by tradesmeninsights | Jun 11, 2013 | Traditional Marketing
I just got back from San Diego and the ISA Convention. For those not familiar, ISA is an association that consists of both manufacturers and distributors that sell into the industrial markets.
That market has had some tough times of recent years, but they seem to be bouncing back. But attendance didn’t reflect it. The manufacturers outnumbered the distributors 15 to 1. It’s a bad sign the first day of a show when you can throw a bowling ball down the aisle and not hit anyone.
What’s impressed me over the past several years is that they are not doing the same old same old. They try different things to get and keep the distributors and manufacturers engaged. But to have engagement, you need folks to engage. The manufacturers certainly showed up, but they can’t talk to themselves. What if we went back to having distributors in the booth?
With all the trade shows and meetings we all go to, it becomes difficult to sometimes justify the ROI on an event like this. Hats off to the ISA for at least trying. I don’t have the answer, but if this is a sign of what’s to come, the ISA won’t be around for long.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 6, 2013 | Public Relations
Today we have a post from Rachel Kerstetter, Sonnhalter’s PR Engineer.
Working in public relations gives me the opportunity to tell stories. I get to tell stories about company histories, professional successes, how products came into being, etc.
Stories are a powerful tool in getting messages across. I’ve been thinking about safety since June is National Safety Month and one powerful story stood out to me. Here’s the headline:
Laborer Dies in Trench Collapse and Lives to Tell the Tale
It compelled me to read further and it brought me to a more in-depth account of Eric Giguere’s story about how not focusing on safety cost him his life and the tough decisions that those around him had to make, which ultimately brought him back.
That article is here.
Basically his team had been working in an unsupported trench without incident for quite some time, then it unexpectedly collapsed and buried him. The people around him had to make tough decisions about how to dig him out and then administered CPR.
One of Eric’s statements about safety stuck with me: “I’m a guy who got comfortable doing things the wrong way.”
By not taking the proper safety precautions, they were saving time on the project. But the cost was great.
Eric’s story is powerful and carries more weight than statistics can. It’s not a horror story to scare people into following the rules rather, it’s a lesson in consequences for taking short cuts and an example of tough decisions, made quickly in a time of crisis.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 5, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends
I’m just back from one of the most intense 48 hours I’ve ever spent at a marketing event. The BMA’s International Conference, “BLAZE” just ended in Chicago where nearly 800 marketing professionals gathered to talk about and learn ways to deal with the ever-changing challenges facing all of us.
The overall theme was no matter what we do, we need to focus on our customers and their needs. B-to-B industry thought leaders gave us practical examples of what’s happening in the market and how we might deal with them. Of particular interest to me was a study just being released that was done by Forrester on industry trends. Here are some highlights:
- Marketing role continues to get broader
- New skills are needed by 97% of marketers
- 70% are concerned about brand integrity
- 45% can find people with the right skill sets
- 97% are doing things they’ve never done before
- Budgets are not keeping up with the demands that are being put on marketing
The general consensus was that we need better collaboration between marketing, sales and IT. We need to tear down the silos and have a common strategy, better integration and customer insights.
They also challenged us on where to find growth over the next five years. How do you compete with the likes of Amazon (who’s growing 25% a year)? 40% of all online sales are coming from mobile devices. What are you doing in this area?
If you’re not familiar with the BMA, you should look into it. They are the only game in town that focuses on B-to-B. Along with their international conference, they have 10 regional events and those cities that have chapters hold monthly meetings.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 4, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Are you looking for ways to get in front of tradesmen? If you’re a manufacturer and don’t have anything on YouTube, you’re missing a great opportunity. What better way to show a customer or prospect how to use your product, highlight features and benefits or even have a customer testimonial.
Next to Google (who by the way owns YouTube), YouTube is the highest searched. The numbers are staggering:
- YouTube has 1 Billion unique visitors each month and sees four billion video views every day.
- 1 hour of video is uploaded every second – that’s 60 hours a minute!
- Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years) watching video.
- integrated into Google Results.
