Without the internet, our company would no longer exist. That is the
stark truth in a business that can no longer be sustained by local
markets or conventional marketing. The message is: ‘Go global or go
broke.’
It seems incredible that we took our first tentative steps into web
trading as recently as 2003. At that time our business was still 95%
UK-based and most enquiries came from the traditional sub-contracted
plating and finishing sectors.
Having established an internet presence with our first proper web
site, my eyes were first opened up to its potential at an exhibition in
Germany during spring 2004. A company from the Far East that had found
my website came to the stand, bought several items of equipment and
handed over a cheque for £45,000.00. This covered the cost of the show
by a factor of 10!
That same year, our export sales rose from 5% to 20%, and the
following year to 35%. After falling back slightly last year, partly due
to the strength of sterling, we are now seeing overseas sales rising
again towards the 35% level.
It is not only exports that have benefited from web exposure. For our
machinery resale business, the internet has unlocked previously
untapped opportunities across a myriad of manufacturing processes and
products. From blasting paving stones to barrelling widgets, from tiny
workshops in Mumbai to large factories in Minnesota, they are all
beating a path to our door.
Their requirements are diverse and unpredictable. Some are looking
for a stop-gap solution to a production bottle-neck. Some require major
new plants and others have equipment that they want to sell to us.
Although many are ‘tyre kickers’, others offer valuable opportunities.
So how do we do it? For a start, we have adhered to the mantra:
‘Content is king’. Just as the dishwasher repair man told me recently
that ‘You can never add too much salt’, so our webmaster tells me, ‘You
can never add too much keyword content.’ Our site is stuffed with
information on all of the key subjects in our industry: Plating,
degreasing, peaning, pickling, annealing and rumbling to name just a
few. When multiplied by the six languages that the site is created in,
it all adds up to a big fat fly for a Google spider.
Secondly, we leave no stone unturned in the process of bringing
people to our site. As well as traditional marketing and mass emailing,
we have also introduced a website membership scheme. This is building
into a large global community of industry professionals, entrepreneurs,
academics and others that have opted in to our database. In turn we are
able to automatically keep them informed about items of interest as they
are added to our stock.
We employ a professional company to undertake ‘organic’ search engine
optimisation. This maintains our position on the front page of Google
for many of the key search phrases that are relevant to our business.
Because our products are so diverse, we have a ‘long tail’ of over 200
search terms hitting our site on any given day.
For tactical marketing of specific areas, such as our new product
lines, we utilise the Google ‘pay-per-click’ scheme. This places short,
punchy classified ads onto Google pages to initiate page views and
encourage enquiries.
Of course, none of this activity comes cheaply. However, we have
discovered over the years that the Business Link network is a very
valuable resource to industry. For our most recent phase of web
development, we received 33% funding, which is well worth having.
As the recession starts to bite and doing deals gets more complex, we
can console ourselves in the knowledge that our web site continues to
creep up the search engine rankings, our membership scheme is attracting
new potential buyers every day and our brand recognition is growing
throughout the global finishing industry.
In the next issue, I will reveal how our development has integrated
our purchasing and accounting systems into one web-driven business
platform, linked to a worldwide marketing network.
