Industrial Marketing Tip: Experimentation is the Key to Growth
We recently talked to the top minds in the industrial marketing world and asked them for their best advice, and we’ve curated it here now! Learn how the following industry experts handle content creation, consumer insights, and everything between.
Curt Anderson founded an eCommerce company in 1995 that was ranked 3X on the Internet Retailer Magazine Top 1000 eCommerce companies. Curt has been consulting U.S. Manufacturers since 2012 on Manufacturing eCommerce Success.
Industrial Marketing Tip 1: “You have only one chance to make an outstanding first ‘Webpression'”
We only have a few seconds to make an outstanding first impression — especially when it comes to websites. So an important question to ask: When a brand new prospect or a potential customer lands on your website, do you make a strong first Webpression?
Like it or not, your company website is your 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sales rep.
With that in mind, if your website is not an absolute top priority, or even worse, an afterthought, an extremely important question to ask yourself: WHY?
Your website serves as the face of your business as well as the ambassador of your company. Most likely the first contact or engagement with a new customer comes from your website. Especially if you are a small business.
Regardless of your legacy, reputation, or number of years in business, new prospects who are unfamiliar with your business judge you by your web presence. This can be a tough pill to swallow, particularly for those in manufacturing.
Your website actually plays the role of company sales rep out in the field, 24/7/365. So how is your website (aka: your most important sales rep) performing?
Steve Robinson is a veteran marketer and the Founder and CEO of Brilliant Metrics, a digital marketing agency serving manufacturers and SaaS providers. In addition to his role leading and growing new relationships for Brilliant Metrics, Steve is an instructor for The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee School of Continuing Ed.
Industrial Marketing Tip 2: “Experimentation is the
key to constant growth, but only if done well.”
A good marketing experiment follows the scientific method. It has a hypothesis. It has only one variable (one thing you’re changing between groups). It is tested for statistical validity. Most important of all, it produces knowledge that is applicable outside the context of the test. So for example, let’s say you test two ads: A and B. If A and B have different headlines, photography, copy, and calls to action, you might know which performs better, but you don’t know why and you have no new knowledge about your audience.
Compare that with a test of two emails with the same copy, but one ends in “request a meeting” and the other, “request a demo”. You have a hypothesis that more people want to get a demo than request a meeting. You run the test and use a confidence calculator to test the results – it tells you the test was accurate with 98% confidence. Now you come away with hard knowledge that “request a demo” is (or is not) better than “request a meeting” for a given point in the buyer’s journey, and you can take that knowledge and run with it or validate it across other mediums.
Anthony Gioeli is a team-oriented leader with deep international experience spanning strategy, marketing, product management, business development and sales across software/cloud, silicon, wireless, biometrics and sensors. Anthony has successfully recruited and led global teams, launched new technologies, expanded into new market segments, structured and negotiated complex sales and partnership agreements, and completed several M&As.
Industrial Marketing Tip 3: “Create your marketing plan to support both short-term & long-term business objectives”
Industrial companies have both short and long-term goals. Your marketing plan should be aligned with both. Split your activities and resources so you can support both the near-term revenue objectives and longer-term strategic initiatives. Your lead gen activities should be primarily focused on the short-term to grow revenue, while your brand positioning looks to the future. The content you develop and your product positioning should be intelligently thought out to support both.
Lee Chapman is the President at TREW Marketing. Lee’s diverse marketing background spans three decades across the technology, government and nonprofit sectors with deep focus in the areas of project and marketing management, content and collateral, web, and brand consistency. Before joining TREW, Lee was part of the corporate marketing leadership team at National Instruments, where over the course of her 11-year career she served in various roles including Corporate Content and Community Relations Manager, Creative Strategy and Design Group Manager, and Brand Policy.
Industrial Marketing Tip 4: “Create a Frictionless Buyer’s Journey”
The traditional selling process is full of friction. A direct sales approach, while effective in the past largely through face-to-face events, ads, and cold calling, isn’t appealing to younger engineers. More than 60% of the evaluation phase for a B2B product or service now happens online before a prospect ever engages directly with sales.
The power now lies with the buyer or prospect, and they are consuming up to 13 pieces of content throughout their buyer’s journey. To attract these savvy prospects, you need an optimized website and a consistent cadence of educational vs. promotional content.
Show your target audience that you understand their pain points and are uniquely poised to solve them by offering a frictionless buyer’s journey that includes a mix of technical blogs, white papers, CAD drawings, case studies, datasheets, and videos.
This process creates efficiencies within your sales and marketing team, boosts qualified leads, and creates happy future customers.
Rebecca Marich is the Director of Marketing at TalentLaunch. Rebecca is an award-winning, innovative marketing director with more than 15 years of experience
in digital marketing campaign development. She specializes in coupling digital marketing strategy, brand development, and user experiences in the industrial space.
Industrial Marketing Tip 5: “Know Your Challenges to Provide the Best User Experience”
Today’s digital marketing channels are completely algorithm-driven, and I’m not just referring to content. If you aren’t optimizing to provide the best user experience possible, you’re not earning market share.
B2B marketers face the challenge of turning these fast-paced digital interactions into personal, memorable, customer-centric experiences. As a result, easy means of contact (such as integrated chat functions) and largely ungated access to detailed information like CAD models are quickly becoming essential features. However, there’s still a critical piece missing. These digital exchanges need to be supported with genuine human interaction — which is where the establishment of long-term relationships and trust live.
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