by Fronetics | May 9, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Supply Chain
Putting your audience’s informational needs first when publishing blog content is the only way to guarantee success in the modern marketing landscape.
Highlights:
- Audiences are increasingly ignoring promotional messaging.
- Buyers are seeking value from vendors outside the sales funnel.
- Information is your best asset — publish what you know.
The latest industry research from the Content Marketing Institute indicates that nearly all (90%) of the most successful B2B content marketers have one thing in common: they prioritize their audience’s informational needs over their sales/promotional message. And that’s compared with only 56% of the least successful B2B content marketers.
Materials-handling marketers should take note when making decisions about publishing blog content. We see companies in this sector making this mistake all the time. They want to fill their blogs with information about their products. But to achieve success in today’s B2B purchasing landscape, you need to be prioritizing your audience’s needs over promotional messaging.
Sales pitches get ignored
A large reason for shifting focus is because audiences are increasingly tuning out sales pitches. This generation of buyers has been heavily marketed to their entire lives, and they don’t hesitate to swipe left at the slightest hint of someone trying to sell them something.
Think for a moment about your own personal experiences with email, social media, and even phone calls. The truth is, most of us tune out overt sales pitches, either hitting delete or scrolling past them. We’ve moved beyond a time when marketing is about pushing your products.
Your blog, therefore, should not be another channel for selling. But, what kinds of information should you publish?
Provide value by putting customer needs first
The answer is actually quite simple. What information or expertise do your buyers want? Your most valuable commodity is your unique understanding of the challenges your audience faces. If you begin publishing blog content that answers their questions, they’ll be more likely to find you, remember you, and become your customer.
As you think about publishing blog content, take a step back and think about the questions your buyers ask, either of you, on social media, or elsewhere. Examine industry publications to determine the challenges faced by your target buyer persona.
Does your content answer those questions? Does it offer value in and of itself? And does it inform your audience about how you are there to help them? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re taking the right steps toward materials-handling marketing with today’s B2B buyers.
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by Fronetics | Apr 9, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing
If you’re trying to build a YouTube audience, you’ll need equal parts strategy, creativity, concision, and valuable subject matter. Highlights: Strategy and creativity are top priorities. Keep content short and sweet for maximum impact. Offer value to your audience...
by Fronetics | Apr 3, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Supply Chain
Here’s why manufacturing marketers should skip the sales pitch and create content that prioritizes the needs of their target audience.
Highlights:
- Research indicates that only about half of manufacturing marketers are prioritizing their audience’s needs when creating content.
- Inbound marketing (like content marketing) is more effective than outbound marketing for B2B businesses.
- A documented strategy will help you get started creating focused, quality content.
One statistic is sticking out to me in the Content Marketing Institute’s Manufacturing Content Marketing 2019: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report. According to the research, half (51%) of manufacturing marketers reported that they always or frequently prioritize their sales/promotional message over their audience’s informational needs when creating content for content marketing purposes.
Let’s think about that for a second.
A preponderance of manufacturing content marketers are, unfortunately, missing the point.
We’ve written before about why inbound marketing, like content marketing, is more effective for the supply chain than more traditional outbound marketing techniques. And while it’s true that “the supply chain is increasingly seeing the value of moving to an inbound marketing strategy,” the CMI’s research suggests that it’s taking some marketers a long time.
Why you should be putting your audience’s informational needs first
Why should you be emphasizing your audience’s informational needs over your promotional goals when creating content?
The short answer is: because your audience prefers it. One of the basic premises of content marketing is the recognition that, increasingly, your customers want much more from you than your product. For manufacturing marketers, this means that customers want value separate from and outside of the sales funnel.
Enter content marketing. Creating effective marketing content relies on accepting that your business has much more to offer than its primary products and services. In fact, your most valuable commodity, as we’ve often said before, isn’t any material or service — it’s the knowledge, expertise, and informed, unique perspectives you have to offer.
Strategize to put customers first
To successfully adjust your content marketing efforts to put your customers’ informational needs first, the first step is having a well-defined, measurable strategy — and documenting it. This means defining precisely who you’re trying to reach and developing a complete target buyer persona(s).
Once you’ve defined exactly who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to identify the unique questions, needs, and challenges this target buyer faces. Chances are, your business has not only the products to meet those needs, but also the information to answer question and offer valuable insights.
One of the benefits of a documented strategy, with clearly stated objectives, is that it allows you to set up metrics and evaluate your successes and shortfalls. This is where you can start listening to your target buyers. You can even solicit responses from them via email and social media that will allow you to target and hone your efforts in the future.
