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Case Studies – The New Show and Tell

March 30, 2021 Joanne Gustafson

Like many of you, the bane of my work day is the email inbox. The sheer volume of never ending emails is enough to overwhelm. On top of that there are the bolded, all caps subject lines yelling to be opened and read immediately.

The challenge is that email is one of the easiest investments in communicating to and growing your customer base. So why should you bother investing time in sending out emails if they are just going to go ignored? The bigger question is: Why are your emails being ignored and how do you get people to engage?

Yes, your weekly newsletter might be getting deleted from some inboxes during the afternoon slump. But did those emails address your customers’ needs? Probably not.

When investing in an email program there are a couple essential rules to follow. The first is clean and segment your database Take an evening, delegate to an assistant, hire a marketing professional. Whatever it takes, be sure to clean up your list. What you send out, no matter how engaging, won’t matter if the right people don’t see it.

Once you have the missing names or incorrect emails filtered out you should segment your list. There are several ways to segment a list. For most manufacturers segmentation by industry is the best option. You’ll also want to note if the contact is a customer, prospect or vendor. Now you can invest in building your relationship with the people on your list.

The Case Study

The best place to start is the case study. A case study should tell a story to the reader about your company that intrigues and showcases your product and process. When curating case study content, look at the information from your audiences’ viewpoint. A case study shouldn’t have a company centric focus. It should showcase something you did for a customer that may not be readily apparent to others.

This could be based on an innovative new product, or be a story about quality or customer service. If you choose to engage in a consistent email campaign be sure to mix it up a bit. If every case study is about a product, it will feel like you’re selling at your audience.

Case studies should addresses a challenge your customer faced and the solution you worked with them to find. Create a compelling story to showcase a different side of your company outside of products. The best stories are the ones that make the reader think “Wow, if they can do that for another customer then surely they can solve my challenge”.

Note: You don’t necessarily need to mention the name of the customer to get your message across, although it’s best if you’re able to.

When you create a compelling case study that customers can relate to, they will want to know more about your company. When you talk about something that you are passionate about, people listen. Make case studies work for you and showcase that passion.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

Protecting Your Systems

January 27, 2021 Joanne Gustafson

Earlier this month, we told you about a scam email that two of our clients received in December that alleged they had misused photos on their websites. This is just one of many misleading emails or outright scams out there. We will continue to share the ones we come across, but we thought this was a good opportunity to tell you about a service that can help train your employees not to fall victim to scammers.

In the case of the photography scam, we were fortunate that neither client clicked on the link embedded in the email. Most companies count on their employees to know enough to keep their systems safe; however, employees usually are not trained on what to look out for. We recommend training your employees to protect your company from cyber-attacks through phishing scams.

Firewalls and anti-malware software are critical to fighting off cybercriminals and their malicious attacks on your servers, but many employees might not recognize a phishing email or know not to click on an embedded link. One click and you could become the victim of a malware attack. Education on the subject is a must.

Phishing Training will help you…

  • Improve Awareness – If an employee doesn’t know how to distinguish between a legitimate email from a trusted source versus a phishing email, your system could be compromised.
  • Avoid Unplanned Costs – Cyberattacks are expensive. The bad players may be able to access your financials or charge you to get your data back and, in some cases, leave you open to a lawsuit if they access customer information.
  • Ensure Compliance – It’s simple. When hackers have access to your secure data, you risk violating the law in addition to risking civil penalties or a lawsuit.
  • Protect Your Reputation – No one wants to be that company in the news with the major data breach.
  • Create a Team – Educating your employees allows them to work as a team that can recognize a phishing attack and report it before hackers have a chance to take advantage of your network.

For more information on computer safety training, please contact us. We’ll connect you with a service provider who can assist you with your specific company needs.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

Scam Alert

January 12, 2021 Joanne Gustafson

In the last month, we’ve had two clients receive similar emails. Both mentioned images that were used illegally on their website. Since we purchased all images for them, we were sure it was a scam. Fortunately, both clients forwarded us the email without clicking on anything.

