My guess – still there, we’re doing it. In short, when times are hard we switch from turnover growth to growing market share. That may well mean 10% or even 20% down on last year is a good result – achieved by running hard to stand still. However, if it results in greater market share then as we climb out of this recession we can expect to see the benefits of our hard work. One thing’s for sure, if we wait until we see the upturn then it will be too late to join in. The results will come from what we are doing now. So, let’s be happy that web traffic/enquiries are high – they represent business waiting to happen.
Doing the job properly – at the end of the day the whole industrial PR process – with or without search engines – is about getting genuine information to places where it can reach serious potential users/buyers. These are willing buyers – if they don’t buy then their business will not exist, but they must buy knowledgeably. Do that job right and it is worth doing from everybody’s perspective.
Search engines in their own way are only trying to facilitate the same process – so we are all working toward the same end – there is no need to try to manipulate the search engines – do the job properly and they will put an enquirer together with the information they are seeking. Although it does help to be able to think like a customer and to set up ones information and it’s distribution to fit that enquiry process i.e. understand the information that is important to a customer, how they may go about finding it, what form they may find it easiest to digest and how to make their life easy in progressing their enquiry. This is not “rocket science” but it does require a measure of knowledge, understanding, skill, experience, flexibility, balance and judgment – sound like any PR agency you know?
Interesting to hear over several years from a number of the media guys that their enquiry rates are maintained through the holiday periods ( December, July, August etc ) – and to see that this is supported by client’s own monthly web traffic stats. In-fact web-stats seem to confirm apocryphal stories of hard pressed engineers taking work home and searching online over the weekends. As for holiday periods – is it that these are really quiet times when customers can plan ahead and do some product research – or is it that with colleagues away on holiday those left are more pressured to find what they need? Whatever the explanation, it seems we do not have a holiday period in PR these days and that readership interest levels are not a mirror of business levels. Obviously they are linked, but they do not track each other directly and why should they – the drivers are different and the timing is different.
The creation of easily digested information regarding products and services. By presenting genuine information in a quickly assimilated way we are helping engineers to stay up-to date with developments and trends so that they can quickly solve problems in design or production. This presents a wider profile of possibilities and helps optimise the innovation cycle.
Dissemination to enable it to be easily found – build a better mousetrap and people will NOT beat a path to your door – unless they actually need a mousetrap and know about yours! This is a genuine need – by putting our information where it can easily be found we are serving that need. People sometimes need to be told that a) mousetraps exist, b) some mousetraps are different/better/cheaper than others and which is which. A whole range of media publications have grown up to serve this need on a wider basis from the national press to Google, to a plethora of very small but very targeted publications.
