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INDUSTRIAL ADVERTISING FOR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Foreword: Much of what we are going to tell you in this discussion is going to be different from what you will likely hear from many other sources. The truth in advertising is: 'There is very little truth in the advertising industry.' Much advertising advice is based on what is best for the agency or account executive - not the client or their product. Read, heed and believe! You are being treated to the results of 45 years experience, with all size budgets, selling and marketing in the industrial technical world.

BEST BUY

Editorial publicity is far and away your most effective form of advertising. It is the sweat equity of the ad business. We mean writing and publishing press releases, problem-solving case studies and technical feature articles in the thousands of worldwide trade and professional journals published each month. This is the way a small company, with a small budget, or no budget at all, can have their product or services news become known worldwide, and quickly. The major expense involved - some time - some writing skills - some postage stamps. As your free editorial efforts get published, the quality, quantity and source of reader inquiries will point the way to the right publications worthy of your paid space advertising dollars. That is smart market research.

A GOOD BUY

Space advertising is generally most cost-effective in vertical-oriented (profession dedicated) trade publications. For example, if you make live centers for CNC automatic lathes, you would normally have better results from a small paid advertisement in Automatic Lathe Operator Magazine than from a large paid ad in World Industry or General Industrial Product News.

INCREASING YOUR REACH

Go for more small space ads in a wider variety of specialized (trade dedicated) books rather than spending all your money in one place. Do not listen to anyone trying to sell you 'page dominator deals,' several ads on the same page, larger ads, unnecessary color or multiple repetitions of a bad ad. Folks who are serious about industrial/technical product awareness and purchasing are often looking for solutions to specific problems, or they are looking into the sources where they may find a new bearing, a new pump, a new-type welding wire. You don't need the biggest or brightest ad in the book to attract their attention. Secret Good Deal:  Look near back of book in area of employment advertising for business card size ads.

EFFECTIVE INDUSTRIAL ADVERTISING CREATION

Kick the creative types out on their asses. Open the first major industrial magazine you can get your hands on. Look through it. You will find a dazzling, full-page photograph of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon and after 5 minutes of detective work you will discover these fools are selling pipe couplings or electric motors. Moral - you have a very few seconds to deliver your message and tell the reader what you are selling, so do not waste your reader's short attention span. The reader's eyes and mind will move on quickly. Forget cute ads and attempts by novice copywriters or graphic artists to demonstrate their cleverness. Keep your ad copy and graphics simple and direct.

CORPORATE IMAGE ADVERTISING

Do not listen to this kind of bull. You are in business to sell products and services. The only companies that can afford corporate image advertising are those that are so big and rich that they really don't need it. If you are a traditional ad hack, you had best get lost in the shuffle of a big company where your misdirected efforts will not really affect anything. You may pick up a fat enough pay check to keep up with your fellow, arrogant but stupid yuppies.

INTERNET AS AN INDUSTRIAL ADVERTISING MEDIUM

Everyone who builds a web site goes on the internet with high hopes. Most people are soon discouraged as they learn the truth about what you can and can not do with a web site. The internet is not an active marketing activity. If you simply build a web site to sell industrial products, you are going to be disappointed. You will find it is harder and it costs more to promote your web site than it costs to build it in the first place. You might compare a web site to having a book you wrote placed in a vast public library, the largest in the world. How is anyone going to find it? Why should they find it? Why should anyone read it? They won't! There are many thousands of similar books on closely related subject matters in the same repository. The best thing about the internet has been the ability to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. When you can get away with it without running into sick flamers, college profs, jealous ad agencies, or PR competitors, etc. it is a good deal for any advertiser.

The most successful web-based sales programs have been those that prey on the baser, more prurient side of human activity, and a few other more common consumer-type needs. It has much less real business/commercial/industrial value.

The people who dominate the internet are the same big players that dominate everything else in life. They are the people that can afford expensive banner advertising that pops up as soon as you turn on your browser or visit any search engine. 

The internet is an excellent medium in its role of library depository for the rapid deployment of requested information. Concentrate on useful content when you build your site. You should primarily depend on other ways of advertising your products and services. You need to work in the more active, better-established arenas such as the worldwide trade press to attract initial interest. You can generate many more sales leads, with less investment, through monthly editorial items, press releases, case histories, feature articles and paid space advertising in monthly trade magazines and professional journals. If you are going to have a web site (and they are useful, so I think you should) the first place you should promote it is through the trade press.  

TRADE SHOWS

A poor advertising and marketing investment. Here is why: The objective of advertising and marketing is to support the company sales effort. Furthermore, it should support that objective in the most cost-effective manner possible. We support sales by expanding potential qualified buyer awareness of the product or service. We generate product inquiries and sales leads. There is nothing you can accomplish at a trade show that can not be accomplished much cheaper and more effectively in other ways (lower cost = more qualified leads).

The highest possible cost-per-lead comes from trade shows. Nothing is worse, other than random door knocking or cold- calling. 

The competition will talk if we are not there in Chicago (at the really big show)!

Let them talk, talk, talk. Talk is cheap and you are demonstrating your marketing smarts by staying home. Incidentally, did your talking competitors ever buy anything from you?

Typical Trade Show Numbers: World Widget Show. The promoters claim 50,000 attendees. They nearly always inflate/round off/lie. You will be lucky if there are 30,000 real people coming through the hall entrance. The 30,000 must be divided into areas of interest. If all the attendees have a common or closely related interest, either it is a very small show, or you wandered into a rock concert by mistake! Now pre-suppose, there are 700 exhibitors, exhibiting 3,500 different products. You manufacture GREEN FLOOR WIDGETS. Start calculating the odds of how many attendees can have any possible serious interest in or use for GREEN FLOOR WIDGETS? It will be surprising enough if their legs hold up long enough to get them to your Booth # 23 on Aisle 14-J. How many hard-earned dollars did that remote patch of floor space cost you in total? The best selling that goes on in conjunction with any trade show happens long before the show. It is called selling the show space.

Now my friends we will kick another sacred cow, another bad advertising and marketing deal.

ANNUAL REGISTERS/DIRECTORIES, ETC.

One major example of this type book has a sales force of over 300 people earning their annual living by selling advertising in these books. Extend out the hypothetical numbers involved. The sacred cow is actually a very fat cash cow! I understand one of these publications has a circulation/distribution of about 90-100,000 multiple volume sets. These books, mostly full of expensive paid advertising, are sold to the users and the price is not cheap.

We will not get into a long discussion of why this is not a smart marketing approach. Go through the odds, or probability numbers, again of your selection potential from these passive, usually dusty books, sitting in a bookcase for a year or more? It is not good. Not totally useless but the same objectives can be achieved more effectively in other ways. A paid ad in the right, vertically- oriented, monthly trade journal is much more likely to turn into a good marketing investment than any annual type issues. A monthly usually gets read or browsed hard, cover to cover, then placed away, handed down to other readers, or thrown away. Your ad has a chance to be seen. The annual comes in, last year's copy is tossed out and the new one takes it's place on the bookshelves for a year. Sometimes read - more often not.

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Last modified Feb 19, 2008

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