Understanding Audiences

thank you all right well we'll have a few more people filter in but uh we'll get back underway or you'll all be late to lunch and that will make everybody sad so we'd rather not do that so um before i introduce our next guest apparently the offer of um prizes training courses from scout has really inspired everybody to smash the twitters and apparently we were trending number one in adelaide this morning

so i don't know if that's a streak i think we did i think we have every year now so um that's good good job we're still going through and picking out the best ones so just keep keep working your way at it and we'll give away those free scout courses at the end of the day so um our next guest is paul mcfarlane uh paul is the chief marketing officer at gsme

esm electrical and paul is here today to explain how trader has activated an aggressive digital marketing plan to grow the trader brand to communicate traders values uh celebrate fun with traders customers and explain traders product offer as a new and legitimate alternative as a new market entrance a conservative industry now one thing that um we noticed the last couple of years of social media day is just a lack of b2b content

so um we've invited paul along today to talk about very much a business and business environment and how understanding your audience can help you activate that marketing plan so please welcome paul thanks ryan it's nice to be here today thanks for the invitation this is a much different crowd than what i'm normally used to speaking to so normally it's electricians electrical contractors apprentices electrical wholesalers 95 of the room is normally males

i think we've got we've changed that balance significantly today um so my job is to all of what ryan just said but also uh knowing your target audience is what i'm going to hone in and i'm going to try and the guys you just heard from before morning tea from the states lots of technical stuff lots of learnings we're going to try and bring it back to something really local here in

south australia for a national business that we are and just show what we've done in a short period of time to from a business to business point of view engage a digital strategy with our customer base knowing our audience pretty well what that little thing is there so if you remember nothing else from today um these are the that's our vision and that's our our three key words or our dna if

you like so we're we make electrical switches and sockets and power points and things that electricians use in your house sometimes front and wall back a wall but we want to be the australian owned provider of choice for a true quality alternative of electrical accessories to the trade in australia end of story with a lot of multinationals and i'll talk about who they are in a minute around us that do things

a bit differently with lots of rules and lots of rigidity we want to come back into the game with words that resonate with our audience of passion flexibility and partnership small business we can be a lot more passionate flexible and do things differently than multinational companies so if you remember nothing else that's what we stand for so today is a bit of a gratuitous plug for what we do but i'll bring

it back to some of the key learnings for knowing your target audience just press the button so to give you a bit of history my boss is simon gerrard he's a fourth generation from the gerard family in this town the klipsel name is pretty well known right back to his great grandfather uh alfred gerard in 1920 when the klipsaw brand was born i won't bore you with all the detail of the

history of the family other than this town a big brand and per capita that brand before the gerard family sold that to schneider electric in 2003 probably the biggest brand per capita in any sector of the electrical world um globally so massive so knowing our audience we've known our audience as a family and a business and trade with that sort of tradition right back to the 1920s certainly when clips will became

big in the 70s 80s 90s and early 2000s that is all we've done is talk to our customer love our customer in those traditional sort of ways without going through the detail after 2003 the gerard family couldn't compete in the electrical switches and sockets market so we stayed out of that game when schneider actually bought them but in 2015 march 2015 simon gerard came along to myself and two or three others

and said let's get back into it again because the world was changing we felt there was an opportunity to get back in so right over here you'll see that the trader name was born no family involved many other robots or sisters or brothers or aunties and and family straight back to simon and a heap of key people in four and a half years we've gone from two or three staff we're nearly

60 staff so we've had significant growth that gives you a bit of a feel of the legacy of where i'm going to next slide map so in terms of brand and position there's been some dominant brands the clipsal brand i talked about which we're all part of for a long time legrand hbm hagar other brands all global whether they're dutch german french they've got lots of great product no doubt about that

but then in this market there's been a lot of a vacuum if you like of lots of uh not de-regular it's a very regulated market but there's lots of infiltration of lots of non-regulated product the market was crying out for someone to fight the bottom end of the channel and also provide some passion flexibility in partnership with some of the big boys might have lost or had a few rules and did

things differently since the good old days of klipso so we've slotted right in the middle that's our brand position next one we are pretty wacky so rather than have a white box with abc one two three part numbers on of electricians and look boring boring boring electrical distributor distributor wholesaler outlet robert gerrard back in the 1990s bought a game park in south africa um lucky enough to have been there a few

times and we said well when we bring out when we activate it again we're going to put different ranges and i won't go through product today we're going to put cats and animals around our products and jazz them up and give them all a bit of a personality that'll flow onto some of the merchandise i'll show you later so we have got personality in our business but we are business to business

