by Fronetics | Oct 2, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Our infographic gives you everything from the basics to the specifics of using Reddit for B2B marketing.
Highlights:
- Reddit is a social platform made up of thousands of individual forums where users can post content and vote on its relevance and value.
- The first rule of Reddit: avoid overt brand promotion and sales pitches.
- Creating your own subreddit is the best way to make Reddit a high-value marketing channel.
Reddit calls itself the “frontpage of the internet.” And for good reason. The social networking site boasts over 300 million active users, as well as 140,000 active communities and a whopping 14 million pageviews per month. However, when it comes to using Reddit for B2B marketing, it’s still a relatively untapped channel.
Our infographic is your ultimate guide to using Reddit for B2B marketing. Read on to find out more about this platform and how you can put it to work for your business.
What is Reddit?
Since the site was founded in 2005, Reddit’s user base has skewed young. However, as millennials come of age and rise to positions of influence within the B2B purchasing landscape, Reddit is becoming an increasingly effective way to reach your target audience.
At its most fundamental level, Reddit is a social sharing website built around users submitting links, pictures, and text, which the community can then vote on. Similarly to Quora, the content that’s voted as best rises to top visibility, while downvoted content becomes less visible.
The structure of the site resembles an intricate message board, divided up into hundreds of thousands of subfolders, called “subreddits,” which function as specific forums. Imagine just about any topic you can think of, and there’s probably a subreddit for it. In fact, for thinking about Reddit for B2B marketing, the following subreddits could be of interest:
If you’re looking for industry discussion on a specific marketing topic, it’s likely you can find a relevant subreddit. While each subreddit has different moderators and regulations, there’s one common thread that runs through the entire site: there is a premium placed on authentic content and interactions – and a disdain for overt self-promotion.
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Using Reddit for B2B marketing in 5 steps
Now that we’ve covered the basics about what Reddit is and how it works, let’s talk about how to make it part of your marketing strategy.
Step 1: Determine your target subreddit(s).
In the same way that a good digital marketing strategy begins with identifying your target audience, determining your target subreddits is the starting point for successfully using Reddit for B2B marketing. While the massive quantity of subreddits can be overwhelming, consider the following three questions to zero in on the right subreddits for your business:
- Does the subreddit relate to your business’ brand or products, as well as any specific keywords that shape your digital marketing strategy?
- How large is each subreddit’s audience? (Note: bigger isn’t necessarily better. A larger audience has the potential to generate more traffic, but it’s easier to establish your brand’s presence in a smaller subreddit.)
- How much engagement does the subreddit generate?
Once you’ve determined a few relevant subreddits with various audience sizes and high engagement, you’re ready to begin posting.
Step 2: Post links… to websites other than your own.
Before you start wondering why we’re encouraging you to promote other pages, there’s another facet of Reddit to consider. The platform takes the idea of Karma to a literal level. On Reddit, your reputation is referred to as your “Karma score,” and it’s determined by your level of positive participation on Reddit, measured by the number of upvotes you receive. As your Karma score rises, your posts become more visible.
One of the most effective ways to boost your Karma score, particularly when you’re starting out, is to post links to content that the subreddit community finds relevant and generate conversation. It’s important to make sure you don’t repost content that another member of your subreddit has already posted, as duplicates can hurt your Karma score.
Step 3: Share valuable content… that’s not a sales pitch.
When posting content to your target subreddits, the path to success is quite simple. Post content that offers value to the community. This means engaging in discussions, asking and answering questions, and, at all costs, avoiding blatant sales pitches.
Sam Holzman of ZoomInfo explains it this way: “Sharing a link to a product page will signal that you’re a marketer who wants to promote products, not an engaged community member. On the other hand, a blog post about the benefits of a particular product will be more useful to your fellow community members and, as a result, is more likely to be upvoted and commented on.”
Step 4: Advertise on Reddit.
While blatant sales pitches on Reddit are a sure way to a low Karma score, the platform does offer its own native advertising. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, Reddit Advertising is a relatively inexpensive way to boost the visibility of your content on the platform. However, it’s important to note that Reddit doesn’t offer the type of analytics as Facebook and Twitter.
Sponsored posts on Reddit appear at the top of targeted subreddits for a specified duration. You pay for duration as well as the number of impressions you receive. Sponsored posts look like any other Reddit posts. Advertising on the platform isn’t necessary for success, but it can help establish a visible presence, particularly at first.
