Engineer Eric works for an OEM that sells its engines to large multinational automotive companies. He is tasked with designing, developing and testing the engines that they then sell to these companies. Recently the automotive company has complained to Eric, saying that a lot of their customers were experiencing engine issues, which were discovered to be fuel dilution in their engine oil. It turns out that Eric has been using outdated fuel injector nozzles in his production process.
To avoid compromising the business relationship and to ensure that he is producing engines that meet the necessary standards, Eric starts to research a solution. Your company sells the fuel injector nozzles that Eric needs in order for him to develop the modern engine, so how do you make sure that when Eric needs to buy something, he knows to use your company? This is where an effective industrial marketing strategy comes in.
What is industrial marketing?
Simply put, it is B2B marketing. Eric works for the OEM, and you are his supplier (further down the supply chain) that provides the nozzle component which he needs in order to develop engines, so that they can sell their engines into the automotive industry.
Ask About Marketing for Industry
Why is marketing for industry important in 2022?
The buying process in B2B industries continues to develop. Whereas in the past; brochures, tradeshows, and outbound sales were the best way to secure new customers like Eric, now there is much more of a focus on getting the right industrial digital content in front of the right people at the right time.
In the information era in which we are living, Eric (the buyer) has access to almost everything he needs in order to make a decision about what he buys before the need to speak with anyone at your organization.
This lack of control on the process might sound daunting, but fear not. A highly focused industry marketing strategy will help you to reach buyers like Eric, so that when he is in buying mode he knows instinctively to come to you, or your content will answer all of his questions in such a way that you build the type of trust that makes him feel confident that you are the right company for him.
Creating your marketing strategy for industry
We’ll start by looking at the high-level strategic objectives of your organization. In most cases, this will be to sell as much of your product or service as possible or to raise a certain amount of funding so that you can develop your offering.
Aligning your marketing objectives with the above is the key. Let’s say your business objectives are to be the leading supplier of fuel injector nozzles to the automotive industry. Your marketing objectives might be to reach automotive engineers, like Eric, and to drive pipeline (excuse the pun!) for your sales team.
Knowing your target market and more importantly understanding their needs is the logical next step for industry marketers. Consider the challenges that your potential customers face, how your product resolves those challenges, and develop a value proposition around this. Your value proposition will form the basis on which you develop your overall marketing strategy.
The likelihood is that your products will resolve different challenges for different people, so a reasonable next step is to segment your audience into a variety of personas or ideal customer profiles. You then develop a combination of mini-marketing strategies for each persona that sits underneath your overall marketing strategy.
As well as the company objectives, you’ll also want to align your marketing objectives with your sales, SDR team, product team, etc. so that when you run a marketing campaign, next steps and follow ups are clearly understood by each team.
Finally you can begin to draft your marketing plan so that you can promote your value proposition to your different buying personas.
Creating digital marketing content for industry
Creating digital marketing content for industry has a number of aspects. Below we will look at some of the key inescapable elements.
Website content
The buying journey often starts with a search engine. Eric can be in any stage of the buying process, so as industrial marketers we need to ensure we have the right content for him at the right time. Eric will start by searching for Fuel Dilution in Engine Oil.
In this example, there are a couple of aspects that will help Eric to engage with your company. Firstly, you would need to appear at or near the top of the search engine for that search term. You can achieve this through a well planned SEO strategy that combines (amongst other things) detailed digital content optimized for the key search term or phrase.
An effective SEO strategy will ensure that you appear above the fold in the top 5 search results, so you are on the list of companies that Eric will consider buying from. Now you need to focus your marketing efforts on being the top pick on that list. You can do that through effective industrial content marketing.
Eric has a number of questions that he wants answered before making a decision. This might include something like what causes fuel dilution in oil. .jpg)
Provide a combination of blog posts, white papers and videos, published to your site, answering this and other relevant questions that Eric might have. By offering this knowledge to Eric, you build credibility and stand out from the rest of the companies on his shortlist.
Video marketing and video ads for industry are really important. You can highlight the key features of your products in an easy-to-consume way, like in the example below.
Tribology in the Automotive Industry.
3rd party publishers
As part of his research, Eric might also look to industry websites or publications for further details. Think about where your audience goes to read industry content, research new products, and learn about their applications.
How can you leverage the power of the publisher's audience? The answer is by publishing the same sort of high-level content that you would publish to your own site on theirs. By focusing on content creation and recycling, you position yourself as a thought leader and build a reputation, whilst also adding another lead generation source to your sales pipeline.
