if I don’t need them yet)?
Many of Fronetics’ clients start off wanting only one of our services (like social media management), but quickly realize a multi-channel digital strategy would better help them reach their goals. You want to know that, if you need to expand your scope of work to include more services (such as social advertising or video creation), your partner can handle those.
6) Do you offer training?
We’ve all heard the old adage about teaching a man to fish. While it can be hugely beneficial for your business to trust your marketing strategy to the experts, part of a well-rounded strategy includes educating key members of your staff, such as sales personnel, on how the rest of your business’ operations can dovetail with your marketing strategy. A partner who offers workshops or other types of training is a plus.
7) What is your philosophy for content creation?
Listen for a partner who listens to you. If you’re going to outsource content creation, your partner needs to be ready to learn every aspect of your business, its goals, and its philosophies — and to create content that reflects those things.
8) Do you have videography capability?
Even if you don’t think your business needs video content right now, chances are, this new wave content platform will be something you need at some point. You want to find a partner who can easily help you make strides in this area — whether the partner handles video production in house or will manage a third-party vendor for you.
9) What are your goals for my business?
You want a partner who shares your company’s vision. But it’s a bonus if you can find a partner who offers you goals you hadn’t even considered but that make sense for your business.
10) What’s the first thing you’re going to do when I hand over my business’ marketing strategy to your firm?
While it might be exciting to hear an answer like “revamp your entire web presence,” the savvier business listens for something a little different. A partner who assures that they will first seek to analyze, research, and understand every aspect of your unique business will ultimately be more likely to guide you to your goals. Once they know the ins and outs, then it’s time for the revamping!
Use Quora to answer potential customers’ questions, and they’ll perceive you as a valuable source of knowledge and an industry thought leader.
Despite gaining popularity over the last several years, Quora’s potential as a marketing tool for supply chain and logistics companies remains largely untapped.
In case you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, Quora touts itself as “a place to share knowledge and better understand the world.” It’s a simple premise, but one that’s been highly effective since its founding in 2009: “It’s a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.” Essentially, the site is a community-generated question-and-answer forum.
How does Quora work?
Anyone can ask or answer questions on Quora. A key feature of the site is voting feature: community members vote on which answers are most helpful, boosting those responders’ visibility and credibility. A few other things the site allows you to do:
Target your question to specific users;
Publish content (much like LinkedIn’s publishing platform);
Search for questions or topics relevant to your business, and follow these keywords to get notifications of new questions.
You might already be starting to see the exciting potential in this social media platform. But let’s talk about three specific ways you can use Quora to build your brand, generate leads, and engage with your potential buyers.
3 ways supply chain and logistics marketers can use Quora
1) Research
Using Quora is about gaining and spreading knowledge. Your peers and competitors might be talking about their new projects with an audience that’s actively offering feedback on what it wants or doesn’t want. Before even jumping in with your own content, just staying attuned to the conversation can be a valuable resource as your business builds its marketing strategy.
2) Building and maintaining connections
Relationship-building is a key benefit of using Quora. While sites like LinkedIn and Twitter are valuable for quicker engagement, Quora offers a forum for substantive conversations, a crucial building block for lasting buyer engagement.
The site also offers a great opportunity to reach beyond your normal sphere. Emma MacAnnally of Torchlight suggests: “Don’t be afraid to ask questions and engage in conversations with others you respect and admire.” She points out that doing this will broaden your audience, offer new insights, and give you recognition with thought leaders in your field. “Networking can happen anywhere,” she says.
3) Reputation building
Quora offers you the ability to run a quick search of your business’ name, and tune in to what’s being said about your brand. Also, by answering others’ questions with substantive, reliable content, you can become a resource for potential buyers, as well as others in the industry.
Your business is more than its product. You can offer your audience valuable knowledge. Quora gives you a direct way to answer the questions that your potential buyers are asking, building your reputation as a resource for knowledge and as an industry thought leader.
