Marketing for Lighting and Energy Control: How to Avoid Extinction

If you’ve been in the lighting and energy control business for a while, you know that “Business as usual” just isn’t cutting it anymore—especially when it comes to marketing. Once-proven methods for getting your message out to customers and prospects are increasingly ineffective. What’s changed? And what can you do about it?

Brian Halligan, co-author of Inbound Marketing and Chief Executive Officer of HubSpot describes the situation this way: “People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.”

What is Brian talking about? It used to be hard for buyers to gather information about the product or service they were considering. For people looking for lighting and energy control solutions there were catalogs, flyers, and brochures. Or they could check out some of the trade journals. But it wasn’t always easy to find objective information. There wasn’t a good way to gather information from peers who had used the product or service themselves. The Internet changed all that.

Now buyers, architects, or people who specify systems for residential or commercial buildings have a wealth of information at the fingertips.

And it used to be that if someone didn’t like what you offered, they might stick with you anyway because it was too hard to find an alternate source. Now, your competition is one click away. And pricing isn’t much of a tool. Your potential customers can check prices at the click of a button. Differentiation has never been more important. But how do you set yourself apart?

One way you can set yourself apart is to provide your customers with helpful information—information that helps them to make a good decision. You can answer their questions about problems or issues they’re dealing with. You can help them determine which solution will really meet their need. Will you win every sale? No. But you’ll stand a better chance of winning the people who are a good fit for your products and services—and those are the people who will tell their business colleagues about you.

Lighting and energy control systems have changed a lot over the last few years. So has the way you need to talk to prospective customers. How can you use your products, services, knowledge, and experience to ensure the success of your customers? Light and energy control businesses that figure this out will thrive. Those that don’t will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Performance Marketing manages marketing programs for several industries including several lighting-related companies.

Why Yesterday’s Marketing Approach Won’t Bring Results Today

In April AT&T sold a majority stake of its declining Yellow Pages business so that it could “focus on its core telephone business.” But there’s more going on here than AT&T sharpening its business focus. AT&T has seen revenue from its Yellow Pages unit shrink 30 percent in two years. What’s going on?

Perhaps the best way to answer that is to relate an experience a business colleague shared with us recently. He visited a large office building the week after the new phone books came out. At both ends of the building on every floor he saw two pallets. On one pallet were shrink-wrapped copies of the new phone books with a sign that said, “Take one!” Few books had been taken. In some cases the shrink-wrapping hadn’t even been disturbed. The other pallet had a sign that said, “Leave your old books here.” There were considerably more books on this pallet.

AT&T knows what’s going on. When people want information, they don’t go to the Yellow Pages anymore. They go to the Web. And when they go to the Web, they don’t go to an online version of the Yellow Pages. They go to Google and search. AT&T knows that they are not going to get the results they want today by relying on yesterday’s marketing approaches.

What does that mean for your business? Gone are the days when you could take out an (expensive) ad in the Yellow Pages and hope customers would find you there. That’s not where people are looking for you. They’re looking online.

But you can’t just use today’s tools (the Web) with yesterday’s mindset. Your online presence has to be much more than a digital version of your old corporate brochure on your website. You need to turn your website into a lean, mean, marketing machine. You spent good money building your website, but what has your website done for you lately? Your website needs to be generating leads for your business.

How do you make that happen? First, your website needs to be easy to find. That means optimizing it so that the right people find it. Second, it needs to be easy for prospective customers to find the information they’re looking for. That means creating quality content. And third, your site needs to enable you and your prospects to engage with one another. That’s how you turn lookers into leads—and ultimately into customers.

What are your biggest challenges in the new age of marketing?

The Changing Face of Marketing: What Do Your Customers See?

It’s been said lately that your new business card isn’t that rectangular piece of paper you hand out to potential clients or customers—it’s your URL.

It’s true. Your website—and in particular, your company’s home page—is the face of your company. More often than not, that’s where the people you’re trying to reach form their opinions about your company. So what face are you presenting to your public? Is the image people see when looking at your home page really representative of your business?  Are you even aware of the face you’re presenting?

The sad fact is that many companies (of all sizes) spend a lot of time and money creating their website—and never look at it again. When is the last time you visited your own website and looked at it the way your customers do? A regular review of your “public face” is an absolute must because this is the view that the majority of people have of you.

If you really want to get an objective view, engage someone from outside of your company to look at it with you and tell you what they see. Here are a few things to look for when you review your site.

