by Fronetics | May 14, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
Here are 4 ideas for measuring podcast success, including downloads, audience, lead tracking, and intangible benefits.
Podcasts are an increasingly popular content medium, but measuring their performance is difficult. Here are some tips for measuring podcast success in spite of the challenges. Spoiler alert: it’s an art, not a science.
Why podcasts?
Today’s busy professionals are increasingly driven to make their “down time” more productive and engaged. The popularity of podcasts rises every year, with more than 50% of American homes now classified as “podcast fans” by Nielsen.
[bctt tweet=”Podcasts are essentially blogs in audio format, and — like blogs — they are relatively cheap to produce, making them an excellent high-value offer.” username=”Fronetics”]
Podcasts are easily downloadable on a phone or mobile device. They allow the user to listen to a topic of interest while commuting, exercising, or cleaning the house. Podcasts are essentially blogs in audio format, and — like blogs — they are relatively cheap to produce, making them an excellent high-value offer with which to generate or nurture leads.
If you’re already creating podcasts as part of your content program, good for you! But, you’re probably running into a familiar challenge: It’s really hard to measure podcast performance.
4 tips for measuring podcast success
ROI calculations for podcasts are notoriously elusive because users download them on their devices. Producers won’t know whether a user ever listened to any or all of a particular podcast.
But measuring podcast success is possible, at least for those that don’t mind a little more nuance than numbers. Here are 4 tips to get you started.
1) Track unique downloads
With podcasting, the best measurement is something called a “unique download,” which tries to capture how podcasts are generally obtained. It measures a progressively downloaded file by a single user at a single IP address over a 24-hour period. Third-party tracking services like PodTrac or tracking/hosting services like Libsyn or Podbean can give you this information.
Is this perfect? Nope! Users can download and never listen or download and only partially listen. Multiple users can listen to one download, and one user can download twice (or more) onto multiple devices. There is nothing exact about tracking the number of unique downloads. But based on the way podcasts are consumed, it’s not a bad metric, and frankly, it’s all we’ve got.
2) Estimate your base audience
Determining the approximate size of your subscriber list — or at least your committed and consistent listening audience — is also helpful. This isn’t exactly the same as unique downloads. Subscribers are people that have gone out of their way to make sure to be alerted when you publish a new podcast.
To do this, examine two trends: the consistency in unique downloads across multiple episodes and, more importantly, the number of downloads in the first 48 hours after a new release. Those first few days are when your consistent listeners will grab the industry-fresh (you hope!) info, and it will give you sense of how big that segment is.
These subscribers are your bread and butter. And you can use this number, albeit approximate, as you would other marketing metrics that measure engagement.
3) Get creative (without getting annoying)
If getting a better sense of lead generation from your podcasts is imperative, try thinking creatively about how to access that information from your audience. But beware! The more you require of your listeners, the more annoying you potentially become. That said, here are some ideas.
- Create a page/section on your website where visitors can access the podcast. If you’re using a marketing software like HubSpot, you’ll be able to tell if leads access this via your site.
- Add an optional question on the lead-generation forms on your website, just a simple checkbox like, “Have you heard our podcasts?”
- Check the previous page path from your homepage on Google Analytics or your referrals sites report from software platforms like HubSpot for traffic coming from podcast websites.
- Create a special landing page and mention it as a call-to-action in your podcast several times. This way, you know any traffic visiting this page must have come through the podcast.
All these can offer a rough (but low) estimate of leads that have consumed podcast content.
4) Remember the value of intangibles
Here’s the part where we remind you how important it is to remember why you are podcasting. Lead generation? Of course. But why else? We’d venture to say building relationships, like all of your content marketing. Podcasts are wonderful for this!
Invite your current customers or best business relationships to join you for a podcast. There’s a lot of power in a really good interview on a podcast: You get some fresh and new content; you deepen a potentially very useful business relationship; and you gain their network of listeners, too.
Learn from the inconsistent
Patterns and consistency can give a broad sense of the success of your podcasting. But don’t forget to abandon them sometimes, particularly if there is one podcast that’s an outlier.
If one was wildly successful, that’s fantastic. Chances are you hit on an extremely timely topic, or perhaps did something better in your efforts to share outside of your base subscriber list. Great news for your lead-generation efforts!