so we're not b2c so unlike a lot of what you hear today business to consumer we actually don't sell and transact to the audience i'll talk about we sell to the distributor in between but we create demand on our journey in the four and a half years we've done a lot of stuff and we when i first started out i didn't have a marketing team it was me um and we had

a couple of sales people and we were into it there's a person in this room that was with us on that journey early on doing our social media and helping us which was wonderful but we got to a point where we could evolve and i've actually got cassie zivkov put your hands up cassie she's our digital marketing media manager in our business we now have a dedicated resource around digital around our

business in a very mature uh clipsal business that have been going for 80 900 years you've dealt with everyone in the channel right from the electrical wholesalers electrical contractor to builders to consulting engineers architects developers and they will do stuff on the block they'll promote their products to the consumer we're a startup company so where do we start where do we put our effort to try and get that demand really we're

going to get stock on the shelf and the distributor and we're going to get the electrician pulling it out of that shop and putting on a wall putting in people's homes or offices or buildings so for the purpose of today we now built the building blocks for us are really those green bits so as a new market entrance electrical wholesalers where we actually transact we sell a package of gear different ranges

of switches and sockets weatherproof etc into a branch now you might not see these names as familiar but you'll see an mm there an l h a p r a media c w they're trade outlet type shops they're like your reese plumbing in the electric in the plumbing industry they're our electrical shops they're usually in the back of suburbs they're not in your retail outlets where you would typically see them but

that's where tradies go to get their gear there's 1200 trade outlets in australia we have to get on the shelf we have to get the deal right it's a haggle to get on the shelf and promise demand sales out if we sell it to them and no one pulls it out they will send it back and we will go out of business hence the next patch of green being the key for

us if it was paul mcfarlane electrical not simon gerard 100 years of tradition we wouldn't even get first through that first gate so we've got a bit of we've got the gate open at least it's a very hard market to crack against the big players so we tr the wholesaler transact with it transacts with electrical contractor but we actually do our transaction with the distributor so the mms the p and rs

direct sales today i'll really focus on electrical contractors electricians and the installer because if i sell it to the distributor and i can't pull it out as i said it'll go back so who's our target audience we've got about 15 to 20 000 give or take depending on how many are actually operational electrical contractors around australia they've got an abn and are registered electrical contractors or licensed electricians running a team they're

the people you'd ring to do work on your house they're small businesses they might be sold traders right through to companies that have got a couple of hundred sparkies there are give or take depending on what stats you 65 70 000 electricians in these businesses everyone from the 16 17 year old apprentice right through to the 70 year old that's still hanging around the tools or hanging around the office closing up

his business or finishing up so our big porsche i'll bring this back to digital is to we have to create support here with the electrician so he goes into that distributor and pulls it out for us and gets that repeat sale so it's a pull through the wholesaler and the wholesaler serves our demand they can block us they've got might have different or better deals we have to really get in bed

with the electrician so that our destiny is achieved and i won't talk too much about the other bits but we have got started with some builder activity we've won fairmont homes here in south australia and then we've got more to do with all those other channels that will come in time but today it's that second bunch of green i'll talk about primarily thanks slimer when we started out the business we realized

we are very very very conservative in the electoral game so everything from if you went to an event uh with lipsaw in 1995 there would have been a poster in the branch there would have been a flyer on the counter blake said oh mate i'll give you a ring you get along with this one there's no such thing as eventbrite no such thing as facebook no such thing as any sort of

digital comms email and so on some of our wholesaler partners and contractors still love seeing a poster so we can't move away from the traditional tactile old-school stuff so everything from a printed catalog we will still do a printed catalogue for people's vans just like this one here which is the trade bible which would sit on the dashboard and guys would still thumb through it but it's also available on the web

now as a flip chart you can download it you can click through it so when we looked at what we're going to do it's a bit hard to read but we wanted to get to a point where we started saying we want to get to some digital domination and if our customers didn't want to change we would help them change with us and teach them why it was good so everything down

the bottom is all your traditional stuff your revenge your boards in branches point of sale sales promotions all that printed stuff which is more expensive we'll still even mail out invites through australia post from time to time but in the red stuff at the top we wanted to get seriously active in all the different social media platforms we wanted to get guys understanding the power of the ipad and the iphone or

devices email marketing youtube website cutting videos all sorts of stuff hence the appointment of cassie and other people in our business and it's a massive cultural shift to try and get guys there but that's where we need to take the world and they we need to if they're not going to come we need to lead them and take us with them next slide so what does our audience look like as you

