by Fronetics | Jul 20, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Recent surveys show video platforms are the next big focus for marketers in terms of content distribution channels.
Social media marketing can seem a bit like keeping up with the Joneses. Which content distribution channels are your competitors using? Where are they getting the most engagement? How often are they posting and when?
We’re big advocates of social benchmarking against your competitors. But, just as much, we are always thinking ahead, trying to figure out where the industry is going next. It’s important to get ahead of the trends so that you can be right there leading the pack.
The State of Inbound has been tracking global marketing and sales trends for the last eight years, with a particular focus on inbound marketing. (Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing.) The 2017 survey included more than 6,300 professionals at from 141 countries, so it offers a very comprehensive view of current trends in content marketing.
One part of the survey of particular interest involves which distribution channels marketers are planning to invest in next. It gives us an idea of where companies will be putting their time and money in terms of social media marketing. Let’s take a look at the results.
Content distribution channel investment
The more than 6,300 marketing professionals surveyed answered the following question: “What content distribution channels do you plan to add to your marketing efforts in the next 12 months?” The chart below shows responses from 2016 and 2017 surveys for comparison.
Source: State of Inbound 2017
Marketers will maintain or increase their investment on YouTube and Facebook video — focus on the latter jumping a significant 7% over 2016. Interest in Instagram and messaging apps has also grown significantly over the last year, while marketers’ investment in podcasts, Snapchat, and Slack has decreased.
I also want to note quickly that investment in Medium has remained steady at 8%. I plan to write more about Medium as an opportunity for supply chain and logistics businesses in the near future, so stay tuned!
Misaligned priorities
Another noteworthy aspect of this survey question is how respondents at various levels of the corporate ladder answered. Do the people who set company goals have the same priorities as those tasked with social media management and content distribution on a daily basis? Of course not! Take a look.
Source: State of Inbound 2017
Broken down by respondents’ roles, the data shows a division in the priorities of C-level executives versus individual contributors. Executives show a higher preference to expand to new channels of distribution such as messaging apps. The individual contributors responsible for the day-to-day oversight, however, offer a more conservative approach, favoring more tried-and-true distribution channels.
It is also interesting to note that individual contributors consider Facebook video a top priority slightly over YouTube, while executives, directors, and managers uniformly prefer YouTube.
Our takeaway: Video, video video
Across the board, companies are turning their content distribution focus to video platforms, and the supply chain should be, too. If you haven’t heard me say it before, I’ll tell you now: Yes, video can work for the supply chain.
Why? In a nutshell, YouTube reaches more adults ages 18-34 in the U.S. than any cable network. Users browse the platform for entertainment purposes, but also for tips, information, and ideas. And anywhere people are seeking solutions, businesses should be providing answers.
Live video, too, is a trend that is not going away anytime soon. According to the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 61% of marketers plan on using live video services such as Facebook Live and Periscope, and 69% want to learn more about live video.
Live video helps businesses promote transparency, good communication, and relatability. It’s something that will do your business a world of good in the supply chain and logistics industries.
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by Fronetics | Mar 28, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Follow these four steps ahead of the show to ensure you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts.
This is the first installment of a three-part series about generating leads around a trade show.
As thousands of us prepare for our travels to Chicago to attend ProMat 2017, many are wondering: How can I maximize my time? What can I do to stand out? What will help me generate the most new business?
These are important questions — ones that deserve careful thought and strategy. So we created a three-part series to help you make the most of your next trade show.
In this first part, we will focus on the prep work you can do before heading to your trade show that will set you up for success.
Pre-show prep in 4 steps
With over 850 exhibitors attending ProMat this year, it is important to start the work of nurturing leads before you even leave your office. Strategically planning for this event can help you get the most out of your trade show experience, and get you the leads to grow your business and increase your sales.
Here are four tips to get you started on the right track.
1. Set clear goals
Why are you attending ProMat? What do you hope to gain from your attendance, in addition to leads? Understanding why you are attending a trade show is the foundation for creating what you want to achieve from your presence.
For example, if your goal is to boost your social media presence, make sure every handout, landing page, and face-to-face interaction includes a request to like your company on Facebook (or other social media sites). Or if you are hoping to educate potential customers on a new product, work on creating exciting new marketing handouts and presentations that can be displayed during the trade show.
2. Research your audience
Focusing on who will be attending the show can give you invaluable insight into the motivation behind their attendance and how you can best capture their attention.
