Mobile Apps for the Equipment Business
An Interesting Conversation…
I met yesterday with a very professional APP developer to discuss the business case for mobile applications. It seems the word “APP” is the rage these days, and with good reason. If you’re not making your business “smart phone friendly”, you’re missing out on literally millions of dollars of opportunity.
Today, however, the focus, and least in our industry, and the focus of equipment marketing, has been on making “mobile websites”, those that render on your phone like you see on your desktop. Which is fine, but only part of the equation. Let’s talk APP for a minute. The real BUSINESS reasons for developing an APP are the following:
- Improve revenue by engaging more customers
- Decrease costs by making a costly process more efficient
- Improve customer satisfaction by making their lives easier when engaging your customer
Use Your Imagination
With that in mind, think about all of the possible opportunities to engage customers and make their lives easier. There are literally hundreds of “touch points” within the equipment industry that beg for good mobile apps. A few are listed here, but it’s fun to think bigger:
- Games & Giveaways: Each time a customer has an experience with you, they can be encouraged to play a game to stay in touch for rewards or prizes. This gives your company and a customer to continue to engage.
- Service Department: Design a field work order that is rendered on a tablet whereby approval is instant and is e-mailed back to the service department for processing
- Service Scheduling: Use an APP for customers that allow them to schedule service, directly connecting your company to your customer when those service bays need filling and you can offer “specials” to get them in the door
- Customer Service: Imagine the possibilities with this one. An APP that is developed that allows a customer, in real time, to take a 4 question survey in which the results are automatically scored and charted allowing management to view the feedback in real time
Equipment Marketing and Mobile Applications
This is the first in several upcoming posts about this exciting technology. EquipmentFX is pioneering some very cool ways to use mobile applications to make our lives easier and more productive. Look for more posts on this subject…
To Your Success…
5 Facts About Lead Managment
Five Facts About Lead Management
Sometimes lost in the purpose of equipment marketing (branding, messaging, websites etc…) is the importance of metrics to understand where leads come from and why they fill out a contact form. Filling out a contact form is the holy grail of “Inbound Marketing”. It’s what allows our equipment marketing departments, or equipment marketing service partners, to follow-up and communicate responsibly. See these alarming statistics published by Leads360, a leading online lead service:
- Leads convert 22 times more often when you make contact within the first 5 minutes
- 78% of prospects convert with the company that first call them
- The average lead takes between 5 and 6 attempts to contact
- Changes in sales process can impact close rates by more than 35%
- 40% of leads eventually convert with consistent, long term follow-up
So, when you plan your equipment marketing for 2012, make sure your lead generation and management processes are tight and visible. If you’d like a complete Lead Management Checklist, stay tuned or email me at steve@equipmentfx.com and I’ll send one right away.
To Your Success…
2012 Marketing Must Have’s
2012 Equipment Marketing Must Have’s
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged but we’re back to it. It was high time to focus on some big projects that I hope help our industry long term.
2011 was a great year for me, and I worked on some great projects that included online equipment inventory management and helping several companies improve their equipment marketing. Sometimes we did a lot, sometimes we did a little, but we always progressed toward a common goal: How to create and manage new customers.
Control What We Can
Our industry faced a ton of challenges in 2011. It’s hard to know what to believe sometimes. First we’ve got good news, then we’ve got bad news. Then we stop hiring and spending. Most that I talk to are pretty optimistic fortunately. But, I am always reminded that in equipment marketing, we can and should control our future. There are small, practical and cost effective steps we can take to control how we create and manage relationships.
Whether you do your marketing yourself, or hire an agency, marketing has fundamentally changed from “Outbound” to “Inbound”. Knowing the difference quite literally could be the difference between success or failure. It respects the relationship building aspect of normal sales processes, but dramatically accelerates your ability to spread your message and capture leads. It measures the key activity that drives performance.
11 Core Competencies Your Agency Must Have
1) Offers the Right Services: Be clear about what you need, and what they offer
2) Presents a Clearly Defined Delivery Process: How will this Agency deliver on their promise?
3) Uses a Goal Oriented Sales Process: Equipment marketing should HELP sales, and have specific goals to do this
4) Maintains a Website Optimized for Inbound: They should be familiar with the term “inbound” and know the key tools and technologies
5) Presents Compelling Case Studies: They should have the “proof” of leads, leads to sales and/or results to back up their claim
6) Cites Specific Areas of Focus: No one can do EVERYTHING, unless they have a big, and well oiled team
7) Teaches & Trains Your People: They should be committed to helping your equipment marketing and equipment marketing team
8) In House Capabilities or Trusted Partners: Most firms do both, but it helps to understand upfront
9) Possesses Strong Project Management Skills: This is not an activity to be taken lightly and the equipment marketing company should understand the detail to pull the project together
10) Places an Emphasis on Measurement: Good equipment marketing is about measuring… everything!
