Sonnhalter announced the recent appointment of Kaylee Lauriel to public relations intern. In this role she will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience including writing press releases and blog posts, conducting research and creating social media content.
Lauriel attends Pennwest Edinboro University, where she majors in Strategic Communications and plays on the women’s soccer team. Along with being a student athlete, Lauriel is a member of multiple on-campus groups such as the Honors College and the Applied Communicators of Edinboro.
During her time at Pennwest Edinboro, Lauriel has taken introduction to PR classes, as well as courses on event planning and organizational business that have prepared her for taking on this internship. By the end of her internship, Lauriel hopes to have a greater understanding of her future career path, along with gaining some real-world portfolio content.
When she isn’t working or on the soccer field, Lauriel enjoys spending time with her dog or reading books.
In a recent article from Industrial Distribution, the term “omnichannel” and what it means for distributors was discussed. Omnichannel means the connection of all systems, platforms, departments and sales channels. With omnichannel capabilities, distributors can provide customers with a consistent experience across all touch points.
Why are omnichannels important to B2B customers?
Omnichannels allow users to have a fluid shopping experience and give them options when they shop. Over time the number of channels that customers can engage with has grown and will continue to grow. In a study from McKinsey & Company, they found that modern B2B buyers want to engage with distributors across 10 or more channels and move between channels seamlessly.
With more channels for buyers to access this leads to more sales.
What Is Omnichannel?
An omnichannel model gives you a holistic view of the customer experience and buying journey. When you understand your buyers’ buying patterns then you will know what products they are in the market for and how to better your business.
By having multiple channels, it allows users more opportunities for buying and makes it easier to buy from you.
How many channels do you offer your customers today? If it’s anything less than 10, it’s possible you’re not reaching all your potential customers.
Over the past decade, we’ve watched LinkedIn go from a job recruiting site to now being a true networking ecosystem. Join Matt Sonnhalter for a Marketing Minute to learn more about the exciting potential of using LinkedIn for your company.
If you’re a manufacturer that markets products and services to the construction, industrial, or manufacturing markets, you must know how much your marketing efforts are paying off. That being said, measuring the return on investment (ROI) for each individual effort can be difficult. However, with the right approach, it’s possible. In this article, we’ll discuss how to measure the ROI of your manufacturing marketing efforts to help you make better decisions about your marketing spending and strategies. More accurately, we’ll cover creative ways to measure different types of engagement. This will help you ensure that every penny counts towards achieving the best outcomes possible.
1 Understand the Basics of Return on Investment (ROI)
A return on investment is anything that brings you a return after an initial investment. More often than not, this is a monetary return, but not always. That being said, one of the most important things for any business is figuring out the ROI. If you know what you are investing into and why, you can maximize efficiency and bottom line. When it comes to manufacturing marketing efforts, as with all marketing efforts, your goal should be to maximize returns while minimizing expenditures. Using metrics like time spent or money saved will help you gauge whether you are on the right track to success or failure. As a result, you’ll be able to make decisions quickly and efficiently.
2 Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Identifying key performance indicators is essential to measure the ROI of your manufacturing marketing efforts accurately. Your KPIs can help you set goals and measure progress. They can also help you prioritize tasks, increase productivity, and improve customer satisfaction. It can be challenging to figure out which KPIs are relevant for your type of business. This can be especially difficult for manufacturing marketing efforts since it requires specific marketing. However, no matter the type of business, the same principles hold. You need to establish processes that incorporate feedback systems when meeting particular objectives. This will ensure that you accomplish all your tasks thoroughly and efficiently. Additionally, with the data you gather, you will have all the information necessary to make informed decisions that yield results.
3 Analyze the ROI of Different Types of Manufacturing Marketing Efforts
When it comes to marketing efforts in the manufacturing industry, many different options are available. It can be challenging to determine which ones will yield the best ROI. This is where analyzing different types of ROI becomes essential. Understanding how each strategy affects your bottom line lets you decide which methods make sense for you. This is the best course of action if you wish to figure out how to allocate resources accordingly. Doing this is going to allow you to get a complete understanding of the efficacy of your marketing initiatives.
4 Make Use of Software Solutions to Track Your Campaigns
Automation and software solutions make the process of tracking campaigns easier and faster. Not only that, but they free up valuable time to focus on other business processes. By taking advantage of automation, companies in the construction, industrial, and manufacturing markets can get real-time information to track the effectiveness of their campaigns. This data help with making more informed decisions on optimizing their efforts to maximize ROI. Additionally, automation can help identify growth opportunities.
Furthermore, it can show areas where campaigns need tweaking or improvement. Keeping an eye on the performance of your campaigns using software will even give you a competitive edge in your market. That being said, CRM is the best software to use for this purpose. If you can make the most of your CRM, you won’t have issues staying on top of your ROIs.
5 Utilize Data Analytics to Identify Areas for Improvement
By utilizing data analytics, manufacturers can gain greater insight into their customers. Furthermore, they can identify areas in need of improvement. Data analytics allow a manufacturer to compare customer feedback over time. This, in turn, makes it possible for them to detect any changes that may warrant attention. Combing data analysis with target research will also help you recognize customer trends. This is important because staying on top of the changes in your industry will help you adapt quickly and accurately. This assessment of customer preferences allows companies to remain agile and respond to customer demand in a timely manner. As a result, this is going to increase customer satisfaction.
Additionally, harnessing the power of data-driven decision-making can significantly improve multiple aspects of the business. For instance, by leveraging advanced analytics tools and techniques, you can better understand your whole operation and figure out how to improve them.
6 Develop Strategies to Maximize Your ROI
Maximizing your company’s ROI is the key to sustainable growth and profitability. However, you need to understand how to structure your investments across different advertising platforms to achieve this. And, for this to work, you need to create a strategy. When creating a strategy, you must be careful because what’s on paper may not be so cut and dry when you put it into practice. For this reason, you must regularly monitor metrics such as sales volume and cost efficiency to ensure they work in practice. If you don’t do this, there is no way to ensure success.
Conclusion
In order to effectively measure the ROI of your manufacturing marketing efforts, first and foremost, it’s important to understand your ROI. In addition, identifying KPIs can help to ensure accuracy when it comes to the data you collect. Furthermore, software solutions like CRM can help streamline the process. So, following these steps will increase the likelihood that you will hit the right targets with your next marketing effort. Not only that, but you will also be able to accurately measure the ROI and make any improvements if at all necessary.
Meta Description: If you are looking for a way to improve your business, you need to know how to measure the ROI of your manufacturing marketing efforts.
Michael James is a seasoned marketing professional with years of experience in the manufacturing industry. He has developed a deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities of marketing products. In his free time, Michael loves spending time hiking and surfing.
Let’s face it, third-party cookies and Ad IDs have been a crutch for advertisers over the past decade.
Well now as data restrictions tighten and tech companies (i.e., Google and Apple) make it harder for advertisers to track users, everyone is scrambling to find alternatives to using cookies.
One alternative is using your first-party data which is the data you collect on your audience based on their activity within your website, app, email services or social media.
A new study from LiveIntent and Advertiser Perceptions lists the top ways advertisers plan to grow or enhance first-party data, with the Top 3 areas being:
1) Growing email lists via newsletters
Nine in 10 advertisers see newsletters as valuable in understanding your audience. The use of growing your email list will help businesses to activate their data and fully understand their audience. Newsletters will also allow businesses to personalize their communication efforts and see who they should be targeting. Lastly, they will also help to provide first-party data and show you relevant content that businesses can use to build a connection with consumers.
2) Site/app visitation behavior
Website and app visitation can provide important behavior that can be used to track their data. When users connect to your website, the website can collect your audience details. From websites or apps, you can gain users email address, name, mobile number, location based on shipping information and behavioral data. With all this data you can easily see what audience persona or following you have and market directly towards them.
3) Social media
Social media is a vital tool in collecting your audience’s data. Your audience will most likely be using social media way more than just typical Google. Especially in this day and age, people are constantly on a social media platform throughout the day. With social media, you can directly see who your audience is and can even focus on paid media to target and get more insights. With knowing your audience, you can also look for ways to improve on social media to try and expand your first-party data.
Data is very important in knowing who your audience is and seeing who you should be marketing towards.
What’s your company doing to increase their first-party data?
CLEVELAND – April 2023 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, announces NIBCO as one of its newest clients.
Founded in 1904, NIBCO is a leading provider of valves, fittings and flow control products for commercial, industrial and institutional construction, marine markets, as well as residential and irrigation markets. Headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, NIBCO offers more than 56,000 SKUs to the plumbing industry.
“As NIBCO continues to grow and expand, Sonnhalter’s knowledge of the industry will help NIBCO to increase our brand awareness,” said Sally Boyer, marketing communications manager at NIBCO. “At NIBCO, we have a manufacturing history spanning over a century of producing high quality products, and with Sonnhalter we can continue to push boundaries.”
Sonnhalter will be assisting NIBCO in managing its earned media, social media, paid media and overall marcom strategy.
“NIBCO is a company with a rich history and expansive list of valves, fittings and flow control products,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “We look forward to working together to enhance NIBCO’s brand leadership in the industry.”
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 NIBCO INC.
Founded in 1904, NIBCO INC. is a leading provider of valves, fittings, and flow control products for commercial, industrial and institutional construction, Navy marine markets, as well as residential and irrigation markets. NIBCO is headquartered in Elkhart, Ind., and has 13 manufacturing plants located throughout the United States and globally. Visit NIBCO.com for information on the complete line of NIBCO products.
By the time I reached Indianapolis for the NTEA Work Truck Week, my seventh trade show in just over 52 days, my battery/energy level was running close to empty! Luckily for me there were plenty of batteries and charging stations since electric vehicles were once again the hot topic of the show. You couldn’t walk 10-feet down any aisle without tripping over something EV-related.
As the industry’s transition to electric power accelerates, much of the news coming out of Work Truck Week was related to electric vehicles, including the launch of eight commercial EVs, as well as associated auxiliary power solutions, bodies and equipment.
The Green Truck Summit, NTEA’s full-day advanced fuels and vehicle technology conference, was also sold out for the second year in a row, with nearly 1,000 attendees.
And the overall attendance of the show returned to pre-pandemic levels with 14,885 industry professionals, setting a new record with a 17% increase over the 2022 event.
Here are just a few of the commercial electric vehicles which were unveiled at the show:
-Isuzu Commercial Truck of America and Hino Trucks both chose Work Truck Week 2023 to announce their first all-electric trucks, Isuzu’s N-Series EV and Hino’s M5e and L6e.
-Mack Trucks unveiled its first electric vehicle in the medium-duty segment, the Mack® MD Electric.
-Shyft Group revealed the new Blue Arc Class 5 All Electric Crew Cab, while Ideanomics and VIA Motors introduced the VTRUX® electric work truck.
-Workhorse Group pulled the silk from its new W56 zero-emission step van.
-JB Poindexter & Co business units announced several new products and developments, including Project ZEVX, an EAVX, Reading Truck and ZEVX electric concept, and an all-electric C250 postal truck demonstration vehicle developed by Morgan Olson for Canada Post.
-Ram Commercial showcased its new Ram 1500 Battery-electric Vehicle Concept, and Bollinger Motors provided updates on its new B4 all-electric fleet truck. Meanwhile, Ford Pro marked the one-year anniversary of the Ford E-Transit all-electric van.
And while the commercial EVs dominated the headlines at the show, there was one booth that caught my eye as I was walking the last day of the show. Loop Energy, an industry-leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of hydrogen fuel cell systems for vehicle OEMs and power generation system manufacturers. They were showcasing their newest commercial vehicle solution. Who knows…maybe hydrogen could be the next alternative fuel/power source in the decades to come. I guess maybe we are not that far away from flying vehicles:)
Well, that’s a wrap for the 1Q 2023 trade show season, time to rest up for the Fall trade show circuit!
Each month, Alan Sipe, a contributing editor for Professional Distributor magazine, writes a sales skill article targeted to the independent business people who own and operate the various branded tool trucks you see parked at automotive repair shops everywhere.
As a mobile jobber for a major brand, you either have a set number of technicians on your route or a set geographic boundary controlling your selling efforts. Being an independent mobile jobber, your efficiency, selling time, and logic determine the ground you can successfully cover. Major or independent, there are limits on the number of customer opportunities and realistic hours in the day you can sell.
It’s always easy to think that you only need a bigger territory or access to larger dealerships to be a Top 100 dealer (but this is probably not going to happen). You could wish for lower prices, higher margins, and fewer backorders (I guarantee that this is not going to happen). And finally, you can hope that one of your competitors drops out of the business since he is a price-cutting pain in your wallet!
So, if wishing, hoping, and praying are not going to help, there is only one thing remaining. You are going to have to accept the cards (aka, technicians) you’ve been dealt and make the most of it.
This month we’re looking at ways for you to look at your customer and prospect base and build your revenues with the opportunities you have.
I imagine you have a good idea of who are all the absolute Tool Nuts, Good Customers, Sporadic Customers, non-customer prospects, and Dead Beats (cash only) that work in your area. I’m guessing that you have some document/spreadsheet/program with all the names of the technicians and shop owners in your area.
Let’s start with the Dead Beats (cash only) in your area. No matter how bad at bill paying these technicians are, they still need tools to do their jobs. Granted they are probably buying many of their tools at Harbor Freight or some other discount location, but there are still some specialty products they can only get from a true automotive jobber — like you. Don’t ignore these people. You never know if their financial missteps are over or they are now somehow currently flush with cash. Talk to them, show them your new cool tools, and discuss a way for them to potentially get in your good credit graces. Maybe give them a plan that if they buy x amount from you for cash, you will start them out with a small credit line. Talk openly but discretely with them about their issues, it’s often surprising what a little open communication can accomplish. Think of it this way, anything you sell them is 100% plus business, and additionally, you will probably sell to these people at full-boat list price.
Your next target group should be the people who are buying from someone but not from you. These are your prospects. Continue dropping off your promotional brochures and eye-to-eye thank them for looking at it and while you at it mention that you would appreciate a shot at their business. I’m sure in some cases these non-customers are mad at you, your predecessor, or the brand that is on your truck, and these issues are what you need to get past. Sometimes a simple request like “how can I earn your business back” may crack the ice and open a conversation. This conversation may not be all peaches and cream at first.
When they regurgitate whatever the previous sin (in their eyes) was, honor their statement with “I’m sorry that happened, and I’ll do my best to meet your needs as we move forward.” Sure, the prospect may be a knucklehead and never forgive you for not taking back the broken lugnut socket that he had welded to a pry bar for busting loose frozen wheel nuts. Just keep asking. If this guy is that odd, he will sooner or later become unhappy with his current supplier and come back to you. The successful action in this instance is to keep talking to them and asking for their business. Again, anything you sell them is 100% plus business.
The hardest nut to crack is the sporadic buyer. Are they maxing out their credit with every mobile who calls on them? Are they trying to spread the wealth and keep everybody happy? Are you their primary, secondary, or almost-nothing supplier?
Firstly, try your best to figure out where you stand with this sporadic buyer. Are you number 1,2,3, or four on their purchase scheme? You can mention to them that if they were to consolidate their purchases with you, you could give them something in return. Better terms, cumulative discount, the first shot of what’s new and exclusive. Something to make them feel special. Setting them up on a try before you buy it, one-week loaner program is a good way to get someone’s interest. There is no need to give away the store, just make them feel wanted and special.
The” tool nuts” of which I am one, will buy almost anything new that hits the market. The challenge here is that except when a tool is new and exclusive to your brand it is probably new and available from you and all your competitors too. In this case, it is often true that the first mobile in the door with this cool new tool gets the business.
A great idea for your Tool Nuts is to develop an email or text group list of these technicians and the day you learn of or get your hands on a new tool communicate with this group immediately letting them know about the product and that you will be bringing it to them shortly. You can even give the recipients of this communique the option of hitting reply and pre-ordering this product from you. Anything you can do to get them committed to you is the objective.
And finally, there are your Good Customers. The acronym KDWYD (keep doing what you’re doing) is your first line of defense. Keep treating them like gold, telling them every week that you appreciate their business, and always, always ask if there’s anything else you can do for them. As corny as it sounds the motivational phrase “you’re best kept rose will soon wither and die if left unattended” fits your good customers perfectly.
There’s a ton of money to be made in the s!@t business…at least that’s what I reminded every year I attend the WWETT Show.
This show does a great job on their education sessions…and this year was no different, with over 100 sessions running over the four days. And I loved their “Button Wall” which was just outside the main entrance of the exhibit hall…the “straight outta toilet paper” and “septic” (which was orange, so obviously had to grab) were the two buttons I picked up.
The exhibit hall was packed (I believe there’s still a waiting list for companies that wish to exhibit at the show). Pipe re-lining and repair was a “hot topic” for this year’s show. It’s been at past shows, but I feel this year it was much more prevalent across the entire show.
One thing I took advantage of this year, which I hadn’t in the past, were the facility tours on the last day of the show. I signed up for the Belmont Wastewater Treatment Plant, Indianapolis’ largest wastewater treatment plant. And this was the first time I had toured a wastewater plant.
It was fascinating and the highlight of the show for me…here are just a couple of nuggets of wisdom I learned on the tour:
-they have a max daily capacity of running 330 million of gallons through the system (normally daily amount is 120M gallons)
-it only takes 12 hours for the untreated water to go through the entire system and when it is released into the water it’s actually cleaner than the actual water running in the river
-to help deal with surges and overflows from strong storms, they are currently building (scheduled for completion the end of 2025) the DigIndy Tunnel System that’s a 28-miles-long network of 18-foot diameter deep rock tunnels, 250 feet beneath the city, with a main trunk and five fingers which has a 250 million gallon capacity
-I think the gigantic ten screw pumps were my favorite part, followed by the UV light treatment
Typically this shows runs Monday-Thursday and tends to be in the mid/end of February, but the show organizers are shaking things up for 2023, which will now be happening at the end of January (January 24-27) and running Wednesday-Saturday. This 2023 show will also run up against AHR Expo in Chicago and coincide with the World of Concrete Show out in Vegas, so it will be interesting to see how this affects attendance.
CLEVELAND – April 1, 2023 – Sonnhalter, a leading B2T communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, has made the strategic decision to supplement its marketing offerings with plumbing, HVAC and electrical contracting services due to industry need and demand.
“After careful consideration we’ve made the decision to add plumbing, HVAC and electrical contracting services to our current business offerings, since there is a growing demand and potential for exponential growth,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect, Sonnhalter Contracting.
“Our philosophy as a marketing firm was always ‘that we are not afraid to get our hands dirty,” explained Sonnhalter. “With more and more tradesmen retiring, the skills gap has become a more urgent crisis in the contracting arena. We feel Sonnhalter can do its part to address this need.”
Every day, the shortage in the skilled trades becomes more acute. Industry experts say the trades lost nearly a million skilled workers during the recession that have yet to be replaced, and as older workers retire, the crunch will get even tighter.
For more information on Sonnhalter’s contracting services, including plumbing, mechanical contracting, general contracting and electrical contracting, please contact: Matt Sonnhalter at msonnhalter@sonnhalter.com.
Just kidding… APRIL FOOLS!!!
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.
In 2023, companies are taking the time and effort to access their opportunities and think about long-term impact, and short-term actions. This is inspiring marketers to be more strategic on platforms while working with the ever-changing algorithms.
Hootsuite released their 2023 Social Trends report and in this blog, we will discuss the future of social media marketing.
Influencers
“With the recession, with COVID, and just being more financially pinched… marketing dollars always get cut. When we’re strapped for resources, creators become a very appealing tool for marketers,” said Leah Gritton, director of integration strategy, Energy BBDO.
When working with influencers it’s important to do your research as you can discover a variety of influencers across different platforms. Understanding relevant influencers and their audience will help identify potential influencers to work with. Don’t be shy to work with influencers who have fewer followers as it’s essential to find a creator that can make content applicable to your product or service.
Return on Investment
Last year, 83% of marketers in Hootsuite’s social media trends survey reported having some level of confidence in the return on investment (ROI) of social media, up from 68% the year before. This year, they asked how confident marketers were that social media was useful for marketing to or engaging with their audience. A whopping 96% of marketers reported some level of confidence on how useful social media is.
All social media metrics can tell you something about whether you’re achieving objectives and meeting your goals. But tracking the right metrics is the key to understanding your social ROI. Run monthly, quarterly and yearly reports to understand how social is performing and what can be done differently.
As leaderships evaluate budgets and have deeper conversations about goals, make sure everyone is on the same page. Social media is a valuable channel for your audience and efforts should be maximized.
Social Media Platforms
More than 84% of TikTok users are also on Facebook and almost 88% of Twitter users are also on Instagram. People don’t only get different types of value from different networks, they explicitly use different social networks for different purposes.
As social media platforms introduce new features, make sure to reflect on your business goals. Focus on creating content that is well suited to the platform and your company, instead of trying to keep up with every new feature.
Some recommendations we have are conducting a social media audit to evaluate what audiences are on what platforms and how does your social media presence compare to your competitors. We also recommend making your content fit each platform. Having your social content reflect the platform it’s getting posted on allows you to more easily target your audience and build a stronger strategy.
Building a brand and connecting with your audience can be difficult, but developing goals, taking a deeper dive into your social strategy and creating an online presence, makes it easier! We hope with the look inside the top social media trends of 2023 that this helps to give you insight and ideas of what you should be striving for.
Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
Sure, some people are lucky enough to work with a product or service that they consume or want to consume, but most of us spend our days working on products or services where we are not part of the target audience. And, that’s okay. You don’t have to be the target audience to be able to market to them. However, you do have to recognize who they are and keep them top of mind when making marketing and product decisions.
It seems so obvious, but it’s not. For example, a team member may know that their target audience is a 45-64-year-old woman, yet they choose to put a 20-something model in their print ad. Sure, she looks good, but that isn’t the right choice to resonate with the target audience, and in fact, may actually turn off that audience. That is a simple example, but you get the idea. If those marketers were thinking about their target audience, the young model wouldn’t have been a consideration.
Getting into the minds of your audience may take some time and extra thought, but it’s worth it. You need to know them and also know what they say about your brand or product. If your audience says a product is practical, it’s practical. It doesn’t matter that you want it to be chic.
THERE ARE A NUMBER OF WAYS TO GET TO KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.
See them in action. I spent a large portion of my career in marketing research, so I’ve had the pleasure of watching consumers interact with a variety of products from greeting cards to bank teller lines to welding equipment. There is no replacement for seeing them in action. Get out of your office. Trust me, you will learn something every single time. You can watch them and just observe, or better yet, ask them some questions. Why did you choose that? How did you decide to pick that up first? Was this something on your list or an impulse purchase today? Then listen to what they say and ask follow-up questions. People are more than willing to share their experiences. One thing to remember is that you’re only talking to a small number of folks. Yes, it’s helpful, but don’t make decisions based on what we like to say is “a focus group of one.” Combine this with other learnings.
Conduct primary research with them. There are many methodologies out there from quantitative to qualitative. Match the method to the objective. You’ll want quantitative (e.g., survey) if you want to measure something. An example here is finding the preferred marketing message. To choose a winner, a large sample size is needed which means quantitative. Qualitative (e.g., focus group) is used when you want to explore something. The example here is understanding what the target audience likes and dislikes about a selection of marketing messages.
Dig into secondary research. There is data available on many target audiences – especially if your audience is a common one (e.g., Moms 25 – 54). Understand that this information won’t be specific to your brand or product, but you can still learn a lot about various audiences this way. Try to look at secondary research first, because it can help inform what you want to know from your specific audience.
Knowing your audience is a key step in presenting your brand or product in a way that resonates with them. Take that step – it’s worth it.
