by Eric Gagnon amd originally posted by The Business Marketing Institute
Wherever I go, I try to stay on the lookout for ideas and how-to-do-it lessons for making better products, and for ways to market and sell products and services more effectively.
Awhile back I encountered a great company run by a guy who makes great products, and who really knows how to communicate with his prospects and customers. As marketing pros, there’s much we can learn from his company that can be applied to any B2B marketing program or project.
Louis Iturra is the founder of Iturra Designs, a supplier of band saw parts and accessories in Jacksonville, FL. If you’ve just bought a bandsaw and start Googling around for information, Iturra’s name comes up everywhere—even though he’s never had a Web site, and is too busy to spend much time online.
Iturra manufactures and sells parts to help you rebuild, improve, and optimize the performance of your bandsaw. Owners of the venerable old made-in-U.S.A. Delta bandsaws as well as the new, Chinese-built clones of these machines come to Louis for parts and accessories to help them cut straighter, thicker, faster, and more smoothly.
In addition to sales made to retailers and catalog companies, 70% of Iturra’s business is generated by his massive 230-page free catalog—more like a book than a catalog, actually.
A plain, black-and-white piece run on a half-dozen laser printers in Louis’ shop, the Iturra Designs catalog is packed with useful information on every aspect of buying, rebuilding, modifying and using band saws. And whether you’re selling high-end industrial machining products in Chicago, shop floor automation systems in San Jose, or Web design services in Denver, there are lessons to be learned in the way Louis does business for every B2B marketer.
Your Readers Want Honesty
Many of Louis’ loyal customers are owners of classic American-made woodworking machines, such as those made by Delta from the 1930s until recently, when they outsourced their manufacturing to China. Owners of these old U.S.-made bandsaws have a dedication to solid American engineering rivalling that of Harley-Davidson owners. Louis helps owners of these old saws restore, rebuild, and modernize them so they run better than new.
Other Iturra customers include recent owners of Chinese-made clones of Delta bandsaws, cheaper machines of lower quality than the older, American-built saws. Louis helps these owners upgrade the weak points of these machines with ingeniously designed products, most of which Louis designs and makes himself.
Louis begins his catalog with a two-page editorial on the decline of American manufacturing and product quality, pointing the finger at greedy, disconnected, number-crunching CEOs for wrecking the quality and dominance of many of America’s leading manufacturing brands. Strong words, but true: An unorthodox way to lead off a product catalog, but its honesty strikes a chord with Louis’ prospects and customers, and sets the tone for his approach to product development and marketing.
The first lesson we learn from Louis is that honesty and truth are the most important things in marketing: Say what you believe and speak the truth, and you’ll be a standout. This is a good thing.
Branding=Reputation: Selling Great Products Builds Your Brand
By now you can probably sense that Louis doesn’t care anything about fancy marketing concepts like “branding,” yet, if you want to use this term, he’s created one of the strongest brands in his business.
How does he do it? Since branding is another name for a company’s reputation, Louis has a great brand because, first and foremost, he makes and sells great products. In the old days they used to call this a reputation; now they call it branding.
Louis started out nine years ago with a single product—a 3-inch high-tension steel spring. A favorable article in Fine Woodworking magazine led to a flood of orders lasting months, which gave Louis the cash flow to design and manufacture other products he’s added to his lineup. Each product is of the highest quality, built much better and stronger than it needs to be.
When you buy any of his products, you get a beautifully machined part that’s better than its stock Chinese-made replacement, featuring design elements that make it work better or more precisely than the stock part it replaces. The hallmark of American design and product character are the generous use of materials that serve product function, design that serves functionality, and rock-solid reliability. Louis is right: This was how we made things in America before the finance geeks took over our best companies.
“Show What You Know” with Honest, Comprehensive, Helpful Product Info and Advice
In addition to selling great products, Louis is obsessive about providing intensely detailed and informative descriptions and instructions for every product in his catalog.
The most important part of the Iturra catalog are its product listings, which read more like mini-tutorials for installing and using each product. Many product listings span a page or more, and give out far more information than the typical catalog sales copy you’d see in his competitors’ product catalogs.
Read through the Iturra catalog and you’ll not only see the range of products Louis offers, you’ll get a near-complete education on the operation, restoration, and use of bandsaws and related accessories.
Louis doesn’t hold anything back here—there are plenty of photos, diagrams where needed, and copious amounts of text for each product. With Louis, it’s not so much a case of “show what you know,” as it is “share what you know,” since much of the information contained in his catalog is a result of his direct experience, and this is the knowledge he shares freely with his customers and prospects.
