by Fronetics | Jun 16, 2020 | Blog, Covid-19, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
We conducted a quick audit of supply chain company pages — and found these examples of effective marketing strategies.
The country is step by step trying to return to a new normal, but uncertainty continues to throw a wrench into full supply chain recovery. What are some examples of effective marketing strategies during such a disruptive time? When a Zappos order takes two weeks to arrive rather than the usual overnight, even end customers cannot help but notice the impact of the global pandemic is far from over.
Group News Editor Jeff Berman reflects on the challenges in Logistics Management:
“We have emerged from the abyss, in the past, but things felt different, in the sense that perhaps there was more of a tangible or definitive endgame or objective that would bring some type of closure to these issues. But, unfortunately, as things relate to COVID-19 and the ongoing civil unrest, things remain far more loosely defined, or simply undefined or uncertain.”
Despite the disruption, organizations that can emerge as beacons of knowledge and stability can have a distinct advantage over the competition. While some supply chain companies have chosen — deliberately or not — to leave out references to the disruption in their external communication and on their websites, others have created elaborate resources directed at current customers and prospects.
So, what marketing strategies are others pursuing? We conducted a quick audit of leading industry publications and company pages to see who have decided to actively engage their audience and how they have gone about doing it. As you will see, returning features of these examples of effective marketing strategies during Covid-19 is the:
- Reframing of the sales language to suit the current environment
- Focus on being a source of help
- Effort to initiate meaningful conversations with prospects
4 examples of effective marketing strategies to take your company through Covid-19 uncertainty
Descartes — comprehensive resource page instills confidence
Descartes has created a text-book resource page. The multinational technology company leaves no question unanswered, skillfully weaving thought leadership resources and customer testimonials with gratitude to “logistics and supply chain heroes” and a running log of press mentions.
The product pitch has been reframed to answer the needs of the target audience. Descartes’ cloud-based logistics and supply chain solutions are not just good for any challenge but specifically brings the “flexibility needed to efficiently respond to challenges related to the global pandemic.”
The rest of the page is built to reinforce that point. Three calls-to-action urge readers to:
- Join an upcoming webinar on finding alternative supply sources in a disruptive time
- Speak to a Descartes expert on how to mitigate operational challenges
- Connect with a Domain expert
In addition, readers find as many as 11 whitepapers or Covid-19 Action Guides. Topics cover a range of challenges, from pivoting to no-contact deliveries and assessing the impact on supply sources with global trade data to dealing with import and export compliance issues. Descartes has also, in a short amount of time, compiled a list of case studies that serve as real-life examples of how the company has helped customers mitigate the impact of Covid-19.
Takeaway: The page instills confidence and enforces the impression this company is ready to lead customers through volatile times.
Quinyx — timely study starts relevant conversations
Quinyx, a global cloud-based, workforce management SaaS provider, astutely made the company part of relevant conversations by producing a study, The State of the Deskless Workforce, at just the right time. The study surveyed 12,000 deskless workers in a range of industries, including logistics and transportation, in March and, again, in April to understand the impact of the global pandemic.
Among the findings that generated a stir: 30% of logistics workers think it is a fireable offense to take more than one consecutive sick day; and nearly 20% of logistics professionals came into work sick during the Covid-19 outbreak.
The timely release of the study managed to both subtly promote the Quinyx solutions and highlight the newsworthy issue of workplace flexibility. A related blog post on the study concludes: “If 2020 has a silver lining, it comes in how it’s forcing businesses to react, respond and embrace technology to safeguard their futures.”
Takeaway: The study helps position Quinyx as a hands-on partner tuned into the needs of customers in a rapidly evolving work environment.
Kinaxis — virtual events fill trade show void
On May 29, Kinaxis issued a press release: The company was launching Kinaxis Live, a series of virtual conferences on the theme, “Planning for the New Normal.” In the release, Kinaxis, steered clear of the Wikipedia description of the company (“a supply chain management and sales and operation planning software company”), opting instead for action-driven language that captures the aim of its target audience (“the authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world”).
The events bring together Kinaxis experts as well as supply chain practitioners from other companies, including Merck, Flex, ON Semiconductor, Lippert Components, and Konica Minolta, and promise to discuss:
- Lessons learned on managing through COVID-19 and the future of supply chain planning
- Insights on how to prepare for the rebound and long-term impacts across industries
- Tips on how to build resiliency and agility into your integrated business and supply chain planning by leveraging AI, human intelligence, and concurrent planning
Takeaway: By bringing the conversation online, Kinaxis can reach prospects who missed out on the opportunity to connect during one of the now canceled or postponed trade shows. The events also help establish Kinaxis as a trusted and knowledgeable resource with a large ecosystem of high-profile partners.
