Transcript Air Knives - EXAIR - Chief Executive Boards International

CEBI Fall Summit 2010
Web Marketing 101
Bryan Peters
President
Exair Corporation
EXAIR.com
Over 100,000
current or
future
customers
visit
EXAIR.com
every month
EXAIR.com : Origins
• Original project was to build a BBS in 1995
• That project was scrapped in late 1995 in
favor of web site
• First web site built in 1996 using
WordPerfect
• Web hosting through WorldCom cost
around $300/month
EXAIR.com : Goals (Original)
• Allow customers to download installation and
maintenance sheets
• Scope expanded to allow customers to
download CAD drawings
• Adobe PDF format became popular in the mid1990’s and became an option for literature
distribution
EXAIR.com : Strategy
• Make every information transaction easier
• Automate some customer interactions
• Deliver deeper product and technical content
than a printed catalog
• Fully commit - Use offline assets (letterhead,
product labeling, advertising, catalogs,
business cards, etc.) to drive traffic online
EXAIR.com : Content
• Applications – Application Engineers
• PDF files – Graphic Designer / Marketing
• CAD files - Engineering
• Presentations – Application Engineers
• FAQs – Application Engineers
• Press Releases – Marketing / Engineering
• Videos – Marketing / Application Engineers
Finding ways to reuse content is critical!
EXAIR.com : E-commerce
• In 1998, we began selling products online
• We accept credit cards or purchase orders
• Only end users buying at list price targeted
• Over 10k online orders
• All online orders flow automatically into our
ERP system for processing, and then back to
the web site for automatic customer
notification and shipment tracking
Co-branded web sites
• In 2000, launched first co-branded web site
• Today, we have 60 sites in 23 languages
EXAIR Blog : Origins
• In 2008, launched a blog as another way to
highlight applications using EXAIR products
• In 2009, the blog evolved to include content
beyond product applications
EXAIR Blog : Strategy
• Make blog an external gateway to EXAIR.com
• Get contributions from other departments
• Keep marketing largely away from the blog
• Show a personality – this is a branding tool
• Words are boring. Humor + videos = traffic
• Do not focus on selling through the blog
• Make only ~50% of blog product related
Search Marketing : Overview - Organic
Organic Search
• Driven by the content of your web pages
• Unpredictable, inconsistent and slow
• Created an industry promising fool’s gold
• Relatively inexpensive
• Important for a portion of the audience
• A tool like WebPosition can help
Search Marketing : Overview - Paid
Paid Search
• Show me the money – can be expensive
• More predictable than SEO
• Quickly changeable
• Increasingly competitive
• Important for a portion of the audience
• Mix “high rent” (Google, Yahoo, Bing) with
“low rent” (7 Search, Looksmart)
Search Marketing : Vital Info - Organic
Organic Search
• Beware promises of top position in Google
• Content drives position – and you control
the content
• Some users consider ONLY organic results
and ignore ads
• If you depend solely on this, you will wake
up hungry one day
Search Marketing : Vital Info - Paid
Paid Search
• Easy and quick to start a Google program
• Online tools through Google will give you
estimates for traffic and cost for any
keywords you can imagine
• Pay close attention to settings for language
and country
• Don’t be a hero – being #1 isn’t realistic
for every keyword
Social Media : Examples
• Blog (constant stream of fresh content)
• Twitter (most instant information platform)
• Facebook (largest ad platform in the world)
• YouTube (2nd largest search engine)
• LinkedIn (business networking)
• Viral videos (don’t underestimate humor)
• Docstoc/Scribd (online libraries)
Social Media : Why?
Are any of these right for your business?
Are your customers already using them?
Are your competitors already using them?
Can it be an effective new channel for
information distribution?
Facebook : Why?
• “Like” buttons are everywhere – find a
popular web site without one
• The single deepest consumer preference
database on the planet
• The largest ad platform in the world
• The largest peer-to-peer recommendation
engine in the world
Facebook : Our Strategy
What we are doing:
• EXAIR uses social media, particularly
Facebook, to show our humanity
• Charitable giving, volunteerism and
sponsorships are published here
• Employees are recognized for their “off the
field” efforts here
• Every department contributes potential
content each week
Brand Monitoring
What are your customers saying about you?
What are your competitors saying about you?
What are your competitors doing that you don’t
know about yet?
Where do you find industry information first?
Brand Monitoring
• Google Alerts
• Most valuable tool for brand monitoring
• Has blind spots in social media
• Social Mention
• Like Google Alerts but focused on social
• Twitter
• Press releases are being released to
Twitter before they hit any other place
• One of the two “go to” destinations for
customer complaints, along with Facebook
Contact Frequency
How often do customers hear from you?
Are you defending “your” corner of their brain?
• Printed Newsletter – quarterly
• E-Newsletter – every 3 weeks
• Blog – was weekly, now daily
• Facebook – daily
• Twitter – several (5-10) times per day from
multiple accounts
EXAIR Links
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www.exair.com
blog.exair.com
facebook.com/exair
www.youtube.com/user/exaircorporation
www.linkedin.com/company/963456
@exair
@exair_ke
@exair_bf
@exair_jp
@exair_nr
@exair_bp
Questions?
Questions?
CEBI Fall Summit 2010
Web Marketing 101
Bryan Peters
President
Exair Corporation