A Perfect Fit for Safety

3M is now offering Thinsulate™ Thermal Insoles designed to make outdoor work more comfortable and industrial workers more productive. The proprietary combination of 3M™ Thinsulate™ Insulation technology and energy-return performance foam absorbs shock with every step.

To learn more about our Product Database, e-mail us at info@growwithsms.com

Kristen Hogrefe,
June 4, 2010

Simple or Custom Catalogs - Design Solutions for All Distributors

In these lean times, more companies are looking to trim their catalog budget and still maintain their market presence. Here are some helpful ideas on using the alternate simple catalog design exclusively from SMS to economize and still sell smartly.

Custom or Simple – Which way should I go?
Simple catalog design begins with more effective use of valuable catalog real estate, displaying essential information only, and the effective use of color. Simple catalog approaches still get the word out but in a more compact and direct way. The real key to capturing the essence of your selling message by using the simple catalog design is to:
 Carefully choose your product selection – Select your best sellers first for sure and then specify your “underdogs” that show promise. Drop “tail-draggers” as they should not even be in the catalog equation.
 Select a clean template design – Standardize on a template design that is practical and allows for maximum use of product information on your page. Template treatments often establish a trademarked “look and feel” that is specific to your company mark.
 Plan on white space – Understand it is not necessary to fill every available nook and cranny on your layout. In fact, you can actually increase readability if you make tasteful use of white space.

Custom Catalogs Serve a Purpose Too
Unlike simple catalogs that typically are less than a hundred pages and contain usually no more than four to five product blocks per page, a custom catalog contains specialized brand-imaging features that address:
1.) Informational Blocks and Fillers – Typically industry standards like ANSI, OSHA, ASTM and CSA. Others contain the use of Industry Best Practices for a given product offering.
2.) Application Photos – Action shots that show the product in its natural habitat on the job such as a fall protection device like a harness, hard hat or safety glasses.
3.) Call-Outs and Charts – Sometimes called “stoppers”; refers to the use of bursts that say NEW, Now ONLY__, Cut-resistant ratings, etc.
4.) Price Customization – Quantity break specials, limited offers, special savings, etc.
5.) Multiple Product Blocks – As many as six or more on a given page per product offering

Simple or Custom - A Word about Use of Color and Position
Experts conclude that colorful catalog presentations sell more product. Design your simple or custom catalog so that it is appealing to read by maximizing the use of color. Choose a common typeface that is easily read and less taxing on the eyes.
Evidence also supports the conclusion that you should place your star performers in the upper right hand corner of a right hand page because that’s where the eye goes first when the reader opens your catalog. Secondarily, the upper left-hand position on an opposing page also bodes well for increased readership.
It’s Up to You
In the final analysis, the correct catalog solution is the one that fits your budget, existing customer base and your target audience. There are, however, a few key aspects of this catalog discussion to keep in mind.
First, if budget constraints are dictating your course of action in getting your catalog out, a simple catalog can fit the bill very nicely. Some presence is better than no presence. Saving 40% off a normal custom catalog can suddenly make you say…yes we can!
Secondly, the simple catalog approach allows you to use a finite budget appropriation and produce multiple frequencies or issues of your catalog throughout the calendar year.

If You’ve Got the Time…
Finally, if brand imaging is key and plays a major role in your overall sales mix, the custom catalog approach might work best because it gives you ample real estate and opportunity to reinforce those frontrunner sales messages and drive your core sales home. When budget is not a deterrent and pre-planning is meticulous, the custom catalog is your best answer.

About the Author:
Paul C. Simcock is a Project Manager at Safety Marketing Services - Brooksville, Florida, a technology-based marketing solutions provider for industrial safety equipment distributors, resellers and manufacturers providing expertly designed catalogs, print collateral, event displays and e-commerce websites.

To learn more about our “simple” solution, e-mail us at info@growwithsms.com.

A Simple Solution for a Difficult Problem

What comes to mind when you think of the word “value”? Do you think quality or cost-savings? More than likely, you expect both.

Living and working in the reality of a weak economy makes businesses re-examine how they can provide their customers with a quality product, at a price their customers can afford, with an overhead the company can afford.

Not unlike other businesses, SMS has faced the same question. We specialize in custom catalogs, but comprehensive customization may not fit your marketing budget at the current time. We asked ourselves what we could do to offer a lower-cost catalog alternative while maintaining our quality standards.

What we arrived at is a concept we simply refer to as our “Simple Catalog.” Don’t let the word “simple” fool you; we dedicate the same attention to internal proofing and, as always, work with suppliers to guarantee your product content is current and approved for your project. You still choose your exclusive product selection, receive one-on-one project management and enjoy a professionally designed cover representing your corporate brand.

The difference lies is a more simple design and fewer production proofs, resulting in a shorter catalog process. The overall page layout focuses on representing each product in an equal fashion, greatly reducing the amount of design time and costs (as required in custom layouts).