PLEASE be on the lookout for any email like the one below:

Hi,

This is Meleena and I am a qualified illustrator.

I was discouraged, putting it lightly, when I recognised my images at your website. If you use a copyrighted image without an owner’s permission, you’d better know that you could be sued by the owner.

It’s unlawful to use stolen images and it’s so mean!

See this document with the links to my images you used at (website name) and my earlier publications to obtain the evidence of my ownership.

Download it now and check this out for yourself: (a link supposedly to a document listing the pages with the images in question)

If you don’t delete the images mentioned in the document above within the next few days, I’ll file a complaint on you to your hosting provider letting them know that my copyrights have been severely infringed and I am trying to protect my intellectual property.

And if it is not enough, you may be pretty damn sure I am going to take legal action against you! And I won’t give you a prior notice again.s

There a are a few ways to immediately identify this as a scam:

  1. Misspelled word – recognised instead of recognized (This technically isn’t a misspelling. That’s how the word is spelled by non-Americans—so it’s more an indication that it’s from another country.)
  2. Request to download a file – never legit unless requested
  3. Threatening language – used to scare recipient into action
  4. No contact information – can’t confirm claim

This is just one of the many scams out there, but it’s rather prevalent these days. We thought we should send out a warning. Remember, NEVER download a file from an email you don’t recognize or remit any kind of payment to a person or company that you can’t confirm.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

The Manufacturers Workforce Summit Series

November 23, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

Web Savvy Marketers is proud to be a Series Sponsor of the Manufacturers Workforce Summit Series presented by Connecticut Manufacturers Resource Group.

The Manufacturers Workforce Summit Series is the state’s only workforce-building event focused solely on manufacturing. Due to the ongoing restrictions on in-person gatherings, event organizers have decided to take the Summit online in an inventive new format. Rather than a single day of workshops and networking, the second annual Summit will feature a series of six online presentations and panel discussions, to be held over the course of ten months beginning on Thursday, October 15.

Each session will be designed to give senior executives in the manufacturing industry the opportunity to learn from thought-leaders and resource providers who can offer solutions to some of the sector’s unique and pressing workforce challenges. Topics will include best practices from around the state, with presentations and panel discussions featuring manufacturers who have had success with recruiting and retaining a dedicated workforce in this highly competitive market. Serving as the program’s emcee will be Ron Angelo, President and CEO of the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) and former Deputy Commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).

The Summit Series has begun. The first event on October 15th was a success. Leesa Schipani moderated a discussion on the Second Chance Program with Peter Brunault and Angel Torres from Whitcraft and Warden Garcia from the Department of Corrections. Note: It’s not too late to sign up.

Register for the remainder of the series and you will be sent the complete video of the October event. 

Click here for more information and the dates/description of each upcoming webinar in the series.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

Not Back to Normal but Better than Normal

July 22, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

A recent article in the CT Mirror calls on education not only to help us recover from the pessimism and economic downturn related to COVID-19, but to actually lead us to a better place than where we were before. I found that interesting, because it addresses education beyond what is taught in the classroom or measured on standardized tests. The article talks about broadening that scope to include something called Collective Impact, saying, “Collaborations such as ‘Cradle to Career’ have accelerated progress for children through collective impact. Collaboration between education and community development efforts are expanding education’s effect on communities. What other segment of organized society has such credentials?”

So how does this relate to manufacturing? Just as education has the best credentials to positively impact communities, manufacturers have the best credentials to help overcome the workforce challenge. We discussed the Collective Impact concept at last year’s Manufacturers Only Workforce Summit. It’s no longer enough to simply seek out and hire employees based on your individual needs as a manufacturer at a specific moment. If we keep doing that, manufacturers will just continue stealing the best employees from each other. Instead, we should be striving to improve the perception of manufacturing jobs throughout our communities. Before a company talks about why it’s great to work for them, they need to explain why it’s great to be in manufacturing overall.

