wavelengthresults

  • Upcoming Webinar

    Getting Back on Track: Increasing Sales, Protecting Customer Relationships, and Mapping a Path for Growth

    The World Trade Centers Association will host “Getting Back on Track: Increasing Sales, Protecting Customer Relationships, and Mapping a Path for Growth,” a webinar presented by Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength president, on Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 10:00 a.m.

    Thursday, January 28, 2021
    10:00 a.m. EST

    The World Trade Centers Association is an organization that supports trade and investment opportunities for commercial property developers, economic development agencies, and international businesses that are looking to expand globally. Wavelength has been a member of the Association for nearly 15 years and frequently delivers marketing advice and support to its members.

    Topics for Discussion

    Many companies are focused on operational, staffing, and safety issues, but what about protecting customer relationships and marketing to drive sustainable growth? Join Jennifer Simpson for a Zoom discussion of these critical topics:

    Growth Strategies: Lead Generation in the New Normal
    Shifting your approach when the traditional sales model no longer works.

    Retention Strategies: Protecting Existing Customer Relationships
    Communicating to retain customer relationships and protect them from competitive advances.

    Budgeting Strategies
    Evaluating what worked in the past within the context of the current climate, and making sure you’re getting the most from your marketing budget.

    Register for This Event

    About Jennifer Simpson

    Jennifer is a performance-driven marketing strategist with 20+ years of experience developing results-driven, integrated marketing programs for B2B and B2C organizations, including JLG Industries, National Bearings, HB McClure Company, Datum Storage Solutions, Electron Energy, and Martin’s Chair. Jennifer has a proven ability to craft strategies that create measurable financial results that are directly attributable to marketing initiatives. She is a bridge builder who brings C-suite, sales, product managers, and relevant stakeholders together to achieve corporate goals. Her marketing specialties include strategic planning, branding, and lead generation strategies, and she is backed by a team of experienced marketing professionals who work collectively to help their clients succeed.

    LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS WEBINAR.

  • Website Evaluation

    Auditing Your Website During Times of Transition:
    A Beginner’s Guide

    Your website should continually evolve to accommodate changes in user behavior, market dynamics, and competitive shifts. Times of transition provide excellent opportunities to evaluate your market position and your ability to differentiate your business from competitors while connecting with target audiences in a way that moves people to action.

    Now is the time to reevaluate your brand, your messaging, or your interactive strategy and assess your website’s performance from your customer’s point of view. If you are considering a website update, a self-performed audit will guide the development of a customer-centric, funnel-oriented, results-driven website that can contribute directly to top-line objectives.

    Traditional website audits evaluate technical features, SEO, and limited design performance while largely ignoring more impactful aspects of a site such as user experience, messaging, and funnel management. When clients engage us for a website audit, we examine the site’s user experience, content and engagement, and lead funneling in addition to searchability and performance.

    A thorough website audit can be used to:

    • identify opportunities for how your website can evolve and adapt to the needs of your users and generate more leads.
    • implement changes by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your site design, navigation, content, and engagement that directly affect the user experience.
    • correct technical issues that have a negative impact on the user experience and interrupt lead funneling.
    • consider the bigger picture of how your website integrates with your overall marketing strategy and sales tactics.

    Criteria for Evaluation

    Following is a list of website features and questions to consider for those who want to improve the user experience for better website performance and improved lead gen.

    1. User Experience

    This includes all aspects of a visitor’s interaction with your website, including usability, seamless integration of products, services, and markets, and meeting the user’s needs and expectations. A positive user experience that meets the user’s needs generates more leads and builds brand loyalty.

    Basic questions for consideration include:

    • Do you have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout?
    • Are your conversion paths and/or processes intuitive?
    • Is there consistency in how fonts, colors, and other important visual elements are being used?
    • Is there a clear hierarchy of information so it is easy for visitors to understand what they will find on the page and where they might look for the information they need?
    • Does your content organization strategy inadvertently dilute SEO content and interfere with organic search goals?
    • Is your product or service naming convention logical and easy for audiences to interpret?