There is no easy answer to correct today’s economic situation, but SMS is doing what we can to offer you one “simple” alternative that may help fit a smaller budget and still provide a quality product for you to use in marketing your business.

Kristen Hogrefe, November 17, 2009

To learn more about our “simple” solution, e-mail us at info@growwithsms.com or visit our Simple Catalog Program page for additonal info.

Staying Focused on Promotions

Touring the expo hall at last week’s National Safety Congress it seemed at first like the economy was causing exhibitors to do whatever promotions were necessary to survive. It was interesting looking at my notes from this year and comparing them to the first national safety show I attended back in 1994. Despite seeing a decrease in attendance over recent years, it was interesting to gauge the ebb and flow of supplier promotional activity this year. Compared to previous years, promotions were more focused on service and quality; as a result I believe the industrial safety distribution network will be more active in the next few months.

Extreme marketing and promotions of product and price do not have to be shrewd or tactical. I admire the scope and sheer precision of McDonald’s staging a full-frontal assault on Starbucks. The company’s thoughtful and well-funded McCoffee “McBlitz” is doing its job - freaking out Starbucks while scraping away at market share.

How can that analogy translate to hard hats, vests and fall protection harnesses? No matter what the product or service you offer, freebies and promotions have to be done with precision and ample focus to ensure success without hemorrhaging profits. Supposedly, two million people took advantage of Denny’s free “Grand Slam Breakfast” which followed shortly after being promoted during the Super Bowl. Will that, beyond the obvious short-term public relations frenzy, actually deliver substantive, long-term results to the company? You may have 1,000 workers come through your on-site turnaround trailer or shoe mobile because you gave out donuts but foot traffic doesn’t necessarily equal profit when freebies are involved, and they need to be planned out or they will backfire. Getting people in the door is one thing. Getting them in the door again, with the intent of spending is something quite different.

Here are few ideas for marketing directors of industrial safety and fire equipment distributors:

1) “BE PREPARED” – Follow the Boy Scout motto when activating any promotion that is going to pull product, service, or some combination of the two. An inability to deliver on your promise can cause more harm than good and actually have a detrimental effect on your promotion. Running out of the product or having service issues that anger customers are two obvious unwanted results.

2) Listen to your supplier partners and know what is being given away. If it’s going to be free, it needs to be both memorable and core to your mission; a signature offering for which people will return. Don’t get people excited about something they will never see again, don’t go cheap to save a few dollars and don’t change something for the promo that will take away from your core concept. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an eyewear case, safety lanyards or elbow pads. You can bundle several products into the price of one that someone pays for, creating the illusion that it’s “free.”

3) Get them to come back. Any promo that doesn’t have a bounce-back effect is self-defeating. Years ago, when I worked for an industrial distributor, I followed this principle during a prescription safety eyewear promotion. When a client received a new pair of glasses, they were given a sample of our private-label lens cleaning towelette and discount certificate for a future purchase of a lens cleaning station from one of our regional distribution centers. This motivated the client to return and “shop” for more. It also gave the regional locations opportunities to up-sell and increase referrals of new customers. Within a year, the lens cleaning products ranked third in most products sold with an average profit margin of 35%. A freebie with no call to action is a freebie without legs and doesn’t generate profit.

4) Collect data on your new customers. When they call or come in, identify them and enter them into your database for future promotions and opportunities. There are many ways to do this, a fish bowl placed on a will-call counter for a gift certificate drawn at the end of the month or a complimentary respirator fit-testing on their service anniversary are two examples.

5) Pulse the promotions. The first time may well be “free” and makes the customer feel good, but when offered too often, they lose their effect and the customer begins to expect it. Use timing (e.g., monthly, quarterly, seasonally) as a guide, and experiment to see what works. Remember, promotions that recur too frequently create the negative result of conditioning customers to hold out for the promotion and never pay full price again.

6) Finally, figure out ways to make your generosity pay for itself. If there’s an inexpensive way to drive traffic and exposure, go for it. This could mean promoting internally through e-mail campaigns, brochures, direct mail postcards, a banner on your website, etc. Maybe for one month, your customer service or inside sales team mentions a new product or service being offered during each phone call. You could foster charitable partnerships that make use of customer, supplier and distributor relationships for mutual benefit or giving a percentage of added proceeds to a local charity to get people spending a few extra dollars and feeling good about the sale. From experience, I found this works better for the bottom line with sales from high-end or premium products.

Giving things away can be good or bad depending on your approach; if done right, promotions can be invigorating and profitable. So get excited, design one that works for you, fire away and review any feedback and track your results.

Todd Guenther, November 6, 2009

Todd Guenther is a 15-year veteran of the safety and fire equipment industry and works with small to mid-size industrial distributors to develop custom marketing and business development projects such as print catalog, eCommerce websites and trade show materials.

