Marketing Communications
The changing nature of selling...
Personal selling has an important strategic role in communicating between a company and its customers, no more so than in the chemical industry.
But selling in the 21st century is changing. The days of the business lunch and dropping by on a Friday have long since gone. Time and resource constraints mean that customers only want to see you when they need to, or when they perceive you might be able add value to their business.
Customers today are better educated, more discerning and less willing to give you their time freely.
Selling made easier...
To keep your name in front of customers it is becoming more important than ever to communicate by other means.
Selling may be the primary way to communicate with customers but it's far from being the only tool in the box. Other forms of marketing communication are growing in importance - who can now argue against the necessity of having a web site?
Chemical distributors and producers need to reassess what a marketing communications programme could do for them in the context of the plan for expanding their businesses. It could well make the job of selling your company, products and services a lot easier.
Ways a marketing communications programme can help your business
- Inform, educate & get enquiries. Make selling easier for your sales teams. Generating leads from both existing and prospective customers should be a key communications task. Inform your customers of new product developments before the sales person gets around to visiting them.
- Remind, reinforce and sell ‘Cross selling’ of other products to existing customers is a critical activity particularly for chemical distributors with a large portfolio of products to promote. Customers will forget what you've got to offer unless you remind them regularly. After all you're not the only person selling to them that day.
- Branding and image building. Raising knowledge of your company, what you're about and what you do is important in making people feel comfortable in trading with you. In many ways this is more important for newer, smaller businesses than those with well established brands. Chemical distributors should try to highlight what makes them different from the competition and target existing and prospective Principals as well as customers.
- Build customer loyalty and retention. Direct, regular communication all helps build customer loyalty. Maintaining an on-going dialogue through communications makes customers feel wanted. Retaining existing customers and keeping them satisfied is as important for a developing a successful business as gaining new ones.
It is vital to plan in advance to avoid a lot of wasted effort both in preparing the marketing activity and handling the response to it afterwards.
You should look to run an integrated campaign with different elements working together both at different times and simultaneously.
Each activity direct mail, trade press advertising, PR, telemarketing - leverages the other. If done right ‘the sum of the total’ is greater than ‘sum of the parts’.
How Chemagility can help you use marketing communications to grow your business?
- Marketing communications programme. Chemagility have the marketing expertise and industry knowledge to develop a integrated marketing communications plan tailored to your business needs.
- Telemarketing. We have experience in the 'ins' and 'outs' of implementing telemarketing and its use as a highly effective tool for account management and for following-up mailing and email campaigns.
- Mailers, newsletters & brochures. We can produce all types of leaflets, mailers and brochures in a design that reflects your corporate identity, gives maximum impact and will appeal to your target audience. We are able to draw on our experiences in the chemical distribution industry in writing creative copy and articles for newsletters and in-house magazines.
- Presentations. We produce PowerPoint and Flash multimedia presentations for field use or distribution on CD.
- Exhibitions & Events. Our team has successfully designed exhibition stands for a number of international and industry events related to the chemical industry. We can arrange everything from design concepts, to stand build and event management.
- Public Relations. Chemagility are experienced in writing news releases for the trade press that serves the chemical industry and end use markets. We have good media contacts and know how best to present news stories for maximum coverage.
- Integration with your web strategy, email and on-line advertising. We will ensure your marketing communication plan mixes the best of traditional with the best of current online practices. Our real strengths are in web design & strategy, search engine marketing, email campaigns and on-line advertising.
