Many industrial companies and manufacturers struggle with content marketing. It is not because marketers and decision-makers in these organizations don’t understand the value of inbound marketing but implementing an effective content marketing strategy is proving to be quite a challenge for them.
Usually the problem stems from three possible scenarios that I’ve come across. I’m going to make some suggestions in this post to help you solve the problem if you are an industrial marketer stuck in one of these scenarios.
Scenario #1: Founders of most small to mid-sized manufacturing and fabrication shops are hands-on people who have built their businesses from the ground up. Over the years, they’ve relied heavily on their personal contacts, business networks, sales reps and traditional outbound marketing to generate new leads and sales. These decision-makers are not going to change their mindset easily and overnight, adopt a philosophy of “think like a publisher.”
If you are the Sales & Marketing Director or the Marketing Specialist in one of these companies, you need to:
Scenario #2: The industrial company is 100% dependent on its inside/outside sales team for leads and sales. There is tremendous amount of resistance from the sales team to any kind of change that is perceived as affecting their livelihood, feeling of being relegated to the very end of the buying cycle and the loss of control over the way they have been doing their jobs.
As the in-house industrial marketer, you need to:
Scenario #3: It is not uncommon in smaller industrial companies for the entire marketing department to consist of one person. It is overwhelming to create a constant flow of relevant content with a single individual carrying the entire load. Usually the marketing budgets tend to be equally small in such a scenario.
If you are in this situation, help yourself by:
Regardless of the situation you are in, your number one job as an industrial marketer is to help sell more of your company’s products and services. Not just publish content for the sake of content marketing. (See my post, Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher, Act Like an Investor)
My suggestions in this post should help you as an industrial marketer to get over the content marketing hump.
Share your thoughts here if you have come up with your own content marketing solutions.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.