by tradespeopleinsights | Sep 7, 2010 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
Sonnhalter is deeply involved with the professional tradesmen. We recently completed an overview of the Plumbing market. The purpose of the document is to give the reader a quick snapshot of the industry, its players and trends for the balance of 2010 and what to look for in 2011.
Highlights include interviews with editors of the top trade publications. Also included are association and buying group contacts, trade shows/meetings, industry trends and media publications. A free copy for download is available. Click here to sign up.
by tradespeopleinsights | Sep 2, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
You only have one chance to make a first impression!
Yes, I realize that some of you have major market shares in your respective industries. Yes, most contractors should know who you are and what you make. Yes, most of us have competitors that are trying to take share away from us.
So what’s the point? You only have one chance to make a first impression! The point is that we all have to continuously be “up” and be promoting our product.
If a contractor walks into a distributor’s open house event or counter days and meets someone representing you that is less than enthusiastic about being there or knowledgable about your products, wouldn’t you say you might have a problem?
I’ve asked Bill Via, President of CSV Marketing, to outline some tips on ways to not only make an impression on the contractors, but also on the distributors you sell through.
Here are 5 tips to help you set yourself apart at a counter day or open house event:
- Arrive early and be the last to leave. This says, I care more about your business than those that came late and left early.
- Take time during the slow periods to educate the distributor’s salespeople on the features and benefits of your offerings.
- 8′ Table cover with your company’s name $200. This creates a professional space and showcases your products. This is ideal for counter days and says to the customer, the products in this area are special.
- 10′ x 10′ Canopy $150. Space under the tent is always at a premium and often limits your ability to bring everything you want to show; bringing your own tent allows you to fill up your own space and most distributors love the fact that you’re a self sufficient.
- Demo Truck $15,000. Whether it’s a ½ ton van or a retired tool truck, pulling in with a completely self-contained marketing machine says that you’re willing to sell and market your products. The truck serves double duty when it’s time to do in-plant sales calls.
We all know that with open houses and counter days, degrees of success come with all kinds of variables, and regardless of attendance, you can make the difference. What are some things you demand from your Reps to make a lasting impression?
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by tradespeopleinsights | 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 tradespeopleinsights | Aug 31, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Today we have a guest post by Marc D. LeVine, Director of Social Media for Riaenjolie Inc., a web development company that specializes in websites for contractors and other tradespeople. If you’re a contractor, look at his tips to help improve your site.
Darren Salyer of Total Home Remodeling in Wentzville, MO has been running FaceBook ads since December 2009. By March 2010, he had only spent a total of $125 dollars to gain some needed attention for his then struggling business.
As a result of his dabbling in Social Media Marketing (SMM), Darren’s Facebook fan page received eighty-four clicks over the three month period with about sixty-five of those visitors moving on to review his business website.
It would seem that the marketing effort paid off for Total Home Remodeling, which was rewarded with three nice jobs to bid on. The total value of the three bids was $87,000. Not bad for a $125 total investment.
Under the marketing blog where Darren Salyer posted the results of his online marketing strategy, he reported that “things look good” for getting all three of these contracts signed. Regardless of the final outcome, he snagged three promising opportunities that may not otherwise have come his way had he not given FaceBook’s pay-per-click advertising a try.
Hard Times Call For Hard and Fast Solutions
The current recession has taken its toll on the construction industry. Many independent contractors have been forced to close up shop; while those still hanging on have had to cut back and revise their marketing strategies as Darren Salyer may also been forced to do.
Strapped for cash, many small contractors have had to resort to lower-cost business marketing ideas to bring in more work. Social Media Marketing has proved to be rather effective in helping some of these builders and handymen reach out to a new audience of Web savvy consumers; many of whom live locally and are in need of quality home improvement services.
Local contractors are, for the most part, chasing the same limited pool of work in their area and should be seeking out marketing strategies and tactics to help them stand out among those in an increasingly competitive crowd. The Web offers these small business owners what may be the marketing equivalent of “low price flights” to the usual year long PennySaver ads, which come with recurring cost. Very often these kind of local ads offer little or no response during extended periods throughout the year.
Andy Gaur, CEO of RiaEnjolie Inc., a New Jersey web page design company specializing in professional looking and affordable websites for general contractors and other tradespeople, is very well attuned to the world of traditional and social media marketing. “It is much better to be preparing a well conceived and comprehensive marketing plan and getting ready to use an appropriate mix of outreach strategies rather than just sticking with just one or two that haven’t been working so well lately for most general contractors,” says Gaur. “If you don’t jump on different things – like Social Media – that show promise, you may end up in a struggle to retain your current customers and fail to gain new ones that are unaware of your business and what you can offer them in quality workmanship, good service and competitive pricing.”
Social Media Can Add Depth to Your Marketing Effort
You say you don’t get Social Media? You will not get ‘it’ until you have experimented with ‘it.’ We all engage in Social Media Networking and Marketing in ways that suit our own unique needs and personal styles. Some use it to promote their business. Some use it to research information. Some use it to create a network of friends and business people to communicate with. And, others use it to “lurk” and listen to the conversations of others. For them it is a way to better understand different points of view.
Your time is at a premium, so take some baby steps with social media. Reconcile the time spent on Social Media Marketing by accepting the value of the “conversations” you’ll be soon be engaging in with your existing and potential customers.