For more information about SMS, visit http://www.growwithsms.com/ or email info@growwithsms.com

USFA Report reveals 118 Firefighters died on duty in 2008

The United States Fire Administration (USFA) released the report Firefighter Fatalities in the United States in 2008, which revealed that of the 118 firefighters who died on duty, 45 died of heart attacks, which continues to be the most frequent cause of death for firefighters.

The causes of death among firefighters are well known and the steps necessary to protect firefighters have been studied and reported in numerous forums,” United States Fire Administrator Kelvin J. Cochran said. “We must take the necessary steps to ensure, as much as possible, all firefighters return from every call, safely.”

The USFA is the single public agency source of information for all on-duty firefighter fatalities in the United States each year. The report continues a series of annual studies by the USFA of on-duty firefighter fatalities.

Firefighter Fatalities in the United States identifies all on-duty firefighter fatalities that occurred in the United States and its protectorates during the calendar year and provides circumstances surrounding each occurrence. An overview of the 118 firefighters that died while on duty in 2008 finds:
• The total breakdown included 66 volunteer, 34 career and 18 wildland agency firefighters
• There were 5 firefighter fatality incidents where two or more firefighters were killed, claiming a total of 18 firefighters' lives
• 26 firefighters were killed during activities involving brush, grass or wildland firefighting, more than twice the number killed the previous year

Activities related to emergency incidents resulted in the deaths of 75 firefighters:
• 28 firefighters died while engaging in activities at the scene of a fire
• 21 firefighters died while responding to, and three while returning from, emergency incidents
• 12 firefighters died while they were engaged in training activities
• 13 firefighters died after the conclusion of their on-duty activity

For 32 years, USFA has tracked the number of firefighter fatalities and conducted an annual analysis. Through the collection of information on the causes of firefighter deaths, USFA is able to focus on specific problems and direct efforts toward finding solutions to reduce the number of firefighter fatalities in the future. This information also is used by many organizations to measure the effectiveness of their current efforts directed toward firefighter health and safety.

The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which worked closely with USFA on this report, also maintains a list of firefighters who die in the line of duty and are honored during the annual National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend held each October in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Source: www.usfa.dhs.gov

Todd Guenther, October 22, 2009

For more information about SMS, visit http://www.growwithsms.com/ or email info@growwithsms.com

The 4 P’s of Marketing: Product, Price, Place & Promotion

Part 4 of 4: “Promotion”

We conclude this four-part series by exploring various promotional or branding concepts within the marketing mix.

Promotion includes advertising, sales promotion, education, publicity and personal selling. It means taking the research of your target market and directing the product, price and distribution plans into a format that will capture someone’s attention.

In the context of the marketing mix, the promotion represents the three other aspects of communicating information about the product or service with the goal of generating a positive “buzz” or customer response. Decisions and tactics made on how a product or service is promoted may be directed individually or you may chose to combine multiple strategies or cross-promotions. Two decades ago the shotgun approach or “spray and pray” method as it was called, worked very well; the idea of taking aim at several target markets, using the same marketing strategy for all of them was profitable. However, economics have changed the marketing playing field rapidly and advertising is among the first line items cut from a budget to reduce costs. This means research of your target market and carefully planning your promotional agenda is critical before executing any type of marketing campaign.

Here are a few of the more popular marketing communication strategies:
• Personal selling and utilizing a sales force, including inside sales and customer service
• Advertising through traditional and non-traditional media
• Cross-promotions with a strategic supplier partner
• Trending by demographics
• Creative packaging
• Product bundling
• Sales promotions
• Public relations
• Product tie-in

One of the most talked about examples of successful marketing in pop-culture is the story of E.T. and Reese’s Pieces candy. It is a fact that Stephen Spielberg had first asked Mars M&M’s to use their famous name brand, but was turned down for unconfirmed reasons. He then went to Hershey’s and requested the use of Reese’s Pieces. They saw the potential and stepped up and donated their candy along with a million-dollar cross-promotional tie-in at the same time the movie opened in 1982. Wall Street saw Hershey’s stock rise 85% in less than two weeks. In the same amount of time, shares of Mars M&M’s dropped 65% in value.

The concept of “Social Media Publicity” started taking off with the rise of e-mail followed by internet chat rooms. Here’s another example of a unique marketing strategy that produced triple-digit ROI:

In 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” was released. This independent movie, produced in nine days for less than $150,000 was promoted through a carefully constructed teaser campaign which primarily consisted of internet messages targeted at mid-teens and young-adults eight months before the movie was released. The massive buzz that the chat room campaign created resulted in the movie making $248,639,099 worldwide.