     

    1. Content and Engagement

    Content includes all of the messaging, images, text, downloads, videos, audio, and information available from your website. Engagement is the degree to which these elements are relevant and meaningful to the user and move the user to action. Meaningful, relevant content attracts active searches with intent and improves the quality of prospects entering the lead funnel. Content is a principal way that businesses establish industry leadership and credibility. It is also the key component of an inbound marketing program.

    Aspects to consider:

    • Is your content customized to meet the needs and pain points of individual audiences?
    • Is the breadth and depth of content sufficient to satisfy user expectations?
    • Is the content useful to your user? Does it add value?
    • Do you communicate with confidence, leadership, and trust?
    • Is it clear that you truly understand your audiences and how you solve their problems?
    • Does your content follow a logical or efficient path?
    • Is your copy deep (vs. shallow) without being too dense?

     

    1. Lead Funneling

    Lead funneling is the planned strategy of effectively moving a site visitor from initial search to the website and through content to action. The key word here is planned. A results-oriented website that is expected to put quality leads into a pipeline must have a lead generation and lead funneling strategy. Websites that work in harmony with sales efforts capture more highly qualified leads and create a more satisfying experiences for customers and sales partners.

    Questions for consideration:

    • Are there a variety of marketing offers that appeal to different user personas?
    • Are there conversation opportunities for users in varying stages of the funnel?
    • Are calls to action used effectively?

     

    1. Searchability and Site Performance

    Searchability and site performance (such as load times) are the factors that most website audits delve into to help determine gaps that need to be filled to boost results. While these two areas are extremely important, we suggest assessing them at the end of your site audit instead of at the beginning. Focusing first on keywords and technical performance can make it too easy to forget about the most important consideration for a results-driven site: customer experience.

    In order for your website to engage and outperform competitive options, you must demonstrate an understanding of your customers by efficiently and consistently meeting their needs and solving their problems. This can only be done from a customer-centric approach that focuses first on what the audit reveals and second on building (or rebuilding) the website to resolve key issues and create a more satisfying customer experience. A customer-centric site audit helps shift the assessment focus from you to your customers, and it ensures that strategy, design, and goals are aligned with the needs and behavior of your target audiences.

     

    Free Resources

    For a free self-guided website audit, click here to download.

    For a no-obligation website audit performed by Wavelength, call 717-823-6939 or email your request to jennifer@wavelengthresults.com.

    LEARN MORE ABOUT WEBSITE AUDITS.

  • Wire Basket Maker Three M Tool Weaves New Strategy with Wavelength

    Helping Three M Tool of York, PA, identify new opportunities for growth and open channels for lead generation will be the primary focus of Wavelength’s newest client relationship.

    Three M Tool is a designer and manufacturer of custom industrial wire baskets and a fabricator of rod, wire, mesh, and perforated metal. Three M has been successful in producing wire baskets for OEMs and end users that use the baskets within a piece of equipment or as part of a production process, but market disruptions and shifts in market dynamics have caused the company to more legwork lately in order to keep its pipeline full. These conditions have made for inconsistent workflows and created challenges in keeping skilled personnel and equipment operating at capacity.

    “Actively listening to our clients’ needs, goals, and frustrations and gaining their perspectives on the real day-to-day challenges of their business are critical first steps in any new client relationship, and this approach is a true differentiator for Wavelength,” said Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength president. “Our strategy and tactics for Three M Tool will be based on their distinct position within their industry and on their specific needs and goals for growth.”

    Just like Three M designs custom wire baskets to fit flawlessly into a piece of equipment, Wavelength will design a custom marketing program that perfectly aligns with Three M’s goals for growth.

    “Wavelength is doing the real work of marketing,” notes Simpson. “That work starts with listening carefully and thinking critically about what the client has to offer and how and where that offering aligns with the needs and pain points of customers and new prospects.”

    Currently, Wavelength is working with Three M to assess its brand strengths and weaknesses, audit its marketing materials and plans, understand its company goals, and prepare insights, findings, and recommendations for client review that will act as a jumping off point for strategy development and tactical planning.

    Check back with our Articles often for news and updates on Three M Tool and other Wavelength clients.

    LEARN HOW WAVELENGTH CAN HELP YOU.

