Experiential marketing – the next big thing?

How often has the technical possibility to do something been heralded as the demise for existing technologies? CDs and web sites would replace print as the medium of choice for example, podcasts, RSS, experiential marketing are the way forward and so on. We have taken the view that being at the cutting edge is overall a good thing, it makes the company using it look as though it is also forward looking. But what we believe must be avoided is only using one method – our view is to play to the strengths that different marketing tools offer and bring them into the mix in the way they work best. Then there is the problem of explaining the new technology to clients. I suspect Alexander Graham Bell had the same problem – ‘but none of my customers have a telephone, so I don’t need one because they can’t ring anyway’. About ten to fifteen years ago the response to making product data available on CD was, ‘my customers don’t have PCs’. But when we showed their customers the benefits they went and bought a PC – they were just waiting for someone to take the lead. Same with web sites, ‘our competitors don’t have them, so why should we?’ That then changed to, ‘all our competitors have a web site – we need one right now.’ Pioneering new technologies can be tough in the b-2-b market with risk adverse clients who still wonder what happened to response cards from magazines. Much of this thought was prompted by an article in the Sunday Telegraph on the subject of company magazines used as a subliminal sales technique by major retailers to entice consumers – a sector of publishing that is apparently booming. Having belatedly adopted web sites, some clients are now so obsessed by the idea they continue to pour in resource and effort in the belief this is now all they need to do – unfortunately encouraged by ‘experts’ that tell them to spend thousands pounds more making the site search engine optimized – but that’s another subject. The newspaper article ran the following quote – ‘more and more companies are realizing that having got their web sites up and running, it is actually a pretty dead experience.’ Wow! So, back to magazines. By definition it is fresh each time – more than can be said of some web sites – and if correctly targeted will have sufficient retention value for the recipient to stop, review, read then pass on to colleagues. Far more subtle and effective than unsolicited junk mail which is destined straight to the recycling sack. We have long endorsed the value to the client company of a magazine or newsletter for their customers – we have just published the 10th anniversary issue for one client. By showcasing how they solved unusual challenges they have established a reputation for expertise, differentiating them from competitors who are just moving the boxes off the shelf. A good company magazine a couple of times a year works as a valuable part of a successful PR programme. So experiential marketing may not be just the high tech stuff – a good old fashioned read could also provide an interesting experience that makes customers favourably disposed to the company publishing the magazine. Why not take a look now at the various PR tools that could also apply and visit Technical Marketing’s web site.

Britain - a nation of small firms, most with no employees!

News arrived this morning from The Small Business Service (SBS) an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry, announcing Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Statistics for the UK 2005. The press release can be found at, Small Business Service web site What the figures confirm is that in numeric terms 99.3% of all the UK’s 4.3 million business enterprises are officially classified as small – that is they employ less than 49 people. Of these, 3.2 million some 72.8% have no employees at all! These are interesting statistics where nearly three quarters of all UK businesses are one-man operations. In theory, plenty of scope to grow small businesses into medium size enterprises, a role where marketing can play a crucial role. The challenge is identifying those businesses that actually want to grow and take on employees with all the legislative implications that goes with it. This is an interesting challenge - the companies that could really benefit from marketing expertise are the least able to invest. We have developed means for working with clients that are highly affordable and where the impact of marketing can be quickly assessed in terms of orders received.

Exhibition time

One of the sometimes neglected tasks of an exhibition or trade show is the Press Pack. In fact trade shows present a number of useful opportunities for publicity – the pre-show announcements, photo opportunities and events on the booth and post show success stories. But what might get overlooked is getting press packs into the hands of press visitors you may not know – especially those from overseas. Of course the traditional press pack is often an expense clients already faced with all types of charges to exhibit, will decline. A professionally printed folder, copies of recent press releases, glossy photo, maybe new brochures – it can be quite an expense. Then who gets them? Experience shows press packs can disappear from the exhibition press room, probably as useful briefing aids to competitors, so stocks need topping up from time to time. The obvious solution is to put everything on a CD – but wait. I checked on a number of CD Press Packs at an exhibition and they all had adopted the same approach of simply dumping files and images on the CD with no explanation – hardly an inducement for a busy editor to open them. Our approach has been to provide navigation just like a web site to include background material, recent press releases, short movies, contact details plus direct links to the client’s web site. We have just delivered a master disk to a client ready or next weeks show. Our client’s e-mail said it all ‘Many thanks for the CD, it looks great.’ To find out more about how we can provide CD Press packs or to request a sample, take a look at at Technical Marketing’s web site.