can see i said at the top of the program um that's our audience that's just a few snips off our facebook page of different events so this is a great one here boys have got high views on that is who i normally talk to um they're a different breed there's some really smart young electricians that aren't that tactile and don't want the poster and they live on their phone but i'd only

be guessing this bloke here he loves his poster i don't know that he's doing like so so that's the challenge we've got they're trade nights at the counter bloke installing something over here this is at the corporate box here in adelaide so we a lot of that is up close and personal stuff so no matter how much digital we do and how much we talk about today understanding our audience is still

very much about people and having personal relations with with our human customers so business to business for trader so who is our primary target audience you saw the photo um how do they roll the electrical contractors they're electricians they're installers they're an interesting bunch but they're pretty easy in the most part to define typical profiles the owners of contracting businesses they're the decision makers and they usually have electricians working for them

electricians will offer moonlight and do their own stuff so they shouldn't be understated they'll do stuff on weekends so they still need to know about your gear but generally the business owner makes the call on whether he's going to change from clipsal to trader or hbm to trader or use our gear in some shape or form 95 percent of male there are some females certainly a lot of sole trading businesses you'll

find that the the wife often does run all the books and works in the office it's not uncommon but a lot of these events we go there will be the blokes that turn up they're tradies so they're good on the tools chances are they got to you 10 or 11 at school and they were good at tech studies and didn't want to do year 12.

uh when an apprenticeship and all of a sudden were really good they were really good with their hands and all of a sudden they got a lot of work on oh god i better get three vans and before they know it they've got a business a lot of them aren't great business people the ones that are and the ones that take the time to invest in themselves to be good business people

do really well some don't realize that putting powerpoints on and forgetting to invoice your customer doesn't bring the cash in so so but there's good blokes out there they are the sole of the earth for australian businesses they installation of their their products right through to the invoicing and everything in between as i said earlier there's lots of one-man bands there's companies with 200 sparkies and they're bigger businesses some might even

be on the stock exchange most are conservative they do things the way their dad or their boss did particularly when we had the market know when we're at klipsil it'd be like i'll just use clip circus my dad did and my grandpa did and that's what we use and that's when i was an apprentice that's what i was on and that's i'm not changing eclipsael and others it's like it's a bit

like the canadian club advert i just drink beer because trev drinks beer and trying to change them and all of a sudden you got that bloke saying no give something else a go so that's our challenge at the moment breaking down a lot of the good work with that same target audience that klipso hbm hager and others have to say give us a go and that's when flexibility passion partnership and some

old school values come to the fore so it's what they know they know part numbers we brainwashed them in the 70s 80s 90s 2000s on part numbers you might call it a double powerpoint they'll give it an actual part number but actually try and get them to call our part number versus the one they're using really tough so we're trying to undo a lot of the good work of the past they're

reluctant to change because of that now it's been working fine we're trying we're in the business of trying to get sales and trying to get support change their brand preference so we're gonna try and make them change we're gonna give them reasons to do that can be set in their ways not so the younger generation so the younger generation that kick around the 25 year old business owner through to sort of

mid to late 30s 40 even who never went to eclipse of 500 or never went and got entertained when the good old days are on and there's only one player and there's no competition and life was good they don't know the good old days so our rep goes out and sees one of them or they find us in a digital sense we can get connected with them pretty cool so not so

the younger generation don't have the same expectations of the glory days traditionally um they have found their product information in a non-digital sense i'll just go to my local p r branch you'll give me a catalog uh there'll be a brochure there oh i might get on that website and see if i can find a tech data sheet that will scare me but i'll try and see if i can do that

otherwise i'll get the bloke to print it out for me that's the mentality i need a book for the van as i said before so most are not great at upselling either there's lots of different ranges right up to glass power points and automation packages you can get people just keep doing the same stuff they need help they need tools they need digital but they actually don't know they need it or

they're afraid of it so traders got to start being their coach and take them on the journey of understanding that it's not all paper based and there are ways to sell stuff and there are ways to do things in a digital sense and i'll get to that often they operate from the van or a small office and they just go where the business is you'll find a lot of sparkies if you've

got one of your own if there is such a thing as the yellow pages anymore they might have had net in there might be on a website or a search engine for sparkies you might have a phone number on their van they've got no idea outside of that most of them in terms of marketing the ones that are doing it are doing quite well and the ones that are embracing digital are

doing really well many are inefficient so they'll they don't buy their product or go to a job got to go back and get something so with a digital mindset uh they the world can improve for them if they get into a digital mindset in their business and we can help them on that journey next one continued so they look after their customers as we look after them so they have builders and

