There’s no debating that the office technology dealer community has been slow in embracing the use of an ecommerce platform to supplement and accentuate its existing salesforce. Late to the party is more apt: when resellers finally made the commitment to implement Keypoint Intelligence’s UVERCE or another solution, you could almost imagine an obnoxious Amazon bellowing from the back of the room, in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Hey, look who finally decided to show up. Get outta here!”
Eh, no worries. We always knew that Amazon would be its boorish, pushy self, regardless of what industry it locks horns with (which is everyone imaginable). We kid; more Americans have Amazon Prime accounts than they do butterfly tattoos, which is saying a lot. But while the online retailer (or e-tailer, if you prefer) has absolutely saturated the global marketplace, that’s largely a factor in the B2C space. Sure, you can find MFPs and other office products synonymous with the dealer circle on the big A, but they don’t know the industry like you do. Service and monthly recurring revenue is your sweet spot. Personalized relationships. That’s your turf.
Dealers pride themselves on contractual agreements, but there’s nothing wrong with gleaning some interest from internet browsers who are at varying junctions in the buying cycle, visitors intrigued by the wealth of information on various units in the form of blogs and why-tos. Amazon doesn’t know what you know, but for the time being, it may be the better online vehicle. That’s where targeted marketing, SEO and other tactics can help close the gap. As we kick off the July State of the Industry report on ecommerce platforms, we canvassed our dealer panel to provide their thoughts on how they’re able to gain more traction in a crowded online market.
Pulse Technology, relatively speaking, is a grizzled veteran among dealers with ecommerce platforms. The Schaumburg, Illinois-based dealer’s marketing efforts are designed to boost its SEO and generate leads, notes CEO Chip Miceli, with HubSpot being a cornerstone to its overall marketing and sales endeavors. The dealer’s website is built on a HubSpot platform.
According to Miceli, Pulse leverages a number of marketing initiatives, including content posts and actively using LinkedIn, which he feels is a great business-to-business platform, and Facebook. Digital marketing and a degree of billboard advertising have also proven effective.
“We run regular email drip campaigns and are now considering some traditional ‘snail mail’ direct marketing outreach as well,” Miceli noted. “We write and post a new blog to our website each week, and we complement all of these efforts with an ongoing public relations campaign for both trade and regional media.
“For SEO we ensure our website has the topics potential customers are looking to learn more about and provide them with a wealth of information – we call this our resource center,” he added. “It helps answer questions often asked on a range of topics from managed services to cybersecurity and more. We want our website visitors to feel educated about the business solutions we provide.”
Call to Action
Advanced Imaging Solutions of Las Vegas is in the process of reconciling inventory issues, particularly with A4 units, which should improve considerably before the end of summer. As a result, there hasn’t been a concerted push to drive traffic to the platform, which is powered by MPSToolbox. For the time being, Vice President of Marketing Keven Ellison is leveraging his online content, thus when visitors dig deeper to learn more about the costs of a Kyocera copier, for example, it can help stir buyers who are in the midst of their buying cycle. The site has several calls to action and a configurator that helps ease them into the funnel.
“That’s how we’re driving traffic right now, and we’ll probably add some things such as display advertising or AdWords after we get inventory running at the optimal level,” said Ellison, who noted AIS uses a combination of analytics through Google and Shopify.
Stone’s Office Equipment in Richmond, Virginia, like a number of other dealers that are still in the early phase of their platform, hasn’t put a lot of promotional heft behind its site yet. It has done some light marketing efforts through Evolved Office, and some email blasts to its newsletter subscribers. In June, President Sam Stone began to use the company’s LinkedIn and Instagram accounts to spread the gospel to augment blogs on the company’s website.
“We’re still working to get the site the way we want it,” Stone said. “We’ve been mainly focusing on our customer base for a handful of models, and we’re controlling what they see. We’re waiting to get some feedback from customers.”
In addition to online ads and other digital search optimization methods, Woodhull LLC of Springboro, Ohio, has found some traditional routes to be effective in reaching current clients. Robert Woodhull, vice president of business development, notes the company will include info sheets regarding its ecommerce solution in invoices sent out to clients.
Client Priorities
Being directed to an online store may not be ideal for all customers, but with a younger generation of buyers that values time more than doing a lot of leg work to save a few bucks, it certainly has its place in the dealer toolbelt. Not everyone needs to have their hand held in the buying process, Woodhull noted. They want the ability to pull the trigger on a purchase without wasting time finding a rock-bottom price.
“When a two-hour response time, next-day toner and a necessary tool for your office is $200 a month, which is exponentially less than a [company’s] cell phone bill…people my age and younger don’t need four quotes for that,” he said. “They don’t want to mess with that, they value their time more than possibly a $10 cost difference per month.”
At press time, Kelly Office Solutions was in the process of taking its ecommerce store live, thus it hadn’t done any meaningful marketing activities to gain more traction. According to Claudia Coleman, director of marketing for the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, dealer, its plans include social media posts in addition to smaller campaigns that will target certain segments. LinkedIn is already paying dividends for drawing attention to FP Mailing solutions and the company’s pure technologies (air, ice, water).
“Each of the past few weeks, we had 3,900 to 4,000 views on LinkedIn,” she said. “We’re getting a lot of hits, so clearly we can develop a presence there.”
