Here are 4 components of an effective lead-nurturing campaign that will entice your potential customers and have them moving down the sales funnel.
Your content marketing objectives really come down to one basic goal: to generate a high number of quality leads. These leads will help drive tomorrow’s revenue and increase sales. In fact, 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.
[bctt tweet=” 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.” username=”Fronetics”]
As more and more buyers discover brands before they are ready to purchase, an essential function of any marketing department is lead nurturing. That is, moving leads through the sales funnel by leveraging what’s known about their needs and online behavior.
Marketo, a marketing software company, describes lead nurturing as being “personalized, adaptive, and able to listen and react to buyer behavior in real time.”
We know that marketers need to focus their lead nurturing strategy on multi-channel engagement. This includes utilizing email, social media, blogs, and video to interact with potential customers. A multi-channel lead nurturing strategy is essential for companies looking to optimize their user experience and bring in high-quality leads.
With so many variables contributing to a productive lead-generation campaign, it can be challenging to pinpoint what differentiates a successful campaign from a mediocre one. Here are four tools that will help you deliver a series of targeted messages across multiple touch points and platforms to help solidify your lead-nurturing strategy and increase your quality leads.
4 building blocks of an effective lead-nurturing campaign
Successful lead nurturing is really about utilizing all the tools at your disposal to meaningfully connect with your leads in order to build trust and establish credibility. Using these four key points, marketers can start building on their lead-generation efforts as they guide potential customers on their journey to becoming a client.
And don’t forget: Asking for the right information is key! If you want to nurture high-quality leads, you need to make sure you’re capturing relevant, helpful information along the sales journey.
More and more supply chain marketers are realizing the benefits of inbound marketing (over outbound marketing) including cost savings and increased lead generation.
Marketers are constantly coming up with new and trendy ways to attract leads. With endless platforms available to us, it can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned marketers to know where they need to focus their efforts.
In order to find the right solutions for your supply chain marketing needs, you first have to understand the difference between inbound and outbound marketing. And more importantly, how they can help — or hinder — your marketing efforts.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing describes any marketing approach that pushes a message onto a buyer. Traditional marketing — tv and radio ads, telemarketing, banner and display ads — are all examples of outbound marketing.
Another name for this marketing tactic is interruption marketing, as it typically tries to take “attention away from what your buyer is doing and bring it, forcibly, on to your product or service.”
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on audiences finding you. Instead of pushing a message onto buyers, inbound marketing allows you to establish your brand as an industry leader and let interested audiences come to you. This type of marketing attempts to draw in potential customers through interesting and engaging content.
Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing. Examples include blog posts, social media, infographics, white papers, and videos.
Why is inbound marketing better for the supply chain?
Outbound marketing used to be the ‘go to’ for generating leads, but this is simply no longer the case. Marketers across industries have found that inbound marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing practices. In fact, almost three-quarters (68%) of inbound organizations believe their marketing strategy is effective, while more than half (52%) of outbound marketers don’t believe their strategy is effective.
[bctt tweet=”Marketers across industries have found that inbound marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing practices. In fact, almost three-quarters (68%) of inbound organizations believe their marketing strategy is effective.” username=”Fronetics”]
Here’s why we think inbound marketing is better for supply chain marketers than outbound marketing.
Video: Why supply chain marketers need inbound marketing
If your supply chain company isn’t active on social media, know that your competitors are. Here are three ways social media can help the supply chain, improving processes and expanding your audiences.
I remember my first supply chain job after college. My boss was stuck on the word “social” and didn’t see any value in social media at the time. He believed that you came to work to be productive and that social media was counterproductive. There was no need for a crossroads between social media and the supply chain.
Fast forward a few years — ok, maybe more than a few — and there are still plenty of supply chain companies that aren’t utilizing social media to help grow their brands. Social networking isn’t about being social; it is about facilitating communication and collaboration, distributing content, and engaging with target audiences. It’s about making processes more efficient using innovative technologies, like automation tools.
[bctt tweet=”Social networking isn’t about being social; it is about facilitating communication and collaboration, distributing content, and engaging with target audiences.” username=”Fronetics”]
As part of a comprehensive content marketing strategy, social media can actually help your supply chain company meet ROI benchmarks. Utilizing social media increases your brand’s visibility and promotes transparency. The distribution of high-quality, thought provoking content will help your target audience see you as an industry leader, which will help you boost sales and increase customer engagement.