Maximize your reach.
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Webinars for industry
Eric is now approaching the decision-making stage, but what if your competitors have done all of what we have talked about so far too? You need to think about how to get your potential customer closer to the sale. One way you can do this is with on-demand webinar product demos or explainer videos. Adding webinars to your video marketing strategy provides evergreen content that you can reuse in different formats.
A simple call to action button in a clear and obvious place can allow Eric to watch a more detailed demonstration of your product. The webinar can include your product manager answering FAQs, product details, aftercare best practices, and other information that a buyer would need to know in order to make an informed decision.
Podcasts for industry professionals
Audio content has been growing increasingly popular for some time now. This is often created and distributed in the form of a podcast. There really is a podcast for every type of niche now so consider how to leverage audio content in your marketing strategy.
AZoNetwork Tip: A good place to start is by taking the audio file of your webinar content and creating a podcast episode from that.
What about industrial branding?
As well as search engines, Eric will likely speak to a colleague or industry peer about his requirements. This is where a strong brand plays a pivotal role. Achieving a strong brand isn’t about having a nice logo (although that helps) it is about being the go to company within your space.
Think of your brand as what others say about your company when you are not in the room. Grow your brand position by creating high-quality, useful content which helps your target market and drives positive feedback via word of mouth. You should also consider an effective distribution strategy.
Create once, distribute forever.
Distributing industrial marketing content
For those prospects not yet in buying mode, it is important to keep your organization and brand top-of-mind. We can do this by creating the industrial marketing content mentioned above and distributing it to targeted audiences. You can find a few examples of how you can do that below.
Industrial newsletters
Ultra-targeted industrial newsletters are the best place to start. Drive qualified traffic to your featured articles by using them to sponsor industry newsletters
>>>View deatils about industry newsletters<<<
Email marketing for Industry
Another option is to create customized emails to your target audience that promotes your latest piece of content. This could be an eBook, whitepaper or webinar. Having the email about one piece of content focuses the reader and will likely drive more results for you.
Social media for Industry
Social media content is another good way to keep your organization top of mind. It is becoming increasingly difficult to reach an audience using only organic social media, so a combination of paid social and influencer collaboration with company content is a great way to develop your social media presence. You can use a multichannel approach or focus on the social platforms that are currently giving you the best results.
Google Ads for Industry
A good SEO strategy can take a number of months before it starts showing the intended results, i.e getting to the top of search engines. One way to overcome this in the short term is to bid on google ads to appear at the top.
Google ads are also an extremely effective way of reaching the top of search results for highly competitive keywords.
Display advertising for Industry
Increase Brand Awareness with Google display ads and display ads on 3rd party sites. Well placed ads will drive targeted traffic to your website content.
Analyze your industrial marketing results
Of course with all marketing efforts, we want to scientifically analyze the results so we can get the best return on investment. There are a number of steps you can take here:
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Once your industrial SEO and content marketing strategies are in place and the right traffic is using your site, we need to ensure we convert as many of them as possible. In our example above Eric hit the ‘Book a Demo’ CTA but it might be that ‘Talk to Sales’ works better.
Running CRO tests provides you with the definitive data to decide which options drive the best results by showing different CTAs to different site visitors and measuring the impact.
Google Analytics
Setting marketing goals and measuring the results is important to your industrial marketing success. At different stages of the buying process, this could mean measuring, social followers, email clicks, page views, webinar attendees, demos booked and most importantly marketing-driven pipeline.
A lot of this data will be available in your Google Analytics account and/or your CRM so keep track of these for each of your industrial marketing campaigns.
AZoIntel
Combine your Google Analytics account with high-level keywords, Google Ad and AZoNetwork marketing data by using the AZoIntel marketing platform.
AZoIntel enables you to view your customer journeys at a deeper level; empowering you to understand more about the behavior and characteristics of your customers throughout their buying process. You can watch a full demo of how it works here.
Conclusion
An effective industrial marketing strategy for B2B companies is key to taking customers like Eric from ‘person with a need’ to a paying customer:
- Align your marketing and business objectives
- Understand the needs of your target market
- Create digital marketing content that drives action
If you want to talk about your industrial marketing strategy, then get in touch by completing the form below and we will arrange a time to discuss your needs further.
Ask About Marketing for Industry