Kibo — approachable resource center builds competitive edge
The rise of online shopping since the arrival of Covid-19 has — naturally — triggered interest in cloud-based technology. And Kibo has aptly seized the opportunity to raise the profile of its ecommerce platform with a clean-cut Covid-19 resource page.
Aiming to provide “tactical and empowering content to lean on,” Kibo has created a range of resources tightly focused on showcasing industry expertise and answering customer questions. Visitors can access webinars, a whitepaper, and blog posts on everything from personalizing your order management strategy in the Covid-19 era to setting up touchless pickup.
Takeaway: The conversational tone of the page strikes a balance between promoting the company product and sounding genuinely interested in helping clients navigate the Covid-19 crisis. In the intensely competitive market for ecommerce platforms, the page can set Kibo apart.
Many companies are still learning how to best conduct marketing in the midst of a global crisis. Examining examples of effective marketing strategies can generate ideas and inspire adjustments that help your organization rise above the pack.
Read more:
The case for outsourcing content marketing at a time of disruption
Supply chain marketing during Covid-19, the risk of cutting back
Covid-19 messaging strategy for supply chain companies: Getting the basics right
by Fronetics | Aug 28, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Here are our thoughts on how often your company should blog, including challenges and ways to overcome them.
Creating valuable, relevant content in a strategic and consistent manner creates demand for your products and services and drives profitable customer action. Blogging is a large part of the foundation of your content marketing strategy. If it’s not, it should be.
Blogging is a great way to attract traffic to your website, build brand awareness, and interact with new visitors. But, a question we get all the time is, “How often should my company blog?”
Blogging: frequency matters.
Blogging every once in awhile isn’t going to get you results. You need to publish quality content on a consistent basis to attract prospects to your site.
[bctt tweet=”Blogging every once and awhile isn’t going to get you results. You need to publish quality content on a consistent basis to attract prospects to your site.” username=”Fronetics”]
The reality is that the more often you blog, the more traffic and leads you’ll get. Search engines consider posting frequency in their rankings. What’s more, every time you post, you create a new opportunity to be found, to be shared, and to be linked to by other sites.
Blogging: the challenge.
The trouble in publishing more posts is balancing resources so that you’re publishing frequently but maintaining value and quality within your content. We’re big advocates of testing to find your personal sweet spot for the amount of posts your organization is able to publish to maximize traffic and leads.
When you start publishing more frequently, make sure to track your KPIs, calculate ROI, and assess whether increasing blogging frequency is right for your business. You may be surprised at the results.
Here’s Elizabeth Hines, creative/editorial director at Fronetics, to discuss how often your company should be posting blogs.
Video: How often should my company blog?
Final thoughts.
Blogging needs to be a central part of your content marketing strategy. And unfortunately, it can take a while to start drawing traffic (and eventually, leads) from your posts. But the benefits of consistent blogging make it worth it.
And don’t forget, blog posts become more credible with age. That is to say, search engines value older content that has had more time to accumulate, like social shares and referrals from other web pages. The more relevant a blog post proves itself to be to readers over time, the higher it will rank in search engine results.
Have you tried blogging more frequently? Coming up with topics can be one of the biggest challenges. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
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by Fronetics | Feb 20, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
One of 2018’s fastest growing marketing trends is influencer marketing. Companies will increase their influencer marketing budget to keep up with the competition.
You’ve probably heard the buzzword by now: Influencer marketing seems to be on the tip of every marketer’s tongue these days. Linqia’s latest report, The State of Influencer Marketing 2018, shows that B2C companies are already taking full advantage of this marketing trend. Their report shows that 86% of B2C marketers used influencer marketing in 2017, and 92% of marketers that tried it found it to be effective.
B2B marketers, on the other hand, have been slower to adopt this new marketing trend. Influence 2.0 – The Future of Influencer Marketing Research Report 2017 showed that only 11% of B2B marketers have an ongoing influencer program.
To understand why influencer marketing is becoming so popular and why B2B companies need to jump on the trend, let’s start with the basics.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people, rather than the target market as a whole. Marketers identify individuals that have influence over potential buyers and create marketing campaigns and activities around these influencers.
For example, Microsoft teamed up with National Geographic last year to launch an influencer marketing campaign, called “Make What’s Next.” The technology giant leveraged some of the most famous adventure photographer influencers on Nat Geo’s Instagram for the campaign. The objective was to bring awareness to young women with interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). By utilizing Nat Geo’s most heavily followed female photographers, Microsoft was able to access a built-in following.
