Last week, I had the pleasure and surprise of being sold to by Mr. Appliance. Seriously? Mr. Appliance. A technician armed with all the right questions, solutions and an iPad. Yes, an iPad. These guys are slick…. I called to have my digital high tech microwave repaired. It seemed that the number pad had worn down or there was a short. Well, I am not sure anything was wrong with the microwave except for a glitch, because all the guy did was unplug it from the power and talk to me for two minutes, and plugged it back in.  Well, it worked and $90 later, I was mad it was so simple but relieved. My husband unplugged it for 8 hours to no avail. So while we laughed about how that project was too easy, he started asking me about the rest of the house…. he looks at his iPad and my service history, seeing an opportunity,   “how is your dishwasher behaving?” he says, I say, terrible, it’s got a bunch of soap scum and doesn’t clean anything, damn GE.  He opens it up and says, yep, it needs to be cleaned, you are using too much soap and it’s not getting anything clean since the soap scum is circulating. He also tells me that maybe my water is not hot enough, and to run the faucet before I run the dishwasher.

This is news to me….  He recommends a $40 bottle of Dishwasher Magic, swears by it. So I say okay, and it arrives via UPS in three days or so, and I am running it now as I type.  Then he says, what else you got? So I say, well, our dryer is horrible. Takes three cycles or more to dry clothes…so he takes a look. The unit gets hot, but he reaches into the vent in the wall and takes a look outside at the exhaust, and it’s got 7+ years of lint and gunk.  Yep, so I sign up to get it cleaned, for a future appointment for the next week, for $160.  Sold. I had it done Monday and have 1/3 of a big garbage bag full of lint to prove it’s clean.  I am happy.  Clothes are drying much faster, with my 16 year old dryer unit.  He types all his notes in his iPad and leaves, driving away in a super -decaled, colorful, branded “Mr. Appliance” PT Cruiser.    

So $90 plus $40 plus $160… $290 came pretty easily to Mr. Appliance.  He was not trying to sell me, just providing solutions to a few domestic pains in my you know what. I did not feel sold to, and I will probably recommend them to anyone who will listen. Mr. Appliance fixed three problems for me and I am happier than ever to write that check.

Day 5 of Interactive Conference in Austin - Comments not about conference topics but on marketing…  There are lots of young people in town wearing their orange badges and spending a lot of money on 2nd Street, 4th Street and 6th and everywhere in between.  I have seen parties for Bing (in the rain outside) L’Oreal (kind of a boring-looking party upstairs at Lambert’s on 2nd) and I saw a funny banner in green for Survey Monkey on 6th Street at one of the upstairs bars. It said something like, “To drink here or there, that is the question.” I saw a party network bus driving around/ double decker style bus, with speakers so loud it sounded like a real concert. They parked by the Moody Theater by the new W, and I turned my head to see if I had walked by a concert venue and it was this BUS!  Good job to the marketers there. 

These folks are going to seminars even on Saturday and Sunday til about 5pm - - you have to give them credit for kind of working all day.  It is such a great town when the sun is out. Rained all day Friday and Saturday, so the sun was very welcome on Sunday. Every outdoor table and stand up bar is full, everyone is smiling, everyone is buying stuff. And guess what? Drinks are affordable, food is affordable and the shops on 2nd Street are inexpensive!!  $12.90 for fun earrings.  $17 for a Kensie shrug sweater marked down from $68. Buy two pieces of jewelry, get one free….   such simple marketing…. have an event and wrap creative/fun restaurants, and bars, and retail around it, make it safe, have some creativity, be ever so friendly, and people come! People stay!  People look for creative places to go. They don’t want TGIF or PF Chang. They want new. And they find it.  People pack the bars and stay on Sunday night!!!  People look happy! They look relaxed. They are soooo loud having fun!  What a concept, right.  Not every convention city is like this, is it?

