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Industrial marketing strategy

How Industrial Marketing Strategy Must Change to Fill Pipelines Again

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Your industrial marketing strategy may have changed recently because of the coronavirus. I don’t think manufacturers have much of a choice because the pandemic has negatively impacted their sales pipelines. There is no getting around that fact.

Some of these changes may be permanent, while others have become necessities at least for the foreseeable future. Either way, your industrial marketing strategies need to adapt to these changes as the economy begins to reopen.

All of my manufacturing clients have taken the appropriate steps at their companies in accordance with CDC and local guidelines to make their workplaces safer for their employees, customers, and suppliers. Still, there are some noticeable changes, especially for industrial marketers.

Impact of COVID-19 on industrial marketers

Over the past few months, IEEE GlobalSpec has been tracking how industrial marketers have been impacted by the coronavirus. They shared some of their findings with me.

Hours worked by industrial marketers

 

Comfort level of industrial marketers

Adjusting industrial marketing strategy and plans

What can you do as a manufacturing or industrial marketer to make sure your sales pipeline has the right kind and the quantity of leads for the sales team to work with?

Let’s look at a marketing strategy that have been the mainstay for manufacturers when it comes to filling pipelines with sales-qualified leads. I’m talking about in-person events like tradeshows.

As recently as November 2019,  manufacturing marketers reported the following (Source: Manufacturing Content Marketing 2020)

  • 24% said that in-person events was their best source for securing leads
  • 33% reported they were the best way to convert leads

Now see how things have changed over the past few months. These new stats from the IEE GlobalSpec survey.

Industrial marketing strategy - tradeshows

To mitigate some of this drop-off in attendance, virtual events and webinars have become very popular lately. Yet, I’ve heard most people say, “It isn’t the same.”

The key takeaway here is that industrial marketers need to adjust their marketing strategies. It can’t be business (marketing) as usual. I’ve published two posts recently that address this issue.

  1. Is Your Industrial Website Ready for Business After the Coronavirus Pandemic?
  2. Adapting Your Industrial Content Marketing Strategy for COVID-19

Redistributing marketing budgets for the rest of 2020

It does feel good when some of my recommendations from those two articles are validated by research findings. This chart is also from the same IEEE GlobalSpec survey.

Note the two key stats from the chart below which is also from the same IEEE GlobalSpec survey. They are:

  1. 27% have shifted funds to content creation
  2. 36% of the respondents were most confident about Industrial Content Marketing being their most successful channel

Budget redistribution for industrial marketing strategy

While I’ve seen some clients put a temporary hold on marketing and a few did cut their budgets, most have redistributed the same budget with more of the money going to digital marketing efforts.

These research findings should help you modify your own industrial marketing strategy for the second half of 2020.

Stay safe and healthy!

Achinta Mitra

Achinta Mitra calls himself a “marketing engineer” because he combines his engineering education and an MBA with 35+ years of practical manufacturing and industrial marketing experience. You want an expert with an insider’s knowledge and an outsider’s objectivity who can point you in the right direction immediately. That's Achinta. He is the Founder of Tiecas, Inc., a manufacturing marketing agency in Houston, Texas. Read Achinta's story here.
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Comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing with us. Your thoughts was clear and impressive. It will be absolutely help for me and my business.

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