March 11th is set aside each year to spread awareness of the importance of plumbing and plumbers. At Sonnhalter, we have a great appreciation for plumbers and the work that they do. Today, Sonnhalter’s PR Technician, Kylie Stanley will be sharing with you some information about the holiday and plumbing.
Often plumbers don’t receive the credit and fame that they deserve even though plumbing is part of our everyday lives.
The reality is that without plumbers, our world would be far from sanitary or pleasant. As part of our team’s commitment to getting our hands dirty in our clients’ work, we’ve had the opportunity to see plumbers at work, we’ve used their tools and we’ve heard their stories; we know that they deserve to be honored today.
Plumbers do much more than unclog drains and fix leaky faucets – it’s plumbers who install the miles of piping that make hot, cold and process water and gas utilities possible.
Did you Know That Plumbing Improves the World…
Over 1 billion of people gained access to piped water supplies between 2000 and 2015
The global population of people who used safely managed sanitation services increased from 28% in 2000 to 39% in 2015
A 4-minute shower can now use as little as 24 liters of water
The dual system toilet flush, created in a small town in Australia in 1980, now uses as little as 4.5 liters of water
Today we salute the ones who keep everything flowing, and not overflowing. Thank you to the dedicated plumbers who answer the call and don’t recount the tales of what they’ve pulled out of pipes.
Next up was AHR in Atlanta. Now I got a whopping 12 hours at home after Vegas to do some laundry, repack and sleep before heading back to the airport! Anyhow no rest for the weary, as we had 30+ editor/influencer appointments over the course of the show for our clients Franklin Electric & NIBCO. So needless to say it was a jam-packed show!
And the busy schedule didn’t stop at the end of each show day…I had plenty of client dinners every night (we ate very well as you could see by the snippets in the video recap) and customer appreciation parties…highlighted by Franklin Electric’s party at the SkyLounge on top of The Glenn Hotel (spectacular views of downtown and the sunset).
I was also amazed at this show as far as the social media presence and the sheer number of influencers…from the AHR Podcast Pavilion and social media sessions, to the swarms of influencers walking the aisles. The podcast pavilion has grown exponentially in just three years. And the influencers far outnumbered the traditional trade media editors!
The NAHB’s International Builders Show (IBS) which has coincided with KBIS since 2014…and this year, the National Hardware Show (https://www.nationalhardwareshow.com/ ) joined the party. This was a great move for them as the last two years of this show have had dismal attendance. Although for some reason NHS is going back to having their own separate show in 2024, and from the exhibitors I spoke with, this seems like a huge mistake.
The IBS/KBIS show attendance and exhibitors were back to pre-pandemic levels, covering all four of the Las Vegas convention center halls, including the new West Hall which is absolutely beautiful. Also, a telltale sign of the trade show attendance level is the “stuffing” like sardines into the Vegas monorail at the end of the day:) And with the NFL Pro Bowl in town that weekend, it added to the buzz and traffic around The Strip.
As usual, ProBuilder’s Show Village was the centerpiece and must-see of the outside exhibits. Highlighting some of the latest innovations and product designs for today’s homes. Five homes on display this year, including a one-bedroom foldable (yes, foldable!) home built with high-tech materials. And as always, they have a happy hour with live entertainment, including some new live competitions/contests the first two days of the show.
As far as the new products there weren’t any “head turners” like the Owens Corning Pinkbar+ I saw earlier in the month at the World of Concrete show see link below for my LinkedIn post about this revolutionary product…but plenty of stuff to see and hands-on demos.
Over time, we have seen many social media platforms rise and gain in popularity. TikTok has risen to be the third-largest social media platform out of the big five worldwide (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter). TikTokis a short-form, video-sharing app that allows users to create and share short videos on any topic. Many tradespeople have turned to TikTok to connect with existing and new customers to talk about their specific trade.
TikTok first launched in 2016 and started to grow rapidly in 2020, mostly due to the Covid-19 pandemic as people were stuck at home and needed entertainment. Over the past couple of years, not only has TikTok continued to grow, but we can see a variety of content on the platform. On TikTok, we see videos about plumbing, tools, construction, automotive and much more! With TikTok still on the rise, it’s important for the trades to be highlighted and for companies to be promoting their products. In this blog post, we will discuss why you should be on TikTok and the pros and cons of doing so.
Cons:
Content Limitations
Like every social media platform, you do have some limitations when it comes to posting and the type of content you can post. TikTok is video platform that utilizes videos from 15-seconds to a minute. Since TikTok only allows videos to be posted and not static photos then you can’t use the platform like other social media sites. Because of this, you will need to reuse or produce videos, which your company might not have the budget for.
Labor and Quality of Videos
Short form videos are easier to produce than long form videos. When producing videos, you will need to think of everything this entails from potential scripts, shooting the video, editing and publishing it. Your videos are a form of storytelling, which means they need to be high-quality videos that are engaging with your audience. If you’re worried about shooting videos then check out our other blog post where we discuss five tips for video. Although TikTok has content limitations, it allows users to be creative in their content. The way TikTok has transformed over time, it provides a great way to experiment with your videos.
Third-Party Ownership
One con for some businesses might be the China ownership of the TikTok app. With ByteDancebeing the parent company of the app, they are able to access the basic information on each user. Although nothing has happened between the parent company and the US, this is definitely one piece of information to keep in mind.
Pros:
Increase Your Audience
On social media, one of your goals should be to increase your followers so you have more people viewing your content and engaging with it. TikTok mainly targets a younger audience so you can increase your brand awareness with younger people in the trades. TikTok content also feels more organic. It’s an effective way to increase brand awareness without feeling salesy.
Increasing Sales
Because we can closely connect with our audience, it’s easier to get your content in front of people who are interested in it. As a company, you can freely post any appropriate video which means you can have endless possibilities to promote your products or services. In fact, 49% of TikTok users have purchased something because they saw it on the app.
Less Competition
While TikTok has grown and a lot of businesses have joined the app, you still have less competition than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Other popular social media apps have been around for a while and have become supersaturated with other brands. Because of this, it’s much harder to grow organically on these platforms. Due to TikTok’s algorithm, it’s much easier to target your audience and grow your business.
Although you want to be careful before jumping on the latest marketing trends, TikTok is definitely a platform you will want to consider. Sit down with your company and review the pros and cons and see if TikTok is something you are willing to invest in. Sonnhalter believes now is the time for manufacturing companies who target the trades to join TikTok to grow your brand and marketing strategy.
Each month, Alan Sipe, a contributing editor for Professional Distributor magazine, writes a sales skill article targeted to the independent business people who own and operate the various branded tool trucks you see parked at automotive repair shops everywhere.
Grew up in a rural area outside a small steel town in Latrobe, Pa. For a small town, we had some pretty famous residents: The golfer, Arnold Palmer, and Fred Rodgers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
We brewed Rolling Rock Beer. Latrobe is the preseason training camp home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And most importantly, David Strickler, a 23-year old druggist apprentice at Tassell Pharmacy in Latrobe, invented the banana split ice cream treat in the summer of 1904.
As kids, we would watch Palmer practice his golf shots for hours on end, and even though he was the best golfer of his time, he practiced every day. Palmer was one of those people that when he talked to you, for that moment in time, you were the only person on earth. No distractions; just you. He made you feel special. Additionally, during his prime, Tiger Woods, probably the best golfer of all time, was known to play 18 holes in a tournament, and then practice for four or five hours into the evening to fine tune his game for the next day.
We would also go to Saint Vincent College to watch the Steelers training camp as they prepared for the season ahead. Again, here was, at that time, the best football team on earth, practicing the basics, over and over again. Heck, even my dad, who was a real-life Marcus Welby country doctor making house calls every day, took the time to study the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) each month.
The point of this bit of Latrobe history is that to be the best at whatever your chosen field is, in addition to the daily work routine, it requires continuous learning, practice, and perseverance.
So, how about you?
Selling is a profession that no matter how long you’ve been at it, and how successful you are, you could always do better — and better increases your revenue and paycheck.
I typed “selling skills books” into Google and got 175,000,000 hits in 1.4 seconds. I typed “selling skills videos” into Google and received a whopping 304,000,000 hits. There is no lack of sales skills training material available to you and much of it is free.
Invest some time and effort in your career, pick up a few new closing skills, learn and develop your social media presence, or just figure out how to make one extra profitable stop per day.
Remember though, unlike many types of skill training, sales skills learning is similar to putting money in your personal savings account — you will probably not use your new skill all the time. It will sit in your mind percolating until just the right selling situation comes up, and you bring it out it to make the sale.
Here’s some ideas:
Boost buyer engagement by bringing your existing product presentations to life. Develop your presentation skills in a way to get your prospect involved from the very start. Asking specific questions about product applications usually works to perk their attention and interest in your product: “Do you find it annoying when your greasy hand slips when you’re turning a screwdriver?”, or “Does it cut into your productive time when you have to wait to use the company scope since you don’t have your own?”
Learn the “puppy dog close.” Just like taking your kids to the animal shelter and saying, “Ok, we will not take the first puppy you see.” Yet, the fist puppy your kids play with is it, and off you go with your new dog. It’s the same with tools. If at all possible, allow a squeamish buyer the opportunity to keep and use that new tool for a week, and it’s a sale.
A high percentage of the readers of Professional Distributor magazine carry one of the major brand’s logos on their trucks. All the major brands are deep into using a broad-based social media program. What I mean is that the weekly email I receive from the major brands is the same email thousands of others receive at the same time. This is good marketing, but you individually, have the opportunity to take it one financial step farther. Start your own simple weekly email to your customers. Show pictures of your customers standing by their new tool storage unit or using their new grinder. Mention something about you or your family to help bond your personal relationship, and adding something about a customer like a birth or wedding also adds a personal touch. End with a picture of something you are promoting or maybe even a used tool you have for sale. An hour a week invested will reap significant long-term results.
Learn the “now or never” close. Normally, the promotional periods for the major mobile jobbers last four to six weeks. If it is getting near the end of a promotional period, and you have a buyer on the fence, a simple sentence like, “I know you’re still deciding on this new tool, and I’m not here to push you, but the promotion is over, and I don’t want you to be upset when the price goes back up. Should we go ahead a get this deal done?”
Finally, set a personal goal to read at least one sales skills book every two months to keep up with the latest selling skills and increase your income.
The first quarter is always a busy time for trade shows and events for the trades and 2023 is no exception. Although I feel this might be the busiest one of my career, with me hitting seven shows over the course of 52 days.
First up this year was World of Concrete and three words would sum up this year’s show…Back To Normal! Yes, finally feels like we are back to pre-pandemic levels…. strong attendance and traffic all three days.
Saw a lot of the same familiar stuff I’ve seen every year at the show:
Masonry skills competition filled Wednesday morning capped off by the BrickLayer500. Always amazed to see these masonry contractors in action.
2. Outside Silver Lot loaded with product demos.
3. Big ass concrete machinery
But the most interesting thing I ran across at the WOC show was PINKBAR+, a new fiberglas rebar from Owens Corning. I’ve seen a lot of “new product launches” at these shows, but this product really was a “head turner.”
2x stronger and up to 7x lighter than steel rebar, plus it’s rustproof! Even though they have the broader code approvals, the local state and city adoption is going to take time…but this will be a game-changer in the market.
Here’s a quick video of some of the highlights I saw at the show (plus I might have snuck in a few meal images:))
That’s it for now for tradeshow #1 of the 2023 season. Next up…back-to-back shows with IBS in Vegas and AHR in Atlanta.
Videos are one piece of marketing content that is not going anywhere anytime soon. With TikTok and other social media platforms promoting the use of videos, it’s important to understand how to produce the best video. The advances in technology have made it easy to whip out your phone and shoot a video for your own business without relying on professional gear. Obviously, having a clean, professional looking video is great sometimes, but authentic phone videos can help to make the video feel organic. In this blog post, we will cover the five best tips and tricks for shooting videos that you can use for your phone or camera.
Plan for Your Video
Occasionally, some videos might be filmed on quick notice, but if you know that you’re filming well ahead of time, make sure to plan. When creating a video, you’re not just pressing record, but many other factors come into play like location, script, objectives and video type.
Before filming, ask yourself what the goal of the video is going to be. Are you making an educational video, behind-the-scenes or testimonial? Knowing the type of video you’re making ensures that you know what kind of videos and b-roll you’re shooting, what questions need to be answered and who needs to be filmed. Also, know where this video is primarily going to be used as that will dictate if you’re filming vertically or horizontally.
2. Lighting
Lighting is essential for your video quality when producing a high or low budget video. When it comes to lighting, there are two different kinds that you can use.
Natural lighting
Professional lighting
Natural lighting is a great cost-effective option for users—but make certain you know the risks. If you don’t have enough natural light, then your video may look dark and grainy, making it hard to see what’s happening in the video. Too much light will lead to harsh lighting on your subject or cause the video to be “blown” out, making the video not usable. When using natural light, work with the sun and overhead lights to make your video look the best.
Professional lighting is something you can invest in to help boost the quality of your video. Using a lighting kit can help to light your subject and make your phone video look like it was taken on a professional camera. When using a lighting kit, ensure you use the three-point lighting system to illuminate the scene. Three-point lighting is when you’re using light sources from three distinct positions. The three types of lights are key light, fill light and backlight.
Key light is the primary and brightest light source in the three-point lighting setup.
Fill light literally fills in the shadows that the key light creates on a subject, bringing out details in the darkness.
Backlight is the third source in this lighting technique; the backlight shines on a subject from behind, completing the light setup.
3. Audio
Audio can make or break your video. If the audio isn’t usable and it’s necessary for the video, then the video is going into the trash. The best and ideal way to capture audio from your subject is to use any microphone other than your camera’s built-in mic. No matter how good your camera’s built-in mic is, it’s still not enough to replace a dedicated external audio recorder. Although, remember to listen to the noise around you before filming to guarantee you get a good quality video. Are you in a loud area? Is there a noisy HVAC system? Are there overhead announcements every five minutes? Take notice the noise around you as that audio, whether you have a microphone or not, will be picked up in the video. If you’re in a loud environment, and it’s possible, move to a quiet or secluded area to film your video.
4. Avoid Shaky Footage
Shaky footage can strain the eyes of your viewership and may cause them to stop watching. We suggest either purchasing a tripod or using the built-in stabilization on your camera to see if you’re holding the phone at an angle. Tripods obviously only work if the subject is still, so looking into external stabilizers might be the best option if you have a shaky hand.
Many video editing software programs also have a built-in feature to stabilize shaky footage, but the results may not be perfect each time.
5. Video Composition
Video composition is how you frame your subject in your video. The ideal way to frame your subject is to follow the “rule of thirds,” which divides the frame into a three-by-three grid, creating intersections that are areas to place your focus.
The rule of thirds is where you mentally divide the frame or screen of your camera/phone into thirds, both vertically and horizontally. This grid overlaying on your screen will help you to place your key subject where the lines intersect. This means that placing your subject into the center of the screen will create a less interesting composition.
One important thing to keep in mind when filming is where the head of your subject is. Make sure they have ample head space, but not too much, as this causes negative space. Also, don’t provide too little head space as you may cut the person’s head out of frame. Framing is an important component of video production that helps tell the story of your video.
Conclusion
Filming videos can sound intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be! By following these tips, you can increase your video production quality and know the basics when it comes to shooting. Remember, whipping your phone out to film is easy and shouldn’t be stressful. So, what are you waiting for? Get out and start filming your videos!
As we enter 2023, marketers are wrapping up their budgets for 2023. In 2022, many marketing budgets had been cut or remained flat. In a recent study from Integrate and Demand Metric, they took a look at the broader marketing community positions on budgets and resources for 2023 as companies aim for growth.
In 2023, marketers are being more optimistic about their budgets with 33% saying their budget will be slightly higher than 2022. Still, only 1 in 4 expect their 2023 budgets to be lower than 2022 budgets, which is an improvement from the situation in 2022, when one-third said it was lower than in 2021.
This year, only 1 in 3 respondents say they have more resources overall to work with than they did last year. Despite that, half of respondents say that they are expected to achieve more this year than they did in 2021.
When looking at budgets for the future, companies are looking at what areas of investments they want to commit to and what will be the best bang for their buck.
It’s no surprise that 54% anticipate an increase in budget for content creation, strategy and digital with social media platforms and influencers continuing to rise.
On the other hand, 47% expect an increase in spending on marketing operations/technology, compared to 35% who envision a decrease in spending in this area. The 47% of respondents expect to increase their budget for demand generation.
The area of investment that the largest number of study participants (53%) plan to decrease spending is on account-based marketing (ABM).
Overall, a slim majority (52%) of B2B marketers are optimistic about their marketing team and its performance compared to a year ago, and most (56%) believe it likely that their marketing team will meet or exceed the goals set for it this year.
Over the past few years, several factors such as the pandemic, supply chain and inflation have affected businesses worldwide leading to companies to evaluate their budgets. Although the economy has been impacted, marketers still remain hopeful about 2023. With these impacts, it’s likely that marketers are used to the constant changes and are trying to push past them.
CLEVELAND – January 2023 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, announces Wright as one of its newest clients.
Founded in 1927, Wright manufactures a complete line of more than 4,000 professional-grade hand tools for the industrial, contractor and MRO markets. Headquartered in Barberton, Ohio, Wright forges tools that create maximum strength and are designed to provide superior performance.
“With Sonnhalter’s knowledge and expertise of the trades and working closely with our key verticals, we know we can leverage our innovative tools and increase our visibility in the industry,” said Tom Futey, president and co-owner, Wright.
Sonnhalter will be assisting Wright in developing and managing their marketing needs including, but not limited to, public relations and social media efforts, paid trade media programs, key messaging development and overall marcom strategy.
“Wright is one of the last U.S. hand tool manufacturers in the industry. They’re prideful of their history and expansive product offerings,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “We are excited to be working with Wright again and to help them further its presence as an industry leader.”
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 Wright
Wright manufactures a complete line of more than 4,000 professional-grade hand tools for the industrial, contractor and MRO markets. For almost 100 years, the company has been innovating, engineering and forging tools that exceed industry expectations. Nearly all Wright-branded products are U.S. made and carry lifetime guarantees against defects in workmanship. For more information on Wright and its products, visit: www.wrighttool.com or call 800-321-2902.
Sonnhalter wins a gold award in “Trade Media Relations” category on behalf of Franklin Electric.
CLEVELAND – January 2023 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, received a gold award in the “Trade Media Relations” category at the 20th Annual Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Cleveland Rocks Awards competition recognizing excellent communications programs and tactics.
Sonnhalter received the gold award in “Trade Media Relations” for Franklin Electric’s proactive media program that maximized its effort to increase knowledge of its products among end users, distributors and media.
Sonnhalter worked to develop a proactive, strategic media relations program to leverage the knowledge and expertise within Franklin Electric and take advantage of key opportunities to spread awareness about the company, its products and technologies, and its expert sources.
The Sonnhalter program included an editorial audit that identified and outlined potential editorial opportunities,
a consistent press release program, ongoing media pitches to place bylined feature articles, technical articles, and case histories, pitching Franklin Electric experts as sources for trade editors’ round-up articles covering industry trends, issues and products and arranging one-on-one media meetings at key trade shows
“We are honored to see our work get recognized by other public relations professionals around Cleveland,” said Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter. “We are proud to have a collaborative effort between Sonnhalter and Franklin Electric to expand their media relations program, and we couldn’t have done it without them.”
Annually, the PRSA-Cleveland Rocks Awards acknowledge Northeast Ohio’s outstanding communications programs, which incorporate research, planning, execution and evaluation. PRSA Cleveland Rocks Award winners demonstrate leadership in public relations and contribute to advancing the profession locally.
About Franklin Electric
Franklin Electric is a global leader in the production and marketing of systems and components for the movement of water and fuel. Recognized as a technical leader in its products and services, Franklin Electric serves customers around the world in residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, municipal, and fueling applications. Franklin Electric is proud to be named in Newsweek’s lists of America’s Most Responsible Companies and Most Trusted Companies for 2022
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 PRSA
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals with nearly 32,000 professional and student members, and more than 100 Chapters nationwide. Serving nearly 300 members, the PRSA Greater Cleveland Chapter brings together public relations, communications and marketing practitioners throughout Northeast Ohio. Among the Chapter’s most important activities and duties is coordinating networking events and activities, developing and hosting professional development activities for members, serving as a resource for public relations students and providing recognition of excellence and best practices in all facets of the field of public relations. www.prsacleveland.org
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.
Certainly, you are aware that we are in the midst of a manufacturing skills gap. Currently within the industry, manufacturing jobs remain empty and companies are unable to find workers who have the knowledge.
Not to mention, the pandemic also contributed to manufacturing jobs vanishing, and now the manufacturing field will be set back decades from the loss.
Propel developed an article and a resource tool to give some insight into the issue and how we can solve it.
The top four causes of the manufacturing gap include:
The false job perception
Lack of technology skill sets
Retiring baby boomers
Blue collar work avoidance
When it comes to manufacturing, many people have varying perceptions of what it entails. With these perceptions, people have an idea of what a manufacturing job looks like, but it’s not always accurate. Perceptions of the job can lead to young people not wanting to work in the manufacturing field.
After the perception comes the lack of technology skills. In today’s job market, companies are wanting workers who have several skills to bring to the table. In most cases, workers who are already in the manufacturing field can’t afford to learn additional skills.
A lot of baby boomers are starting to retire, which leads to jobs being empty, and it doesn’t help that younger people don’t want to work in blue collar jobs. Today, there is a stigma surrounding blue collar jobs and most people view it as people who are less educated, however, that’s far from the truth.
Check out the complete article from Propel to learn more about the manufacturing gap and tools to help.
Does the industry affect SEO? This is a fundamental question to answer because it may seem like SEO is universal, no matter what your website is about. While that is correct to some extent, there are also substantial SEO differences from one industry to another. This is mainly because the essential ranking component of SEO is content. Since content will depend on the nature of your business, it becomes clear that industry does play an important role. With that in mind, we want to talk about SEO tips for industrial companies in 2022 and how they can help you reshape your business!
Define Your Targeted Audience
As a B2B company, your targeted audience is not the same as for B2C businesses. The entire business model is entirely different, and you need to consider that when doing SEO.
One of the best ways to approach this process is to try to imagine your perfect customer. Ask yourself, what would you like to see in a client?
This is a good starting point, but it is not the only step. Once you have outlined your ideal client, try to look at your business from a client’s perspective. What would you, as a client, want from an industrial company? Many businesses fail to present their offers properly, which is one of the top deal killers for B2B buyers.
Once you understand the needs of the business and the needs of the customer, you can develop a specific customer profile that you need to target with SEO.
How to Define the Right Keywords
The industrial industry has its own set of important keywords. Once you define your targeted audience, determining the keywords will be much easier because you already know what the clients want.
Although, there is a word of caution here. We need to explain the definition of “knowing what the client wants”. Your client may want a few different things when it comes to a B2B industrial business. That is why you will need to define a range of their interests.
Let us say you are selling some machinery. For example, your clients might want to:
purchase a machine;
inquire about the use of a machine;
differentiate various types of machines;
learn how to maintain machines;
find repair services;
maybe even resale machines;
This is your range of customer needs and the base for creating keywords. Each of these points may be a different targeted group of customers.
When it comes to actual keywords, you need to create both short-tail and long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords are very useful but also harder to come up with. This is mainly because other companies in the industry use the same keywords.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords that usually consist of three to five words are more precise. You can specifically formulate the way clients search for a specific product.
Furthermore, long-tail keywords can also include the location and specific intent of the client.
