RFID Connect, which offers social-media and event-planning tools, lets buyers and sellers easily connect with each other year-round. Tageos, for example, used RFID Connect during RFID Journal LIVE! 2012—our 10th annual conference and exhibition, held in Orlando, Fla., in April—to connect with potential customers. The company sent 20 meeting requests, and Lucien Repellin, Tageos’ VP of business development, had this to say about the firm’s experience employing the system: “It worked out well. All my messages reached the guys I wanted to connect to. About 50 percent of the requests led to meetings.”
End users attending LIVE! also used RFID Connect. Among the most active, according to a log-in report, were a retail pharmacy, an aerospace manufacturer, a Danish hospital and a glove manufacturer.
RFID Connect works, but most vendors, unfortunately, are not like Tageos. Although we repeatedly encourage vendors to utilize the site to reach out to end users and say, “Hey, I see you are in health care—my company has a solution that solves this problem common to hospitals and clinics,” the truth is that most do not take advantage of the opportunity.
That’s too bad, because RFID Connect now has nearly 9,000 members—up from less than 8,000 in March—and many of these folks are end users searching for solutions to their problems (I can tell by looking at RFID Connect’s usage statistics). But end users are unfamiliar with the many RFID businesses out there, and the solutions they offer.
In February, I wrote in this blog about enhancements made to RFID Connect, enabling end users to find the products and services they seek (see A New Resource for End Users). We added a robust product database, and we feature some of those products on RFID Journal‘s homepage. Murata Manufacturing posted information regarding its tag designed for tracking printed circuit boards, and received a request for samples the very next day.
But again, relatively few vendors have taken advantage of this opportunity to showcase their products, even though pricing starts at just $9.99 per quarter. It’s not too late, of course—you can list your company and products on RFID Connect today. Simply view the various pricing options.
In addition, we introduced a new, targeted pay-per-click advertising program that lets vendors advertise online only to those reading about a topic related to their particular solutions (see Enhanced RFID Journal Text Ads, Linking RFID Product Buyers With Sellers and Hello! I’m Ready to Buy an RFID Solution). For instance, if an RFID technology provider offers a blood-tracking solution, we can show its ad only to people reading about blood tracking—and that firm will pay only if the reader clicks on its ad.
I’m so confident that this program will connect buyers and sellers that for a limited time, we are offering free advertising so that vendors can test the system. Tune into our webinar on June 21 to learn more about this program (see Receive $500 Worth of Free Targeted, Pay-Per-Click Ads on RFID Journal).
We’re doing everything we can to connect buyers and sellers. I know that many end users are interested in finding the right solutions, since I receive e-mails from them every day. I’m sure it would speed up adoption if vendors stepped up and took advantage of the new, low-cost or free tools we offer, as it would enable them to reach their targeted customers quickly and directly.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark’s opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog, the Editor’s Note archive or RFID Connect.