Meeting manufacturing marketers’ challenges
The CMI’s research reinforces the fact that manufacturing marketers face unique challenges. The top reported challenge was “creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within the target audience.”
According to Achinta Mitra, founder of Tiecas, an industrial marketing consultancy, “Buying decisions are made by a committee and very rarely, if ever, by an individual. Some of these stakeholders may never interact with your content or visit your site.”
Essentially, there are various types of buyers with various needs — meaning their content needs are different. Mitra advises bringing “subject matter experts to the forefront, and letting marketing do the heavy lifting in the background.” He bases his advice on the belief that “one engineer to another is a powerful concept for earning trust, gaining credibility, and winning the mindshare of engineers and industrial professionals.”
If you’re thinking beyond downloads when creating content, and truly prioritizing quality information, your content will function broadly throughout the complex manufacturing buyer’s journey.
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by Fronetics | Dec 13, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
These are the top 10 most-viewed supply chain and logistics posts of 2018.
Our goal throughout the year is to provide our readers with the latest news and happenings in the supply chain and logistics industry, with a focus on content marketing. We hope to educate and enlighten our readers with industry insight, tips, and trends to stay ahead of the competition.
This year we’ve taken a deeper look at supply chain and logistics companies that have experienced the highs (Google, Amazon) and lows (Tesla, KFC) of running supply chain and logistics businesses. These posts have highlighted how we can all learn a thing (or two) from their accomplishments and, of course, their mistakes.
Here’s a look at our most popular supply chain and logistics posts this year.
Top 10 supply chain and logistics posts in 2018
1. 10 Must-Follow Supply Chain and Logistics Blogs in 2018
What are your favorite supply chain and logistics blogs? Fronetics wants to tell you about some of our favorite blogs that we follow. Read full post
2. Drawing Lessons from Tesla’s Supply Chain Issues
This guest post from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting examines Tesla’s recent supply chain woes. Argentus also shares the biggest takeaways to help you prevent similar blunders. Read full post
3. Top 3 Logistics and Supply Chain Blogs of 2018
We love hearing what blogs you enjoy reading and find valuable. There are lots of great industry options, so we know it’s not easy to narrow down your favorites. We had lots of great responses, but only Women in Trucking held its spot on our list of the top logistics and supply chain blogs from last year. Read full post
4. KFC Ran Out of Chicken in the UK: What Supply Chain Lessons Can We Learn?
There’s another unfortunate entry in the annals of Supply Chain failures that burst into the wider world of business and pop culture: More than half of the UK’s Kentucky Fried Chicken stores closed because they ran out of chicken this year. Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting examines the lessons we can learn from the restaurant chain’s blunder. Read full post
5. How Google Does Supplier Diversity
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. Read full post
6. Infographic: Influencer Marketing and the Supply Chain
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which marketers identify individuals that have influence over potential buyers and create marketing campaigns and activities around these influencers. Why is this so effective? Because buyers trust influencers talking about your products and services more than they trust you talking about yourself. Read full post
7. Valentine’s 2018 Supply Chain Infographic
Consumers spent a near-record $19.2 billion on Valentine’s Day 2018, up from $18.2 billion in 2017. According to NRF’s annual survey, over half of the country participated (55%) in the romantic holiday, spending just over $140 on average. Read full post
8. Five Go-To Supply Chain Websites
Following leading websites is a great way to keep up with the latest news and information about happenings in the supply chain and logistics industry. Here are our five favorite supply chain websites. Read full post
9. Video: Why Inbound Marketing is Better than Outbound Marketing for Supply Chain Marketers
Marketers are constantly coming up with new and trendy ways to attract leads. With endless platforms available to us, it can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned marketers to know where they need to focus their efforts. Outbound marketing used to be the ‘go to’ for generating leads, but this is simply no longer the case. Marketers across industries have found that inbound marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing practices. Read full post
10. 5 Email Marketing Trends Supply Chain and Logistics Marketers Need to Know
More people are using email than ever before (close to 3.8 billion worldwide). Fronetics works with supply chain and logistics businesses every day, so we have a first-hand understanding of how email marketing can be successful in these industries. Read full post
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Oct 30, 2018 | Blog, Logistics, Supply Chain
In order to transform and mature, these supply chain elements need to be incorporated into a brand’s foundation: stakeholder alignment, visibility, and role clarity.
This guest post was written by Paul Rea for Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
I’ve spent my professional life working in and leading industrial and consumer product supply chains. They all have the same foundational needs that I group into three general areas: Stakeholder Alignment, Visibility, and Role Clarity. Organizations with mature supply chains will likely have this embedded in their DNA already. Immature supply chains that are looking to transform from something reactive to far more collaborative and effective may not. They need to. Supply Chains without these elements are likely incapable of further transformation and maturation.
