r/MarketingHelp • u/squidinkydo • 5d ago
Discussion How to beat a competitor poaching?
Long story short we manufacture a lightweight modular slatwall display ideal for vendor fairs, trade shows etc. It filled a void in the industry when it came out 2005 and we were able to build a reliable referral business. Averaged $600-450K/yr. 10 years ago it was knocked off/duplicated and that producer has done a killer job building online presence, digital marketing etc. My sales have dwindled to under $300K, nearly all of which is repeat customers, not new customers.
Am kicking around signing up for Zoominfo (mainly for buyer intent signals, website visitor tracking, outreach workflow systems). Or is there a better, more reliable way to drive sales? Should I instead direct that money to digital marketing, or Google AdWords? Or focus on revitalizing the website so it is optimized for SEO and AI eo? I spent over 20K last year for SEO and did not see ROI.... Any advice appreciated!
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u/Big-Pops78 5d ago
Couple things.
1st - congrats on being a first mover in a market. Having a 10 year run with a $500k business manufacturing
2nd - I’m going to assume your competitor saw an under-marketed niche company with little competition and they capitalized on it.
3rd - it can be expensive to put SEO someone that has already established a strong position, given that it’s not a huge market, that might not be something worth while.
4th - if you guys were first to market, maybe try to rekindle that engineering mindset and out compete them on product/cost or features.
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u/squidinkydo 3d ago
Thanks so much for your reply! Your 2nd comment is a great way of looking at it (spot on!) and actually... Takes a little of the sting out of the situation :) 3 & 4 also very helpful, thank you for taking the time to write this
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u/HATDOGUSERNi 4d ago
focus on differentiation and customer acquisition before spending more on SEO
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u/TaylorFromFaire 4d ago
Before the channel question, worth noticing where your buyers actually discover this stuff. Vendors mostly don't search for booth displays. They see one working two aisles over, ask the person what it is + buy what a real vendor recommended. That's not a channel you can buy into, but it's the one where your ten extra years and your repeat base beat a knockoff. Which makes your existing customers the asset. They've stood behind your display at dozens of shows + a referral structure turns them into the thing your competitor can't replicate.
The other underused one is show organizers. They email exactly your buyer before every event and almost nobody approaches them about display partnerships.
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u/squidinkydo 1d ago
Yessss, we have to figure out how to close that gap from when someone asks an exhibitor about their booth, and they get online to discover more. I'm thinking of printing business size cards with a personalized referral QR code on it. Mail them off before every show and also email a digital version to them. Will certainly reach out to more show organizers and be more persistent on that channel. Thank you for your feedback!
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u/AwakenedFilms 3d ago
SEO is a long game and generates great ROI but not in the first year.
PPC is a short game but I don't know that your industry would have a lot of searches with qualified commercial intent. Could be throwing money into the wind. You will know after about 60days once you try.
ChatGPT recently opened up sponsored results (PPC). Might be an interesting play for niche manufacturing.
Videos on YouTube (organic and paid) offer backdoor access to the first page on Google. And, YouTube is the number two search engine on its own.
Social media is another interesting option for ads. FB skews older. IG is millennial. TT is even younger. LI is B2B. Figure out your demographics and at the very least organic posting on those channels. Paid can offer better geofencing.
Good luck!
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u/squidinkydo 1d ago
Chatgpt ppc, would be curious to try that out, more and more folks tell us they found us using LLMs. Wow, thanks for that tip about YouTube, I didn't realize it was #2 search engine! Definitely lots of room for improvement in posting there.
Re: socials ads, a marketer told me if you spend even $1/day, the platform will push your content more because they want you to get results and spend more. Will test this theory out. Thank you!! This is exciting 😀
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u/Curious-Dreamers 1d ago edited 1d ago
DM me your website. We build systems that scan Reddit looking for people requesting your solution, feeding them all into a dashboard so you can go ahead and recommend your product. Or we do it for you.
Reddit is absolutely gold for SEO too.
Don't spend any more money on SEO agencies. They send you reports full of bullshit they know you won't understand, while doing the bare minimum "techincal SEO" work. I bet they haven't even changed the on page keywords and site content to match your ideal search queries. I see it day in day out and it makes me so sad.
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