"Joe AutoDrill" wrote in message
...
The paradigm of what is effective "press" and what is not has changed.
To be honest, anyone who thinks print media will give their show or
business or whatever more coverage than a long lasting, well woreded
blog or internet post on a web site is probably wrong.

I've yet to see evidence of that, Joe. The print media are taking a
beating, but narrow-interest Internet media don't seem to be replacing
them, in terms of numbers of viewers attracted to an individual source.
That's not to say it won't happen, but the concentration of readership,
as of a couple of years ago, was all in favor of special-interest print
media.

I guess it depends on the evidence you are seeking... For me, I guess I'm
basing my opinion on what I experience here.

If I spend $2000 on a reoccuring print ad, I might get a customer or two a
year...

If I spend $2000 on a web site, Google AdWords and some site enhancements,
etc. I get a customer a month minimum...

I made the mental leap from my situation to the internet as a whole
because I see my drill's press releases bringing in lots of business and a
lot of my ads going nowhere.

No marketing job is trickier, and more varied, than marketing a specialized
product or group of products for a small business, whether it's industrial
or consumer. In my years of advertising and marketing, businesses like yours
probably made up half of my clients -- not in dollars, but in number.
They're always the toughest and they tend to have very different, if not
unique or singular, solutions.

Services such as search engines and AdWords complicate the equation. Now
you're operating in a mode that was impossible to do for years, in which
people seek you out. That boosts your efficiency if not your reach, and it
lets you skip over some steps in the process.

But whether you have the optimum program is an open question. I'm not
presuming an answer, only commenting that the question isn't answered by
your experience. If it works to your satisfaction, though, I wouldn't mess
with it.

The biggest marketing question in such situations, once you're satisfied
with your sales volume, is where it may leave you vulnerable to competition.
That's a VERY big question, and another one that we couldn't touch here. A
key issue that determines it is your current market share; another is your
relative recognition in your core marketplace.


Now... If a magazine carries a free press release for me in their paper
version and I get a few calls from it, I'm likely to place an ad. ...but
I haven't had that scenario play out in 3-4 years of "beta testing" print
magazines. I've all but dropped print advertising and run 100% on the web
these days.

Well, that's a complicated issue, and far more than we could discuss here.


Now, *total* readership of Internet media doubtless is higher. But there
are so many voices that there is no effective way to "cover" a market
with them, at least, in industry. There are a lot of reasons for this but
the primary one is that the specialized media depend heavily on their
long-developed, institutionalized ways of internally communicating, and
no such thing exists for metalworking in Internet media. I doubt if any
bloggers are getting 300+ press releases before a major trade show, for
example. I frequently got 300 - 600 for a show all by myself when I was
writing for relatively large-circulation industrial magazines. The
publicity managers only had to mail to a dozen of us who wrote about the
machining trades and they could cover 65% or a little more of the market.
Covering the other 35% is very difficult, and it might take 100 mailings
to cover another 20%. Publicity is a numbers game.

Good point. However, what good does it do if 1000 people or 100,000
people see your ad in XXXX magazine but are not on the market for that
product?

None. The ones that matter are the ones that either are in the market now,
or might be in the future. That's where your demand-pull will come from.
It's also where you can deliver your message with some hope of influencing
future sales.

The basic truths in small-business marketing are that people won't buy your
product unless they prefer it; they won't prefer it if they don't know about
it; and they won't know about it if you don't tell them about it.
Recognition is ALWAYS lower than business owners, their sales managers, and
even their marketing managers (if they're not well-trained) believe. I see
that you have positioned yourself well on Google and that you probably get a
lot of hits based on people searching on relevent terms. What I don't know
about your market, but which probably has a lot to do with who gets the
business, is which names a prospective customer will recognize when they do
a search. The ones that pass you over for a competitor, simply because
they've heard of the competitor but they've never heard of you, is almost
always a larger number than a typical advertiser realizes. And you will
never know it happened.

Most of us go to a search engine and type in whatever we want to buy these
days. Saturating the web, at least in my case gives me more business per
dollar or hour spent.

...At least when you look at the "bang per buck" model of evaluating it.
For the price of a 1/8th page ad in some magazines, I can set up a
decent web site dedicated to the product and host it for two years.

Sure. But you're talking about advertising. Publicity and advertising are
two different animals. And the role that your web site is fulfilling in
the marketing-communications mix is not much like that filled by print
advertising. You may get a similar result, but it's coming to you in a
different way.

Point well taken.

For example, a specialized web site for a narrow interest (yours)
actually is an intermediate step in making most industrial sales. It's
probably doing a good and cost-effective job of informing people about
your products but a poor one of building your recognition among the
potential market. There are still at least 120,000 or so commercial
metalworking shops and plants in the US. You can't reach them with a web
site for a specialized business, so you're not priming the pump with that
web site. What you're probably doing is drawing in an audience that
already has a high interest in your product. That's a good thing, but it
doesn't get you in touch with a large percentage of the market that
doesn't know you exist.

Most of those folks know some brand names only because they use the
product already... Many of them wouldn't have a clue how to get in touch
with the manufacturer or distributor of that 20-30 year old unit they own
so they do a web search and find them or me...

And therein lies a story, one that industrial marketers could exploit much
better than they do. But don't get me started. d8-)


The new customers looking for a product search for that type of product
and find them or me too...

But brand recognition? In my field, that's not too important so I guess
my logical thinking will never synch with the mainstream logical thinking
model.

You may well have the ideal program; I wouldn't try to judge it from a
distance.


Every month. I spent an hour talking to Mark Albert at _Modern Machine
Shop_ the other day. I have standing orders for articles from three more
magazines. I don't think I'll write them, for several reasons, but I'm in
touch with the industry.

There are few long-experienced pros in that business these days, and even
fewer in industrial advertising. As a business, it's just hanging on.

I feel for Mark and all of those folks in the industry because their
product serves a purpose that many other outlets can not... At the same
time, their potential readers are retiring or being outsourced to the
cheapest overseas bidder. As my dad always says, the US market for
machining and metalworking is much like the farm market was in the early
1960's. We are maintaining what we have at best and loosing all but the
most niche market stuff to overseas growers... er... Manufacturers...

CLIP

Well, it's a cost of doing business for many people. Trade shows are
always a mixed bag -- like magazines, there are too many of them -- but
they're one way to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry. It's
all too easy, as you doubtless know, to wind up being insulated when you
serve a small market.

That's the #1 danger for us here... If the WWW disappears, we only have
maybe 10% of our current business as repeats / spare parts, etc. We would
survive, but my Bentley (yeah right! I drive a 1997 Nissan with close to
200,000 miles) would have to go I'm sure...

You're probably a lot better off avoiding it. g For one thing, when
people see your press badge, they want to corner you and talk your ear
off. It's better for you, I'm sure, to be free of that and just to go
where you want and see what you want.

LOL... I guess you understand better than anyone why my job title on the
badge usually says "Other" rather than "Small Business Owner With Cash to
Spend", eh?

Thanks for the insight by the way. Would never have thought to post a
question about the subject here seeking an answer(s) like this.

I always enjoy the subject, Joe.

--
Ed Huntress