That said, if you have one or two that garnered lower interest, don’t assume the opposite is true. And don’t let them skew your broader analysis. Sometimes it only has to do with how niche your topic was, and niche topics can still be highly successful lead-generation tools, particularly if yours is a niche business with niche clients. In fact, these niche podcasts may end up being some of your most successful.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Apr 2, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
If you’re looking to increase your brand awareness, and quickly, here are 10 tricks to accelerate your efforts.
If you took Psychology 101 in school (or even if you didn’t), you know that people are more likely to buy from brand names they’re familiar with than those they don’t know. This goes for purchasing things like medicine, and for procuring components or parts as part of the supply chain.
That’s why so many of our clients come to us looking to build brand awareness as one of their main goals. They want to customers to know about them — and sooner rather than later.
Particularly if your business is new, you’re trying to change an existing market perception, or you have to make your marketing dollars work fast to meet a boss’ deadline, you need to grow brand awareness quickly. We’ve got some ideas to accelerate your efforts.
10 tricks to grow brand awareness quickly
1) Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is an on-trend platform that delivers targeted content to B2B buyers and builds brand awareness with potential customers. This feature consists of sequences of content that a user posts over a 24-hour period. Besides photos, Stories can include video and Boomerangs, seconds-long motion clips that play forwards and backwards.
2) Partner with other brands
Creating a promotional partnership with a brand that is ancillary to your role in the supply chain can be a huge boost to your brand awareness, if you choose wisely in your partnership. You benefit from its image and reputation and build collegiality.
3) Start content partnerships
Again, this is all about leveraging other people’s audiences to spread the word about your brand. Reach out to the blogs or media sites your target buyers frequent to see if you can author a post for them. Invite them to guest author on your blog. Basically, create two-way content partnerships where you will ensure that your brand’s name will come across the screens of target buyers.
4) Make sharing easy
This is a great way to let your successes go to work for you. Make it easy for your audience and followers to share your content with their networks. Give them sharing options for email, social media — heck, put share links on anything and everything. Social media is a powerful tool in building your brand. Don’t underuse it.
5) Hold social media contests
Everybody loves to win a contest. Use your social media platforms to create contests in which followers submit a photo or video, and let other users vote for their favorites. Contestants will share the link with their networks, and your brand awareness grows exponentially.
6) Try paid social advertising
Facebook and Twitter ads are relatively cheap, and both platforms do a great job of making sure your content gets to your target audience. You can set metrics and customize your preferences for a targeted audience in a variety of ways. It’s one of the most effective ways to grow brand awareness quickly with a very particular audience, though you have to pay to play.
7) Infographics
These are eye-catching and colorful ways to display interesting data and statistics, and are often overlooked for the content powerhouses they are. They’re prime candidates to be shared far and wide on social media.
8) Personality
Having a memorable personality for your brand isn’t just for B2C companies. While you don’t need to hire the Old Spice Guy, letting your content have a voice and perspective is important. Buyers want to know they’re dealing with a human being.
9) Podcasts
Starting your own industry podcast, perhaps interviewing your own executives and other industry experts, is a great way to build your brand and simultaneously develop relationships with your supply chain peers.
10) Become a resource
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Your most important asset is your knowledge and expertise, not your products and services. Content marketing is all about being a trusted resource for your audience. Ditch the blatant sales pitch in your content and think about how you can help your target buyers instead.
How do you grow brand awareness quickly?
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Dec 14, 2017 | Blog, Logistics, Supply Chain
Here are our most-viewed blog posts from 2017 about the supply chain and logistics industries, including posts about some of the largest supply chain companies in the world, Starbucks and Amazon.
Throughout the year, we write innovative posts to help readers stay in the know with the latest news and happenings to the supply chain & logistics industries. These posts provide insightful and relevant information from thought leaders, current trends, and tips to stay ahead of your competitors. Here’s a look at our most popular posts from this year.
Here are our top 10 supply chain and logistics posts of 2017.
1. Supply Chain Putting the ‘Star’ in Starbucks
Starbucks’ closely managed supply chain may be the key to the premium coffee giant’s success. The international coffee giant has widely studied and acclaimed supply chain management practices, which, according to some, make Starbucks’ coffee and customer experience superior to those of its competitors. Read more.
2. 8 Must-Follow Logistics & Supply Chain Blogs for 2017
Supply chain professionals should be following these eight blogs to keep up with the latest industry news and happenings in the coming year. They cover a range of topics, from technology to strategy, and feature thought leadership by some of the brightest minds in the field. Read more.
