lead generation
Inbound Marketing for the Equipment Business
Inbound Marketing Defined
Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and its products. Inbound marketing is becoming widely accepted because it complements the way buyers make purchasing decisions today — using the Internet and related media to learn about the products and services that best meet their needs.
What This Means for the Equipment Business
A definition of inbound marketing is great, but what does that actually mean for equipment marketing, or equipment marketing services in general? Let’s take a quick look at the short list of key disciplines that we need to understand and act on:
- Blogging: Websites continue to be the online “face” of your company, but the reality is that the content is seldom changed. A blog is a great way to share tips and information in general for your customers that is constantly being indexed by the search engines. Blogs tie right back to your site, so the more you do it, the more content you have, the more relevant you become. And, you can do it in a few minutes per week with a significant impact to your search engine rankings
- Search Engine Optimization: Organic search (not the paid version that Google makes their money from) is a set of strategies that use keywords and phrases strategically placed within your site in a certain way that insures you have the best chance at attracting the prospects and customers searching for what you sell. We’ll cover the difference between “on page” and “off page” search engine optimization in an upcoming related post.
- Social Media: This allows for an online social relationship with potentially thousands of customers. If you stick to the basics of “telling” vs “selling” and educate your customers and prospects about useful ways to make their lives easier, you drive interest and traffic to your website. When they visit your site, they make decisions to complete a contact form, call a dedicated 800# or move on.
Prospects Buy When They Are Ready to Buy
Not when you are ready to sell! The fact is, equipment marketing has lagged several industries when it doesn’t have to. Our prospects are literally bombed with information today. Recent studies show each prospects get’s between 3,000 – 5,000 marketing messages per day.
That’s a LOT of messages. They forget about you and all of the great stuff you sell and service. So, inbound marketing and inbound marketing service companies need to account for this and install a marketing “system” which keeps your company fresh and relevant WITHOUT selling. Educate your audience about how you solve problems and they’ll buy when they’re ready.
To Your Success…
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…
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
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…
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