Adidas and FIFA have found great success in using social media in supply chain management.
Sometimes, a success story can be a powerful motivator. FIFA and Adidas have been extremely successful in using social media in supply chain management. Here’s how it works for these organizations and why your business should consider it.
FIFA and Adidas
These two brands are a match made in heaven. In fact, their relationship spans the 48 years since 1970, when Adidas began supplying the official match ball for all FIFA World Cup matches. And clearly it’s been working for both brands, as they have recently extended their partnership until 2030.
With a global supply chain consisting of more than 1,000 independent factories around the world, Adidas is harnessing the power of social media as it relates to the supply chain.
How they used social media in supply chain management
In 2014, the brand launched the #allin campaign on Twitter, letting users follow the progress of the official 2014 World Cup soccer ball (nicknamed the Brazuca). The ball even had its own Twitter handle. Videos showed the Brazuca outfitted with cameras and sent on a journey around the world.
As you can imagine, this creative marketing was social media gold. Adidas was able to leverage its partnership with the FIFA World Cup and engage its audience in a meaningful and lasting way.
According to Waterloo blogger Jaime Salinas, “Adidas is using social media to improve their organization’s supply chain management globally by creating transparency, increased visibility, communications and quality control that leads to reduced operational and labor costs.”
For example, the Adidas SMS Worker Hotline allows direct communication with factory workers, bridging the gap that can exist between management and workers. The system allows the workers to have anonymity, ensures transparency in tracking complaints. It also allows correction efforts to happen in real time.
The takeaway
So what can your business learn from this duo’s successes with social media in supply chain management?
“Social media can improve [an] organization’s supplying chain management,” writes Salinas. “It can create more visibility, improve communication, increase control, and reduce operational and labor costs.” This creates a more efficient and steady supply chain, which in turn increases customer satisfaction.
Salinas concludes, “The ripple effect of using social media to improve supply chain management can expand outwardly across virtually internal and external organizations, which is great for business.”
Integrating marketing automation into your CRM strategy can improve efficiency, streamline workflows, and make communications more consistent.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about different types of marketing automation, why you should be considering them, and what they can do for your business. Today, we’re talking about customer relationship management (CRM) — an area where you may not have realized that automation could help. Integrating marketing automation into your CRM strategy can improve efficiency, streamline workflows, and make communications more consistent.
So how does integration of CRM and automation look?
Pardot blogger Jenna Hanington explains it like this: “Automation … is the marketing counterpart to your CRM, focused on lead generation and personalized, one-to-one communications powered by the data collected through prospect and visitor tracking.”
Your CRM is a database, and marketing automation is “the tool that allows you to execute on the information stored in that database,” writes Hanington. Integrating the systems has the potential to cut costs and make big gains in terms of productivity. According to Salesforce blogger Matt Wesson, “Marketing automation and [CRM] are complementary tools that only reach their full potential when paired together.”
Combining CRM with marketing automation has the potential to give you more organizational bandwidth, more precision in your messaging and lead nurturing, and more measurable value in your campaigns. Here are a few examples of how CRM and marketing automation can work in tandem.
3 ways your CRM and marketing automation can work together
1) Track behavior
Combining automation with your CRM allows you to go beyond basic demographic data. You can see things like what pages your prospects are visiting, what types of content they’re interested in, and where they are in the buying cycle.
2) Tie revenue to campaigns
Marketing professionals often run into the problem of not being able to specifically tie their efforts to ROI. Creating a campaign in your marketing automation system maps it back to your CRM, so you can correlate closed deals directly with the campaigns that created them. This means you can attribute revenue directly to campaigns and more accurately measure your ROI.
3) Send targeted messages
You can use the behavioral information collected by your marketing automation tool to create and send targeted messages that are customized to your prospects’ interests and stages in the buying cycle. This means your prospects will find your messages more relevant and engaging.
In summary, integrating marketing automation with your customer relationship management database can save you time, make sales and marketing more effective, and better track ROI. This one is a no-brainer.
In many cases, automation in manufacturing creates leaner, more efficient operations. Efficiency facilitates new opportunities and business growth, which in turn allow for job creation.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications in manufacturing have driven a palpable fear that mass job loss is on the horizon. We have to wonder: is the threat as real and as imminent as many think? Like many things, the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
A McKinsey Global Institute report predicts that automation could cause the loss of between 39 and 73 million jobs by 2030 in the U.S. alone. Clearly, the AI genie will not be put back into its bottle. However, this doesn’t mean that all jobs across all sectors will be affected evenly.
Generally, low-skill jobs are more susceptible to replacement by AI. This is especially true in industries like retail, which has worked to automate many aspects along the purchase journey, including processes designed to get packages into consumers’ hands faster.
Not the end of the world
Oddly enough, 73 million lost jobs doesn’t spell all doom and gloom. Yes, people will lose jobs — that is inevitable. Automation, however, will create many more.
Think about it: In many cases, automation creates leaner, more efficient operations. Efficiency facilitates new market opportunities and business growth, which in turn allow for expansion and job creation. And these new jobs aren’t the low-skill positions of their pre-automation predecessors. They’re operating new technology, supervising automated processes, and other higher-paying opportunities.