Performing prospect research using the list of attendees — including anyone who has given you their contact information through social media, your landing page, or website — provides added awareness about your target audience. You can also go one step further and reach out to high-value prospects on your social media sites to step up a meeting time during the show.
3. Advertise, advertise, advertise
Your company has spent valuable resources to attend the show, so make it known that you’ll be there. Reach out to customers, attendees, and contacts through your social media outlets. Most trade shows have event-specific hashtags (#ProMat) to help spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Make sure to include your booth number and location, if possible. Get creative with fun teaser videos to engage with potential customers and get them curious about your new products. Creating an event-specific landing page to channel your prospects into one location, giving you a place to answer questions, create a running list of leads, and continue to promote your presence at the trade show.
4. Create content to distribute
It’s imperative to have content (brochures, templates, etc.) that highlights your brand and products. You should create content that can be distributed during the show that supplements your booth staff, helping them to educate and answer questions.
For example, you can create copies of a presentation you are giving. This allows attendees that cannot attend the presentation to still obtain the valuable information and affords you the opportunity to expand upon the presentation. Preparing these handouts ahead of time allows you to skip the last-minute scramble and focus on being present at the show.
These four tips can get you started on your journey to a successful trade-show experience. Using inbound marketing and social media tools, you are already ahead of your competitors before you even arrive at the show.
Other posts in this series:
by Fronetics | Sep 29, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain, Warehousing & Materials Handling
Content marketing can help your organization amplify its efforts to drive traffic, improve conversion rates, and increase sales.
A recent survey of over 4,500 marketers at organizations around the globe found that converting leads to customers (74%) and growing traffic to their websites (57%) were their companies’ top marketing priorities. Perhaps not surprisingly, these marketers also overwhelmingly reported that generating traffic and leads was their top challenge. Often our business priorities are the most difficult to achieve.
Enter, content marketing.
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing in which businesses publish content to attract prospects who are interested in products in services like theirs. This marketing approach can be highly effective in growing brand awareness, generating leads, and increasing sales. In fact, according to the same survey, organizations using inbound marketing were four times more likely to rate their marketing strategy highly than outbound organizations.
Let’s look at one example from the warehousing sector.
Business was decent for Company X. It had experienced positive growth for over a decade, despite lacking a clear marketing strategy. But leadership started to wonder: Are we missing opportunities for growth?
Company X sought a multi-level digital marketing strategy that would help them increase web traffic, generate more leads, and convert prospects to customers. The team hired Fronetics to create and implement such a strategy.
After 24 months, the results were telling: Web traffic increased by nearly one-fifth (19%). Company X tracked 244 high-quality leads directly sourced from its new content marketing efforts. And new business grew by a remarkable 30%.
Content marketing was highly successful for Company X in achieving its business goals of driving traffic and new business. In fact, the organization realized many other positive benefits as well. You can read about more of them, as well as the strategy Fronetics used to get there, by downloading the case study below.
Want to increase traffic to your business’ website and generate more leads and customers? Have you tried content marketing? Here are a few resources to get you started.
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Need more help? Contact Fronetics to request a free strategy session.
by Fronetics | Aug 11, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
HubSpot and WordPress rank at the top of G2 Crowd’s list comparing platforms to create, edit, and publish digital content.
Businesses and marketers who do not have coding skills rely on web content management systems to publish their digital content. There are a number of different products available, so how do you choose which one is best for your business?
G2 Crowd is a popular business software review site that allows users to rate their experiences with different products to help others make better purchasing decisions. It has leveraged hundreds of user reviews and analyzed market-share data to create a rankings grid for web content management systems. Products with 10 or more reviews are ranked and placed into one of four categories:
- Leaders offer web content management products that are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial scale, market share, and global support and service resources.
- High Performers provide products that are highly rated by their users, but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the vendors in the Leader category.
- Contenders have significant Market Presence and resources, but their products have received below average user Satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate their products.
- Niche products do not have the Market Presence of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer Satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate their success.
The top 10 web content management systems, with their score and category, are as follows:
1) HubSpot (89, Leader)
HubSpot is an inbound marketing software company that helps businesses transform their marketing from outbound (cold calls, email spam, trade shows, TV ads, etc) lead generation to inbound lead generation enabling them to “get found” by more potential customers in the natural course of the way they shop and learn.
2) WordPress (86, Leader)
WordPress.org is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. They like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
3) Drupal (67, Leader)
Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications.