11) Value Transparency: Everything should be visible, measurable and easy communication should be par for the course
I hope that helps. There is soooo much our industry stands to gain from good fundamentals. Whether we like it or not, equipment marketing has fundamentally changed but we CAN control our destiny with a good plan. If you’d like a formal checklist of all of the key questions, look for upcoming posts or email me at steve@equipmentfx.com for a complete list.
To Your Success…
Lead Response Processes from The Big Guys
The Importance of 4 X 48 Hour Response Mechanisms
One lead that turned into a $4.5 million sale over a period of years left an indelible impression on me and our company and drove us to make sure EVERY DETAIL MATTERED. After we closed the initial sale, and secured ongoing after-sale business, I called the decision maker to ask why they chose us. His response…”You were the first we found online, the first to respond and we felt that was a good indication of how we’d be treated by your organization.” Wow. Simple but powerful.
The Detail That Matters
So, we committed to sound process development, both online and offline, to make sure we made as many positive first impressions as we could. From direct mail, to an optimized website, to iron clad lead generation and response processes, we hammered out the detail on every level.
We studied industry leaders such as Amazon.com, Expedia.com, and Fairmont hotels. We stole ideas from the plumbers and pizza delivery companies and put together a system that insured we left a great first impression.
The Steps to a 4 X 48 Hour Response Process
After committing to a to a Search Engine Optimization strategy that insured we had a plan that was current, relevant and better than the competition and gave us multiple first place positions, we followed a step-by-step plan.
First, for every visitor that completed a contact form, we had a landing page redirect just like Amazon.com that said… “other visitors also enjoyed these products and services”, insuring additional traffic and awareness of what we sold and serviced.
Second, for every contact form completed, each inquiring party received an email containing links to other departments, products and services. Just like Expedia does with hotels, cars and other services. Simple and straight forward.
Third, we called all leads in 30 minutes or less. We created a “wow” factor early and often, sometimes calling back in seconds, not minutes, after all leads were routed to our handheld devices, by rep and territory.
Fourth, we sent out a product brochure every night to the prospects with a business card and magnet that people for some strange, odd reason are loathe to throw away (think plumbers and the pizza delivery company).
Our follow up processes consisted of capturing all e-mail addresses and distributing relevant, helpful, timed information on a consistent schedule so the prospect got to know us before they bought something. We grew our customer base by 27% over a 5 year period, much of it attributed to simple process improvement just like this. Simple and straight forward.
We planted seeds of a professional image at every opportunity so when they thought of buying (minutes to years in a sales cycle, literally), we were the first to be thought of when they got serious. No magic to this process, just simple business process improvement and a relentless focus on detail.
To Your Success…
Steve Smith
Social Media ROI & Digital Marketing
A Look Back… and a Look Ahead…
In our industry, it’s easy to look at ways to cut spending, and not plan for lead generation activity, including Social Media. After all, Social Media IS a bit of a mystery isn’t it?
If you go back to the late 1990’s, companies in our industry struggled with cutting spending on traditional media spend, including Yellow Pages. Where were the leads going to come from if we did that? And slowly, we embraced the Internet and forms of email marketing (digital marketing). We did a “little of this, a little of that”. If we really stayed on task, we’d even track customer creation and ROI to these activities (web forms that turned into customers, or email open rates that turned into customers).
5 Stages of Social Media Planning
But even that was time consuming, and certainly not an exact science. Then comes Social Media. What to do now? If you believe that this trend is here to stay (and it is), then you can look to five basic stages of beginning to measure Social Media ROI:
1. The Investment Stage – This is the first necessary step. It’s a great time to really look hard at how you are investing your current media spend, trim the fat and look hard at an investment amount that you can live with. Then, plan the mediums (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, for example) and execute relentlessly.
2. The Action Stage – This can be the most fun stage. The investment you make, if well thought out, will create a platform for you to engage your audience, offer value and pulls users or visitors into your process. You can start slow and small (a Facebook page, for example) or do all of it at once.
3. The Reaction Stage - This is where the public forms a perception of your efforts, message and company. This may lead to a positive or negative perception. Either way, you need to be ready to handle this and REACT to the feedback you get. A positive reaction will increase the non-financial outcome of a given campaign. This stage is the measurement of brand engagement and digital advocacy.
4. The Non-Financial Impact Stage – This is where you see an increase in likes, comments, fans and followers. How effective was your campaign with the public? How effective was your reaction stage from a brand awareness measurement? Did you have an increase in Twitter followers or “Likes” on your Facebook page? Did you have an increase in email newsletter subscriptions? Things like this can lead up to sales, profit and share gains, the “tangible” stuff we all want to see more of.