Why influencer marketing works.
Influencer marketing is extremely effective because of three key components:
- Social reach: Influencers can reach millions of followers (and consumers) through their social media channels, websites, and blogs.
- Original content: Influencers work with marketers to produce original content for your brand.
- Consumer trust: Through their existing, strong relationships with their audiences, influencers have a built-in level of trust and can influence consumer opinions.
Content marketers are working overtime to update their content marketing strategies to include influencer marketing campaigns. Consumers no longer want to hear from brands about their products; they want someone they trust to recommend products and services. This is where influencer marketing comes in to play.
Marketers across industries found influencer marketing to be so effective in 2017, that 52% of are planning programs that leverage multiple types of influencers (celebrities, top-tier bloggers, micro-influencers) in 2018.
Where do you begin?
Instagram should be your starting point. According to new research, influencer marketing on Instagram will have generated over $1 billion by the end of 2017, with significant annual growth going forward. With more than 700 million users, Instagram’s platform allows influencers to easily share photos and videos with their followers. Product promotion has never been easier.
Boxed Water turned to Instagram influencer marketing to market its philanthropic campaign, The ReTree Project. The company paired with social influencers, like actors Aidan Alexander and Jaime King, and YouTube star Megan De Angelis, to spread the word about their new campaign. These popular Instagram users asked consumers to post a photo with the hashtag #ReTree and, in turn, Boxed Water would plant two trees for every photo posted. Just one month after launching the campaign, Boxed Water generated more than 2,600 posts with the hashtag.
With 39% of marketers planning to increase influencer marketing budget this year, B2B companies are quickly seeing the leverage that influencers can have over their target audiences. By pairing your products or services with the right influencer, marketers can easily tap into thousands of potential consumers, increasing website traffic and leads.
Have you tried influencer marketing? How was your experience?
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by Fronetics | May 24, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Ready to give up on content marketing? Chances are, you haven’t given it a fair shot.
You’re three or maybe even six months into your new content marketing program. Congratulations! You’re probably noticing an uptick in web traffic, social reach, and other engagement metrics like time on page. You’re right on track! But you have no leads or sales to speak of. And whether that’s got you nervous that you’re doing something wrong, or just has your boss breathing down your neck to get some results FAST, I’m here to tell you: Now is NOT the time to give up on content marketing.
In fact, giving up now is just about the worst thing you can do. You’ve already made the majority of the investment without giving your program time to deliver your return.
Why does content marketing take so dang long to work?
Content marketing is a long-term solution that helps businesses build brand awareness, grow their audience, and generate new leads and sales. But it takes time and effort to achieve results. You shouldn’t give up on content marketing before the seeds you sow have time to bear fruit.
Just how long will it take for your content marketing strategy to yield results? Well, that really depends on your business and your goals, but you can count on at least six months. (Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says more like 18.) The point is, content marketing is not a magic, overnight solution. The reason reflects why content marketing is effective in the first place.
4 reasons why it’s NOT time to give up on content marketing
1) Developing your strategy takes time.
Only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts to be successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. (That number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy.) The significant increase in effectiveness can be attributed to the careful thought and research that goes into building a strategy.
You will need several months to build the foundation of your content marketing plan if it is to be effective. You need time to research the kind of content that resonates most with your audience and to truly understand the (very specific) demographic that finds value in what your company offers. Then you need time to determine and test which distribution channels will most effectively reach your target audience, to discern a plan for content production, and to build out an editorial calendar reflective of your strategy.
Without getting all of these pieces precisely right, you’ll waste an enormous amount of energy and resources working on an ineffective strategy. Take the time to evaluate the market for your business and its content marketing strategy, and you’ll realize results in time.
2) Becoming an authority takes time.
The goal of your content marketing efforts should be to be a consistent source of information and value to your audience, who gradually will come to trust your authority and reward you with their business when they are ready to make a purchase. And establishing yourself as an expert doesn’t happen overnight.
Consistency is key for two reasons. For one, the average B2B buyer consumes between two to five pieces of content before making a purchase decision. If your content is old, arbitrary, contradictory, or otherwise unreliable, buyers will chose a different vendor whose content is more trustworthy. Consistent and consistently good content keeps your target audience engaged and builds your credibility with them.
Secondly, search engines rank websites based on several factors, and one of the most important is consistency. If your company blogs every other month, compared to companies that post several days a week, your posts will be penalized in search results. And since very few readers click beyond the top five search results, you’re drastically reducing your organic search potential.
