Technology is all around us. Every day, we read about some new advancement – sometimes several in any given day. It's become a part of life for us, personally and professionally. As a dealer, there are many – let's call them "technological conveniences" – you can take advantage of to grow your business, streamline procedures, save time, and more, regardless of the size of your business. I'd like to share three good starting points.
The NAMM Technology Board
The NAMM Technology board, which Korg USA's IT director chairs, has worked very closely with NAMM over the past few years to develop a set of standards within the industry that several companies, including our own, have had great success with. This is something all dealers and manufacturers should explore, because it offers money-saving, automated processes such as writing POs, advanced ship notices, and so forth. And to make this accessible to all dealers and manufacturers, the committee has created a suite of document standards that enable any company, regardless of size, to take advantage of the standards. NAMM and their volunteer Technology board, which is comprised of both manufacturers and retail owners, have invested many years of their time in the development of these standards because they believe it provides a great value to our entire industry. To learn more and get started, simply visit NAMM.org/standards.
Marketing & Promotion
Several manufacturers and distributors in our industry, including Korg USA, have private, dedicated websites for their dealers that contain sales and marketing materials such as product images, logos, price lists, product info, sales and marketing training, and other operations and sales support such as online invoices and so on. Some of the more in-depth sites, such as ours, also offer things like order tracking, delivery ETAs, and order entry. These sites can be accessed at any time of day or night, so dealers can use their downtime to take advantage of the convenience and efficiency these sites offer. As an example, Korg USA dealers can visit Dealers.korgusa.com/get started to begin exploring.
Something else that may seem intimidating at first, or give the appearance of being expensive, is the variety of DIY online promotional and advertising vehicles available these days, all promising new customers or potential ways for new customers to discover and/or connect with your business. But in actuality, it's never been easier to promote your business online. For starters, social media activities such as a company Facebook page enable you to have informal conversations with your customers and let them see "what's new." Do you have some employees who are great gear demonstrators? If so, why not make some videos and post them to an official YouTube page for your business. These days, many cell phones take high-quality video that you can use, and since people aren't necessarily expecting polished masterpieces on YouTube, a simple backdrop will do for your videos. Nothing elaborate needed.
Online Advertising
If you haven't already explored it, consider running some Google ads either to publicize your business in general, or to highlight specific products you sell. They can be set up yourself, you can specify the length of time the ads run, and you determine the budget – even something as low cost as a few dollars a day. You can choose to either run text-based ads that appear on Google search pages, or run traditional banner ads on websites that contain conversations related to what you sell. And if one of your YouTube videos turns out to be well received and you'd like to expand the number of views you receive, you can promote it further in a YouTube ad campaign. And best of all, for brick-and-mortar stores, all of these campaigns can be geo-targeted to specify who will see your ad, based not only on relevant search terms, but also based on where they live.
These types of online ads also offer a way to gain additional exposure beyond our MI industry audience, reaching people who may not know where the local music store is, or the web address of any online dealers when they are ready to begin making music, so running your ad in the place these people visit online, may make the difference between them gravitating toward you vs. someone else.
You can visit Google.com/adwords and click "learn more" to explore the options they offer (and no, Google did not pay us for this endorsement!).
Each of the offerings I've outlined above requires nothing more than a computer, an Internet connection, and a little bit of your time to learn and implement them. So if you haven't tried any of them yet, give it a shot. I think you'll be pleased with the results. And they will also prepare you to embrace the next technology advancement – whatever it may be – that's surely around the corner.
Joe Castronovo is president of Korg USA, Inc., an established brand builder in the MI industry, and exclusive U.S. distributor of the Korg, VOX, Blackstar, Lag, Ashdown, Sakae, and HK Audio brands.
