All posts by Bill

Advertising, Content, Marketing

BlueRally Marketing completes FCS, Inc. Website Redevelopment

BlueRally Marketing has concluded a website redevelopment project for FCS, Inc. FCS, Inc. is a growing industrial services firm based in Danville, Virginia. The firm has two divisions focused on professional janitorial services and large scale industrial cleaning. It maintains contracts throughout the mid-Atlantic region and has recently provided contract work as far away as California.

“FCS, Inc. is one of Danville’s great business success stories,” William Wiebking, BlueRally Marketing’s advertising director, said. “Most of their work is necessary but unglamorous. They engaged Danville’s BlueRally Marketing to find new customers and grow their regional industrial portfolio. The redevelopment of the fcsindustrialsolutions.com website is one part of a larger ongoing effort to market the company regionally. Danville has good road and rail connections for regional growth, and FCS, Inc. is capitalizing on its location as it continues growth in other states and cities.”

FCS, Inc. had two challenging marketing issues facing its industrial services division in 2017. First, the division had limited exposure to its core audience, factory owners and facilities managers. It sought a better method to reach this specific audience, and engage those business leaders successfully. Second, the firm needed a website geared for sales to capture additional interest and leads.

FCS, Inc. offers 12 very different industrial services focused on facility cleaning and maintenance. Services range from explosive dust removal to confined space rescue. Their previous website content provided good information on what they do, but the content wasn’t aligned for sales.

“Through its process, BlueRally Marketing studied the company and discovered several very active efforts FCS, Inc. was doing to win business but were not reflected in their website’s message,” Wiebking said. “They have a very young, responsive, and competitive team. They visit industrial sites on a call and strive to provide thoughtful project quotes expeditiously. This is important information to share with new industrial prospects, who want problems solved quickly and their production lines undisturbed. FCS, Inc. solves problems quickly, but no one arriving at the site knew about their exceptional diligence.”

With the primary content work of the FCS, Inc. website is complete, BlueRally Marketing will remain working closely with the firm to ensure ongoing performance from their marketing efforts. The ongoing goal maintains a healthy forward growth trajectory for FCS, Inc, while being responsive to changes at the firm and with their customers, and outmaneuvering their competition.

BlueRally Marketing LLC is a marketing and professional services firm providing growth-oriented businesses expertise in advertising, content development, and lead generation. Danville and Pittsylvania County companies utilize BlueRally’s 17 years of experience in marketing and public relations to developing an effective, unified message across different advertising platforms.

Teamwork

Make Marketing your Team Member

Teamwork is learned on athletic fields and espoused by almost every primary and secondary school in the country. Teamwork is a central concept in Marine squads, CDC researchers and aerospace engineers. Teamwork is what we cheer for at the Superbowl. It is a character commodity that is valued by employers, employees and Americans in general.

It could be argued that teamwork is what turned America into an economic powerhouse. Men and women working together for a much larger, common goal of peace and prosperity.

Teamwork, then, is the organizational power that turns daunting tasks into manageable efforts. Where one person has a great difficulty with a large task, a group working together can make the same effort much easier or even simple.

Effective marketing is a large task. Locating and engaging new customers with a product or service, often contested by a competitor, is always ongoing. It typically requires elbows on the table in terms of work output. It requires people working together, talking and being adaptive to changes with the target audience.

Many small to mid-size businesses approach this large, competitive area of business with a great ‘I can’ attitude, and quickly realize that there is not enough time or money to tackle a given vision. Halfhearted attempts are still half-hearted.

Additionally, there is the ongoing issue of effectively engaging the target audience for a business. Do display ads, emails or social media work with the business audience? Are newspapers, TV channel and radio stations still valid? Is the message still on target?

Experience counts. If lead generation and customer growth is what you seek, hire marketing partners that will help lift the load, free up time and move the company forward.

USMC Team Building Course
USMC Combat Engineers going through a modified sappers course on August 1, 2016 participate in a team building exercise. Image by Pfc. David Weikle.
Marketing

The Silver Bullet

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One Christmas Eve afternoon, a letter carrier approached a major hospital with a certified letter. The letter was addressed to the president of the hospital, who had already left for the Christmas holiday. Additionally, his secretary and all of the top administrators had followed the CEO’s lead.

The letter carrier needed a signature. While the carrier continued to make the rounds delivering the non-certified mail, an eye was kept open for someone available to accept the certified letter. In radiology, there was a place for the mail, but no one was available to sign for the letter. The same situation was found in cardiology, orthopedics, oncology, neurology and neurosurgery. Even maintenance was gone for the day.

The marketing department was the next stop. Opening the door, the letter carrier discovered a fully staffed, functioning office. Papers were flying, people were hustling and deadlines were crunching. The department was full of activity, and the letter carrier finally found someone to sign for the letter.

Often a serious marketing effort involves a continuous focus on schedules, data and issuing payments. The brand strategy and creative need to be responsive to the market while maintaining consistency in message. Stories need to be developed and told. A unified effort must be maintained to tie it all together, which is basically a strategy. Details in everything demand attention.

