Owen Resh Design+Marketing
Customers have a need. Product development has the talent. Marketing aligns the two, making complex technology simple, benefits obvious and solutions easy to find.
Convert to Electric: National Sales Campaign
My favorite challenge is tackling a perceptual deficit. Take electric forklifts...
20 years ago, their DC motors were unreliable, not weatherproof and unsuitable for heavy duty work.
Today, high performance AC motors, advanced batteries and a superior infrastructure ecosystem leave internal combustion in the dust.
So why do ~33% of U.S. fleets still use internal combustion? An entire generation of fleet managers can't forget those DC motors...
With resistance to electric rooted in the collective memory, we began looking at demographics.
When research revealed millions of technical professionals responsible for equipment purchases would be retiring, we saw an opportunity to reintroduce electric to the new generation.
And since waves of retirement would impact all areas of fleet management, we knew our messages would have to cover a wide range of topics across traditional and digital media.
Working closely with our distributor's sales and marketing leaders, I planned a national campaign targeting the most valuable market: fleets that used liquid propane (LP).
For the launch, we chose a lead message with permanent, universal appeal - savings - and differentiated it from past efforts with a level of imaging new to the industry.
Turning to our agency, we developed the brand, including the logo and accompanying style guide.
With our distributor, we created an editorial calendar syncing up to industry events and publication topics. It included a plan for 9 months of content across earned, paid and owned media.
All content was organized on a site designed to become the industry's resource for LP-to-electric conversion.
LP users had the most to gain from switching but also held the strongest biases. One of these was “ROI thinking.”
To LP users, batteries and chargers had to be purchased, requiring upfront capital and a long payback period.
To address this, we created an online calculator allowing visitors to explore finance options. It became the most visited page, capturing visitors for over 2:30 mins. It also produced hundreds of sales opportunities, including a customer that traveled from Mexico to Chicago to just to confirm the savings they saw online.
Next, we developed a direct mail campaign featuring a fictitious forklift operator: "Mad Mike."
Even though they don't make purchase decisions, research showed that operators influence the decision, and are ultimately responsible for the successful transition to electric.
Mad Mike helped us connect emotionally, channeling the humor and frustrations LP operators experience each day.
By far the biggest obstacle to electric was perceived risk.
To address this, we reached out to customers who had good experiences with their conversions.
During the campaign, we produced 3 testimonials, including 2 milestone events with on-site video shoots.
Since our campaign targeted a new generation of purchasing agents, our plan included the creation of educational blogs.
Subject matter was organized into categories with high industry relevance, such as savings, sustainability and productivity.
As part of our social strategy, we launched an outpost on LinkedIn, and used the blogs to grow an organic following of dealers and end users. For another core audience, utilities, we collaborated on seminars.
During campaign operations we saw 3 consecutive years of growth in sales and new business.
Through effective targeting and relentless sales support, volume of our highest gross-profit product increased by 148%.
Because of the positive impact electric forklifts have on sustainability, health and safety throughout the value chain, this project was rewarding well beyond its commercial success.
Summary
Promote the benefits of electric forklifts throughout the North American material handling industry, with a concentration on users of liquid propane.
Responsibilities
Channel Management, Marketing Strategy, Strategic Marketing Plans, Agency Selection, Agency Management, Program Management, Project Management, Budgeting, Market Research, Marketing Operations, Earned-Paid-Owned Media, Social Media, Website Design, SEO, Direct Mail, Lead Generation, Seminars, Tradeshows, Testimonials, Creative Design, Copy Writing, Photo Shoots, Document Control, Trademarks, Legal Submissions, Analytics, ROI, Salesforce Integration.