In today’s media-saturated world, reaching the right audience with the right message can be tough.

“I think today one of our biggest challenges is really getting the brand and message out there consistently and frequently,” says Art Miller, director of marketing for Vector Security, SDM’s 2015 Dealer of the Year. “It is noisy, not only from an industry perspective, but also from the home automation market perspective. It is tough to reach consumers today. I think the way that consumers get media is different today. Everything is on demand, so trying to reach people is a challenge. You have to be creative and find new ways to reach them.”

Vector has several marketing initiatives to do just that, from both home and commercial security blogs on their website to an active social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, the company last year started selling products and services online to reach those customers that are used to ordering everything from the Web.

In the past year, Vector has seen a 32 percent increase in its Web traffic. “We put a lot of effort into different areas such as improving the search mechanism,” Miller says. “We are constantly looking for ways to drive more traffic. The online store is a growing channel for us that we are looking to for exciting new things. We have social media interest rise. At the end of the day it is about engagement. The more you engage the better your results can be.”

One of the most important parts of engagement is two-way communication, Miller says. That is why Vector enlisted the services of the online review site, Trustpilot.

“There is a growing number of review sites that can’t verify if the complaint or comment is legitimate and there is no way to reply to them,” Miller says. “These sites use negative reviews as an opportunity to ‘encourage’ you to participate with them for very large fees, which is not good for any business. What we did was partner with a third party company called Trustpilot that does verify that it is a customer and that it is a legitimate comment or complaint.

“It allows customers to go on there and post comments and gives us the opportunity to respond, which is much more important. Anybody can post something, but if it hangs out there that is not good. We want to be responsive to those: If there is an issue we want to get it resolved; and if they are giving us high marks we want to thank them.”

Vector also uses the service to help with their other social media efforts. For example, when marketing noticed an influx of comments about the company’s military policy (such as whether homeowners can cancel or move service), Vector created a blog on that topic and content for the website. “We saw all those questions significantly decrease down to almost nothing,” Miller says.

This is just one example of how marketing plays a vital role in everything Vector does, he adds.

“The role of marketing here at Vector touches every group and provides overarching insight into the business. When you couple that with our holistic approach to competitive analysis, trends and customer feedback, it allows us to start to put some pieces together to work with the rest of senior management and really define some strong strategies.”