Archive for January, 2012
Smart Equipment Technology: Better Ways to Create and Manage Customers
Your Digital Marketing Lab
Over the last few years, we have been hard at work building relationships and understanding how and why technology impacts our business, customers and bottom line. Equipment marketing is changing! Over the next month, you’ll see some exciting new changes coming to our website that reflect new service offerings centered around technology that can help our great equipment business create new customers and manage existing ones.
What’s To Come
Not only will you find what we do here at EquipmentFX a living, breathing laboratory of good marketing and technology, we’ve surveyed hundreds of customers, asked about their pains and challenges and have come up with a free video series called “Technology Accelerators for Business”. It is specifically centered on low cost, practical solutions that help us turn complete strangers into paying customers. Some of the subjects include:
- Getting Organized: How to keep all of the stuff coming at us organized when we all have to do more with less
- Database Management: How to clean up our existing databases without making a big deal about it
- Website Design & Development: How to understand and screen web companies that are tasked with helping you create more customers
- Search Engine Optimization: How to understand exactly where you are and build a road map to out rank your competition in the region you do business in, for all your products and services
- Lead Management: How to build a world class lead management system for a few bucks a month without the cost or complexity of a full blown CRM system
- Follow Up Marketing: How to build an e-mail campaign on auto-pilot that guarantees each and every visitor to your website that completes a contact form is contacted 12-16 times per year without worrying about whether the sales staff follows up or not
- Social Media: How to build and manage your social media profiles in a few hours per week and turn casual fans into paying customers
- Mobile Applications: How to understand the business case for mobile applications, look for areas to use them and get them built cheaply but effectively
The Rules Have Changed
Nothing we teach or preach has not been tried and tested. Equipment marketing and equipment marketing service companies need to understand the fundamentals these days to make the phones ring for the sales staff and generate new leads at all costs. It is the lifeblood of any sales organization and we’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on!
To Your Success…
Equipment Marketing Best Practices: Practical Tips Using Video
The Facts are Facts…
Video marketing is becoming very big, very quickly. Many in our industry still see it as somewhat of a gimmick, a “hmmm… maybe at some point” initiative or have a “where would we start and what would we do” reaction. Let’s talk a few hard facts first:
- Fact #1: Every minute of every day, 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube
- Fact #2: Using video, customers and prospects are 53X more likely to find you
- Non-Fact But Well Informed Opinion: Cisco systems thinks that in 3-4 years time, 90% of all content on the internet will be video
Practical Tips to Think About
When considering equipment marketing, think of video creation, use and distribution as a key part of your marketing mix. To get you thinking, I’ve listed a few handy tips to think about:
Tip #1: Define Your Goals
- Increase direct traffic to your website
- Educate people about your company, product and services
- Build inbound links to your website
- Recruit new employees
- Demonstrate the diversity of your existing customer based and how your solutions fit those that don’t know you
- Build credibility with testimonials
Tip #2: Determine the Type of Video
- Testimonial: Customers are great advocates, so let them tell you you
- Product Demonstrations: Your off your product line, features and benefits of in the application, 24/7
- Event or Conference: Make a video summarizing a special event to show off a new facility, seasonal special or a special customer function
- About the Team: Everyone loves to know they’re going to be supported, so show ‘em!
- Tips & Tricks: Create a series of videos showing customers how to solve everyday challenges. It’ll keep ‘em happy and your employees focused on creating and managing more customers
Tip #3: Include a Clear “Call to Action”
- Make the Call to Action Obvious: Not unlike the sale, ask for the order! Tell them what to do… visit your website, call you or?
- Be Consistent with the Behavior You Want to Target: Don’t have them do something or go somewhere and leave them wondering where they are or what they are supposed to do
- Create a Sense of Urgency: Give your audience a specific time to get something or do something. Maybe a “spring special” tied to maintenance specials or something
Video Marketing for Equipment Dealerships
The time is here and now to understand this aspect of your equipment marketing. The technology is cheap, it’s effective, ANYONE can learn how to do it and it will significantly enhance your equipment dealership’s ability to attract and retain more new customers or prospects. To learn more about technology and equipment marketing services, visit our blog at http://blog.equipmentfx.com.
To Your Success…
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…
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