An advertisement is an outbound effort to pay for someone’s attention by telling them about what you do or what you sell. An ad can be costly and takes repetitive impressions to make an impact. Free advice is always a breath of fresh air compared to an advertisement. It brings value to a client or prospect and may help them think of your company when they need to make a purchase decision. However, a FREE Tool or resource goes even further. A free resource enables change. It shows goodwill. It increases the value of your brand. A free tool is a gift of new business potential for a prospect. And, a free tool download means a lead for your team.
Fortunately, the systems integration business is complex, and often consists of very customized high-tech solutions. This means that your expertise is required to bring a project to reality. It also means that there is a significant opportunity for customer buy-in and participation in creating their solution. If you can empower your prospect to take part in the design of the solution, you will be one step closer to a working relationship.
So, how do you create a resource or tool that can be used to start the ideation and design process when systems are so unique and customized? You do not aim for complete system design; you aim for simply getting the project started. Cost estimate calculators, site surveys, how-to education, and checklists will start the process and bring your team and theirs one step closer to a meeting.
Calculators
While the number of security cameras at a location will vary depending on threat level and budget, a customer may be interested to know approximately how much it costs for a 50-camera system that can record for 30 days. No need to be specific, just approximate. The estimate itself will provide a few benefits. It will rule out those that do not have the budget for a solution that you provide. It will also pique the interest of the customer if it is close to their budget, prompting them to follow up for a more definitive solution design. They may even use it to keep others they are already working with honest. This brings you in the door with no sales effort when you would never have known about the opportunity.
A calculator or estimation tool can be as simple as a spreadsheet or streamlined as a custom software tool or mobile app.
Site Surveys
Customers are enabled to start the design process when you provide a site survey tool. On the simple side of the idea, you can provide worksheets for common access control device placement on exterior doors, offices, and storage areas. With this guide, your customer will be more educated about what to expect when you provide a proposal. No more device count shock. Couple that with an estimation calculator for parts and installation, and your sales team will be speaking the same budget language as your prospect from the start of their conversation. These are perfect for camera placement, intrusion detection device counts, access control door counts, perimeter detection measurement, command center furniture design, and more.
Site surveys can be as simple as a PDF document with worksheets or could be a custom software application that could be filled in as they do a walkthrough of their facility.
How-to Education
Explaining how to estimate a project or fix common issues will build trust with your prospect. And when they cannot do it themselves, they will know where to go for expert advice. After all, technology-savvy customers want to know what installation and maintenance they can do on their own and what they will need an integration partner to perform. This eliminates budget and time investment surprises and builds confidence that they are partnered with an honest systems integration company.
How-to advice can be created as a document or video tutorial on your website. Think about how-to videos about camera housing cleaning, verification of door contacts and motion detectors, exporting of video from a variety of VMS platforms, etc.
Checklists
A simple checklist may be the easiest resource to create and share. Checklists enable your prospect to become self-aware of the details required to design, install, or maintain a system. It can help your design team by capturing details that would have otherwise required multiple site visits to obtain. It can help your sales team prepare a proposal before the first meeting. And it can help your maintenance team eliminate unnecessary service calls.
Checklists can be printed out as simple documents or could be part of a mobile app or custom software design.
The Hook
While all these resources can be created and made available easily, be sure to get some sort of customer information in exchange for the free resource. By requiring a name and email address before download, you can reach out to the prospect after they download the resource to see if they need help using it.
Act on the leads. Wait a few days and have your sales team follow up to see if they can be of assistance with a preliminary design proposal. Your maintenance team could reach out to the prospect to see if the recommended fix worked. And if not, the service team can schedule a complimentary or discounted service call.
Tools for Success
Free tools and resources are a strong lead development strategy. Creating the free tools and deploying them on your website for free download with a simple form for contact information collection is a fundamental function of a marketing team or outside sales and marketing partner. Send links to existing customers, post to social media, advertise on LinkedIn and watch the warm leads start developing.
The Vector Firm Content Marketing team has decades of experience in ideation, creation, and implementation of free resource downloads as part of automated and semi-automated sales funnel strategies.
Contact the Vector Firm to discuss your marketing needs.
