Industrial content on websites of most manufacturers and industrial companies tends to be heavy on product specifications. Of course, it is important to have technically accurate and up-to-date product information because that’s the first step in an engineer’s evaluation of your product or solution, especially if you manufacture a component that must be designed in.
However, product specifications alone are not enough to differentiate you from the competition. There are shortcomings to being overly reliant on product-centric content as an industrial content marketing strategy.
Engineers from different fields probably make up a large part of your target audience if you are a manufacturer, distributor or an engineering company. As an industrial marketer, you know it is a challenge marketing to engineers.
While engineers do use social media, they tend to be passive participants making it hard to engage with them using those channels. To illustrate that point, here are a few key findings from the 2016 Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector report published by IEEE ENGINEERING 360.
82% of engineers and technical professionals spend no more than two hours weekly on social media for work-related purposes.
70% of industrial professionals have never shared or posted news about their companies to their own social networks.
64% of engineers and technical professionals say the biggest challenge in using social media for work is its inefficiency when compared to other methods such as search engines, supplier websites and online catalogs.
55% said that social media has too much noise and not enough substance.
Industrial content marketing is facing a big challenge because manufacturers are struggling to make it more engaging for their target audience. They have a good grasp of industrial content marketing’s contributions at the top of funnel but can’t quite connect the dots when it comes to measuring its effectiveness in driving sales.
The problem is not just a matter of better analytics and/or in-depth ROI reports from Marketing Automation. These marketing tools are a big help but can’t completely close the gap. The decision makers at these industrial companies want to know how industrial content marketing will increase their sales before they invest the money. In other words, they are saying, “Show me the money.”
Challenges with industrial content marketing exist across different industries and varying company sizes. Consider these key findings from the sixth annual content marketing survey, 2016 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs:
81% of manufacturers in North America are using content marketing
87% said Sales was their number one goal
18% said they were effective (That is not a typo! Effectiveness was defined as “accomplishing your overall objectives” in the survey)
82% of manufacturing marketers cited creating more engaging content as their top priority
There is a big disconnect here between industrial content marketing and its impact on sales.
If you are responsible for industrial content marketing at your company, you know it is a challenge and can be a daunting task to engage with engineers and technical buyers. It is not too difficult to prove effectiveness with top of the funnel results such as increased traffic, page views, content downloads and newsletter signups.
However, most manufacturers and other industrial companies are not going to be satisfied with that. They want and expect their industrial content marketing strategy to engage with engineers and persuade them to start a conversation with their sales team.
Industrial companies that I talk to on a daily basis, find it challenging to market to engineers. Their biggest hurdle is the lack of response from their target audience. These companies are at a loss and want a better way to market since their target audience is primarily engineers from various disciplines. And therein lies the challenge.
SMEs help to leverage the power of one engineer to another
To connect with engineers and technical professionals, you need your content to speak to their needs by recognizing their daily challenges at work and addressing them. In short, make your industrial content marketing more about them and less about you. Your in-house SMEs are the people who are best qualified for this kind of one-on-one communication with other engineers.
Marketing alone can’t create engaging content, they need to collaborate with their SMEs. Even if marketing does the ghostwriting, the content must be reviewed and authored by SMEs.
“Reliance on interaction with fellow engineers dwarfs other modes as the preferred method of communication for solving problems and gaining new insights.”
(Source: A global research study produced by Beacon Technology Partners and UBM Tech Electronics Network).
Using tacit know-how of SMEs to gain a competitive edge
The concept of “tacit know-how” and its implications for engaging with engineers are important to understand when it comes to industrial content marketing. Product features are great for specifying or getting your industrial products “designed in” but they alone can’t move you to the top of the list so you are not just one of three competitive bidders. It is the experience and the expertise of your SMEs that will convince other engineers that you understand their applications/problems (been there, done that) and prove that you have the right solution.
It’s a myth that engineers and industrial buyers make buy decision strictly based on facts. There is a strong emotion at play – fear of failure. They want to validate their choice by backfilling it with logic. Keeping your SMEs in the forefront provides that valuable assurance and builds credibility with your audience.
Watch this short video (2:15) from UBM Tech’s CEO of Electronics, Kathy Astromoff where she talks about tacit know-how, engineers’ challenges, perceptions, and information-gathering habits.
Engineers and SMEs have more on their plates than ever before
SMEs are very knowledgeable and passionate about their own products, services and solutions. However, engineers are extremely busy and are facing increasing demands on their time and resources.
According to IHS Engineering360 Research Report, 2016 Pulse of Engineering Survey, slightly more than half of engineers (51 percent) said the pace of engineering is accelerating, and 59 percent said they are required to do more with less.
Industrial marketers must understand this time crunch if they want SMEs to help them with content marketing. Don’t expect SMEs to create the content for you. You have to coax the main talking points out of them and then do your own research to flesh out those bullet points. It is our job as industrial content marketers to edit, optimize and create compelling content that is technically accurate while being customer-centric rather than company-centric.
How to work with SMEs for creating engaging content
Whether you an in-house content marketer or an external company offering industrial content marketing services, you will have to work closely with SMEs. This is very important if you want to create content that engineers will find engaging and useful in making a more informed buy decision.
Building a close working relationship with SMEs takes a lot of work and time. I have to do my homework even though I’m a degreed Mechanical Engineer myself. I have found that the effort pays very rich dividends. It has helped me produce the results my clients really want from their industrial content marketing.
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Case Study: Industrial content marketing helps manufacturer jumpstart marketing program and generate sales ready leads
Key Results: 40.9% increase in deals won and adds an additional low seven figure revenue directly attributed to marketing.
