Strand Marketing will be using the backdrop of Waikiki to talk about the release of their new platform Intent ICMSTM, a fully integrated content management, customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation system, at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Honolulu, June 6-8. During a “Fireside Chat” scheduled for Thursday, June 8 at 1:30 to 2:00 p.m. in the 5G/IoT Pavilion Booth #848, David Strand, CEO and brand director of Strand Marketing, will provide an inside look into this unique and versatile website development, brand building and lead generation tool used in their campaigns for high tech and industrial companies. The comprehensive marketing platform has been developed to launch websites and content-driven digital marketing campaigns efficiently while avoiding disparate content management systems (CMS), third party product databases, CRM and marketing automation software. In addition to websites and digital campaigns, it can also be used to launch intranet sites and internal document management systems.
The content management component of Intent has been designed to meet the unique needs of catalog-driven electronic component, materials and equipment manufacturers who offer standardized products. Intent’s scalable database design allows for rapid website development around any product suite’s unique performance parameters. The user experience (UX) includes sortable tables that make it easy for engineering and purchasing prospects to quickly find the product they are looking for without complicated parametric search screens, while individual product pages offer the opportunity to request pricing and download assets, such as data sheets, tech briefs, test data and application notes. Sample ordering and e-commerce are optional add-ons.
Intent is not theme or template-based. It allows for complete design flexibility and unique brand story telling. It provides easy administration and control over all website page editing, including request for pricing and contact forms, copy, images, videos, data and datasheets, engineering resources, blog posts, emails, landing pages, field sales locations, careers and events. Lead generation oriented content created by Strand, such as tech briefs and case studies can be gated, and calls-to-action (CTAs) for them can be placed on any page quickly by the Strand Account Team. For analytics, a digital dashboard provides metrics on web traffic, and overall advertising, email and SEO effectiveness.
Strand has launched Intent after several years building custom CMS’s using Cold Fusion, Drupal and PHP. Dozens of websites for hardware, service and software companies in various high tech and industrial manufacturing and software markets have been launched by Strand. These companies often exhibit longer sales cycles and have high-level security requirements due to their interaction with military and defense contractors. So unlike WordPressTM websites, which inherently require the CMS and open source widgets and scripts to live at the public level on the world-wide-web (leaving these websites vulnerable to hackers), Intent’s (PHP-based) CMS has been designed to publish a pure HTML version of a company’s website to the web without potentially hazardous widgets―leaving the CMS code behind the scenes.
“I set out to provide advanced manufacturers with a CMS that’s perfect for their type of sales and marketing activities―one that’s a safer alternative to WordPressTM and offers an equally robust database back-end as EktronTM [now Episerver©] or Kentico© without the enterpriselevel costs and commitment,” said David Strand, founder and CEO of Strand Marketing. “It’s also never felt right to put our clients at the mercy of a SaaS software company’s business model like HubSpot’sTM, that effectively co-opts their content on a subdomain and charges by how successful you are via tripwires. So we’ve fixed that with Intent by ensuring everything lives on our client’s own main root directory and offering low fixed costs.” He adds, “Our clients were also looking to allow their sales people to see and share data on a prospect in a common place with our Account Management team, and better calculate marketing’s ROI. So by integrating with SharpSpring™, our marketing automation and CRM software provider, Intent now forms a complete and singular prospect profile and dashboard.”
Intent is a proprietary system deployed for Strand’s clients engaged in hands-on demand generation campaigns. Platform use is priced at $250 per month, while campaign management prices scale separately according to budget under management. Strand does not place a proprietary hold on a company’s website content, nor does Intent use subdomains for blogs or landing pages. In addition to the SEO benefit of all website content living on a website’s main root directory, the off-boarding process―should a client wish to move to another CMS―is hassle-free. A pure HTML site is published a final time and the CMS component is disconnected. All data, HTML pages, blog posts, and assets stay in place and previously indexed URLs by search engines remain intact. No URL forwarding is required.
Strand Websites deployed with Intent are optimized for search engines, responsive, securely encrypted via HTTPS and compliant with Google’s pending move to mobile first indexing. Thirdparty e-commerce modules such as ShopifyTM and MagentoTM can be integrated, as can alternative CRM systems such as SalesforceTM or SugarCRMTM. Intent 2.0 is scheduled to include a fully integrated e-commerce and shopping solution, featuring a payment gateway and merchant account service, later this year.
Strand concludes, “It’s great to be able to continue to lead with our demand generation services while giving my team the power of Intent. They love it, and our tech customers love the traffic and leads they’re creating with it.”