Step 5: Create a subreddit.
Creating a subreddit isn’t easy – it requires a significant time investment to start and maintain. However, doing so is the best way to turn Reddit into an extremely valuable marketing channel. Once you’ve established your presence, creating a branded subreddit gives your customers and prospects a forum to interact, with you and with each other.
Particularly at the outset, you’ll likely need to promote your subreddit on other platforms. Post links to it on your other digital assets, and you could even offer an incentive for engaging on your subreddit.
Your branded subreddit is also an ideal place to offer customer service. Holding exclusive Q&As, referred to on Reddit as AMAs (“Ask Me Anything”), is another effective strategy to drive traffic and engagement on your subreddit.
The bottom line on Reddit for B2B marketing
Reddit is a rich resource for marketers and a fertile ground for marketing your brand and products. The platform is best thought of as a place to share and engage with high-quality, valuable content, rather than as a place for overt promotion. Effectively using Reddit for B2B marketing requires an investment of time and energy, but the results can be well worth the effort.
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by Fronetics | Jul 31, 2019 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
Also this month in social media news: Facebook strives to attract content creators, and Pinterest debuts new video tools for brands.
Highlights:
- Less than a month after Facebook released details of its new cryptocurrency, the project has met a stumbling block from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
- Newly released statistics highlight key growth metrics and lay out expectations for digital marketing in the second half of 2019.
- Pinterest’s new video tools as well as updates from Facebook are geared to content creators and brands.
It’s hard to believe it’s already July and 2019 is at its halfway point. It’s a time when organizations are evaluating their performance thus far, and setting goals for the second half of the calendar year. To that end, both Mobile Marketer and Marketing Dive published key digital marketing growth statistics, and we’ve got the highlights for you below.
Last month, Facebook made news by releasing details of its new cryptocurrency, Libra. Now the social media giant has hit a roadblock, in the form of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell calling for a halt until serious concerns are addressed. Facebook is also making news this month by taking a page out if its competitors’ books in its attempt to attract more online content creators. Read on for details on these social media news items from July 2019.
Fed Chief Calls for Facebook to Halt Libra Project Until Concerns Are Addressed
Following closely on the heels of Facebook’s releasing details of its planned Libra cryptocurrency, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the project “cannot go forward” until serious concerns are addressed. “Libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection, and financial stability,” Powell said before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.
The Fed chief’s tough comments not only underscore the regulatory hurdles facing Libra, but put pressure on the project, and dented the price of Libra’s forebear, bitcoin. The price of bitcoin fell by around 7% during his 3-hour testimony. Powell also called for regulatory review of the project to be “patient and careful,” while pointing to the fact that existing rules don’t adequately fit digital currencies.
“It’s something that doesn’t fit neatly or easily within our regulatory scheme, but it does have potentially systemic scale,” said Powell. “It needs a careful look, so I strongly believe we all need to be taking our time with this.”
Facebook spokeswoman Elka Looks responded to the testimony in an email to Reuters: “We are very much aligned with the Chairman around the need for public discourse on this,” wrote Looks. “This is why we along with the 27 other Founding Members of the Libra Association made this announcement so far in advance, so that we could engage in constructive discourse on this and get feedback.”
2019 Key Digital Marketing Growth Statistics Released
The midyear release of statistics from Marketing Dive and Mobile Marketer are important for brands and marketers to pay attention to. In the ever-shifting world of digital marketing, these statistics and trends offer valuable insight into where resources and time are best devoted.
Highlights from the reports include:
- Global online advertising spend is on track to grow 7% this year. That’s up from the 4% forecast in December 2018.
- Location-based marketing will likely grow 14%, reaching $24.4 billion in advertising spending by the end of 2019.
- 43% of all advertisers plan to increase spending on influencer marketing by April of 2020.
- Social referral traffic to retail ecommerce sites has grown by 110% in two years.
Facebook Strives to Attract More Content Creators
In an effort to attract more content creators to its platform, Facebook is giving videos more ways to make money. Observers have noted that the reigning social media giant is “pulling inspiration from other platforms to let you throw cash at your favorite video creators in the form of subscriptions or tokenized ‘stars’ that pay them a penny.”
Facebook’s announcement of its new video developments comes just ahead of VidCon, the world’s biggest conference for online video creators. It follows on the heels of three years of investments in the network’s video services and is in line with consumer trends toward video consumption.
Pinterest Debuts New Video Tools for Brands
Image-curating platform Pinterest is ramping up its video capabilities, in line with a larger consumer shift in viewing habits and a boost from advertisers in spending on social video. New video features include an improved uploader, video tab, lifetime analytics, and Pin scheduling.
The updated video uploader “enables businesses and creators to seamlessly upload video directly to Pinterest to engage with new and existing audiences, and access latest metrics,” according to the announcement.
Pinterest’s announcement points out that unlike on other platforms, videos don’t disappear (as they do on Instagram and Facebook Stories after 24 hours). To that end, their video analytics tool will allow businesses to gain insight into a video’s performance over its lifetime.
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by Fronetics | May 14, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
As the performance gap between high and low digitally achieving companies widens, taking steps toward digital maturity is increasingly important.
Highlights:
- Increasingly, digital maturity is a predictor of overall market success.
- Benefits include reduced costs and time to market and improved product quality and customer satisfaction.
- Companies at any stage of digital maturity can take steps to improve.
Digital maturity, or the process of a company’s learning to respond appropriately to the emerging digitally competitive environment, is increasingly accounting for a widening performance gap among B2B businesses. And the gap will continue to widen: Companies who are adapting well to the digital age will increasingly outperform those who lag behind.
[bctt tweet=”Boston Consulting Group’s second annual survey found that while 25% of the companies surveyed qualified as “digital champions,” nearly one-third are significantly behind in their digital maturity. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Boston Consulting Group’s second annual survey of nearly 2,000 companies in the United States and Europe found that while 25% of the companies surveyed qualified as “digital champions,” nearly one-third are significantly behind in their digital maturity. The study found that “increased levels of digital maturity significantly improved competitive advantage along multiple performance indicators, such as time to market, cost efficiency, product quality, and customer satisfaction.”
BCG’s study used the company’s respected Digital Acceleration Index (DAI) to make comparisons among companies. And it offers some hopeful takeaways for businesses at any point on the spectrum. For example, “an increase in digital maturity of 25 DAI points improves the likelihood of reaching a superior performance for time to market, and cost efficiency doubles.”
These are powerful numbers. And BCG also points out that very few companies have achieved full digital marketing maturity — which means that essentially everyone should be taking note. Our infographic below looks at why digital maturity is important, and how companies can take steps toward achieving it.
The benefits of digital maturity
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BCG’s study aimed to quantify the value of improving digital maturity to impressive results. Some of the most significant benefits the study found were:
- Reduced cost-per-action in online transactions
- Increased online transactions
- Improved return on advertising spending
- Operational improvements from automation
- Reduced workload
- Increased competitive advantage
- Reduced time to market
- Greater cost efficiency
- Improved product quality
- Better customer satisfaction
Achieving digital maturity
No matter where they are in the process of achieving digital maturity, companies can improve and accelerate their progress. In particular, companies should focus their efforts to reap the benefits of digital marketing maturity:
- For improved time to market: Focus on building capabilities like digital marketing and personalization.
- For greater cost efficiency: Devote resources to digitize the technological enablers, such as increased automation in everything from production to marketing.
- For better product quality: Digital leadership is key. Fostering a strong digital culture company-wide and investing in digital talent will result in higher-quality digital products.
- For increased customer satisfaction: Focus on digital customer journeys and personalized offerings.
The bottom line
Digital maturity will increasingly separate the herd. Digital drives performance across B2B industries. It’s time for the supply chain to stop looking at technology as a cost center and start seeing it as a profit driver and competitive advantage in the market.
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by Fronetics | Sep 22, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Companies in the supply chain and logistics industries should take note of these 19 content marketing trends.
Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute recently revealed his predictions for the biggest trends in content marketing for 2017. As the leader of CMI, Pulizzi dedicates much of his time discussing where content marketing is heading with enterprise marketers around the world.
Since 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing as a part of their marketing programs, you’ll likely see some of these trends and issues arising among your competitors, your clients, and, ideally, your company in the near future. As you start to strategize for next year and beyond, be sure to consider these ideas in your supply chain marketing plans.
Creation of a real content marketing strategy
We can’t say it enough: Organizations that have a documented content marketing strategy are more likely to be successful than those that don’t. You would never operate a business without 1) creating a strategy, 2) documenting it, 3) following the strategy, and you should feel the same way about your marketing plan. Here are a few resources to get you started:
Native advertising
Native advertising is a paid, content-based promotion delivered in stream, within the same format as the channel the reader (or viewer) is using. Think of sponsored updates on LinkedIn, which look just like regular posts, or when a radio DJ promotes a product within the regular broadcast. I’ll be writing more about native advertising in the coming months and how the supply chain might use this opportunity as part of their content marketing efforts.
Influencer marketing
Forbes describes influencer marketing as, “A nonpromotional approach to marketing in which brands focus their efforts on opinion leaders, as opposed to direct target market touchpoints.” Basically, highly visible people become brand advocates by employing your products or services in their everyday lives. There are earned influencers, influential people who use your product regularly because they like it. And there are paid influencers, who receive compensation for using certain brands. More to come on this topic as well.
Purpose-driven marketing
Companies can appeal to a target audience by promoting their shared interest in a worthy cause through content. Examples from the supply chain include these six companies that are doing well by doing good.
Video and Visual
Video is not just for funny cats and cover artists anymore — it’s the most popular form of content being consumed online. Smart marketers are developing a visual storytelling strategy that offers consistent delivery of valuable content. Consider how your business might utilize features like Facebook Live or channels like YouTube.
Snapchat
Yes — Snapchat. Before you roll your eyes, check out this convincing article, Why Snapchat Will Be Great for B2B Companies, by Gary Vaynerchuk of Vayner Media. Keep your eyes on this social media platform in the coming year.
Facebook
One thing about Facebook you can count on is that it will always be evolving and adding features to keep up with user preferences. Also, Pulizzi is convinced businesses can do better when it comes to promoting content on this platform. Companies should keep a close eye on what’s to come with Facebook in the near future and how organizations are using it to distribute content and generate leads.
Teams and workflow
Take a good look at content production in your organization. Do blog posts go unedited? Are projects frequently late? Is your team clear about who needs to approve what? A strategic, consistent way to track and complete content-based projects can help streamline production and improve efficiency — not to mention quality.
Content strategy (pipes and process)
Developing a strategy that helps your organization scale its content-production efforts, re-purpose existing content across multiple channels, and properly leverage user experience and technology is key to content marketing success.
Mobile
Google announced in May 2015 that the number of searches on mobile devices has now surpassed those conducted on desktops in the U.S. And we know that reality isn’t limited to personal internet use. Evidence suggests B2B buyers are increasingly using mobile devices to do research, make inquiries, and purchase products. If your website and marketing emails aren’t mobile-friendly, your company is missing out the significant share of customers who demand mobile-optimized content. Try these tips:
Content technology
The marketing software market is expected to grow to more than $32.3 billion by 2018. The number of options companies have is almost blinding. Count on content technology to continue to demand a lot of attention — and, potentially, financial resources — in the next few years.
Writing
Josh Bernoff’s recent article in the Harvard Business Review hits the nail on the head: Bad Writing is Destroying Your Company’s Productivity. In a vast sea of crappy content, superior writing and storytelling can make your business stand out, win customer’s trust, and earn new business. Here are some resources:
Integration with sales
Integrating your sales and marketing teams is one of the most impactful ways to leverage content to gain new customers. For example, merging one of our clients’ sales and marketing databases to improve team communications played an important role in helping the company increase new business by 30%.
ROI and measurement
Making a business case for content marketing is one of the top priorities for the majority of B2B marketers year after year. Check out these resources:
Email and marketing automation
Marketing automation can expand your content’s impact, improve conversion rates, generate leads, and drive repeat purchases. Additionally, it can remove cumbersome manual tasks from your content workflow, freeing up your resources to add value to other, more meaningful tasks. Pulizzi says an expert recently revealed to him that companies are utilizing approximately only 10% of the functionality behind marketing automation — meaning, there’s much room for improvement in this area.
Content distribution and promotion
Even the best, most valuable content is worthless if it fails to reach your target audience. Companies are now focusing on the strategic distribution of their content assets to ensure their success.
Executive buy-in
Earning C-suite support for content marketing is a challenge for many marketers in the supply chain and logistics industries. See “ROI and measurement” above for some resources to support your efforts to win executive buy-in.
Global integration
Organizations and their supply chains continue to become more complex and global in scale. This can put a strain on communication, processes, meeting customer needs and expectations, etc. Content marketing strategies should account for the challenges of global operations.
Construction of a media organization
Pay attention to the recent flux of organizations purchasing media companies or properties to become media enterprises. Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn comes to mind, as well as Arrow Electronics’ acquisition of a number of technical and media properties from UBM.
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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.
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