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 | Sep 15, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy, Talent
Content marketing is significantly more effective when a designated leader is driving your strategy.
Who is leading your content marketing strategy? If you don’t have an immediate answer, your content marketing program probably will not be as effective as it could be.
Research shows that companies who designate someone to drive the execution of their content marketing strategy have greater success than those that do not. So your strategy should account for leadership, specifically naming a person or position that will be in charge of implementation, problem-solving, and measuring results.
Who could take on this role for your business? Here are a few ideas.
An executive
Curata reports that, by 2017, 51% of companies will have an executive in their organization who is directly responsible for an overall content marketing strategy. That’s how important it is to have someone leading your strategy: More than half of organizations will create or designate positions like chief content officer, VP of content, or director of content. If your company is large enough to support this human resource, you’ll likely reap great benefit from your content marketing efforts.
A marketing director
Is there a senior person on your marketing team with experience using content as a marketing tool? Having a marketing director lead your content strategy is a great option for companies who can afford to delegate some of that person’s responsibilities elsewhere to make room for this work. Marketing directors are generally organized and capable of leading a diverse team, and they are used to reporting on KPIs as they relate to marketing efforts.
Whoever produces most of your content
Many smaller or mid-sized companies don’t have large marketing teams, and instead rely on several people to take on content-production responsibilities in addition to their everyday tasks. These are the people who will be most familiar with your company’s content and strategy, and how they align with your business goals. Do any of these people have leadership abilities or experience running a cross-functional team? It could be worth outsourcing some content writing or production in order to allow that person to drive your content marketing strategy.
An advisory firm
Sometimes you don’t have the internal resources or expertise to execute your business’ content marketing on your own. Hiring a firm or professional to create and/or execute your strategy can take enormous pressure off of your employees. They are left to do their jobs, while an experienced team shoulders the burden of planning, producing, and reporting on the progress of your content marketing program. Such a partnership can be very beneficial to companies of all shapes and sizes.
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by Fronetics | Aug 23, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
TotalTrax leverages content marketing to increase web traffic, generate high-quality leads, and, ultimately, grow business.
TotalTrax, Inc., is a provider of real-time vehicle, driver, and inventory tracking technologies for manufacturing and warehouse operations. Despite a decade of positive growth, the company knew it was missing opportunities for new business because of its lack of a clear digital strategy.
That’s why TotalTrax hired Fronetics Strategic Advisors. The firm created and implemented a multi-channel content marketing program designed to increase the company’s digital footprint and accelerate growth.
Content marketing can help a business elevate its brand position by producing content that demonstrates industry expertise, offers valuable information, and builds trust with their target audience. Example benefits include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Higher referral traffic
- Better lead generation and nurturing
- Improved customer loyalty and trust
- Decreased marketing cost and higher ROI
Fronetics evaluated TotalTrax’s existing digital assets. Leveraging extensive market research, the firm helped refine the company’s messaging and content distribution to better engage potential customers. Fronetics then implemented the customized content marketing strategy to help TotalTrax fully leverage its web presence to bring about new business.
The results
In a 24-month period, TotalTrax realized significant gains in web traffic, quality leads, and brand awareness. Key results included:
- 19% increase in overall web traffic
- 500% increase in traffic from social media
- 244 high-quality leads
- 30% net increase in new customers
To learn more about Fronetics’ strategy for TotalTrax, download the free case study below.
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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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by Fronetics | Aug 8, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
B2B marketers who meet more often to discuss and evaluate their content marketing strategy report success at much higher rates than those that meet less frequently.
Do you feel your content marketing is producing results? Only 30% of B2B marketers say they feel effective, and a shocking 55% admit they do not actually know what content marketing success looks like.
If this sounds familiar, take a note from the most effective B2B marketers: Meeting more often can improve content marketing performance.
Another meeting? Say yes for success
We all have been guilty of thinking, “Great. Another meeting to squeeze into my schedule.” But the B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America found some interesting correlations between content marketing effectiveness and frequency of meeting. For instance:
Meeting daily or even weekly improves content marketing results.
61% of the most effective B2B marketers meet daily or weekly with their content marketing team, either virtually or in person.
Meeting more often is time well spent.
Teams that meet daily or weekly find the meetings to be more valuable (70% of respondents) than those who meet less often — like biweekly or monthly (49%). But, only 36% of the content marketing professionals surveyed met once per week, and only 8% met daily. And you guessed it: Those were the teams that reported having the most success with their content marketing.
Meeting strategies
There is more to success than simply holding a meeting, of course. Time spent around the conference table is not going to bring results unless you are asking the right questions with keeping eyes on your content strategy.
What are the new challenges the team is facing? What is happening in the news or industry that might affect or interest your audience? How is your audience responding to recent content? There must be more to regular meetings than coffee and bagels.
Equally important is ensuring the team has a clear vision of your goals and benchmarks. The greater the team’s understanding of what success looks like — clearly defined objectives, expectations, and your content marketing goals — the more effective they can be at their job.
Things to discuss about your content strategy:
- Purpose: What is the goal or objective the team is striving for from content marketing efforts? More leads and increased brand recognition are common examples.
- Audience: Who is your target audience, and what are their needs, interests, and concerns? Where do they consume content (e.g., LinkedIn, blogs)? When do they visit those channels?
- Tactics: What platforms are you using for distribution, and how do they work together? Is there an email campaign as well as daily Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts, for example? Are images important for results?
General discussions to include:
- Open-topic communication: Tap into knowledge from all members of the team to generate ideas, information, and data for content creation. Open discussion can bring insight and fresh angles of approach.
- Ways to improve and reach objectives: Fresh ideas are as important to the team as fresh content. What could you be doing better? Should you be measuring something that you’re not? Are there new technologies or tools that you should try? Every team member should have a voice in how to best execute or improve your content strategy.
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