CHICAGO — Marketing is a vital component for any business to succeed.
However, marketing to consumers is a different animal than marketing products and services to other businesses (B2B).
That’s true for commerce in industrial laundry. But there are even more differences between large, national laundry operations and more localized small to mid-sized facilities. How can smaller laundries compete in marketing against larger entities?
American Laundry News asked four professionals involved with industrial laundry marketing to share their expertise:
- Carmella Cadusale, founder and chief strategist of MCC Marketing Consultancy in Cleveland and a media partner/ad sales rep for TRSA.
- Katie Cox, social media and marketing specialist with the Association for Linen Management (ALM) in Richmond, Kentucky.
- Rebecca Dutcher, president and CEO of RED66 Marketing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which works with several industrial laundry clients.
- Emily Hauber, director of communications for CITY Laundering in Oelwein, Iowa.
If you were speaking with a small to mid-sized operation today, what would your one or two key pieces of advice be?
COX: Never underestimate the value of relationships.
Your ability to know your customers personally, understand their operation, remember the little things, and genuinely care about their success is your advantage.
My second piece of advice would be to let people see who you are. Don’t be afraid to show your employees, your culture, your community involvement and your “why.” Business decisions are made by people, and people naturally want to work with organizations they trust and feel connected to.
DUTCHER: Marketing is an investment in future sales and not an expense. When you’re looking at marketing efforts to support sales and your business, make sure you know some basic numbers to measure success. This can be with set goals, KPIs (key performance indicators) and lead/close attribution.
Having a consistent, strong, data-backed marketing strategy is the best way to move the needle. If you are just trying random things or not allowing yourself time to test and learn from your efforts, you probably won’t see the results you’re looking for.
HAUBER: It wasn’t long ago that producing usable work of any sort was a long, expensive process. In that “BC” era (before ChatGPT), the time it took to create a rough draft was simply the time it took. There weren’t many shortcuts available. With AI, it costs virtually nothing to create first drafts. We can best take advantage of the low cost of generation by generating in bulk, then keeping the best option as the base draft.
Don’t worry about creating the perfect marketing every time. This is the time to create in bulk and test. I used to spend hours creating email automation content, and I overthought every word. Now I have AI assist, and they are tapping into a larger knowledge base than I have, so being OK with shortcuts and monitoring the success and pivoting as needed is much better.
Lastly, be the most responsive provider in your market and make sure your marketing proves it, because responsiveness is the one advantage a smaller operator can win on immediately. And commit to consistency: a modest effort done every week will always beat a big push you can’t sustain.
CADUSALE: First, don’t think of marketing as something you do only when business slows down. Consistency is what builds trust.
Second, tell your story. Every laundry has a story, whether it’s the people, the service, the technology, or the customers they’ve served for decades. Those stories are often what separates one company from another.
Please share any other thoughts that haven’t been covered to help small to mid-sized operations market themselves.
DUTCHER: The biggest thing we see across this industry is websites that are not as strong in real, authentic content. Talking to their best prospect and offering real differentiators. Local and family-owned can be interpreted as too small for a larger business with 100-plus wearers. Highlight capabilities like working with manufacturers with 20 to 300 employees. Show your process for helping a company switch providers [such as] how long does it take, what do they need to do, and will their employees or productivity be interrupted.
Marketing can also be fun and creative. Be willing to stand out and share your people, your stories, and ask your customers for those reviews/testimonials. Capture some videos to put out on social media. It will be uncomfortable, but people connect with people. When we have internal video and real photos from the providers we work with, that performs better on their website and in social media than any stock or supplier photo.
HAUBER: Don’t try to outspend the national players. “Out-care” and “out-communicate” them. Your size is an advantage if you use it, because you can build real relationships and move faster than a big company ever will.
Marketing isn’t a one-time project or a checklist, it’s a habit, and the operators who treat it that way are the ones who keep growing.
Click HERE to read part 1 with a look at the unique marketing needs of industrial laundries.
For part 2, click HERE to read about marketing challenges and effective methods for smaller operations.
And click HERE for part 3 for marketing advice for smaller laundries and where they can go for assistance.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
