Have you ever wondered how to best find great informational insight for your business? This is a common problem most businesses face, so you are not alone. Here’s the good news, many companies and even other industries face the same daunting task of how to find answers. Sometimes, you have to look outside your own company to find helpful answers. Believe it or not, those answers might be easy to find and you may not realize it unless you start digging. So let’s get started.
First, you need to think about what information you want to find and where you need to start digging for that information? My suggestion is to look at other industries that may be closely aligned with yours and also take a look at your competition.
Let’s Say Your Company Is An Automobile Dealership
Are you looking for better ways to use social media to drive customers to your website and also to your brick and mortar dealership? In today’s consumer world, those are critical for success. There are many social channels to use, and also many ways to use them, both good and not so good. Of course, you want the good ones!
Adjacent industries have similar business models and they are not competitors to your company. They can provide great ideas because of their similarities. Retailers and eTailers also provide pertinent ideas because they are driving traffic to both their store and/or their website.
Here are five adjacent industries I suggest looking at for some ideas that can provide a unique perspective.
- Boat Dealerships
- Heavy Equipment Dealers
- Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)
- Motorcycle Dealers
- Accessory Manufacturers
Here are several retailers and eTailers I suggest looking at for some ideas that can provide a unique perspective.
- Big Box Retailers
- Boutique Retailers
- Shopping Mall Retailers
- Pizza Fast Food Retailers
- Amazon, Gap, Nike
I mention these because adjacent industries as well as Retailers and eTailers can have very similar challenges that an automobile dealer has. They want people to use social technologies to drive engagement, and qualified leads to both their site and brick and mortar business. You may also find in your digging around that these adjacent industries look at the customer similarly, so they are trying to accomplish the same thing you are.
This can be very helpful in looking for new ways to execute your social media content creation and strategy. The adjacent industries may also look at the customer and their path totally different. This can also provide you with a different perspective, one that may be useful. Some of the retailers may appear to be way off track. I put these in because they are extremely savvy in reaching effective customer touch points using social media and driving customers to both online and the retail store. The bigger they are, typically the more progressive they are as well. Look for some ways they are executing and do the same for your dealership. You just may be pleasantly surprised.
Competitors
This is the obvious place to do your digging for good information. Check out all of your competitors in your local market to see what their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages look like. Some may have them and some may not. Also, look to see what they are saying? How they are saying it? What hashtags they are using? Are they driving customers to the website or the dealership? Using photos? Videos? How they speak to the customer? There are many ways to look at this, and the more you look at your competitors, the more ideas you will get for your own marketing initiatives.
Establish Cross-Industry, Cross-Functional, Cross-Customer Intelligence
As soon as you start looking around, you will soon discover the ah-ha moment. Yes, there are many ways to accomplish the same goal, and other companies and industries are going about their business different ways. This happens because their perspective on social media, customer pain points and how to solve those pain points can be vastly different. Sometimes it takes a unique perspective from a different angle than yours to gain insight on your challenges and solutions. During the looking stages, you will discover new approaches that you can either imitate and/or learn from to modify your own approach. Start looking around you just might learn something.
Yourbrandexposed.com is designed to look at digital with an eye into the future with a creative, innovative marketing angle. A digital-business perspective for marketers!