they have end users so they're pretty good at doing all that sort of stuff they rely on the strength of the economy big time if the new home starts and the market's good and the economy is prosperous it's good you go to a lot of guys at the moment particularly around adelaide or parts of southern queensland and even victoria a lot of them haven't got lots of work on so that's a

really good barometer to say that there's the economy is a bit soft in a few areas so they need new home building going on they need construction going on as i said before their basic business advertising strategy many rely on word of mouth digital has a low or new priority for them they've got a pretty they're smaller traders they've got a pretty lonely existence they go from job to job to job

they don't really have the office to go to that some of us might have to that a sense of community so trader with that flexibility passion partnership tries to create that sense of community who are their mates their industry mates are often their wholesaler where they pick up the gear from or they're us or the eclipse or the hagar or whoever their suppliers are that's how they stay connected they'll have a

beer and they love a relationship they're pretty it's a pretty basic um pretty basic profile but a good profile they love quality product so no matter what we say about digital today and passion flexibility partnership and our history and all that that products no good and we don't warranty it and they've got to go back to a job and fix it no good for electrician just so you know how electrician makes

money they buy materials from that wholesaler which we create the demand with and they mark up the material purchases and their labor so that's essentially when you get a bill from electrician that's how they make their money unlike other markets like the uk and america and other parts of the world we're a regulated market putting in a powerpoint is dangerous so they've got a certain skill set so australians use electricians you're

going to get an electrician a certificate of compliance is issued um because your house burns down your insurance company will fix it then if there's a proper work behind it and they get the backing of the whole site on the supplier so after saying all of that so what now you know their profile you know who they are it's a pretty defined set of people they all have a mobile phone you

all see electricians they've all got mobile phones the the connected device of today they're all using it they're probably scratching the surface of the actual ability of that phone or that device but they all have one and that device is the tool for digital change so we're gonna i'll talk about how that relates in a minute so everything they once got traditionally be it an invite in australia post or other things

they can now either create or get digitally from suppliers not just trader other people other suppliers other parts of the industry but the world of information exchange is changing and we're here to try and deliver them digital tools even if reluctant try and take them on that journey okay next one so they have that mobile phone so this device is a tool for digital change as i said everything they once got

traditionally they can now get digitally or create digitally so their phone what they think is just uh picking up mrs jones needs to down the powerpoint in the kitchen can actually be so much more for them and for us with them and i could i could spend lots of time on each of these aspects from an e-commerce point of view trade pricing point of view things that they can do on their

phone or tablet device but they can use it as a crm they're amanda certainly we can send campaigns to their inbox etc on email receiving edms receiving monthly newsletters with buttons inside the newsletter that takes them off to a certain product page or something on our website we'd like them to know about e-commerce ordering the app whether you order through our app and i'll show that in a minute and wholesalers actually

transact online but guys still like to go in the branch and pick gear up they don't actually know they can probably do most of their orders through their favorite wholesaler with their discount and pricing structure set from the comfort of their office they still don't do it so we're driving there invoicing finding stuff on a website catalogs like i showed you before all online all in flip charts all available electronically downloadable

so they can send off to a customer they don't have to drive to the other side of town to drop something off a lot of their customers and users will be fine with something that's downloadable or emailable or sendable video they love video they're lazy so they like to be able to watch a video that tells them about the features and benefits of an upcoming product product launches product images something they

can send to their customer you don't print something out you don't fax something get it as a nice image and you can send it to the contractor who may be able to send it to his builder or vice versa technical data sheets um they want to know technical they've got a real appetite for features and benefits all on the website they can go up to our packaging in electrical wholesaler and put

their phone on a qr code it'll tell them everything about that particular product they don't even have to go to the website that product will tell them exactly about that product pricing warranty certificates we've got a trader spec tool which can be done on ipad which can actually be designed to come into your lounge room and actually design plans particularly if you're doing a renovation or a new build staying in touch

social media we'll get to some of this shortly but there are many industry sites some really good ones um some other bad ones that are a bit crass than a bit not pc if you like but there's lots of electrical industry sites out there which guys are getting into and starting to get information from sales and marketing tools i'll show you shortly they can do their own marketing from from their device

and but we can be their marketing support and i'll show you some examples we like this event today we've got events running at the moment we had a renmark event this week we had one in mildura a couple of nights ago in broken hill last night we simon gerard and our rep alex went up there we got 60 or 70 people at mildura on wednesday night i would say 20 of them