Austin is awesome. We have an awesome story.   It’s so many little details that make it great…. it’s the entire approach…. It is not just one singular thing.  This successful and growing city is just like any strong marketing program for a company. It’s not just trying to hit one home run. It’s all the people, all the businesses, all the everyone going for RBIs, on all levels, all the time.

It is weeks like this where I look at Austin and say, I am so happy to be here! And I smile harder at the male pedicab dressed as Wonder Woman.  It’s all the little things that tell a great story. And all the folks here will go home and talk about all their experiences and tell their stories… And more will come…  Just like you hope your marketing efforts will tell stories and convince people to come and stay awhile. - Cathy

Other tips/ comments.

1.  Email prospecting- I don’t advise it. Especially a one-time rental of a list.  It’s like throwing a Hail Mary. Does not work very much. I try not to do it. 

2. You have to go where your buyers are online. Do you have to drive traffic to your site to get a sale? Or can you drive them to agents or resellers or buying sites? Go where the buyers already are/ and where they are already looking.  Go where they are. Be there when they look for you.  Old school is to constantly pull them to your site.

August 23, 2011. Austin, Texas —  If you are a distributor or an industrial goods manufacturer, you have a huge need to manage your “graphic digital assets.” You need these assets for printed catalogs, sale flyers, your web site, a one page sell sheet, a powerpoint presentation tomorrow, an instructions sheet, a price quote… it never ends, right?

I think there is a point, after starting with freelance, then building a department, then having technology replace people, then realizing you have the wrong people or people are stuck salary-wise and personal growth-wise…. every company reaches a point where you ask, is this better to have it in-house or am I better off sending it out? Was I ever any good at having in-house, meaning, “am I doing things economically and efficiently and does it look amazing or no? ”  I think C-level executives often focus on sales tools and accounting software, and can’t wait to buy a CRM package, and sometimes neglect the graphic design and graphics management aspects of their business, even though this area impacts all areas of the business, especially affecting the frequency and effectiveness of marketing programs, both in print and online.  With the advent of the web and people needing instant information, graphic digital assets are really a competitive advantage.

Most industrial companies are using InDesign and Quark, maybe Pagemaker for catalogs and flyers. Not many have made the $150K- $2M investment into software that manages all photos, copy bullets, schematics, etc., and acts as a PIM, with outputs to catalog, pdf, web site and more. Those companies that have made the move and have implemented Pindar Systems or Enterworks or Stibo have done so with a lot invested: money, time, and people, because they understand the value of the information and the speed.  But what do companies do that make tool boxes or end mills, that have small specialty businesses, who can’t necessarily afford the software but need to compete?

Enter: The “in-source” or “outsource” graphic production firms. These can be an independent 5 to 30 employee shop, or it can be a division of a much larger printer like Quad Graphics or RR Donnelly (Snap-On Tools’ catalogs are done by a printer, not in-house).  This is not an ad agency or marketing agency. This is purely graphic design and production work:  the type of work newspapers and magazines have, the type of work companies with 100,000 sku’s or more need, the type of work industrial distributors and manufacturers use.

These solutions may include custom software for managing your digital assets. Or the outsource firm may just do your production work with the Adobe Suite and be fantastic about sending assets back to you for your library. Or maybe they manage a whole new database of images and product descriptions and other text for you, with outputs to a website or printed piece. These solutions come at a cost per page or per hour. It just depends on what type of arrangement and project you have. Some graphic firms will place people in your location to work, which is in-sourcing, while others will have the work done at their offices by outsourcing.

I had one client in Chicago which used a firm such as this, using Stibo, in an in-source arrangement. The cataloger could focus on what they do best, product selection and pricing, and lots of marketing…. and allow the production company to do their thing, graphic design hiring, firing and training as needed, in the client’s offices, and meet all their sale flyer and catalog deadlines.

I think outsourcing is an excellent solution for manufacturers and more of you out there might consider finding not just a freelance graphic artist, but a small company that can really take care of you and do it efficiently and do it well.  It costs the same amount of money to print a good-looking sell sheet as it does a poorly designed one. And, in our industry, there is still a lot of 8th-grade looking graphic design out there…I am sorry to say… it does not have to be that way.  