1. Stakeholder Alignment:
Communicate, collaborate and communicate some more. Find out where you (and everybody else) are going.
Supply Chain is a river running through the company, winding through geography, and facilitating and transporting so much commerce. The vision driving supply chain needs to be completely aligned with its stakeholders and corporate strategy. Even between the rudimentary goal posts of cost containment and service delivery, supply chain needs to consider its internal stakeholders in commercial, finance, manufacturing, regulatory, quality etc. as they all influence, and require support from, the supply chain. Imagine a team that set out to drive costs from the network by extending transit times and managing waste and inventory to that perfect “Lean” minimalism. They have potential problems in a speed to market centric sales strategy. Supply chain needs to be at the table when key commercial strategies are being set or the team and potentially the organization run the risk of fatal mis-alignment. Then, ongoing planning and execution should be managed through a Sales and Operations Planning process (S&OP).
I’ve used internal alignment examples, but the supply chain has many external stakeholders too, not the least of which are 3rd party partners and the customers themselves. The same principles apply. In many cases supply chain will use sales/marketing initiatives as the proxy for the customer’s voice, but it’s not unreasonable to conduct supply chain reviews with key customers. Regular planner to planner (vendor to customer) interfaces are key to day to day supply chain management success. (note: The entire concept of vendor management falls within this bucket.)
2. Visibility:
You must be able to see what you’re doing, and the numbers should add up.
Think of the vast amount of end to end supply chain activities that live outside your walls, from overseas suppliers to 3rd party finished goods DC’s, not to mention the holy grail of supply chain planning itself; the demand signal. Too often people don’t look past their own ERP when thinking of supply chain planning, management and execution. Holistic, managed visibility is critical as complexity or channel distance grows. Remember Mr. Drucker’s “what gets measured gets managed”.
This is more than data and some KPI’s. It requires the right granularity. A monthly KPI may mask what actually happens every Tuesday afternoon. Data and averaged metrics without meaningful analysis and management are dangerous to supply chain. Inventories (raw and finished), transit times and supplier lead times all need to be continually assessed against good demand forecasts, marketing programs and other requirements. The numbers also need to be as real as possible. “System” inventories must match real inventories or there could be a serious mis-fire on a reorder point. Actual transits need to be reviewed in real time. Imagine the manufacturing lead time chaos created if import raw materials were simply presumed to be hitting the port on schedule from when a P.O. was cut (manually or out of an MRP system). Visibility goes far beyond data itself, and an expectation of disciplined regular monitoring and management has to sit on top of the data.
3. Role Clarity:
Get organized.
Supply Chain is a team sport. Silo-ed, uncoordinated (different than decentralized) or poorly staffed supply chain structures can result in decisions that sub-optimize the whole or outright conflict with each other. Even “segmented” channels need to be considered in the whole, somewhere. Supply chains can be complex and distant requiring constant attention. You must invest in either robust tools supporting the process or appropriate head count to compensate. This breaks into a couple of key elements:
a) The specific jobs or activities. Generally the key aspects of Supply Chain management are Purchasing (sourcing), Planning (scheduling) and Logistics (delivery). Sometimes logistics is separate, and procurement may be included with Purchasing, depending upon how location specific the procurement activities are. Manufacturing (make) is often structurally not part of the actual Supply Chain team but is literally surrounded by it and the activities are highly interdependent. In the preferred model of a demand driven Supply Chain a demand forecast drives both production planning and supply chain planning which in turn drives procurement directly and purchasing strategically. Purchasing is also influenced by the forecast directly.
Supply Chain planning and demand planning are different. The demand planner’s role is to be the custodian of a high level of forecast accuracy compared to actual demand. If there is not a credible owner of demand planning (beyond finance gathering forecast data) in the organization then supply chain needs to account for that. I can’t over-emphasize the importance of a good item, location and time sensitive demand forecast to supply chain’s success. Think of it like a TV picture where the demand/forecast is the cable signal input and Supply Chain is the TV set itself. Regardless of how fantastic the set is if the input signal is poor or corrupt the picture on the set will be bad. And there’s very little the rest of the Supply Chain group can do to fix it other than educated guesses.
b) The talent itself. Make sure you staff the right people. Internal moves are great because they shorten or eliminate the company specific learning curve and can further employee development and engagement, but it can be dangerous to be a completely “homegrown” supply chain team. Its like running a race with an in experienced pit crew. Never be afraid to go outside and get the appropriate talent if you don’t have it internally. Jane may be a great performer in sales but does that mean she would necessarily succeed in accounting? Why then, supply chain.
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