went through and actually rsvp'd through eventbrite and didn't have to wait till cassandra in my office rang them so you come mate and we have to do all that sort of high cost high labor type activity so we are changing them slowly so being out of rsvp to an event promotions power mesh i'll explain a bit later and there's just so much more so you can see from the traditional stuff in

the bottom of that wheel i showed you earlier there's a lot of basic stuff but there's so much stuff now we can do back to their device phone or tablet to get digital with them and we're going to take them there next one not sure why that first one didn't come up but here's just some examples he bit your electrical contracting business in your suburb a little office he's got someone in

the office looking after the accounts and he's out in the road doing the installs they don't have any marketing machine behind them if they were to get on to to one of the one of the programs and try and design something up that they could put on as a facebook tile to their customers it would look awful right so one of the things that's going to dry take a huge amount of

resource from us in the next period of time but a service we're prepared to provide is let's say it's hankins electrical hankins want to start selling and promoting our double powerpoint with the usb in the middle of it hankins don't do marketing they don't they don't go into photoshop and they don't certainly do indesign they need someone to give them the tile so they can whack it up on their facebook page

to size and send it out saying call me i can do this for you that barely scratches the surface there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different tiles we've done for different electricians all they've got to do is send us their logo and then we will do that for them and then then on the end of they might have 200 followers on their local facebook or instagram page they look like a

superstar it looks like they've got good marketing we're effectively doing it for them knowing that they can't do it for themselves but at least they're trying they've got a feed and they're looking for content and we're happy to help that content with products and pictures features and benefits to try and help pull that sale not through them right through to the end user get it on the wall okay that will really

garner huge amounts of loyalty and we do that in pretty quick time so it doesn't have to go through too many people in our business to make that happen contract the ringses we're straight onto it because we're partnering with them next one so there are many ways to get connected with trader some more mature than others facebook instagram for us is pretty cool and we're going really really well um lots of

videos going up on youtube and we've also got an app which i'll talk about shortly so we've got lots of mechanisms to get digital and get connected with all of our customers the ones that are already there and the ones that really haven't delved into this area and we're doing it with the word fomo so the fear of missing out so when we do a branch promotion with a heap of contractors

at a local l h branch and this and the branch next door doesn't do it and we put the story up on our facebook feed it creates a an instant i suppose a fact to the to the branch next door oh geez i'm missing out that contractor shops with both me and that wholesaler i better get on board and start promoting the stories of trader we do it in real time and

we do it really quickly next one we also have an app so a company in south australia here pixel force we partner with and we developed an app which is really trying to create a community we call it the wolf pack again that animal silly fun quirky sort of theme but it's to try and get into the hearts and minds and wallets of these electricians by when something comes out or it's

new or there's an event on that we can push notifications out to them alert them of new products run promotions click on the next page ryan and there's also a picture of a poor so admissions to get on the front page of their phone create a community called the wolf pack as i said it's sort of like a members first area there's no real qualification other than to say we want you

to hear what we're doing with you and for you together because you're interested in us with nearly 4 000 sign ups to the app and then it does take the i suppose the destiny out of the wholesalers hands to say oh we put that stock package in the other day and no one's bought it yet it's like we want to talk to these guys to create that pull through so again a

bit of a paw print there this is where i'm more than happy to to lose your attention for a couple of minutes it is by no means perfect four and a half years brought a person into our business to look after it had other people an agency looking after us in the early days we are just trying to get up close and personal particularly in facebook and instagram and be really present

um so you're welcome to go onto facebook and instagram now if you want to grab your phones have a bit of a look if you want to sign up look and follow i'm we're open to any ideas ways we can do it better we are by no means perfect um but that sort of will give you the flavor if you follow and look at it for a week or two weeks just

don't follow it don't mind but that helps articulate how we're trying to create this sense of community drawn back to three words passion flexibility and partnership every time we write a story we'll put content or product or things up there it gets drawn back to that vision and that mission okay so in the middle of that section that says content content content see so many times wholesalers and contractors only have my

facebook page up and running and they just can't maintain the rage they can't maintain the content and they can't mix up the content and they can't make it interesting for long enough it's a big effort i'm sure cassie would agree we we mix it up and we we don't just do it ourselves out of here at head office at rose park here in adelaide it's an all of business approach the only

way i can get smiling faces of electrical contractors in townsville is have terry my rep up there so paul i just took a photo of these guys shaking hands in front of the band he just signed up to the app he just got a jacket through the promo and he's using our puma range now terry send us the photo tell us who he is tell us which whole salary buys from and

tell us why he's a ripper tell us why he's a good bloke the bloking cairns 100ks down the road says oh he's on board is he all of a sudden it creates that groundswell so i need all the reps and everyone in the field everyone in the business to embrace if we're going to get digital it's a culture right across the business we have to get going so running stories from everywhere