5. The Financial Impact Stage - This gets difficult but it IS possible! Did you see an increase in web visits, an increase in email subscribers, web contact forms filled out, leads or credit applications? Did you see an increase during the four previous stages? This may take longer to realize the full return of your investment. Did Twitter actually drive revenue?
While this may sound like a lot of work, it can be. But, not acting on this new medium in a methodical, scheduled way will leave you behind the curve. The train has left the station… are you on it or watching it pull away?
To Your Success…
Steve Smith
Facebook Changes and What It Means to Your Business
Recent Changes to Facebook- What it Means to Your Equipment Business
Question #1 should be… does this mean anything to our business?
I ask this because most equipment companies see Social Media as a waste of time. There is general awareness of it, even a few Fan pages popping up, but how well are they being utilized to drive in and engage prospects? And… what about capturing the leads?
How Recent Changes Impact Your Business
Part of what makes social media so exciting is that it is constantly evolving and changing. While even casual Internet users are aware of the big changes, it’s vital for every marketer tasked with lead generation to pay careful attention to the subtle ones too! Facebook is especially quick at tweaking their platform and the social networking giant recently launched a few new features that are must-knows for anybody leveraging social media for their business.
New Pages Layout
Facebook rolled out a new appearance for Facebook Profiles and company Pages this past month. The most noticeable change was moving the tabs from the top of the Profile or Page and replacing those tabs with a row of pictures. The tabs are now links along the left edge of the Page.
These tweaks were merely aesthetic, but another less noticeable change is that the posts on your wall may now be sorted by “Most Recent” or “Top Posts section to cut back on Spam and general noise on Facebook pages.
From FBML to iframes
Without too much technical jargon, Facebook’s move from requiring designs for custom landing pages to use Facebook’s own mark-up language (FBML) to allowing iframes makes creating these custom pages within Facebook much easier for designers.
iframes are standard HTML tags which allow one page to inserted into another – in this case, Facebook. This means that designers may now create dynamic web applications using standard HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Javascript, Flash etc.
Sound technical? It is, but planning for and executing on these strategies will position your company for a solid customer service and lead generation strategy for years to come.
There are some other technical changes I’ll cover in the next post, so look for those as well…
To Your Success…
Steve
Marketing Plan for 2011
Glad that’s OVER!!!… and Welcome Back
Marketing in 2010 was a tough year, along with 2009, and 2008. 2011 is filled with promise, however, but it’s still easy to lose focus on what is important to create and satisfy customers. So this post is dedicated to a quick reminder of things old and new, then the posts are coming at you fast and furious.
We deliberately took a break, focused on building some things (Social Media Services, for example), hell bent on Research and Development on the most important ways to get ranked on page one, create the best first impression and generate leads, leads, and more leads. All that said, the most important things STILL remain:
- Have something good to say: You’ve innovated your business to warrant consideration from an increasingly demanding buying public
- Say it well: In your copy, your website, your Social Media platforms, everything that can potentially create a first impression of your company
- Say it often: If the average prospect needs to see, hear or think about you between 12 and 18 times each year, what is your plan to address this
- Say it to the right prospects: Don’t mindless blast out emails, mailers or create content the wrong way.
Slow down, think about it and do something about it. Plan, execute, don’t get bogged down into too many details. We’ve got over 200 free videos, white papers, checklists and anything you can think of to jump start your meeting. Simply give us a call or drop us a line and we’ll give it away, no questions asked!
To Your Success and a great 2011
Steve Smith
For those free videos, cheap drugs online Marketing Channel” href=”http://www.youtube.com/stevesmith2211″>CLICK HERE
10 Things Jack Welch Would do about Social Media
The GE Way and Social Media
If you know Jack, or of him, once he picked up on some buzz about Social Media, or his “reticular activating system” told him something important was going down, he’d do the following to understand Social Media and the plan for Social Media Management:
1) Get his top line management in the room
2) Ask for some facts… fad or trend… trend = here to stay
3) He’d ask for feedback from well informed management who would proceed to have a meeting “The GE Way”; faces sweaty, veins bulging in the necks, ties askew, but emerge from the meeting online medicine without prescription they would with a plan of action
4) They would have determined the following: They can be #1 or #2 in their market (or their Social Space, in this case)
5) They would have an organized plan, consult with experts, study the competition and execute relentlessly
6) During their research, they would have uncovered case studies and ROI evidence that ran in the 1000% plus range (with a well laid plan). They would be enlightened the ROI with Social Media could be measured with some accuracy
7) They would have assessed where their other ad spend was going, and what their return was and compare it to Social Media
They would be shocked and dismayed to discover that ROI was a bad word their marketing team didn’t understand or, frankly, want to understand
9) They would assess the costs of their sales staff, their productivity and determine that the bottom feeders had to go because Social Media delivered substantially higher rates of return
10) He would demand measurement, because what gets measured, gets managed
And, throughout this process, he’d realize that the margins are so good, he’s wonder why they were making appliances, jet engines and medical devices. But hey, GE serves the world over and does a heck of a job, so they’d stick to their #1 and #2 markets the world over.