Promotions go beyond movies, radio and newspapers. Media advertising, trade show and direct-mail businesses are billion-dollar industries each, where companies vie for the attention of buyers in every way possible. Does that mean using flashier graphics or fancier gimmicks will sell more product than your competitor? No, because sometimes the simplest approach is the more successful one.

On the same note, marketing experts will also tell you that, given enough time, what goes around will come back around again and “Retro” will never go out of style. Sometimes you have to use what resources are available. Plan ahead, research, hire an outside consultant if needed, ask the unasked questions, listen to the response then revise. Once your plans are executed then follow up, ask more questions, learn from risks that were taken then start the process over.

When it’s done right, promotions can make profits soar.

"It used to be way back in the stone age of 2004 that the digital person would simply say, 'We've got lots of online buzz,' and you just never knew what that meant.” - Christine Birch

Experts say the next generation of consumers are moving faster, thinking faster and making decisions more rapidly than their parents did. In addition, they are taking more educated risks and looking for eye-catching trends outside the mainstream. Tomorrow’s generation of successful promoters will use the influence of instantly streaming information to network information and communicate via text messaging and social media sites beyond the current sites like Blogger and Twitter.

Industry executives are finding it's important to track the instant reactions to their new offerings, and companies are springing up to provide tools that both monitor and analyze buzz on social networking sites. Buzz is the amount of chatter or interest in a product or service, which can increase awareness and help drive sales.

The forecast is manufacturers will increasingly rely on Blogger, Twitter, Facebook or similar online social networking feeds to gauge the popular buzz on products before they come out, in a move reflecting the transition of power a new generation of purchasing directors will have over once-popular focus groups or detailed surveys.

“The writing is on the wall much quicker than ever before,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive VP of Nielsen Online - Digital Strategic Services. “If you know the dog's not going to hunt, at what point do you start to get more efficient and say, we're not going to spend everything, maybe we save the marketing budget for something else.”

If industrial distribution trends persist, based on recent months, the growing influence of online word-of-mouth will impact a world where a Twitter comment can help break or make a marketing promotion plan. Tools are being developed like TrendRR and Fizziology to measure online buzz, valuable research which will strongly impact the future decisions of corporate marketing directors.

"What's really cool about this is the fact that we're not only listening in to the chatter but we’re tracking what’s being said; and our clients are paying attention," said Ben Carlson, co-creator of Fizziology. A creation of advertising firm Bradley and Montgomery, Fizziology creates weekly charts showing what consumers are talking.

Christine Birch, president of marketing at DreamWorks Studios, "It used to be way back in the stone age of 2004 that the digital person would simply say, 'We've got lots of online buzz,' and you just never knew what that meant.”

Some experts say this is the future of market research.

If you’re not already beginning to apply social networking media strategies to your business plan, within a short time you might very well be invisible to the next generation of purchasing managers. The key is to learn about your market and what efforts you can make to bring the most profit from a particular target. Going too far you may risk losing your core buying audience; not doing enough runs that potential risk too.

Like each of the other three P’s in this series, marketing is a science and in addition to product, price, place and promotion it also takes research, patience, planning and risk. If you remember one thing from this series, the success of any product or service depends on the abilities of the production team, the pricing manager, the distribution channel and the promotional efforts all working together, efficiently and effectively.

Sources: Alex Dobuzinskis, Reuters News Services and www.marketingmix.net

Todd Guenther, October 16, 2009

For more information about SMS, visit http://www.growwithsms.com/ or email info@growwithsms.com.

EPA’s Proposed Ruling for Hearing Protection

Keeping up to speed with the industry’s latest standards and regulations can be a full-time job. At SMS, our product specialist team stays current on ANSI and OSHA compliance so that the product copy in our distributor catalogs reflects the latest information.

One important change we want to pass along is the proposed EPA ruling that is likely to revise how hearing protection devices (HPDs) are tested, rated and labeled.
The visible change will involve the way HPDs present the noise reduction rating (NRR), which describes the average sound level reduction, the attenuation in decibels (dB), that a hearing protector provides.

Instead of appearing as a single-number rating, the NRR will likely appear as a two-digit range to indicate the level of attenuation possible, depending on the employee’s level of training and motivation.

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register August 5 and will go through a public comment period, ending November 4, 2009 (as well as a public hearing in October). Once that period ends, the EPA will issue a final rule, perhaps before year end. The current proposal states that manufacturers will have 30 months (2 ½ years) from the effective date of the regulation to comply with the new requirements.

To learn more, visit http://www.epa.gov/EPA-AIR/2009/August/Day-05/a18003.htm

You might also want to check out some websites from the industry’s hearing protection manufacturers. These include: www.NRRUpdate.com, www.howardleight.com/bestpractices, and http://www.moldex.com/non-product/tech-briefs/hearing/new-nrr-rating-system.php.

Kristen Hogrefe, October 12, 2009

For more information about SMS, visit http://www.growwithsms.com/ or email info@growwithsms.com