3. Top 5 Trends to Know to Compete with Amazon’s Supply Chain
Supply chains must accept that they cannot equal the power of Amazon’s supply chain without embracing new trends. While supply chain entities struggle to stay competitive with the e-commerce giant, more organizations will look for ways to eliminate inefficiencies and boost operations. Fortunately, these five trends may alleviate some of the strains of competition by giving supply chain partners an advantage in the global market. Read more.
4. 5 Podcasts for the Supply Chain and Logistics Professionals
These podcasts bring the latest news and thought leadership in the supply chain and logistics industries right to your earbuds. Podcast’s popularity has skyrocketed since the smartphone became as necessary as car keys, giving you to-the-minute facts and information, right in the palm of your hand. If you’re looking to increase your podcast listening, here are five that highlight topics of interest to supply chain and logistics professionals. Read more.
5. What’s the Difference between Supply Chain Management and Logistics (Infographic)
Argentus’ infographic sheds light on the differences between these often-confused functions. Both Logistics and the wider Supply Chain are vital to how companies run today, but the two are still so often confused. We put together an infographic outlining some of the key differences and points of overlap between them. Read more.
6. 5 Books Every Supply Chain Professional Should Read
Add these books to your reading list to stay on top of industry trends and jump start your professional development. Read more.
7. What are the Supply Chain Impacts of Amazon’s Whole Foods Acquisition?
Amazon’s foray into the grocery space has larger implications for its overall strategy, and the possible benefits for the eCommerce goliath are diverse. Big news out of the grocery retail world as Amazon has announced its acquisition of major organic foods retailer Whole Foods Market – for an eye-popping $13.7 billion sale price that doesn’t look so massive given Amazon’s $136 billion sales volume in 2016. Read more.
8. Packaging Trends to Watch in 2017
Will sustainability trends from the consumer packaging industry have an impact on electronics manufacturing this year? Packaging trends suggest a wide range of startups, researchers, and big companies are committed to finding solutions that match the buzzwords du jour — sustainable, bio-degradable, natural, and eco-friendly. Read more.
9. The Top 3 Logistics and Supply Chain Blogs for 2017 – Readers’ Choice!
Our readers voted Morai Logistics, Women in Trucking, and the Oracle Supply Chain Management Blog as the top 3 logistics and supply chain blogs of 2017. Every year we ask our readers to vote for the best industry blogs. The results are always interesting — there’s really a lot of great supply chain and logistics content out there, plus it’s great to see where our readers are finding value. Read more.
10. The State of Supply Chains: The Supply Chain Has Gone Digital (Infographic)
2016 was the year of the digital supply chain — here’s a look at how things changed. The digital transformation has already reached most supply chain organizations. Per GT Nexus, 75% of executives surveyed recognized the digital supply chain as an important factor for the next five years. Read more.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Nov 21, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing
These 10 podcasts for marketers discuss the latest news and trends in the marketing world relevant to the supply chain and logistics industries.
Podcasts have surged in popularity over the past few years. At least 112 million Americans have listened to podcasts, a figure up 11% from last year, with 67 million listening at least monthly. So why are they so popular?
Podcasts are a series of digital audio files that listeners can subscribe to. With the flexibility to listen at their convenience, followers are drawn to the ease and mobility of podcasts. And the available topics are endless.
For supply chain and logistics marketers, podcasts provide the latest digital marketing news, as well as innovative trends that are new to your industry. Here are 10 podcasts that deliver the most up-to-date news in marketing for supply chain and logistics companies.
10 supply chain and logistics marketing podcasts
Millions of dollars are being left on the table right now by supply chain companies because of poor marketing! Supply Chain Gold delivers actionable marketing strategies and information to logistics and 3PL companies, distribution centers, and fulfillment centers to help bring in more sales and increase profit margins. The Supply Chain Gold podcast warehouses internet marketing secrets that your company can leverage to lower customer acquisition costs, grow revenue, increase net profits, drive brand recognition, and dominate your industry.
- #AskGaryVee
Gary Vaynerchuk — author, speaker, and owner of multi-million dollar marketing company VaynerMedia — uses his podcast to answer questions about marketing, social media, and general entrepreneurial topics that his followers ask on social media. If you’re looking for a high-intensity host whose responses are no-fluff, honest, and a tad explicit from time to time, Gary might be just the straight-talking expert you need.
The Marketing Book podcast helps business owners and marketers keep up with the smartest thinking in the quickly changing field of modern marketing. Each episode interviews authors and marketers to give you actionable marketing insights, tips, tactics and resources to help grow your business.