Your customers’ web experience needs to be about them—not about you. Let’s be brutally honest: Nobody really cares all that much about your mission statement. They care about their problems and how you might be able to help them solve those problems.

You need to think like a customer. Why are your customers visiting your site? What are they looking for? How can you help them find what they need quickly? They didn’t come to your website because to hear you extol your virtues. They came because they have a problem or a need. Does your site help them solve that problem or meet that need?

Sometimes it really is about you! Although visitors may not care about your mission statement, they do care about who you are—as it pertains to them. People do want and need to know why you’re in business and why you’re qualified to help them solve their problems. But your “About Us” page needs to focus on how your qualifications and abilities will help them. Here’s help for how to create a powerful about us page. 

How is your website performing? Even though companies spend significant time and money creating their websites, many businesses simply don’t know how their websites are doing. Many businesses don’t know how many leads have come from their website in the last month and can’t track specific results back to their site. They may know who their competition is, but they don’t know how they rank compared to their competition when someone searches online for the goods or services they offer.

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you probably ought to do an audit of your website. The good news is that there are things you can do to improve your chances of being found—and of turning “lookers” into leads.

The face of business has changed a lot in the last few years. Still, some things have remained the same. First impressions are still important. For most people, the first impression they have of your company or organization comes from their first visit to your website. What kind of impression are you giving them?

Room Drop Gift Idea!

Many corproate events are held in warm weather cities where sitting by the beach or pool is on top of every attendees list of "things to do"! 

If you've been searching for a unique room drop gift for your upcoming event - we think we've got the perfect item for you.

The portable SOLAR SOUND SPEAKER is a great item to take to beach or pool. Not only does it protect your phone from sand and water, it works as a solar charging station using the lithium battery via solar panel or USB charger cable. The speaker is a convenient way to enjoy music from your Ipod, Iphone or MP3 player.

The kit include: USB adapter, USB charger, and multiple adapters for charging both iPad 1 and 2, iPod, iPhone, Blackberry and most other mobile phones. The durable case has a carabiner that allows you to clip onto a bag. The padded interior secures and protects. This item runs about $26.98 and there is even room to add your company logo!

For mor information on this or any other room drop gift ideas, please Contact us!

 

Also - don't forget to download our top 20 room drop gifts below.

Marketing Today: Help Your Business Avoid Extinction

You’ve probably noticed that “Business as usual” just isn’t an option anymore. Things have changed and once “proven methods” for getting your message out to customers and constituents have become increasingly ineffective. 

It’s not just your imagination. People who study marketing have documented some of the changes. Brian Halligan, co-author of Inbound Marketing and Chief Executive Officer of HubSpot described the changing situation this way: “People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.”

What does that mean? Once upon a time most of the information customers picked up about a product or service came from the company they were planning to do business with. If they wanted an independent option, consumers could go to a source such as Consumer’s Report for. Or they could talk to friends and colleagues. However, it wasn’t always easy to find good, objective information. There wasn’t a good way to gather information from peers who had used the product or service themselves. Then the Internet changed all that.

It used to be that if your customer didn’t like your product or service, they’d have to drive across town to find an alternative—but that took time. Today, your competition is just one click away. Differentiation has never been more important. But how do you set yourself apart?

Consumers can shop pricing at the click of a button. Some of your competitors may offer to meet or beat any price anyway, so offering the lowest price really doesn’t set you apart. And it doesn’t guarantee loyalty.  One way to set yourself apart is to provide your customers with helpful information—information that will enable them to make a good decision. You can help prospective customers by providing answer to questions they have. You can address the problems or issues they are trying to deal with. You can help them figure out which solution is really going to meet their need. Will you win every sale? Nope. But you’ll win more of the people who are a good fit for your product or service. And those are the people will tell their friends and colleagues how great you are.

Marketing Your Business: What’s Your Real Goal?

Companies often wonder how much money they should spend on advertising. Because companies vary so much in size and marketing philosophy, it’s hard to make meaningful comparisons. For instance, Walmart may only spend 0.4 percent of their budget on advertising, but that’s going to be a whole lot more money than a 10-person shop spending 20 percent. In August 2011 CMO Survey reported that companies spend, on average, approximately 10% of their overall budgets on marketing.

 

More important than what companies spend, is the question of why they spend money on marketing. Why do you spend money on marketing? What’s your goal?

