The following digital marketing testimonial is excerpted from an article written by Steve Raymond, president of Raymond Handling Concepts Corporation, a materials handling company based in the Pacific Northwest.
It was originally published a part of an internal newsletter for RHCC employees in Feb 2015. It is reproduced with permission from Steve.
Raymond Handling Concepts retained Cyberwalker Digital in the fall of 2013 and CWD remains RHCC’s marketing agency of record.
In my latest round of Communication Sessions I have talked about our website, raymondhandling.com, which was dramatically redone in 2014. Although the importance of having a “world class” quality website is something that I understood intellectually last year, I had no idea how much impact it would or could have until we actually had one. It was one of those areas of significant investment that was done in 2014 where I had to have patience and trust and use “loose reins”. And it’s a good thing that I did.
Among the significant purposes of our website is recruiting. Many/all serious applicants for positions at RHCC use our website to find out about us to see if we appear to be a good place to work. A lot of the new people who joined the company in 2014 had already decided they wanted to be part of our Team before they even came in to interview. There is something special about the way the company and our people are depicted in the website that resonates with people; at least it resonates with the people that fit and are actively looking for our unique culture and that is a good thing. Here’s a real live example that came to my attention just this morning (Wed. Feb. 25, 2015) from a candidate for a currently open position who made this comment to a recruiter:
“I spent a bit of time on their website, and like the “personal-ness” of the site, and its emphasis on values and orientation about culture and values. I also appreciated the humility of how employees were listed.”
How neat is that?! I don’t know whether this person will be a match for the opening we are trying to fill, but that’s up to us to decide. I’m guessing he or she is already pre-sold.
Obviously, recruiting is only a small part of the purpose of an effective website. One of the main purposes is to increase awareness of our capabilities and communicate a message to prospects and customers of our capabilities and particular expertise. To give a consistent message that when they deal with RHCC, they are dealing with experts in material handling who can help them with any materials handling problem they may have better than anyone else. We are also getting feedback that this goal of the website is also working for us.
Recently, RHCC sent five of our newest Account Managers back to 
Raymond in Greene (New York) for their two weeks of DART Phase 2 training. After enduring almost continuous snow storms and temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero, so far, none of them has surrendered! One of them, Paul Scontrino from Eastern Washington, shared with me this morning that not just one, but several people at Raymond praised our website publicly, specifically citing the calculators that we have as being even better than the ones they use to train our sales people! As Nick Cage might say, “That’s high praise!”
OK, so now I understand the value of a world class website and feel validated in the decision to be patient and trust people who know more about this than I do. But that’s really not important in our 2015 theme of Driving for Sales Growth. What’s important is to make customers and prospects more aware of our website and all of you can help do that. First, check the site out for yourself. See what all is there. Become intimately familiar with it so you are comfortable guiding people through it. Then, look for opportunities and easy ways to demonstrate it to customers, prospects, friends, relatives, strangers on the street, whoever…the main thing is to drive traffic to the site. Even our customers don’t know all of the capabilities we have. Help them find out. We will all be better for it.
Thanks,
Steve.
Steve Raymond
President
Raymond Handling Concepts Corporation