Although 14 manufacturing industries reported growth in February, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Transportation Equipment; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Machinery; Chemical Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Textile Mills; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Paper Products; Wood Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, the continued weak dollar is being blamed for the high cost of components and raw materials, particularly those obtained overseas. Representatives from Transportation Equipment stated “It is going to force us to increase our selling prices to our customers.” A similar statement was made by representatives from Chemical Products: “We continue to see significant inflation across nearly every type of chemical raw material we purchase.”  Nonmetallic Mineral Products, which is one of the 4 industries to experience contraction last month, along with Plastics & Rubber Products; Primary Metals; and Furniture & Related Products, stated, “Prices continue to rise, while business limps along at last year’s pace.” Plastics and Rubber reported, “Overall demand is off 10 percent.”

While the weak dollar has adversely affected the purchase of components and raw materials overseas it has had a positive impact on exports, which experienced a growth percentage point change of +0.5% with a PMI of 62.5%. Right alongside that of the overall economy, exports have experienced continued month-over-month growth at a faster rate of change for the past twenty months. Both Production and New Orders are up as well. Production experienced an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the January reading of 63.5%, registering a Production Index of 66.3% and continued growth for the 21^st consecutive month. Demonstrating a 20 month growth trend at a faster rate of change, New Orders were up 0.2 percentage points from January.  Thirteen industries reported growth in New Orders, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Wood Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Machinery; Transportation Equipment; Chemical Products; Paper Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Computer & Electronic Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, while Primary Metals; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Furniture & Related Products; and Plastics & Rubber Products reported decreases.

Despite a +0.5 percentage point rise in Prices, and increases for the past 20 months at a faster rate of change, manufacturing and the overall economy continue to expand. And that is good news. Companies are challenged to find cost saving ways to attract new business to offset any decreases in orders from existing customers that may occur as a result of rising Prices. To manage marketing budgets set aside for new business development, industrial marketers must consider the changing landscape of search, social media, and lead/sales generation that occurs online and offline. Content presented on blogs, websites, text ads, emails, industrial directories, map sites, search engines, relevant 3^rd party sites, Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, as well as all direct mail letters and brochures, must be current and highly focused on the specific interests of your target audience groups. Market research may need to be done to understand those interests and to uncover the specific language used by your target audiences to search for what you offer. Through careful research, planning, and implementation budgets can be intelligently and carefully managed to nurture leads, sales, and overall business growth, particularly as you strategize to offset the impact of increased prices.

For help with your marketing research, planning, creation and implementation speak with an Industrial Web Solutions marketing expert. Call (800) 399-9859.

The Google Merchant Center is a website where you can upload and manage your product feeds and make them easy to find on Google Product Search, which allows shoppers to quickly and easily find your product listings on Google.  You may have seen ‘Shopping Results’ in the general Google search results.

As a seller, Google Product Search offers you the following advantages:

• Attract more potential buyers by reaching targeted shoppers as they search for items to buy
• Free to Submit your product listings
• Control your product information by maintaining the accuracy and freshness of your product information, so your customers find the relevant, current items they’re looking for

For your edification, non-product data can also be promoted via feeds by uploading data through Google Base. Although both product content and non-product content is managed at the Google Merchant Center, Google Base is different and allows you to “submit information about all types of online and offline content via a data feed or Google Base API.” As with all Google services, you will need a Google account to use them.

The Google Merchant Center makes it easy to upload and manage your Product Listings you want to appear in Google Product Search, AdWords, and other Google properties. Unlike Google Base, it is specifically for merchants selling products like screws or industrial cameras, for example. This makes it ideal for those of you who sell industrial products that do not need to be custom quoted. It doesn’t matter whether you sell to business customers or consumers. The only criterion to market with Google Product Search through the Google Merchant Center service is that you sell products.

If you have done your homework and completed a comprehensive keyword research to develop your targeted search term lists for each of the products you are selling, then you will be able to associate keyword attributes that serve to attract customers looking to buy what you sell. Additionally, users who have signed up for Google Instant, a great tool for industrial sourcing professionals looking to minimize their search time by zeroing in on the items they need to purchase, will receive relevant suggestions on Google Product Search. So ensuring that your search terms are the right ones is critical to your success.

In addition to industrial search engines, social media sites, pay per click ads, professional organization sites, and other relevant online sites where your targeted site visitors are spending time, you, industrial marketers, need to get your products into the Google Product Search engine. Sign up for a Google Merchant Center account now. If you need help setting up and managing your product feeds, give Industrial Web Solutions a call at (800) 399-9859.

Populated exclusively with member sellers, the engine is designed to deliver quality results based on matching exactly the term searched with the keywords, or tag, used by member sellers to identify their products and services. Having done away with category search altogether, it aims to keep results narrow and focused only on viable sourcing options. 

In an effort to continue to provide buyers and sourcing professionals with the results they are after while membership grows, the search engine’s new features offer additional sourcing options that also represent quality results. If the system does not make an exact match, the buyer is presented with a number of useful options that he can act on right away without having to leave the page he is on.

First, a buyer can click on one of the suggested tags that is fitting to the term he originally searched to get a list of member sellers who may carry what he needs. He can also click on any of the listed results provided by the integrated Google Custom Search. Industrial Web Search controls the quality of results and maintains service to its member sellers by selecting criteria that delivers results indexed by Google that represent actual sourcing options, including member sellers, and not informational sites like Wikipedia, for example.

If a buyer is accustomed to using the major search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing to conduct his search, he can do so right from within Industrial Web Search without having to visit each one of the engines independently. Saving the buyer time and providing him with convenience, the engine automatically enters the term used in the search into a search box for each of the major search engines. All that is left to do is for the buyer to click on the ‘Search’ button for the corresponding engine he wants to use to continue his search. And lastly, the buyer can elect to click on a sponsored ad from Ads by Google.

With all of these options, visiting IndustrialWebSearch.com first to start the sourcing process makes the most sense. You get everything you need from a single resource, saving you time and effort.

Sellers interested in becoming members and taking advantage of the great promotional offers effective until December 31, 2010 should call 800-399-9859 now. Introductory memberships start as low as $150.

Keeping Industrial Search Simple - IndustrialWebSearch.com

1)      Become a member of IndustrialWebSearch.com: Having recently acquired SourceLocal.com, and offering a number of special promotions for joining before the end of the year, the industrial search engine offers you a great way to reach targeted buyers as well as support your overall search engine effectiveness.

2)      Establish your Facebook page. Include your logo and brief description that identifies what you offer to your target audience groups. Invite customers to ‘Like’ your page by promoting it on your website. Include links to your YouTube Channel videos, blog, white papers, case studies, product sheets, or any information of interest to your target audience groups and customers. Add photos, start discussions, and post Events. Get your audience involved as much as possible.

3)      Establish a YouTube.com channel with your unique branding. Videos are a great way to introduce your target audience groups to all the ways you offer value. Whether you are teaching them how to use your products, demonstrating how your service solves a particular problem, or providing information you know to be of interest to them, short videos (60 to 90 seconds in length) are easy for your audience to engage with on their timetable not to mention share with friends and colleagues. Videos offer you long term value, allowing you to use them for any number of branding, educational, marketing, and sales initiatives. Call us at (800) 399-9859 to learn more.

4)      Claim your listings online. There are so many online listing services that generate ad revenue by posting your business information that they acquired from a third-party source. The problem is they don’t check with you first to make sure what they are posting is accurate and current. And often it is not. I told the story once before about a company we helped with our Listing Claiming Service that was being listed as a ‘charity’ because they had been involved in some charity work but were in fact a ‘brick and mortar’ that sold products and services to industrial and commercial businesses. So falling under the Category of ‘Charity’ was not good. Contact us to learn more about our Listings Claiming Services.

5)      Market Locally too. Whether you sell around the global, across the nation, or within a 60 mile radius, you can benefit from marketing locally. In addition to your Google Places account, there are several effective and affordable ways to market locally to ensure you have a strong presence for those buyers who identify a location in their search query. It is another way of ‘covering all your bases.’

6)      AdWords is still a good way to generate sales and branding. If you don’t have a big budget to spend on it then run ads for a shorter period of time according to a set schedule. The idea is to pop up occasionally so your target audience groups know you are out there. You can run a kind of mini AdWords campaign through your Google Places account although your really don’t get control over your keywords. Nothing beats a well-run, managed AdWords campaign no matter how conservative your budget is.

Contact Industrial Web Solutions to plan your online marketing for 2011.

Business persons on-the-go need tools that will make their tasks easier to perform. Ask yourself if there is an online PDA tool you could offer your customers, those who rely on the industrial marketplace for what they need, that would make their sourcing task easier? You offer a specific product or group of products and services. How often do you update information or news about what you offer? The idea is to present your buyer groups with easy access to your information and the ordering process where and whenever the need arises.

To give you an example, although not exclusively an app for iPhone, Industrial Web Search developed a mobile application to complement its more robust desktop version that can be searched on any handheld device. It allows industrial sourcing professionals to access the Industrial Web Search database of member sellers from anywhere their handheld device gets internet access, such as on the shop floor, at a construction site, or at the airport.

If the investment required to develop a mobile application to serve your targeted customer groups does not make sense, then it is definitely worth your while to become a member of Industrial Web Search, a cost effective online service that allows you to reach your targeted buyers whether they are searching for what you offer using their iPhone, Smartphone, or desktop.

The mobile version of the app is easy to use and provides the user with accurate search results based on matching the terms he used to search with the tags you use to identify your products and services to him. You get 100% control over how you tag your content, ensuring that those who need what you offer can easily find you without having to embark on a complicated expedition. The mobile version is provided free to users, as is the desktop version, both of which are included with your paid membership that gives you access to the robust seller application for managing your company tags, your company profile, your RFQs, your product image gallery, and a host of other useful seller services. Industrial Web Search offers sellers many great benefits at three membership price levels to suit all size businesses.

Whether you decide to have a custom app developed to allow your customers easy access to your company and ordering process, or you sign up to become a member of Industrial Web Search, either way it is definitely worth considering making your product/service/company information and ordering process available to busy customers who rely on mobile apps to search and get what they need quickly and conveniently.