Manufacturing Marketing

3 Quotes & A Shelf Full of Green Books

You remember how you used to buy.

Decide what you need, turn to the volumes of green bound industrial registers to look for possible vendors, summon them for meetings and request quotes.

You don't do that anymore, and neither do your buyers.

But a website, some Adwords ads, a bit of SEO, a manufacturing blog and some "expert" who's never been on a factory floor don't get you there.

As every company in your space get's more sophisticated, the reality is that your industrial marketing is competing for the opportunity to educate buyers on how to improve their business. 

That's means you need to build programs that talk about theirs, not yours. And that do it in ways which will help you get found and establish your firm as a helpful resource.....long before you worry about a "lead."

Outbound Sales

There was a time when cold calling and trade shows were the way industrial manufacturers sold and marketed.

Technology changed the former and COVID the latter.

Inbound lead generation is helpful, but outbound sales remains critical to growing predictably and profitably. Unlike the days of line cards and cold calling, today outbound sales requires technology and planning.

Account-based marketing (ABM) and target account selling represent the combination of marketing and sales which was innovated by technology companies and is gradually adopted by industrial manufacturers.

It's about coordinating the right contacts, with the right people, at the right companies, at the right time.

Manufacturing Marketing Is Sales

Crazy sounding. We get it.

But...when so much happens in the shadows of the internet before you are ever contacted by a buyer, that means that marketing has to be in front of buyers early and effectively.

Of course, you want to be remembered and you hope that your brand marketing and industrial public relations will be effective. That's expensive though and so it needs to overlap with efforts to reach buyers who are vaguely aware of and just beginning to wrestle with complex business problems.

That means that your B2B manufacturing marketing needs to coach, consult, educate, and inspire - and it also needs to enable your sales team to help prospects, buyers, and customers.

And that requires more of your sales people than they've had to give in the past. They must:

• research every company and every member of a buying team
• be conversant in business finance
• understand industry trends
• be fluent in technology including social media, video and sales automation

Without Turning Them Off

Buyers have a dim view of B2B sales people. 

Recent research found that:

• 74% of those buyers said (a meeting) was a waste of time and would never take another meeting with that salesperson
• Only 18% said meeting met their expectations
• Only 7% said they would schedule a follow-on meeting because
  • the salesrep was not prepared and the meeting took too much time

Therefore every tactic, content and interaction must be created to solve for the buyer first before your company. And you need to plan for the entire customer lifecycle including customers, providing helpful marketing tools like a customer portal.