In the past I often had the impression that the crane hire business in general was not too much turned towards the Internet. Many crane hire websites were more looking like stuck in the first sketch instead of being a part of a professional corporate branding.
Nowadays a growing number of crane companies has discovered the importance of the corporate website as a relevant sales channel. You find more and more crane hire companies update and relaunch their websites. Many of them also include social media channels like Twitter or Facebook for spreading news and information about the company and their work. Though many corporate websites now shine in a nice (corporate) design, prepared to offer and sale their service, there is one thing on many websites that always makes me wonder.
A major core of a crane hire website, in my opinion, is to give the potential customer detailed information, load charts and specifications about the mobile cranes they offer for hire. That's what the visitor is looking for and probably want's to "buy". But what can you find there oftentimes: The offered load charts and crane specifications don't show the corporate branding of the crane hire. Instead of that it shows the manufacturers' branding.
Corporate branding versus manufacturers' branding
Off course it is quick and easily done to copy the manufacturers load charts to the downloads folder of the website. But is it useful? What do you think:
- Would you give your customer a mug, a pencil or any other kind of advertising material with the manufacturer logo on it, just hoping that he will remember your crane company?
- When you download a brochure from a crane hire website and save it to your computer, do you remember the source of it six months later when it only shows the corporate branding of the manufacturer?
Crane load chart books are an essential piece of information about your crane hire company. Wouldn't it be great to offer your customers load charts which clearly state the source in form of the corporate branding of your company?
The vast majority of our customers is going for the delivery of a printed load chart book. All of them, if they want, also get the free PDF load charts from us afterwards for their website. This is a free service we offer in addition to the setup of a complete load chart book.
However, during the last months we receive more and more enquiries from crane companies who ask us to prepare branded PDF load charts only. That's also what the Swiss crane hire company Toggenburger has asked us for.
Branded PDF load charts for Toggenburger
Late last summer they send us an enquiry for the preparation of branded crane load charts. From the start on they were not going for a printed load chart book but for PDF load charts only.
The existing files on the website were no more up to date according to design and types of cranes. The PDF-files of the prepared load charts is the same like the one for a printed load chart book. So we have started with the basic layout proposal based upon the companies corporate design manual.
Once the layout was approved from Toggenburger we started to prepare the complete load charts according to the delivered list of cranes. This included concrete information of the required crane configurations we had to setup. The configurations at least had to show the maximum ballast configuration as well as the transport configuration according to the Swiss road regulations. For the larger cranes several intermediate ballast configurations had to be included.
After a two stage correction and approval process we have delivered the finished PDF load charts in the beginning of December last year. So all customers can download the up to date load charts for Liebherr cranes, Terex cranes and Grove cranes from the website now. And the best thing about it? The website visitors will remember Toggenburger because of the corporate branding of the load charts.
Toggenburger is one company in a row of three for which we currently prepare PDF load charts only. A second order comes from a german crane hire company, whereas we have started a third package for an international sales platform for used cranes.