For a quick summary of Jack’s book “Winning: His Five Step Approach, click here:
http://equipmentfx.com/assets/Marketing%20Misc/Book%20Review-%20Winning-%20Welch.doc%201997-2003.doc
To Your Success…
Steve Smith
President, EquipmentFX
The Upside of the Downturn: Strategy #13- Get Ready for the Next Downturn… And the One After That
Overview of The Upside of the Downturn- A Must Business Read in Bite Size Pieces
This is one of the great “lemons out of lemonade” business reads that CEO’s, high level positions or anyone tasked with improving a company’s performance should read. It’s also designed for those the KNOW they don’t have all of the answers. It’s not f those that online pharmacy prescription are completely and utterly happy with sales, share, vision and execution.
Part of what we do is to thoroughly understand the detail and GAP between where you are and need to go. To that end, we are providing a short series of posts, objectively recorded for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.
Chapter Summary:
- The Greatest Opportunity & Set of Possibilities
- The New Normal- The Strange Story of How We Got Here
- Reset Priorities- Your Critical First Response to a New Reality
- Protect Your Most Valuable Asset- Your People
- Engage the Outside World- The Nature of Relationships are Changing
- Reexamine Your Strategy & Business Model
- Manage for Value- Most Companies Don’t
- Create New Solutions for Customers New Problems
- Price With Courage- Don’t Assume You Have to Mark Down
- Get Fitter Faster- The Right Kind of Operational Discipline Pays Off
1) For Next Time- Get ready for the expansion to come- and for the recession after that
- The landscape of possibilities is broad; think of them in distinct categories
- Engage the outside world: extend yourself, reach out to others
- Managing people: remain rigorous on all aspects of people management
- Adjust strategy and business model: build in flexibility
- Stay connected with customers: keep understanding needs, refine value propositions
- Manage capital: re-evaluate your strategy, risk and investment mentality
- Get more efficient and productive: focus on everything
- Adapting to changing risks: find new sources, new voices, shift your paradigm
- Continue to grow personally: see this as a historic opportunity to refine your business
What EquipmentFX does About This
We perform a rigorous assessment of your entire marketing efforts, your position, your plan and provide you with completely objective, unbiased feedback with a specific plan on what to do with the recommendations.
We’ll be happy to send you a few demo videos to our assessment, output reports and online plan.
To Your Success…
The Upside of the Downturn: Strategy #12 Don’t Forget to Grow Yourself
Overview of The Upside of the Downturn- A Must Business Read in Bite Size Pieces
This is one of the great “lemons out of lemonade” business reads that CEO’s, high level positions or anyone tasked with improving a company’s performance should read. It’s also designed for those the KNOW they don’t have all of the answers. It’s not f those that are completely and utterly happy with sales, share, vision and execution.
Part of what we do is to thoroughly understand the detail and GAP between where you are and need to go. To that end, we are providing a short series of posts, objectively recorded for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.
Chapter Summary:
- The Greatest Opportunity & Set of Possibilities
- The New Normal- The Strange Story of How We Got Here
- Reset Priorities- Your Critical First Response to a New Reality
- Protect Your Most Valuable Asset- Your People
- Engage the Outside World- The Nature of Relationships are Changing
- Reexamine Your Strategy & Business Model
- Manage for Value- Most Companies Don’t
- Create New Solutions for Customers New Problems
- Price With buying medicine online Courage- Don’t Assume You Have to Mark Down
- Get Fitter Faster- The Right Kind of Operational Discipline Pays Off
1) Don’t Forget to Grow Yourself- Why this downturn is a unique opportunity for self development
- This has changed your people and will force them to stretch in new ways no one ever imagined
- Use the crisis to become a better leader
- i. Stand up and be seen
- ii. Be calm and in control
- iii. Be decisive
- iv. Show fearlessness
- v. Explain the crisis in larger context
- Now is the time to build all abilities; average performers can become great performers when they are continually being pushed
- Build the culture, improve the tools of open collaboration, do it right now!
What EquipmentFX does About This
We perform a rigorous assessment of your entire marketing efforts, your position, your plan and provide you with completely objective, unbiased feedback with a specific plan on what to do with the recommendations.
We’ll be happy to send you a few demo videos to our assessment, output reports and online plan.
To Your Success…
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