Difficulty in Marketing Application-Specific Mainstream products?
 

Hey everybody, who?s up for some business related discussion? :P

I?m having a little trouble deciding whether or not to pursue a venture. Here?s the situation: I?m presently doing all the IT for a multimillion-dollar industrial supply store located in Canada. It?s a small company, but very successful in it?s field.

The company has been around for almost 20 years and is well established with suppliers and product. The only problem, product wise, is that the company is focused entirely around pneumatics (air). This means valving, fittings, tubing and hose, etc. All of it is proper ?contractor grade? materials. You know, professional equipment. The issue is that, because of the nature of the products, less than 5% (I would estimate) of ?surfers? would be interested in the inventory. It?s very ?niche.? :P

My goal is to take the company online and expand its distribution further into the United States and Worldwide. This would come in the form of an online shopping cart with database of items, nothing out of the ordinary.

How would you suggest connecting those involved in the fluid and air power industry to the site? Obviously, buying any sort of traffic would be useless (I would imagine) due to the extreme niche aspect. This type of concept isn?t completely new. Look at a page like http://www.digikey.com, they do exactly what I want, but in the discrete electronics sector. They also appeal to a very small number of design engineers, but are extremely successful with online sales. McMaster-Carr is another site (http://www.mcmaster.com/), but they focus in mechanical components and metals.

So, what?s your suggestion? I appreciate any input whatsoever (constructive criticism, please). I consider a lot of you to be ?Pros? with marketing and online sales. I appreciate your business, and have similar goals. We?ve just got slightly different product lines to move :P

CLIFF?s NOTES VERSION (for people you don?t want to read my mini-essay):
- How would you connect industry professionals (design engineers/purchasers) to a mainstream site selling a single, fluid-power, product base?

Thanks again, guys!

Hi,

Well "specific" targetted ppc keywords might do a little good.

I would put some ads in Industry specific trade mags / rags. also, Check out and see if there are any big time opt-in lists for these types of products?

Oh, I see what you're saying. This might take care of some of the problem..

Anybody else have any ideas?

If you have the budget, I would suggest:
-buying ads/links on related sites like mcmaster
-buying very niched keywords on google/overture
-doing big ads in the major trade journals for a significant amount of time
-doing small ads/classifieds in targeted journals/trades
-doing frequent press releases to the trades with topical articles and announcments about how you are moving accounts online and its saving time and money etc.
-direct mail campaign to your biggest clients and to targeted leads (maybe large postcards)
-introductory letter campaign to the right person in those leads saying "hey, we are online now and it will save you time and money and make life easy, etc. BUT we really need to hear from you to make it better and make it exactly what YOU want, so please take a look and fill out this survey adn we'll give you a free _____ for your trouble." - makes them feel important and gets their ass on the site.


Just my :2cents

Excellent ideas thus far.

There is will be a budget for the project, initially (before any sort of return) I would imagine it to be around the 10,000 to 30,000 (CAD) dollar range. So your suggestions are not unreasonable.

We're in mainstream marketing.. hit me up at michael AT studiocritic DOT com for some info..

I have done the same thing in packaging. I first built packaging hubs and then started http://www.packagingblog.com.

Turned a bussines who used to get 3 - 4 sales a month from the internet into a biz that gets huge SEO traffic and gets 1/3rd of thier biz from the web in under 1 year.

Never paid one dime for PPC!

Check out http://www.meanseo.com for what I can offer.

I'll be contacting you guys today in regards to my offer. I appreciate your interest.

Any other ideas, anybody? I've approached several companies about sponsored ads and they've been reluctant. They feel that it would negatively impact their image, which is understandable.