Amazon: Case in point
Consider the retail industry’s brick-and-mortar boom and bust and the rise of e-commerce. As stores shuttered, companies had to downsize the number of individuals they employed. Then, as e-commerce boomed, e-retailing companies were able to bring on more employees — often at higher salaries than in traditional retail.
Amazon’s expansion to the “once-thriving factory town” of Fall River, Mass., offers a prime example. The city, which boasted nearly 20,000 manufacturing jobs in 1991, saw that number dip below 4,000 by 2015 — in large part due to automation. The 2016 arrival of an Amazon fulfillment center was the single largest job-creation event in recent memory.
Employment at the Fall River center has crept above 2,000 in just over a year. And it’s apparent that number will keep rising and that humans won’t be phased out anytime soon. In fact, rather than replace human workers, Amazon’s technology helps each become more efficient. That stimulates Amazon’s growth and the need for more fulfillment centers and more talent to fill those jobs.
While the majority of the Fall River center’s jobs are not skilled and pay reflects that, other benefits such as overtime, tuition aid, and company shares make annual compensation comparable to or better than what local textile mills once paid. Fulfillment center jobs certainly pay above traditional retail and offer employees the opportunity to work withartificial intelligence — rather than in competition with it.
A double-edged sword
AI in the warehouse may stimulate job growth. But those most likely to lose their jobs to automation — low-skill workers — may not possess the transferable skills to be successful in the new wave of jobs created by technology. For example, would a former factory worker who put together boxes for fulfillment be hirable for a position operating custom box-cutting machinery?
Amazon, again, exemplifies a solution. The company offers its workers significant training and education to breach any skill gaps. Those who have never had experience in a warehouse or operating technology will need companies to invest in their training to ensure those who have lost their jobs to automation will have a place in the new economy.
History repeating
This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered such an issue. Before ATMs were the ubiquitous cash-dispensing machines, many thought them the great disruptor of the banking industry. The bank teller’s role was sure to become obsolete.
What actually happened is that ATMs led to more efficiently run banks. While some jobs were lost, banks were actually able to open up more branch locations, which led to the creation of more jobs.
Will automation in the warehouse cause the same scenario to happen? Will organizations become more efficient, allowing them to grow and hire more workers at better, higher paying jobs? In many cases, it looks like it already has.
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.
Internet users are changing how they search, and search engines are changing in response — which means writing for SEO is changing, too.
We just wrapped up a detailed series on how SEO is changing and what that means for those of us trying to reach potential customers in the digital world. Writing for SEO means creating content that drives traffic, preferably highly qualified traffic that will convert to sales leads. Basically, you need to write your web pages in a way that tells search engines what your site is all about.
Search engines have been working overtime to keep up with the ways internet users are searching the web. Developers are frequently updating the algorithms that Google and Bing use to make sure that users are finding exactly what they’re looking for.
This means that writing for SEO is also changing. You need to keep up with the changes to make sure your content is reaching your target audiences. Trying to rank for certain keywords in each blog post you publish is a practice on the way out.
So, what now?
Make sure you are focusing your content on what your business does best and structure your content around those topics. It’s called the topic cluster model.
Do you know all the latest packaging trends? Do you love helping clients cut down on production costs? Use these areas of expertise to build website content that support your pillar content.
In this video we’ll discuss the four things to know in a changing search landscape and what you can do to stay ahead of these changes.
Video: Writing for SEO tips
I do want to mention that you should never artificially stuff your blog posts with keywords or links or images. After all, search engines will continue to evolve to help readers find what they’re looking for. They’ve gotten really good at spotting these stuffed posts, so stop wasting your time trying to outsmart them.
Your best bet to improve SEO is to create content that is valuable to your target audience. Then you should use these tips as a guide to help users looking for content like yours to find it.
Here are four metrics to benchmark how your brand stacks up against your competitors and to evaluate the success of your content marketing strategy.
Competitive benchmarking is the process of comparing your company’s performance against that of your competitors. You can use various metrics to benchmark what these businesses are doing better than you are and where you have the edge. Benchmarking marketing performance is an important step in the process of evaluating the success of your content marketing strategy.
Organizations of all kinds — large corporations, privately owned businesses, nonprofits, and even sports teams — need to measure their performance to see if their efforts are leading to success. It’s one thing to examine webpage visits, number of clicks on a social post, or how many times a piece of content has been shared to understand what is happening as a result of your activities. But it’s key to take this information and see how it compares to other industry leaders.
Measuring digital marketing performance begins with setting competitive benchmarks. And to do this, you need contextual data. Analytics are great, but not if you don’t have context for your data.
There are several ways to measure your activity against your competitors. At Fronetics, we use these four metrics to benchmark marketing performance against competition and industry leaders.
Video: 4 metrics to benchmark marketing performance against your competition
As with all good strategies, you must continually measure success of your content marketing and adjust based on real-world results. These four metrics to benchmark marketing performance against your competitors are a great way to get started. If you aren’t keeping pace with — or beating — the competition, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
