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 rather than a sales pitch.
An increasing percentage of search traffic is perusing YouTube for information, advice, and education. That makes the platform ideal for getting in front of prospects looking for products and services like yours.
But I’ve seen a lot of B2B marketers getting YouTube wrong. The good news is that the problem is usually that they’re trying too hard — and not in the right ways.
To effectively build a YouTube audience that will eventually become leads and, hopefully, customers, you need to be distributing video content that showcases your organization’s expertise in an approachable way. Here are some simple rules for how to go about that (without barking up the wrong tree).
(Made with Canva)
4 ways to build a YouTube audience
1) Be disciplined about your content schedule.
When it comes to publishing content on social media, when you post is nearly as important as whatyou post. YouTube is no different. Creating and sticking to a consistent schedule for posting new content essentially trains your audience and lets them know when they can expect to hear more from you.
Creating video content consistently doesn’t need to feel like reinventing the wheel. First off, videos should be part of your content calendar in the same way as blog posts, case studies, and other forms of content. You don’t need to create brand new material for each video. Take a high-performing blog post and re-package the ideas into video content.
2) Get creative.
Creativity for B2B companies is all about striking the right balance between entertaining presentation and informative, high-quality content. Think about approaching the information you want to convey in a different way. Can you use a different medium (like animation) or interview two subject-matter experts together if your one-on-one interviews are feeling stale?
There are plenty of technologies available today that will help you create exciting, engaging video content relatively cheaply. Or you could always consider outsourcing your videography.
3) Keep it short.
While we’ve seen recent growth in long-form YouTube content, for most B2B marketing purposes, shorter videos are far more effective. Of course, this is good news in that producing shorter videos can be less time-consuming and costly. But I cannot emphasize enough the importance of quality over quantity here.
[bctt tweet=”A 1- to 2-minute video of high-quality, well-edited content will get far more engagement (and be more successful in helping you build a YouTube audience) than 15 minutes of lecturing or poorly executed, complex animation.” username=”Fronetics”]
A 1- to 2-minute video of high-quality, well-edited content will get far more engagement (and be more successful in helping you build a YouTube audience) than 15 minutes of lecturing or poorly executed, complex animation. If you have a lot of footage about a certain subject, consider releasing a series of shorter videos.
4) Don’t make video a sales pitch.
Content marketing is inbound marketing, and video is no different. Countless studies have shown that increasingly buyers prefer informative, valuable content to blatant sales pitches.
This doesn’t mean that your content shouldn’t be branded, but it does mean that your focus in creation and execution needs to be what you can offer your audience, rather than you’re asking from them.
Use your video content to address specific concerns or answer questions that are relevant to your target audience. It’s simple: if you give something of value, you will build a YouTube audience that could eventually become your leads and customers.
What have you been doing to build a YouTube audience?
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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?
[bctt tweet=”One of the basic premises of content marketing is the recognition that, increasingly, your customers want much more from you than your product.” username=”Fronetics”]
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.
[bctt tweet=”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.” username=”Fronetics”]
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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by Fronetics | Sep 25, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Armed with high-quality, substantive content, sales teams can use inbound marketing to close deals and boost sales. Here’s the content they need to advance purchasing decisions.
Aligning sales and marketing teams is not a new concept, but one that many companies don’t follow. Think about it: the ultimate goal in business is increased revenue from sales growth! In order to achieve this goal, it’s best to focus on what the buyers’ needs are at the individual stages of the buying process and to provide content to help them move along the sales funnel.
You’re asking yourself, “How do I do that?” Easy, start combining your sales and marketing efforts to maximize what each department does best. When done correctly, content marketing can support sales goals, making it easier to generate leads and helping the sales team close business.
Valuable and relevant content is not a sales pitch but can help the sales process. Arm your sales team with content that communicates valuable information to prospects so that they have the knowledge to make more informed decisions.
[bctt tweet=”Arm your sales team with content that communicates valuable information to prospects so that they have the knowledge to make more informed decisions.” username=”Fronetics”]
Moreover, concentrate on creating 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 and use your sales team to further distribute your content.
But what kinds of content does your sales team need in order to close deals? Here to discuss our top suggestions is Frank Cavallaro, CEO and Founder of Fronetics.
Video: what content sales needs in order to close deals
Takeaway: teamwork is key
Sales and marketing teams that are aligned perform better. According to State of Inbound 2018’s latest survey, sales teams closely aligned with their marketing counterparts ranked the quality of marketing-sourced leads much higher than those that were rarely aligned or misaligned. That shows that when marketing and sales work together, everyone gets more of what they’re looking for — namely, leads and sales!
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