by Fronetics | Jun 15, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Strategy
B2B organizations are leveraging review sites to increase organic traffic and conversion rates. Here’s how.
Consumers regularly turn to review sites to research products and services before they buy. But did you know that businesses can leverage this behavior to increase organic traffic and drive conversions?
B2B organizations are joining third-party review sites precisely for benefits like these. In fact, such memberships are becoming an integral part of some marketing strategies.
Let’s take a look at it works.
Review sites inform buying decisions
Buyers value the opinions of peers and colleagues. In fact, B2B buyers rank it among their top three resources for information about solutions, along with experts and web searches.
It makes sense: User reviews offer an unbiased, credible experience regarding a company’s product or services, so potential customers do not have to rely exclusively on information the organization provides. What’s more, reviewers often share more than just opinions; they frequently include related tips or good-to-knows, which offer extra value for the reader.
Experts equate review sites to short-form versions of case studies, which 83% of B2B buyers report as important when comparing vendors. Reviews offer real-life experiences with the product or service, but are much quicker to read and easy to consume in aggregate than case studies. They are also written from a buyer’s perspective, which resonates much more than, say, technical language and specifications.
Value for businesses
More succinct than a case study and just as credible, user reviews offer compelling testimonials that can attract customers at any point in the buying cycle. Here are a few ways organizations can leverage them to their advantage.
1) Use them as content.
Reviews make excellent lead-nurturing content. A business could share a positive review on social media or integrate it into a blog post. Negative reviews, too, give an organization a chance to address questions or concerns through content. Either way, reviews give insight into what customers are talking about, and this can help inform your content strategy.
2) Build brand awareness.
As more buyers turn to review sites to research products, companies who are members of the review site benefit from having their name in the mix. Even if a potential customer is researching a competitor, that person will likely come across your business name in comparison. That kind of exposure is invaluable as buyers are actively creating their vendor short lists — especially if you have very positive reviews.
3) Build customer trust.
Participating on a business-review site promotes the transparency customers crave. It tells them you are willing to let your customers share the bad as well as the good for all to see. Additionally, positive reviews can boost an organization’s Google seller rating, which appears next to the business name in AdWords ads. The seller rating gives readers insight into how the business rates for quality service before that person ever visits the website and, if the rating is high, establishes instant credibility. And more credibility equals more click-throughs.
4) Increase organic traffic.
Search engines favor reviews, meaning search engine algorithms increase the search ranking of sellers who have favorable ratings on review sites. Consider that 60% of organic clicks go to the top three search results, and that the vast majority of readers won’t search beyond the first page of results. Any boost from positive reviews can increase your organic traffic potential.
5) Drive conversions.
Many organizations are finding reviews enormous valuable for their business in the late stages of the buyer’s journey. Password-management startup Dashlane, for example, reported a 14.5% increase in conversion rates when reviews were added to paid ad landing pages. Because reviews hold such credibility and resonate so strongly with customers, they make for excellent closing content.
Here are a few B2B review platforms to consider joining as part of your marketing strategy.
- G2 Crowd: Offers online reviews on B2B marketing services as well as business software.
- GetApp: Allows users to search for industry topics as well as specific products.
- IT Central Station: Described as a “Yelp or TripAdvisor for enterprise technology.”
- TechnologyAdvice: Allows users to perform side-by-side comparisons of solutions within a particular category.
- Trustpilot: A community where users can interact with one another regarding particular solutions they use.
- TrustRadius: Authenticates each reviewer and validates every review through its research team prior to publishing.
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by Fronetics | Jun 14, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Try writing about these topics on your supply chain blog to engage customers.
Content is an important part of many logistics and supply chain companies’ marketing plans. Yet nearly half (45%) say creating quality content on a consistent basis is their biggest challenge.
If your business is part of the 90% that produces some or all content in-house, you have likely struggled with this from time to time. You know that you shouldn’t pitch your products. But, then, what are you supposed to say on your blog?
Here are some thoughts on what to write about:
1) Offer something of value.
Do you have expert advice on a particular topic? Is there something about your products or your people that would be entertaining to your audience? Do you have access to top-of-their-field specialists that could discuss a particular issue?
2) Share your mission.
What is your company’s mission statement? Pick one aspect and describe why this is important to you/society, or illustrate how your company is living up to it. For example, a green transportation company might create an infographic about the industry’s impact on the environment.
3) Tell a story.
What anecdotes can you share about your business? Are their employees with exceptional stories to share? Customers whose narrative bears repeating? What stories illustrate something about your business? For example, Southwest Airlines’ Nuts About Southwest blog regularly shares customer stories — tugging at the heartstrings with nearly missed births, marriage proposals, and, of course, adorable animals — that illustrate the airline’s commitment to customer service and on-time arrivals.