4) Kenitco (61, High Performer)
Delivering more out-of-the-box functionality than other systems, Kentico makes enterprise-grade, integrated marketing manageable and affordable for businesses of all sizes.
5) Joomla (59, High Performer)
Joomla is a content management system (CMS), which enables you to build websites and powerful online applications.
6) Ingeniux CMS (50, High Performer)
Ingeniux CMS is an enterprise content management platform designed to manage the persuasive web. Easy one-click editing, personalized content, software-as-a-service delivery options, and 100% ASP.NET MVC.
7) Crownpeak (48, Higher Performer)
Crownpeak is the only cloud-first Digital Experience Management (DXM) platform with native Digital Quality Management (DQM). The result is easier, faster and more cost-efficient digital experiences for Marketing and IT teams and their customers.
8) Clickability (46, High Performer)
Clickability helps businesses succeed in a dynamic and competitive environment through internet-scale solutions integrated into a global platform.
9) Evoq Content (46, High Performer)
Evoq Content is DNN’s commercially licensed Content Management System (CMS).
10) idev CMS (44, High Performer)
idev CMS is here to make your life easier. Period. Gone are the days of looking at source code and trying to figure out how to format your website content. With the idev CMS, which is at the core of nearly every Americaneagle.com-built website, your website maintenance headaches will dissolve.
To learn more about the rankings grid, methodology, and the programs, visit G2 Crowd’s website.
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by Fronetics | Aug 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Strategy
Examine these stats when you analyze your content to improve your content strategy and the effectiveness of future content.
A critical (but often overlooked) element of an effective inbound marketing strategy follows the actual production and distribution of content: analyzing your content. It sounds obvious, but many businesses who are producing content do not take the time — or are unsure how — to evaluate how it has performed over time.
Regularly studying how your blog posts, videos, high-value resources (e.g., case studies), and other content resonates with your audience helps inform your strategy. It tells you what kinds of content succeeds in driving traffic and converting leads, as well as which distribution platforms and patterns are optimal.
While you may have had a good feel for this when you initially developed your strategy — p.s. you should always have a strategy and you should always document it — an audit can confirm it. If it doesn’t, you can make adjustments.
Also, keep in mind that digital and social media is constantly evolving. Regular content analysis will dictate where and how you need to accommodate changing user patterns, interests, behaviors, and technologies.
Here are four things that are important to evaluate when you analyze your content.
1) Views
How many times your content has been read, watched, or downloaded is a good indicator of how well it resonates with your audience. It’s important to evaluate individual pieces of content (rather than total website views) so you’ll know exactly what is driving web traffic.
Run such reports on a regular basis, examining how your content has performed over that short interval of time. You’ll want to consider how certain subjects play during the time of publication. You should also keep an eye out for how things have changed over time — for example, a topic that normally drives a lot of traffic that is no longer getting the same attention. Has audience interest changed or been satiated? Is the distribution platform no longer appropriate for that topic?
For blog posts or web pages, make sure to check both pageviews and unique pageviews, as well as bounce rate and time on page. That way, you can rule out any spam traffic or pages that draw a large audience but do not end up keeping them once they start reading. An eye-catching title or well-optimized post can bring the horse to water, but if it’s not drinking, your content isn’t doing its job.
2) Performance over time
It’s equally important to check how individual content has performed over its lifetime.
You may have a blog post that gets an extraordinary number of views the week it is posted but then fails to draw traffic thereafter. If that’s the case, examine what circumstances were in place at the time of the post and how the post fit in that context, then try to replicate that pattern in the future.
On the other hand, if you have a post that continues to draw traffic long after it has been posted, take note. Is content involving similar topics popular as well? Your audience is hungry for information about that subject. Consider other factors: Was it authored by a particular company leader? Is it formatted in a certain way, or did you use certain keywords?
3) Social impact
What kind of content gets the most engagement on social media? Examining the number of likes, shares, comments, and click-throughs on individual posts offers insight into what your followers are interested in. It can also help you evaluate your distribution strategy. Do certain subjects perform better at different times of the day? Get more engagement on one platform? Use individual channel’s analytics features as well as tools like Google Analytics to evaluate the impact of your content on social media.
4) Lead conversion
The reason we create and publish content is to attract new business, so knowing what drives lead generation and conversion is incredibly valuable. If you use marketing software, like HubSpot, this is easier to do. If not, it can be difficult, though not impossible, to understand what content was critical in winning over your customers.
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