Industrial Marketer

The Industrial Marketer podcast scratches the surface on the topic of social media for manufacturers. One tip: Authenticity is the key to social media, and it means different things on different sites. Finding the right tone is important on every channel, and it will be different from the tone on your website.

Much like the larger world around us, the manufacturing and industrial information ecosystems have become very fragmented. People consume information in all sorts of ways through all sorts of channels. In this episode, the Industrial Marketer Podcast looks at combating fragmentation by taking a holistic approach to search engine marketing. Plan your paid search investments to align with and coincide with your organic search efforts. 

Make sure your paid search is properly targeted to marry up with your content marketing to reinforce how your solutions help your prospects and customers. Consider the many ways you can target paid search:

• Geography
• Timing, including these parameters:
  • Buying cycling; when you need to get prospects into your lead gen funnel
  • Seasonal
  • Trade publication editorial calendars
  • Events and trade shows
• Customer segments
• Product launches 
• Personas

Targeting your paid search increases the odds that you will bring people to your good work and what you have been building toward.

A competitive analysis looks at product, sales and marketing strategies for you and your competitors. The Industrial Marketer Podcast in this latest episode will help you get started by looking at the tools and technologies available and how to frame an analysis in terms of goals and perspective. But the benefits of a competitive analysis really can be simplified by asking these questions:

• Where do my competitors show up?
• How do my competitors get visibility/traffic?
• Where are they that I am not?
• Where am I where they are not?

The internal diagnostic is an important foundation in a competitive analysis. It will show you where you are strong in the market, and then you can layer in your competition. With both in hand, you can tweak your tactics and dial up or down marketing and sales initiatives.

What do industrial marketers need to know about CRM tools? Here’s a hint: technology improves your overall equipment efficiency (OEE), and an ERP streamlines your inventory and production schedule. A Customer Relationship Management system provides data for how long it takes to get through your marketing funnel or a sales cycle, information about your close rate and why deals don’t close, such as responsiveness or competitor price. 

You rely on data for insights into your manufacturing operation; your sales operation should be no different. Industrial sales enablement is about discipline and processes. The ability to know the value of leads by varying sources, and how they move through the funnel at different speeds, allows you to more effectively experiment with your sales and marketing tactics. We’ll help you with what industrial sales enablement is, what it isn’t, and how you can get started. And we offer up Joey Strawn’s top 10 tools that industrial marketers should possess in order to enable their sales teams:

• Sales Decks
• Market Research
• Case Studies
• Target Persona Outlines
• Sales Scripts
• Blog Posts
• Product/Service Sheets
• One-Pages
• Competitor Comparison Guides
• Visualized Customer Journey Map

The ROI for industrial marketing begins with understanding the difference between data and analytics. The essentials for determining your ROI for industrial marketing include:

• Have tracking in place so you know where your leads come from.
• Develop a lead scoring system to determine what are your best leads and where they come from.
• Track conversions, which is extremely important for the long buying cycles in the industrial and manufacturing sectors.

A professional website that focuses on customer solutions is now a cost of doing business for manufacturers. Ideally, your content is at the intersection of what you want to convey and the questions prospects ask about how to solve their pain points.

These top the list for must-dos:

• Provide searchable content that is customer-focused.
• Leverage SEO.
• Design for mobile.

And these top the list for don’ts:

• Assume a prospect knows what your company does.
• Make it all about your company.
• Underestimate the power of video.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Nearly three-quarters of respondents in a survey say they are conducting more than half of the buying process online before choosing to speak with someone at a company.

https://www.globalspec.com/advertising/trends-wp/SMFE_2020

It’s always been difficult for manufacturers to communicate what they do through their name and branding. We look at the importance of visual branding to let industrials know what you do and how you can help them.

Co-hosts Joey Strawn and Nels Jensen look at the unique aspects of marketing to manufacturers, including the narrow target audiences, and how content plays a key role in educating different personas through the elongated buying process. 

Links to mentions in the show:

• Website usage increase for sales:

https://blog.thomasnet.com/industrial-distributor-website-examples-that-increase-sales

• Increase in digital spend by manufacturers

https://mediaradar.com/blog/b2b-industries-increasing-spend/

• Industrial Marketing Budget Guide:

https://industrialstrengthmarketing.com/industrial-marketing-budget-guide-2021/

• Explanatory video of metal forging:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKz7FFIduYc

• Sandvik Coromant site:

https://www.sandvik.coromant.com/en-gb/pages/default.aspx

Co-hosts Joey Strawn and Nels Jensen discuss trends in manufacturing and digital advertising, and how the two intersect in ways that will impact marketing stakeholders in 2021.

Links: 

5 Trends in Industrial Sales and Marketing You Don’t Want to Miss in 2021
https://industrialstrengthmarketing.com/insights/articles/5-trends-in-industrial-sales-and-marketing-you-dont-want-to-miss/

Manufacturing growth in digital spend in 2020:
https://mediaradar.com/blog/b2b-industries-increasing-spend/

Manufacturing investment in equipment in 2020:
https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/news-publications/inside-supply-management-magazine/blog/2020-10/report-on-business-roundup-september-manufacturing-pmi/

89 percent say they are not going back to old tactics:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-global-b2b-decision-maker-response-to-covid-19-crisis