Social Media Examiner’s weekly podcast is hosted by Michael Stelzner and other members of SME’s team. Each podcast focuses on new social media features and strategies, providing listeners with actionable tips they can use to improve their social media results.
Copyblogger FM is a weekly, short-form broadcast hosted by Sonia Simone. Each week she and a team of rotating experts discuss the week’s news and updates in the field of content marketing, email marketing, copywriting, conversion optimization, and more.
John J. Wall and Christopher S. Penn host a 20-minute, weekly show recorded in a local coffee shop. The podcast is designed to be casual and conversational. They share tips on social marketing, SEO, search marketing, copywriting, affiliate marketing, and more. They also take listener questions.
Industry experts Eric Siu and Neil Patel offer users unconventional marketing wisdom that will make you want to kick some of your traditional strategies to the curb. Their goal is to bring valuable, actionable marketing tips in just 10 minutes.
Buffer’s blog is highly successful, so no wonder its podcast is equally informative. The content will appeal to anyone who practices social media marketing, whether you’re brand new to marketing or you’re a social media practitioner. They regularly have industry leaders on the show, including Mari Smith and Neil Patel.
Know Your Audience is a weekly podcast that interviews journalists, bloggers, data scientists, and analytics/audience development professionals. The goal is to start a meaningful conversation about what it takes to create engaging content and learn from the people who are shaping the future of media.
Listen and learn from interviews with social business leaders representing top brands and agencies. Host Bernie Borges leads an educational format as guests share their experiences and insights on social business topics including marketing, selling, customer service, employee advocacy, recruiting and commerce to fuel your social business journey.
Related posts:
by Fronetics | Jun 28, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
In June’s social media news, more social media platforms are making changes to benefit businesses who advertise.
June has seen a lot of recent changes in big-name platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, that will directly impact the engagement between businesses and potential customers. The trend is to create apps that work harder for paid advertisers, increasing brand awareness for businesses and proving their worth through built-in tracking.
Apple has also been working overtime to keep their products competing with the big players in the social media game. New analytics and introduction of Business Chat are keeping the fruit relevant.
Facebook Rolls Out Two New Ad Campaign Tools for Marketers
Facebook delivered two new options for helping businesses grow: Valued Optimization and Lookalike Audiences. The first, Valued Optimization, “works by using the purchase values sent from the Facebook pixel to estimate how much a person may spend with your business over a seven-day period. The ad’s bid is then automatically adjusted based on this estimation, allowing campaigns to deliver ads to people likely to spend more with your business at a low cost.” The second, Lookalike Audiences, helps marketers reach people likely to be interested in a business based on people who have visited their site. Read more
Facebook Expands Click to Messenger Ads to Instagram
Facebook continues to expand ways for users to connect directly with businesses. The Click to Messenger ads have been available through Facebook for a while, and now they’re expanding to Instagram. “Instagram Click to Messenger ads let you reach the people you care about on Instagram and engage with them on Messenger.” Read more
Instagram Makes Sponsored Content More Transparent
Last week Instagram introduced a new “paid partnership tag” that will clearly identify sponsored posts on its app. “Partnerships between community creators and businesses are an important part of the Instagram experience, and a healthy community should be open and consistent about paid partnerships.” This new tag will help users determine when posts are influenced by commercial relationships with businesses. Read more
Apple Rolls Out Analytics to Podcast App
During a podcast session at WWDC, the Apple developer conference, Apple announced that its podcast app will now have the ability to give publishers data that tells them just how much of their episodes are actually being listening to. Apple Podcasts app will allow creators to track aggregated data about when users start, stop, and skip within an episode. This data will give podcasts tangible results that were once estimated from the number of downloads a podcast received. Read more
Apple Debuts Business Chat
Business Chat allows real customer service representatives to communicate directly with users through iMessage. According to the Apple Developer site, customers can use this new feature to “find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Spotlight, and Siri.” The Verge reports that “there will be built-in features like Apple Pay and calendar integration, which will allow Business Chat to facilitate purchases without requiring the user to exit the chat.” Read more
Twitter Experiments with New Promotional Features for Sponsored Live Video
After entering into an exclusive partnership with Live Nation, Twitter is experimenting with new features to help promote events featured on LN. New features like an alert that users can set to remind them of the live event or a branded timeline that will put all tweets about the event on one landing page will help strengthen the relationship between Twitter and Live Nation, paving the way for more partnerships with big brands. Read more
Related posts:
