brianm

Brian’s Blog March 25, 2012

Re: Custom Carpet Edges & Custom Rugs

Welcome!

Today let’s talk about upgrading your carpet workroom offerings.

There are many carpet stores and shops that offer standard run of the mill carpet binding and sometimes serging and fringe edges for area rugs. But today let think about how to add additional profits and capture more profitable hi-end business.

Here’s an example of a wide blind stitch with an interior color added. You can use Instabind to get this look or with a narrow binding applied prior to the wider edge. Bind stitching is usually done using our Model PBL-TX wide tapestry binder or adding a tapestry guide to your existing binder.

Even if you offer regular carpet binding, you can still offer custom serging and even rope style edges using different DIY Instabind styles with out an initial equipment investment.

            

Serge Style Instabind                     Rope Style Instabind

Also adding a serging tape folder to a carpet binding machine is a great economical way to offer the same quality look.

We are here to take your calls and answer your questions. Please contact us during business hours or send us a note anytime.

Thanks for stopping by!

Brian’s Blog March 12, 2013

Welcome to my blog.

Today I decided to talk about the importance of online information. We started a campaign to get our products listed on the web and have been adding video.

Please review our YouTube channel here.

In addition to having a virtual online showroom, we see the increased value of offering our customer service support and training via this media.

We are also seeing our fame spread through word of mouth and appreciate helpful people that post all on their own, they are blogging on  places like Pinterest & Curbly among others.

This generates organic search engine optimization and drives new folks to our website constantly and increasingly.

So if you are not currently placing your offering out in cyberspace, please get busy and watch the results.

Also just a quick thank you to all the bloggers helping spread the word!

Brian’s Blog February 4th, 2013

First of all, if we saw you at Surfaces this year, thank you for stopping by our booth. We were glad to see you and discuss your needs and challenges for 2013.

We were pleased with the overall attendance and traffic this year. Everyone seemed upbeat and reported better sales and opportunities ahead for 2013.

• We were excited to introduce our new Veltron line of 7/8 and 1-1/4 inch widths of polyester binding in over 275 colors.
• Our model PBB portable bobbinless carpet binders,  now offering the ability to sew transition moldings on heavy rubber mats.
• 50 colors of our newly introduced cotton serge yarns on 1.25 lb cones.
• Newly re-designed artificial turf seaming tapes that speed up and greatly reduce the cost of  installation of grass fields and golf putting surfaces.
• We also now have an ever growing library of videos available on either YouTube (search for Bond Products) or on our new website: https://bondproducts.com/

Please contact us toll free at 888-800-BOND (2663) and a live person will be happy to help answer your questions!

Bond Products Shares its Top 5 Marketing Techniques (part 2)

…continued

Third, as part of our effort to maximize the potential of the contact information mentioned above, we’ve implemented a regular email marketing campaign that allows us to communicate with and reward our customers.  For this, we use Mailchimp, a simple and free tool (free up to 2,000 subscribers, then reasonably priced after).  Mailchimp is an all-in-one tool that allows us to store, access and manage our mailing lists, create and edit our email newsletters, deliver them to our customer and prospect lists and then track the success metrics of each individual campaign.  Though we aren’t marketing gurus, we are able to understand and tweak our email marketing efforts and measure the results through this one great online marketing tool.  If you are fortunate enough to build a solid email marketing list, this should definitely be a part of your overall marketing plan.

Fourth, we’ve become increasingly aware of the value of social media.  In a global online world that is becoming more locally networked, personal recommendations and social mentions are more and more important to online business success.  To make sure we are part of this global conversation, we have secured our own Facebook and Twitter profiles, and we regularly use them to reach out to our “followers”.  Not only is this a great way to speak to a large audience, but it’s also a great way to maintain a personal relationship with a group of like-minded individuals who might be a half a world away.  We think it’s interesting that something as simple and elegant as social media is actually helping to take a geographically boundless group of people and keep them connected, and can personally attest to the value of your investment in this technique.  The important thing when it comes to social media is to make sure your “messages” are insightful and personal (never self-serving).  As with all opt-in marketing, you shouldn’t spam those who are offering you their attention.

Finally, we’ve been using pay-per-click marketing, learning first-hand why Google Adwords is the top platform for online advertising.  It is completely customizable, and incredibly powerful and precise in the way that it allows you to create, schedule and deliver your ads – down to the point that we can run an ad between certain hours on certain days of the week to a specific geographic region using specific media tools (we’re not kidding!).  This means that we can control our advertising budget like never before imagined.  While there are certainly any number of best practices out there regarding when, where, how, why and what to do with your ad campaigns, we’ve found that it’s best to use the test and tweak tools offered by Adwords to get the optimum results.  With all of the parameters and the instant reaction of Google behind you, it’s easy to let the results dictate your own best practices.   The key to all PPC marketing is never stop trying to improve your results.

Well, there you have it, the top 5 online marketing tools and techniques that we’ve found over the last year.  If you start with #1 and work your way through them, testing and evaluating at every turn (again, the tools themselves make this really easy), you will no doubt start to see some impressive results for yourself.  The worst thing you can do is ignore the evolution and power of the web as a means to reach out and develop relationships with your marketplace!

Bond Products Shares its Top 5 Marketing Techniques

As you might have noticed, we’ve been investing heavily in our website and related online marketing technologies here at Bond Products.  This has had a major impact on the growth of our business, and (more importantly) served as a valuable learning experience for us.  With these online tools, we are able to analyze and adjust any of our marketing efforts with a few clicks.

In our dedication to helping you, our carpet retailers and installers, we’ve decided to share a bit of what we’ve learned in the hopes that it might have a similar impact on your business.  While the proper mix and employment of these techniques will vary for each of you, the following have been the most promising and effective for us.

First, we’ve been steadily increasing our blogging efforts.  This has been helped us in two ways – it has allowed us to provide constant, up-to-date information and advice to our customers, and it has allowed us to “feed” the search engines with fresh content.   As a result, we have strengthened both our rapport and relationship with our customers, and been rewarded with higher placement in the search results by engines such as Google and Bing.  While the ideal frequency and delivery of blog posts is a topic of much debate, we tend to follow the most widely accepted advice and post a minimum of once per week or at least 4 times per month.  If you are thinking of blogging, make sure your posts are well-written, informative, and original, showcasing and sharing your expertise and dedication to service.

Second, we’ve been making use of simple web form technologies that allow us to quickly and easily capture the contact information of our website visitors.  This has probably been the highest return on our web investment, as this incredibly valuable information has the potential for any number of future campaigns and sales.  By capturing and storing this information in a secure database, we are able to access and market to a pre-qualified, targeted group of prospects and customers.  If you are thinking of implementing an online subscribe/register form, make sure are up front about what you will do with the information and that you respect and protect this it at all costs, never selling or using it in any way that doesn’t immediately serve those who have trusted you.  If you invest in solid security, and provide written notice of your privacy policy, you will find that your list will continue to grow in size and potential.

to be continued…

Bond Products is Going to Vegas!

Bond Products will be displaying at this year’s 2013 Surfaces Annual Convention at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.  This show, which runs from 9-5 on Tuesday, January 29 and Wednesday, January 30 and 9-3 on Thursday, January 31, is the leading floor covering industry event, attracting retailers, distributors, installers, designers, and home builders from around the country.  It is an excellent opportunity to discover the latest in tools and techniques and network with other attendees.

You can find us at Booth #B2428 showcasing Veltron, our new high-quality polyester binding tape that provides a more durable non-fraying edge at competitive prices.  Make sure you stop by for in-person demonstrations and special show discount pricing.  We will also be conducting on-site workshops on some of the latest binding and serging machinery and sundries products (we’re very excited about Instabind – our new time-saving, DIY binding solution).

If you aren’t already registered, be our guest by registering here.  It promises to be an excellent learning and relationship-building event that is sure to provide your retail and/or installer business with plenty of inspiration and ideas for the year to come.  We look forward to seeing you there!

 Join us at the 2nd Annual Bond Open

House and learn from the Pros!

 

We are excited to announce that we are hosting our Second Annual Bond Open House on Thursday, October 11, 2012, from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. We have a lot of things we are offering this year including:

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• Free labor on portable binder repairs (you just have to pay for the parts)*
• Free instruction on maintaining and servicing your binder
• Free training on binding, serging, carving, and fringing techniques
• A 10 percent discount on all Bond equipment and supplies
• Trade evaluations on your old equipment if you want to “trade up”
• …and most importantly…It’s a pizza party! FREE FOOD AND DRINKS.

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In addition to all of this, you will get to see our state-of-the-art carpet workroom. It’s truly an amazing place to see in action.

We hope you’ll take advantage of the services and training as well as the food. We’d love to visit and catch up with all of our friends and to show you all the things we have to offer.

If you have any questions or need directions to our place, just contact us.

See you soon!

 

*Note: Free labor is limited to portable binders only, with a limit of two per customer. If you would like to take advantage of this service, please call ahead and make an appointment.