Online Marketing Strategy – Commercial Electrical Testing

Roger on 28/04/2012

Aim: Develop an Online Marketing Strategy that is aligned with business and marketing objectives to provide consistent direction for online marketing activities.

SITUATION ANALYSIS

  • Assess micro and macro environments to provide SWOT analysis
    • Market – Expanding or contracting?
    • Company – Growing or shrinking?
    • Competitors – Growing or shrinking? (80 in Reading area)
    • Customers – Which online platforms do they use? Touchpoints.
    • Resources – Human, financial, technological

OBJECTIVES

  • Sell – Set customer acquisition and retention targets e.g. winning x number of clients from competitors within given time scale.
  • Serve – Set customer satisfaction targets e.g. increased transparency and accountability.
  • Sizzle – Set brand recognition and perception targets e.g. delivering excellent customer experience.
  • Speak – Set number of engaged customers e.g. number of existing customers engaged with & number of potential customers engaged with within given time scale.
  • Save – Set efficiency gains targets e.g. streamlined communications with existing customers.

STRATEGY

Essentially channel marketing strategy.

  • Segmentation – Segment customers through Spend, Regularity, Service Usage, Online Communications Usage.
  • Brand Positioning – Selecting brand position within the industry based customers served and perceived gaps in the market.
  • Value Proposition – Achieve differential advantage of buying services, e.g. Safety, Peace of mind, Compliance to legislation, cost effectiveness, reliability.
  • Communication – Target brand and value communications to relevant customer segments.
  • Integration – Integrate digital and social media marketing with business and marketing objectives.

TACTICS

  • Set up Google Alerts for company name, competitors name, and specific industry keywords to gather picture of the digital landscape CET is operating in.
  • Optimise website with greater CTA, remove inline styling, add company address in footer.
  • Optimise website for mobile devices.
  • Implement SEO for website with optimised keywords, rich snippets, authorship, sitemap.
  • Implement Google Analytics for website.
  • Increase and optimise usage of News section on website to included regular updates about company and changes within the industry.
  • Use pingomatic to tell search engines News has been updated.
  • Implement Twitter feed on website.
  • Fix LinkedIn profile link on website.
  • Optimise Google Places page and encourage customers to leave reviews.
  • Optimise Twitter page including background image.
  • Increase and optimise Twitter usage to include regular updates about the company, and industry, but more importantly engage in conversations, retweets and mentions. Follow customers, intermediaries, and industry leaders.
  • Set up eCRM to manage email campaigns to existing customers.
  • Create QR codes for particular tests, equipment, service, or customer that link to specific help pages on company website.
  • Utilise PAT Electric App to manage asset database and export reports to customers.

ACTION

  • Prioritise website improvements, social media, and seo actions.
  • Set resources for project/tasks, including financial, technological, and human.
  • Assign responsibilities for tasks.
  • Set schedule for tasks and project.
  • Set KPI’s for project.

CONTROL

  • Measuring and evaluating strategy and implementation.
    • Were customer acquisition and retention targets met?
    • Measure customer satisfaction through surveys. Were targets met?
    • Measure brand recognition and perception through survey. Were targets met? Are more potential customers aware of the company. Do existing customers feel they have an excellent customer experience.
    • Measure number of engaged customers e.g. number of existing customers engaged with & number of potential customers engaged with within given time scale.
    • Measure efficiency gains. Has there been an increase in the number of customer communicated to with email, Twitter, etc. Were targets met?

Questions

  • How does the team work together on a project? Collaboratively or more individually?
  • What’s the day-to-day work pace like?
  • Which aspect of the role would be the highest priority?
  • Will there be opportunities for sharing skills so I can learn more?
  • How would my performance be monitored?
  • Would you be able to support me in my course with things like information for case studies, etc.?
  • Assuming I’m success at the this stage, what’s the next part of the process?

Nompa Pro DH trucks – Initial Testing

Roger on 08/04/2012

Took the first prototype Nompa Pro DH trucks out for a test ride.

Nompa Pro Flexi-trucks

They performed well and seem like they’ll do what I’m hoping, e.g be stable at high speed and not suffer from speed wobble, reduce bump steer and provide a bit of dampening, and give the wheels some camber which should change the grip characteristics of the tyres, especially in corners. The only issue seems to be with the lack of return to centre, but with a bit more development I might be able to work that out, possibly by staggering the truck bolts which would also give more turn.

Some thoughts on cornering

Roger on 07/04/2012

How many ways are there to go round a corner on a mountainboard? The answer is lots

But to start with let’s think of a corner as having nine points on it. Three of them are on the outside edge, one at start of the corner, one at the apex, and one at the end. Let’s call them A, B and C. And then we have the same along the inside edge of the corner. Let’s call them D, E, and F. Now, let’s add another three points that follow the middle of the corner and call them G, H and I, and draw all the connecting lines.

Those nine points can be joined up like this:

Cornering lines

Which gives us:

  • A, B, C
  • A, B, I
  • A, B, F
  • A, H, C
  • A, H, I
  • A, H, F
  • A, E, F
  • A, E, I
  • A, E, C
  • D, B, C
  • D, B, F
  • D, B, I
  • D, H, C
  • D, H, I
  • D, H, F
  • D, E, F
  • D, E, I
  • D, E, C
  • G, B, F
  • G, B, I
  • G, B, C
  • G, H, F
  • G, H, I
  • G, H, C
  • G, E, F
  • G, E, I
  • G, E, C

Those nine points give us 27 different ways to go round a corner.

So, what the point of all this? Surely we just ride into a corner, go round it, come out of it and carrying on riding, right? Is it really worth thinking about your line? What are the benefits?

There are two benefits to choosing your line round a corner; speed and control.

Taking a corner at the maximum speed is all about getting it as smooth as possible. In motor sports, the ‘racing line’ would be A, E, C as it’s the shortest line though the corner (rather than going round it), and on some corners that would work just fine. But on a boarderX track this might not be the case. As berms are built to hold the rider on the track following the central line of G, H, I might be the faster line. But, out freeriding on a loose surface might mean that taking the widest line of A, B, C might be fastest as we don’t slide.

Control is all about being able to put your board exactly where you want it, to be able to come out of a corner on the best line for the next feature or obstacle. Remember, line out is more important than line in, so if we want to exit the corner at point I we have nine lines to follow. If we knew we were going too fast to get round the corner we might go D, B, I and lose some speed by going out wide. Or maybe we came into the corner on the G, H, I line but a rider had fallen in front of us so we had to go G, B, I. And, of course, this is all based on the perfect corner, but in the real world the track might narrow at the exit of the corner so that F, I, and C are all in the same place. Then we really need to consider our line in to make the exit clean.

So, regardless of whether we have a berm to help us get round the corner or not, choosing the right line can be really useful for maintaining speed, loosing speed, avoiding obstacles (and other riders), or even just making it round the corner. As every corner is different, it’s up to you to decide what you think is the best line to take (and if you’re a boarderX racer, practice every line).

It’s lucky there are so many corners in the world.