The Manufacturers Workforce Summit Series  is being presented by CT Manufacturers Resource Group (a division of Web Savvy Marketers) and manufacturers who are committed to Collective Impact. They are willing to share their experiences and success stories to help their fellow manufacturers and boost the industry as a whole.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

Consistent Communication – Part IV

July 8, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

How to get the message out

We’ve talked about how to formulate your message and how to keep it consistent while still targeting it to appeal to specific audiences. Now what? How do you get your message out to the people who need to hear it? Here are a few ideas:

• Website/Blog

First of all, you should focus on your website and/or blog. This is where you can be totally in charge of your message without a filter. The goal of all the other online efforts is to drive traffic TO your website so people can see in detail who you are, what you sell, and, of course, find a way to do business with you—so utilizing your website to present the right message is paramount.

A lot of you might have gotten disenchanted with the idea of a “blog” because it seemed frivolous—so it might help to think of your blog as your NEWSROOM. If you’ve developed a new technology or you want to comment on something that’s happening in your industry, a blog post is a great place to start. You control the message, and you position yourself as a member of the thought leadership in your industry. And blog posts, because they are updates to your website content, are great for search engine optimization.

  • LinkedIn/Social Media

These are also great channels for demonstrating thought leadership. Once you’ve done a blog post, you can share it on LinkedIn or your other selected social channels. (You should put some thought into which channels make sense for you—there are a ton of options depending on who you want to reach and what you want to say.) But remember that we’re basically talking about word-of-mouth. How many times have you said that word-of-mouth is your best marketing tool? Social media sharing is online word-of-mouth. People “like” you, they follow you, and they share interesting information about you.

  • Email

Done right, email is still an incredibly powerful tool for connecting with your customers and employees—and people whom you want to become your customers and employees. A few quick tips about email marketing:

  1. Update your database to make sure you are reaching the right people.
  2. Don’t overdo it. If you email too much, people will unsubscribe.
  3. Craft your messages in the way we talked about before. Be consistent with your brand and always keep in mind what matters to THE READER.
  • ThomasNet and CTmrg

There are resources out there that are pulling together stories about how companies are contributing during the pandemic. People need this information, and ThomasNet and CTmrg are two websites that are curating those stories. Make sure they have your information AND that the information exists on your website or your blog so they can link back to it and drive traffic for you.

  • Press Releases and Industry Publications

There is opportunity right now to get your message to a broader audience than you might think. If you are making NEWS, if you are doing something different than anyone else, if you have developed a new product or are doing something in a whole new way in the face of COVID-19, people want to know about that. That deserves a press release.

There are also many, many industry vertical publications out there that might be open to publishing articles about that kind of thing. Most of them are especially interested in success stories or case studies. What is a specific thing you did that solved a specific problem? These pieces can’t be in marketing-speak, but they are needed. Publications are looking for relevant content right now. Look through some of the industry publications you get—you probably get several of them, either in physical form or electronically. What kind of stories do they contain? Do you do similar things? Look for opportunities to share stories of what you are doing well.

Filed Under: Marketing, Tools & Tips

Consistent Communication – Part III

July 1, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

We’ve talked about the importance of creating a segmented database and determining the “voice” of your different messages depending on the audience you are targeting. Now let’s discuss what is worth saying. This is probably the biggest challenge our clients face. What should we talk about?

To help them answer that question, we’ve found that interviewing them on a regular basis can be beneficial. Most of the time, the interview starts with a simple, “What’s new?”—and the response is usually, “Same old, same old.” That’s to be expected, but because we approach these interviews from an “outsider” perspective, we’re able to help the clients uncover topics that might be interesting to their audiences even if they aren’t so interesting to the clients themselves.

A 15-minute chat can often yield three or four great ideas to write about. If you don’t have access to someone from the outside to do interviews like these, have one of your employees do it. Just sit down and talk about what the business is up to, and you’ll probably find that the process will help you to formulate messaging.