No matter what your approach is to social media marketing, you should have a strategy and goal that keeps you focused on your target audience and the ultimate prize – doing business with them. Rather than complicate things too much, here are three steps that apply to almost every small business engaged in Social Media Marketing:
Tip 1: Listen. Blogger Tania Yuki in her post on comscore.com shares the following advice:
“People are talking about your business, so you may as well get down in the weeds and know what’s going on.”
Tip 2: Engage. “Social media is the tool, social engagement is what you do to create awareness and earn sales.” This is according to Social Media Guru, Brian Solis, who has offered a number of bestselling books dealing with Social Media for business. Solis goes on to explain that “Creating a presence in social networks is mandatory, but it’s also not enough. Actively and thoughtfully engaging consumers in social networks is quickly becoming an expectation. It’s up to your business to develop a following.”
Tip 3: Respond. Great response begins with great listening. Lindsay Lebresco of Conversation, a Social Media agency recommends the basics like Google Alerts, Twitter, Technorati and search engines to search out key categories – using keywords – that will let you know what people are saying about you and your business. Carefully read and understand what is being said; (if the remarks are negative) take a few deep breaths and perhaps sleep on it; think of a positive way to frame your response and respond in an appropriate manner.
Before You Can Soar You Must Build A Place to Land
Oh, by the way, there is a preliminary step to these three. You won’t be successful in social media marketing without, first, having an effective website for your consumers to visit when they want to check you out. Most potential customers start their consideration process at your website. It must be professional looking, informative and able to bring them to whatever the next step is that you want them to take leading to doing business with you – a “call to action.”
So take a look at your website and ask yourself the following questions about it? Does Your Website Really Measure Up?
1. Is your website’s design aesthetically pleasing?
2. How intuitive is your website to navigate?
3. Does your website have a clear statement of PURPOSE near the top of its homepage?
4. Is your website copy concisely written and richly informative?
5. Do you update your website content REGULARLY?
6. Does your website have a “call to action” on every page for customers to respond to?
7. Does your website’s index page draw visitors further into its content and to where you display and sell your products and contract your services?
8. Is your website designed to encourage future visits (i.e. is there a newsletter; a tell-a-friend feature; a blog with an RSS button to subscribe with?)
Contractors, you can definitely “build some sweat equity” into the process of social media and most likely will get the business results you are looking for. You just need to be smart in the ways you employ the Internet in order to be easily found by consumers and then, be able to impress them when they land at your website for their very first time.
If your website passes the effectiveness test and if you have done all your homework with regard to local geo-search, you’ll be very pleased at the additional phone calls you’ll be getting from local customers looking for a reliable residential general contractor in the local area .
Marc LeVine – About the Author:
Marc LeVine is the Director of Social Media for RiaEnjolie, Inc. (http://www.riaenjolie.com/construction-websites.html) a NJ-based web development company specializing in professional looking and affordable websites for small businesses.
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by tradespeopleinsights | Aug 26, 2010 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing
Your knowledge about your business, your niche and your industry is a great asset to your company and that knowledge is often sought after by industry media.
Interaction with the media benefits both parties. A reporter gains depth and substance to the piece they are working on, and you and your company gain priceless publicity.
Here are 6 tips from Rosemarie Ascherl, PR foreman at Sonnhalter, on how to make the most of the trade media:
For this partnering to work though, each party needs to understand how the other works. When you are interacting with a journalist, it is important to remember certain guidelines.
- Prepare – It is important to be prepared when you speak to the media. Before a scheduled interview, take some time to anticipate questions that a reporter might ask. Take some time to learn about the medium, reporter and the audience. By doing this, you can modify your responses to better fit the piece.
- Think before you speak – When talking to a journalist, you want to make sure you are in control and that you have a clear idea of what your agenda is. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to say? And what don’t you want to say? First, don’t go off the record. If you’re not prepared to hear it, see it or read it in the article, just don’t say it. Second, make sure you take the time to think through your answer before it is spoken, because once something is out there, is no going back. You want to control your answers. If a reporter tries to pin you with a tough question or brings up something you don’t want to speak on, either say you have no comment or try rephrasing the question in terms that are more favorable to you. Whatever you do, don’t lie. Tell the truth. Third, make sure you don’t ramble. Make your point and move on. Reporters think concisely so try to answer the same way.
- Use layman’s terms – You don’t want to use company or industry jargon that might confuse the reader or sound too complicated. Keep it clear and concise for the best results.
- Journalists work on deadline – Editorial opportunities, especially interviews, are requested by a deadline. Often times, the editor calls at the last minute without very much lead time, and you have to be able to meet that deadline. Reporters will go to the next opportunity if they don’t get a response, and a lot of the time that means they will turn to your competitors. No one wants to miss out on a valuable and highly credible opportunity, so it is important to respect an editor’s deadline.
- What’s your message – When speaking with a reporter, try to make sure you get in your key points. Don’t simply answer the question, but try to bridge the questions to a key point you want the reporter to know about. This can open new opportunities to you as well. A reporter might expand your addition to the piece he/she is working on or may wish to contact you further on the new points you have spoken on.
- Time is of the Essence – Always make sure you provide information asked of you. If you tell a reporter that you are going to send him/her more information, make sure you do.
Adhering to a few simple guidelines can result in valuable publicity and gain trust between you and the journalist that can generate future editorial opportunities.