Here are some SEO tips for industrial companies when coming up with keywords:
An example of a short-tail keyword might be industrial machinery.
And an example of a long-tail keyword might be industrial machinery for sale Cleveland.
In the second example, you are clearly defining the product (industrial machines), the type of service (purchase), and the location (Cleveland).
Use Videos to Boost Your SEO Efforts
Search engine optimization is just one step in creating a perfect buyer’s journey. This is how a client will discover your business. Since we all know how important first impression is, you want to ensure that it impacts the customer.
One way to do this is through the power of video. It is no secret that people watch video instructions much more than read them. Furthermore, a video does not require 100% attention, meaning the user can listen to it while doing other stuff. Another huge benefit, especially for industrial companies, is that a video perfectly explains how machines work, the maintenance process, and so on.
You can improve the buyer’s journey and boost your SEO efforts by implementing videos. Google simply loves the use of videos. Just remember to include your keywords in the video titles.
Do Not Forget About Meta Descriptions
Metadata is a crucial element of SEO. When a user does a search query, they get a link to a page and a short description of that same page. That is a meta description. It is a brief summary of what users can expect when they click the link.
A meta description should be punctual, concise, and engaging. It should directly tell the customer what to expect. The best tip is to keep it short and sweet, so you inform your clients and, at the same time, intrigue them. The meta description should help them decide to click on the link.
Make Sure That Your Website is Technical Without Errors
Even though SEO and digital marketing play a crucial role in advertising, it is equally important that your website is up and running without any issues. Slow loading speed or 404 errors are the quickest way to lose clients.
Also, websites that load fast rank much higher on Google. That is because the backend code is written correctly, and all the elements are optimized to improve the loading speed.
You Must Have a Mobile Version of Your Website
This should go without saying, but you need a mobile website version. This is the first thing that Google checks, and mobile websites rank higher than desktop versions.
Furthermore, clients use smartphones more often and need a mobile version.
SEO Tips for Industrial Companies in 2022 Made Simple
And there you have it. There are many ways to improve your SEO efforts, but these SEO tips for industrial companies in 2022 will make your life easier. Understand that SEO is a process that requires constant audits and maintenance. With that in mind, take your time to do it the right way!
Stella Russel is an experienced blogger and copywriter. For the last six years, she’s been writing articles for various clients, mostly in the field of online business development, SEO and digital marketing. In her free time, she likes to travel and experience new cultures.
CLEVELAND – November 2022 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, received more than $40,000 worth of donations from Supply Smart to benefit the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity.
Supply Smart is a nationwide distributor of residential plumbing and HVAC products for the professional. The donation consisted of more than 25 pallets of faucets, sinks, bath, drain and plumbing supplies.
“Even though our tool drive was officially over, we received a generous donation–the largest single donation we’ve received since we started our annual tool drives–from Supply Smart that traveled from Texas all the way to Cleveland,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “We are thankful for Supply Smart’s donation of plumbing and HVAC products, and we know that they will go to great use for Habitat for Humanity.”
“Supply Smart and Sonnhalter came together for a great cause to benefit the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity,” said Rafael De La Cruz, marketing strategy & content manager. “We were more than happy to donate more than 25 pallets of supplies and we’re already looking forward to next year.”
The items donated will benefit Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity and be used on Habitat for Humanity projects or will be sold at one of the organization’s ReStores.
For more information on Sonnhalter’s Tool Drive to support Habitat for Humanity, visit: Sonnhalter.com/tooldrive and to view the donation, visit: https://youtu.be/Tih2_C_RXcI
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/.
About Supply Smart
With five strategically located warehouses, Supply Smart is a nationwide distributor of residential plumbing and HVAC products for the professional. When the business was originally founded, it was their goal to deliver essential plumbing supplies to the contractor’s doorstep, as quickly as possible. Over 18 years later, its mission is still the same, visit: https://www.supplysmart.com/.
by MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network)MAGNET’s mission is to support, educate and champion manufacturing in Ohio with the goal of transforming the region’s economy into a powerful, global player. You can visit MAGNET online at manufacturingsuccess.org.
Maybe you already have and execute a marketing plan for your brand and products. Maybe you want to improve it. Maybe you have no marketing at all.
However mature your company’s marketing plan is, successful efforts will always stem from a strong foundation. Refresh your knowledge or kickstart your marketing with these helpful tips.
Realize the importance of marketing and create a dedicated budget for it.
The same way you invest in people, capital equipment, new technology and building improvements, you need to invest in your brand. A good rule of thumb is to dedicate six percent of annual revenue to your marketing plan. Not only will your campaigns maintain a connection with current contacts, it will build new ones–generate leads.
If you aren’t sure how people can or are finding you, how your site ranks in a Google search or if you’re staying top of your customers’ minds with relevant, useful information (or doing any of these things intentionally), you’re likely falling behind to businesses that are. To the inverse, coordinated campaigns that focus on these goals are also ones you can measure and grow.
Marketing is oftentimes the first budget cut during an economic downturn, albeit counterintuitive because this is when you need to do MORE marketing. When recovery happens, everything will be ready and working for you. Did you know that it takes about six to nine months for Google to rank and index you for a search? Then, you need to maintain that, and if you don’t, your ranking dips quickly. Your marketer will be back to square one when the economy ticks back upward. The same way you don’t waste time on rework on your plant floor, don’t unnecessarily rework marketing. (more…)
“The best thing about doing this is that I got to have coffee with my Dad in the barn every morning until he passed. Now I have that cup of coffee with my son and will as long as he stays involved.”
This statement paints a clear and vibrant picture of a small business owner’s emotional drivers. It surfaced in a series of qualitative in-depth interviews and encapsulates an emotional theme that ran through the interviews. It speaks to one of this audience’s core values and influences even their most rational decisions. B2B marketers hunger for these types of insights as they look for ways to bring a human element to their messaging and positioning.
The resonance of the theme and its usefulness for developing customer personas and journeys stems from the methodology that uncovered it – qualitative in-depth interviews. B2B marketers and their agency partners often face resistance from internal stakeholders who doubt the value of insights that aren’t expressed as a statistical projection of the market. But in-depth interviews provide the time and format that enable an individual to make the journey from superficial reactions to overly rational answers, and finally to what it means to them personally. As a full disclosure, it’s not always as clear or powerful as connecting with a father who has passed on but relative to surveys, big data and social listening – it gets you closer to the human side of the B2B buyer.
This is not a criticism of surveys, VOC programs, and other more quantitative methodologies. We routinely use those approaches because they provide robust insights needed for branding, market sizing, pricing, and bundling strategies. But when you want to understand the human side of a B2B buyer, qualitative in-depth interviews are one of the best tools in the research tool box.
But having a tool in your tool box isn’t enough. You need to use the tool correctly. The most common mistake B2B marketers make when using qualitative in-depth interviews is to treat it like a survey and create a list of 50 specific questions. You also cannot simply ask, “How does xyz make you feel? How does it connect to you as a person?”.
Discover the sheer value of digital marketing in the construction industry, from leveraging automation to enhancing branding and more.
While digital marketing holds different values for different industries, there are arguably no industries that don’t benefit from it. It’s rightly a staple of the digital age, helping modernize and augment traditional marketing strategies. In many cases, it can also specifically cater to the unique, inherent, or persistent challenges of select sectors or industries. Such is the case for the construction industry in B2B and market-focused B2T settings. To illustrate this, let us explore the demonstrable value of digital marketing in the construction industry.
Construction industry challenges
Given the global pandemic, the construction industry does face immense challenges – as Deloitte notes. Our audiences are likely well aware of them, so here we may briefly outline the three main ones:
Supply chain disruptions. In the second half of 2020, supply chain vulnerabilities started appearing. While some stabilization has come, there has been no full recovery to pre-pandemic levels.
Sourcing challenges. In turn, supply shortages persist, accompanied by price inflations and delivery delays. In combination, “supply chain disruptions and volatility are expected to be among the biggest challenges in 2022.”
Labor shortages. Finally, like other industries, construction struggles with labor shortages and a lack of qualified candidates.
Still, InEight’s Global Capital Projects Outlook finds general, if cautious, optimism among North American capital project and construction professionals:
Digital transformation does seem to drive much of this optimism, as Construction Dive reports. Most (95%) of surveyed professionals are willing to embrace digital tools and digitization. And yet, despite the intent, the groundwork for it is scarce:
“Despite the hunger for digital transformation, construction lags behind other industries. Only 15% of respondents have implemented a digital transformation strategy, and 38% of respondents said that they haven’t built out a strategy or that it’s not a priority[.]”
Marketing challenges
In this context, digital marketing could unveil new opportunities and reinvigorate the industry. Yet, as we’ve covered before, digital marketing in the construction industry faces distinct challenges of its own. A lack of in-house talent, given little skillset overlap, lagging applications of automation, and other factors are persistently present.
In addition, the industry does not generally lend itself to content marketing to the degree others do. The complexity of its offers, coupled with less exciting visuals to elevate marketing, necessarily hold it back. The scrutiny of B2B decision-makers also leaves little room for emotionally-driven, bombastic marketing, which would perform in B2C settings.
The value of digital marketing in the construction industry
Nonetheless, digital marketing does begin to see considerable use in the construction industry. It can’t directly help overcome hands-on challenges like supply chain disruptions, of course, but it can offer sustainability through operation optimizations, enhanced marketing reach, and so on. It can do so in many ways by ultimately driving revenue, but four specific applications deserve due note.
#1 Leveraging automation and increasing traffic
Perhaps most notably, digital marketing entails considerable marketing automation. This comes with an array of inherent benefits, including the universal boon of effectively growing one’s customer base. In fact, among the four key benefits of marketing automation Pedalix identifies, three directly address this need – allowing construction marketers to boost efficiency with this asset in hand:
Unfortunately, only 1 in 5 marketers are using marketing automation tools to their fullest. This is due to a few different barriers, including lack of training and resources, lack of budget, and slow onboarding. Still, the sheer benefit as regards time efficiency and valuable lead generation alone should make automation a worthy goal.
These aside, marketing automation lends itself perfectly to optimizing email marketing, social media management, and paid ads, making for a broader holistic improvement to marketing reach. Although most B2B marketers will rightly rely more on targeted marketing, as we’ll cover below, few would solely rely on it – if any. Indeed, they will rightly find less value in marketing to broader audiences, but there’s value in it nonetheless. SEO and content marketing will at all times help generate and acquire leads, which no marketer should overlook.
#2 Augmenting traditional marketing
For that matter, there is ample room for digital marketing in the construction industry as regards expanding marketing channels. It’s very common for the industry to rely more on hands-on, traditional marketing, and outbound marketing tactics. This will, of course, vary, but a degree of need for digitalization seems evident in the research above.
In this regard, construction marketers can combine traditional and digital, instead of needlessly leaning on one excessively. They can, for example, continue to attend networking events and offer business cards, but they can also incorporate business information into email signatures. They can maintain outbound marketing spendings, such as billboards and print ads, but also invest in inbound marketing like SEO and PPC to give audiences agency and entice them visually. The power of video is well-established, even in the industry’s uniquely demanding B2B marketing settings.
#3 Solidifying and humanizing a brand
As a product of the above and a standalone benefit, digital marketing also helps construction marketers’ branding efforts. Branding is not a B2C endeavor, as it directly enhances customer trust – which B2B self-evidently thrives on.
In this regard, digital marketing offers a wealth of platforms, channels, and content forms for marketers to solidify branding truly. It directly enhances some of the most substantive brand image factors and signals, as Oberlo identifies them:
Authenticity
Recognition
First impressions
Transparency
Values alignment
Among them, brand consistency is particularly notable, as they also find it directly enhances revenue:
It’s no exaggeration to say that brand consistency is among the most crucial trust signals in B2B settings. Construction marketers can use digital marketing to stand out among their peers and build trust with key prospects. How they choose to do so will naturally vary, but brand consistency should be a staple quality in their efforts.
#4 Targeted B2B marketing
Finally, where the above might find universal appeal, targeted B2B marketing is likely uniquely appealing to the industry. Construction marketers typically target specific decision-makers as marketing prospects, which traditional marketing can only achieve with limited efficiency. It’s in this regard that digital marketing can truly shine, especially through its social media subset.
Indeed, social media platforms are undeniably effective B2B marketing tools. As we’ve covered in the past, LinkedIn has become a B2B juggernaut, in no small part due to its built-in targeting tools. It allows marketers to focus on specific audiences, including ones in key companies and positions, crafting ideal, information-rich customer journeys. Facebook does so as well, cementing the value of digital marketing in the construction industry, as the two platforms, in combination, can drastically expand one’s potential audience.
Conclusion
In closing, there is demonstrable value in digital marketing in the construction industry. It is not a panacea for all of the industry’s persisting challenges, nor is it effortless. It is, however, an invaluable asset in times of “cautious optimism.” Combining the above advantages, it can help marketers tap into vast new audiences, solidify branding, and attract valuable B2B prospects. And with enormous, ever-expanding applications for automation, it can do so with notable convenience – a welcome perk for an industry that embraces it somewhat slowly and reservedly.
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/.
Differentiating your product or brand boils down to two simple questions. 1) What are your customer’s needs and buying criteria? And, 2) which of these can your product/brand own?
Most marketers and strategists do a good job on Step 1: They generally know their customer’s needs and buying criteria—the set of capabilities, brand traits, and outcomes that drive purchase decisions. This is the right first step. It identifies many key factors that influence vendor selection. But that initial list can be misleading and lack actionability. Here’s why.
Competitors hold an advantage on some of the dimensions important to customers and it will be challenging and costly to compete on those criteria.
Some of the customer’s most important buying criteria are threshold conditions and you cannot differentiate on table-stakes requirements.
According to recent research from Brightcove and Ascend2, 88% of B2B buyers have watched videos to learn about a company’s products or services in the last three months.
Over the last couple of years, video content has become increasingly popular and it’s very easy to see why. B2B buyers can see information quickly and with people’s short attention spans, videos are perfect for businesses. 70% of B2B buyers say that video beats other content formats in creating awareness of business-related problems compared to research reports, webinars, infographics, blog posts, e-books and white papers.
You might be thinking, “why is video so important to my customers”? Well 40% of people find video helpful to learn how to solve a problem, 36% of people use videos to hear other people’s opinions on products and 32% use it to learn more about the organization.
When looking at videos to solve a problem or learn, more users will look for reviews, demos, brand story videos, customer testimonials and more. Video enables buyers to visually connect a product or service offering to their needs in an easily digestible and efficient way.
For building trust among your customers, you want to create meaningful relationships while delivering a personalized experience. Videos are a great way to build that trust with your audience and allow them to learn more information about your business. Keep in mind that video quality matters to your audience, 44% of buyers say that video quality matters as they navigate through their buying journey. So, if you have a video with low quality, buyers can easily make assumptions about your brand and products.
B2B buyers find video to helpful in sharing information to others who may be interested.
How is your company using video in its marketing efforts?
Donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials that are no longer needed, during the month of August to support Habitat for Humanity.
CLEVELAND – July 2022 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, is partnering with Habitat for Humanity again for its Thirteenth Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive. In the past decade, Sonnhalter has raised more than $336,000 worth in donations for the organization.
From Monday, August 1 to Wednesday, August 31, organizations, businesses and manufacturers are encouraged to donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials to the Sonnhalter Tool Drive to benefit Cleveland Habitat’s mission of building homes and empowering families through safe and affordable home ownership.
“We never imagined when we started the Tool Drive in 2010, that we would be heading into our thirteenth year of partnership with the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “We are once again counting on the generosity of our clients and business colleagues, as well as businesses, to clean out their extra inventory, overstocked materials and demo models, and donate to this very worthy cause. We’re hoping our thirteenth year is the luckiest yet, as we attempt to exceed the donations of past years.”
The Sonnhalter Tool Drive strives to engage businesses and organizations to look through warehouses for extra inventory and overstocked tools or items.
Cleveland Habitat has helped more than 300 Habitat homeowners, including more than 1,000 children, have a safe and decent place to live. The donated items will be used for Habitat for Humanity projects or will be sold at the organization’s ReStore, discount home improvement stores with two locations in Cuyahoga County. Proceeds from ReStore sales are used to help Habitat build and rehabilitate homes for those in need.
Tools and materials can be shipped to Attn: Tool Drive, Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. For information on how you can participate in the Sonnhalter Tool Drive, or to coordinate larger shipments, i.e., pallet size, please contact Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard from Sonnhalter at 216.242.0420 x130 or rascherl@sonnhalter.com. To make a monetary donation, please make checks payable to “Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity” and mail to Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115.
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/.
From populating email lists to leveraging automation, discover the most common industrial marketing challenges and how to overcome them.
As the pandemic slowly recedes and the marketing world takes a breath of relief, the manufacturing industry remains cautious. Perhaps rightly so; B2B salespeople have not been performing according to expectations, all things considered. In fact, just two days before this article was written, Deloitte released its 2022 manufacturing industry outlook corroborating this. It outlined surprising growth but found “optimism around revenue growth is held in check by caution from ongoing risks.” For this reason, risk mitigation and “business agility” will substantially inform the industry’s future, one could safely argue. So, to help you do so, let us explore the most common industrial marketing challenges that may lie ahead.
#1 Populating email lists
Starting with the lead generation phase, email lists remain notoriously hard to populate. It’s increasingly hard to populate them with meaningful, engaged leads. There are ample reasons for this, including diminishing audience trust, fragmented customer journeys, outdated business websites, etc. Simultaneously, the gradual eclipse of third-party cookies weighs on marketers of all industries, hampering audience data acquisition further.
The manufacturing industry is no exception to this, and in many ways, it may have it worse. As some manufacturers remain resistant to digitization and the Industry 4.0 movement calls for its own attention from those who embrace it, the lead acquisition may suffer in turn.
Solutions
As a mainstay among industrial marketing challenges, there are a few different measures against this issue. Here, let us outline the three most substantive ones for text economy:
Avoid purchased lists at all costs. Such lists rarely perform or pay off at all, as your email recipients have not opted into them. In addition, using such lists carries serious risks with email carriers and may even come with legal ramifications.
Engage in Landing Page Optimization (LPO). Instead, you may polish your landing pages via LPO to craft enticing signup forms. For B2B specifically, you may frame them with phase-appropriate offerings like case studies and industry reports to encourage signups.
Constantly cleanse your lists. As you do, remember to discard leads that needlessly bloat your email lists. You should, of course, follow up with valuable leads manifold beforehand, but cleansing your lists will ensure they perform better.
For a visual example of phase-appropriate offerings, we may cite the following graph by HubSpot:
Alt. tag: An illustration of the three customer journey stages by HubSpot.
Similarly, still in the early lead generation phase but also beyond it, come industrial marketing challenges with adopting Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This set of practices allows your website and content to be visible in search engines by adhering to Google’s criteria. Needless to say, any marketer of any industry can reap tremendous benefits from higher Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) rankings. Time and time again, research has shown that the top results get the vast majority of all clicks, and the same applies to its now-prominent local SEO subset. Ensuring such visibility can help your brand grow by raising brand awareness more effectively and expanding your reach.
What’s more, contrary to the belief of some, SEO is far from a B2C mainstay alone. To cite HubSpot again, consider the following findings on B2B campaign goals:
Alt. tag: A graph on B2B marketers’ primary campaign goals by HubSpot.
Not only is brand awareness the primary goal, but engagement, advertising, and lead generation all benefit from SEO as well. And yet, the manufacturing industry struggles to embrace SEO long-term. Some find its 200+ ranking factors too expansive, and others quit soon after seeing poor short-term results. Finally, some understandably lack the resources for it and choose to engage minimally, if at all.
Solutions
Such industrial marketing challenges are not easy to overcome, unfortunately. They often stem from deep-seated resistance to SEO, a lack of resources, and other understandable circumstances. Still, as initial steps, you may consider the following:
Prioritize SEO subtypes. First, you may examine which SEO subtypes make the most sense for you, among on-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO. They all serve their purposes, and ideally, you should neglect none of them – but some prioritization may help ease the strain on your budget.
Prioritize ranking factors. Similarly, Google’s 200+ ranking factors do not welcome SEO newcomers much. Again, you may best neglect none of them, especially not core ones like website speed and content optimizations. Still, starting with small and calculated steps may offer an easier route and a smoother learning curve.
Adjust your expectations. Finally, SEO is a long-term commitment and a continuous process, and this should be clear throughout your company. Expecting quick results will only set you up for disappointment and possibly sway you from it.
#3 Modernizing websites and content marketing
Next, approaching the lead acquisition and conversion phases, we may explore deeper industrial marketing challenges that overlap with SEO. Namely, website and content modernizations that digital marketing mandates. The two primary challenges with both are resistance to change and resource allocation. Some manufacturing businesses may believe their B2B focus does not warrant website optimizations and instead rely on marketing outreach alone. Established ones may also find content marketing changes unappealing when their current approach has seemingly performed well enough so far.
Thankfully, both are slowly diminishing. The industry has largely heeded Google’s warnings on bounce rates, and Content Marketing Institute finds B2B content marketing taking priority:
Alt. tag: A pie chart on B2B content marketing budget changes in 2022 by Content Marketing Institute.
Still, the problem lies less in embracing change and more in how one can best implement change. Here, we may suggest the following fundamentals:
Polish your website for first impressions. Loading speeds are crucial, but only one component of your leads’ first impression. Remember to polish your web design to denote professionalism, offer valid Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) information, feature your mission statement and accreditations prominently, etc.
Address the entire customer journey through content marketing. Remember that your content should frame the whole customer journey, from awareness to conversion. Craft logical, hierarchical journeys through website structure and internal links and cater to each stage with informative, valuable content.
Always remember B2B’s focus on decision-makers. On that note, always remember you are targeting cautious decision-makers; B2C’s emotional responses won’t suffice for them. Frame your offerings with as much value as possible, and don’t shy away from moderate jargon to establish authoritativeness.
#4 Expanding marketing channels
Of course, after content marketing, we may delve into industrial marketing challenges that relate to marketing channels themselves. In this regard, too, digital marketers across all industries are slowly embracing the need for multichannel and omnichannel marketing. What many perceived as a primarily B2C-focused philosophy is now finding its way to B2B marketing, as the latter confidently expands to social media. Of course, B2B and B2C favor starkly different platforms, as research finds:
Alt. tag: A graph on popular social media channels among B2B marketers.
Thus, with marketing prioritization in mind, the manufacturing industry and B2B, on the whole, are turning to LinkedIn. With continuously flattering statistics substantiating its popularity, it’s arguably the most valuable marketing channel to begin expanding to in 2022.
Solutions
Here, the primary challenge lies more in leveraging LinkedIn effectively to secure a good Return on Investment (ROI). Here we may cover the fundamentals:
Carefully define your goals. As with all new marketing channels, you should begin with a robust outline of your S.M.A.R.T. goals. Determine your campaign’s purpose, metrics to monitor performance, and strict time frames.
Polish your company page and Showcase pages. Similarly, you may polish your company page just as you would your business website. It will inform your leads’ first impression, so it should immediately denote professionalism and inspire trust. You may also dedicate Showcase pages to specific products or services for more focused campaigns.
Leverage sponsored content. Finally, LinkedIn’s sponsored ads, and InMail can serve to further augment your campaigns, just like how paid marketing can enhance your organic marketing efforts.
To further explore these industrial marketing challenges, you may also consult our article on LinkedIn best practices.
#5 Managing and monitoring marketing campaigns
Finally, the core challenge with such extensions comes in plain management and monitoring. The average B2B business of any industry will have to manage each qualified lead carefully. Doing so across multiple channels while managing SEO and monitoring paid ad campaigns can naturally overwhelm even seasoned marketers. Of course, this kind of expansion can also stretch budgets, resources, and teams too thin in the process.
