by Fronetics | Sep 5, 2019 | Blog, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Instagram Stories offers paid advertising delivering targeted content to B2B buyers and building brand awareness with potential customers.
Highlights:
- As the number of people using stories has grown, so has the number of businesses using the format to connect with their audiences on social media.
- As more people browse Stories, you can show your ad to the maximum number of people possible using this format.
- You can get more eyes on your video content by posting videos on Instagram Stories.
Video transcript:
I’m Elizabeth Hines from Fronetics and today’s topic is paid advertisements on Instagram Stories.
Instagram Stories are the latest social media trend. As the number of people using stories has grown, so has the number of businesses using the format to connect with their audiences on social media.
Story ads represent an alternative to News Feed ads, which, though still effective, had lost a bit of novelty. Here are 3 reasons to start using Instagram Story ads:
1) Brand reach: As more people browse Stories, you can show your ad to the maximum number of people possible using this format.
2) Traffic and conversions: Send more people to your website, where they can convert to a lead.
3) Video views: Stories are a great platform for video. You can get more eyes on your video content by using it in this channel.
The rise in popularity of Instagram Story Ads tells an interesting, ahem…story. People are interacting more and more meaningfully with brands on their mobile devices and they increasingly want to do so in a format that is easy, convenient, and engaging.
If you want help setting up your Instagram Ads, visit us at fronetics.com to learn more.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Jul 3, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
Getting lots of web traffic but short on leads? Here are five tips to help create strong landing pages that convert visitors to leads.
We hear it all time: “My website is getting great traffic, but we’re not converting those visits to leads.”
We compare it to the Patriots getting the ball all the way down the field but then not being able to score a touchdown. Chances are your landing pages are the problem.
[bctt tweet=”We hear it all time: “My website is getting great traffic, but we’re not converting those visits to leads.” We compare it to the Patriots getting the ball all the way down the field but then not being able to score a touchdown. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Landing pages are a fundamental tool in converting website visitors into leads. They’re what convince your visitors that they absolutely must download your fabulous resource offer. Yet oftentimes they’re treated as the annoying little sibling to high-value content pieces — tagging along almost as if an after-thought.
In reality, landing pages have just as much, and possibly even more, importance than the content offer. What good is your best resource if your landing page doesn’t do its job? You don’t want people to just visit your website. You want them to take action while they’re reading your content.
Here are five tips for supply chain marketers who are looking to generate better conversion rates from their landing pages. These tips make it easy — and tempting — for visitors to take action.
Infographic: 5 tips for creating landing pages that convert
(Made with Canva)
Key takeaway
It comes down to basically one objective: Be clear about what you want your visitor to do on your landing page. All of these recommendations help to create a landing page that makes it easy — and beneficial — for visitors to take a specific action.
Once you’ve made adjustments to your landing page, don’t forget to test, test, test! Still not getting the conversions you’re looking for? Go back and continue to tweak. Soon enough, you’ll have solid landing pages that convert those visitors to leads.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | May 22, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain
If you don’t give visitors many easy, attractive opportunities to convert on your website, content marketing won’t generate leads for you.
I’ve been noticing a trend lately that I wanted to share.
We talk with a lot of supply chain and logistics companies who are interested in the idea of content marketing. They’re catching on to the benefits, particular those involving lead generation. They know that creating high-quality, original content on a regular basis — mostly, timely blog posts on a weekly (or more frequent) basis — can drive organic traffic to their websites. And a lot of that traffic will be marketing- or sales-qualified leads.
[bctt tweet=”Content marketing won’t generate leads if you’re driving visitors to a website that stinks.” username=”Fronetics”]
That’s great! I’m glad supply chain and logistics companies are increasingly interested in content marketing. But there’s one problem: Some aren’t willing to take a holistic approach to this solution. Mostly, they aren’t willing to improve their websites.
I totally get it: Websites are a major investment — both financially and temporally. But so is content marketing. And you would be wasting a lot of time and money investing in a content marketing program if all the leads you’re going to drive to your website don’t convert or end up with mixed messaging about your business.
When content marketing won’t generate leads
Content marketing won’t generate leads if you’re driving visitors to a website that stinks. How do you know if your website stinks? Here are a few examples:
Your content is disorganized, unclear, or filled with jargon.