As a SumAll article put it, “Whether getting traffic to your blog or your content ranked in the search engines, it doesn’t happen overnight, but instead by repeatedly creating and distributing quality content on a frequent basis for the long-term.”
3) Building your audience takes time.
The B2B buying process is becoming longer and more complex because the majority of buyers (82%) are using more sources to research and evaluate products and services, and they are spending more time in the research phase itself. In fact, 71% of B2B researchers start with a generic search — rather than searching for a particular company — and do an average of 12 searches before even engaging with a specific brand’s site. They are 57% of the way down the sales path by this point, meaning they have already spent a fair amount of time educating themselves with the enormous amount of information available to them on the internet.
This means you need to allow your target audience time to find you and complete thorough research about you and your competitors before you even realize that the lead exists. And likely there will be more time before a sale takes place.
Content marketing is much more about lead nurturing than producing instant results. As you build your reputation as a valuable source of information, you will simultaneously build a loyal following of readers and content consumers who continue to return to you for knowledge and, ultimately, purchases. Relationship-building is not a streamlined process, but it does foster the ever-valuable repeat business that will have a greater impact on your bottom line than a one-and-done sale.
4) Your sales cycle takes time.
Unfortunately, content marketing cannot decrease the length of your sales cycle. Thus, you can’t expect to see the fruits of your labors (in terms of dollars) until at least one cycle is complete.
There should be, however, hints along the way that your efforts are working. Metrics like increased website traffic, email registrations, and social reach offer clues that more potential customers are finding your business in their research. You should take these signs and continually evolve your strategy to accommodate what is working for your business.
Also keep in mind that while content marketing can have an enormous impact on generating and nurturing leads, it does not deliver sales on a silver platter. Sales teams still play a major role in building on those relationships and closing deals.
Please don’t give up on content marketing before it’s had time to play out. You’ll not only lose out on your initial investment, but also all the leads and sales that will eventually come your way once your program has had time to develop fully.
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by Fronetics | Apr 12, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Interesting, original content is central to brand building for the supply chain and beyond.
What do Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian West, and Dan Rather have in common? Like ‘em or hate ‘em, they’ve each amassed an enormous organic following on social media. It doesn’t matter when or where they post it; these celebrities have proven that people will go out of their way to receive their content.
I came across an article the other day about the rising importance of the content creator that got me thinking about this. Joe Hyrkin, CEO of media company Issu, believes the age-old marketing debate about content vs. distribution is now a moot one. “Media consumers will change their behavior and go where a creator has produced interesting content,” he writes.
So many companies — supply chain, B2B, B2C, and beyond — spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to figure out the best places to distribute content and the best times to post. Don’t get me wrong: Those are incredibly important pieces of the puzzle. But I don’t think we can overemphasize the importance of the quality of your content and building a brand that reflects thought leadership.
In short, if you produce the kind of content that your target audience finds compelling, entertaining, and/or interesting, then you’re going to be successful.
“Interesting” is a matter of taste
You may roll your eyes at the idea that any of the above mentioned personalities qualify as “interesting content creators.” But that doesn’t matter — because a whole heck of a lot of people think they do.
The key for the content creator is, of course, inventing and creating for your specific audience.
Probably for your B2B business that doesn’t involve a scantily clad selfie or inflammatory tweet. But if you can be on the cutting edge of what does matter to your target audience, you’ll begin to build a brand that followers feel compelled to watch.
Speak your truth
We live in an interesting time for words like “true” and “fake.” But what I know to be important in content creation is authenticity.
Dan Rather offers an interesting case study. The 84-year-old veteran broadcaster’s rapid rise to social media stardom began with his candid election commentary on Facebook last November. Fans and critics alike have continued to engage with him via this platform. The resulting discussion can only be attributed to Rather’s authenticity — he shares what he truly thinks and feels, and encourages his followers to do the same.
Companies that use content and social platforms as an outlet for their missions, interests, and passions find greater success than those that are trying to be something they’re not in these spaces. For examples of companies who are doing it well, think of Coyote Logistics, Whole Foods, GoPro, Nike, Oracle, and Lowe’s.
Takeaway
The takeaway for the supply chain and other B2B companies is this: If you can build a brand with a reputation for creating really interesting original content, things like distribution, posting time, and posting frequency become less important.
People will know you as a source for cutting-edge ideas and thought leadership. People will be looking for your content. People will follow you because they care about what you have to say.
Don’t underestimate the power of quality original content.
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