It’s a common theme among manufacturers—they are so busy with day-to-day operations that they don’t realize that what they are doing can be really interesting to someone from the outside, particularly prospective customers. For example, maybe you just bought a brand-new piece of equipment and brought it online. Does it increase your capacity or give you a capability that you didn’t have before? Customers and prospects will want to know about that! Is it a great new technology? Employees and recruits might really get excited about it!

You also should think about what you are doing in relation to what’s happening in your industry or in the world at large. Since early spring, the focus of almost every aspect of our lives has been the pandemic. What did you do during this time? Did you focus on helping, like encouraging volunteering or making donations? For instance, several manufacturers in Berlin created a Local Lunchtime Challenge in which they purchased lunches for their employees from local restaurants. It demonstrated their appreciation to their workers, who were going above and beyond to keep the manufacturers going despite the overwhelming challenges, and it also funneled business to restaurants in the community. And by making it a “challenge” and sharing it, they encouraged as many companies as possible to join in. That is a great story!

If you can’t come up with a story from inside your business right now, you can always share other information that you find interesting. Look for articles about manufacturing, business ownership, COVID-19, or anything else that you find informative and helpful. Simply write a quick introduction about why you find the piece worthwhile and then share a link to it. People always appreciate good, practical stories that give them information they need.

So, when you set out to create a message to share with your network, look for something that falls into one of the three categories we’ve talked about:

  • What are you working on?
  • What is going on in the industry or the world? (e.g., COVID-19)
  • What is something I’ve found interesting and helpful?

Filed Under: Marketing, Tools & Tips

Consistent Communication – Part II

June 24, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

Last week, we addressed the need for a segmented database. Once you have that, it’s time to determine your message. Before you start writing blog posts or sending out e-newsletters, you need to decide on the “voice” of your messages. Is it going to be very professional or more casual? Will you be speaking in the first or third person? Will it differ depending on the audience? These are important things to consider before you even begin writing.

To make these decisions, you must first understand your brand. People often think that a “brand” is something that’s important for consumer products or big corporations like McDonald’s or Apple or any of those instantly recognizable logos that come to mind. But every business has a brand, whether they think they do or not. If you have customers, if you have people who are willing to give you money for something, you have a brand. A brand is like a promise. It’s everything that people know in their gut about your company—what they know they will get when they do business with you. It is what differentiates you from your competitors in the minds of the people you want to do business with.

So when you develop messages—LinkedIn posts, advertisements, press releases, email marketing, job postings (those are incredibly important right now)—keeping your brand foremost in your mind as you create them will help you to achieve consistency even though you are crafting the language to appeal to specific audiences.

One way you can flesh out your brand in your mind and use it to craft messages is by using the marketing tool called a SWOT analysis. You’ve probably done that at some point—and if you haven’t done it recently, we’d encourage you to do it especially as we enter a post-COVID 19 world, because so much about the marketplace has changed. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, the letters stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Your brand message should primarily emphasize your Strengths and Opportunities, and as much as possible, downplay your Weaknesses and Threats.

Quick example: Say your biggest strength—your differentiator, your uniqueness—is that you’ve been in business in your field longer than anyone else. You have massive experience. An Opportunity could be that you are incorporating new product lines so you can serve new customers. Perhaps a Threat is that other companies can afford to sell more cheaply than you. When you sit down to craft a message, you’ll want to keep in mind words like “respected,” “valuable,” “experienced”—because you want to attract the attention of people who value the same things you value (customers AND employees). You don’t want people who need products fast, cheap, and in bulk. That’s not you.

So get clear on your brand and what you have to offer, and WHO you want to attract. Then you can tailor your messages to your target audience while still maintaining some consistency.

Finally, a message needs to be about what matters to the person RECEIVING it, not the person sending it. If you are introducing a new product to the market, that’s a great thing to communicate. But the message needs to be about what problem it solves, and how it can make people’s work easier or their lives better. Get out of your own head. Your innovation and how smart you are for coming up with it—that’s not as important as how the product will be used.

