Online demos important for equipment firms

Online platforms can attract and channel customers, particularly for equipment companies, the marketing director at WP Bakery Group says.

WP Bakery Group re-launched three of its business websites at the beginning of the year. Websites for WP Industrial Bakery Technologies, WP Bakery Technologies and WP Haton were all revamped following around six months of preparations.

Ansgar von Garrel, marketing director at WP Bakery Group, said that dedicating resources in online is extremely important for any machinery manufacturing firm.

“When you look at the process of the investment in technology like we produce, an online platform can serve the purpose of attraction and channelling,” Von Garrel said.

“Especially for us as a manufacturing company, it is important to explain how our machines work. Demonstration videos are the easiest and quickest way to give everybody an impression of this,” he said.

“Our customers do more and more research before they approach us… We realized that we had to reach our customers through more and more communication channels.”

Building awareness and involvement

Online is a great tool to enable our customers to find look into what solutions an equipment company has on offer, the marketing director said.

“Online gives the chance to raise awareness, popularity and knowledge of a company and its products and solutions. You look around and you see most of the people using smart phones, email, tablets. These are all channels where we can reach our customers very fast and efficiently and on a very personal level.”

The new websites promote the group’s social media and YouTube presence.

Von Garrel said the company uses YouTube for communicating events, demonstration videos of machines and also visual information on how to use and clean equipment.

He said that social media is simply another channel to reach customers, a mere additive to WP Bakery Group’s overall online presence.

Facebook in particular is simply an image tool, not a source of technical information, he added.

Online will never replace face-to-face

“Online presence can lead to face-to-face interaction if done right. It will never replace direct contact with customers though, especially in the high involvement business-to-business field,” Von Garrel said.

“Online does not give you immediate feedback like personal interaction unless you are using a medium such as Facebook or Twitter. We believe online adds additional value to the overall customer journey,” he added.

Source: WP Bakery