so go back to that fomo that fear of missing out so i made that comment before when you are running a store when are you running a story in my branch with my trader users it's beautiful because you do it next door knowing that he hasn't put any stock in yet and you're going to get the phone call and you'll have to put some stock in because they share the account because

most electrical contractors as i said on the profile of the electrical contractor has two or three wholesalers he shares his credit with if you like and where he buys his gear so we play him off a bit so if you look at the activities of what our main two platforms and all of our social media it's just all about it's like our daily digital newsletter what's happening and where and sometimes it's

actually about the perception that we're doing more than we actually are so we could be in parramatta one week in sydney we could be in bankstown then we could be on the north shore we could be here we might not have that much business in some of those suburbs we're trying to create the perception that we're eddie everywhere okay and it works we love celebrating people and customers in real time our

multinational friends that run these types of pages they have big marketing departments with four layers of approval by the time that stories hit the deck and the barbecue happened and you went over all these customers it's now now 28th of august it's old news you can't run that we run it the next day so if you go on our facebook feed now you would see all of our story from mildura 24

hours ago with smiling faces and the trade night we had promoting products you've got to tell them you've got to tell them again you could try and find different ways to tell them contractors love to know features and benefits so things in this room that aren't that important they love to know that there's a certain gasket on something or there's a certain knuckle that does this and the screws are four mil

longer than our competitors they're all weird stuff but in stuff that's important to installers we love celebrating conversions and guys that have moved from another brand and we have it we aggravate a bit we have a bit of fun with that we have our competition chasing our facebook feed trying to work out where we're going to be next which is all good stuff we promote our stocks so despite the fact we

have to create the demand with electrician we should always thank the one we transact with and take pictures of what they're doing in their branch to create demand for our product if they're actively pushing our product with us um and helps activate the branch next door that might not be doing something promotion sales tools videos information all easy stuff to digest people partnership always saying thank you to our supporters and it's

a great way to do it through a social media platform we're a bit speedy we're cheeky we've got a bit of personality it's fun it's up close and it's personal it's a lot of stuff that the bigger companies can't do in the speed and the way we tend to do things so it all gets drawn back to those three words just a quick slide on this i won't spend too much time

up sales people versus digital we need sales people everywhere we're a human business still but the digital side of our business all of what i just talked about on the previous page creates like a virtual rep something's happening and the amount of inquiries that cassie will get saying i've seen all your stuff on facebook started following a month ago any chance your rep could come out and see me absolutely so we're

getting leads from the field from people that aren't even on our database we don't really know them so it's definitely virtually repping them it still requires investment putting people like cassie on and actually making the the need to actually spend money in this area but it's not having to have a car a salary on cost look after a certain region the tyranny of distance in a car in metro sydney waiting at

the lights all day reps put their own message on product releases we try and get them straight down the line on what they should say and what the benefits are but they sort of tend to put their own flavor on it in a written digital form straight off to the website it is cut and dried as to what that product will do and how it will do it so there's no different

flavors put to it and sometimes with reps there's other than getting sales there's a lack of discipline we can measure through social media forums how many we're getting each week how many inquiries we're getting um how much traffic it's all creating so digital effort finds customers without sometimes finding them it can activate their support without humans in such a large potential available market we've only got 15 or 16 sales people running

around and we don't even know all the supporters that currently use our gear because with some of them were found through the digital sense but we recognize that the traditional sales model is still there too and both complement each other and we need both so digital although virtual um still requires investment and we employ cassie to do just that and even today not to put ourselves up in lights but to celebrate

another angle and another story about trader talking about how we do things we'll do a story on digital adelaide today on facebook about we were here talking about our business i'm sure some of our contractors say that's cool what are you guys doing in digital that can you help my business so it'll create that tsunami of interest next one a few little marketing statements we run by some of these are ripped

off from other people but it just keeps our it just keeps our reps focused on why we exist and how we can live up to our values so um everything you see in our digital stuff is very much the brand that we are building and that's what the digital stuff is building awareness and our brand as passionate flexible partners and the alternative in the trade is that set of expectations memories stories

and relationships that when we take all that into account account for this customer's decision to choose our product or service over someone else's and that gerard 100 years gives us a leg up with them i don't just buy our goods and services our power points in many cases do the same as what clipsals do it's how they feel about our brand so they buy relations they buy stories and magic marketing is

