10 Ways to Extend your Brand with Industrial Customers

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a session put on by the Disney Institute in Orlando covering the Disney Customer Experience.  This Saturday morning workshop covered some of the techniques that Disney uses to excel in customer service.  The topic that stuck out most for me was their efforts to “extend the brand” to help visitors to Disneyworld gain a better overall vacation experience and further build a positive impression of Disney.  Some of the tools they use to accomplish this include:

• Well designed vacation packets sent with your reservation information and other useful (and promotional) information in preparation for your visit.
• Branding and greeting at the airport, including shuttle transportation to the Disneyworld area with video entertainment to get you in the mood.
• Signage placed well out from the park itself to make you feel surrounded by “Disneyness” (again, my word, not theirs).
• Special treatment by the hotel staff, including (as an example) entertaining arrangement of any plush Disney toys you may have purchased and left in your room for the day (such as Mickey finishing off your room service meal).
• Development of Downtown Disney, to make even your adult or nightlife activities encompassed by the Disney brand.

This may seem an obvious step for an entertainment or destination company, but it can’t possibly apply in industrial marketing, right?  Well ever since that session, I’ve looked for examples of companies employing such practices in a B-to-B or technical market, as well as brainstormed how we might implement such practices at my own companies.  You would be surprised at the ways in which this can apply.  Some ideas to consider:

1. Offer to engage with your customers in their specification process, to help ease their burden and, at the same time, create specifications that provide your solutions a slight edge.  You can even charge for these services for some customers, and perhaps credit back the cost should they select your solution.
2. Provide thorough supporting information on your quotes, leveraging your marketing communications material where possible to reinforce your value proposition and overall corporate message.
3. When you receive the order from your customer, provide an acknowledgement with your thanks and, should the project involve engineering time or project management, keep in steady communication with them on its progress.
4. Provide a branded token of your appreciation after completion of a successful project, something of nominal value but meaningful (and creative, if possible).

5. 

   Sandvik Coromant’s “yellow coat specialists” are a common sight in factories and at trade shows

   Make sure your service personal wear visible and quality company attire; one company in the tooling industry equips nearly everyone who touches the brand in front of customers in bright yellow work jackets, even at trade shows (where their technicians can often be seen in their customers’ booths, making adjustments, real or exaggerated, to equipment).

6. Invite your customers to meet with you at trade shows, and employ other minimally intrusive ways to keep your brand in front of them on a timely basis.
7. Offer to create and share a success story – often companies have internal newsletters that need content, and if you have provided them something that helps fulfill a corporate mission (like sustainability, continuous improvement, etc.) they will be happy to promote the success internally.
8. Offer complimentary periodic inspections of your installed equipment, perhaps in conjunction with other service trips you are making to the area to cut down on costs; this provides an opportunity to generate revenue through spare parts and to identify other opportunities to provide solutions to this account.
9. Offer to do a consultative review of the customer’s operations and where your solutions may help, along with an analysis of the payback and ROI on such solutions (this may only be possible once you have credibility from providing a successful first solution).
10. And, perhaps the most common solution – develop a blog, newsletter, company magazine, or other method of communicating more regularly with your customers even when they are not in the buying cycle, so that you are front-of-mind when they are.

Have you  implemented or observed other practices for extending a brand presence at industrial accounts?

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• Innovation in Aftermarket Offerings for Industrial Marketers
• Application Success Profiles – A Powerful and Flexible Marketing Tool
• Trade Show Strategies for Industrial Marketers – Go Niche, Go Big, or Stay Home
• Nike and the Minimalist Running Movement