An Alternative Universe of Manufacturing Marketing

Ed Marsh | Apr 30, 2021

If your marketing material sounds anything like this....

 

Honestly, I'm not sure if this was real at some point in the past, or not.

But regardless of whether you're an Onion or BabylonBee fan, you know that too often reality approaches satire.

Chuckle if you like, but then listen in on your sales reps call recordings. (You do use a CRM like HubSpot with call recording and analysis, right?)

Search your company using Googles "site" function (in a Google search window type "site:YourCompanyURLhere" and check out some of the nuggets that come up. Then do the same for your competitors.

Read through your sell sheets, site pages, trade show handouts - even read through your boilerplate verbiage on your quotes.

And even, to draw the comparison closely, watch a couple of your product and corporate profile videos!

And then tell me if you're still chuckling....I'll wait.

You'll probably find yourself recognizing uncomfortable similarities between your marketing materials and this gem.

Manufacturing Marketing is Hard...and it's Based on Customers

This isn't a slam. It's just an observation.

As Jill Konrath highlights in her books, NOBODY but you care about your products and tech specs.

manufacturing marketing and industrial sales don't rely on product knowledge

Everything needs to be in the context of your buyers' business, their buyers' challenges, and how you address those....and minimize costs and risks associated with implementation!

Imagine a maintenance manager listening to this video - (s)he might sense job security, or might be horrified at the training, parts, modules, PM, and other requirements to support it.

If this is uncomfortably close to how any of your manufacturing marketing materials or industrial sales approaches sounds, then maybe we should chat.