Such a cool idea

A telephone call today from the editor of an industrial publication covering the world of instrumentation who had decided to use a press release we had sent on behalf of a client. Good news indeed to win the editorial lottery as the more usual response is a fax offering to publish for a £100 or so – to cover the cost of colour separations don’t you know - or the press release had just gone straight in the trash can. As a matter of economy for our clients we have long since stopped sending out printed, double spaced press releases accompanied by glossy photographs, instead we send a branded html e-mail with a small low-resolution image. So when the editor requested a high-resolution image for publication, in less than 10 seconds it was on the editorial PC. How did we do this? Well thanks to Virtual News Office the conversation went like this….
‘Do you have internet access there?’
‘Yes’
‘OK, go to the client web site … are you on the home page?’
‘Yes’
‘See the News Office link?… click on this and you are now on the news index page with thumbnails, headlines and opening lines of each recent story. The one you need is currently second on the list …. click to open and there is the image you want, available at different resolutions and with captions and photo credits.’
‘Great! I am downloading now, thank you.’
Our view is we should make it easy for editors to get the information they need about a company, not just press releases, but background information too. To find out more about how we can help, take a look at Technical Marketing’s web site.

Two hundred dollars of marketing stuff

An e-mail invitation arrived to attend a webinar, snappily entitled "What's Working NOW In B-to-B Marketing To Drive Leads & Sales." It was sent by an American of my acquaintance who modestly describes himself as a sales lead expert and was introduced by one of our clients. The invite was intriguing on two counts. First the concept of a webinar as a revenue generating business model explicit in the discount offered – ‘And, as a way of thanking you for your past support, I've arranged for you to get exclusive "Friends" pricing. Registration is just $59 if you act by the end of the week. And the program is backed up by a money-back guarantee.’ Secondly the concept of putting a dollar value on marketing tools – ‘plus, when you register and attend you'll receive a bonus package of B-to-B marketing tools valued at well over $200.00. Best of all, this package includes - customized to your exact specifications and free of charge - a 500-record prospecting database.’ The idea of marketing tools worth $200 is of itself intriguing – what exactly would $200 buy in terms of marketing time or collateral? What does $200 of marketing stuff look like? How useful is it? I could go on. Becoming a marketing expert in a 90 minute webinar, empowered to drive previously unobtainable shed loads of sales leads suggests a simple secret formula that can be revealed for a mere $£59 investment, an enlightenment, a pivotal moment when the scales fall from the eyes and the path to a successful future lies bright and shiny in front of you. Is it a similar empowerment offered by desk top publishing to make everyone a talented designer, or the ability to produce web sites for a few dollars? Experience suggests otherwise. A clearly thought out marketing plan designed to implement a strategy to deliver business objectives through carefully executed campaigns and a long term view of investing in an integrated marketing programme exemplified by on-going business relationships might prove more sustainable. To find out more, take a look at our approach to marketing consultancy at Technical Marketing .

Copyright free images

Writing on the MK Media Circle e-mail forum, photographer Kevin Sansbury poses the question in relation to the launch of a royalty free image site, ‘can someone explain what fees are given to the photographer when images are used. There is a trend that is killing the professional photographer that royalty free images are being used instead of commissioning a professional photographer.’ This raises an interesting issue, particularly in the industrial b-2-b PR space, as to whether the press release can stand the cost of a professional commission at all. Demonstrating the value of PR investment to smaller businesses is hard enough, plus the demand for an ‘editorial charge’ without the photographer fee on top. Interestingly the Pro-Talk web sites which carry vast numbers of industrial PR don’t publish images at all, whilst the printed journals reject most press releases due to limited space, in turn due to less advertising - so it is little surprise PR agencies are cautious about commissioning photography that may only be destined for the trash can. Interestingly a different conversation took place on the UKEPR forum towards the end of last year where a b-2-b PR agency had been hit with substantial royalty charges for using a modest image somewhere on their web site. Because such images can easily be lifted from the Internet and dropped into another web site does not imply they are royalty free and if they are the property of one of the large image libraries the chances are they will be tracked down and users invoiced. At Technical Marketing we have cautioned our clients to ensure they have the right to use images for publicity purposes and better still to use one of our online ImageBanks to store images online, along with copyright statements, captions and searchable descriptions.

Death of the salesman?