 

Some companies focus a lot of their marketing efforts on building brand—and that’s important. You want customers and clients to have a clear image of who you are and what you do. It’s not, however, your main goal.

 

What is your real goal in marketing your business? You want to engage potential customers and clients (the people for whom your products and services are designed) in such a way that will examine your products and services—and ultimately make a decision to purchase from you. Marketing’s primary goal is to generate qualified leads—the kind of leads that generate sales.

 

So what kind of marketing efforts bring in qualified leads? According to HubSpot, 63 percent of companies claim that social media has increased their marketing effectiveness. Here’s how they back up that claim:

 

• B2B businesses who blogged just 16 to 20 times per month got 3 times more leads than those who didn’t blog. B2C businesses who blogged just 16 to 20 times per month got over 4 times more leads than those who didn’t blog.

• Businesses with over 200 total blog articles got 3.5 times more leads than those with under 20 blog posts.

• Businesses with websites that have 401 to 1,000 webpages have 6 times more leads than those with 51 to 100.

• Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages.

• They cite similar data for companies using other social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

 

Where are you focusing your marketing efforts? Are you polishing your image or are you generating qualified leads that will result in sales? We’d love to help you work on marketing that brings you the results you need. Shoot us a note about any questions you have regarding marketing that generates leads and we’ll help you reach your goal.

Is All This Talk About Inbound Marketing Just a Bunch of Hot Air?

Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of talk about the emergence of social media and inbound marketing strategies as the new wave of marketing. But is it just talk? Is it all a bunch of hot air? Or is something real going on here?

 

The inbound marketing gurus at HupSpot recently shared a case study about one of their clients that gives some pretty compelling evidence that taking an inbound strategy to your marketing isn’t just “pie (or a balloon) in the sky.” You can read the complete case study for yourself, but here’s the gist of it.

 

The company purchased 20 spots before, during, and after the Super Bowl in its local market. The ads used a tracking phone number so the business knew which incoming calls came from the commercial. The commercial drove viewers to the company's homepage, but there was no integration of offline efforts with their website or social media. According to Nielsen Ratings, their ads were seen by 2.8 million viewers.

 

Web traffic for the company was up 11% on Super Bowl Sunday and 4% the following Monday. That’s a nice increase. But during that same time period their blog generated twice as much traffic as the TV spots—AND several inbound leads. The TV ads generated no online leads, only 7 phone calls, and zero opportunities or customer conversions. And what did they pay for this kind of performance? $54,000!

 

Since this company started using inbound marketing it has increased organic traffic by 567% and overall traffic by 583% in less than a year.

 

Does that mean that if you throw together a blog and post it on the Internet that you’ll see the same kind of results? Nope! You need a good strategic plan. You need good content. And you need to execute your plan well. We can help you with that. Shoot us a note and we’ll be happy to talk to you about how you can take advantage of the power of inbound marketing.

 

Unless, of course, you still think it’s just a bunch of hot air!

Marketing Today: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

The days of “one size fits all” marketing are history. Treating all your clients the same has never been a good marketing approach. Today it’s even more critical to pay attention to your audience. These days your clients are telling you what they want to know instead of what waiting passively for you to tell them what you think they should know.

Why does that matter?

Let’s say you’re a distributor of pet supplies and you sell to pet supply stores across the country. You can’t assume that all of your clients only carry products for cats (even if you happen to be a cat person yourself). Pet stores cater to dog lovers, too. And they need to have supplies for the people who like hamsters, rats, fish, and birds. And some stores may focus on exotic pets such as snakes.

Here’s the issue:  If you gear all of your messaging exclusively to cat products, you’re going to miss a huge chunk of your audience.

Bottom line –

• How well do you really know your clients (your target market)?
• Do you communicate with all of your clients as if they were interested in the same thing?
• Shouldn’t your content address the needs of each target market?
• And, wouldn’t it be nice to get feedback from your clients in order to improve your service?

Today’s Inbound Marketing Techniques allow you to better address the specific needs and wants of your clients. And the good news is, it won’t cost you that much.

For example – do you utilize your company blog to benefit your clients—and to gather information that will help you service them?

• Remember that blogs are designed to be two-way streets - not just a platform for you to “preach” to clients.
• Blogs are also an avenue your clients can use to respond to you.
• Give them helpful information and then ask them what else they want to know.
• Ask them how you could improve whatever goods or services you provide that would make them more useful.
• Ask them to share successes—and failures (You know clients will talk to each other if the products they buy from you don’t work, or if they have a bad experience. It’s better when they do it where you can see it, learn from it, and respond).

