Marketing During a Supply Chain Crisis: Best Practices

Marketing During a Supply Chain Crisis: Best Practices

Marketing During a Supply Chain Crisis: Best Practices

As supply chain issues create out-of-stock scenarios across industries, brands are missing the opportunity to better align their marketing, sales and supply chain leaders.
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Marketing Can Support Supply Chain Management 

As product shortages and long-lead times continue, both customers and employees are feeling the strain. Between the lack of dock space for cargo ships and a shortage of truck drivers, experts predict that we’ll continue to see shortages until 2023. So how is this affecting brand loyalty? And how can brands improve customer experience during this crisis? 

Supply Problems Affect Brand Loyalty

New research from McKinsey reveals that product availability is the single most important purchasing factor. Only 13 percent of respondents who faced out-of-stock products in the past three months say they waited for an item to come back in stock. A whopping 71 percent switched retailers or brands.

As consumers develop new shopping habits, it’s time for marketers to re-evaluate their approach:

  1. Marketers need to better familiarize themselves with their company’s distribution and supply chain.
  2. Internal teams need to work together to help alleviate this crisis.

Here are several key steps brands can take ensure brand loyalty remains strong.

Do Not Cut Ad Spend

It’s no surprise that the brands with ongoing advertising campaigns are the most successful. While some brands are cutting their spending, others are taking advantage of the opportunity to snag new customers, shift loyalty or promote other products and services. Be flexible but keep your eye on the long-term goal of building customer loyalty. Brands that continue to run campaigns can experience several benefits:

 

  • Continue to collect first-party data which will support data-drive marketing decisions.
  • Continue to test and optimize ad copy while keeping existing customers away from competitors.
  • Test new opportunities like loyalty programs or allow shoppers to pre-buy.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

Maintain Open Communication

You have numerous communication channels available. Use email, SMS or even advertising to tell customers when items are back in stock. If delays occur, use these channels to provide updates. Customers won’t be thrilled about delays, but they will appreciate a thoughtful update.

Internal communication is imperative as well. By working collaboratively, you’ll avoid overpromising and under-delivering which can be a detriment to brand loyalty.

Create Contingency Plans

A crisis scenario has the potential to interrupt business and significantly damage your reputation. But crisis planning is not just for your PR team. Work together to determine a Plan B for every scenario ranging from raw materials shortages to closures due to variant outbreaks. Effective communication during a crisis can be the difference between a positive outcome and irreparable damage.

Your Next Steps

Our supply chain issues won’t disappear overnight. Now is the ideal time to update your response strategy across business units. Use this opportunity to explore how to build stronger relationships and keep loyal customers happy.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your digital marketing. Have more questions about marketing during times of crisis? Reach out to us directly.

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Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

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You Have More First-Party Data Than you Think: Here’s How to Use it

You Have More First-Party Data Than you Think: Here’s How to Use it

You Have More First-Party Data Than you Think: Here’s How to Use it

5-easy-ways-to-generate-website-traffic
Liz-headshot

Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

Gain A Better Understanding of Your Customers 

Reaching customers without intruding on their privacy continues to be a priority for marketers in 2022. Google, Apple and Facebook have taken steps to reduce the amount of third-party tracking on their platforms, which translates into less data for marketers to leverage. This information historically has been the cornerstone of effective marketing, helping to shape marketing content, advertising strategies, and more.

A Shifting Reliance on First-Party Data

First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers. This data is collected firsthand without an intermediary between you and the information.  First-party data can only be accessed via platforms that you own and control. As a company, you can gather information about digital interactions, purchase history, social behavior or profile preferences to create content, ads and digital experiences that cater to an individual’s interests.

Third-party data sources can be incredibly helpful, but as we’ve seen, these sources are becoming less reliable and more expensive. Which is why it’s more important than ever to focus on collecting and using data that you own.

Benefits of First-Party Data

By relying on actual interactions with your brand, you’re building a strong foundation to understand your customers. The results can translate into a superior product or service without the “creep factor” that is associated with third-party tracking. First-party data is readily available and much easier to collect than you might think.  It’s about knowing what’s available and using it to shape your business strategy.

So, how can you effectively get the most out of your data without the help of third-party tracking?

Pro Tip: Use first-party data to create highly personalized messages and increase the effectiveness of your marketing.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

Sources of First-Party Data

Website

Digital interactions via your website are a primary way to collect data. Traffic sources, visitor behavior and even names and email addresses collected through website forms are valuable data points. Consider how users respond to your website and the pages they visit the most. 

Email and SMS

Your subscriber list is another valuable data source. Open rates, click rates and bounce rates all shed light on how these individuals interact with your brand and your content. Both email and text messaging are considered intimate forms of communication and can shed light on how customers view your company.

Call Centers

If your company runs a call center, you likely have access to call records and transcripts. This information can be used to understand patterns, keywords or other quantitative data that can help shape your strategy.

 Survey Data and Customer Feedback

Simple online surveys can yield plenty of information about your customers and what they want from you. More formal surveys conducted by a third party are still considered essential if you want unbiased feedback from customers.

Common Challenges with First-Party Data

Despite access to a wealth of information, there are challenges to collecting and leveraging this data. 

Poor Strategy  

Do you know what sources you have? And are they properly configured to collect data? It might take several weeks or months to understand what information is relevant to your brand and how to go about collecting it. And don’t forget to consider how you plan to map the data to your customer journey.

Integrating Data from Multiple Platforms

It’s challenging to pull data from different sources into one cohesive system or report that will give you a true sense of the big picture. Even though you own these data sources, the technology across platforms may or may not integrate easily. Consider partnering with an agency with the technical experience to guide the strategy and implementation of this piece. 

Taking Meaningful Action in Real Time

Your data is only valuable if you use it in a timely matter. Customer behaviors are ever evolving which means companies need to move efficiently when they recognize valuable trends. And always be ready to shift your strategy as the landscape evolves.

Your Next Steps

Using first-person data to guide your marketing campaigns is no longer optional – it’s a must do for every brand. Invest the time in understanding what data sources will be valuable to you and build the necessary system to collect and distill the information in a way that’s actionable. Over time, you’ll be able understand what data points are key success metrics for your brand.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your campaigns. Have more questions about data driven marketing? Reach out to us directly.

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read more

Subscribe to Get The Latest Insights.

What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.

Join The List

Request a Demo.

Are you ready to take action? Let's see how we can reach your
goals with a 20-minute introductory call.