Evolving to maximize ROI
The road to a solid Web strategy doesn’t end when a searcher becomes a customer. Now, you tweak based on the actions you’re tracking.
“With all those quotes we get, we just need to pay attention to: What’s the latest and greatest?” Eggemeyer says. “We seem to be getting an awful lot of requests for the widget so we need to make sure that on our website we talk about how we make widgets.”
Companies won’t survive without adjusting to changing customer needs; so must websites also stay current. Analytics make online success and failure obvious, so they can help you optimize your strategy.
“You want to get your return on your investment,” Rubin says. “You want to look at what your cost-per-click comes out to be, and then you jettison those programs that don’t work and you invest more in those that do.”
As you think ahead to adding new digital components like social media, e-mail newsletters and blogs — which Rubin only added, one at a time, after the website was up and running — keep the overall strategy cohesive.
“It all has to work together and provide seamless integration across different platforms,” he says. “We also have a small pay-per-click program with Google and we’re working with Google Maps, but they all lead back to our website. It all has to reinforce each other. It all has to be consistent.”
You’re probably wondering when you’ll see these pieces come together into a return on investment. Eggemeyer saw his ROI pretty quickly after Keats’ site went live in April 2009. A former customer that had lost touch with its one-time supplier reunited when discovering online that Keats still had tools to make a certain part. One quick order paid off the new website.
The home run, though, if you ask Eggemeyer, was the phone call from a military contractor in Alabama, who had seen Keats’ site. The call led to a million-dollar order to develop a metal clip for a plastic bullet.
“Would have I been able to get that customer back with the traditional sales methods?” Eggemeyer asks. “No, because they wanted to see that I could do the zinc plating and that I could hold certain tolerances. And that isn’t on a brochure I’ve ever done, and they probably wouldn’t be asking that of me at tradeshow — and I don’t know if I could have given them that attention to sit down and talk engineer to engineer. But that stuff was on my website, and that gave them the warm fuzzy that Keats can do it.”
All in all, Keats’ sales are up 30 percent since the launch, and the number of quotes more than doubled from 600 to 1,400 in one year. Maxi similarly grew sales by 37 percent while setting four consecutive months of records, bringing in customers from new industries and locations. In fact, Rubin faces a wonderful problem because of the growth.
“The next step is moving to a bigger building,” he says. “We’re actually at full capacity in terms of the throughput in our warehouse. We’ve been so successful with this strategy that it’s difficult for us to add new customers.”
Rigano hears similar stories frequently, another sign that effectively leveraging your website as a sales tool is a crucial ingredient of growth.
“We’re asking people, ‘How did you (grow)?’” Rigano says. “The majority have said, ‘The strategies for success were developing business in new geographies, developing new innovative products and services, pursuing business in new industries, increasing online marketing. That’s how they’re continuing to grow, and that’s all through web strategies.”
How to reach: Thomas Industrial Network, (866) 585-1191 or www.thomasnet.com
How to reach: Keats Manufacturing Co., (800) 532-8763 or www.keatsmfg.com
How to reach: Maxi Container, (800) 727-6294 or www.maxicontainer.com
Want to hear more stories like this? Read more on:
How Matt Eggemeyer’s web strategy keeps customers coming to Keats Manufacturing.
How Carmen DeLeo crafted an online strategy for CDM Electronics.
How Don Ascione successfully put all his “eggs in the Internet basket.”