Here are three ways social media can help the supply chain improve communication, increase information sharing, and engage with new (and current) customers.
Video: 3 ways social media can help the supply chain
Recommendations
Still apprehensive about diving into social media? Try not to focus on the ‘social’ aspect. Instead, focus on using the tools available through social media platforms as a means to get things done.
Looking to increase leads? Increase engagement with potential customers through content? Find innovative ways to grow your target audiences? Find ways to support these goals through social media.
And if you’re not comfortable in the social media world (we think you need to be), find younger professionals on your team that are. Encourage these employees to find new and exciting opportunities to increase visibility and engagement through social media.
What ways do you think social media can help the supply chain?
Content marketing is a long-term solution. Here’s why it takes so long to see results.
You are committed to your content marketing program. You’ve created blog posts, uploaded videos, and collaborated with industry leaders. You may have started noticing an increase in web traffic, social reach, and other engagement metrics like time on page. You’re on the right track!
The problem is your lack of leads or sales. Your boss is pressuring you for results, and you’re starting to question your efforts. Are you doing something wrong?
The answer is NO.
In fact, you’re doing everything right. Now you need to give your investment time to deliver on your return. But I know you’re asking, “Why does content marketing take so dang long to work?”
[bctt tweet=”Content marketing is a long-term solution that helps businesses build brand awareness, grow their audience, and generate new leads and sales. ” username=”Fronetics”]
Content marketing is a long-term solution that helps businesses build brand awareness, grow their audience, and generate new leads and sales. But it takes time and effort to achieve results. You don’t want to give up before you see the fruits of your labors.
Just how long will it take for your content marketing strategy to yield results? Well, that really depends on your business and your goals, but you can count on at least six months. Content marketers Neil Patel and Carol Ann Tan both write that content marketing strategies take at least six to nine months to start seeing results.
But that doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel. Here are 4 reasons content marketing doesn’t show results overnight but is still well worth your time and investment.
Video: 4 reasons why it’s NOT time to give up on content marketing
Please don’t give up on content marketing before it’s had time to play out. We understand you want to see the fruits of your labor. But if you pull the plug too early, you’ll lose out on your initial investment, not to mention the leads and sales that are eventually coming your way.
Focus on what you do best — and save time and money — by parceling off these 6 marketing tasks to outsource.
If you’re anything like me, you’re busy — not-enough-hours-in-the-day busy. We find that supply chain and logistics marketers are some of the most overworked professionals in the industry. One person (or a very small team) is often responsible for all marketing and sales efforts for an organization. So I want to let you in on a little secret: Outsourcing is your solution to being too busy.
[bctt tweet=”Outsourcing marketing tasks allows you to focus on insourcing your core competencies.” username=”Fronetics”]
Outsourcing marketing tasks allows you to focus on insourcing your core competencies. In other words, you can start focusing on what you do best and delegate specified tasks to external experts.
The content marketing landscape is constantly changing. There are more and more marketing tasks to cover: social media, videos, blogs, emails, etc. How can you truly focus your attention on any one area when you have so many balls in the air?
Don’t work harder. Work smarter.
Outsourcing marketing gives you the opportunity to remove some of the time-consuming and laborious tasks from your desk, so you can get back to the core of your marketing efforts.
That doesn’t mean you have to outsource all your marketing tasks, or even half of them. Choosing several areas beyond your staff’s expertise, or tasks that are particularly tedious, can help you improve your marketing efforts and take stress off an overworked internal team.
Here are six areas you should consider outsourcing.
Video: 6 marketing tasks to outsource
Final thoughts
Finding the right partner is key when you choose to outsource marketing tasks. You have to trust the people to whom you are delegating tasks, so that you know the work is getting done the way you want while you focus your attention on other tasks.
The right partner will work with you to develop a strategy that closely aligns with your business goals. Your partner can even execute the strategy for you and provide regular updates on how it’s working. This kind of results-driven approach will ensure you’re stretching your marketing dollars to the fullest extent and getting the kind of results that will grow your bottom line.