In this regard, the simple solution lies in marketing automation. The manufacturing industry continues to embrace it, thankfully, and this massive software industry continues to expand uninhibited – as GrandViewResearch finds:
Alt. tag: A graph on the expansion of the digital marketing software market in the US by GrandViewResearch.
And yet, there lies the primary challenge, too; only 1 in 5 marketers use such tools to their full potential. So the issue does not lie in finding solutions to manage and monitor campaigns but in using them effectively.
Solutions
To address this, one needs to address the exact shortcomings that inhibit automation adoption. To cover the three main ones from our aforelinked article, here we may touch on:
The most fundamental challenge in adopting automation software of any kind comes in poor training and insufficient educational material. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software notably suffers from this, as Nomalys’s aggregated research finds. Thus, remember to very carefully scrutinize your candidates as regards training courses and material, and keep an attentive eye on your onboarding process and continuous training alike.
Management resources. Similarly crucial among industrial marketing challenges is a lack of management resources. This typically manifests in poor integration options and ongoing management support from software vendors. You may best address this proactively by carefully examining what your software candidates offer.
Finally, strained budgets can also make automation software hard to maintain. Proactivity offers the best option here, too; conduct careful market research in advance, and don’t rule out downscaling. You may often find yourself paying for more features than you need, so opting for more compact, affordable solutions may let your budget breathe.
Conclusion
Industrial marketing challenges include both traditional mainstays and emerging ones as digitization advances. They span across all phases of the customer journey and often include internal resistance to change, budget constraints, and difficulties in adapting to new solutions and strategies. While only cursory, this article hopefully helped you pinpoint them early and adjust proactively, ensuring continued growth in 2022 despite the looming risks ahead.
In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The final macro trend for 2022 is the customer care trend.
The Customer Care Trend
Social marketers rescue their brands from the customer service apocalypse
Spurred on by lockdowns and chaotic shifts in business operations, we’ve seen social marketers take on more responsibility for managing an influx of customer service inquiries.
Social has become the front line of this crisis
Consumers, fed up with waiting on hold, have discovered that service delivered via social is immediate, convenient, and effective. In a Nielsen survey commissioned by Facebook, 64% of people said they now prefer to message rather than call a business. The pressure on businesses to adapt to as many digital customer service channels as possible is sky high.
According to Gartner, 60% of all customer service requests will be managed via digital channels by 2023. Consumer expectations are mounting. Demand for integrating customer care channels is increasing—and social is where that pressure is peaking.
Most organizations are not ready to deliver customer care on social.
Despite a rise in demand, many organizations aren’t well positioned to deliver effective customer care over social media…at least not yet. Our internal data from research conducted in July 2021 tells us that 71% of organizations have either not started investing in social customer care yet, or they don’t plan to invest in it at all.
In 2022, business leaders will look to social marketers to take a greater role in customer care. Pioneering social marketers will break from their departmental silos to build deeper inroads with customer service teams and take more agency in delivering customer care.
What do you think about these five trends and where does Social Media rank in your marketing priorities for 2022?
Influencers are becoming increasingly popular among consumer brands, but have you thought about it for B2T (business-to-trades) companies? Join Matt Sonnhalter as he discusses the questions you should ask yourself before starting an influencer program. He outlines three things to consider – social media, products that are conducive to good influencer content and an e-commerce presence.
To view other videos from Sonnhalter, visit our YouTube channel here and let us know if there’s a B2T marketing topic you’d like us to cover.
In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The fourth macro trend for 2022 is the social commerce trend.
The Social Commerce Trend
Social becomes the heart of the post-pandemic shopping experience
Lockdowns shot ecommerce forward a decade—in three months.
That all changed overnight when consumers went into lockdown and many looked to meet basic needs by buying online.
Suddenly, 84% of consumers were shopping over the internet, according to Shopify. eMarketer reported a surge in ecommerce sales growth to 18%, the highest increase the firm had ever reported for this figure. And in what McKinsey dubbed “the quickening,” ecommerce penetration rocketed ahead more in the first 90 days of the pandemic than it had in the previous decade.
This “temporary” boom in online shopping isn’t stopping
Nearly two years since the beginning of the pandemic, this shift in consumer spending has shown no signs of slowing down. And with eMarketer projecting that double-digit annual growth will drive ecommerce sales from $792 billion in 2020 to $1.6 trillion in 2025, it’s clear that our new ecommerce habits aren’t just here to stay—they’re very much on the rise.
This growth is particularly acute when it comes to social commerce. According to Hootsuite and We Are Social’s Digital 2021 report, the global social commerce industry is currently worth more than half a trillion US dollars. Simon Kemp, founder of strategic marketing consultancy Kepios, expects that number to grow.
And it’s not just discovery that gives social commerce its business utility. Buyers are using social media to search, research and evaluate the brands they buy from, making social networks the second-most important channel for online brand research after search engines. What’s more, if we look at people aged 16 to 24, social networks actually rank even higher than search engines like Google when it comes to brand research.
While the brick-and-mortar storefront lives on post-pandemic, it’s become clear that social commerce is an opportunity businesses can’t afford to miss. Small businesses in 2022 will work to extend the experience customers have with their brands across social storefronts and real life, while global enterprises test the limits of the online shopping experience.
Younger generations now turn to social networks to research brands more than search engines.
Search engines: 51.3%
Social networks: 53.2%
Percentage of global internet users aged 16-24 who use each channel as a primary source of information when researching brands. Source: Hootsuite and We Are Social, Digital 202119
In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The third macro trend for 2022 is the ROI trend.
The ROI Trend
Social quietly matures out of the marketing department
Respondents in our 2022 Social Trends survey—particularly larger businesses—indicated that they have become more confident in quantifying the return on investment (ROI) of their social media practices. The majority of marketers (83%) report that they are either somewhat, very, or extremely confident in quantifying the ROI of their social efforts, up from 68% last year.
What can you learn from marketers who said they’re “extremely confident” in measuring the ROI of social media?
1) Social media has a priming effect on the rest of your marketing. 55% say their social ads strategy is completely integrated with other marketing activities. Meaning these marketers know that social works in conjunction with other marketing efforts to drive awareness and help with brand recall.
2) Social can help you gain valuable customer insights. 48% strongly agree that social listening has increased in value for their organization. Meaning these marketers are using social to learn more about what their customers want and need so that they can deliver exactly that.
3) Social is at its most powerful when paid and organic work together. 65% have completely integrated their paid and organic social media efforts. Meaning these marketers understand how to strategically use both to attract new customers while deepening relationships with existing ones.
Bold businesses in 2022 will buff up their employee advocacy programs, get better at using social to gather consumer insights, and strive to deliver the kind of impact they’ve seen social have on their marketing elsewhere in their organizations.
In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The second macro trend for 2022 is the social advertising trend.
The Social Advertising Trend
Marketers get creative as consumers wise up to social ads
But another more likely reason—and a bigger takeaway for marketers when it comes to advertising anywhere on social—is the fact that these networks encourage advertisers to make content that fits organically into the platforms.
Brands that advertise successfully on these networks understand that audience mindset is key. Simply put, no one wants their experience on any social network interrupted by ads from brands that are as boring as they are self-
Consumers, wise to the sameness of social advertising, are holding brands to a higher standard when it comes to creativity—but they’re also rewarding those that get it right. Brands that want to stand out in 2022 will have to work harder to create ads that mirror and enrich the distinct experience offered by each social network.
Despite historically low budgets, marketers are spending more on social ads
This year, marketing budgets relative to revenue are the lowest they have ever been, according to Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey. However, more than half (51.4%) of the marketers that we surveyed said they plan to increase their paid social spend in 2022.
Where do they plan to spend that money? Last year, most of the marketers we spoke to disproportionately pointed at Instagram. This year, investment in Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn has caught up.
The largest increases in spend relative to last year are going toward TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat. Marketers are shifting their resources to where they can make the most impact—and, increasingly, that’s on networks that typically haven’t been a priority in the social marketing channel mix.
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…)
This year’s Super Bowl ads were dominated by “future” themed ads from the multiple crypto currency ones, the metaverse and what seemed like an electric vehicle ad during every commercial break!
But my favorite commercials brought back a little nostalgia.
Here were my top 4 commercials from the big day:
1. Chevy’s Silverado all-electric Sopranos homage was ingenious. As soon as you hear that initial beat and the “woke up this morning” music by Alabama 3, you are instantly taken back to the Sopranos series. Then of course the shots of New York skyline, the New Jersey turnpike and glimpses of a woman driving…which makes you start wondering who’s driving the truck. The entire commercial did a great job at building anticipation…with no voiceover until :50 seconds into the minute-long commercial to then payoff the tagline “whole new truck for a whole new generation”. By far, my favorite commercial of the day.
2. Rocket Homes & Rocket Mortgage Dream House with Anna Kendrick and Barbie. Such a clever way to work in finding and financing your dream house with Rocket. I loved their “competitive bid” buyer characters like Better Offer Betty, House Flipper Skipper and my favorite Ca$h Offer Carl! And then the special guest appearances by He-Man and Skeletor for the “fixer-upper” castle at the end.
3. GM Electric Vehicle line with the Austin Powers cast. How can one go wrong with Dr. Evil and his infamous pinkie finger?!?! Combined with Scott Evil, Number 2, Frau Farbissina and then a special appearance of Baby-Me instead of Mini-Me. And then having classic lines from Dr. Evil like “Help save the world first, then take over the world”!
4. Irish Spring Body Wash. As soon as you hear that Irish music you are taken back to their old commercials. And then you are peppered with witty statements such as “Were stinkiness is unwelcome” and “Smell from a nice-smelling place.” And finally the payoff, with those classic white knit sweaters after the guy appears from behind a giant bottle of Irish Spring body wash as if it were a Stonehenge-like monolith.
Sonnhalter has updated our vocational education database to connect tradespeople to thousands of programs that are available. With the ongoing concern about our nation’s skills gap, the option for choosing an education to pursue a vocational career is certainly an attractive one. With plentiful skilled labor jobs to fill, trade jobs pay very well (sometimes better than four-year college degrees) and don’t saddle students with hefty student loans.
Sonnhalter originally released our extensive vocational education database in 2015 after conducting extensive research on thousands of vo-ed programs across the country. When we updated the list in 2017, we added about 1,000 new programs, separating them out by state tabs and standardizing the descriptions to make it even easier to search, sort and use.
Today, that database has been updated again and now lists more than 1,000 schools and over 4,000 programs, offering different types of degrees or certifications. The types of programs include construction, electrician, robotics, welding, HVAC, plumbing, machine tool technology, automotive tech, among others. A separate tab for national programs and resources is also included. The list is downloadable, easy-to-navigate and designed to be sortable for a variety of fields.
The database is useful, and we hope to help bridge the gap between manufacturers and educational programs. The database serves as a useful tool for companies looking to implement more grassroots campaigns to recruit the next generation of professional tradesmen.
There are numerous ways to take advantage of a tool like our database. Here are a few suggestions of how to make our work, work for you.
Fill the Talent Pipeline
Your HR team or recruiting group is probably aware of area schools, but they may not be aware of all of them depending on how stretched they are. Take to tool, find the schools in your backyard and neighboring communities and connect with the programs. There are a variety of ways to connect with these programs, here are a few:
Hire their graduates
Provide scholarships
Develop a co-op or apprenticeship program
Invite them to career fairs
Participate in recruiting events
Get In Front of the Students
Making your organization known to those learning a trade is never a bad idea. Tradespeople who start using a certain brand of tool or installing a specific type of product are likely to continue using them throughout their career, so get in front of them! Here are a few ways to do that.
Vocational programs can be a resource for your own organizational development.
Partner with local schools for continued training and certification programs for your own team
Diversify your own employees’ skills through cross training at local programs
Support the Industry
Industries can’t move forward without the support of those inside of them. You can’t count on others to advance the field you’re in, you have to be involved. Use education programs from the list to get started.
Help programs recruit students
Learn about the next generation of tradespeople through the programs so that you can better work with them when they become your employees or customers
It will take teamwork and effective communication to help close the skills gap that the industry is facing. Support for vocational training programs is crucial, and it should come from those within the industry.
To sign up and download Sonnhalter’s updated, comprehensive list of vocational programs in the U.S., visit sonnhalter.com/vocational.
I think we would all agree that social media is here to stay, and this recent stat confirms it: 77% of people surveyed for a joint report by Facebook and NYU’s Governance Lab indicated that the most important group they are part of operates online (where social media plays a major part).
Hootsuite released their 2022 Social Trends report and in this five-part series, we will discuss each trend.
The Brand Strategy Trend
Brands finally get community right (with the help of creators)
In 2022, the key to unlocking online communities (no matter the size of your business) is in the hands of digital creators.
Instead of trying to build a community from the ground up, the smartest brands in 2022 will tap into existing creator communities to learn more about their customers, simplify content creation, and build brand awareness and affinity.
Stop thinking about your followers as your community
A lot of small and midsized businesses make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do when it comes to online community building is to get people to follow them. Assuming that a passive following is equal to an engaged, thriving, and loyal community does the power of social media a disservice. And it can cloud your judgment of your product’s real value.
Instead, seek out online communities that are active and engaged around interests relevant to your product category. If you make dishware, talk to home cooks. If you service cars, find auto clubs. If you manufacture welding equipment, find welders. By using creators to tap into these circles where you’re not well known and adding value there, you’ll reach new audiences, build cultural relevance, and learn more about your customers.
Support the growth of content creators in earnest
Not only should you be listening to what people are saying within the online communities you’re targeting—you should be actively supporting the content creators who are making those communities flourish. This goes beyond handing out freebies and swag (although those are nice too). Build trust by investing in your creator partners, taking the lead in distributing their content, and actively amplifying their content on your channels. If people within the community see you as an active partner in supporting the creators they admire, they’ll be more likely to trust that you have their best interests at heart too. Then it’s just up to you to deliver.
According to the latest survey from Ascend2 and its research partners, when they investigated the state of marketing automation, they learned that only 1 in 5 marketers are using automation tools to the fullest potential. But, why is that the case?
Well, marketers have different reasons for implementing marketing automation–like 35% use it for streamlining marketing and sale efforts, 34% for improving customer engagement or even 34% of improving customer experience.
Although marketing automation seems simple, marketing professionals are often faced with barriers that stop them from using marketing automation to the fullest potential.
Here are the Top 5 Barriers to full use of Marketing Automation Tools:
Lack of training/resources/knowledgebase
Lack of resources to manage
Lack of budget to maintain
Complicated setup
Slow onboarding process
Not only are there barriers to marketing automation, but only 39% of automation tools are somewhat integrated. With the inability to have integrated marketing and with companies facing barriers, it presents a challenge to marketers.
These above barriers help reinforce that implementing a marketing automation tool is more than a one-time cost and needs to have an on-going commitment to resources and dollars in order to ensure success.
Within marketing there will be barriers, but look on the bright side of what marketing automation tools can do! Marketing automation is top beneficial for email marketing at 40%, social media management at 39% and paid ads at 32%. Using marketing automation tools, it allows you to be more efficient on multiple channels, strengthen your marketing and better align your marketing goals.
What have been your company’s barriers to fully maximizing your Marketing Automation platform?
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?
Happy Holidays 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 2022!
Sonnhalter, your B2T partner – let’s build something together.
In just a few short years, LinkedIn has vastly outgrown its humble 2003 beginnings. From a small professional networking platform, it has evolved into a B2B marketing powerhouse with undeniable benefits toward business growth. Still, it does not suffice to approach it traditionally, especially as a manufacturer. So let’s see what are some best practices for using LinkedIn in B2B and industrial marketing.
What is LinkedIn, and is it effective for B2B marketing?
LinkedIn launched in 2003 and has largely remained a professional networking and career development platform. Since 2016, it has become a Microsoft subsidiary, but its B2B marketing beginnings had already preceded the acquisition. Indeed, by 2015, access to its users’ information had already become the platform’s primary revenue source.
Today, it has proven itself to be an immensely powerful lead generation tool for B2B marketers, regardless of industry. Data by InsideSales outlines this in no uncertain terms; LinkedIn sits confidently among the best.
Alt. tag: A graph on the lead generation effectiveness of various social media platforms.
In 2019, “LinkedIn [was] the second-most popular social media platform used by B2B marketers, ranking only behind Facebook.”
“66% of video marketers in a 2019 survey said they would include LinkedIn in their 2020 video marketing strategy.”
“In 2019, over 87% of video marketers on LinkedIn described the platform as an effective video marketing channel.”
Best Practices for Using LinkedIn in B2B and Industrial Marketing
All that said, however, approaching LinkedIn for B2B and industrial marketing requires planning and a thorough understanding of what the platform offers. It requires careful alignment with your other marketing tactics and assets, from your website to your social media activities. Finally, it requires effort and readjustments, as most B2B marketers will attest to, and absolute transparency. Indeed, misleading information alone is the primary deal-breaker for B2B buyers.
#1 Start with SEO
First and foremost, it should be undeniable that SEO is something worth investing in regarding B2B marketing. That’s because your company page, showcase pages, and even direct outreach will inevitably funnel traffic to your website.
Naturally, search engine visibility may not directly benefit your LinkedIn marketing efforts. However, it will help acquire traffic and leads from other practices, and SEO will optimize your website in other key regards to entice LinkedIn B2B leads. Among others, consider your website’s speed and responsiveness as examples. Both speed and responsiveness are crucial factors for lead generation, regardless of type or industry. Google/SOASTA research has correlated the former with higher bounce rates, and the latter spearheads Google’s Core Web Vitals.
#2 Define your goals
Next, with SEO foundations in order, you may begin defining your LinkedIn B2B marketing goals. For industrial marketing, manufacturers will typically aim for lead generation, attracting valuable prospects. You may, however, aim for brand awareness instead, depending on your overall marketing efforts. You may even seek to enhance engagement, which LinkedIn does facilitate as well.
To do so properly, you may adhere to SMART goal definitions, as Hubspot defines them:
Specific – define your goals in as specific terms as possible.
Measurable – set clear performance indicators to measure your goals’ success.
Attainable – keep your goals realistic in relation to your resources and market position.
Relevant – set relevant goals that complement your overall strategies.
Time-bound – keep your goals strictly time-bound.
#3 Refine your company page
With your SEO and goals in order, you may now begin to delve into LinkedIn’s unique characteristics. The very first step should be to refine your company page, as it will often be your leads’ first contact with your brand.
A LinkedIn company page is, in many regards, similar to Google My Business (GMB) profiles. As such, many best practices for using LinkedIn in B2B and industrial marketing will follow similar steps.
Claim your vanity URL. This will make your LinkedIn page more recognizable and easier to share. LinkedIn offers help with this step in this article.
Optimize your About Us section. This will serve as your mission statement and highlight your history, achievements, and best offerings. As you do, remember to use your keywords for better visibility.
Choose your specialty. Similarly, you may choose up to 20 specialties that best describe your business and skillsets. Here, you may pick ones most relevant to manufacturing, such as ones adjacent to the AEC industry.
Add images and information fields. As with GMB, images will also work wonders toward establishing your brand’s visual identity. As you do, ensure you’ve added accurate Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) information, and any other relevant information such as hashtags that you deem appropriate.
Add links to your website and social media follow buttons. Finally, remember to link back to your website and social media profiles to align your marketing efforts more closely. For the latter, you may use LinkedIn’s or third-party plugins.
#4 Use Showcase pages
Showcase pages offer the next step toward effective B2B marketing. LinkedIn explains that “Showcase Pages are extensions of your LinkedIn Page, designed to spotlight individual brands, business units and initiatives. Once created, they’ll be listed under ‘Affiliated Pages’ on your main LinkedIn Page”.
For example, SalesForce’s showcase pages list looks like this:
Alt. tag: SalesForce’s showcase pages on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn continues to note that “Showcase Pages have the same posting options and analytics as your LinkedIn Page to help meet your growth objectives”. However, they rightly suggest against showcase pages for specific areas or regions.
Thus, to effectively leverage showcase pages, you may instead carefully choose which of your branches, initiatives, and affiliates warrant one. You may create up to 25, but you will be fragmenting your audience considerably if you exceed 10. Once you do, prime them for conversions and target specific B2B audience segments through them, including through keywords of choice. Finally, remember to apply the same refinements as you would for your company page, including links to your website.
#5 Post engaging content and leverage sponsored content
Finally, using LinkedIn in B2B and industrial marketing requires impeccable content. Unlike B2C, where emotional responses are easier to trigger, B2B marketing hinges on informational depth and quality. In industrial marketing specifically, you will be targeting decision-makers who cannot afford to make poor decisions.
The primary means of enticing said decision-makers, as with SEO and all inbound marketing, is content. Organic content should primarily depend on your own keyword research and your buyer personas, enriching their customer journey to you. Analytics tools for this practice include:
LinkedIn’s built-in analytics tools for demographics and firmographics
Buyer persona and customer journey mapping software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software
Organic, inbound content is only one option, however. LinkedIn’s arguable strength lies in its outbound content, so you may also consider sponsored content. This primarily comes in two notable, different forms:
Sponsored content. This includes sponsored posts, text ads, video ads, and image ads that will appear in your audiences’ feeds. For sponsored content, you may opt for Cost Per Click (CPC), paying for each click generated, or for Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), paying for content views.
Sponsored InMail. In contrast, InMail lands in your audiences’ inboxes. Here, you may include extensive body copy, tailored landing pages, Calls to Action (CTAs), and more. In all cases, to avoid having your messages discarded, you should ensure to present your audiences with clear, concise offers, timing your outreach appropriately. Sponsored InMail costs on a Cost Per Send (CPS) basis, so crafting the perfect message will also benefit your allocated budget.
With these practices in mind, will you shift your marketing efforts more towards LinkedIn, or at least implement some of the techniques we mentioned?
In marketing, we must take complex ideas and simplify them for our audiences. Sometimes it can be difficult in the midst of the chaos.
Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
Your organization may be complex, with a wide variety of products and services, and you have a lot you want to say. However, too often in our excitement to tell the world about how awesome we are, we tend to say too much and only end up confusing people. Finding a way to simplify your message and distill what your company has to offer is important.
THE FOREST THROUGH THE TREES
Why it’s important to simplify varies based on what you are trying to do. If you are advertising or posting on social media, you only have a few words or seconds to get your message across. Just look at any billboard. Most are an awful mess. They attempt to say too much – often, the font is too small and there are confusing images, and the result is a message that gets lost in the medium.
Or you may have a complex service with many offerings and need to find a way to summarize what you do and how it’s done, otherwise people will get overwhelmed. They won’t understand what sets you apart from your competition and why they should buy your product or service. Have you ever read through a website or a brochure and even after a few paragraphs, you still aren’t sure what they do or the simple thing you think should be easy to find is just not evident? Yeah – sad because these are just all lost opportunities.
SO HOW DO YOU MAKE THE COMPLEX SIMPLE?
There are many way to do this, though one of our favorite exercises to conduct with a client is taking them through a value attribute map or process.
Begin with listing out your product or service features. Write them out in a horizontal row. Keep it to the most important 5 to 7 to start with. For each feature, identify the benefit to the user, and write that above your row of features. For example, my travel mug (S’well for Sue/Yeti for Dean) is thermally insulated. That’s a feature. The benefit is it keeps my coffee or tea hot for a long time. Keep in mind, a feature can have more than one benefit.
The next step is the most important – keep laddering up. For each benefit, describe why you believe that benefit is important to your target audience. What value do they attribute to that benefit? You have to look at this from your target audience’s perspective – an outside-in approach. Following through from the travel mug example, the reason I value my drink staying hot for a long time is because it tastes better hot, saves me time from having to re-heat, and it’s one less thing to worry about through my crazy day.
Do this for every feature. You may and should find that many features end up having the same benefit and end-value. And that’s the key. It’s laddering up to what is most important to your target audience.
Think about those end values – your key message is in there. It won’t say everything you may want to, but it’s the perfect way to get the initial message across and break through the clutter of competing messages. You don’t have to tell them everything at once, just enough to help them understand what makes your product/service meaningful to them and unique enough that it gets them to want to learn more. And then that’s your opportunity to then tell them more.
Using a value attribute map is just one way to help bring clarity from chaos. There are other methods, and they have many things in common such as getting organized, creating hierarchies, and thinking about what is important from the perspective of your target audience. Because in the end, it’s about the audience, not about you.
Digital channels play an important role when it comes to advertising. I’m sure this is no surprise to most marketers given the pandemic the world has been facing the past 18 months.
According to Emarketer, the forecast for this year is expected to grow almost 25% and by 2023, the total B2B digital spend is forecasted to almost double to be close to the 15 billion mark.
Another stat that surprised me was that LinkedIn is forecasted to account for nearly one-third of the total B2B display ad spending in 2021. And I’m sure a majority of these ads are for job openings, but there are still plenty of promoted posts I’m seeing on LinkedIn.
On the other hand, digital ad investment accounts for 32% of total B2B digital ad spend. This is mostly due to Technology Products and Service companies. With digital channels being vital when marketing to your customers, B2B marketers are investing more in digital ads than display.
How has your company’s digital advertising grown over the past year?
Entering 2021, companies anticipated to have budget growth of more than 5% as they expected to have a swift recovery. A recent report from Gartner reveals that the share of company revenues allocated to marketing expense budgets has fallen drastically this year.
The survey of 400 marketing leaders across 5 global markets found that marketing budgets as a portion of revenue have fallen to 6.4% this year. The previous lowest year was 10.2% back in 2014. From the results we can see five trends happening.
Trend Number One:
The first trend that reflects this decrease is from the downward pressure on marketing spend induced by the pandemic. When budgets are getting cut, marketing budgets are usually the first ones to be on the chopping block.
Trend Number Two:
All nine industries analyzed had cuts in budget as a portion of revenue. Manufacturing experienced the biggest percentage-point drop in revenue allocated to marketing…12.7% in 2020, but only 5.8% for 2021! With the digital enterprise accelerating investments, spending priorities began to shift.
Trend Number Three:
With digital commerce dominating, marketing budgets started to spread across all different channels. 72.2% of investments were split between marketing channels like websites, digital ads and social channels.
Trend Number Four:
A lot of external agency capabilities are now moving to in-house strategic tactics. The three that have moved focus are brand strategy, innovation and technology and marketing strategy development.
Trend Number Five:
Lastly, with the shift to digital commerce that meant companies needed to change their spending on analytics. With having to invest in online programs to fuel digital success, this ended up taking 12.3% of the total budget.
I know manufacturers across the board are struggling with supply chain, labor shortages and other issues, but hard to believe marketing spending dropped so much in just one year.
Where is your company’s marketing budget share trending as a percentage of the company’s revenue?
In 2020, companies and businesses turned to online events as an alternative to in-person events due to COVID-19. With those who previously held face-to-face events, 4 in 5 or 78% of people converted to online. Although online events were successful, people are starting to feel burnt out from them.
According to Activate Marketing Services in partnership with MarketingCharts, 9 in 10 or 90% of Demand Gen marketers agree that buyers are becoming fatigued with online events.
We all had to pivot last year to replace in-person events (tradeshows, association and industry meetings) … and most of us tried to fill the gap by replacing them with some sort of online/virtual event. With buyers becoming fatigued, and that will only be growing, companies are starting to redirect their focus. Instead, high-quality lead programs have risen up the ranks when respondents were asked to choose their top 3 options. That being said, companies are starting to focus more on content and engagement with their audience.
This doesn’t mean virtual events are going away anytime soon. Although I don’t know about you, but most of the online events I attended were pretty much busts.
What does your company have planned for the remainder of the year? Any in-person events? I know I’m scheduled to attend at least half a dozen trade shows between now and the end of the year and I can’t wait to continue to see people “live” and in person!
CLEVELAND –September 2021 – 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 12th year during its annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive, which ran the entire month of August and collected $26,500 worth of donations of tools and building materials. Since Sonnhalter began its efforts in 2010, it has collected $336,500 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.
“Every year, we at Sonnhalter are inspired and uplifted by the generosity of our great community in its efforts to help those in need with donated tools and building materials,” said Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter. “We would like to thank our clients, partners and community members for their continued support in helping Sonnhalter raise nearly $336,500 for this great cause.”
“Sonnhalter’s Tool Drive is like Christmas in August! Instead of Santa’s sleigh, they bring a large truck full of tools for us and that’s the gift that keeps on giving all year around,” 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 12th 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 12th Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive included Buyers Products, CSV Marketing, Endeavor Business Media, General Pipe Cleaners, Jergens, Inc., Ignition, Kapro, Samsel Supply, Lakeside Supply, Ledlenser, Mortar Net Solutions, Sutton Industrial, Wolff Bros. Supply, and Woodhill Supply.
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. We create hope by building and fully rehabbing homes, strengthening neighborhoods and reweaving communities. Cleveland Habitat was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987. Cleveland Habitat has brought together over 275 sponsor groups and 87,000 volunteers to help more than 300 Habitat homeowners, including more than 1,000 children, have a safe and decent place to live. We have provided working families who earn between 30 and 80% of the area median income (AMI) affordable homeownership opportunities in 20 different Cleveland neighborhoods. For more information on Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity visit http://www.clevelandhabitat.org/.
Virtual selling will continue to be around after COVID-19. Over the past year, there has been a shift of moving things to be done virtually or remote. In a recent report, State of Sales, LinkedIn looked at the top deal killers for B2B buyers.
When looking at the report, some of these concepts seem so obvious, but if they made the list, then they must be happening out there.
Here are the Top 3 B2B seller behavior deal killers for buyers:
Delivering misleading information about a product, its price, etc. – taking the top spot at 48%, I guess my question is why 52% of B2B buyers would buy from a vendor that gives them inaccurate info about the product and its price! Tell the truth; representing a trusted brand can make outreach more successful and gain you customers.
Not understanding my company and its needs – this seems like “Sales 101,” but it’s amazing how many salespeople are too focused on their own product/service and not the customer. A sales professional needs to be focused on the consumer’s need rather than pushing a product.
Not understanding their own product or service – with the amount of information on the internet and the amount of time buyers spend researching prior to reaching out to the company, shouldn’t be a surprise they sometimes know more than the salesperson.
Sales professionals are taking note of these deal killers and trying to improve. Knowing and identifying deal killers is important when targeting your audience, so you can adjust your outreach and effectively build trust.
Looking into the future, how will you change as a sales professional?
Influencer marketing is one of the top forms of marketing, especially in 2021. With influencer marketing being in demand, marketers must use it to seek their target audience.
In a recent report from Linqia, “State of Influencer Marketing,” they outline some of their key findings. While this report is focused on enterprise marketers, these broader B2C influencer marketing trends eventually make their way down to the B2B market.
Here are some of the key highlights:
Interest in using TikTok in influencer marketing campaigns rose 325% in just one year
90% of enterprise marketers wanted to work with micro-influencers
Marketers are working with significantly fewer influencers than three years ago
86% of respondents are already using shoppable links to allow consumers to go from inspiration to purchase instantly
65% of respondents indicated that measuring ROI continues to be the biggest pain point in influencer marketing
It’s no surprise that the top two platforms are TikTok and Instagram as video content is continuing to grow within influencer channels. In fact, one in three marketers said it is extremely important.
Influencers are more than just their audience; they also create compelling content across channels and this is why they’re so effective.
What changes are you making to your Influencer Marketing Program for 2021?
After 2020, we can see a change in what types of content are most effective. In a recent report from Activate Marketing Services, they surveyed 72% of B2B tech marketers and demand gen decision-makers for a report on effective content.
In this blog, we will look at each tunnel tier and each type of content.
Top of the Funnel:
At the top of the funnel, we have blog posts that are considered most effective. Whereas next we have 66% of people who consider infographics the most effective. Lastly, at the top of the funnel we have videos. Blogs, infographics and videos are great sources of content as buyers are engaging with more digital content especially after the pandemic. When crafting content for your company, keep your audience in mind to optimize business.
Mid-Funnel:
In the mid-funnel, we can see virtual events and webcasts were most effective. Last year, we saw an increase of virtual events and webinars due to COVID-19 and the cancellation of in-person events. Online events are great to expand your audience and let anyone listen from anywhere.
Bottom of the Funnel:
In our final tier, we have data-driven content. For example, this type of content consists of white papers, e-books and case studies, with white papers at 41% effective, e-books at 9% and case studies at 16%.
And while this study focused on B2B tech marketers, these content pieces would work for the general B2B marketers.
What’s been your most effective content type at each stage of the funnel?
CLEVELAND – July 2021 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, is partnering with Habitat for Humanity again for its Twelfth Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive. In the past decade, Sonnhalter has raised more than $310,000 worth in donations for the organization.
From Sunday, August 1 to Tuesday, August 31, organizations, businesses and manufacturers are encouraged to donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials to the Sonnhalter Tool Drive to benefit Habitat for Humanity’s cause and its efforts of eliminating substandard housing.
“We never imagined how big the tool drive would become! Over a decade later, we are still working with our wonderful partners at the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “Since our efforts began in 2010, we are once again counting on the generosity of our clients and business colleagues, as well as businesses to clean out their extra inventory, overstocked materials and demo models, and donate to this very worthy cause. We’re looking forward to exceeding the donations of past years.”
The Sonnhalter Tool Drive strives to engage businesses and organizations to look through warehouses for extra inventory and overstocked tools or items.
Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity has completed more than 300 homes since 1987 and today, engages over 3,000 volunteers, who provide more than 93,000 hours of service per year to Cleveland’s most distressed neighborhoods. The donated items will be used for Habitat for Humanity projects or will be sold at one of the organization’s ReStore, a recycled building materials store. Proceeds from ReStore sales are used to help Habitat build and rehabilitate homes for those in need.
Tools and materials can be shipped to Attn: Tool Drive, Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. For information on how you can participate in the Sonnhalter Tool Drive, or to coordinate larger shipments i.e., pallet size, please contact Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard from Sonnhalter at 216.242.0420 x130 or rascherl@sonnhalter.com. To make a monetary donation, please make checks payable to “Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity” and mail to Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115.
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. We create hope by building and fully rehabbing homes, strengthening neighborhoods and reweaving communities. Cleveland Habitat was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987. Cleveland Habitat has brought together over 275 sponsor groups and 87,000 volunteers to help more than 300 Habitat homeowners, including more than 1,000 children, have a safe and decent place to live. We have provided working families who earn between 30 and 80% of the area median income (AMI) affordable homeownership opportunities in 20 different Cleveland neighborhoods. For more information on Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity visit http://www.clevelandhabitat.org/.
Having a business plan is important for the success of any business. A business plan will help you to evaluate your goals and determine how you will set about achieving them. It will help you recognize where things are not going according to plan and help you take corrective action. A good business plan can also help you to attract much-needed funding.
Setting up in business as a manufacturer representative is no exception, and a well-constructed business plan can mean the difference between failure and success. Here we take a look at how you can create a business plan that really works for a manufacturer representative.
Nature of Your Business — One of the first things you should do is define what the nature of your business is. This is partly for the benefit of any potential investors who might be considering making an investment in your company. Before they are willing to part with any money, they will first need to know what your company is all about and how it will make a profit.
Defining the nature of your business is also beneficial to you when it comes to running your company. It can be all too easy otherwise for somebody to get side-tracked and lose focus on their objectives.
Capital Requirements — How much money do you need to get started? How much will it cost to register your company? What do you need to pay to get business premises of your own? What about utilities, IT, desks, and other furniture and equipment? All of these things will need to be taken into consideration to make sure you have what you need; otherwise, you will struggle to function. It is also a good idea to try and account for unexpected expenses. If financial literacy isn’t your strong suit, there are resources online that will help.
Identify Your Competitors — Who are your competitors? Which manufacturers do they represent? Who do they sell to? What advantages do they have over you, and what advantages do you have over them? How can you encourage customers to buy from you instead of the competition?
Knowing the competition will help you understand just how competitive your field really is. If you find yourself in a fiercely competitive market, then you will need to try and work out how you can stand out from the rest, or even consider another field altogether. Identifying your competition could also help you to learn from them. If they have been in business for a long time, what have they been doing to make themselves successful?
Clients and Customers — If you’re a manufacturer representative, who are you going to represent? Do you already have a relationship with a manufacturer that you could work with? Are there others whose products you’re familiar with that you could approach? Bear in mind that if you’re going to go into business selling products for other people, you simply must have something to sell.
Just as important as having something to sell is having somebody to sell to. Your business plan should include market research into the demand for a manufacturer’s products. Are you selling to businesses? If that’s the case, what appropriate businesses are there in your area? Will you need to travel long distances to meetings with potential customers, or can you find a cloud calling solution for virtual meetings? How much will travel cost, and accommodation if required?
Marketing — How are you going to acquire new prospects? Advertising? Door-to-door? Cold-calling? Is your method of gaining new products something you can do yourself or will you need help? Will you need to employ staff to do it for you, or outsource marketing to another business?
Your business plan will need to take into account the cost and efforts involved with acquiring new prospects. It will help potential investors to see that there is a good business opportunity while it can also help you to identify any potential issues with your sales methodology and finding people to sell to.
Identify Potential Obstacles — Things don’t always run smoothly for businesses. Even the best laid plans are not immune to external influences that the business owner has no control over. For example, the recent global health crisis has put significant strain on the supply chain, and a recent report found that 94% of manufacturing leaders report concerns about their current supply chains. This translates to potential shipping delays for your products, which is out of your control.
While we may not be able to prevent issues from happening, however, we can make sure we are prepared to deal with them when they do arise.
Try and consider which obstacles exist or might exist at some point in the future. How are you going to overcome those obstacles? What contingency plans can you put into place? If you’re not prepared for such eventualities, then it can have a severely detrimental impact on your business; being prepared can help make them more of a minor inconvenience.
Financial Forecast — Create a realistic financial forecast. How many sales do you realistically see yourself making, and how much revenue will they generate? How much will your business cost to run? What overheads will you have? What will be your profit margin once all costs have been deducted from revenue?
It’s important you are honest when creating your financial forecast. Trying to make the forecast look better on paper will not achieve anything for you in reality, other than maybe lead you into debt. If the forecast does not look good, then you will need to re-evaluate your goals. Doing so will make it a lot more likely that you have a business that’s a success rather than one that closes down quickly.
A well-made business plan is important for numerous reasons. It can help you attract necessary investment in your company if needed, while it can also help ensure you have a viable business before you start. A business plan will also help you to keep your company headed in the right direction and identify areas that need improvement. The right business plan can make the difference between a company that fails and a company that is a huge success, so it’s well worth spending your time on creating one that really works.
With being stuck inside for the past year, 2020 became the year of videos, making some businesses embrace a digital approach and adopt new methods of marketing. From this, we can look at the key shifts for video that happened last year.
The latest report from Vidyard looks at 2020 video completion rates and other benchmarks.
Here are the key findings:
The average length of business-related videos increased from 4 minutes in 2019 to just over 6 minutes in 2020. That said, the majority (60%) of videos produced for business purposes (such as to support sales, marketing and communication efforts) are 2 minutes or less, with 37.3% being up to one minute long and another 23% being 1-2 minutes long.
Vidyard reports that with the cancellations of a majority of in-person events, videos over 20 minutes long saw an increase of 66% over 2019. It also pointed out that videos between 2 and 10 minutes have also increased, presumably “leaning on the trend of frictionless, self-service buying experiences to provide educational content to prospective customers upfront.”
With video content increasing, we need to keep in mind people’s attention spans. If you’re producing long-form videos, consider making simple cuts to keep your audience engaged or trim the video down.
Video is a powerful medium and adds value to your business.
Did video length for your company’s videos increase last year?
In the manufacturing arena where competition is fierce, some companies have turned to blogs as a way to increase brand awareness, become a thought leader in their space, increase their web traffic and generate leads.
Write With Your Buyer Personas In Mind – When creating blog content, remember who your audience is. By establishing your audience, you can make customized content towards them.
Use Images & Visual Elements – Enhance your story by using pictures to help break up text and keep readers engaged. Images can play an important part in increasing the reading time on your blog.
Link To External Sources, And Your Own Content! – Help your readers through the story by providing credibility. This helps with your brand’s trust and can drive readers to conversion pages, which can boost SEO.
Establish A Frequency To Posting Your Blogs – Make sure you’re committing to the blog by frequently posting. One way to keep up with posting is to create a content calendar and lay out all the blogs you’re doing in a month.
Ensure Your Blogs Have A Strong Word Count – Posts under 300 words are not recommended for SEO, and when your SEO isn’t strong, consumers can’t find you online. At the same time, don’t post a blog with 2,500 words of “awful” as people will not read it.
Blogs can help to achieve your business goals and build trust between you and the consumer. Follow the rules above and check out the rest in their article to learn how to improve your blog.
CLEVELAND – June 2021 – Sonnhalter, a marketing communications firm to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, names Kylie Stanley the new public relations technician. In this role, Stanley will develop content for social media, write copy and represent Sonnhalter and its clients.
Stanley attended The University of Akron, where she studied Public Relations and Media Studies. While in school, Stanley produced the university’s web-series, “Class Cancelled,” that showcased activities students could do in the Akron area. From her video experience, she was awarded a Lower Great Lakes Emmy in the Arts and Entertainment college category.
Along with her video experience, Stanley has worked with social media and was a media relations intern at a Columbus marketing agency.
“We are excited to have Kylie join the Sonnhalter team,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “Kylie is a talented young professional and we look forward to seeing her grow here.”
Stanley is currently a member of the central Ohio chapter of PRSA.
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.
Fewer than one-quarter of consumers in the U.S. feel they are more in control of their data than they were a year ago
Today, trust can make or break a brand’s reputation. 74% of people drive their brand trust on “respects and protects customer’s data, privacy and security.” This is according to a recent survey from Morning Consult, which analyzed the important elements of brand trust.
The survey looked into 15,000 global consumers in 15 markets in March 2021 and shows us what drives trust among global consumers.
The main drivers of trust come from:
Functional
Experiential
Social
Emotional
Here are some key highlights from their survey:
Based on the survey, we can see that at the top we have emotional drivers like, “protects my personal data.” While on the other end, the other top drivers for brand trust are more product-related such as:
Good value for the price
High quality
Products or services that work as advertised
It’s clear that experience and customer service contribute to one’s brand trust.
How does your brand/company perform against these Top 10 drivers?
Are you looking for new customers or want to increase business?
Well-developed public relations can be an effective tool to boost your business and help reach your desired audience. You will be able to establish an emotional connection to your audience through your brand’s marketing.
There are many ways that public relations can benefit you, but today we will be focusing on four methods. Michelle Garrett analyzed these four methods in a post she wrote for Thomas, “Why Public Relations Matters to Manufacturers.”
Educates – Public relations helps to teach your audience about who you are and why your company should matter to them. It also provides the information to your market about your products and services.
Image and Reputation – Public relations can aid in building trust and to establish your brand in the industry. By creating a strong reputation, it can lead to credibility and provide you with lifelong customers. If your customers know what your brand stands for, they will be more likely to engage with your business.
Awareness and Visibility – Potential customers will know that your brand exists, and campaigns can spread awareness of the work that your company is doing. With awareness efforts, you can change public opinions and promote your brand’s value.
Interest – From awareness we can create interest for your brand and products. Interest helps to pull customers in and make them want to learn more about your brand or be involved.
No matter how big or small a story is, it can help to elevate your brand and increase business. Let’s take some notes by looking at some examples of past public relations stories that have created visibility.
Associated General Contractors
Associated General Contractors of California partnered up with BuildOUT California, the world’s first industry association for sustainable growth of LGBTQ+ owned and certified business. This partnership is impactful for their audience and shows that the company cares about diversity and inclusion.
Partnerships can be rewarding and can help your business stand out against your competitors.
Mergers & Acquisitions
HEPACO is a leader in environmental and emergency response services that acquired Summit Field Services from Summit Environmental Services, LLC. This expansion helps to boost business development and to add value to your brand.
In the News
RMH Systems, a turn-key automation packaging and material handling integrator, announced Ryan Howard as their new president. With newsworthy information, your customers will want to hear about any changes happening within the company.
When using all these public relations efforts, we can create powerful results and assist in your brand’s marketing.
Need help with utilizing public relations? Contact us and check out our website for more tips.
This infographic from Statista shows the Top 7 U.S. states by the number of structurally deficient bridges in 2020.
Who knew Iowa had so many bridges? I always thought of rows and rows of corn fields for them. 🙂
The full 2021 Bridge Conditions Report from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) is alarming. Here are some key highlights and figures:
220,000 of U.S. bridges—36 percent—need repair work
79,500 of U. S. bridges need replacement
At the current pace, it would take nearly 40 years to repair the current backlog of “structurally deficient” (SD) bridges
Motorists drive across structurally deficient bridges 171.5 million times daily
A structurally deficient bridge, on average, is nearly 68 years old, compared to 32 years for a bridge in good condition and 54 years for a bridge in fair condition.
Bridge inspections generally occur once every 24 months. Bridge ratings are updated as inspections are completed—each year some bridges are classified as poor or structurally deficient and others are removed from that category as they undergo repair, rehabilitation or replacement.
How are the bridges and infrastructure in your hometown?
Each month, Alan Sipe, a contributing editor for Professional Distributor magazine, writes a sales skill article targeted to the independent business people who own and operate the various branded tool trucks you see parked at automotive repair shops everywhere. Although this article is written for the automotive repair industry, the sales skills are applicable to everyone.
Is it an objection or a question?
Your response will make a world of difference to your wallet.
You’re right in the middle of a product presentation on a new Jenny electric 7.5hp stationary air compressor when the prospect interrupts and growls, “How much is this compressor?”
Is it a question? Is it an objection? Is the product too expensive? The prospect used a negative tone, so they must be unhappy with my presentation, right? I’m not done with the presentation and he’s getting antsy, so he’s trying to rush me, isn’t he?
First things first. Let’s understand what’s meant by the question, “How much is this compressor?”
If you think about it, the prospect probably had a compressor that was working just fine. Now the thing just died or is on its last legs and they must get a new one. The prospect isn’t happy with needing a new compressor, so they most likely won’t be thrilled with any price other than free.
In this case, even though the prospect interrupted you with a question, it’s simply that, a question. How you respond can move your potential customer in the direction of saying “yes” to the compressor purchase, or it can blow up in your face.
A simple, straightforward response is always the best. Try being relaxed, and say something like, “It will be between $X and $Y depending on which accessories you choose. Let’s take a look at the accessories and see what you decide.” (more…)
Brand posts on Instagram had an average engagement rate in 2020 that was more than four times higher than on Facebook or Twitter. This is according to recent findings from Socialinsider, which also analyzed social media engagement benchmarks across 35 different industries.
The study looked into over 22 million posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and created a comparison between the social media performance of 2019 and 2020.
Here are the key stats for “industrial,” which is the most relevant industry for Sonnhalter’s B2T market. Brands within the Industrial category have high average engagement rates per post across the board.
Average Engagement Rate Per Post
Instagram – 1.36%
Facebook – 0.52%
Twitter – 0.08%
This confirms what Sonnhalter has seen for our clients. Instagram is by far the best performing social media platform.
Are you seeing similar success and engagement with your Instagram channel?
The study also delved into understanding frequency of postings, and what mix of photos and videos were used across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Businesses can no longer manage their expanding content libraries with siloed repositories or simple tools like spreadsheets. So, if you’re exploring a DAM technology for your company, this report from Forrester is a must read. Forrester covers the 14 DAM providers that matter most and how they stack up against each other.
Vendors are evaluated against 28 criteria, which are grouped into three high-level categories:
Current Offering
Library services
Work-in-progress assets
Video and emerging content support
Marketing support
Usability and user interface
Enterprise platform integrations
Strategy
Product vision
Past performance
Market approach
Supporting product and services
Delivery model
Market Presence
Product revenue
Average deal size
If you are already using a DAM, I’m curious which one do you use and what has your experience been?
By now most everyone knows that video is where it’s at. If you want to grab attention on social media, in your e-newsletter or in a press release–make sure it contains a video!
Video is a powerful communication tool that provides a more personal feel to your message. You will be far more likely to connect on an emotional level with your audience if you use video versus another content type. And, when it comes to social media marketing, video is a great way to engage with your audience.
But there are different types of video, some more appropriate and effective than others depending on what your marketing goals are. Joe Forte recently broke down the types of video in his recent post for Content Marketing Institute, “5 Types of Video to Add to Your Social Media Marketing.”
Live Video – Best for when your brand has a significant following, Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and other streaming services make it easy to connect with your audience. Livestreaming allows you to talk with your followers and are most effective for announcements, behind-the-scenes looks, and product information videos.
Tutorial Videos – Among the most frequently shared on social media, tutorial videos have mass appeal by relating to your products and services. Or, they can be broader topics that relate to your audience and industry. Tutorial videos need to be clear, educational and entertaining. They need to be long enough to show every step and short enough to be engaging.
Informational Videos – Informational videos can cover any topic. Build your content archive with videos on a variety of relevant topics. Make them unique, clever or insightful. When adding video to your social media, concentrate on content likely to be shared, something valuable to make it worth the viewer’s time.
Behind-the-Scenes Video – Behind-the-scenes videos are a great way to make your company and your team more personable by highlighting day-to-day operations, your offices, your manufacturing processes, and more. Designed to build trust and brand identity, this type of video really gives the opportunity to dig down into what makes a brand exceptional.
User-Generated Video – UGC is quickly becoming a fantastic and easier way to engage an audience. You can encourage your followers to create videos and ask them to incorporate your hashtags into the upload. User-generated content is a brilliant way to grow an audience because users are more inclined to share content they create. Viewing the user-generated content also is an excellent way to get a feel for your audience’s personalities and what they’re interested in.
Which type works the best for your brand? It’s a great idea to experiment with these and see which generates the most interest and engagement. Read the complete post for more information, examples and tips on producing each of these valuable types of video content.
Read more on the importance of video in marketing:
1) Planning and Strategy: This includes setting your goals and identifying your audience, developing your team and creating killer content.
2) Driving Registration: It’s important to plan ahead. Email is essential. While other marketing tools help widen your reach, 80% of webinar registration is generated by email promotions. Don’t forget to simplify the registration form. Only ask for the basics and don’t scare registrants off by asking for too many details.
3) Before Your Webinar: Design a presentation that resonates. Keep slides clean with no more than three bullet points per slide. Make sure your team is equipped with the appropriate audio and video technology.
4) During Your Webinar: Your presenter should be well-rehearsed, energetic and engaging. Also, invite your audience to get involved by using polls and surveys and take advantage of feedback during a Q&A.
5) After Your Webinar: Having the right “on-demand” strategy will ensure your webinar lives on. But, also make sure you follow up with the attendees and have an effective post-webinar strategy in place.
There are a lot of moving parts that go into putting together a great webinar. It takes planning, people and technology, all working together to create the perfect event. What are some of your webinar best practices?
Want more content on the topic of webinars? Visit these blog posts.
Have you seen the renderings for Amazon’s headquarters in Virginia?
I recently ran across an article on Building Design & Construction Magazine’s website from John Caulfield which outlined some of the key features of this new campus. Amazon’s proposed design for the second phase of its corporate headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, includes a $2.5 billion investment that will encompass five office buildings for 25,000 employees.
Here are some of the key highlights:
The Phase 2 site, called PenPlace, will be anchored by The Helix, a 370,000-square-foot, spiral-shaped building
2.8-million-square-foot campus with three, 22-story buildings that target LEED Platinum certification
PenPlace’s sustainable features include an onsite water reclamation system for reducing cooling, irrigation, and flushing demand by 50%
2.5-plus acres of public open space and connected walkways, a dog run, a 250-seat amphitheater, woodlands, and art installations
Over 950 onsite bike spaces, including 180 for visitors; there will be one-quarter mile of new protected bike lanes
All-electric central heating and cooling system that runs on 100% renewable energy from a solar farm in southern Virginia
What other cool building renderings have you seen recently?
In past blog posts, we’ve discussed some of the ways companies can hit the ground running with Instagram and make it a useful cog in their marketing machine. Now that you’ve set up an account, accumulated some followers and fired off some posts, you may be wondering why your posts haven’t performed as well as you had hoped. The reason may be that your posts aren’t optimized for the best possible engagement. What do I mean by that? Well, as you may have noticed, your Instagram feed is no longer chronological. Instead, the feed is actually run by an ever-changing algorithm that is constantly trying to figure out and prioritize and show you posts that you are most likely to interact or engage with.
While Instagram hasn’t publicly divulged the specifics of its algorithm, those able to read between the lines understand that getting the most exposure on the platform comes down to engagement, not just “likes” and a regular posting routine. What this means is that the algorithm is specifically looking for posts that users spend time and interact with, or content that will illicit more shares, saves, comments and longer video views. So, how can you get better engagement and overall performance with your Instagram channel? Here are five suggestions!
Create content that users will “save” or “share.”
Instagram now has a “save” feature which allows users to archive photos and videos into a special folder that they can view later. Saving a post signals to the algorithm that a user found the post to be worthwhile, which helps boost the post’s visibility. Additionally, if a user “shares” a post via direct message, that also scores better for the algorithm than standard likes and comments. As a company, there are plenty of ways you can create savable or shareable content. Examples include infographics, how-to videos, tips, tricks and sharing fun content created by influencers.
Post when your followers are most likely to be online.
While posting daily (or at least 4-5 times a week) is crucial for growing your channel, posting at the wrong time can cost you meaningful exposure. Since Instagram’s algorithm favors posts that receive a lot of interaction in a short amount of time, it’s important to post when your followers are most active and have the best chance to see your content. While early first thing in the morning, lunchtime and right after 5 p.m. are generally viewed as acceptable times to post, Instagram now offers business accounts an Insights tab that allows you see the exact hours your followers are most engaged.
Improve the quality of your content.
This one might seem obvious, but if your content isn’t working, maybe it’s time to take a step back and see things from the user’s perspective and what they would like to see. Everyone on Instagram is fighting for attention, so what can you do to pull people in? Consider posts with real people, good lighting or some sort of action shot. If you’re making a video, try to get right to the point within the first couple seconds to grab people’s attention and try to make the length as short as possible to increase your views. Or, think of a thoughtful caption with helpful product or how-to info that your followers would want to read. These minor tweaks can help keep eyeballs on your content for longer periods of time, which will lead to a boost in the algorithm.
Explore all of Instagram’s new features.
Another tactic that both pleases the algorithm and gives you more ways to interact with your audience is utilizing all of Instagram features for content creation. A few years ago, Instagram introduced Stories, a feature that allows users to share short clips and moments that disappeared after 24 hours, and IGTV, a feature for long-form videos that allows users to create content that more resembles vlogs and other web series. Last summer, Instagram introduced Reels to compete with Tik Tok and give users a space to easily share and swipe through 15-second and 30-second clips with all kinds of audio and visual effects. While not every company is the right fit for trying to replicate the kind of Instagram content that goes viral or participating in the latest meme or social media “challenge,” companies need to research these features and see if there is a natural segue to use them for fun product demos, instructional videos, Q&As and other types of engaging content your followers might engage. As previously stated, when it comes to engagement, the longer a user is looking at your content, the better. Plus, Instagram has been known to reward accounts that utilize more of its features.
Monitor what works and what doesn’t work.
Any social media manager will tell you that a successful Instagram account is one that is flexible, persistent and versatile. Don’t be afraid to experiment with a variety of different content types and see which ones your audience responds to best. Analyze the elements of your posts that seemed to start a conversation in the comments or received a lot of saves and shares and let that steer you in the right direction. While some of these metrics can be viewed in your Insights tab, companies interested in taking a deeper dive into these analytics should consider social media listening and monitoring services like Agorapulse, Sprout Social and many others.
While we can’t anticipate the next big change in Instagram’s algorithm or user experience, I believe making a strong commitment to making quality, engaging content on a regular basis will always be in a company’s best interest.
To read more about optimizing your company’s efforts on Instagram, read:
The construction and manufacturing industries are enormous engines driving any economy.
For instance, in the U.S., the construction industry employs more than 7 million individuals and generates more than $1.3 trillion.
On the other hand, manufacturers in the U.S. are responsible for 11.39% of the economy’s total output. They employ 8.51% of the total available workforce, and their overall output exceeds $2.3 trillion.
As a result, any changes that occur in those two major industries have far-reaching consequences on the economy as a whole.
Therefore, there are certain things you need to consider when you market disruptive technologies in those fields.
Radical change, which is also known as disruptive change.
The change you aim to bring about falls into the final category, but it helps to be aware of how your target industries have evolved in all four of the above categories.
The Evolution of the Construction Industry
The construction industry is relatively new to disruptive change.
Over the past few centuries, it has mostly witnessed minor progressive changes. Engineers in the early twentieth century were relatively similar to those from the preceding centuries.
They drew plans by hand, used analog surveying equipment, and planned out projects using physical files and dossiers.
Today, engineers use advanced programs like AutoCAD and Revit to produce computer-aided designs, and almost every construction company worth its salt uses construction management software.
For instance, BIM software is changing the game, providing engineers with clear 3D models.
Modular manufacturing and prefabrication construction enable engineers to build structures in a fraction of the time it normally took, while also reducing waste.
Manufacturing has its origins in artisanal work. From blacksmiths and coppersmiths to shoemakers, laboring for hours and days over the final product used to be the norm.
However, this all changed with the industrial revolution.
For one thing, when Adam Smith introduced the concept of the division of labor, artisanal workers had a much more difficult time competing with large-scale organizations.
It wasn’t long before machines took over the manufacturing process, introducing mass production and rendering people who work with their hands all but obsolete.
Ford’s assembly line then took efficiency to a whole new level — and this isn’t even the end of the story.
Over the past fifty years, computerization has disrupted the manufacturing industry.
It has allowed automation, which has been buoyed recently by the introduction of AI.
Additionally, the collection of data has given us the field of analytics.
Needless to say, it is impossible to imagine what other disruptions the future holds for manufacturers all over the world.
In his seminal book “Crossing the Chasm,” Geoffrey Moore has explored why many disruptive entrepreneurs have a hard time reaching the mainstream market.
He realized that adopting new technologies involves a high degree of risk, especially when the technology in question is so novel that there is little data to make an informed decision.
The problem is not only that these technologies are unproven: there is also a lack of supporting infrastructure to justify the switch.
It is often difficult to distinguish between something that will radically change an industry from something that will prove to be nothing more than a passing fad.
With this in mind, he broke down companies into different categories:
Innovators and early adopters: They are the people so enamored with technology that they are willing to try anything new and take the risk so long as it may give them a leg up over the competition. You will also find visionaries in this category.
The mainstream market: This category can be broken down into an early and late majority. These groups entail pragmatists and people who appreciate the benefit of sticking with the herd.
Laggards: Those are companies and individuals so conservative that they might not adopt new technology even when the entire market has already turned to it.
Your marketing efforts will have to take all four categories into account.
How to Market to the Construction and Manufacturing Industries
We have already seen the inherent difficulties in marketing disruptive tech, with the construction and the manufacturing industries representing extreme ends on a spectrum of change.
In spite of their differences, both these industries are facing radical change. How can marketers smoothen the transition?
For starters, any marketing message consists of three components:
The message.
The target of the message.
The proof that verifies the message.
Let’s look at each element separately.
The Message
When it comes to the message, your main goal is to communicate the value of your offer.
To make your offer acceptable to wary prospects, draw comparisons between the disruptive elements and things that might be familiar to the audience. Also, make sure you address their concerns. Here’s how.
Highlight Value
To begin with, you want to show your audience what they have to gain by adopting new, disruptive technology.
After all, change is hard, and adapting to a new piece of technology often takes effort.
However, if the value exceeds the costs of change, your customers will be happy to take the leap.
Additionally, you should shed light on the possible consequences of being too late to the party.
Show that failing to adopt these new technologies promptly puts the company at a disadvantage to its competitors.
For example, when it comes to the construction industry, you can point out how drones can save money in surveying or how 3D printing will finish a task that used to take days or even weeks in mere hours.
You can do this through webinars, case studies, or any other form of educational content.
Explain Through Analogies
One of the most efficient ways to market new products is through analogies.
This comes in handy when the customer struggles to see the potential value of the new technology.
Analogies help demonstrate how things will improve once the new technology has been adopted.
They also show how the new technology relates to older technologies, which makes people feel safer.
For example, if you are trying to convince a manufacturer of the value of using AR and VR technology in their factories, this is what your spiel might look like:
“Investing in AR and VR will cost you X amount of dollars, which is about twice the amount you invest annually to train your workers.
However, while a trainer’s fee is recurring every year, AR and VR will only require an initial investment, and the maintenance fees will be a fraction of your training costs.
In essence, it will be like having a trainer on your factory floor 24/7, increasing productivity and keeping your workers safe, and you only have to pay once.”
Analogies offer reference points, enabling customers to make better-informed decisions.
Address Fears
When marketing disruptive technologies, many potential customers will express skepticism and even fear of jumping into uncharted waters.
It’s the marketer’s job to address these concerns and assuage them.
Start with listening to your customers and learn how to respond to each individual objection.
For instance, one common concern that is bound to pop up time and again is that these new technologies aren’t widespread yet and that the switching costs may be too high to justify the shift.
You can reply by pointing out that this is always the case with innovation.
Show that while there may be switching costs, there are even higher costs to delaying the inevitable.
You can go one step further and explain that there are several innovative technologies already being adopted by visionaries, thanks in part to the rise of industry 4.0.
For instance, there are construction companies that use IoT to keep their workers safe, and there are manufacturers relying on AI-based analytics tools to give them an edge in the marketplace.
Your prospects can get that same competitive edge with a little audacity.
The Target of the Message
Apart from the message itself, you have to be mindful of who you’re communicating with.
If you choose the right target audience, you increase your chances of success.
Start With Innovators and Early Adopters
Remember the classification of buyers with regard to adopting disruptive technology?
Well, you want to begin with targeting the innovators and early adopters. These are the companies that will be most receptive to trying out new technologies.
After all, you will have a miserable time selling innovation to people who are frightened by change.
To identify these visionaries, seek out companies that have already begun digitally transforming their outfit.
You can also look for companies with a history of adopting new technology and embracing change rather than running away from it.
For instance, you might have a better chance of finding your target market if you reach out to young professionals unafraid to challenge the status quo.
Talk to the C-Suite
If you are going to create educational content, you should direct it to the decision-makers — the C-level executives.
They are the ones who will give the final go or no-go decision, and they will do so according to their perception of the disruptive technology’s value.
Conversely, directors and their underlings tend to make purchase decisions based on the features of the technologies, the functions offered, and the price.
Ergo, they don’t necessarily look at the larger picture and the associated value, which is why it is best to sell them commodities instead of disruptive tech.
The Proof That Verifies the Message
One of the strongest tools in any marketer’s arsenal is social proof, so the main issue with new and disruptive technologies is the lack of it.
Therefore, to spark interest and reach a wider audience, you might want to consider collaborating with influencers and thought-leaders in your field.
Their endorsement will give weight to your message and attract mainstream audiences.
For example, working with a construction influencer, such as Kim Bates or Jay Bowman, can help you explore how companies can benefit from the abundance of data in the construction industry.
Other decision-makers in your targeted fields will be more open to giving you a chance if you’re backed by thought leaders they trust.
Putting It All Together
At the end of the day, marketing is all about crafting the right message, targeting the right people, and providing the right evidence.
When it comes to disruptive technology, things can be a bit trickier due to people’s natural hesitancy to embrace change.
Nevertheless, with a little creativity and plenty of perseverance, you will not only capture the early adopters and innovators, but also find different ways to reach the mainstream market.
It might require building the right partnerships and offering the right value propositions, but with a little grit, anything is possible!
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About our guest blogger: Michelle Laurey works as a VA for small businesses. She loves talking business, and productivity, and share her experience with others. Outside her keyboard, she spends time with her Kindle library or binge-watching Billions. Her superpower? Vinyasa flow! Talk to her on Twitter @michelle_laurey.
Virtual or Hybrid? It’s the question all the industry trade shows targeting the professional tradesman are facing for 2021.
2020 was a rough year for industry trade shows, with a good chunk of them cancelling or postponing their events. And for shows that tried the “virtual” route, they were met with pretty poor results.
Typically, my first quarter is packed with various industry shows, but given the pandemic, here’s how three of these shows are handling their 2021 events.
GlobalSpec recently released their latest annual “State of Marketing to Engineers” Report. In addition to measuring the usage and success of various marketing tactics, this year’s report also includes specific questions about the pandemic and its effect on engineers as well as emerging trends of virtual events.
Here are the Top 5 key findings I found interesting after reading the report.
1) Supplier/vendor websites #1 source for new trends and products
With trade shows cancelled for most of 2020, it’s no surprise engineers turned directly to suppliers/vendors for relevant and timely information.
2) Engineers find value from virtual events, but even more so from webinars
In general, our manufacturer clients did not see a lot of value, from an exhibitor standpoint, with 2020 virtual events targeting the “contractor” audience, but it’s nice to hear some positive news from virtual events targeting “engineers.”
3) Online content supports over 50% of the buyer’s journey
This percentage continues to increase every year, so having a well-thought out and planned content strategy is never more important for marketers trying to reach the engineering audience.
4) Videos and podcasts grow in adoption
Videos continue to be a key marketing tactic for engineers; this was the first year podcasts were measured and over half listen to them on a regular basis…will be interesting to see where this number goes in future reports.
5) Be wary of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Professional networks and LinkedIn are by far the preferred social media channels for engineers.
What marketing tactics are you finding successful for the engineering audience?
No matter what your company’s specific goals are, the ultimate aim is always to achieve sustainable growth.
Whether you want to increase your total number of customers, annual revenue, lead generation or overall market presence, you need an effective marketing strategy to grow your business.
You can get by on referrals and passive client acquisition techniques for a while but, eventually, the industry will pass your company by if it is not growing.
So, the question is, how do you achieve sustainable growth? Is there a competitive strategy being used by top U.S. companies that you can use yourself? How do you position your company so it is no longer at the mercy of fickle customer relationships and fluctuations in the market? How can you increase your market share while stimulating organic growth?
The best approach is to come up with a marketing plan that incorporates a proven go-to-market strategy that top companies use to generate new leads and sales. Below are five of the best business growth strategies used by top U.S. companies to gain a competitive advantage.
Define Your Company’s Ideal Buyer Profile
Stop chasing unproductive leads. It is a time consuming and unprofitable use of your resources.
Top U.S. companies in every industry do not waste time on leads that don’t translate to sales. There are some audiences that, no matter how skillfully you nurture them, will never be a viable option.
This is why you should create a reliable profile for the type of customer that is not only likely to become a sale but also the type of customer that is a good fit for your company’s services.
Stop concerning yourself with how you can attract the highest number of leads. Narrow your approach and focus on the most productive ones.
Which audiences have you worked well with in the past? Which characteristics set those audiences apart from your other customers? Answering these questions helps you narrow down the type of your ideal buyer.
Remember, top companies are extremely efficient. They do not waste time chasing down pointless leads. Neither should you.
Know When a Lead is Engaging With Your Company
The top companies know when to strike. They know when a prospect is showing genuine interest and how to take the next step.
You have to separate the people who are looking at you out of curiosity from high engagement leads that are indicating legitimate interest.
Again, the goal here is to make the best use of your time and resources. Don’t chase down leads that won’t make a purchase. Define the threshold where someone becomes a qualified lead that is worth pursuing.
Once a lead is determined to have shown genuine interest in your products and services, actively pursue their business and move towards the next part of the sales process.
Provide Your Leads With a Solution to Their Unique Problems
Top companies sell their products or services as needs rather than wants. They don’t say, “Here’s why you might like us.” They say, “Here’s why you can’t afford to be without us.”
There is no way around it, people these days have short attention spans. You need to stand out if you want any chance of securing new business.
The top U.S. companies find a way to make their products and services appear as a solution to a problem. To do this, you have to identify the problem first then show how you can provide the solution.
Identify a problem your ideal lead has then tailor your marketing content around a specific solution to it. What can you do for your prospect that the competition cannot do? Make your offerings appear valuable. This helps you transition them from a potential customer to a successful sale.
Separate Yourself From the Competition
Top companies know that to grow, they need to stand out in their industry.
Entering a crowded marketplace is difficult. You need to demonstrate your competitive advantage over others. Why should your leads choose you instead of someone else?
Growth depends on conversion. To convert leads into sales, discover what you do differently from everyone else in your industry. Find your niche and narrow in on it.
If the competition is doing one thing, do something different. Make sure your leads know that you offer an alternative to what the competition is offering.
Modernize Your Marketing Techniques
The top companies are not where they are by accident. They adopted the latest technologies and data capturing techniques to secure the biggest share of the market they could.
We are now firmly in the digital age. You need a strong online presence without question. Without one, you will not just fail to grow, but your company will become irrelevant. All of the top companies are taking a professional approach to managing their digital, online, and social media presences.
Go where the best leads are. If the leads you want are using a specific social media platform, have a presence there. Are you trying to target a younger client? Chances are advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will resonate with them.
Do not overlook the effectiveness of LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to connect directly with the decision-makers at the businesses you’re trying to land as clients.
Do not neglect email marketing. Most people use email for the majority of their business conversations. You need to make your agency a part of those conversations.
Learn From the Best
In this day and age, there is no excuse for ignoring what the leaders in your industry are doing. Successful companies plan for growth and work for it.
Be like the top companies and do what it takes to secure the business that allows your company to grow.
These strategies are designed to help your company, but your efforts should not stop there. Study the top companies in your industry and keep evolving.
About Jeff Pugel:
Jeff’s goal is straightforward… to help serious business owners generate more clients, close more sales and increase their overall revenue and profits… quickly and inexpensively.
Jeff specializes in sales and marketing for small business owners. Over the years, he’s developed a keen understanding of the complex issues facing small business owners in the type of volatile economy we have today and foreseeable future.
A 20+ years career in marketing working with top marketers including AT&T Wireless, Intel, Advil, American Express, and Esurance prior to becoming a marketing coach has helped Jeff develop the skills to quickly and effectively teach small business owners how to successfully apply the right strategies in the right order that allows them to grow their business to its maximum capacity.
It’s no secret that we are immersed in the “Age of Visual” culture, with cameras in everyone’s back pocket and with more than 2.5 billion camera phones in use, photos are becoming the “universal language.” If you’ve been paying attention to marketing and social media trends over the past several years, you know that the entire internet is becoming more visual. In fact, a picture might be worth far more than a thousand words now.
Shifts in the social media world are putting bigger emphasis on using high-quality photos in content. It should also be no surprise that the fastest growing social media networks are Instagram and Facebook.
Thinking about your own news browsing habits, you have to admit that you are more likely to click on an article that has an intriguing image.
Jeff shared some interesting stats, including:
Articles with images get 94% more total views
Including photos or videos with press releases increases views by more than 45%
Facebook engagement rates for photos are 37% higher than plain text
In an ecommerce site, 67% of consumers say the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing a product
In an online store, customers think that the quality of a product’s image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%)
Read the rest of his blog post for some tips on integrating photos into your content.
While we wait for the return of trade shows and other in-person events, join Matt Sonnhalter for a Marketing Minute to learn about some of the ways your company can utilize the latest digital technology to effectively reach your customers, distributors and employees in 2021. He outlines three tactics to consider–social media, virtual training and webinars–and offers some tips for success when using virtual platforms.
To view other videos from Sonnhalter, visit our YouTube channel here and let us know if there’s a B2T marketing topic you’d like us to cover.
Whether in Cleveland, or on the North Pole, 2020 was the year the world recognized just how much we need our professional tradespeople to keep the lights on, the water running and the reindeer fed. We’ve all experienced major changes to our way of life, but Sonnhalter would like to extend our appreciation to all essential workers for whom the job never stopped.
We are also grateful for another constant in a most unpredictable year: the support we receive from our wonderful clients, business partners and friends like you. We thank you for another successful year, and we hope you and your family have a safe, wonderful holiday season.
Sonnhalter, your B2T partner – let’s build something together.
If your company has recently missed an opportunity due to a trade show cancellation or the postponement of another event, it can have a significant effect on your bottom line.
This is especially true for manufacturers who market products and services to construction, industrial or similar markets.
Trade shows are a huge opportunity to promote your company, connect with potential clients, do demonstrations and network for referral opportunities. Therefore, if you miss one, you need a way to make up for the loss of revenue and business benefits.
In this article, we will discuss several ways to do damage control for these missed opportunities. With these strategies, you can turn a bad situation into something that helps your company grow instead.
You should get your sales reps to reconnect with these companies and attempt to maintain the relationship and gain new sales deals. Here are some ways you can do that: (more…)
Sonnhalter wins Silver Davey Awards in the Print Campaign-B2B for Design/Print and Social Features-Best Community Building & Engagement for Social categories.
CLEVELAND – December 2020 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, won two Silver Davey Awards with its clients, General Pipe Cleaners and Kapro Tools. Sonnhalter won a Silver Davey with General Pipe Cleaners in the Print Campaign-B2B for Design/Print for General Pipe Cleaners’ new “Duotone Look and Feel” creative. Sonnhalter also won a Silver Davey with Kapro Tools in the “Social Features-Best Community Building & Engagement for Social” for the launch of Kapro’s influencer program.
For the award it received in the category of Print Campaign-B2B for Design/Print, Sonnhalter wanted to give General Pipe Cleaners’ print and digital creative a completely new look and feel that felt more contemporary to today’s audience. By using a duotone, high-contrast effect, Sonnhalter was able to develop creative that felt very modern and allowed the products in their distinct orange color to pop.
For the award it received in the category of Social Features-Best Community Building & Engagement for Social, Sonnhalter worked strategically in finding and pitching woodworking, DIY and contractor influencers in the U.S. and Canada who would be willing to use Kapro Tools’ products on upcoming builds and give honest opinions on the product’s features. Sonnhalter drafted personalized letters to accompany each package of Kapro product samples. Since the launch of the program in 2019, Kapro Tools’ number of Instagram followers has grown more than ten times its original number of followers, and the company has greatly increased its presence and credibility across many crucial online communities.
With nearly 2,000 entries from across the U.S. and from around the world, the Davey Awards honors the finest creative work from the best small shops, firms, and companies worldwide. The Davey Awards are judged and overseen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA). The AIVA is an invitation-only member-based organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.
“These awards are a testament both to the collaborative relationship Sonnhalter has with our clients and our ability to incorporate the latest trends in order to help them resonate with a modern audience,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “Sonnhalter is very pleased to be recognized for our efforts by these industry experts, and we extend our appreciation to them, as well as General Pipe Cleaners and Kapro Tools, who made winning these awards possible.”
About the Davey Awards
The Davey Awards exclusively honor the “Davids” of creativity, the finest small shops, firms, agencies, and companies worldwide. David defeated the giant Goliath with a big idea and a little rock – the sort of thing small agencies do each year. The annual International Davey Awards honors the achievements of the “Creative Davids,” who derive their strength from big ideas rather than big budgets. The Davey Awards is the leading awards competition specifically for smaller agencies as they compete with their peers to win the recognition they deserve. Please visit www.daveyawards.com for more information.
We are in unchartered waters of a global pandemic and macroeconomic uncertainty. In this environment, how should businesses adjust their strategies to best address the unpredictable market? Are price cuts – or price increases – warranted to protect growth and margins?
Pricing in a volatile market is challenging. Dramatic pricing decisions can have a lasting effect on the profitability profile of a business long after a downturn. Conversely, best-in-class businesses use market volatility to their advantage by identifying opportunities to maintain, and even expand margins and reset their profitability. Now is not the time to overreact. Rather it’s a time when data analytics can help considerably to make informed decisions. With the right strategy, tools and approach, businesses can turn what appears to be a poor market situation into greater profitability and improved market positioning in the long-term.
What To Do
Resist the urge to immediately lower pricing. Impulsive decisions often have unanticipated consequences. If competitors respond with their own price reductions, it could start a price war that will decrease industry profitability across the board and reset the competitive dynamics in the market for years to come. A lower price in the downturn becomes a new normal in the minds of customers and sets new reference price and margin expectations for the business. And when the market rebounds, there’s no guarantee that price increases can recoup lost profitability.
In the same vein, don’t mirror competitor behaviors without a data-driven strategic review. These actions may trigger a race to the bottom all market participants want to avoid. Try to balance the need to stay competitive against implementing a policy that will reduce industry profitability. (more…)
Over the past decade, we’ve watched Instagram transform from the “app with all the cool filters” to an essential marketing tool for companies marketing to the professional tradesman. Its video capabilities, poll/Q&A functions and other interactive features have become extremely useful for companies to showcase new products, spread the word at trade shows and connect with customers in ways that were not previously possible.
Join Matt Sonnhalter for a Marketing Minute to learn more about the exciting potential of incorporating Instagram into your social media plan!
To view other videos from Sonnhalter, visit our YouTube channel here and let us know if there’s a B2T marketing topic you’d like us to cover.
No matter what kind of promotion you’re doing, when going after the professional tradesmen, the bottom line is you want them to ask for more info and ultimately make a sale. You can’t do that in an ad (print or digital) by itself. You need those that are interested in whatever it is you’re selling to go somewhere to get more info. Effective landing pages make it clear what the visitor is going to get by visiting the site.
A landing page is ideal for a next step in the lead process. A good landing page will target a particular audience using a unique page that allows visitors to download the appropriate content (you wouldn’t have the same offer for say a tradesman and for a design engineer). They also help you track and monitor activity by offers so you know what works and what doesn’t.
Landing pages help segment markets, capture leads and make it possible to monitor advertising effectiveness.
By directing them to a specific page with an offer and the appropriate form to fill out, it makes it more likely that they will complete the form and convert to a lead.
If your visitors decide to download your offer, why not invite them to share your content?
Lead nurturing is a very important part of the process. 50% of those who respond aren’t ready to buy just yet.
78% of sales that start with a web inquiry get won by the first company that responds.
By sending a follow-up thank you to those that downloaded material, you have the opportunity to offer them additional info and downloads, as well as asking them to share it with others via social media.
Many contractors have trouble navigating the digital scene. Here are tips that you can share with them to help them get noticed and sell more of your stuff!
Contractor’s Online Success Strategy: Get Listed on These Four Websites
For service-providing businesses, like contracting companies, greater online visibility can almost immediately bring more business. People’s primary way of finding somebody to do a job for them is by doing quick online research. In order to increase your chance of being found online, one of the simplest things you can do is get listed on websites for contractor services. Here are some websites worth considering.
HomeAdvisor
HomeAdvisor.com
With over 487,000 likes on Facebook, 26,200 followers on Instagram and more than 40,400 followers on Twitter, HomeAdvisor is one of the most popular websites for home service professionals.
HomeAdvisor’s web platform is extremely user-friendly. There is a very wide array of home improvement categories to choose from. Homeowners pick one, describe their needs and they get matched with up to four professionals. They can also read reviews of a particular contractor’s services.
HomeAdvisor offers contractors a robust, user-friendly system that lets you categorize and organize your leads, keep track of communications, and connect with prospects via phone or email with the touch of a button. Its mobile app lets you take these tools on the road to help you stay on top of your pipeline.
CraftJack
CraftJack.com
CraftJack is a very versatile web tool which allows you to do a lot more than just get listed in a search directory.
CraftJack works much like a social network but one geared exclusively towards contractors. Each contractor has a unique profile page, which they can use to promote their business. You can use it to showcase your finished work by posting photos and videos. Plus, the page will display your overall customer rating.
The CraftJack Pro app allows contractors to connect with homeowners, receive job alerts, schedule work, and request reviews right from their mobile device. CraftJack comes with a feature called Lead Manager, which can help you get more leads and referrals. You can even get discounts on the leads you win (e.g. by contacting a lead within 30 minutes of receiving the notification).
ACCA
Acca.org
ACCA stands for the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. But that doesn’t mean that only HVAC contractors can get listed. The website also works for contractors in refrigeration, plumbing, home and building performance, etc.
The way the website works is very simple. There is a search engine which homeowners, builders or building owners can use to find a contractor based on a variety of criteria, such as proximity, the kind of work they perform and the market segment in which they operate – commercial, residential or government. Site visitors can also find instructions on how to choose the most suitable contractor and see a list of questions they may want to ask the contractor before the work begins.
While you can get listed even if you are not a member, becoming one will grant you some extra benefits, such as opportunities to network during ACCA events or discounts on accreditation programs.
Angi’s List
Angi’s is for contractors who work in the areas of home and yard improvement, as well as auto and health services. The website claims to be used by more than 6 million US households.
There are two ways your business can get listed in Angi’s List’s search directory. The first one is if a customer that is really pleased with your services adds you there and recommends you as a professional. The second one is if you create your own free profile where you can list your areas of expertise, follow your ratings and respond to customer feedback.
If you receive a negative review, Angi’s List will give you the opportunity to talk to the reviewer and hopefully have the review removed. Bear in mind that you should have a valid license, because Angi’s List gives homeowners the option to check if you are licensed and bonded.
Some Additional Advice
These four websites will give your business great visibility and increase your chances of getting more business. But there are two other things you should also do. First, get listed on Google My Business, so your business can appear in the “sponsored ads” column of Google search results. Second, try to get listed in the .gov website of your state, as this will give you some extra credibility.
What steps are you taking to advertise your business and make sure you are visible online?
Today, October 2, is National Manufacturing Day (MFG Day) and like everything in 2020, it didn’t present the same opportunities as it has in past years.
MFG Day is a team effort to change the perception of the industry, in order to give manufacturing a facelift, as well as address the labor shortages in the industry by connecting with a new generation. The day helps reveal the reality of modern manufacturing careers by encouraging U.S. companies and educational institutions to open their doors to students, parents, teachers and community leaders.
While this year’s global pandemic drastically reduced the opportunity for manufacturers to open their doors to open houses, manufacturers were encouraged to hold virtual events and partner with organizations to showcase their unique opportunities.
Although the first Friday in October is designated as MFG Day, it takes more than just one day. The Manufacturing Institute is encouraging manufacturers across the country to use the day to kick off an entire month of awareness as we are reminded of the important role that modern manufacturing plays in each of our lives.
Use this powerful opportunity to bring awareness to the high-paying, rewarding and meaningful career opportunities in the industry and to open minds to what’s possible with a career in modern manufacturing.
Here’s a quick look at manufacturing:
Sonnhalter would like to thank all the organizations, manufacturers and educators who help make this important initiative possible every year!
As we enter into the final quarter of 2020, (and we think we can say with absolute certainty that we are all anxious for 2020 to be over!) we find ourselves in the midst of strategic planning for the upcoming year.
Our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research, provided some thoughts on strategic planning during this unprecedented time. Their mantra is “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
We’re all a bit tired. Psychologists are calling it pandemic fatigue and even Zoom fatigue. It’s basically just getting burned out because our normal routines have changed for a prolonged period of time and we don’t have a good sense of when we’ll finally settle into our new normal (not our favorite term either).
STARTING A NEW WORK INITIATIVE MAY BE HARDER THAN IN THE PAST.
But there are some basics that must continue or are now in need of a reboot, such as updating your strategic plan. If your organization doesn’t have a strategic plan for 2021 or if it was created pre-pandemic, now is the time to either create one or revise the one you had. Customer purchasing patterns, competitor strategies and other factors have dramatically changed since early this year.
According to McKinsey, over 75% of U.S. consumers have tried a new shopping behavior since the outbreak of COVID-19. They have either tried new brands or shopped at a different retailer. They are also caring more about how companies take care of the safety of their employees and the company’s purpose.
Companies are also pivoting in what’s being called the big reset. Leaders are modifying how they manage, technology use has increased, core processes modified, and they are finding new ways to innovate. It’s very likely your organization has been doing a lot of these same things. If so, your strategic plan needs to reflect these changes.
A GOOD STRATEGIC PLAN IS GROUNDED BY YOUR MISSION AND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.
Once those are established,
Update the insights you have on your customers, competition, financial performance/drivers, and other areas as needed (legislation or political landscape, technology developments, employee engagement, etc.).
Review and validate if your vision for where you want to be in the next 3 to 5 years is still what you want to achieve.
Review or develop the strategies and supporting tactics to achieve your vision.
Finally, ensure metrics are in place to measure your progress along with how the plan will be managed.
A PLANNING SESSION CAN HAPPEN VIRTUALLY.
With many teams working somewhat remotely, this can be done virtually. We’ve done it this way and can help you with it. Let’s chat and learn how to effectively run a strategic planning process virtually. It can be surprisingly fun and more productive than some in-person sessions. It’s important to do this now and not hope that your original map is good enough since the road to your destination is very different.
As a marketing communications firm dedicated to the business-to-tradesmen (B2T) industry, we quickly realized the tremendous impact COVID-19 would have on all facets of our business. We set out to develop resources to help businesses during the pandemic, and also educate ourselves by hearing from all types of industry voices on the effects of the pandemic.
Through extensive research and interviews with a number of key industry stakeholders, we began creating this content at the start of the pandemic and continued throughout the ensuing months to examine the effects and compare them to effects that were initially predicted for the future of the industry.
In our “COVID-19 Tip Sheet,” you’ll discover how manufacturers, media, distributors and influencers adjusted to the challenges of this new normal. The coverage of the topic includes a five-part series with several editors, publishers and key personnel from the trade media industry, a three-part series of interviews with industry influencers, advice for COVID-19 internal and external communications and content and interviews from the distributor’s perspective.
You can sign up to download this comprehensive resource guide full of information regarding COVID-19 and its effects on the niche that Sonnhalter serves, here.
Need help with navigating your marketing strategies through this difficult time? Contact us. And check out our other Tip Sheets here.
CLEVELAND – September 2020 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, partnered with Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity for an eleventh year during its annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive, which ran the entire month of August and collected $27,000 worth of tools and building materials. Since Sonnhalter began its efforts in 2010, it has collected $310,000 in donations.
Sonnhalter team members Matt Sonnhalter and Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard load donations for the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity.
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.
“This year, the Sonnhalter team had the unique challenge of putting together our Tool Drive in a way that could be safe and effective amidst the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “While we anticipated a potential drop in community participation, we were pleasantly surprised and grateful to announce that our donations this year were as strong as years past.”
“Cleveland Habitat for Humanity eagerly awaits Sonnhalter’s annual Tool Drive,” said John Habat, president/CEO of the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. “It replenishes our inventory and generates revenues to support our affordable homeownership program. Sonnhalter has been doing this for more than ten years, demonstrating again and again its commitment to affordable housing in Cleveland. Sonnhalter is a treasured partner.”
Community participants in the Eleventh Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive included the Berea Recreation Center, Fear’s Confections, Frangos Group, Rising Star Coffee Roasters, Skidmark Garage, The Wine Spot and many individuals living in the community.
Trade industry participants in the Eleventh Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive included Airmaster, Beta Tools, Buyers Products, General Pipe Cleaners, Jergens, Inc., Kapro, KNIPEX Tools, Mortar Net Solutions, Samsel Supply, Sutton Industrial, Viega LLC, Winter Equipment, Wolff Bros. Supply and Woodhill Supply.
“Every year, we at Sonnhalter are inspired and uplifted by the generosity of our great community in its efforts to help those in need with donated tools and building materials,” added Sonnhalter. “As we move into our second decade of this endeavor, we would like to thank our clients, partners and community members for their continued support in helping Sonnhalter raise nearly $310,000 for this great cause.”
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. The organization creates hope by building and fully rehabbing homes, strengthening neighborhoods and reweaving communities. Cleveland Habitat was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987. During the last 32 years, Cleveland Habitat has brought together over 325 sponsor groups and 90,000 volunteers to help more than 275 Habitat homeowners, including more than 900 children, have a safe and decent place to live. Cleveland Habitat has provided working families who earn between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) affordable homeownership opportunities in 20 different Cleveland neighborhoods. For more information, visit: www.clevelandhabitat.org.
We’re all trying to do more with less. When it comes to social media, it’s no different. We should be focused on content and use automated tools to help spread the word on social platforms. Every industry is different but following are some automation tools you should consider and an infographic on the best times to post.
Here’s a list of tools that will help you schedule and post your content at the best time:
SocialOomph – Provides scheduled social posting services for individuals and teams. Has been around since 2008.
HootSuite – Allows you to manage up to 50 social media profiles, schedule your content and report your analytics.
Sendible – Allows you to efficiently craft tailored posts for each social media platform and collaborate with your clients and teams.
AgoraPulse – An easy-to use-social media management software that allows you to drive engagement and build authentic relationships on one platform.
Buffer – Helps you manage multiple social media accounts at once and easily schedule content.
ManageFlitter – Tools that help to optimize your Twitter account and identify your Twitter accounts’ prime time.
Facebook Insights – Provides information about your Facebook audience and how they are interacting with your page.
Later – Founded as the first-to-market Instagram scheduler in 2014, Later (formerly Latergramme) has grown from a simple Instagram tool to the number one visual marketing platform for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
The following infographic by Zenesys will give you a ballpark of the best and worst times to post on various social media platforms.
The construction industry is slowly embracing digital transformation and using it in its design, project estimation, and safety perspectives.
However, some of the players are still hesitant about the new technological changes, making it hard to develop strategies aimed at streamlining the whole process.
Digital transformation is vital in construction. It helps to simplify complex processes such as resource traceability, communication, on-time project completion, productivity, and employee safety. These are all major hindrances to profitability and customer satisfaction.
Introducing digital solutions is a good move that allows construction experts to face and tackle the challenges faced during project management.
What Digital Transformation Means in Construction
Transforming the construction industry is not just about bringing in the latest technologies and incorporating them into the processes. It means addressing all old challenges using new technology.
This includes assessing the business and project needs, strategizing, and mapping the journey to ensure all future work is based on improved interrelated processes.
Digitization is a fundamental shift in business operations to ensure growth, efficiency, and profitability.
By adopting data-enabled field software and hardware and other vital digital tools, you’ll be able to sustain growth for your firm.
For instance, if you use drones or other UAVs for aerial photography, you’ll expedite the land survey using the best imaging techniques, data analytics, and topographic mapping software for informing the building strategy.
These tools can also help inspect sites for structural issues or safety hazards, helping to secure the sites. When used alongside 3D printing, progress reporting, and automated equipment tracking, these techniques can reduce the time, cost, and effort exerted in the entire construction process.
Common Challenges Related to Digital Transformation in Construction
Many new technologies are available to help construction businesses become more efficient and productive. While you may be enthusiastic and ready to embrace change, you also have to ensure that all stakeholders are on board as well. (more…)
It has been more than five months since the Sonnhalter office transitioned to an indefinite work-from-home (WFH) policy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. And like thousands of companies and millions of employees all over the world, we have both struggled and thrived as we learn to live with this massive paradigm shift. While our stories may not be unique, we thought it would be a fun exercise to have a team roundtable and let everyone reflect and share the ways they’ve adjusted to life in quarantine and learned to thrive as best as they can in the “New Normal.”
When Sonnhalter initially started working from home, what were some of the initial adjustments you had to make to your daily routine in order to be productive?
Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, PR Foreman: I was fairly used to WFH from my time independent contracting for a few years. So, although I stopped getting up quite as early as I used to (5:45 a.m.), I still got up early every morning and took a shower and got out of my PJs. I tried to step away from my computer at lunch time and take a walk after lunch to break and refresh myself. It is proven that taking a walk can reduce stress, and studies have shown that going for walks can not only improve your ability to focus, but it can actually boost our creative problem-solving skills!
Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect, Sonnhalter: I had to get used to both my wife and I working in a two-bedroom apartment, which was not designed for having two people work remotely! Other adjustments include keeping in daily contact with my fellow employees (when I was in the office it was easy to just walk around the office and say “hi” and catch up with employees) and trying to figure out good natural and/or virtual backgrounds for video calls.
What have been some of the upsides of your experience working from home?
Andrew Poulsen: I had about a two-foot stack of books I was finally able to get around to finishing. I want to come out of this experience with some positives, so I’ve tried to fill the hours I used to spend going out, watching sports and shopping with educating myself. Also, my girlfriend and I had discussed converting our spare bedroom into an office for months, so quarantine forced me to stop being lazy and finally put the desk and shelves together to make it happen.
Sandy Bucher, Media Engineer: No commute! I never really worked on a laptop before, so I now have experience doing that. I am able to take the laptop out onto my back deck and work outside if I want. I can concentrate better with fewer distractions and noise. I’m able to spend more time with my dog, Charlie. I can do household chores throughout the day. I’m able to retrieve packages right away, so they’re not sitting outside.
Robin Heike, Production Engineer: Being able to login in as early as 6:30a.m. to start the day since I am up early. Not having to drive into work.
What have been some of the downsides of your experience working from home?
Angela Ruland, Design Engineer: Not being able to have in-person meetings with clients and coworkers. Emailing back and forth for everything can get old.
Matt Sonnhalter: Sometimes, the days start to feel like the movie “Groundhog Day”… (more…)
As all aspects of the B2T (business-to-trades) industry are challenged with navigating their businesses through the realities of COVID-19, we had the opportunity to gain some insights on this “New Normal” as it relates to the distributor sector of our industry. We gained insights by speaking to a couple of industry experts and learned how they saw the distributor sector adapting to this new environment.
Open for Business
When the pandemic first occurred, several major industrial distributors outlined COVID-19 safety precautions that they soon enacted in their facilities, including closing branches to the public except for curbside pickup, temperature screenings for all employees upon entry, staggered shifts and frequent deep cleanings. Smaller, local distributors followed suit, issuing statements on their protocols and not wanting their customers to wonder if they were still open.
“The distributors that we work with were open, but the vast majority of them locked their doors,” said Beck Oberholtzer, regional and marketing manager, at CSV Marketing, Inc., a manufacturers’ representative agency offering a diverse array of high-quality, industrial products. “If the distributor had a showroom, there was no walk-in business and they were doing touchless delivery.”
“Most of the smaller distributors were not able to send their employees home,” added Oberholtzer. “They still had employees working the phones and pulling orders, which were delivered or set outside. Some of these smaller, older-style businesses’ systems just aren’t set up to operate through the cloud. They have servers onsite and need people in the building to conduct business.”
According to Natalie Forster, editor of Supply House Times, a BNP Media brand reaching wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers’ representatives of plumbing, bath and kitchen, industrial PVF, radiant and hydronics, and HVAC products, as well as the official publication of the American Supply Association, “The biggest impact I’m seeing from the pandemic is that distributors are planning on keeping the switch to digital. Suppliers are realizing that they can be even more efficient with text-in orders and people working from home. This pandemic is going to be with us for a long time and the need for cleanliness is not going to go away. Many of the distributors, suppliers and showrooms plan to keep these changes in place.”
Forster reported that the majority of distributors had not allowed contractors to come inside when the pandemic initially hit, although it varied from state to state. Customer service, accounting and HR departments have been able to work remotely in order to keep the minimal amount of people in the showrooms and warehouses, and they have opted for drive-up, contactless service. As various states began reopening phases, suppliers implemented the typical precautions that you see elsewhere–face masks, lines on the floor and increased cleanliness.
At the beginning of the pandemic, contractors in some states, knowing that they were going to be deemed essential and that construction wouldn’t stop, came into the distributorships to obtain the supplies they needed for the remainder of their projects.
Supply Chain Challenges
Some suppliers had the foresight to predict that the pandemic would impact the U.S. in the way that it did, and proactively made mass orders to have surplus of inventory at hand. Other distributors didn’t have trouble getting inventory, other than the obvious PPE equipment, which was frozen by government mandates. However, others experienced minor troubles.
“The one trend that we heard, was that suppliers that get the majority of product from overseas, ran into the most problems,” said Oberholtzer. “Manufacturers that are manufacturing overseas experienced a significant slowdown.”
In recent years, especially since the “Great Recession” of ‘08, distributors have tended to be very lean on inventory levels, for the most part stocking only what they must and keeping levels low.
“It will be interesting to see how distributors will react long term,” said Bill Via, president of CSV Marketing. “Margins have been forced down with online business. Why would a supplier want to hang onto inventory any longer than they must? We see distributors looking to suppliers that are really good at JIT (just-in-time).”
Staying in Touch … Virtually
As states are opening up, many distributors continue to be cautious.
“Some distributors are letting customers in, but they are not allowing salespeople in,” said Oberholtzer. “While others are not letting customers in but will meet with contractors on location. It varies, but salespeople ‘dropping in’ is not an option anywhere right now.”
According to recent survey stats from an HVAC buying group, when it inquired of its members whether distributor locations were seeing outside salespeople, it found that 37 percent were not allowing any in-person sales meetings, 46 percent were scheduling appointments for emergencies only, and only 16 percent were accepting in-person sales calls.
Manufacturers reps, whose entire job is interacting and building relationships with distributors and suppliers, are finding that during these unprecedented times, they must be especially creative at cultivating those relationships. The bottom line is more communication. More frequent video calls. More emails. More texts.
“Everyone is doing Zoom virtual meetings,” said Forster. “It’s so important to stay top of mind. Whereas, if you did an in-person meeting, maybe you went to a sports event and had a great time; that lingers for a while. Now, it’s important to be more proactive. And, I think the greatest challenge going forward is going to be figuring out how to maintain relationships with customers while sports events and gatherings aren’t happening.”
Due to social distancing policies, manufacturers that traditionally held distributor “Lunch & Learns,” to conduct product demos and education, are also turning to other avenues.
“We’ve also seen distributors embracing the opportunity for online training,” said Forster. “Training is more important than ever before—and it can be done virtually.”
Ramping Up E-Commerce
In response to the pandemic, many distributors are attempting to accelerate their efforts to revamp their e-commerce platforms. Smaller distributors that tend to be more “old school” generally haven’t implemented sophisticated e-commerce systems, if they have e-commerce at all.
“Larger distributors that had solid e-commerce platforms actually did very well so far during the pandemic, some even showed growth,” said Via. “Smaller, mom and pop distributors, who might not even have online purchasing capabilities, weren’t prepared to keep the business running off site. Those businesses have reported sales down anywhere from 30 to 80 percent, and I think they are realizing that they’ve got to proactively get e-commerce in place, or they may not survive the next pandemic.”
“I think some distributors are capitalizing on this time to ramp up (or launch) their e-commerce platforms to get them to where they need to be sales-wise,” agreed Forster.
New Opportunities
While some distributors are really grateful that they were located in less populated areas that were less affected by COVID shut downs, other distributors are predicting that the industry will see an increase in acquisitions, which it has already seen for years. Some of these acquisitions will be made strictly for their customer base or for their skilled employees.
“There is a real possibility that there will be some casualties because of the pandemic,” said Via. “We are also seeing distributors that have approached manufacturers for credit relief.”
“In addition, we’re seeing manufacturers that are offering extended dating and special shipping deals like prepaid freight to ease the stress for suppliers,” added Oberholtzer.
New Respect for the Trades
One interesting takeaway from the pandemic that several distributors noticed is that people seemed to have gained additional respect for essential workers and the trades, that perhaps was lacking.
“We’ve had a couple of distributors submit thank you letters acknowledging plumbers and other essential workers in the trades and requesting it to be published,” said Forster. “Now, people might be thinking, ‘It’s not a bad idea to be in an essential field.’ Maybe, if we activate this in the correct way, we can turn this into a positive and help address the skilled labor shortage.”
Made in the USA
Another silver lining in the pandemic is the move towards, “Made in the U.S.”
“We think there is going to be a real serious push towards domestically made products as we move forward,” said Via. “Imported products are going to have to be the only option, or suppliers are going to have a battle on their hands. There is a very anti-Asia sentiment in the market right now.”
“Initially, the reason why manufacturers went to China was cost,” added Oberholtzer. “When you change the equation with the risks involved with another disruption, as well as customers pushing back for domestic products, it makes sense to re-examine imported products. Over the next five to 15 years, expect to see a lot more manufacturing in America when it is possible.”
It’s great to see people coming together, not just in this industry, but across all industries,” said Forster. “We’re all going through this together. We are finding more efficient ways to do things, and everyone is trying to be as productive as possible. We are going to come out of this!”
To read more of the series or more about the effects of COVID-19 in the B2T industry:
As we are all challenged with navigating our businesses through the realities of COVID-19, we’ve noticed that a number of the trade media have been nimble in responding to the “New Normal.”
We had the opportunity to speak with several publishers in our B2T (business-to-trades) industry to learn how they were adapting to this new environment. The following is part five of our five-part series.
CFE Media and Technology has provided engineers in manufacturing, commercial and industrial buildings and manufacturing control systems with the knowledge they need to improve their operational efficiency for the past 10 years. The company’s publishing brands include Consulting-Specifying Engineer, Control Engineering, Plant Engineering and Oil and Gas Engineering.
We spoke with Matt Waddell, vice president of sales at CFE Media and Technology, who oversees the entire sales organization and ensures CFE provides its marketing partners with direct access to targeted engineers, market intelligence and best practices to accomplish their marketing goals.
When the COVID-19 pandemic initially hit, CFE immediately realized that its subscribers were, for the most part, working from home. Reaching multiple engineer marketplaces—plant engineering and manufacturing, control engineering, oil and gas engineering and consulting specifying engineering—its subscribers had an easier transition than many other industry segments.
“They either travel a lot and are used to working remotely, or they’ve been able to transfer computer capabilities and bandwidth to a home office,” said Waddell. “Other engineers within our subscriber base are considered essential workers that are represented by key markets like food and beverage-, pharma- and healthcare-related markets.”
Lend a Helping Hand
“We know that our engineering audience will remember those that have helped them during this difficult time, whether it was creating education or providing a free service,” said Waddell. “And, when companies find a way to help out, they definitely endear themselves to our audience.”
For an example, one of CFE’s partners, Bentley, created its, “We’ve Got Your Back Initiative,” to help its customers meet work-from-home challenges by making its software accessible and waiving its fees until the end of September 2020.
“Sophisticated marketers know that now is a bad time to disappear,” said Waddell. “We’ve talked to a lot of manufacturers that are interested in working with us to create content for the engineers to educate the market during this time.”
To address the changes that have occurred in the marketplace, not only with its subscribers, but also with its advertiser partners, CFE made several changes and created several new digital and virtual communication products.
Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic started, CFE launched a weekly e-newsletter titled, “COVID-19 Engineering Alert.” The e-newsletter was created in four versions, targeted with specific content to CFE’s four engineering markets, consulting specifying, control, plant and oil and gas. The newsletter provides engineers with up-to-date information about how this global pandemic is impacting the engineering community.
“We’ve noticed that our open rates and click-thru rates have been very impressive across all brands,” said Waddell. “Likely, because many engineers have more time working from home.”
No Show, No Problem
As more and more industry trade shows are cancelled or postponed, CFE found additional ways to keep its engineering audience up-to-date and allow its clients the opportunity to showcase their products. CFE brands typically attend the international Hannover Messe, International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), Pack Expo International, and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). CFE also hosts the Global Manufacturing and Automation Summit (GMA) in connection with IMTS.
CFE created its Virtual Booth Visit as a way for manufacturers to showcase their products to targeted engineering audiences, despite the cancellations of these trade shows and other events. The Virtual Booth Visit is hosted online and is available for engineers to access on demand. It includes a 15-minute product overview presentation, a 5-minute demonstration video for the product and options for the viewers to download spec sheets or contact the product manager directly.
“If you were planning on launching new products or product updates at a show, we’ve got a virtual event platform solution,” said Waddell. “Our partners aren’t going to shows, so they likely have some budget to work with to find alternate methods to get the word out to their audiences without having the big party and the booth expo.”
At certain trade shows, for an example NFPA, the association uses the conference as a platform for fire and safety engineers to review, update and vote on codes and standards to ensure the safety of buildings and fire protection practices. These codes and standards must be followed by the AHJs (authorities having jurisdiction), municipalities and other government agencies for design purposes.
“As we come out of the COVID-19 era, we know there are going to be a lot of dramatic changes,” suggested Waddell. “Not only are the codes and standards going to change, but as a result, there is going to be a demand for creating new products and solutions. It’s actually a great opportunity for both the engineers and manufacturers to be very involved in these updates.”
Regarding live events, CFE holds its annual Marketing to Engineers® educational seminar for its marketing partners. The seminar features industry experts presenting tips for successful integrated marketing campaigns and the latest marketing trends relevant to the engineering community.
“In the past, we’ve always held our Marketing to Engineers event live and in person,” said Waddell. “Unfortunately, this year we had to change it to a virtual live event. Now, more than ever, this event is extremely important because there are limited ways to communicate with engineers.”
CFE marketing partners had the option to access the same great content that they would have experienced in-person and they have the option to view it on-demand on any computer or smart device.
CFE also recently launched CFE Edu to provide continuing education to engineering professionals. Whether enrolled students need a refresher course on a particular topic or need to know the latest issues going on in the engineering industry, CFE Edu offers courses that touch on various topics. CFE’s new Virtual Training Week, which will be held October 5-9, 2020, is an additional way to further educate engineer subscribers and offer CEU and PDH accreditation at the same time.
“We’ve definitely seen an uptick in registrations for all of our products,” said Waddell, “Keep in mind that this is a small amount of data, but we have to assume that with our engineer subscribers stuck at home, they have more time to actually consume information.”
CFE believes that the ability for the engineer to consume highly educational content at their pace is resonating. And, the opportunity to earn professional development hours (PDH) or continuing education units (CEU) is also valuable.
In spite of the unique and difficult situation of COVID-19, CFE continues to roll out new products and look for unique ways to proactively get valuable information out to its engineer subscribers.
“We’re not letting COVID stop us,” declared Waddell. “We remain positive. And, we continue to keep the ideas coming, we keep learning how engineers are consuming content and we keep putting out the best vehicles to proactively help engineers during this time.”
To read more of the series about how the trade media is adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic and more about the effects of COVID-19 in the B2T industry:
Donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials that are no longer needed during the month of August to support Habitat for Humanity.
CLEVELAND – July 2020 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, is partnering with Habitat for Humanity again for its Eleventh Annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive. In the past decade, Sonnhalter has raised more than $280,000 worth in donations for the organization.
From Saturday, August 1 to Monday, August 31, organizations, businesses and manufacturers are encouraged to donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials to the Sonnhalter Tool Drive to benefit Habitat for Humanity’s cause and its efforts of eliminating substandard housing.
“When we held our first annual Sonnhalter Tool Drive ten years ago, we never dreamed that we would be entering a second decade of working on this endeavor with such a great partner as the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity!” said Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect at Sonnhalter. “We really count on the generosity of businesses to clean out their extra inventory, overstocked materials and demo models, and donate to this very worthy cause. In our eleventh year, we’re looking forward to exceeding the generous donations of years past.”
Affiliates of Habitat for Humanity individually work with participants to sponsor fundraising activities such as tool drives. The Sonnhalter Tool Drive strives to engage businesses and organizations to look through warehouses for extra inventory and overstocked tools or items, as well as the community to look through their workbenches, storage lockers, basements and garages for duplicated or no-longer-needed tools and items to donate.
Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity has completed more than 250 homes since 1987 and today, engages over 3,000 volunteers, who provide more than 93,000 hours of service per year to Cleveland’s most distressed neighborhoods. The donated items will be used for Habitat for Humanity projects or will be sold at one of the organization’s ReStore, a recycled building materials store. Proceeds from ReStore sales are used to help Habitat build and rehabilitate homes for those in need.
Tools and materials can be shipped to Attn: Tool Drive, Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. For information on how you can participate in the Sonnhalter Tool Drive, please contact Rosemarie Ascherl from Sonnhalter at 216.242.0420 x130 or rascherl@sonnhalter.com. To make a monetary donation, please make checks payable to “Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity” and mail to Sonnhalter, 1320 Sumner Ave., Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio 44115.
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. The organization creates hope by building and fully rehabbing homes, strengthening neighborhoods and reweaving communities. Cleveland Habitat was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987. During the last 32 years, Cleveland Habitat has brought together over 325 sponsor groups and 90,000 volunteers to help more than 275 Habitat homeowners, including more than 900 children, have a safe and decent place to live. Cleveland Habitat has provided working families who earn between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) affordable homeownership opportunities in 20 different Cleveland neighborhoods. For more information, visit: www.clevelandhabitat.org.
Does your company have a presence on YouTube? If not, consider these stats:
2 billion monthly active YouTube users
30 million daily active YouTube users
5 billion videos watched each day
500 hours of new videos are uploaded every minute
500 billion videos shared to date
We’re a visual society and everyone loves to watch videos. Of B-to-B companies who are using videos, 80% of them reported positive results. From a manufacturing perspective, this should be a no-brainer. The key is to have a strategy and create compelling content. How-to videos, troubleshooting, new product launches are just a few that come to mind.
Some of the biggest challenges many B-to-B firms face are lack of manpower and budgets, followed by creating compelling content. Videos don’t have to be long or be made into a Hollywood production. There are inexpensive cameras (including a recent iPhone) and simple editing software that enable most videos to be created in-house. The key is content. You must provide the viewer something he or she can use. Keep the message clear, to the point and short.
Here’s an example of one of our Marketing Minutes:
According to a recent study by Demand Metric, the most important objectives of videos are:
Certainly, these top three objectives fit into your marketing strategy. So, what are you doing about capitalizing videos to enhance your marketing efforts?
As we are all challenged with navigating our businesses through the realities of COVID-19, we’ve noticed that a number of the trade media have been nimble in responding to the “New Normal.”
We had the opportunity to speak with several publishers in our B2T (business-to-trades) industry to learn how they were adapting to this new environment. The following is part four of our five-part series.
SGC Horizon is a leading diversified media, content, marketing, data and events company serving the residential and commercial design and construction markets. The company has a collection of leading publication brands, including ProBuilder, Pro Remodeler, Building Design+Construction, Products, ProTradeCraft and Construction Equipment.
We spoke with Jeff Elliott, SGC Horizon Regional Sales Director and Principal.
Since 2018, one of SGC Horizon’s key initiatives is ProCONNECT, a series of events that bring leading building industry professionals together with top building product manufacturers for a day-and-a-half of confidential one-on-one meetings to discuss upcoming projects and explore solutions.
ProCONNECT is not just another trade show. ProCONNECT’s unique, one-on-one format and manageable size of up to 100 attendees and sponsors creates just the right environment for truly effective problem solving, high-level networking, and efficient use of attendees’ valuable time.
“ProCONNECT is kind of like ‘speed dating’ between key target audiences of builders and building product manufacturers,” said Elliott. “Since we launched ProCONNECT, our 12 events have produced more than 5,000 one-on-one meetings.”
Connecting Pros Virtually
“When COVID-19 hit, we were in the midst of holding an in-person ProCONNECT event for the multifamily market,” said Elliott. “It was held right when the pandemic was starting, and only three people canceled. We received positive reactions with productive meetings and great leads.”
Once the country started closing down and live events became impossible, SGC Horizon quickly responded to the new normal. “We knew that allowing people to connect virtually and engage in substantive discussions was going to be a valuable service we could provide,” said Elliott.
The company immediately launched Virtual ProCONNECT. “Keeping the health and safety of our audience members and building products customers in mind, we can keep connecting builders and manufacturers in an effort to establish and grow long-lasting partnerships—all from the comfort and safety of their home offices,” said Elliott.
The virtual ProCONNECT format brings traditional event ideas right to a home office. The event opens with an opportunity for attendees to ‘e-meet’ and continues with one-on-one private Zoom breakout meetings to discuss future projects and partnerships. Manufacturers meet with at least 16 builders over what amounts to a total of eight hours over two half-days.
ProCONNECT Produces Tangible Sales Results
ProCONNECT events have proven to be highly efficient for both attendees and sponsor companies.
“At a time when people are finding it impossible to meet in person, ProCONNECT is giving them an opportunity to keep their businesses moving along, said Elliott. “It’s a really good investment, where you can actually measure the marketing ROI and tie it back to orders. The feedback we are getting has been great.”
Each month, Alan Sipe, a contributing editor for Professional Distributor magazine, writes a sales skill article targeted to the independent business people who own and operate the various branded tool trucks you see parked at automotive repair shops everywhere. Although this article is written for the automotive repair industry, the sales skills are applicable to everyone.
Practice feature, advantage, benefit selling … and create some videos.
All the cool stuff you ordered at your recent major jobber show or from your recent promotions is in and your mobile store is filled to the top. Your credit line is stretched to, or even past, its limit. Adding to this situation is the fact that COVID-19 is giving everyone good reason to keep their distance and be conservative with their purchases. Additionally, since most of us are not driving our vehicles very
much, our cars are not breaking down and the rate of collisions has decreased.
If you are still making your calls, each one must be more productive than ever. And if you are working from home, getting those sales is more difficult than ever. So, what’s a mobile jobber to do? The answer is to demonstrate your products better than ever. Remember: a presentation without demonstration is a wasted conversation. As a wagon jobber, you offer the technicians several benefits that other merchants can’t or won’t. Things like on-the-spot sales/service, repair or replacement of broken products, specialty products that are very hard to find elsewhere, a wide variety of products, excellent credit terms, and the knowledge to present the right tool for the job to be done.
What you cannot do is compete on price. Therefore, you must be a better salesperson than any online picture or description, and significantly better than the next mobile jobber coming through the door.
Let’s get to the point. If you want to sell more stuff, make your calls, give great demonstrations and ask for the order. Do that enough times and you will sell something. Do it better and better each time and you will make more sales.
It is very important for you to know the product features, advantages, and benefits before you start your presentation. The feature simply is what it is: “This unit has a USB port.” The advantage is what it does: “This USB port will power and charge your phone, tablet, and other electronics.” The benefit describes how it impacts the user: “This handy feature will help you keep your electronics ready for use at any time and stop those annoying dead battery delays.”
Again, the feature is simply what it is. The advantage is what it does. To you, the benefit may be so logical that you may feel silly mentioning it. Present it anyway! You are not selling to yourself; you are selling a product to your prospect. Don’t assume what they do or do not know. In fact, presume they know nothing and you will be better off. Think of it this way: your demonstration is no different than singing a song or performing in a play. Every time AC/DC performs “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” they sing every word. They leave out nothing, even though their fans know every word. Performing a demo is no different. Leave out nothing. That one little feature or benefit that you omit may be exactly the one that convinces your prospect to buy. (more…)
Social media is constantly evolving and presenting new opportunities for reaching and engaging with your audience of professional tradesmen. You might be wondering if you’re using your social media channels optimally? Or, would you be better served by switching to a new social trend?
As a longtime leader in Business-to-Tradesman marketing, we’ve developed 10 helpful tips that will help you integrate social media in your overall marketing program to effectively reach contractors in this niche space.
In “10 Tips for Effective Social Media Practices,” you’ll learn how to evaluate the social media you’re already using and pick the right avenues for connecting with contractors. The tip sheet shares the latest best practices for Instagram, as well as handling negative feedback and leveraging influencer relations.
With the stress and anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic constantly looming, finding silver linings throughout this situation isn’t always easy. But with millions stuck at home with their phones acting as their main source of entertainment and social interaction, influencers and content creators in the trades have been able to use this time as an opportunity to expand their audiences, connect and engage with their online communities and use their platforms to spread messages of positivity and encouragement.
One of these content creators is Dustin Henson, owner of Rustic Customs Woodshop. Based out of Texas, Dustin primarily makes custom wood projects for customers, such as barn doors, dining room tables and built-in shelving units. On Instagram, Dustin is a very active voice in the woodworking and DIY communities, where he shares his projects and woodworking tips to his more than 13,000 Instagram followers.
Sonnhalter spoke with Dustin to learn more about how the pandemic has affected his personal and professional life, the nature of the content he creates and some of the positives he has experienced while staying home with his wife and kids.
Sonnhalter: What were some of the initial changes you noticed in your personal and professional life when the pandemic started?
Dustin Henson: In my personal life, I think it’s obvious. It’s been nice spending time with the family, but I think being stuck in the house has us ready to strangle each other. [laughs] Professionally, I was already booked two or three months ahead of time, so it hadn’t slowed down my business yet. I just don’t have as many new projects coming in. Probably about 90% of my stuff is barn doors or custom-built furniture for houses, where I have to go out and visit the homes to measure for those projects, so that’s been put on hold.
Did you notice any significant changes in engagement or follower growth on social media?
Each month, Alan Sipe, a contributing editor for 
Marketing is oftentimes the first budget cut during an economic downturn, albeit counterintuitive because this is when you need to do MORE marketing. When recovery happens, everything will be ready and working for you. Did you know that it takes about six to nine months for Google to rank and index you for a search? Then, you need to maintain that, and if you don’t, your ranking dips quickly. Your marketer will be back to square one when the economy ticks back upward. The same way you don’t waste time on rework on your plant floor, don’t unnecessarily rework marketing. 
alter to help benefit Habitat for Humanity’s cause of eliminating substandard housing and homelessness.
Today, that database has been updated again and now lists more than 1,000 schools and over 4,000 programs, offering different types of degrees or certifications. The types of programs include construction, electrician, robotics, welding, HVAC, plumbing, machine tool technology, automotive tech, among others. A separate tab for national programs and resources is also included. The list is downloadable, easy-to-navigate and designed to be sortable for a variety of fields.
awareness and affinity.
rly one-third of the total B2B display ad spending in 2021. And I’m sure a majority of these ads are for job openings, but there are still plenty of promoted posts I’m seeing on LinkedIn.
help those in need with donated tools and building materials,” said Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter. “We would like to thank our clients, partners and community members for their continued support in helping Sonnhalter raise nearly $336,500 for this great cause.”
Practice feature, advantage, benefit selling … and create some videos.
