Hydroponics Company Becomes Internet Powerhouse

IMPORTANT PRESS RELEASE
Release Date: September 1, 2006. Not Embargoed.
Subject: Hot New Hydroponics Website and Products
From: Advanced Nutrients, located in Abbottsford, British Columbia, Canada

Contact Information: Company Co-Founder and President Robert C. Higgins

Phone: 604 854 6793. Email: VIPmedia@advancednutrients.com.

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Website Address: www.advancednutrients.com

HYDROPONICS COMPANY BECOMES INTERNET POWERHOUSE

The hydroponics industry has traditionally been a “brick and mortar” business that uses retail stores to sell products direct to customers.

When hydroponics was a small industry catering to fewer growers, the brick and mortar approach made sense.

Indeed, many products sold to hydroponics growers are the kind growers wanted to examine in person. Growers wanted to do comparison-shopping, read ingredients on labels, and ask salespeople lengthy, detailed questions.

Before the advent of the Internet, hydroponics goods and many other products were too specialized and complicated to be sold through mail order or catalogues.

And even after the advent of the Internet, most of the traditional hydroponics companies have continued to rely solely on retail stores instead of on new marketing venues such as the Internet.

It’s true, most hydroponics companies built websites, but few if any of those sites were professionally designed, and some of them were viewed as amateurish by web experts.

Now, this amateurish approach to Internet marketing has been abandoned by a Canadian hydroponics company. It’s no surprise that the Advanced Nutrients hydroponics fertilizer and plant growth company, based in Abbotsford, British Columbia, is now a pioneer of progressive, full-throttle Internet marketing.

The company is already lauded as a pioneer in the hydroponics industry. It designed the first truly comprehensive, botanically-useful line of plant growth products for the hydroponics industry. It popularized hydroponics so that thousands of new hobbyists and would-be professionals became hydroponics growers.

Advanced was the first hydroponics company to use high-tech marketing, along with magazine, television and radio advertisements, to gain new hydroponics customers and market share.

And now, Advanced Nutrients has debuted a new website that Internet wizards say is one of the best they’ve seen.

According to company co-founder and marketing guru Michael Straumietis, the new Advanced Nutrients website was designed after years of polling hydroponics customers, retailers and industry insiders.

“Customers told us that they wanted lots more information about gardening and products,” Straumietis explains. “Retailers said customers came to their stores totally uneducated about hydroponics gardening. Retailers also complained that online sellers were selling our products in ways that damaged our reputation and affected retail sales. Our Internet consultants said that although our site was better than any other hydroponics site, that there were many improvements we could make. So we made them.”

The first step in the marketing re-design involved something that has nothing to do with the Internet. The company’s team of plant scientists, product testers and product formulators took apart every one of the company’s dozens of formulas, analyzed the components, field-tested updated versions of each formula, and then advised company officials which formulas should be kept and which should be discontinued.

“The research team gave us the heads-up on the latest plant science and hydroponics technology, so we could not only upgrade, delete or replace existing products, but also create a new generation of products that nobody else had imagined,” Straumietis says.

An example of the company’s new generation products is Monkey Juice. This product is designed specifically for a coconut hull soil substitute called coco coir that more and more hydroponics growers are using as a replacement for other soil substitutes.

Straumietis says his scientists found that coco coir had unique physiochemical properties that didn’t mesh with existing hydroponics fertilizers. Advanced Nutrients designed Monkey Juice to maximize the benefits and minimize the disadvantages of coco coir.

“Coir has some great qualities, but our studies showed that it wasn’t as good as sphagnum moss,” Straumietis recalls. “So our researchers had to work extra hard to push coco to do as well as, or even exceed, the performance of sphagnum as a root media in hydroponics.”

Straumietis says coco coir aficionados have readily told him that Monkey Juice makes coco coir perform better than any other soil substitute.

The success of Monkey Juice is matched by the acclaim given to Connoisseur, a high-end, super-premium fertilizer that significantly increases the yield and quality of flowers, fruits, nuts and vegetables.

“We’ve always created hot new formulas whenever we saw a need and could find the botanical technology to make a great product,” Straumietis explains. “The rest of the industry trails along behind us trying to reverse engineer our formulas in a vain attempt to capitalize on our research and development.”

Internet marketing and infotech experts don’t think that any competitor will be able to imitate the new Advanced Nutrients website.

The site gives away tons of information about growing all kinds of plants and trees. It offers hydroponics growers a special, free bi-monthly newsletter.

Product information and ordering has been expanded and, paradoxically, also streamlined. Even novice web customers can easily find out about products they’ve never used before, call toll-free technical advisors to see if the products will work in their gardens, and then order them for immediate delivery.

Straumietis says that the revamped Advanced website will create increased sales for retail hydroponics stores. The site includes a store finder that helps customers find the nearest retailer.

“The retailers don’t see our online ordering as competition,” he asserts. “They know that most of the traffic we get will drive more people to the stores where they will be better educated customers who buy more of our products more often. The retailers are telling us that the new site is bringing more and better customers through their doors.”

The site’s visual features are sparkling and extremely user-friendly. The navigation is seamless and smooth. The use of creative color, font, style and visual layout make the site clean and totally user-friendly.

“This site is a model example of a modern, product-centered website,” enthuses marketing guru David Garner, a San Francisco-based web expert who earns big money evaluating marketing techniques and website success. “The writing, the look, the cool way it feels, the navigation, the way it loads fast, the headers, the guarantee, and especially how customers can easily get what they want- all of it is obviously top quality and among the top ten sites I’ve seen on the web. They’ve done a great job introducing their company to new customers while making the site a gold mine for experienced hydroponics people seeking the best products.”

Garner says he is also very impressed by the site’s security systems. He points out that the site uses many more layers of visible and invisible security than most sites do, making it virtually impossible for hackers, info-thieves or government spies to look into.

Straumietis is pleased with the new site, but takes the praise in stride. He says that he and Advanced co-founders Robert C. Higgins and Gino Yordanov have spent many months working with scientists, web experts, graphic artists, botanists and other personnel to make the company’s product line and its website the best in the business.

“The most important thing for us isn’t marketing- it’s making products that give growers the best tool kit so they can score big in any gardening situation,” Straumietis says. “We’ve got organics, synthetics, products that protect plants without using toxins, systemic enhancers, plant growth co-factors, root boosters, foliar treatments, yield boosters and other specialized formulas that are easy to use and more powerful than anything on the market. Our new website better explains our products and makes them available so more people grow more successfully than ever before.”

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Contact Information

Robert Higgins

Co-Founder

Advanced Nutrients

Contact via E-mail