LBM Journal January 2010 : Page 15
BOB HEIDENREICH ON SELLING THE DECK PROJECT Moving from“Bricks” to “Clicks” Our entry into online deck product sales has proved a boon in a bad economy. A s I’ve mentioned in my last two columns, in early summer 2009, our company went online with a deck store retail site to both expand and complement our physical brick-and- mortar store. The site is thedeckstoreonline.com, and it’s proven a very effective marketing and sales tool for us, especially in this economy. Along with our online presence, we’ve also been pursuing a number of other mar- keting efforts that focus on the Internet and other new social media. For instance, I mentioned last issue that I now try to “Tweet” once a day, using Twitter, the online social media portal that lets you send out short, 140-character texts to talk about what you’re doing. I found out firsthand that Twitter has benefits far beyond what you might expect. Last Mother’s Day, we had some thieves steal the five security cameras we had mounted on the outside of our build- ing. Well, it’s not very easy to steal a se- curity camera without it first taking a pic- ture of the robber’s face, so those images were already recorded on media located in the store. I sent out a Tweet about it, and a local reporter saw it. His local television news station featured the story, so we got a lot of local publicity for that. And then, to make the story even better, the thief came back on July 4th and stole the cameras again! The news station came back and did a fun story on inept crooks, giving us two and a half minutes of pub- licity on a Sunday night, the most watched television night on the most-watched news program in our area! While obviously this was something of a strange coincidence, it did show me how powerful the new media can be for raising your visibility in a community. Here’s another example: If you ever publish anything, say an article in a newsletter or if you have anything pub- lished about your company, why not Tweet the web address link to that piece so that your customers can read it if they’re interested? Everyone may not want to read it, but for those people interested in the subject, it’s a cumulative marketing effort in that they become more interested in you and your company, and see you as an ex- pert in your field. We also use other social media in our marketing efforts. We have a Facebook ac- count for our store, and we post informa- tion about us and about our products there. We handle all of that internally, meaning that someone from our staff is posting material and monitoring the site. If we’re not busy with something in our store, we’re always looking online to see what others in our industry are doing, and looking for ways to reach our customers with this new online push. And as we explore our marketing ef- forts online and in social media, it’s changed the way we view some of our more traditional marketing techniques. For instance, we’ve scaled back on the number of home shows we do and are in- stead reinvesting that money into our on- line presence. Over the years, we’ve seen that home shows have really been proliferating, and in a sense, they’re diluting their impact in PART 3 OF A 3-PART SERIES that they now have shows spring, summer, fall—you name it. And home shows are an expensive marketing proposition—both from the standpoint of actual cash-outlay and the cost to staff them properly. While I believe that the biggest, most established home shows will continue to be important in marketing decking, I also think some of the smaller home shows will go away, and we’re planning for that. We believe that a lot of people would rather search online for information about decks now rather than go to a home show. Home shows had a much stronger impact before online sites became such a good way to communicate. Today people can go online and browse through our photo albums of decks we’ve built, see deck layouts, and get a sense of everything we offer without ever leaving their home. What you see online today will likely be far different tomorrow. ■ BOB HEIDENREICH is the owner of the 30- employee The Deckstore, in Apple Valley, Minn. He has been selling decking and home improvement projects for 26 years. Follow the Deckstore: twitter.com/TheDeckstore. LBMJournal.com ❘ January 2010 ❘ LBM JOURNAL 15
BOB HEIDENREICH ON SELLING THE DECK PROJECT: MOVING FROM “BRICKS” TO “CLICKS”
BOB HEIDENREICH
Our entry into online deck product sales has proved a boon in a bad economy.
As I’ve mentioned in my last two columns, in early summer 2009, our company went online with a deck store retail site to both expand and complement our physical brick-andmortar store.
The site is thedeckstoreonline.com, and it’s proven a very effective marketing and sales tool for us, especially in this economy.
Along with our online presence, we’ve also been pursuing a number of other marketing efforts that focus on the Internet and other new social media.
For instance, I mentioned last issue that I now try to “Tweet” once a day, using Twitter, the online social media portal that lets you send out short, 140-character texts to talk about what you’re doing.
I found out firsthand that Twitter has benefits far beyond what you might expect.
Last Mother’s Day, we had some thieves steal the five security cameras we had mounted on the outside of our building.Well, it’s not very easy to steal a security camera without it first taking a picture of the robber’s face, so those images were already recorded on media located in the store. I sent out a Tweet about it, and a local reporter saw it. His local television news station featured the story, so we got a lot of local publicity for that.
And then, to make the story even better, the thief came back on July 4th and stole the cameras again! The news station came back and did a fun story on inept crooks, giving us two and a half minutes of publicity on a Sunday night, the most watched television night on the most-watched news program in our area!
While obviously this was something of a strange coincidence, it did show me how powerful the new media can be for raising your visibility in a community.
Here’s another example: If you ever publish anything, say an article in a newsletter or if you have anything published about your company, why not Tweet the web address link to that piece so that your customers can read it if they’re interested? Everyone may not want to read it, but for those people interested in the subject, it’s a cumulative marketing effort in that they become more interested in you and your company, and see you as an expert in your field.
We also use other social media in our marketing efforts. We have a Facebook account for our store, and we post information about us and about our products there. We handle all of that internally, meaning that someone from our staff is posting material and monitoring the site.
If we’re not busy with something in our store, we’re always looking online to see what others in our industry are doing, and looking for ways to reach our customers with this new online push.
And as we explore our marketing efforts online and in social media, it’s changed the way we view some of our more traditional marketing techniques.
For instance, we’ve scaled back on the number of home shows we do and are instead reinvesting that money into our online presence.
Over the years, we’ve seen that home shows have really been proliferating, and in a sense, they’re diluting their impact in that they now have shows spring, summer, fall—you name it. And home shows are an expensive marketing proposition—both from the standpoint of actual cash-outlay and the cost to staff them properly.
While I believe that the biggest, most established home shows will continue to be important in marketing decking, I also think some of the smaller home shows will go away, and we’re planning for that. We believe that a lot of people would rather search online for information about decks now rather than go to a home show.Home shows had a much stronger impact before online sites became such a good way to communicate.
Today people can go online and browse through our photo albums of decks we’ve built, see deck layouts, and get a sense of everything we offer without ever leaving their home.
What you see online today will likely be far different tomorrow.
Publication List