  • Merchandising Solutions Puts Wavelength’s Marketing Expertise on Display

    Merchandising Solutions, a manufacturer of custom plastic product displays and industrial parts located in Lancaster, PA, has partnered with Wavelength to jumpstart its marketing and set the company on a fast track for growth in 2021.

    Despite having a strong foundation of repeat business and loyal customers, Merchandising Solutions found its sales stagnating. The company was also experiencing COVID-related client disruption caused by role changes and eliminated positions within their client base. Merchandising Solutions reached out to MANTEC, an independent resource council for manufacturers, looking for marketing recommendations that would help the company attract more new business and promote growth that better aligns with the company’s more high-efficiency, high-margin capabilities. MANTEC identified Wavelength as the qualified solution provider best suited to meet Merchandising Solutions’ marketing needs.

    Known for its custom product displays, such as point-of-purchase displays, product glorifiers, and countertop displays, Merchandising Solutions also has the unique capability of producing industrial parts for OEMs. It’s these two distinct industries that make the company’s brand identity and marketing challenging, as each represents a different audience with different needs.

    “We’ve done a lot of foundational work with Merchandising Solutions to define their target audiences and identify and refine their competitive differential and value messages,” said Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength president. “Understanding what each type of customer needs and identifying the right language to speak to them is key to establishing the trust that opens doors to new relationships.”

    According to Simpson, the biggest challenge is Merchandising Solutions’ distinct audiences. “Plastics distributors, designers, and brokers share a set of common interests that includes custom branding and aesthetics, but OEM’s are a completely different group that is much more interested in precise specifications and long-term product performance,” noted Simpson. “Our job is to reach each audience with the right language and messages that position Merchandising Solutions as the best solution for their needs.”

    Merchandising Solutions’ marketing program will kick off with a rework of the company’s existing website that will include a restructuring of the site map, content updating and new content creation, and SEO. This work will be followed by a lead generation and nurturing campaign, which is set to begin in early spring.

  • Recruiting for HVAC Company – 4 Ways to Ensure You Cover All Channels

    Unfortunately, we’re seeing a major labor shortage in the skilled trades. For companies that rely on skilled workers with adequate knowledge and experience, like an HVAC contractor, this shortage of skilled laborers can restrict growth. While it can be challenging to find employees, the rate the industry is growing at does not reflect that lack of employees. It is estimated that the United States’ workforce will need an additional 115,000 HVACR technicians by 2022. What are the best methods for recruiting for HVAC contractors?

    1. Micro-Target. Talk to your department managers to identify the tangible, and often intangible, qualities of desired prospective employees. Pinpoint the skills and interests you’d like potential employees to possess and then micro-target these areas through methods such as Facebook or in-app advertising, where you can carefully target groups of people with the skills you’re looking for. You can also use more creative methods such as geofencing to target job seekers from your competitors if that company has a similar culture and necessary skills as your business. Geofencing has even more applications to help ensure a cultural fit. Be sure to ask us about this particular strategy.

    2. Grassroots. Many companies also forget to use one of their most important assets for recruitment, current employees. Create an incentive program for your current employees to encourage candidate referrals. For example, you can offer a current employee $500 if a person they refer is hired by the company and stays for at least six months. Decide what parameters you want to set for your referral program, but you’re around 70% more likely to find skilled applicants by trusting your own employees to spread the word in their networks. In addition to an incentive program, use creative ways to get employees to share information about open positions at your company and the positive workplace culture job seekers can find. Learn about your employee demographics and where they spend their time; it’s likely that others that would be a good culture fit and looking for jobs may be in those places as well. Do a lot of your employees spend time at the gym or go to a specific bar or restaurant? Do they have specific hobbies where they’re around other people? Create merchandise that shares information about applying for a position with your business and give it to your employees or distribute it to local businesses where you think the type of employee you’re looking for would frequent.

