Industrial Marketing

When you boil it all down, you have three customers, Tom, Dick and Harry.

Let’s pretend you have an astronomy website, Astromall 2000.com.

• Tom wants to buy a telescope for his son’s birthday. He knows zilch about what he needs to buy. He has loads of questions and a budget. He needs your site to untangle things for him. Tom is a n00b.
• Dick owns a telescope, reads astronomy magazines and has been to your website in the past. He just got his tax return and wants to buy a new telescope, but needs help from your site on picking sure if he wants a Meade or a Celestron. Dick is an educated buyer.
• Harry has owned telescopes for the last 25 years. He writes the articles in the magazines that Dick reads. He comes to your site because he wants a TeleVue Ethos 2″ Eyepiece to see if you have it available. Harry is an expert.

Your website needs to cater to three very different experiences. Does it? Does your present site do it?

Do you sell digital services? Do you create and ship as bits over the internet? Are you a programmer? Designer? Writer?

If so, are you having trouble landing that dream client?

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years, as both a buyer and sell, that can help you:

1. I want to see a strong digital portfolio. Show the best of the best of your work. If you aren’t proud of it, don’t show it. Don’t expect me to imagine how good you are. I really need to see if your style matches my vision. The bigger your portfolio, the better I can tell if we have a fit.
2. Make your portfolio simple to navigate. Give me through your portfolio in a hurry. Nix the browser pop-ups. Don’t make me cycle through 100 webpages. Don’t send me 25 links in an email to look at. Don’t force me to go to click through to a dozen websites when you can take screenshots and post them all on one page.
3. Keep your portfolio updated. “John’s Voice Overs from 1947″ isn’t exactly inspiring.
4. Don’t have a huge body of existing work? Feel free to get creative. It’s great if you’ve worked with a big company, but those of you who are ambitious won’t be afraid to mock something up that is similar to a big project, like doing the motion design for a fake Apple commercial. (Yes, be honest that it isn’t “official”.)
5. Inject your personality into your site. You’re a real human, I’m a real human. I want to see your face. I want to see you at work. If you don’t think that is very professional, think about this: in the real world, if you were going to sell me a widget, I’d be talking to you in person. I’m not just buying your product or service, I’m buying you, too. (Well, you know what I mean.)
6. When you communicate with me, be enthusiastic and prompt. Sell your work, sell yourself. If you can’t be enthusiastic and prompt when you are trying to get me to commit to hiring you, I know you aren’t going to be when we are attached at the hip.
7. Don’t take “no” personally. I’ve sent out lots of: “my vision and your work style don’t match up.” It doesn’t mean you suck. Some people want Rembrandt and some people want Picasso. Some people are amazing at one style, but weak in another. Fair enough?
8. Even if I say no, don’t be afraid to say: “Tell me what you are looking for and I’ll be happy to spend an hour or two putting something together, no charge. If it works out, great. If not, no hard feelings.” I see very few folks make any additional effort, and then they sit on their laurels and wonder why people don’t hire them.
9. Be passionate. I want to hire someone who absolutely loves his work. Someone that eats and sleeps their work. Someone that wants to hear about my project and is ready to understand my vision and ready to add his or her ideas to. If you are looking to simply snag another client and get a paycheck, I’ll ferret you out and let you go work with another boring corporate client.

Now go get ‘em!

I live a mile away from a small baseball field.

I’ve never been to a game there, but I see them going on each week.

For folks that visit that field on a regular basis, I’m sure they have the process figured out. Park the car here, go to the box office, pay this much, go sit here.

I’m an outsider, though. I don’t know the system. So I feel left out. And I don’t go.

Does your business make new folks feel like outsiders? Are you sure?

In my town, there is a Japanese restaurant that positions a guy on a major road dressed in Japanese garb waving folks in to their restaurant.

I notice this guy every time I drive by. I always try to wave back.

If every restaurant in town decided to use the same technique and the road were full of guys waving at me, I wouldn’t see any of them anymore. Brain filter, activate.

Techniques are great, but when everyone is using the same ones to get attention, you won’t get noticed.