In order to accomplish that goal, we can give some thanks to the Internet, which allows us to visit the website of PSE Associates, LLC (www.pseassociates.com). Once there, visitors will quickly learn how one rep firm has put its arms around change and embraced it as a prime tool in order to move from the past and into the future to better communicate with its principals, customers and fellow reps.

If Wells’ fictional hero could travel back a few years, according to John Aiello, founder and president of PSE, here’s the kind of Internet/communications presence he’d find for the Guilford, Connecticut, rep firm: “All we had was a bland informational page that had our contact information and links to our principals. The web page did absolutely nothing to portray the essence of our firm. While it was primitive, it served its purpose for PSE at the time!” Aiello adds that the firm’s first presence on the web began in the late ‘90s and, “We didn’t do much to really bring the website up to date until 2010 — and it showed.” He continues that PSE originally had a website because “I felt it was the way of the future. Everyone had one, so it seemed to make sense for us to do the same. The problem was I didn’t understand web marketing, but at the same time it was easier for me to tell people to go to the website than it was to mail them a catalog.”

Well, today a visitor to PSE’s website will see how times have changed and more important how time has changed what the rep firm does on the web. “The difference between our first effort and the website we have today is like night and day,” explains Marilyn Rowland, account manager and marketing strategist for PSE. “There really is no comparison. We’ve graduated to a professional site that tells the story of who we are, our experience, what we look like, what we stand for, and ultimately provides much better insight into who our principals are. The site is much more visually appealing, user-friendly and provides users with much more information.”

“We wanted potential customers, principals and existing customers to be able to visit our website and learn about the people behind the business.”

Following a Path to Change

The journey from where PSE was then to where it finds itself today was hardly automatic, according to Rowland. Here’s the path she followed: “While I am a complete novice at web design, in just three weeks I immersed myself in learning everything I could about how to design a user-friendly and professional looking site. I took a lot of webinars (plus the MANA teleforum* on reps’ websites) which helped me learn what to include, and perhaps more important, what not to include.

“I first researched which web design program was going to be the most efficient, user-friendly, and economical for us. After testing a few different software packages, I settled on Microsoft Web 4 and thus began my journey into web design. After a few days of working with the software, I kept thinking to myself ‘There has to be an easier way’ — and there was. I conducted a few Internet searches on web design templates and came across a great website called www.templatemonster.com. This site featured pre-designed web templates that you could purchase for a low fee and then customize in a web-design program. After a few hours of looking through the thousands of templates, I developed a short list of 20 or so that I thought would be appropriate for PSE. I presented my findings to John and together we settled on the one you see today.”

And, what is it that visitors will find as a result of that effort?

“We carefully designed a brand new, state-of-the-art website that when compared to our old site, provides much easier access to PSE, better marketing of our current principals, conveys the prestige of the agency and does a great job telling the PSE story,” says Rowland. “Additionally, we wanted potential customers, principals and existing customers to be able to visit our website and learn about the people behind the business. As a result, each employee has a detailed biography, picture and job description, which we feel helps people identify and connect with the individuals they are conducting business with.”

“We realized social media can serve as a viable source of where much of PSE’s growth would come from in the future.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Complementing Personal Contact

Commenting for a moment on how this biographical information complements the relationships that the agency has worked so long and hard to establish with its customers and principals, Rowland explains: “It’s not our goal to replace face-to-face contact, and we feel it’s impractical to think the webpage can do that. We believe in face-to-face relationships and it is our hope that the ‘about-us’ page can serve as a springboard that will allow for potential customers/principals to feel more comfortable with who we are before they even speak with us. The website gives us credibility — people are able to put a face to a name, a background to the experience. Our website sets us apart. We don’t just tell the customer whom we represent, we tell them why we represent our principals. The website also provides ease of contact — people can easily go to our website for contact information and e-mail us directly from there. We’re not conducting Internet selling, rather we are providing a portal for customers/principals/leads, whomever, to learn how we can help through our years of experience and whom we represent.

“If you received a mailing from us explaining that we’d like to talk to you and directed you to our website — we feel you would be more inclined to talk to us rather than a competitor with a mediocre website — because we tell a story of who we are, and we think it’s an impressive story that we are proud to tell.”

Like Rowland, Aiello is determined to have PSE’s Internet/web presence work as a complement rather than a substitute for person-to-person contact. He agrees that “It’s easy to use technology to keep people at arm’s length, and it’s definitely a tough issue for many reps today. Electronic walls have been put up and we have to find ways to get people to want to talk to us — to need to talk to us. We have to show our customers that we have what they need. Our website is one function — but also we are conducting targeted marketing with e-mails, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. All of our efforts are geared to demonstrate a presence.”

Returning to the subject of the website specifics, Rowland continues: “We really tried to include things we thought people would be interested in reading. That explains our use of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. It’s there that we answer many of the top questions we typically get from customers/principals. We also have a ‘PSE news’ section where we will be posting agency news as well as updates on where PSE can be found (at trade shows, etc). For our existing principals, we wanted the website to be a key marketing tool. Our line card page features our principals with logos, pictures, contact information, a short description of what they do, and perhaps most importantly a link to their product brochure. Last, but certainly not least, the design of the website was a very key element. We wanted something crisp, clean and professional.”

