by Fronetics | Sep 6, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Your customers use vendor content in their purchasing decisions, and you need a strategy to reach them — or your competitors will.
Content marketing can be a game-changer, in terms of new business and sales revenue, for organizations of all sizes and industries and levels of marketing savvy. But you can’t just set up a blog and a few social media accounts and expect sales numbers to start shooting through the roof.
The truth is, your potential customers consider vendor content in the purchasing process. If you don’t have a data-driven content marketing strategy to attract their business, you’ll lose them to your competitors.
Sometimes, the numbers say it best. Here are 12 content marketing strategy statistics that underscore the importance of developing a clear content marketing strategy to advance your business goals.
12 content marketing strategy statistics
Your customers want content.
95% of B2B buyers are willing to consider vendor-related content as trustworthy. (DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)
47% of B2B buyers consume 3-5 pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson. (DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)
51% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. (DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)
Type of content buyers have used in the past 12 months to make B2B purchasing decisions:
- White Papers (82%)
- Webinars (78%)
- Case studies (73%)
- eBooks (67%)
- Blog posts (66%)
- Infographics (66%)
- Third-party/Analyst reports (62%)
- Video/Motion graphics (47%)
- Interactive presentations (36%)
(DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)
It’s important to clearly define your strategy and goals.
Content marketing effectiveness increases with:
- Experience (64% of experienced marketers say they are effective)
- A documented content marketing strategy (48%)
- A documented editorial mission statement (49%)
- Organizational clarity on what content marketing success looks like (55%)
- Daily or weekly content marketing meetings (41%)
(Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)
Only 13% of those who do not document their strategy feel their content marketing is effective. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)
Your strategy should clearly define your target audience and their needs.
96% of B2B buyers say content that speaks directly to their company is the single-most influential aspect of a vendor’s website. (Demand Gen 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report)
What makes content most effective?
- Audience relevance (58%)
- Engaging and compelling storytelling (57%)
- Triggers a response/Action (54%)
(LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
Your competitors are using content to win over potential customers.
88% of B2B organizations in North America use content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)
75% of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing. (Curata)
79% of logistics and supply chain companies consider content as an effective tool for their business. (Fronetics)
The marketing software market is expected to grow to more than $32.3 billion in 2018. (IDC)
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Aug 29, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain, Warehousing & Materials Handling
Fronetics designed a content marketing strategy that helped the logistics software company realize increases in new business and sales revenue.
Your company is doing pretty well. You have a nice website and a social media account or two. And you’ve experienced year-over-year growth. Why would you do anything differently?
Just ask TotalTrax, a provider of real-time vehicle, driver, and inventory tracking technologies for manufacturing and warehouse operations. Despite a decade of positive growth, the company realized there were many untapped opportunities for new business. So the TotalTrax team hired Fronetics Strategic Advisors to create and implement a new, data-driven marketing strategy that could increase web traffic, lead generation, and brand awareness.
After a comprehensive audit of TotalTrax’s digital assets, Fronetics was able to recommend a course of action and implement a multi-channel content marketing program. The program included such steps as:
- Creating a blog and posting regular targeted content
- Consistently posting on TotalTrax’s social media accounts
- Implementing paid search, email marketing, and other strategies
After just 24 months, TotalTrax realized significant gains in web traffic, lead generation and nurturing, and — most importantly — new business and sales revenue.
To learn more about how content marketing helped TotalTrax grow business, download our case study below.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Aug 18, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Transactional emails offer prime real estate for driving further customer engagement or action.
Your business probably invests a lot of time and effort creating marketing emails to send to your prospects and consumers. But have you thought much about the content of your confirmation and thank you emails?
New findings from IBM Marketing Cloud’s 2016 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study suggest you should. The survey “examines messages sent by nearly 750 companies and 3,000 brands in 2015, using a wide variety of measurements to establish benchmarks on customer engagement (via multiple open, click, and device/email client metrics) and list churn (hard bounces, unsubscribes, and complaints).”
One important finding relates to how recipients engage with transactional emails, messages confirming a purchase or an action (such as signing up for a newsletter). In almost every respect, transactional emails outperform non-transactional emails. For example:
- Transactional emails generate roughly 2x the open rates of non-transactional emails.
- Transactional emails generate roughly 3x the click-through rates of non-transactional emails.
This should not be a surprise, since these emails are based directly on a person’s purchase or action. But what many companies don’t realize is that these messages represent an opportunity to drive further customer engagement or action. Adding a prominent call to action can encourage the recipient to join your email list, make an additional purchase, or otherwise move further down the purchase path.
Instead of a simple “Thanks for your purchase!” email, put a little thought into how you might keep that person interacting with your business. Here are a few ideas:
1) Ask them to review their purchases.
Include a link to the recipient’s account or orders page. This gets them back on your website, where you can add additional calls to action, advertise related products, or encourage them to join a loyalty program.
2) Offer an incentive for future purchases.