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Industrial content marketing success for most manufacturers and other industrial companies is usually measured by an increase in the number of RFQs/RFPs. Arguments about quality vs. quantity tend to fall on deaf ears because these companies with long sales cycles need a certain volume of quotes to keep their pipelines full and active.
Often, their stated goal for content marketing is “We want to increase awareness among engineers and industrial buyers and generate new contacts.” You’ve probably heard the same or something similar if you are part of an in-house marketing department or an outside industrial marketing consultant like me.
On the surface, it looks like a well-defined marketing goal but if you look closely, you’ll see that it takes many interim steps between raising awareness and converting traffic into qualified leads. It is this lack of understanding of what it takes to go from point A to point B that causes owners and decision makers at these industrial companies to get frustrated from the lack of quick results and shocked by the price tag.
Growing pains in industrial content marketing
According to Engineering360’s online survey addressing the marketing trends, challenges and expenditures within the engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial companies, thirty-nine percent were just getting started with content marketing and only 12 percent can show how content marketing contributes to sales.
Industrial content marketing used by manufacturers, distributors and engineering companies is failing to engage the target audience – engineers, technical professionals and industrial buyers. This is not a new problem.
Back in 2014, Forrester had published their research report titled B2B Content Fails The Customer Engagement Test. Here’s a statement from their brief – “Nowhere is the struggle to produce compelling business-to-business (B2B) content more evident than on corporate websites: When 26 out of 30 fail to pass even a basic 10-criteria test, it’s time for chief marketing officers (CMOs) to seriously rethink their content marketing plans for 2015.”
Fast forward to 2016 and industrial companies are still struggling with the same problem. The challenges that manufacturing marketers face are very similar to those experienced by all B2B marketers. 65% of manufacturing marketers said producing engaging content is their biggest challenge (Source: 2016 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/ MarketingProfs).
I recently received two emails from two different manufacturers. They both inquired about using manufacturing content marketing to help their sales efforts. Both these companies had used telemarketing and other conventional marketing tactics with very little success in generating sales qualified leads.
You may be experiencing the same or similar problems as these two manufacturers. Here are excerpts from those emails.
“Using a lead generation company right now that charges too much and delivers too little. They do not understand industrial sales, and although they are talented and penetrating accounts, many of the set appointments do not answer the phone.”
“I have been doing the conventional style of marketing i.e. making cold calls, face-time with clients. After all such interactions, I was simply told to mail the information regarding our product, company credentials etc. I have met 100+ people and so far only a few have responded.”
These two manufacturers are experiencing firsthand the realities of industrial buyer behavior these days. Buyers are in self-serve self-select mode and remain mainly invisible for a large portion of the buy cycle. These industrial buyers will engage with your sales team only when they are ready. Hounding them with cold calls or unwanted emails is not going to help them make a more informed decision of selecting your company as the preferred manufacturer.
Marketing engineering services is very different from marketing industrial products. The biggest difference is that you are selling an intangible concept as versus a physical product. The final deliverable in engineering services may be a written report but it is still not the same as selling a motor or a pump.
I have run across hybrid situations where the manufacturer sells custom-engineered products. These are not standard off the shelf widgets but require significant amount of engineering consulting upfront before producing the final product.
In this post, I’ll stick with marketing pure engineering services such as Soil and Groundwater Investigation/Remediation; Engineering Feasibility Studies and Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) Audits to name a few.
Traditionally, engineering services firms have relied on referrals, professional networking and event sponsorships to grow their business. Referral business is great but they are usually few and far between for a dependable growth strategy. Networking and sponsorships are time consuming and expensive.
Let’s say you’ve perfected your marketing message into a concise 30-second elevator pitch and you’ve become good at delivering it to strangers you meet at professional events. Assume you’ve managed to pique their interest, which is no small feat. Guess what, they are going to check out your website when they get back to the office. The content on your site will make or break that first impression.
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.
Content marketing is proving to be a big challenge for industrial distributors that I have talked to. The problem stems from the fact that distributors have relied heavily in the past on their principal manufacturers to provide them with marketing content and collateral. Weaning themselves from that reliance and becoming publishers of original content is not only a challenge but they just don’t have the necessary resources for content marketing.
The second part of the problem is that these companies are sales driven and marketing has never been a major part of their sales process. Sales people cold calling, setting appointments for face to face meetings and building relationships are how they have always generated new leads and increased sales. Distributors have realized that industrial buyers are no longer engaging with their sales people like they used to. They recognize the fact that they need to support their sales team with better industrial marketing with content.
Industrial distributors don’t want to become publishers of content; they want to sell more of their products. I accept that reality, the challenge lies is delivering quantifiable ROI from content marketing. (See my post, “Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher, Act Like an Investor”)
Using content marketing for organic or natural SEO to drive qualified traffic for top of the funnel (ToFU) activities is a large part of the solution. However, it is only half the equation. Your content needs to engage with visitors, persuade them to take action now rather than later and convert them into sales qualified leads. This conversion process is far more challenging.
The problem is not just a matter of better analytics and/or in-depth ROI reports from Marketing Automation. These marketing tools are a big help but can’t completely close the gap. The decision makers at these industrial companies want to know how 
I recently received two emails from two different manufacturers. They both inquired about using manufacturing content marketing to help their sales efforts. Both these companies had used telemarketing and other conventional marketing tactics with very little success in generating sales qualified leads.
Marketing engineering services is very different from marketing industrial products. The biggest difference is that you are selling an intangible concept as versus a physical product. The final deliverable in engineering services may be a written report but it is still not the same as selling a motor or a pump.
Most manufacturers including precision CNC machine shops and fabricators have difficulty understanding the true value of