Marketing Plan Emphasizes Internet

Pixelbenders — a multimedia graphics, Web and illustration design firm in Rogers — created Minute Drain’s Web site and has since locked up the rest of the company’s marketing business. Justin Williams, Pixelbenders vice president and co-founder, said his firm is close to completing production on a series of television commercials for Minute Drain that will begin airing in November on local cable television.

Jon Williams, Justin’s brother and morning show co-host on KMXF-FM radio in Fayetteville, did the voice-overs for the TV spots.

Pixelbenders also created a full-color, 9-by-12-inch tri-fold brochure that Minute Drain is mailing out at a rate of 25,000 every two weeks. The recipients are 502,000 registered Mercruiser engine owners nationwide.

Minute Drain’s market is existing inboard and stern-drive boat owners who may be interested in retrofitting their watercraft with a hassle-free engine block drain.

The campaign is focused on geographic regions that are most likely affected by cold snaps. But states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, where most small lakes freeze over completely, offer a smaller pond of customers. And in areas such as Florida, no winterization is even needed.

“What we are finding in places such as Florida, though, is that Minute Drain is a quick way to get silt out of inboard engines,” said Randy Myers, Minute Drain’s founder and president.

“So there’s demand there, too.”

Justin Williams described the advertising campaign as “very crisp.”

“We wanted to make even people who aren’t boat owners understand the message so that it would seem even less complicated to boaters,” Williams said. “The goal of the entire campaign is to stress that Minute Drain is affordable, easy to use and that it increases the value of your boat by enabling you to use it year-round.”

Myers said he plans to run national TV commercials on networks such as ESPN and CNN during 2003. In the meantime, he’s expecting 95 percent of the company’s sales to come online through www.minutedrain.com.

“We’re very fortunate to have vendors like Pixelbender and the Prairie Creek Marina, who have enabled us to do things in first-rate fashion,” Myers said. Pixelbenders has done a real good job. We’re throwing money at the advertising end for sure. As corny as it sounds, we really started this whole thing out to begin with because I want to promote boating.”

Minute Drain spent about $7,500 on its Web-site design.

Williams said www.minutedrain.com received 13,894 hits from Sept. 1-Sept. 25, with an average of 23 per hour or 555 per day. The Internet business is significant because the worldwide market of registered Mercruiser engine owners is 18.4 million.

“The same day we launched our Internet site,” Myers said, “we sold a Minute Drain through it to a customer in Kentucky. We weren’t even registered with all of the search engines yet.”

Direct marketing efforts to 103 Cobalt dealers nationwide and other certified dealers and technicians is also under way.

Myers said his competition for the retrofit market is nonexistent at present. The fall winterization season is so close, he said, that it would be almost impossible for another firm to gear up to compete. And by next year, Myers expects Minute Drain’s marketing campaign to have already penetrated most of the market.