For years the automotive industry has served as a beacon of America’s thriving commerce industry. Now that once-thriving sector is facing a global chip shortage, which has caused automakers to slow production. With supply chains sputtering along,what does that mean for manufacturers such as GHSP— a company founded in 1924, with deep roots in providing automakers some of the key components used in everyday cars.

“ We’re not able to necessarily provide the product that our customers are looking for. They’re not always able to, to continue their production. You have the consumer still wanting it. And so it’s been unique in the sense that we aren’t really looking for a lot of work. We’re just looking to fulfill the work that we already have in terms of certainly in our auto space and the markets and companies that we service.” 

John Major is the Director of Marketing at GHSP, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, John details how GHSP is reinvesting in itself by building up its marketing efforts. John also provides examples of how the company is expanding its product offerings by jumping into the appliance sector, and he details the marketing strategies they are using to build brand awareness and to target potential customers. Enjoy this episode!

Main Takeaways

• Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way: When your company is reliant on face-to-face interaction to demonstrate your products and services, it’s important to find new ways to engage your consumers. Consider finding alternative ways to display your products, such as putting together showcase videos or building out a TV studio in an effort to broadcast how the product works.
• Well, This is New: When you’re entering a new product space, one of the most important things a marketer can do is understand if you have product-market fit. Understanding the niche audience that will need and utilize your product is not only important when it comes to identifying who your target market is, but also in understanding how your service will be used.
• A Chance to Show Off: While product launches should be used as a marketing tool to build anticipation and excitement for your latest offering, they should also be used as ways to identify future customers and open up conversations for how your product should fit into their current offering.

Key Quotes

“Once we started looking more toward appliances, we found it somewhat like what we were doing with the automotive space and we ended up structuring a lot of our campaigns to go after specific OEMs or manufacturers that we wanted to work with. We really started trying to single out exactly who those companies were and we started identifying who the key players were in those companies. Then we started getting very targeted in some of the campaigns to try to help them understand who we are and what we do, and try to open some doors and have some more dialogue with them.”

“It’s always a challenge being able to find that niche or that product that will resonate when you’re looking at a product launch show, because that’s the place everyone goes to make an impact. We’re already planning out our next show and for the 2022 show what are we going to bring? What are we going to keep? That’s the advantage of having an innovation team that is consistently and continually looking at today and tomorrow, but really utilizing a mega trends approach to start trying to understand what do people want and what type of problems are out there that we can solve?”

“Something that we’ve done well here at GHSP is being able to identify problems, identify issues people are having, and then bring a solution to them. Bringing a solution to a problem or a new way of looking at something when you come to an event [or product launch], you’re bringing something unique that fixes people’s problems, that’s what starts resonating.”

Bio

John Major has more than 20 years of experience leading marketing and communications efforts. Most recently, he was senior manager of corporate marketing and communications at Dexter-based Paladin Attachments.

Previously, Major served Warrenville, Illinois-based Pettibone as director of marketing from 2012 to 2016.

In 2002, he founded the Marquette-based marketing, design and production agency MediaBox and served as principal and president for 10 years.

Major holds a B.F.A. in graphic communications from Northern Michigan University.

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