We were not surprised by the findings of a recent market research report that engineers are turning to the Internet as their preferred source for product specifications. According to market research carried out this summer in the GlobalSpec Annual Engineering Trends Survey, 90% of respondents involved with purchasing of technical products or services have used the Internet to obtain product specifications, with 56% rating specifications as ‘the most valuable information when searching for products or services’.

This serves to confirm Technical Marketing's view that the Internet is now a vital part of any integrated marketing campaign and highlights our four main areas of service – ‘marketing consultancy’, ‘internet marketing’, ‘press & public relations’ and ‘technical writing, documentation and publication’. We have used web database techniques to enable our clients to rapidly publish and update product specifications and news online – two of the top items engineers and buyers are looking for – and with full search facilities for visitors to quickly identify products and services they want.

The survey also records that 45% now spend more than 6 hours a week on the Internet for work purposes, meanwhile the use of printed trade magazines and attendance at trade shows continues to decline - 18% reported a decrease in use of printed magazines and 51% did not attend any trade shows. The top four reasons for using the Internet were found to be – ‘to find components and suppliers’, ‘obtain product specifications’, ‘research’ and ‘news’.

When it comes to contacting suppliers 42% opt for the web as their preferred medium, 36% for e-mail and 21% telephone and just 1% preferring a sales rep visit!

Is print in decline?

Two sides of the online v print argument this week. On the one hand we are preparing final text for a client’s regular newsletter, on the other, a letter arrived from Process Engineering magazine headed ‘Important Changes’. The important changes it would appear are a less frequent publication, now once every two months and the introduction of a fortnightly e-mail news. The letter goes on to emphasise the benefits that will see ‘an increase in the amount of quality editorial coverage’ and the ability to ‘deliver more timely news via web and e-mail and concentrate on providing greater analysis and application content in the magazine.’ This reflects an approach to news delivery that we have been impressing on our clients for some years – e-mail, RSS, and online news for urgent communication and print for more in-depth coverage – in short to provide an interesting read and add retention value to the publication. In conversation some months ago and in another industry, one company president confided over a cup of coffee, that by the time the monthly industry journal arrived he felt he had already read most of the content. Of course there is another big issue driving this change and that is the economics of the traditional trade press. Not only is news slow to appear, but advertising revenues have been under pressure for years … but that’s another debate. This is the tenth anniversary of our client’s newsletter and from the beginning this was not really about news, but about application stories and helpful technical advice. The use of stories and third party endorsement to demonstrate how customer problems have been solved has been the source directly of a number of new projects and also helped build the company a reputation as being knowledgeable in their industry - especially as they now compete with importers of low cost product from China. It is just one factor in building a differentiated position. So we feel there is a continuing role for the print, providing the content is right. To understand more visit Technical Marketing's web site .

Is RSS about to take off as a marketing tool?

From the Technical editor of Pro-Talk this week comes a series of e-mails on the topic of RSS - a subject about which he enthuses. He sees RSS as the third arm of the Internet alongside e-mail and web sites. At Technical Marketing Ltd we have been offering RSS to our clients for at least 2 years now – maybe longer. We agree it is a great facility, but has not really taken off. It gets round the blanket blocking of e-mails by over enthusiastic IT departments that in some cases seem to filter most everything out, not just ‘subscribed for’ e-mail news, but individual e-mails too! And with RSS appearing in browsers such as Safari and reportedly eventually from Microsoft Explorer it will also become more widely used. To find out more about how RSS can work for you, check out the Virtual News Office .

Marketing in the engineering work space

A phone call from a client in the engineering sector this morning raised an interesting topic that, if a true reflection of the industry suggests a major sea change for British manufacturing. We have become used to the political views that Britain has long since ceased to be a serious manufacturing nation and after first Japan, then the so-called tiger economies of the Far East, now China is the workshop of the world. We have also read that British university students have been opting for the softer options and rejecting the engineering and science disciplines as we progress towards a nation of hairdressers and finger nail artists. So how does this affect our client? In two ways. Because so much manufacture is now off shore his sales are increasingly for prototypes or laboratory research projects and not volumes for manufacture embodiment. Secondly the ‘engineers’ he is selling to, are now less well informed. Result – more sales effort to sell less product. One of the ways we have been able to help our client is to create informative material in the form of White Papers and Guides that can be downloaded from the web site and help fill the knowledge gap. To find out more about White Papers and guides take a look at Technical Marketing's web site.