no longer about the stuff that you make but the stories you tell with your customer and digital is a cool way of doing that celebrating successes so the trade of digital marketing is all about the stories we create and stories we share the effort we deliver and our evidence of passion flexibility and partnership with our customers rises up and will make us the number one digital communicator in our sector all right

the sector generally has been really boring slow on the uptake so already in four and a half years across most of what we do we'll be leading but we have noticed in the last 12 months that wholesalers contractors other suppliers have lifted their profile probably because of what we've done which is a good thing it actually is taking everyone into that space we're just going to win the race so i talked

about earlier this was something uh amelia was going to do a podcast with me this morning but she struggling with her voice so the communication that connects with something i was going to throw into it it's got nothing to do with digital but it's a bit fun right so we know that contractors like to drink a beer with us they're tradies we know we've got the animals the cats so we came

out with stubby holders that have got fluffy fur on them right we came out with a green one to start with which was the cougar range and sort of the the brand one if you like and then everyone's saying should do different colors you should do the puma one the flat cat the leopard the snow leopard and it just went crazy that is the cheapest sort of marketing we can get we

land them pretty cheap put them in a six-pack and why because they're fun they're weird they're memorable they build our brand and they just differentiate us okay they're cheap it does suit our target audience you'll find that contractors get a little pack of these they're probably worth 12 or 14 landed but he's made the decision to move over to the trader switches and sockets they'll live in his boat his caravan his

shack they'll sit on the front of his van they'll go around with him and they'll keep us on the shopping list they're pretty sought after and we've got limited amounts of different colors so it's not although it's not little shops like coles we're not that big it's our little version of doing something a bit quirky and giving something away and they all chase it to try and get the set right puts

us front and center in their purchasing thoughts it just keeps us on the shopping list it does make us look a bit different and a bit weirder than the rest is at the end of the day we are primarily selling switches and sockets electrical accessories of which other competitors have got so we've got to be different next one this is where i'll i'll start to wind up but this is where we

talk about digital on the phone and i could do two hours on this and i'd need google and everything hooked up i can't help myself but put a plug in i've got power points and switches down there that are mechanical power points and switches you've all got your own house some of you might be lucky enough to have c bus and color touch screens you might have built a new house and

spent 20 grand on automation good luck to you if you could afford that but the world has changed dramatically from that color touch screen and the phone is driving a lot of those so we've brought out products there's no product in this one but it's a powerpoint the electrician could straight on the wall it's got a bluetooth brain in the back of it and with light switches and dimmers and fan controllers

and all sorts you can create a mesh a bluetooth mesh you can pair that with your phone so it is a digital application here for connected spaces you can still actually touch that power point as you're coming home want to touch it like a normal switch or a dolly you can commission it and you can play with it you can sit on the couch you can open and shut lights and do

all sorts of things if you put a little hub with it you can take it off to the internet and you can control your switches and power points from the other side of the world because you're off to the internet so but then the real cool thing is when you're in the house you can commission this so that actually has the talk function that talks to google or amazon alexa they can

actually say google turn my lights off and turn the bathroom heated heater rail towel on for 15 minutes from now there's a whole range of commands that can be done we're working really closely with google here in australia and we're the only ones are allowed to formally allowed to use that logo with the trader brand in the same comms and that's this is really starting to storm the market so from a

digital point of view using your phone contract a lot of contractors don't do that sort of work on the wall because it's too hard and they've got to do lots of training you can install a powerpoint you can install our new power mesh system there will be 10 double power points in there and that is really simple really affordable not home automation just lifestyle benefits that you can activate show anyone that's

under 10 you can talk to a light switch for a power point and they'll see that as commonplace like it'd be like saying to them used to be able to wind up windows in the back of your car or do a telephone like this they expect that in the next 10 to 12 15 years that everything will be connected through voice or the internet of things next one so as i said

you've got your cloud connect you've got your phone talk digital this is more product now um electricians can use their phone to start pairing devices and provide new solutions for the new home market and the retrofit market and get power points and light switches and fan controllers to to be spoken to with voice commands next one so when we go to market yeah passion flexibility partnership we are trying to undo the

work particularly for all of us that came across from clipsal to come and work for the gerard family again is to change your spots and break their habits so that's that's another one of our catch cries a lot of guys will say yeah eclipsa's not like they used to be or or hager's not like they used to be but trying to get guys to change because they're conservative it's hard we've really

got to try and activate that provide those digital marketing tools provide some points of difference for them to come on a journey with us next one so we're nearly there so what now the journey for us is long and we're really to be honest we've really only just started so today cassie came this morning has listened into the speakers before lunch and we're listening to the ones after lunch we're learning every

day we don't come here today saying we've got all the answers but we are having a crack we have a hundred years of years of dna and traditional know-how from the gerard family that's all wonderful but really all it does is open the door to try and have a conversation with a contractor to bring that business across the race is quick and we need to lead it thankfully as i said earlier

our industry has been really slow on the uptake so what we've done in a short amount of time is better than most that have been around for a fair while we have to always be learning trying new things watching others so we stay ahead and this does mean thinking planning executed and being totally committed to a digital strategy like that big wheel i put up earlier it's not just a textbook academic

oh look at that in the marketing that's cool you've got to live it you've got to believe in it and you've got to live it and put plans in place against it and if it means changing our customers even if they don't know they have to change or feel they don't want to change we're going to take them on that journey one thing's for sure the world is changing around them so

why not be ahead or at least on point for them and show that digital leadership they really do need it they just don't know we have to educate them so it's early days but we are digitally dominating best we can our sector for now so there's so much so much more to do thank you uh any questions we'll see andrea's up the back of the mic but it was really interesting paul

that would has uh was talking about the fact that knowing your audience sometimes means maybe you need to do things that aren't on the internet it seems like a weird insight for a digital event yeah it's really weird we we could go some suppliers are going all digital one because it's cheaper but two because they're just trying to take them all there in a hurry you've got to understand that your customer

might be he might be 62 years of age he's only ever having a book on the front of his dashboard of his van oh turn the web on oh i'm going to do that i can't go to a portal if you haven't got a tactile method for me i'll have to look elsewhere so what that looks like in 10 years who knows that 62 year old guy will have retired and the

young guy comes through right but in that in that interim you've got to be ready for both audiences and in some cases there's a bit of the i think there's a bit of a coming back to some tactile items like it's not all good and well to say let's put all of our catalogs online and let's show a consumer by sending him a pdf and flick it open on a computer if

you're building a house and you wanted to see our glass looking switches and sockets there's something to be said for a coffee table type book still you don't print them like crazy you don't print a hundred thousand you might print twenty thousand and make sure that builders and sparkies have got a few in their van but those who wanna leave it on the coffee table or the end of the kitchen bench

and make some and make some selections because in here when we show our glass range we spot gloss it and we spot printer so that it's as close to looking as glass on paper as possible you can't get that on a computer screen right so to answer to your question it'll always be a blend for us of printed non traditional resources plus the digital stuff i think it was uh question down

here andrea did you bring running shoes yes good while we're doing that i think it was interesting too that your persona was really deeply defined because you've had you know hundreds of years of experience in this area sorry um but how are you keeping on top of changing demographics in that marketplace as you know we know that governments are pushing initiatives to try and make these kind of trade-based businesses less male

dominated um you know how do you monitor that change yeah um it's an interesting one there's there's still there's there's some really i was in geelong only about a month ago and there was a lady who runs a electrical contracting business runs a good business 30 odd guys working for her she loves this power mesh stuff one barely young and open-minded to change and she's on all the social media platforms but

she's a rarity but she's we're going to do a testimonial on a case study around her own house she's going to buy it and put it in we're not going to gift it to her she's going to use it and get her electricians to start up selling it in the field so female electricians in our industry are a bit like male nurses they pop up they're different and they they're prepared to

do things a bit more less conventionally compared to the males whether we can't really solve it as a supplier there'll be more come through in time it's got unlike afl football and all that sort of stuff where women play more girls are in the trade now which is good but gee whiz i got a lot of events i went to one in brisbane the other week and there was there was 88

guys there and two two females in one room so we're coming from a long way back um so the question over here yeah hello i'm i'm just wondering what the penetration rate is for um sparky's in facebook how many have actually have got a facebook page now oh that's a good question i probably should know the answer to that i don't know if cassie can help me out they some of them

have got them and they often start them and you think oh good i remember him starting it in october 2018.

he rang us and said he'd like a couple of tiles and then you go back to you go and have a look at it today and he did four stories and he didn't do his last one since 25th of january so they get a head of steam up um but they don't know how to do the content unless they're out there with their phone proudly taking pictures of jobs and finishing off

work and celebrating their end users and their builders some do it really well a lot just don't even have a profile i don't even know how to open it they're scared of oh i'm in the admin page am i in the admin page where i can put through the post am i am i in the page where i can just see it surprisingly for all their technical skills on putting stuff on

the wall and doing stuff that scares all the rest of us some are really poor at all that sort of stuff a real low skill set so i don't know the number but they're planning out they're trying anyways thanks thanks for your time thank you all right hey i think okay you need hey oh