Season’s greetings, from the Sonnhalter team! We are grateful for another successful year, and we couldn’t have done it without our wonderful clients, business partners and friends like you. The Sonnhalter team will be taking some time off over the holidays from December 24th to January 2nd. We hope that you enjoy this holiday season and time with your family and friends! We’ll see you in 2023! Sonnhalter, your B2T partner – let’s build something together.
Manufacturing Day takes place on the first Friday of every October and this year it’s October 7th. National Manufacturing Day helps show the reality of modern manufacturing careers by encouraging thousands of companies and educational institutions around the nation to open their doors to students, parents, teachers and community leaders.
To celebrate, some manufacturers host in-person events in order to address labor shortages in the industry and inspire a new generation.
Currently, manufacturers are seeking to fill 4 million jobs over the next decade.
Manufacturing Day helps to bring manufacturers together and shine a spotlight on manufacturing careers.
CLEVELAND –September 2022 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, partnered with Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity for a 13th year during its annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive, which ran the entire month of August and collected $41,500 worth of donations of tools and building materials. Since Sonnhalter began its efforts in 2010, it has collected $378,000 in donations.
Organizations, businesses and residents were encouraged to donate new and gently used tools, as well as building materials, furniture and appliances, to Sonnhalter to help benefit Habitat for Humanity’s cause of eliminating substandard housing and homelessness.
“Our 13th Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive proved to be very lucky, as we raised $41,500 for the Habitat for Humanity cause—the most we’ve raised to date,” said Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter. “We continue to be inspired and humbled by the generosity of our clients, partners and community members for their continued support in helping Sonnhalter raise nearly $378,000 for this great cause.”
“Every year, we look forward to the arrival of the donations that have resulted from the Sonnhalter Tool Drive,” said John Habat, president/CEO of the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. “Sonnhalter’s Tool Drive helps to bring awareness to areas we have no access to and provides us tools to work on our houses, in our tool shop, and to be sold to the general public.”
Community participants in the 13th Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive included Berea Recreation Center, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Berea Branch, Fear’s Confections, Frangos Group, Rising Star Coffee Roasters, St. Mary of the Falls, Skidmark Garage, The Wine Spot and many individuals living in the community.
Trade industry participants in the 13th Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive included Buyers Products, Bill Boyadjis (Endeavor Business Media), General Pipe Cleaners, Jergens, Inc., Kapro, Lakeside Supply, Ledlenser USA, Mortar Net Solutions, NIBCO, Samsel Supply, Sutton Industrial, Winter Equipment, Wolff Bros. Supply, Woodhill Supply and Wright.
All of the donations that Sonnhalter collected benefited Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. The donated items will be used for Habitat for Humanity projects or will be sold at one of the organization’s ReStores, recycled building materials and home furnishings stores. Proceeds from the ReStore sales are used to help Habitat build and rehabilitate homes for those in need.
About Sonnhalter
Established in 1976, Sonnhalter is the leading B2T marketing communications firm to companies that target professional tradesmen in construction, industrial and MRO markets. Sonnhalter is located in the historic Brownell Building in the heart of downtown Cleveland. Sonnhalter’s brand identity highlights its expertise in marketing to the professional tradesmen. Its tagline, “Not Afraid To Get Our Hands Dirty,” promotes the employees’ willingness to roll up their sleeves and dig deep into clients’ businesses, also, it refers to the market it targets: the tradesmen who work with – and dirty – their hands every day. Sonnhalter developed the acronym “B2T,” which stands for “business-to-tradesmen” to capture the essence of its specialty. For more information, visit the company website at Sonnhalter.com.
About Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity
Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity engages people of all faiths to eliminate substandard housing. Cleveland Habitat was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987. Since then, Cleveland Habitat has brought together community members, volunteers and sponsor groups to help more than 300 Habitat homeowners, including more than 1,000 children, have a safe and decent place to live. For more information on Great Cleveland Habitat for Humanity, visit: https://www.clevelandhabitat.org/.
For many digital marketers, the ongoing pandemic acted as an accelerant for digitization. Most famously embraced by the World Economic Forum, this view holds that it didn’t disrupt per se; it pushed forward. Content marketers across industries, seeing increasingly fragmented customer journeys, agreed – and ones in the manufacturing industry corroborated it. As customers exhibited online event fatigue, they too needed to face this change along with the industry’s inherent ones. However, content marketing ideas for manufacturing companies don’t come easily in such a demanding market, let alone effective ones.
Content marketing challenges for manufacturing companies
As an introductory note, here we may first highlight said challenges. The manufacturing industry does face distinct ones of its own, which inexperienced or broader-scope content marketers may miss or underestimate. In turn, it becomes nigh impossible to produce effective content for it, let alone beat the competition with it.
To consolidate them, the primary ones include:
Offer complexity. A manufacturing company typically does not sell simple products accessible to a wide market. Framing such specialized offers properly for their niche audiences requires considerable industry expertise.
Decision-makers’ scrutiny. Moreover, manufacturing content marketers need to entice decision-makers who seek expertise and offer tangible value. As with B2C marketing, eliciting emotional responses will very rarely bear results with this audience.
A less visually exciting industry. Finally, the manufacturing industry offers comparatively fewer thrills for compelling visual content to thrive on. This has been changing in recent years, however.
In addition, the typical customer’s purchase decision process spans a much longer journey. Strategyn breaks down the individual steps into 6; need, research, design, evaluation, shortlist, and purchase.
A chart of the industrial buyer’s buying process by Strategyn.
Evidently, then, content marketers cannot afford to overlook this unique set of factors. The industrial buyer is cautious and knowledgeable, and requires stage-specific content across the buyer journey to court effectively.
For that matter, Content Marketing Institute offers some notable insights. It finds that half (49%) of manufacturing marketers rate their company’s efforts as “moderately successful,” and only 18% rate them as more successful than that. Among what they often lack, they find, are:
Prioritizing optimal content delivery times
Crafting stage-specific content
Using storytelling in their content
It is these factors that content marketers may need to address, alongside picking the optimal marketing mediums and channels. (more…)
When it comes to selling it’s important to keep your buyer in mind. Although it can be hard to please your buyer, sellers need to approach buyers, differentiate themselves from the competition, and demonstrate their value.
Here are some of the key findings that I found interesting:
1) Seller performance continues to decline – with the key to this decline being that buyers have continued to change faster than sellers, and sales organizations haven’t kept up.
2) Only 33% of salespeople are effective at selling in a “virtual” environment – the challenges of selling virtually, combined with longer buying cycles and changes in the buying process, mean that sellers have a more difficult path than ever to making the sale.
3) Buyers don’t view sellers as a valuable resource – respondents ranked sellers next to last out of 10 preferred resources used to solve business problems. Buyers are finding more value in using their past experiences with vendors, social networks and trade media or colleagues.
4) Buyers continue to engage sellers later and later in the sales process – over 79% wait until after they have full defined needs; over half (57%) identify solutions first. The earlier that sellers can be involved with the buyers then they have more time to influence the buyer’s decisions.
5) Factors influencing large purchase decisions – Features/Benefits, Ease of Use and Solution Value are listed as the Top 3, while “pricing” is seen as a secondary issue. Decision-making has many factors and depends on the buyer and for 27% they use analytical thinking and facts to make their decisions.
How has your sales team performed selling virtually?
alter to help benefit Habitat for Humanity’s cause of eliminating substandard housing and homelessness.