      • Market to influencers. When conducting recruiting efforts, think beyond targeting the people you want to hire. Market to their influencers as well. A prospective employee’s family may be helping out in the job efforts; consider targeting spouses, parents, or significant others. These people are more likely to pass on the information to your potential future employees.
      • Create early touchpoints.For brands in highly competitive industries, it is also beneficial to start recruiting early with students. Instead of waiting for skilled HVAC workers to get a few years of experience, start cultivating promising students as early as high school when they need to begin making decisions about the type of career they wish to pursue. Visit the school on career day and highlight the benefits of going into skilled labor. Beyond targeting high school students, partner with your local tech schools as well. Taking time to get to know the top students in those schools means that you can find great future employees during their training and hire them once they’re done. Too many HVAC companies make the mistake of only looking for employees with years of experience; by hiring recent graduates, companies can train the students themselves and ensure they have the necessary skills. HVAC companies should also consider training employees in their own facilities, so they have a safe environment and more options for hiring. By training employees in-house, a company no longer limits itself to only finding employees with years and years of experience.

    3. Constantly Recruit. To counteract the lack of skilled employees for the industry, businesses must step up their recruiting efforts. Always be on the lookout for potential hires. Running ongoing recruiting efforts builds brand awareness, communicates your culture, and highlights the benefits you can offer. You never know when a skilled worker may be considering looking for a new job. Even if you are not currently looking to hire, get the information out there so you have a pool of talent to pull from. Create a dialogue with people who express interest, and you’ll have options for hiring at a moment’s notice. Consider adding a “Contact Me About Upcoming Positions” to your website’s career page to help build a candidate database.

    4. Go Broad. Instead of simply posting to your company website and listing open positions, make sure you’re posting to as many third-party job sites as possible. Engage and leverage as many channels as you can to advertise your open positions. Post on LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and other job boards, particularly those that are more locally focused. Once you’ve covered the basic places to post, you can also supplement with paid advertising. Use PPC advertising, such as Google Ads, to share information about your open positions.

    For HVAC contractors, when it comes to recruiting for HVAC technicians, they need to diligently work toward finding the best employees possible. These tips help ensure that you’re tapping into every possible channel to find new employees.

    Read more articles on the best recruitment marketing practices.

  • The Importance of Candidate Profiling in Employee Recruitment Initiatives

    A regional machine shop had specific growth goals in mind but also had a critical problem — they needed more skilled employees to help support the planned growth. Without new, ready-to-go team members, the company would plateau. Wavelength leveraged our extensive candidate profiling process to reach the “right” candidates.

    The program delivered the desired number of candidates two months earlier than planned, thus reducing our client’s investment. Today, they can use our model to conduct employee recruitment with the same strategies but without the outside cost.

    The management and human resources teams hired Wavelength for a limited-time engagement to attract a pool of qualified candidates that they could vet for both skill and cultural fit.

    Because the “right” employee needed to have a distinct mindset (independent and creative but also willing to see a job through the nitty-gritty, less stimulating tasks), we began by building an in-depth profile of the ideal candidate. The profiling process involved deep dive sessions with management and HR, a competitive evaluation and comparison, online brand reputation assessment, and most importantly, the development of the likes, dislikes, and behaviors of our target candidates. The goal was to identify where we would find these candidates both inside and outside of the daily professional realm.

    Once we identified the characteristics that would allow us to micro target ideal candidates, we used a combination of digital advertising (paid social, geofencing, IP targeting), content marketing, online brand reputation enhancement, and public relations. We also engaged our UX expert, Matt Hollenbach, to analyse and improve the home page and careers pages to streamline the process for our targets. Our recruitment program experience has taught us to align the structure of our careers and applications pages to mirror the behavioral preferences of our targets. One size does not fit all and careers and applications pages should be carefully planned.

    After each tactic was deployed and changes were made to the website, we used our web user behavioral analysis tool to tell us if our strategies were working. If so, what could we continue to use? If not, what would we eliminate and replace with a higher performing tactic? This web user behavioral analysis tool is easy to embed in any website and allows brands to see, first hand, how people use their site and where design, call-to-action, and content improvements can be made in order to boost conversions or achieve other desired outcomes.

    The ability to quickly transition from location-specific geofencing to household-specific IP targeting became essential with the COVID-19 lockdowns that drove many of our targets from their places of employment and enjoyment to their homes.

    The program delivered the desired number of candidates two months earlier than planned, thus reducing our client’s investment. Today, they can use our model to conduct employee recruitment with the same strategies but without the outside cost.