Real marketing is a non-stop grind.

Whether you’re new to marketing or a seasoned pro, the temptation to find a Silver Bullet that can both increase sales while decreasing workload is great. Would a marketer enjoy joining their colleagues and retire from work early on Christmas Eve? Would they equally enjoy showing their boss an impact on sales? Absolutely.

For CEO’s, it is comforting to think that a Silver Bullet will provide an edge over the competition. There typically is no one thing that pushes sales to the next level. For example, social media is a big buzz with many who think about marketing, but it is not a one-size-fits-all. It is just another tool in the marketing toolbox.

For example, a business that manufactures bolts is not the same as one that serves coffee. While both could find a way to utilize social media, they will take a different approach.

Bolt buyers are likely to be other businesses with a consistent need for bolts. Bolts sales would likely be a commodity. Coffee sellers sell to consumers, and need to keep customers engaged in buying their coffee brand. In this scenario, social media would lend itself easily to the coffee seller. There is probably not much need to market mass bolt sales on social media.

Unfortunately, everyone has heard about using social media to push sales. It is a good bet that all coffee sellers are pushing their brand on social media. Competitors attempt to emulate success once they see it, too. Silver bullets are rarely exclusive and once noticed, are rarely ignored by good competition. They don’t remain silver bullets very long.

When you approach marketing and sales, there is no easy way to win. The best marketers always have a plan. They might make their efforts look easy, but their is a reality. Good marketing usually involves a lot of hard work, just as the letter carrier discovered on Christmas Eve.

Buying Advertising

The Phone Book is Dead

When was the last time that you used a phone book? If you’re like most people, you probably can’t remember. That stack of phone books hidden in the end table has been gone for a while. There might be one slim edition lying around for that ‘just in case’ moment, but failing that desire it probably went into the trash can.

The old Yellow Pages was the money maker for the phone company. Expensive black and white ads trying to position your company in certain categories. Later, they added color since that is what customer’s eyes looked at first. Ads were expensive and the approval process was annoying. While it connected many new customers with businesses, it was a chore to use and heavy to lug out. And, it was time-consuming when you didn’t know exactly what you were seeking.

Now that the phone book is gone, how do customers find your business? The answer is in your purse or pocket. It’s the smartphone.

Smartphone owners use their devices every day, multiple times per day. You might be one of those individuals. More than half of all current smartphone users have used their phone to get health information (62%) and do online banking (57%). They research real estate listing for homes and rentals (44%). They look for jobs (43%) and submit job applications (18%). They lookup government resources (40%) or focus on education (30%).

Smartphones are a part of society. They are used for communications with Text use over 92%, voice use over 91% and email use over 87%. Over 80% of smartphone users access their phones for the internet. Video, music, and SNS are also accessed over the devices, and these segments are growing.

How big is the smartphone market? 2016 Statista research projects smartphone ownership to grow to 207.2 million users or an increase of 16.7 million users over 2015. In a U.S. population of 320 million, that means roughly two-thirds of the country has smartphone capability. By 2019, smartphone use is expected to grow to 236.8 million.

“Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now smartphone owners, and for many, these devices are a key entry point to the online world,” said Aaron Smith at the Pew Research Center. “64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011. Smartphone ownership is especially high among younger Americans, as well as those with relatively high income and education levels.”
In advertising your business, being found on a smartphone is where you want to be. This is true for search, social and for navigation. If someone is looking for your goods or services, then get with the program and position yourself for success in everyone’s pocket.

“Number of smartphone users in the United States from 2010 to 2019 (in millions),” Statista 2016.

“U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015,” by Adam Smith, The Pew Research Center, April 1, 2015.

Marketing

The Marketing Rule of Ten

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An old, successful investor once expressed his buying philosophy in his stock picks. He stated that nine times out of ten he loses on picking winners. These nine stocks give him a loss or become duds, if he could manage a neutral outcome, in his portfolio. Then with a gleam in his eyes he stated, “But the tenth stock, it more than makes up for the others.”

He called it his Rule of Ten.

Marketing is much the same way. There are a multitude of options to communicate a message in any given market. Standard efforts often include display, radio, outreach, search, social and video. Typically, buyers want more than one of them to drive a successful marketing effort.  But, which ones?

There is a lot of buzz about online offerings, to include banner ads, search and advertising on mobile devices. There is opportunity there, but is that all a business needs?  Does video, including cable and satellite, have a place? Are newspapers and print still useful? Should a business participate in a trade show.

Every business message is unique.  Connecting that message with the right audience, and then trying to grow the audience, is the real marketing work. Ensuring an effort is structured for the best chance of success is the craft.

Just like investments, many advertising buys are duds. They typically won’t hurt a business if they are bought, but they also won’t help a business realize a goal, too. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of a reasonable advertising effort won’t be known until it is fully explored. Working with an experienced marketing professional will help shorten this process, and likely save money.

Like the old pro investor, marketing efforts might take nine duds before a winner is discovered. Finding the winners in the field of advertisers is the work. When you have a winner, the bottom line will show.