Category: Content Marketing

  • Content Marketing for Manufacturers: What’s real and what’s hype?

    If you are a manufacturing marketer, I’m sure you’ve heard all the buzz and the hype surrounding content marketing for manufacturers. It is a fact that today more manufacturers are using content marketing for increasing awareness (branding), lead generation and sales. That’s not hype, it’s definitely a reality as reported by the 2015 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs.

    Goals of content marketing for manufacturers

    Is content marketing for manufacturers meeting those goals and expectations?

    I’ll answer that question by first citing study findings and then with my own experiences with manufacturing clients.

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  • No Digital Marketing for Manufacturers = Marketing in the Past

    Are you marketing in the past without digital marketing for manufacturers?Most manufacturers including precision CNC machine shops and fabricators have difficulty understanding the true value of digital marketing for manufacturers. Some that have implemented it, struggle to produce tangible results, meaning a boost in sales that they can attribute to marketing.

    The need for a robust online presence (Website and customer-centric content marketing) is driven by your customer’s behavior and not because marketing consultants are telling you to do so. Today’s industrial buyers are in self-serve and self-select mode, making them virtually invisible and hard to reach. They don’t need or want to talk to your sales people to get product information. Your buyers will engage with your sales team only when they are ready. Hounding them with cold calls or unwanted spammy emails is not going to make them choose you over the competition.

    The lack of buy-in for digital marketing is a two-fold problem as I see it with my industrial clients. The first issue is a mindset at the top and the second part is one of incorrect attribution.

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  • Content Industrial Buyers Want from Supplier Websites

    Manufacturers and industrial companies have shifted more of their marketing dollars to digital marketing channels for a very good reason. Their target audience—engineers and industrial buyers are using digital media to find components, equipment, services and suppliers (77%); obtain product specifications (73%); find product availability information (70%); perform research (67%); and compare products across suppliers (66%). (Source: 2015 Digital Media Use in the Industrial Sector; IHS Engineering360 Research Report).

    The chart below shows how industrial professionals are using the Internet for work-related purposes.

    work-realted use of the Internet by industrial professionals

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  • Industrial Marketing Plan: A 3-Phase Approach

    Industrial marketing plan

    As we go deeper into Q4 with the holidays right around the corner, most industrial companies start to think about their industrial marketing plan for the next year. As an industrial marketing consultant, I’m often asked by clients the best way to approach this important planning task.

    My preferred way is what I call the 3-phase industrial marketing plan approach. I refer to them as phases instead of steps because each phase consists of several smaller steps.

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  • Content Marketing for Industrial Companies – Is There Content Overload?

    There was a time not too long ago when manufacturers and industrial companies were blamed for being slow adopters of content marketing. Have we progressed from that to too much content in just a few short years?

    Take a look at these stats from the 2015 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs. 65% of manufacturers are creating more content this year compared to one year ago and that is down slightly from the previous year’s 70%.

    Content marketing for industrial companies in 2015

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  • Lead Generation for Industrial Companies is a Process not a Campaign

    I hear too many manufacturers and industrial companies talking about creating campaigns because they want to pump up their lead generation. That mode of thinking is outdated and simply doesn’t work today where you are dealing with mostly invisible and self-directed industrial buyers.

    Buyers are looking for information online and interacting with sales people on their own terms. Your industrial lead generation needs to evolve to meet their needs. Otherwise you are going to struggle generating qualified leads that turn into sales opportunities. That is a virtual certainty.

    Evolution of industrial lead generation

    The old ways of industrial lead generation have changed. Engineers and technical buyers do most of their research, evaluation and finally selecting a vendor very differently today than in the past. Complicating the process is the fact that the buyers do not usually go on a linear buying journey. There are many stakeholders involved in the buying decision, some of whom may never visit your website and/or meet your sales people.

    Now I know you’ve read/heard all this before so what exactly is different about lead generation today? Here’s a handy chart from Marketo that explains the differences between then and now.

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  • Industrial Content Marketing – Selling the Problem not Just Solutions

    Industrial content marketing for problem solvingManufacturers, distributors and engineering companies want to jump into industrial content marketing because they’ve read the buzz about its effectiveness in generating high quality leads for selling solutions. They want to educate the market about their solutions and in the process create “thought leadership.”

    Those are all great and valid reasons for industrial companies to do content marketing. There is a problem however and that is the problem itself.

    I see industrial marketers assume that their audience is aware of the problem and is actively seeking a solution, presumably theirs. Their entire content marketing strategy is based on that assumption. They write blog posts about their solutions and create content that is very solution-centric.

    You ask, “What’s the problem then? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do with content marketing?”

    Indulge me for a moment because I’m about to tell you something different.

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  • Content Marketing for Manufacturers: Overcoming Writer’s Block

    Overcoming writer's block in content marketing for manufacturers82% of manufacturers said they are using content marketing according to findings from the 2015 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America published by CMI. More than half (59%) also said one of their top challenges is “Producing Content Consistently.” This is not an isolated finding; I’ve read other research studies that have reported similar results.

    Writer’s block – the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing. (Wikipedia). That is exactly what I hear most often from my industrial clients who are struggling with content marketing.

    Part of the problem is that in-house subject matter experts (SMEs) are too busy with their regular jobs to create content and the other part is the notion that they have nothing more or new to say because their audience who are primarily engineers already knows everything there is to know about the subject matter.

    If you are facing the same challenges, I have two suggestions:

    1. For the first challenge, read – Industrial Blogging Lessons Learned from Working with Technical SMEs
    2. For the second part of the problem, read on…

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  • Why are Manufacturers Still Struggling with Content Marketing?

    Last week, I received an advance copy of the research study, 2015 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America thanks to Amanda Subler of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). There may be slight differences between my draft copy and the final version that was published by CMI recently.

    Even though there has been a slight decline this year in the number of manufacturers who said they use content marketing (82% vs. 86% last year), far more manufacturing marketers cited sales as a goal this year than they did last year (85% vs. 56%). Content marketing for driving sales has now become an accepted industrial marketing strategy.

    Content marketing for manufacturers

    That’s the good news.

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