When considering content, here are some suggestions. Tell the story first and don’t worry about the length. Shorter is always better and you should focus on the first 15 seconds. If you get their attention, you have a better chance of them viewing the entire video. They need to determine up front that the video will help them. When telling a story, your goals are:
- Engage the customer
- Educate the customer
- Make points of differentiation
- Entertain customers
- Be different
Rich Brooks in Social Media Explorer explored ways to maximize your YouTube presence. Here are some of the highlights:
- Create compelling content – Address the needs of your customers.
- Make it findable – both in and out of YouTube. Your Title, Description and Tags are important.
- Brand your channel – Create a custom background that goes along with your branding . Use “Player View” as your layout and select autoplay feature.
- Post a bulletin and alert your friends and subscribers – Create a link and put it on your home pages.
- Leverage other social media platforms – Blog about it, Tweet it, post it on Facebook and submit it to StumbleUpon.
What are you doing to leverage your YouTube videos?
by tradesmeninsights | May 30, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Mile Free, Director of Industry Research and Technology for the Precision Machined Products Association, is posting today with advice for connecting on social media. Miles blogs regularly on PMPA’s blog, Speaking of Precision.
As tradesmen, advertising used to be pretty easy to figure out. A yellow pages ad in the local phone book, small display advertisements in the newspaper and maybe some classified advertisements in the weekly as well. Near a big city? Maybe you would have bit the bullet for a display ad in their yellow pages too. As a customer, in the old days, that’s how I would have found you…
So who uses a phone book these days?
Who still has a land line phone?
How many folks with smartphones walk around carrying a phone book?
My latest phone book is still on the front porch
That’s a trick question. While no one is carrying a phone book, the fact is that when they need to find something, they go search for it. On their smart phone or web device. How easy are you to find on search? For what kind of things are you on Google’s page one?
I’m not suggesting that you need to pay for advertisements on Google to get to page one, but if you use social media tools correctly, you can be found on Google for the services that you provide, and that your customers want.
While I am a staff director for a trade association of precision machining companies, the lessons I learned about how to increase visibility in online search are just as applicable to tradesmen to build your credibility, and thus your visibility online.
Here are 5 steps to increasing your online visibility:
- Make sure that your website covers the products and services that you provide. Having an up-to-date website with photos is key to engaging your potential customers and audience. Think of it as your online showroom. Make it look like a showroom, a place where people would like to shop. Nice photos on your website and in your blog get you found on Google too.
- Create a blog to share your expertise. It will only take an hour or two a week to create some modest posts about your specialty, or show pictures and discuss a job you just completed, or why you should use a professional to do ____. Share it on both your business and personal Facebook pages.
- Use LinkedIn Groups and Facebook to increase your credibility in Google and other search engines. LinkedIn Groups are where you can post your blog posts as news items to get wider viewership. As Google finds your content on places other than your blog and website, it boosts your trust factor and credibility. Find them for your trade, your customers and your locale. Facebook provides a great way to have a conversation with your “natural market”- the folks you already know- and gives them material to help generate word of mouth. Even Twitter can have a role in your tradesman marketing.
- Repurpose what you already have. If you already have a sales brochure, repost sections of it as stand-alone blog content. Take photos from your jobs completed book, repost them telling a bit about the back story- How by doing it with your approach, you saved the owner $XXX in time or dollars. Or why these materials instead of XYZ…
- Share your expertise. Keeping your expertise hidden doesn’t help anyone. “3 things that can go wrong when you pour Liquid Fire ™ down your toilets instead of getting professional help” may just save someone’s eyesight, as well as help people think about what is really important when trying to solve their problem.
You are an expert. You don’t have to tell anyone why you use 1-1/4” fasteners instead of the 1” ones …but what’s the harm in pointing out that as a professional you use the right fastener for the job, as opposed to just buying the cheapest ones down at the depot store? And then showing them a photo of a job you had to fix because the other guy didn’t use the right fastener?
As you share more and more of your wisdom and experience online, if you tag it properly, you will soon discover that Google has put you on page one for some of products and services in your area that you offer. Because you blogged about them with credibility. And it happened without an ad buy- because to Google, you have become the credible expert in your area.
by tradesmeninsights | May 29, 2013 | Events/Trade Shows
For those of you that are going to San Diego next week for the ISA Show, Sonnhalter has put together an Insider’s Guide to San Diego by asking friends and business associates about gems in the city that you might not be aware of. It includes Restaurants, Nightlife, Events and more. It’s available here.
