Creating
a Sales-Generating Online Catalog -- Easily and Affordably
Ted Harp, vice president
of Coburn-Myers Fastening Systems,
Inc., says, "ThomasNet provides quality tools to
allow you to market yourselves. Our online program [with ThomasNet] is a
cost-effective way for a small company to have an online catalog and keep up
with the industry… at a fraction of the cost it would have been for
us to create the catalog ourselves.”
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Payments
in the Industrial Market
Aaron Bills, co-founder and chief
operating officer of 3Delta Systems, Inc., answers your questions regarding
credit card and purchasing card processing.
Many firms spend a significant amount of money to attract clients to their
websites in order to sell their goods and services. They carefully scrutinize
the return on this investment to ensure they receive good value for their
marketing dollar.
However, when it comes time to get paid for their sale, many
firms' hard-won business profit can be needlessly drained because a customer's
credit card transaction isn't being processed as cost-effectively as it should
be.
This article is a brief introduction to facets of credit card processing
that often are not well understood, but where knowledge can create savings and
operational improvement. Q: Aren't all credit card transactions
basically the same?
A : No. Over the years credit card processing has become a lot more
diverse and complex.
Many perceptions about how credit card processing works are shaped by
our
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Time to Revamp Your Company's Website?
The spring season is the perfect time to do a little "spring cleaning" on our
websites. It's time to clear out any "clutter" in our content, making sure each
word and graphic has a purpose and clearly communicates our messages to our
customers. It's also time to evaluate the overall effectiveness of our websites,
monitoring where visitors are spending their time, where they're coming from,
and what actions they're taking when they're visiting our sites. (Take a look at
last month's issue of
The Industrial Marketer
for more information about web analytics.)
The wealth of information that our "spring cleaning" efforts can provide can
tell us what's working on our sites, and what's not. Also, it can tell us if
it's time to revamp our website to make it more effective.
Are you
giving your customers what they want?
Is your website a selling machine? Is it helping you secure more business?
If it isn’t, it should be. Remember: the main marketing objective
for our websites should be to convert website visitors to customers.
On your site, make sure you're providing the type of content your customers want
to see when they visit, such as detailed product information that's easy to find
and very easy to understand, plus the ability to buy or take action right away.
Today's industrial buyers are active online buyers. In a
ThomasNet/Google Survey, industrial buyers say they research and compare products
and services online. They source products and increasingly complete the buying
process online: more than 55% purchased industrial products online in the previous
year. The report also shows that 90% of industrial buyers are online, and
they're hungry for information. An industrial buyer is quoted as saying, "I'm a
power shopper online and spend almost a quarter [25%] of my work week sourcing
for products and services."
Your website should meet potential buyers' expectations to easily find quality
information on the site. Buyers expect to find the following:
∙ Detailed product information
∙ Up-to-date information
∙ Search tools and functionality
∙ Ability to take action.
∙ Ease of use
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88%
The percentage
of industrial buyers and specifiers who said
that the information found on a company’s website is relevant in
performing their job.
Source: “A Day
in Your Life Survey” of industrial buyers and specifiers conducted by
ThomasNet in 2007.
Content is
Key to Your Website's Success
According to the Marketing
Watchdog Journal from Bulldog Solutions, visitors to your
website are "still searching for content that helps educate them about key
business issues."
Read more...
How to Make 'Green' Websites Work
Here are some tips from Cision's
The Navigator to help you create effective
strategies to "capture the spirit of environmental conservation" in your
website initiatives.
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Focus on
'Influencers'... Not on 'Detractors'
MarketingVOX.com
recommends that you identify and focus on customers who are "influencers" in
all of your marketing efforts. The site says, "Depending on the product or
service a company hopes to sell, the appropriate circle of influencers can
vary…" Read more...
Discover
the Power of White Papers in B2B Marketing
On his Writing White Papers
blog, Michael Stelzner says, in B2B marketing "the white paper has pushed
brochures and other marketing tools to the side over the last few decades."
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