Listening is huge. Some businesses think blogs are all about talking. Really, they’re just as much about listening to what your clients are saying. If you give them the opportunity to respond—and listen carefully—you can learn a lot about what they want, what they need, and what they really think about your products and services (instead of what you think they think).

Your clients are all different. One size doesn’t fit all. What steps are you taking to find out what your clients are thinking? What are your biggest challenges? What’s working and what’s not?

Using Social Media in B2B Marketing

More and more businesses are using social media tools to connect with their customers and potential customers. Businesses have Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and blogs. Some have videos on YouTube. Some are on Google+ and some have tons of connections on LinkedIn. 

All the cool businesses are doing it, so it must be a good thing. And that means you should be doing it too, right? Not so fast, Twitter Toes! Just because something is called social media, that doesn’t automatically make it social. And it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you. 

There’s no questioning that the way we do marketing has changed. The customer is now in control. He or she determines what information to look at. And where does that information reside? It’s online. Social media tools like the ones mentioned above can make it easier for customers to find information—if they’re used correctly. But these tools need to be used to draw people in (what we refer to as “Inbound marketing”). If you use these new tools to ram your message down someone’s throat, you’re missing the point. 

Good marketing has always been a predominantly social event. It’s the bringing together of people with wants and needs and the goods and services that can meet those wants and needs. Today, more than ever, that social element needs to be cultivated. As the business world moves deeper and deeper into online, social media methods for connecting with their potential customers, they need to make sure they are enhancing the social experience for their customers—and not just using a new tool to force information on them.

That means listening to customers and giving them information in the way they want to receive it. 

Something like Twitter for instance, can be used to let your customers know that more information—about something they’re interested in—is available if they want it. You shouldn’t use it to strong-arm someone so you can “close the deal.”

Facebook is a great place to let your customers share their experiences about using your product or service. It’s not the place to brag about how great you are. That’s just bad manners—and it’s anti-social behavior, no matter what social media tool you’re using. 

What are your biggest questions about using social media? Where have you had success? What hasn’t worked? Let’s talk!

Rebranding project is more than just a logo

Rebranding project is more than just a new logo: Case Study 360 Destination Group

When it comes to marketing – Evolution is inevitable. If your company is operating in the same old way it always has – then you are stagnant and may be losing out on new business. Change is an important part of business growth. And if you’re interested in growing your business, you must be open to new ideas, new styles and new techniques. Alternatively, you may be ready to pass the baton or sell your business – which will be more valuable with a forward thinking and modern growth plan in place.

Two popular examples of companies reinventing themselves are Apple and most recently Starbucks. The true changes are not only seen via the new logos and outward appearances, these firms also changed their thinking.

Companies evolve because their clients evolve. New visions are created – and so new processes are implemented. When the rebranding efforts are backed by real Process Change – the results can be visionary.

Recently I did a re-branding project for a client named 360 Destination Group. The results of this re-branding were exponential because the client was open to change and have focused on actively changing the processes within the company to better meet the needs of their clients.  A realization was made that relationships between them and their clients were now being created in a new way. A few of the challenges are listed here:

• How do we build relationships that don’t begin with a hand shake but a “virtual handshake”?
• How can the prospect feel as if they know and trust our company BEFORE they actually meet us?
• How can we harness the power of the internet to build real business growth?
• How is our target market changing and how can we change with them to meet their needs?

Below is the new look that was created by Performance Marketing to meet the objectives of the re-branding:

• The vibe of the site is so real that you practically feel as though you know the staff prior to ever speaking with them.
• The Name “360 Destination Group” let’s the buyer know the services offered are turn-key
• The feel of the website is modern, forward thinking, fun, and professional.

The real change  – the processes within the company - is not tangible. The sales staff was trained on better ways to align themselves with the online marketing strategies. the "virtual relationships" that start forming online do much of the “prospecting” up front. The sales staff learned to focus on the needs of the customers by asking probing questions and thinking about solutions rather than sales pitches. With sales and marketing alignment (Smarketing), the sales staff will be better equipped to close more sales and do so by better serving the client.

For more information on Re-branding, Internet Marketing or our Sales & Marketing alignment Training (Smarketing) please contact us! New class starts Feb 22, 2012!