I see this most often. Companies create websites without considering a larger content strategy. Their company or products/services have evolved over time, but the website has not evolved with it (or someone quickly threw up a couple of extra pages without considering the site map as a whole). And, worst of all, web pages become filled with jargon and corporate speak because companies don’t take the time to strategize web page creation as part of that larger content strategy.
Messaging on your website pages serves internal purposes rather than helping customers.
So many businesses create their websites and fill pages with information about their company. “Wait, isn’t that what a website is for?” you might be asking.
No, I would argue. Your website, like your content, should service the customer first. You should design it with the user in mind, helping that prospect find the information they’re seeking and move seamlessly down the sales funnel.
Sure, you should include information about your company on your website. But too many times I see organizations forget about their customers in the creation of their sites. And when prospects visit, they’re caught in a web of the company’s self-promotion — an no closer to making a purchase than before.
There are no opportunities for conversion.
This one seems obvious. But, for some reason, companies frequently create websites hoping to generate leads but give visitors few (or hidden!) opportunities for conversion. If each page doesn’t have a clear call-to-action, specific to the page’s content, with the opportunity to submit contact information, how do you suppose visitors are going to become leads? I’ll say from experience, very few, if any, will proactively reach out and ask to join your email list.
Get it together
If you’re going to make the significant investment in content marketing — and lead generation is your primary goal — you have to think about your website, too. Otherwise, the traffic you’re driving to your site will never convert. And you’ll have wasted your time and money.
Want to make your website an effective lead-generating machine? Stay tuned for part 2 of this post tomorrow: 5 Tips to Generate More Leads on Your Website.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Jun 23, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
HubSpot users also saw 3x more leads and 4.1x web visitors per month after a year using the software.
A study has found that using HubSpot for your inbound marketing can increase sales revenue by 72% in 12 months.
A 2016 MIT Sloan student analysis showed that HubSpot’s inbound marketing software provides users a substantial boost in quality leads, which converted into more sales. In year two of using the software, customers continued to see impressive increases.
The in-depth report was a compilation of customer survey responses and web data gathered over a 24-month period for HubSpot users from 2013 to 2015. It looked at three fundamental aspects of marketing methodology:
- Attracting new visitors to the user’s website
- Conversion of these visitors into customer leads
- Closing those leads into actual sales
Leveraging tools to streamline and magnify marketing and sales efforts is important for all businesses in the supply chain and logistics industries, but it can be especially important if your business is small, or has limited resources. HubSpot proved to be a competitive solution, with cost-effective results that increased leads, customers, and revenue.
Report highlights
Attracting new customers
- Users averaged 3x more leads per month after a year.
- Websites averaged 4.1x more visitors per month after a year.
Conversion of website visitors into leads
- Approximately 83% of the HubSpot customers experienced an increase in their conversion rate of leads into customers.
- Size of the business did not matter; all saw significant increases in site traffic and lead conversion rates.
Closing those leads into sales
- 72% of HubSpot customers saw an increase in sales revenue in one year.
Other findings focused on substantial support in meeting goals and the ease of attracting the right customer persona for optimum results.
- 96 % of customers surveyed said that HubSpot helped them meet their marketing goals.
- 68% of customer respondents felt that their efforts generated better quality leads while using HubSpot.
- Increased customer satisfaction was reported by 46% of HubSpot users since they began using the program.
Is HubSpot right for your business?
HubSpot is a marketing platform that takes all of the inbound marketing methods that were once separate services and consolidates them into one integrated software package. It provides marketing analytics, lead intelligence, A/B landing page testing, CRM integration, email service integration, eCommerce integration, and API integration.
From one location, you can blog, tweet, optimize, then capture and nurture leads. It drives the right customers to you using extensive research specific to your industry. It pinpoints your competitors and potential customers, including their typical pain points, interests, and questions.
A separate 12-month study conducted by Overgo involving both B2B and B2C businesses compared companies using HubSpot to those who did not. It found:
- An average increase of 170% in organic traffic after one year, whereas those using HubSpot saw an average organic traffic increase of 590%.