This comprehensive information-sharing also extends to the instruction sheets Louis includes with every one of his products, large and small; they’re loaded with detailed, concise, understandable photos and text covering every step involved in installing and using each one of his products.
Louis also spends hours on the phone each week with prospects and customers who call in with questions about his products. I’ve called him a few times and am impressed with the range of knowledge he will freely share with his customers, and by how much additional information he provides that’s way beyond basic product details—and I’m sure his other callers feel the same way. Ask Louis about putting a more powerful motor on your band saw and he’ll not only give you every detail on doing this, he’ll also tell you how to run a 220-volt line into your basement, if you also need to know this (I did).
Louis could easily cut his catalog by half and sell like everyone else, and he could delegate his customer service to an order-taker, but by sharing what he knows, he’s created a standout position in his field, and gains an almost cult-like loyalty from his customers.
And remember, he’s doing it all with crude, laser-printed, hand-made catalogs and tiny ads in woodworking magazines. No Web site. No fancy ad campaigns. No monthly PR firm retainer.
A better catalog design and clever copy wouldn’t make Louis any better off.When you know what you know and share what you know, all you need to do is put this information out there and make it clear to your reader; do this well and you’re more than halfway there to persuading your reader to buy your product.
How Can You Show, and Share, What You Know?
While the way Iturra communicates with his customers and prospects is unique to him and his business, there are some very useful underlying lessons we can draw from his approach.
First, there is no such thing as providing too much helpful information. Louis errs on the side of providing too much helpful information to his readers, and that’s a good thing. His prospects want all the information they can get so they can make an informed purchase decision. Don’t your prospects want the same thing?
Think about your products from your prospect’s viewpoint: Is there anything—and anything else—your prospect should know about your product? If so, it probably belongs in your marketing deliverables. You can’t lose by providing too much useful information.
For example, would the presentation of your next product catalog be more effective if you introduced a mini-tutorial on using one of your products? Would readers gain a more favorable impression of your product if you provided a description of your manufacturing process, and described how your process makes your product better than the other guy’s product?
How else can your product or service be used by your customer? Are there complex or unique applications for your product that would not be readily understood by your prospects? If so, would your reader benefit by knowing these ways? And if so, then how?
Are there other ways your customers use your products that other prospects and customers would find interesting, useful, productive, or profitable in their business? A real-life profile of current customers who use your products adds truth and character to the way you present your company and its products to the rest of your customers and prospects.
It’s not only true that “the more you tell the more you sell,” but by your willingness to provide extreme detail on the uses, issues, and applications involved with your company’s products or services, you also position your company (or client) as more knowledgeable than your competitors. The more you do this, and the longer you do it, the higher the chance your company becomes recognized as the go-to supplier for the product or service you’re selling. You also mitigate against the risk of leaving out that essential product information that could have led to a sale, and reduce your company’s (and client’s) customer service expense.
What else do your prospects and customers need to know?
Enthusiasm is Contagious
The other thing we can learn from Louis is that enthusiasm drives the helpful advice he provides to his prospects and customers. These extensive product descriptions wouldn’t be nearly as effective if they weren’t infused with the enthusiasm that comes from enjoying your work, as Louis clearly does.
While it would be disengenuous for a multimillion dollar industrial products or high-tech company to copy Iturra’s home-grown approach to marketing presentation, copy for every product must include enthusiasm as its vital ingredient.
Writing copy with energy and enthusiasm creates better and more effective copy than recyclying the same old marketing buzz-benefits everyone else uses in your business. If Louis can put as much enthusiasm as he does into describing the virtues of a bandsaw blade, then you can do it with the high-dollar technical products you’re selling.
Building better products, being honest, showing what you know, and showing enthusiasm are the ways Louis Iturra has built his business and created a unique niche in his field. As long as he keeps doing this, he’ll attract loyal customers and defend his business against larger companies and cheaper offshore competitors. This is what us marketing people call “building an invincible brand franchise.” If you’re fighting for market share in your field, you’d do a lot worse than taking a page from the way Louis plays the game.
To see a .PDF of excerpted pages from the Iturra Designs catalog, click here.
Comments? Questions? Send them to me at: eric@businessmarketinginstitute.com
Eric Gagnon (eric@businessmarketinginstitute.com), a director with the Business Marketing Institute, is author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook and The CRM Field Marketing Handbook.