Organization Name: Stampede Presentation Products, Inc.
Industry: Audio/Visual Distribution
Contact: Jeff Willis, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Management
Web References: Stampede Presentation Products,B2B Social Media
About Stampede Presentation Products
When audio and visual (a/v) dealers need to deliver a complete solution to their customers, they turn to Stampede Presentation Products. Founded in 1997 by Mark Wilkins, Stampede has been a pioneer in sourcing, commercializing and distributing innovative technologies for dealers engaged in professional design and installation of audio and visual solutions.
Unlike other distributors with a line of products across multiple technologies, Stampede’s success has been built on its expertise and deep knowledge of the a/v industry. The company recognized that there were thousands of a/v dealers who weren’t being served by direct relationships with manufacturers. These dealers needed one source for all of their audio and visual needs, and they needed education and training about the myriad products being offered by multiple manufacturers. Stampede prides itself on being the best in the AV business by consistently addressing these needs, resulting year-over-year growth for this privately held company.
Today, the company has partnerships with more than 150 manufacturers, offering over 80,000 products for audio and visual installations. Stampede’s extensive dealer network has access to the widest range of professional a/v products for multiple markets, including corporate, education, retail, hospitality, government, and houses of worship.
The Challenge
With an extensive and constantly evolving product line, multiple office locations, thousands of dealers in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Stampede needed to market to its customers and prospects and engage with them via methods that are relevant to today’s buyers.
The Solution
“Stampede, the best in the AV Business”, was the greeting I received when I phoned Jeff Willis, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Product Management at Stampede Presentation Products. Willis, who has been with the company since 2007, is responsible for the company’s marketing strategies, which includes their social strategy for customer engagement.
When asked about Stampede’s overall approach to social media, Willis commented, “While the value of Social Media in a B2B business setting has been talked about for several years, it’s within the last 18 months that we’ve seen the adoption of the social platforms by our industry groups, associations and stakeholders. As a result, being prepared with a platform strategy allowed us to quickly become relevant in creating engagement with customers and prospects via social media.”
Willis’ team at Stampede uses social media to extend the reach of their marketing and to supplement some of their more traditional marketing activities. They use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube as primary social media platforms for contests, communications, promotions, and to drive traffic to the numerous live, experiential events that the company directly participates in or sponsors each year. According to Willis, a recent social media program resulted in significant traffic to the Stampede trade show booth at the Infocomm 2015 show. “Our most effective social media program was geared around an effort to drive booth attendance at a major industry trade show. Aggregating engagement by leveraging hashtags deployed by industry groups, we were able to increase engagement nearly 400%.”
In the following audio clip, Jeff Willis comments on how social media helped drive traffic and attendance at a recent trade show:
Social Data + Sales Data = Big Actionable Data
One of Stampede’s most innovative uses of social media lies in connecting the data available via social media with their own internal data warehouse. The company combines the marketing data available from their social media efforts with their own transactional data to target further activities in the social world. With this integration and analysis of data, Stampede is able to score engagements with stakeholders via each social media platform. They link that data to their other marketing initiatives, resulting in a highly refined and targeted approach to further outbound marketing activities.
Planning for Tomorrow
Continually focused on being the best in the Pro AV business, the company is already preparing for tomorrow. According to Willis, “Our Twitter and YouTube video accounts far outweigh the value of Facebook; and our LinkedIn strategy is more institutional messaging and employee recruitment more than it is marketing related. However, that will continue to change as LinkedIn is the most significant platform for linking our sales team to our marketing effort and our CRM.”
Beyond the company’s ability to adapt to the changing social landscape, Willis’ vision includes being able to create a centralized view of their customers’ social media engagements, and connect the timing of that activity to financial transactions. Additionally, Willis sees the next great frontier in being able to connect Stampede’s social activities with their vendors, creating a unified opportunity of engagement with prospective clients. “We are focused on continuing to build a unique business for our vendor partners; and are using social media to introduce several new disciplines into that effort. “
Watch the following video featuring Stampede’s Senior Vice President Jeff Willis as he discusses the use of social media by the company:
Success Performance Indicators
Stampede has realized several successes from their social media activities, notably:
- 10X the engagement via social media than with live interactions through traditional engagement methods
- 138,000 impressions generated from social media activities related to a recent trade show
- 400% increase in engagement with trade show attendees at a recent trade show
- 50,000+ contacts in the professional a/v industry reached via social media
Lessons for Others
Use social media to support traditional marketing. Stampede hasn’t abandoned its more traditional marketing activities. Instead, social media activities are an integral part of the company’s overall marketing and sales activities. Using social media has helped the company to increase its engagement with customers, drive traffic to very traditional activities such as trade shows and events and to support its promotional activities.
Look ahead, stay ahead. Stampede planned its social strategy well in advance of their industry fully adopting social media. Since the widespread acceptance of social media, Stampede has executed on their strategy and is looking ahead once again. With a goal of being the best in the AV business, Stampede is using the insights from its social programs to refine and develop the next stage of its social media engagement strategy.
Connect the data, connect the dots. Stampede recognizes the value of data – both the data available from social media engagement and the transactional data available within their own data warehouse. By connecting both sets of data, the team at Stampede has actionable intelligence to help them target their social activities.
Submitted by: Kcress, University of Waterloo
To contact the author of this entry please email at: kcress1009@gmail.com