- HubSpot received 125% more (B2B) and 294% more (B2C) leads than companies not using HubSpot. (Several of the B2B companies received fewer leads because their targets are multi-million dollar deals, a much smaller avenue of opportunity.)
The difference was attributed to the tools HubSpot offers its customers, which include:
- Ranking opportunities – a feature that shows which keywords offer your business an opportunity to get ranked on the first page of search results.
- Conversion opportunities – shows which keywords are attracting a lot of traffic but not converting, then suggests ways to increase conversion.
- Long-tail opportunities – suggests keywords where ranking could improve substantially if you add a certain word or phrase.
- Competitors – compares your site’s ranking and search volume to your competitors.
- Campaigns – helps organize keywords into campaigns for tracking and measurement.
HubSpot’s inbound marketing software has consistently provided a relatively fast and high return on investment for the majority of B2B or B2C companies, no matter their size.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Apr 26, 2016 | Blog, Strategy
Engage your leads early in meaningful dialogue to improve your chances of conversion.
Your strategic marketing plan is generating a steady influx of quality leads, so closing sales should be easy, right? Only if you are contacting your leads early enough in the sales cycle.
Leads become sale opportunities if they are approached like a garden. Care is needed from the start to cultivate and produce the desired results. So, when is the perfect time to begin nurturing leads? It is earlier than you might think.
When a potential customer first shows interest in a blog post, opens an email, or shares your company’s post on social media, this is the first point of positive contact. You needs to keep that contact going and develop it into a conversation. And we are not talking about starting out with a sales pitch, either. Leads become sales when they are cultivated and grown like a trusted relationship — and the earlier after first contact the better.
According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, most companies are not responding nearly fast enough to their sales leads. The authors audited more than 2,200 businesses and measured their response time to web-generated leads. While only about a third (37%) responded within an hour, the average first response time was 42 hours. Surprisingly, 23% of companies never responded.
Google and Corporate Executive Board’s white paper on lead follow-up offers some insight on why quick responses are so important. For one, a reported 35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. That is largely because today’s B2B customers are nearly 60% through the sales process before they first engage a sales rep. By the time you hear from them, they are close to buying and want answers in a timely fashion to make their decision.
So, how fast of a response is ideal? A study conducted by Franklin Covey found that contact ratios improve 900% if web leads had some form of contact by the company within five minutes of submission. Now, it is probably not possible for your sales team to act upon every lead with that kind of velocity, but it is vital that they utilize proactive sales strategies, rather than reactive.
Reactive is leaving a message and, if they hear back, responding to it. Proactive is going after the sale with confidence and commitment to engaging the lead in real dialogue.
Early dialogue: What it is, and what it’s not
Early on in the sales cycle, you are not pushing to close the sale, but rather you are building a relationship through conversations. You are creating dialogue, not a sales monologue. Be there first, be relevant, and be action-oriented, and your customers will rely on your solutions more often.
You begin this dialogue by asking great, open-ended questions, essentially taking the time to get to know the potential customer. This helps you determine what will best suit this prospect’s needs, and it builds confidence and trust and will very often help the prospect consider issues they may never have thought of.
When you get that potential customer thinking outside the boundaries of their initial issue, it provides a bigger opportunity for you to showcase how your services or products can solve several of the customer’s dilemmas. It is also important to consider your products or services in terms of how they benefit the customer; your presentation will then be customer-focused, and that builds trust and respect in the relationship.
There many moving parts to an effective lead-nurturing campaign, and often there are many steps required to cultivate those leads into sales. From the start of the sales cycle, your company should:
- Take the time to discover and understand the potential customer’s needs and wants first, then advise and offer information. Make the move to match and sell the appropriate solution your company can offer.
- Have the ability to listen and offer viable solutions. Your sales team needs to be well informed about the products, services, and solutions that they are selling.
- Your sales team must be able to follow up quickly, consistently, and with an open dialogue to turn leads into customers.
Studies show that the faster you begin dialogue with a lead, the better your chances of conversion into a sale. This means that when cultivating a qualified lead, you don’t want your sales reps to make one phone call and simply leave a voicemail. You want real conversations to happen. If you don’t, your lead-generation efforts were for naught.
Related posts:
