by tradesmeninsights | Oct 14, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Everyone knows that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Can you imagine what a video is worth? Online video is growing at very fast pace (more than 24 hours worth of video is being uploaded every minute to YouTube). There were over 30 BILLION views over the past year. YouTube is only second to Google when it comes to search.
In other words, you need to seriously consider video as part of your overall marketing strategy especially.Viral videos are affordable to make and are one of the most effective tools you can use. Contractors and tradesmen want to see how things work. What makes your widget better than your competitors. Better yet, wouldn’t it be nice to have a customer say or show how great your product is. They are also great tools for training both sales and distributors. Here’s an example of a product demo from Arbortech that has helped them gain interest and decrease the selling cycle.
Plus, YouTube has metrics attached to it where you can see how many views, country of origin, where links are coming from and audience profile info.
Your website is also a great place to promote them as well or use Quick Response codes to push people from ads or packaging to more info. The key is, if you’re a manufacturer, don’t overlook videos as a viable marketing tool.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 21, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
Sometimes we get caught up in selling product and making quotas and we lose site of what we’re really selling. If we’re just selling widgets, we’d better have one no one else has. If not, why should someone buy from you?
Today we have a guest post from Alan Sipe, President and General Manager of Knipex LP in Chicago. Alan is a dear friend, an old client and knows a few things about selling high-priced hand tools. Alan will share some thoughts with you regarding Value Propositions.
A lot is written about the topic of presenting your company’s Value Proposition and surely you have passed this along to all the semi-professional golfers and lunch buyers in your sales department…haven’t you?
So how do you know if your sales team has read the articles, thought about and formulated a basic company Value Proposition statement to use in their daily sales calls?
Simple…grab the first sales team member that walks by your office door and ask this question:
- “If a customer were to say to you that generally our prices are a little higher overall than our competitors,” how would you reply to that statement specifically?
- Be quiet now and don’t help them with an answer.
- Do not let the salesperson ask you a whole bunch of qualifying questions!
- Have them answer that specific question.
Hopefully your salesperson will have a quick and precise answer like:
- We maintain heavy stocks on the inventory you need and buy from us.
- We deliver on time and packed correctly.
- Our invoices are correct the first time to save your accounting office time and money.
- We either have or have quick access to the product technical answers you need.
- I bring you new ideas and products to help you do your job better.
- We have the best repair shop in town.
- You can count on us to be here when you need us, we have been in business for XX years.
- And maybe even…We stuck by you with a good credit line when the business was tough.
If you get an answer like any of these, you have work to do:
- Let me go back and review your pricing.
- We give you the best prices we can.
- Our suppliers are raising their prices to us.
- Let me think about that and get back to you.
- What competitor is cutting their price?
- If I give you a 5% discount overall, would that help? (If you get this answer, you really have problems and give your team way too much pricing authority, but this is an article for another day)
Put on your sales manager’s hat, write down a list of your company’s Value Propositions and make sure your sales team can rattle them off quickly and with conviction. Don’t be a sissy…make it happen!
What are your thoughts on Value Propositions? Does your company have one? Do you know what it is?
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by tradesmeninsights | Sep 14, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Yes, another survey and no, I can’t say that it’s that different other than we are targeting only the Industrial/Manufacturing sector to get a sense of how active you are using this new media. If you give us your email, we’d be happy to send you the results. The more responses, the more meaningful the results.
Click here to take the survey.
Thanks for taking the time.
Please share with a freind.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 8, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Content Marketing is an overarching term that involves the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of engaging your prospects. Manufacturers who are trying to reach the professional tradesmen would benefit by building your brand, increasing your recognition and having you become a thought leader in your industry.
Relevant and valuable content will attract a clearly defined and understood target audience.
Here are 5 ways to use content marketing:
- Define your target audience.
- Identify their pain points – what keeps them up at night, and develop a way to address them.
- Make a blog the center of your communications efforts – make it the one-stop shop concept where professional tradesmen can come and get valuable info and insights.
- Continually measure your response and make adjustments if necessary.
- Jump start your blog traffic – repurpose content through other social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook using third-party tools to make the process easy and efficient to manage.
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by tradesmeninsights | Sep 1, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing, Uncategorized
For those of you who are constantly trying to measure ROI on your Advertising/Marketing budgets, things fall short when you can’t say for sure what happened to all those leads you turned over to the sales force. We’re having a free webinar on September 14th at 2 PM EST and you can sign up here.
Here are some highlights:
- Most companies let new business opportunities slip through their fingers… and don’t know it!
- Recent studies found that some 80% of website visitor inquiries are ignored. Earlier studies found that 67% of inquirers are real prospects, yet 72% never hear from a salesperson.
- In this webinar, you will learn how to maximize the sales opportunities in every lead and maximize the return on your marketing investment.
- Learn how to follow-up on all leads quickly, affordably and effectively, how to improve follow-up effectiveness in the field, and how to implement easy-to-use tools to measure results.
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 24, 2010 | Marketing Tools, Traditional Marketing
The current economic conditions have managers looking for marketing options that they may have not considered in the past.
The decision whether to use a direct sales force or an independent rep to call on distributors so often is one based primarily on control and not necessarily effectiveness.
I asked Bill Via, President of CSV Marketing, a leading independent rep firm for his thoughts. Here they are:
Everyone understands that utilizing an independent rep is a fixed cost of sale, but in my opinion that should not be the most important factor.
What is important is that an independent rep gets you access to those customers that have already said no to your direct man, fact is that they are probably already selling them products and the day will come when the opportunity for your products presents itself, will your direct guy be there when that happens?
Sure you do lose a certain amount of direct control and accountability and maybe you’re of the opinion that a focused “direct” guy brings your product an elevated perception of creditability.
One would argue that if you invest the time and energy into product and market training, your independent can bring the same level of professionalism to your product, and most importantly, you get that critical access.
What are your thoughts on this…Direct or Independent?