For more ideas and writing prompts like these, check out our free resource, On Writing Good Content: A Guide for the Logistics and Supply Chain.
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by Fronetics | Jun 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
A data-driven content marketing strategy will increase your program’s success and help win the buy-in of executives.
What is driving your digital and content marketing strategy? If all you have in the driver’s seat are a few creative ideas, you may find yourself frustrated with the results and struggling to garner support from the C-Suite.
Different audiences respond in different ways. The question is, where are your potential new customers and what are they looking for? Data plays a critical role in uncovering those answers.
Data can guide you to:
- Define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? When can you best reach them?
- Select the best topics for your content. What information do they need, and what will peak their interest? What do they seek most from the content they read?
- Narrow down a distribution strategy that will produce results. Which digital and social media channels will best reach your audience, grow your business, increase sales, and improve your brand’s reach? Which networks are your competitors using most?
- Gauge what is working and what is not. Reportedly, 53% of digital content marketers don’t measure their success. No wonder so many content marketing programs fail. If you don’t take the time to determine what content is resonating with your target audience, how will you know what to produce in the future?
- Tune into market changes. As your business evolves and customers’ needs change, data serves as your compass to remain competitive in an ever-changing marketplace.
A data-driven strategy will win over the C-suite
In addition to giving you a foundation for your strategy, data can garner the support of the C-suite, which you must have in order to fund your marketing program. A plan based simply on ideas, no matter how brilliant, will not appeal to executives who base decisions on data.
They want to see how your marketing plan provides answers to the needs of your target audience (potential customers) and what those customers are worth to the company’s growth and success. If your strategy aligns with data, they’ll be able to get behind every point.
Creating a data-driven strategy
Aligning your strategy with data takes some time and effort, but it is crucial to optimizing the performance of your content marketing program and winning C-suite support. Here are some steps to get started.
- Analyze your reports, data, and interviews with stakeholders in the company about your target customer. Compile this information, and document the very specific demographic(s) you want to reach. Research the digital behaviors and patterns of this demographic.
- Audit your existing content (or hire an expert to do it). Look at the substance, source, and performance of your most successful and your least successful assets. Are there changes you can make to your poor-performing content to improve it, based on learnings from your successful content and your audience research?
- Plan an editorial calendar of future content based on what has been successful in the past. Sharing this information and seeking ideas from employees outside the marketing department can be a very valuable exercise.
- Test the distribution channels and times that have been most successful in the past and that fit the behaviors of your target audience. Continually refine your distribution strategy based on your results.
- Don’t forget to document your strategy! Marketers who put it in writing report success at significantly higher rates than those who don’t document their strategies.
By distributing the right content, at the right time, to the right audience, on the right channels, your content marketing program will reach its maximum potential.
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by Fronetics | Jun 8, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
This is part one of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B. See part two, How to Hire Talent through LinkedIn, and part three, 10 Ways to Gain LinkedIn Followers.
LinkedIn is the most popular social network for B2B companies. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
Chances are your business is on LinkedIn. B2B companies overwhelmingly report it as the most important social network to their business. But there’s a big difference between being on LinkedIn and being active on LinkedIn — and the latter can have a big impact on your bottom line.
LinkedIn has grown to be much more than a professional networking site. Leveraging all of its functions can help you generate leads, recruit premium talent, and establish your business as a trusted source of knowledge in your industry.
Here is a basic overview of LinkedIn for those businesses who are looking to optimize their presence on this most popular B2B social networking platform.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site with more than 433 million users in over 200 countries. It was launched in 2003, and was purchased by Microsoft in June 2016.
Individual users can create profiles highlighting their skills and employment history and “connect” with others. They can also:
- Search and apply for jobs
- Ask for introductions to people in their contacts’ networks (called second- and third-degree connections)
- Endorse connections for their skills and write them recommendations
- Follow companies and Influencers to receive updates on their activities
- See who has viewed their profile
- Share content and updates
- Like, comment on, and share other users’ content and updates
- Send private messages to other users
LinkedIn is free to join, but there are also several subscription options for job seekers, recruiters, marketers, and sellers that offer premium benefits and solutions.
LinkedIn for B2B employers
Businesses can create profiles on LinkedIn, as well as share content, make connections, and see analytics detailing who engages with their company. Getting set up is a little different from creating an individual profile, however. Here’s what you need to know.
The company page
Employers can create a company page. Company pages have four main sections.
- Home: displays the business overview, updates/shared content, friends and colleagues connected to the business, Showcase pages, and links to other affiliated company pages
- Careers (paid subscription required): facilitates interactions with job seekers
- Analytics: provides metrics and identifies trends on your updates, followers, and visitors
- Notifications: offers a daily overview of the updates and page performance
For tips on optimizing your company page, check out our free resource, A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page.
