If you ever shopped with a bank or credit card, chances are you’ve used a product sold by . They’re a leading provider of point of sale and transaction supply solutions which, as President and CEO Stephen Enfield explains, is everything from ATM and gas station receipts to credit card paper rolls and the mobile receipts used by shipping companies. With a staff of eight, the company is a small business success story, having grown in revenue at more than 20 percent per year to supply more than 10,000 businesses across North America.
The marketing team, consisting of Enfield and product marketing specialist Alethea Copelas, have developed an innovative online mix that includes search engine optimization (SEO), social media, email, product feeds, blogging and advertising.
They bought a subscription of multiple PRWeb online press releases from PRWeb’s parent company Vocus in 2010.
“We really have to stay ahead of the game,” Enfield says. “As a small business, we can make implement new things very quickly compared to larger businesses. On the SEO side, we’re always looking at being progressive and cutting edge. We were attending a lot of conferences to stay abreast of best practices in marketing and SEO when we first heard of Vocus. All of the industry experts were saying that press releases can be a very effective strategy towards that end.
“There were some free distribution services out there, as well as some high-end ones which seemed more geared towards medium-to-large companies. What we liked about Vocus was the toolset, service, offering and pricing was a good fit for the small-to-medium business market that we’re right in the middle of.
“We wanted someone with a lot of expertise. Being a small company with a small marketing dept, we didn’t have a lot of resources, so we wanted a partner with expertise in writing and distributing press releases, and in industry best practices. We were also looking for a tool that would be easy to use, right out of the box, and someone who could guide us in using it. We saw all of that in Vocus, and since we became an SBE customer in 2010, we’ve been very pleased with the service, the tool and the results.”
Generating Coverage and Sales
The team’s goal is to drive website traffic and awareness of their products and services, with a heavy focus on generating the branding exposure that put POS Supply Solutions above their competitors on search engine pages. They currently publish two online press releases per month, optimized with targeted content and often tailored to a current industry conversation or trend.
“In some cases, we promote new product categories,” says Enfield. “In others, we might promote a product that solves an industry need that there’s currently a buzz around.”
“We’re also looking to generate coverage and pickups,” explains Enfield. “We’ve had a couple of industry publications do further profiles on our company and products after picking up our distribution. We didn’t pitch those publications specifically—they came to us—and now we’re developing relationships with them.”
In terms of web traffic—and sales too—says Enfield, the results are often dramatic and immediately apparent.
“In some cases,” he says, “particularly if we’re pushing a particular product category, we see clear spikes in traffic after the news release, followed by a direct correlation in increased sales. In most cases, we can attribute that directly to our SBE news releases. The initial ROI has been very good.”
“I didn’t expect to get as much customer support as we have.”
“I think Vocus SBE is something everybody can do,” Enfield says. “It’s a very intuitive tool. It’s easy to put in the content; add the information links, add the images. It’s very user-friendly.
“We also learned a lot about best practices from working with our Vocus account executive,” Enfield says. “On the first couple of releases, we used his expertise quite a bit. He helped us with appropriate headline formats, story length, link density, custom URLs and multiple keywords; even with the best time of day to distribute a release. It was very helpful to be able to call and make sure everything is correct. Support is easy to get hold of, which isn’t always the case with a lot of companies. It’s a big benefit; I didn’t expect to get as much support as we have.
“We’d highly recommend Vocus for most businesses,” says Enfield. “It depends on your goals, of course, but I can’t imagine many companies that wouldn’t benefit from online press releases—particularly within the SMB market. The package we got is very cost-effective—Vocus SBE is a good spot for us.”