    To learn more about our employee recruitment strategies, call Gary Peterson at 717-823-6939 or email Gary.

    Read more articles on the best recruitment marketing practices.

  • Solving the Labor Crisis: View Our Webinar

    MANTEC, a manufacturing service provider serving South Central Pennsylvania, will host “Solving the Labor Crisis: Attracting the Right People, Hiring for Culture, Training for Competence,” a webinar presented by Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength president, on Thursday, July 15, 2021 from 11:00 a.m. to noon.

    View the Webinar Recording

    Summary:

    Manufacturers are struggling to hire skilled labor to fill positions; meanwhile, millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic are trying to find their place once again in the workforce. Manufacturing has a critical need that the American workforce can fill, but we need to recalibrate the way we think about hiring and training.

    In this webinar, we’ll explore how to profile your target candidate, how to develop messaging and strategies that speak to those target candidates, how to fix issues that may be turning candidates off (like bad online reviews), and how to overcome specific challenges like cumbersome application processes that are required by corporate parents. We’ll also talk about how shifting from hiring for skills to hiring for culture can help you attract a larger pool of job candidates who have all the right qualities for the job and the right cultural fit to stay.

    Specific topics for discussion include:

    • Identifying what makes you a top employer from a branding and recruitment perspective
    • Profiling your top candidate based on your top employees or aspirations
    • Finding those candidates even if you have to get creative
    • Using a variety of strategies to get the word out and get the applications in
    • Tracking your efforts for high ROI
    • Improving job descriptions to attract better candidates
    • Simplifying the application process
    • Training for the positions you need to fill
    • Hiring candidates who stay

    Presented by Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength President

    About the Presenter

    Jennifer Simpson is a performance-driven marketing strategist with 20+ years of experience developing results-driven, integrated marketing and recruitment programs for B2B and B2C organizations. Jennifer has a proven ability to craft strategies that create measurable financial results that are directly attributable to marketing initiatives. Her marketing specialties include strategic planning, employee recruitment, and lead generation strategies.

    Read more articles on the best recruitment marketing practices.

  • New Hill Woodworks Website Now Live

    Wavelength is excited to announce that we launched client Hill Woodworks’ new website in early July, and company owner Chris Foltz is looking forward to growing the business with this new tool in her toolbox.

    Hill Woodworks designs and manufactures cabinetry, countertops, and custom millwork for a wide variety of commercial industries and applications. Hill also carries the special distinction of Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) Certification, a national certification for women-owned businesses in the United States.

    Hill Woodworks’ new website showcases the company’s custom build capabilities and highlights the many industries the company serves, including medical, churches, banking, and education. The site also addresses Hill’s different audiences, which include general contractors and end users such as facility managers.

  • Wavelength Deepens HVAC Experience with new Client Beltway Air Conditioning & Heating

    Wavelength is excited to announce a new client relationship with Beltway Air Conditioning & Heating of Hanover, MD. Beltway is a locally owned and operated business that specializes in residential and commercial heating, cooling, and ventilation services. The HVAC company signed on with Wavelength to implement a marketing program to increase sales and grow its customer base. The Wavelength team will be working with Beltway to build on and enhance the company’s current digital activities as well as add direct marketing and smart direct mail to its marketing efforts.

    “Wavelength has a wealth of experience in the HVAC sector for both residential- and commercial-facing clientele, and we’re pleased to be able to apply our expertise in this new program for Beltway to help them grow,” said Jennifer Simpson, Wavelength president. “Most of our team has been serving HVAC contractors, distributors, and manufacturers for more than 25 years. We have a strong track record in HVAC and have proven we can produce double-digit sales growth in the HVAC sector. We look forward to delivering equally strong results for Beltway.”

    Beltway Air Conditioning & Heating is a Better Business Bureau accredited company with an A+ rating and serves a 25-mile radius around the Hanover, MD, area. Beltway offers products from Lennox, Goodman, Daikin, and Trane, and its areas of expertise include: residential heating, cooling, heat pumps, custom ductwork, and indoor air quality products and services, as well as commercial design-build, office buildings, apartment buildings, and retail stores.