Opinion from MB, page-35

Hi Chrisso,

I agree that up until now, EdenCrete's overall marketing efforts (home page, PR, advertising, social media etc.) have been pretty woeful, or even non-existent. To make matters far worse, EdenCrete's home page is diffcult to navigate, it lacks some important information, and it is also mostly out of date. I presume that the reason for all of this is the current lack of both human and capital resources, which should all soon change.

Nevertheless, EdenCrete's home page should be its visiting card, and as such, it should a very polished and professional piece of work, or indeed a masterpiece in this "social media" day and age. It could well be an intending major customer's first real contact with EdenCrete, and therefore it must provide enough information, in an easy to find and simple form, in order to entice an interested company to get on the phone or to E-Mail EdenCrete for far more detailed information. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on EdenCrete's Facebook presence, as I am not a member.

In fact I have been very reluctant to simply direct the many persons and companies that I have talked to about Eden and EdenCrete, to EdenCrete's home page. I much rather prefer to put my own explanatory E-Mails together, with of course the link to the EdenCrete home page, but more importantly, I attach a few of EdenCrete's own PDF's (which are very good by the way!) as well as some selected EDE's ASX announcements eg. MARTA, Parchem, Shotcrete, Twiggs County, etc. i.e. the ones that I feel are the most relevant to the person or company concerned, and to round things off, I attach the latest EDE Investor presentation, in PDF form, as an Eden Innovations company and activities overview. I should point out, that if any person or company wants additional information I suggest they contact Eden or EdenCrete directly. Please note: I am not actively selling or marketing Eden or EdenCrete etc., rather, I am just talking and corresponding with interested persons and companies about Eden and EdenCrete etc. that I have existing contact with, or those that I have since met by chance, or those that have been referred to me. 

Having said all this, and having just been very critical of EdenCrete's overall marketing efforts up to now (home page, PR, advertising, social media etc.) or the lack of thereof, there is a far bigger picture i.e. it should not be forgotten that EdenCrete is a highly specialised product, and its actual target customer group is therefore extremely small i.e. it is not a product for the masses, nor can it be simply ordered online. Therefore, new age marketing forms such as social media, which are often fantastic, may, in EdenCrete's case, not be the most effective selling tool (apart from simply raising customer awareness, which is always a good thing). This is due to the fact that interested customers (contractors, DOT's, concrete producers, construction companies, engineers, etc.) wishing to have more detailed information, will always have to contact a salesperson at EdenCrete directly. Therefore, it is quite possible that, in order to be far more effective, the majority of EdenCrete's selling will have to be done the old-fashioned way i.e. telephone canvassing (remember that?) and/or E-Mail mailing actions. In addition, presentations by EdenCrete salespersons at concrete, engineer and construction industry association meetings, conferences, workshops, think tanks etc. are quite possibly also a far more effective way of reaching EdenCrete's target customers in a leveraged manner and generating the life blood of all sales teams i.e. sales leads. Wherever such sales leads originate from, it is then up to the EdenCrete salesman to professionally answer basic questions, and to then organise a serious technical discussion, with the view to having potential customers test EdenCrete (after this it is up to EdenCrete to perform as promised, and then up to the salesperson to close the deal). I am assuming that these two primary forms of lead generation and the resultant "direct selling" process, is the sales method that EdenCrete is currently employing. Just to clarify, direct selling is: person-to-person and thus company-to-company selling in locations other than a retail establishment, a social media or other platform, at the offices of the salesperson or the prospective customer's premises (the old fashioned way!).

Bearing in mind that the old-fashioned way of selling is a very time intensive task, and couple this with the conservative nature of the global concrete industry, which is very set in its ways (pun intended), and vehemently against change, and as a result, dead set against disruptive technologies like EdenCrete, and it is little wonder that the EdenCrete sales team appear to have massively underperformed. Throw in the very slow "initial sales lead to actual order conversion rate", due the extremely long and ever-present testing required (unfortunate, but absolutely necessary!) and you have the reason for the glacial pace of EdenCrete sales over the last 3 years.

As I said in a previous E-Mail, the proof of the pudding will be over the next 12-24 months.

Best regards,

Mark