In fact a good website provides most of what a good sales/technical support team has to offer – but all it can offer is information.

A good sales engineer can offer much more such as guidance and informed opinion based on an understanding of the customer’s problem. Today the best sales engineers can also add the information that cannot be packaged on the website and make the connections which make big differences. For example – when a published spec is conservative, when a cheaper/more expensive option would be a better choice – what “better” might even mean in a particular context, fluid information like delivery times, new products coming soon but not announced or not on the website yet, products listed but not available or which may be fully developed yet, and manufacturing options not generally known.

A good sales engineer and tech support team are worth their weight in gold because not only do they know the right questions they also know to get the answers.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business

Industrial website design seems to be maturing into a stylish but very focused search friendly catalogue format, backed up by a wealth of valuable material:

–    Data sheets
–    CAD downloads
–    Specification guides
–    Application guides
–    Technology tutorials
–    “How to” videos

Call us to see how you can use our industrial website design services

By taking a systematic approach to content generation and dissemination we find that we can cost-effectively achieve coverage for clients. This generally involves a trickle-down from the initial brief which may start as a press release, white paper, feature article or video.

The process works something like this (with variations):

• Press Release content feeds the Blog and Social Media – which both add variety and relevance while potentially stimulating conversation.
• A White Paper goes on the website and the Blog – it also gives rise to a press release and social media coverage driving traffic to the full document on the website.
• Videos on YouTube channel can also be shown on the website and Blog, and covered on Social Media.
• Feature articles convert to white papers to go on the website and Blog with press release and social media coverage.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business

When I took on my first proper marketing job (as marketing manager for a small company in the enclosures business) I was given a sales territory of my own – it was local and smaller than the other sales engineers but I was accountable for it and had to spend time “on the road”. I was also introduced to the sales desk – where I spent many happy hours!

My point is that we should not forget what it is to be a customer and to deal with customers face to face. It requires empathy – that ability to walk a few yards in someone else’s shoes. This is a process that can yield remarkable outcomes as sometimes taking a slightly different view of a situation can yield a completely different understanding – whether it is marketing or engineering.

If you don’t understand a marketing activity or an application then put yourself in your customers’ shoes and see what they see – often it really is all about perspective.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business.

Why do people watch YouTube – yes aside from entertainment – many many people watch “how to do it videos”. I remember one video getting 30,000 hits in a year on how to trim florists’ plastic foam with a knife.

We all like to see how to do something – it gives us knowledge and confidence to do the same or similar ourselves. We are also grateful to the video provider who takes on credibility, status and authority.

The same is true of re-telling in-print stories of how your customers use your products – referred to as “application stories”. Tell one prospective customer how someone else saved time/money/solved quality problems/achieved an otherwise impossible task – then you have a really powerful testimonial.

So don’t take your customers application for granted – once you have solved their problem turn the story into valuable content for your PR or Social Media campaigns – your sales team will – eventually – love you for it.

Take a look at your customer list and ask “What do they do with our product?”

The answer may surprise you and provide prospective customers with an interesting approach to their own problems, and so bring them to your door.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business

Clearly we are still in the early stages of globalisation – with the great manufacturing engine that is China starting to find life difficult courtesy of re-shoring and economic downturn.

Will we see Chinese companies become more aggressive again? They already have some really big players to rival the biggest the west has to offer and other countries are riding the wave of global capital made so much more fluid now that the west has pumped out cheap money via our monetary easing policies.

However, we are also facing a range of problems around climate change/global warming, all of which potentially have technology solutions – roughly equivalent to finding ways to re-use and re-cycle materials while using less energy more efficiently – so long as it is renewable energy. Oh yes, and finding a way to reduce not only the output of greenhouse gases but also their existing levels in the atmosphere.

Now if that doesn’t speak loudly of technology opportunities, I don’t know what does – and the customers, from global power players to individual customers, are even becoming prepared to pay for the solution. Part of that solution is looking like having the businesses in place to provide the technologies.

So that is going to be a whole new opportunity – and we look forward to helping it with relevant marketing activities.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business.

If you go to an expert you expect them to sort your problem, yes? Not to find the Holy Grail but to at least try and if they know they can’t do it, then to be delighted to suggest an alternative.

Well, in industry and especially manufacturing, every company is expected to be an expert – so act responsibly.  Don’t just off-handedly explain “Oh no, we can’t deal with that” and leave your customer hanging, lost and unsupported to find their way in a situation where they are unable on their own to resolve the matter. If you really can’t (or don’t want to) help directly then a sympathetic referral or possible direction to explore will be warmly remembered – rather than a grumpy refusal.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business

Welcome to the second in our series on the importance of how a company does things. Selling what you believe in – and not – that is not believing in it and not selling it.

There is a myth abroad that a “salesman”/”saleswoman” can sell anything (as if that was a good thing!). The truth is that someone who believes in a product or service as being right for the customer, backed by experience and expertise is probably the best sales person you have. In the mass market business to customer (B2C) world where repeat sales are maybe not as important, the sell anything-to-anyone approach with pressure tactics if necessary is a common finding. However, in the business to business (B2B) world where numbers are smaller and technical considerations fully front and centre, then it simply puts people off. If your sales people know what they are doing and believe in it then it shines through to a fundamentally better customer experience.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business

Often it is important that we are not afraid to state the obvious – it may not be obvious to everybody and those people, newcomers to the field perhaps, will thank you for it. Just don’t tout it as new wisdom – or you will bore and probably offend the people to whom it is obvious (perhaps because they learned it many years ago) and they may also be your customers.

Call us to see how you can use online marketing in your business