Gaining followers
Once a business has a company page, employees can add it to their personal profiles, indicating that they work there (or have in the past). By doing so, they automatically become followers of the company and will receive its updates in their newsfeeds. When they follow the business or like, comment on, or share its content, all of their followers see this action, motivating others to do the same.
Users can also find and follow your company by typing in the business name in the search box at the top of the website.
Companies can help attract their target audience to follow them by using Follow Ads. Follow Ads appear throughout LinkedIn and can be targeted to users in specific industries, companies, and regions. They invite users to click the “Follow” button and join your page. Here is what it looks like:
There are other types of ads designed to attract followers and drive users to your company page. Learn more on LinkedIn Ads.
Other features to know
Groups
Groups connect users from across LinkedIn with common interests and provide forums for related discussion. While company pages cannot join groups or participate in group discussions, individual members can share your company content in these forums. Your employees who launch, administer, and participate in groups related to your business or industry can help get your business name and content in front of like-minded professionals this way.
If you manage a group related to your business or industry, you can also feature it on your company page — up to three groups per company page or two groups per showcase page. Note that you would have to be the company page administrator and a member of the group you would like to add.
Showcase pages
Showcase pages are subunits of a company page that highlight a brand, business unit, or initiative within your business. If you have multiple business units, for example, users can choose to follow the showcase pages of just those that interest them. Your business can tailor the content and messages you share on each showcase page to better engage the demographic specific to that segment. The idea is to help businesses segment their audiences so they can build long-term relationships through content distribution. Read more about showcase pages.
LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn Pulse is the network’s publishing platform. Users can write blog posts to publish on Pulse by choosing “Pulse” under the “Interests” dropdown menu, or by choosing “Publish a post” from the homepage. There’s no limit on word count, and you can upload rich media like photos, videos, tweets, podcasts, and presentations to supplement your post.
Posts published to Pulse are search-engine friendly, and authors’ networks receive notification when they publish. While you can’t post on Pulse as a company page, you can post content from employee authors on your company page.
Influencers
Launched in 2012, the Influencers program encompasses less than 1,000 of the world’s top business leaders, thinkers, and innovators who contribute regular content on Pulse. Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, and Richard Branson are a few examples. A team of LinkedIn editors select Influencers and work with them to create content around issues and topics on which they can provide a unique perspective as leaders in their industries and geographies.
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by Fronetics | Jun 6, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Trying to pass your sales pitch off as content will only hurt your content marketing efforts.
Think your blog is a refreshing new way to highlight your products or services? Do your posts include verbiage like “one-stop-shopping,” “innovative,” or “industry leader?” Stop right there. Everyone you reach probably knows right away that you are trying to sell them something, and they will quickly move on.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, being “salesy” will make potential customers look elsewhere, or run in the opposite direction — perhaps to your competition. The best way to win customers is to stop boasting about yourself and to stop trying to sell. Content that answers your customer’s needs is what will grow your business.
Nobody welcomes a sales pitch
Admit it: you tune out anyone that comes across as trying to sell you something. You get emails, voicemails, and social media updates with “information” that is really a not-so-cleverly disguised sales pitch. What do you do? Most likely you hit delete, or you do not read past the first sign of a sales promotion.
So you know deep down that “salesy” does not sell. Yet, according to a recent study of 500 global marketers from the Economist Group, many B2B content marketing programs are doing just that: promoting products throughout their content efforts. In fact, 93% of the marketers surveyed said they directly connect content to a specific product or service.
Customers see right through this trick. The same study found the majority of B2B customers are annoyed by pitches. In fact, 71% of B2B executives reported that content they didn’t like seemed more like a sales pitch than valuable information.
Focus on your customers to increase sales
So what should you content be doing? Rather than forcing your products on your prospective customers, take time to answer their questions. Be the expert advice they are seeking. You do this by:
- Keeping content informative and educational. Your content should hold value for your readers.
- Letting your content demonstrate market expertise. It should give the reader a favorable impression of you and your business. They should walk away thinking that you know what you are talking about.
- Write as if you are speaking to a business peer. You are approachable and intelligent. Speak the language of the customer, and bring something new to the table, in terms of information.
- Focus on topics and questions of crucial importance to your target audience. What do they care about or want to know more about?
The philosophy of content marketing is to offer help, to educate, and, at times, to entertain your target audience. This is accomplished by focusing on the customers’ needs and interests, not your company’s latest product. When you form this online relationship with your audience, you gain their trust and respect, and that is what brings in sales.
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