Encourage recipients to buy again soon by providing a discount code for their next transaction. This also helps build brand loyalty by showing customers you value their business and want them to come back.
3) Request they follow you on social media.
Provide links to your various social media accounts to build additional touch points with your customers and prospects. Suggest they post photos of themselves using the products they purchased, share their purchase (or link to the newsletter sign-up, etc.) with their followers, or enter your contest or giveaway happening on these platforms.
4) Show them how to use their purchase.
Link to content that can improve their experience with the product or service they just bought. Step-by-steps guides, how-to videos, images of other buyers using the product: give them valuable support to improve their user experience and to keep them engaged with your content.
5) Display similar or related products.
What else do customers buy when they make the same purchase? Do you have other products or services that go along with it? For example, someone buying a hammer might also be interested in nails, toolboxes, or screwdrivers.
6) Ask them to join your loyalty or rewards program.
This is another way to offer incentives for future purchases and exclusive access to deals while your business gains additional information about the person.
7) Request they sign up for your newsletter, join your email list, or subscribe to your blog.
Encourage them to stay in the loop by opting into your content. You’ll stay in the sights of potential buyers that aren’t ready to make a purchase, and be on their mind when the time comes to buy.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Aug 15, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
If your social media strategy doesn’t align with your business objectives and target audience, your marketing budget is probably better spent elsewhere.
Almost half of CMOs report they do not feel prepared to manage the challenges that accompany the rise of social media. Regardless marketers report that they plan to double social media spending in the next five years.
Pouring money into increasingly complex and expansive social marketing campaigns will not guarantee success, however. Instead, Keith Quesenberry, author of Social Media Strategy: Marketing and Advertising in the Consumer Revolution, suggests that marketers need to boil their social strategies down to the basics to improve results.
“They must use fundamental marketing concepts and modify them for this new two-way, consumer-empowered medium of social media,” says Quesenberry in a Harvard Business Review article. He offers these four steps for developing a basic social strategy.
1) Identify your business objectives.
Any strategy your business adopts should carefully align with your goals. Are you hoping to grow brand awareness? Generate more leads? Rebrand your business? Your social strategy should serve those objectives.
2) Listen to your target audience.
Yyou should have a thorough understanding of who your target audience is and how they use social media. After all, millennials use different platforms at different times than, say, Fortune 500 CEOs. Quesenberry suggests using analytics tools within social networks and secondary research, such as the Pew Research Internet Project, Nielsen, or Edison Research, to identify larger trends in social media use.
3) Produce engaging content.
Create 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. Use the social channels that best suit your brand message, type of content, and target audience.
4) Link marketing goals to social media KPIs.
Measure key performance indicators such as social media click-throughs to purchase (if the goal is online sales), social impressions (for brand awareness), or number of campaign-specific forms completed (for lead generation).
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Aug 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Supply Chain
As buyers spend more time researching vendors online, your business’ digital content should anticipate the questions, problems and needs of your target buyer so that you can make their short list.
Want to appeal to — and close sales with — more customers? Your content must speak directly to your target audience’s needs and wants.
According to Demand Gen’s 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report, nearly half of buyers (48%) report that their purchase cycle has increased since last year. One of the main reasons: they are spending more time conducting research and using more sources to investigate purchases.
That means potential customers are scrutinizing vendors more than ever before. As a vendor, your business should be examining your digital content to ensure it meets the expectations of B2B buyers seeking products and services like yours.
And what, exactly, are buyers looking for?
When researching a vendor on its website, Demand Gen survey respondents reported overwhelmingly that “content that speaks directly to [my] company” is the single-most influential aspect of the website. In fact, 96% rank that somewhat important or very important.
Therefore, your business should be creating content that answers questions, solves problems, and makes life easier for your target buyer. When they are reading your website, blog, or social media posts, they should feel like you understand their pain points and concerns and that you have the exact solution their specific business requires.
What else is important to buyers?
When it comes to conducting research on a vendor website, buyers ranked the following factors, in order, behind content speaking directly to their companies.
1. Easy access to pricing and competitive information
Can anyone navigating your website quickly and easily find what your products or services cost? Or have you hidden or excluded that information?
2. Vendor-focused content
Buyers want to understand not just who they are buying from but, more importantly, what you can offer them. Case studies detailing successes of your other customers, product data sheets illustrating technical characteristics and performance metrics — buyers crave this kind of information.
3. Search and navigation tools
Buyers want to be able to quickly find exactly what they are looking for. Your website should be easy to navigate and very user-friendly.
4. Easy access to content
Are you hoarding high-value resources behind lengthy registration forms in order to extract as much information as possible from your leads? You may be losing prospects because of it. Keep your forms short and sweet.
5. Relevancy of website speaking directly to the industry/company
You understand the business environment in which your customers operate. Your website should convey this knowledge so that prospects can recognize your expertise and trust your business and its solutions.
6. Thought leadership content
Expert content like whitepapers, reports, and infographics elevate your brand image and establish you as a leading voice in the industry.
Related posts:
