Tag: niche markets

Grow Content Ideas from Supply Chain

Chain link represents supply chainThe strengths of distributors, suppliers and manufacturers can differentiate companies from their competition. Content that positions your company as a wise decision maker in this regard can influence website visitors. Look no further than your own supply chain to find content ideas that create confidence.

Information about your supply chain can show what niche markets you serve, how you operate efficiently, what makes you resilient, talent you are associated with, and how you keep your standards high and consistent.

Customer Segmentation

For example, the choice made by a consumer on which restaurant to go to may rely on many factors such as age, food style preference, or décor.  The restaurateur’s supply chain reflects the market segment and helps differentiate the restaurant.

If an establishment is made kid-friendly by providing foam mat play areas, the manufacturer’s website should describe the safety and durability of the mats for children. An ingredients supplier website copy should describe how the ingredients are cultivated and from where. When design is important, website copy can include a portfolio of restaurant designers that resonate well with a particular customer segment.  This type of content answers questions, is targeted and customer focused.

Operational Efficiency

Include cost saving and inventory management decisions made by your company that have a positive result for your customer. Your supply chain is collaborating with these decisions. Why?

Resiliency

Having a variety of resources to call upon ensures that customers will be served. You may or may not include names of companies. But briefly describe their capabilities and your relationship with them in terms of years or volume.

Standardization

When consistency is important, describe how standardization solves problems for customers. How do you make sure the widgets within the widgets are aligned properly each time? Address issues on how you preserve quality, consistently.

Finding and sharing content from your supply chain can add credibility to your site, show support for your suppliers, and educate your website visitors.

The Smart Ideas File

As a content writer and strategist I go through a lot of information every week. I rely on my own systems (using various methods for filtering the glut including Google Reader that I described in another post). I keep them in a “Smart Ideas” file. I remember some content from mere memory. Smart ideas don’t grow easily but this week’s plums were there for the picking.

From the Supply Side Community forum Alissa Marrapodi, managing editor for Inside Cosmeceuticals, writes:

“The consumer is driving the cosmeceutical market. No longer are manufacturers introducing niche markets and suggesting consumers’ needs proactively; but the consumer is putting their demands out there via social media, etc., and manufacturers are now reacting and responding to consumers. The shelves are not setting the trends; consumers’ demands are…A total of 63 percent of purchasing is driven by beauty blogs.”

From Seth Godin’s blog post on How to be Interviewed:

“If your answers aren’t interesting, exciting or engaging, that’s your fault, not the interviewer’s. “ He also says that interviewees don’t need to take every question posed literally. Redirect and talk about what you care about.

From a live conversation with Investment Banker Doug McConnell:

After a meeting with owners of a B2B company start up, Doug said to me: “It’s good to have an outside source filtering industry information to them. Entrepreneurs tend to become insular, only seeing what they want to see.”

Questioning Smart Ideas

Sometimes I ponder questions posed in an article, even when it’s the smartest sounding idea. In her article, A Better Way to Get Vitamins, Anita Marlay, R.D., L.D. writes: “Really, wouldn’t eating an orange for a snack make better sense than eating a processed fruit snack with added vitamin C?”

It would seem so, but another choice is emerging through the fast growing Functional Foods industry. Commercial organic farm operators that pick fruit when it’s ripe and freeze dry it immediately can create powerful antioxidant rich compounds. New ORAC (total antioxidant capacity measurement) tests show a fresh plum has an ORAC value of 9.49 (per gram); compared to a dried plum (prune) with an ORAC value of 57.7 (per gram). The same is true of grapes. Fresh grapes have an ORAC value of 4.46 (per gram) versus dried grapes (raisins) which have an ORAC value of 28.3 (per gram).

What makes sense is that drying removes the water and concentrates the antioxidants. Bio technology firms are positioned to partner with companies to offer new food or beverage products that are not only convenient but lend scientific support to the effects of added nutritional ingredients. That’s a long answer to her question, but sometimes it’s good to stop and think about what you know.

Do you have a smart ideas file? How do you retain those you’ve read or heard?