The world is big; there is so much talent out there if you seek it. Sometimes you get to hire it as an employee and other times it makes sense to use a consultant or outsource firm. So if you are interested in outsourcing or in-sourcing graphic production and design, call me. I have ideas for you with a partner of mine, Peter Farago at www.faragoassoc.com in Michigan.  Call Cathy @512 330 4900 or email: cathyveri@gmail.com

Is your company listed on Thomasnet.com? The old printed, green directories are back and bigger than ever on the Internet.  No longer in print. Thomas has put all their money, efforts and know-how into their online website and search engine. The reports are amazing and their search engine results for their listings are fantastic…coming up on Google, Yahoo and Bing as if you were a paid advertiser on those sites.

Thomasnet.com is the “Google of industrial supply.” Are you in?  For more info and consulting about this, call me: 512 330 4900. I can’t say enough good things about how slick this is. 

The truth about fishing and marketing

by Cathy Veri

Marketing consultants always seem to have new buzz words, such as “selling the latest CRM software,” “empowered salesperson initiative” or “closed-loop program.” But my marketing vocabulary over the last 12 years has not changed much. I still preach the same basic things when I meet with my industrial distribution clients.

While those buzz words (and the hefty proposals which follow) are worth learning about, I find that people get more juiced up with exciting, actionable and affordable ideas from listening to me explain the following 12 topics.

1. Postcards don’t work on prospects. Unless the postcards are coupons. Let’s be honest. Almost all postcards go into the garbage. They have become: a) commonplace…too many companies use them, and because of that, they are even more difficult to make stand out; b) people know it’s an inexpensive way to spam through the mail and we’ve trained them not to read them; c) postcards have always been difficult to assign real value to. We’ve only embraced them due to increases in postage cost.

2. On new customer acquisition mailing: Just like dead fish, 2 percent response stinks. If you are not going to make a great offer, something the prospect simply and logically cannot refuse, why bother mailing it? The whole purpose of an acquisition piece is to get a FIRST order. You need to try very hard to make that postage and print expense work for you. If you don’t get a first order, you’ve failed. Two percent is nothing to brag about at your monthly meeting. I would go so far as to say that if you have a budget, you should want to break even or lose money on the first order from a new customer, just to get the chance to market to them for second, third and fourth orders. Most companies do not understand this simple concept.

3. People do read. Not all people. Just your true prospects. Despite what the boss says, don’t be afraid of long, detailed copy. Pharmaceutical companies put full-page ads together in magazines, with six-point type describing the drug at length. The ads are all copy. Why? Because for the 2 percent of the population who are true prospects for the product, they will read every word. THAT is who the company is marketing to, who they want to solicit a response from, not the general public. You should not care that most people will not read your ad. You don’t want quantity, you want quality prospects.

4. B-to-B direct marketing staff, and marketers in general (especially the entry level folks), need to understand their No. 1 job at the company is to make money. Ask your staff what they are responsible for at the company, or what their purpose there is. Most will list their seemingly endless project duties, losing sight completely of the BIG reason they are employed. Marketing folks who do not say “I am here to make money for the company” need to be coached that that is the right answer and that it should shape what they work on each day.

5. Mail it more than once, will ya? The secret to most marketing efforts: do it more than once. If you are going to mail or e-mail an offer, make sure you design the program and budget to allow for multiple mailings. You can’t mail anything once and expect to get a record-breaking response. Repetition works.

6. Pretty doesn’t always win. Perfect looking graphic design does not always mean sales. In B-to-B, there are plenty of success stories where a sale flyer or direct mail piece broke most of the understood graphic design rules and still succeeded, especially in the industrial distribution and manufacturing industries like computer components, tools and packaging supplies. When designing a logo, a mail piece or a Web site, great marketers will always assess the specific audience, the competition and the value of the goods being sold. Computer components cannot be presented like a jewelry catalog. It just doesn’t work. This is where industry experience (in-house or outsourced) is key. And beware of catalog consultants who offer to critique your B-to-B piece. Understanding the context of the piece, the industry, what’s been done before, and what that buyer is like are all key factors in determining what that piece should look like. Marketing-based creativity works!

7. Every company that sells to other businesses, no matter how small or large, needs to have consistent marketing programs to sell to three customer types: current customers, customers who are inactive and customers who have gone away for more than six months. If you cannot point to specific programs or plans for EACH of these three customer groups, you are missing the boat and most likely need to re-evaluate your marketing plan.

8. Develop a new customer program so that when you get a first order, you make the customer feel special, find out as much as you can (profile) and encourage future orders. This could be as simple as a mailed thank you card with a reply card, or a follow-up phone call. It could be a new customer “welcome kit” sent by mail, which might include product samples or a logo hat, a pen. Do something that fits your business, your budget and your business personality. New customer campaigns can dramatically increase second orders. I have seen it as high as 65 percent at a particular tool distributor. Second order enticements do not always need to be a discount.

9. Most B-to-B marketers don’t put real people programs in place to follow up on leads effectively. I have written about this before. Case in point: In 1999, I requested catalogs by phone from nine office supply companies. I told them I was a marketing agency. Over the next two weeks, each company mailed me their main catalog, ranging in postage from $2.50 to $6. The catalog print cost was probably in the $2 to $5 range, plus the box, so you are talking $5 to $13 each in expense. Out of the nine companies, how many do you think called me within a week or two to find out about my business or to solicit an order? None. Yet each of them was willing to spend up to $13 to send me their catalog. If a real person would have called me, that person would have gotten a large order for furniture and office supplies. People buy from people, no matter how large your company may get.

10. Whatever you send to customers and prospects, say something bold and differentiate your company. You have to be bold or the message will be lost. And you have to consistently repeat it. What is the difference between Office Depot and Office Max? I don’t know. What is the difference between Eggo and, hmmm…I can’t think of another frozen waffle company off the top of my head. Can you?

11. Direct marketers and marketers of all types need to READ more and join a professional marketing organization in order to be better marketers. I am amazed by how little my clients read about their craft. I personally am a sales and marketing book junkie, and because of it, I know a little about all kinds of “things marketing.” Know that there is nothing wrong with copying a great idea and tweaking it to make it your own. Learn from others, in your industry and outside. Reading gives you an edge. And in some cases, it might be the only way to learn more. If you are not learning new things from your boss or if someone else has not stepped in as your mentor, you have no choice but to read on your own and join professional groups to make sure you are constantly learning. There is no excuse for not getting better at your job…and this learning happens OUTSIDE of work hours. Marketers need to read books about salesmanship too, not just the marketing books. And try to be a mentor to people who you manage. If you are a manager, there is no excuse for not being a mentor.

12. New programs and new ideas cannot always be substantiated by numbers. As B-to-B marketers, we have the convenience of countless reports and quantitative views of our business. Sometimes we like to hide behind those reports to justify why we haven’t tried something new. Truly great entrepreneurs take a flier on an idea or a belief and they go for it and execute. If you are the first in an industry to do something, there won’t be any proof that it will work. There is no market research, no history to review, no big meetings to be had. There is only an idea and the will to execute it well.

As a wise six-year old once proclaimed to me while fishing on Hubbard Lake in Michigan, exasperated upon reeling in his fishing line, “I guess you can’t catch a fish if you ain’t got no bait!”

Cathy Veri is the principal consultant at her firm, Marketecture, a marketing services and consulting company serving industrial distribution and manufacturing companies. She has worked with four of the top 50 industrial distributors in the U.S. and was the director of marketing for J&L Industrial Supply from 1993 to 1998. Contact her at (734) 674-8379 orcveri@wideopenwest.com.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2006.