When we first launched the site, one of the first things we did was ask our principals for criticisms and what they would change.

Using Social Media

Not content with just having an updated website, Rowland notes that another key element to the agency’s revamped communications effort was linking the site to the firm’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. “We realized social media can serve as a viable source of where much of PSE’s growth would come from in the future, and it was important to us that we jumped on that bandwagon now. We intend to market through the social media sites while also offering articles and links that we think our customers/principals will find of interest. Our goal is to make our social media sites and our website places where people will go, not only to learn about PSE, but also to get information on industry trends and market analysis.”

Expanding on the expected role of social media, Rowland continues: “For PSE, our goal with social media is to help cement our personal relationships with customers; it’s not all business. We learn a lot about the people we interact with. Facebook tells us when people’s birthdays are, gives us reason to interact and get more personal. We also like people to know what PSE is up to — we talk about events we’re attending, new lines we’re carrying, and we try to give informational updates so that people looking on Twitter/Facebook can find valuable information that helpful for them.

“We already have a handful of followers on Twitter, which is very exciting, and we are hoping to gain more in the coming months. In addition, we link our e-mail marketing to our social media, which allows prospects to instantly connect with PSE and get up to speed on our newest ventures, events and news, all right from the e-mails we send. For example, we were Tweeting from the Las Vegas Shot Show in January 2011, and because of that, we actually got the Shot Show to follow us on Twitter. That kind of impact can really broaden our network, and we’re impressed with how quickly people jumped on our bandwagon!”

Aside from the website and social media use, all PSE associates use BlackBerry technology to increase communication with customers/principals. This allows them to answer e-mails and respond to calls/voicemails very quickly, even outside of normal business hours.

Not done yet in its efforts to change and improve communications, PSE has launched an e-mail marketing campaign. “We compiled a list of e-mail addresses that are segmented by different categories (some are general prospects, or interested in a particular product/market, etc),” explains Rowland. “We intend on e-mailing a monthly newsletter and also using e-mail marketing to target new prospects. Our e-mail marketing service allows us to identify the effectiveness of our campaign by providing information on how many people clicked on our e-mail, what links in the e-mail were used and what was the average amount of time people spent reading our e-mails. This can be a very effective strategy for PSE’s future and we are eager to see the results.”

Avoiding SPAM

Any e-mail marketing campaign can be accompanied with the danger of your message being considered SPAM. Rowland admits that she’s aware of that danger. “Our e-mail marketing has been quite successful thus far, although it is still early in our campaign to really analyze its true impact. Our e-mail marketing software keeps track of who opens our e-mails, what links were clicked on and provides many other statistics so we can actually understand the impact our e-mails have on our network. Overall, we are pleased with the reach that e-mail marketing has provided and we intend to use this capability to the fullest extent to take PSE beyond traditional snail-mail marketing.

“I think SPAM is something every e-marketer faces on an ongoing basis. PSE combats being mistaken for SPAM by verifying our e-mail address, adhering to the Can Spam Act of 2003, and using reliable resources to obtain viable e-mail addresses for our e-mail campaigns. Our e-mail marketing software also advises us if our e-mail contains any punctuation or wording that will be reason for an e-mail filter to put our e-mails in SPAM. Our software also keeps track of what e-mail addresses bounce back so we are able to understand and verify why we were caught in SPAM, which helps us manage our e-mail marketing campaigns better.”

Aiello and Rowland agree that all of PSE’s communications efforts have been especially aggressive and ambitious, but they also agree that it’s results that prove whether those efforts have been effective. According to Aiello, “Word of mouth has been the primary way we’ve heard feedback, but so far feedback has been very positive. When we first launched the site, one of the first things we did was ask our principals for criticisms and what they would change, etc. New customers/principals have been quite impressed with our site and we’ve had a few inquiries from other businesses asking if we could consider building their website. We were quite complimented by that.”

Rowland adds: “Given that our new and improved website has only been live since August 2010, we feel it’s early for it to produce increased business. However, we can state that we have seen a huge surge in the number of home page hits over the last six months. We find that now when we refer people to our website, visitors are spending much more time (average visit is up to more than five minutes) looking through our website and reading about who we are. Our hosting site provides us with analytics that demonstrate that people are in fact going to our website more often, spending more time on our site, and downloading many of our pdf documents linked to our principals. We already feel the website is a success, and we’re constantly considering ways to make it even better.

“I think the success we’ve seen so far by way of having so many hits on the site is a true measure of its effectiveness. We have had a lot of positive feedback from our principals and customers about the website’s look, feel and how much information it offers.”

If the PSE staff is satisfied thus far with their new and improved communications efforts, they’re hardly content to rest on their laurels. When asked what a visitor would find if they were to revisit the agency and its website sometime in the future, Rowland maintains that “In five years our site will have evolved even more. I think we’ll be way past where we are now. It will probably be even more interactive visually, likely with video. We’re thinking about having an FTP (file transfer protocol) web page which would give existing customers the ability to login, put in their purchase order numbers and get instant information about their orders without having to pick up the phone. Who knows, maybe we’ll one day have a PSE app for the Iphone/droid? (We are actively looking into this for the future!)”