The world of manufacturing has long since been at the forefront of technological advances, including the assembly-line to machine-based manufacturing, and everything in between. However, when it comes to the use of Social Intelligence to drive business decisions, the world of manufacturing is still lagging behind.
The leaders in manufacturing for any industry are the ones that use innovative technological advances in their manufacturing process, and in today’s world, that includes Social Intelligence. So, if you want to get a leg up on your competitors, it’s time you understand the benefits of letting Intelligence drive your business decisions. With that in mind, below are a few, of many, examples of how Social Intelligence will help your manufacturing business.
Social Intelligence Provides Audience Demographics
People readily share massive amounts of information about who they are online, maybe even without knowing it. Location, age, gender, etc. All, some or most of this information is out there on most of your consumers, you just need the proper tools to gather it. We often see customers refine their campaign material when they find out even the most basic demographic information about their audience – their age, gender, languages. You can also look into more sophisticated analytics, like interests and affinities, in order to help target your message, your approach, and your channels or engagement.
A few years back, Lockheed Martin began utilizing audience analytics to learn more about who their audience is a Social Media initiative that they dubbed “Engineering a Better Tomorrow” which was designed to give the brand a new voice, and further define and elevate that voice into cultural relevance through social media. They spoke directly to their audience, interacted with them, learned about them, and let them have a say in the future of the Lockheed Martin. This helped them adapt their marketing and messaging to be more modern and approachable, as opposed to the perception it had before of being too “old school.”
General Market Research & Trend Identification
Social Media is the greatest (and free) focus group available to any business. While typically people think that this is strictly for consumer-facing industries, even a business-to-business manufacturing organization can learn about what their customers think about their products, their industry, and their competitors by listening to them on Social Media. The conversations that they listen to online can answer many questions about the future of their products and industry, but only if the Social Data is properly analyzed so that Social Intelligence can be derived from it to help generate strategic and impactful business decisions.
If you truly want to know your consumers, you must know what they talk about when they are discussing you or the products you manufacture. In other words, you must be able to quickly and easily identify topics that your audience is discussing around your own topics so that you can get ahead of the conversations, and be a part of the trending conversations that matter to your consumers. This is something that is easy to do through Social Intelligence, as you can use a tool’s Insight Tree that provides you with the keywords, terms, phrases, etc., that are being used around the specific topics and subtopics that you are tracking.
This is one of the most useful tools for manufacturers to understand what their consumer’s concerns, hesitations, and excitement are the products that they are manufacturing. For example, you might be an automotive manufacturer and you learn that while your audience is concerned about the cost and the drive quality of your products, those that are actual customers are praising your drive quality. Furthermore, through Social Intelligence, brands can also get an understanding of associated conversations. In other words, while monitoring what is being said about a specific product of yours, you can discover what your audience thinks about the entire genre of that product. This can help manufacturers refine their messaging, get influential advocates involved and help push potential customers to become actual customers in the most effective way possible.
A great example of how to use the great focus group that is Social Media to use Social Intelligence to determine what your customers want, what they think, etc., is to look at Boeing. For years, Boeing has been way ahead of the pack of manufacturers who utilize Social Media to their advantage. For example, Boeing’s signature “Dreamliner” airplane was given that name after Boeing tested different names out with their social audience and let them decide what they liked best.
Boeing also goes as far as to constantly release videos online for their social audience to let them see the new Dreamliners take off every time a new version of the airplane comes out.
Create Competitive Analysis
Want to know what your competitors are doing? How are they viewed by your audience? Would it be helpful to understand how your consumers view you and the products you manufacture compared with your competitor’s?
Social Intelligence can provide answers to all of those questions and more. You can see how your reputation as a manufacturer stacks up against your competitors. You can utilize your Social Intelligence analysis to determine how your audience feels your products compare to your competitors’ and truly understand what you need to change to compete and succeed.
If you want to know more about how you as a manufacturer can use Social Intelligence to help drive your business decisions, feel free to request a demo and see for yourself how Synthesio’s leading global Social Intelligence can help your manufacturing business.