This is especially important in the post COVID-19 market. People are helping people. Your products are helping people. I’d bet that everybody reading this has been creating something or doing something that is service-oriented over these last couple of months. That’s where the world is right now, and that’s the tone in the market. So keep that in mind. Why does what your are doing MATTER? If you talk about that, people are going to want to hear what you have to say. Next week, we’ll discuss What’s Worth Saying.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

How Manufacturers Can Communicate Their Capabilities During a Time of Crisis

April 6, 2020 Joanne Gustafson

Letting people know what you can do at this time is a public service.

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis is affecting every individual and every business in America. Sadly, a lot of companies have been forced to suspend operations as demand has fallen off—but for many manufacturers, demand is as great as it ever was, if not exponentially higher. If you are an essential manufacturer who is up and running during this national emergency, you owe it to your customers and the general public to let them know.

This isn’t about raising your profile or marketing your company. Companies like yours are filling vital needs right now, and people are looking for information about your capabilities.

Here are some ideas for how you can get the word out:

• COVID 19 Capabilities Page – Think about what your company is doing (or is capable of doing) as it relates to COVID-19. Have you switched over to manufacturing PPE or other critically needed emergency equipment? What have you done to ensure that your supply chain will be uninterrupted? Have you made changes with the materials you use to reinforce safety and sanitization? These are things people need to know! Create a page or section on your website detailing how your business is addressing COVID-19, and make that page easy to find. Put it in the Capabilities dropdown on your navigation or feature a link to it on your homepage.

• Protecting Your Employees – You have probably taken major steps to protect the health and wellness of your workforce, too. Add that information to your website so people know how serious you take your commitment to keep your employees safe while staying in business. This could be part of the COVID 19 Capabilities Page or you could create a standalone page to thank your employees.

• Press Coverage – If you have the ability to meet a lifesaving need, reach out to the media and let them know. Now is not the time to be shy about communicating your know-how or your capacity to ramp up if needed. A press release detailing what you can do could put you in front of someone who urgently needs your products or capabilities.

• Industry Outreach – ThomasNet has put together a database of manufacturers and their capabilities as they relate to COVID-19 needs. Be sure to share your information with them, as well. Also reach out to your industry publications to learn what information they’re looking for.

• Blogging – Add all this information on your blog, and post regular updates. Things are changing quickly, and you will want to keep visitors to your website up to date on everything you are doing. Make it easy for anyone with a need to quickly understand how you can help.

As an essential manufacturer who is operating during this time of crisis, you are helping to keep our country running. Communicating your capabilities is a service both to your customers and the general public, so don’t neglect to do it. If we can help, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Filed Under: Tools & Tips

Manufacturers Only Workforce Summit

April 16, 2019 Joanne Gustafson

The Connecticut Manufacturers Resource Group (CTmrg) in conjunction with the Hartford Business Journal (HBJ) is hosting a workforce summit geared towards the specific challenges manufacturers face regarding workforce recruitment and retention.

We’re inviting manufacturing company owners and HR directors to attend the event to share unique solutions to their recruitment and retention challenges.

Recruitment and Retention Panel Discussions 

The event will include two panel discussions – one on recruitment and the other on retention. The panels will consist of manufacturers discussing a variety of topics including…

  • Recruiting and working with Military Vets
  • Wow to set up training programs with your local high school
  • 2nd chance programs
  • Next generation on-boarding
  • Profit sharing
  • EQ training
  • There is also a presentation on an alternate workforce

Bonus – Funding Sources and Educational Partners

In addition, we will have representatives from all the funding programs (STEP, Step-up, forgive-able grants, MVP, NETAAC, etc.). There will also be representatives of the technical high school system, community college and state colleges/universities. It will provide a true one-stop resource for funding and education partners.

Join Us

Date: Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Time: 7:30am-12:30pm
Location: UConn Cell & Genome Sciences Building, 400 Farmington Ave, Farmington, CT
Cost: $49.95 (Breakfast and coffee will be provided)

Click Here to Register

We are limited to 100 attendees so be sure to sign up soon.

Filed Under: Events

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