Industrial Marketing: What Industrial Buyers are Looking for on Supplier Websites

How Industrial Marketers can meet the needs of their audience and foster a great digital customer experience

Industrial Marketers are always seeking the perfect marketing mix. Working to to find the perfect balance between what they want to say to their customers, and what their customers want from them. This delicate balance is commonly referred to as “Digital Customer Experience,” and often times it’s the difference between online success and “epic fail.” The failure frequently develops when an industrial manufacturer is “talking at” their audience as opposed to “responding to,” and fulfilling a need. But how are companies supposed to know what their audience wants? Lucky for us, Marketing Guru and driving force behind Industrial Marketing Today, Achinta Mitra, has analyzed a treasure trove of data outlining exactly what industrial buyers are seeking from suppliers online.  (continue reading at Industrial Marketing Today)

Content Industrial Buyers Want from Supplier Websites

by Achinta Mitra of Industrial Marketing Today

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. (continue reading here)

The same study also found that the top three work-related digital resources used by technical professionals of any age have remained unchanged from 2014 to 2015: General Search Engines (89%), Supplier Websites (75%) and Online Catalogs (74%).

All those statistics are very encouraging but they only tell half the story because it only represents the demand side – how industrial buyers are making their purchase decisions. However, suppliers are falling short when it comes to providing content that industrial buyers want.

Does your website provide content industrial buyers want?

Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes and see if the content on your current site will persuade you to take an action that will ultimately lead to an RFQ.

The tendency for most companies is to talk about their product features and available options. Those are great and technical specifications are important to engineers. So it makes sense to create lots of good product-centric website content but there is a big disconnect.  (continue reading at Industrial Marketing Today)

Industrial buyers are in self-serve and self-select modes

The problem lies in the assumption that site visitors will pick up the phone and want to speak to someone on your sales team. That just isn’t happening often enough and it is the biggest source of frustration that I hear from my industrial clients.

More than half the engineers (58%) that responded to the IHS survey mentioned above waited until the comparison/evaluation or purchase stages of the buy cycle to contact the supplier.

Don’t expect your site visitors to pick up the phone or email your sales team after their first visit. You may not make the initial cut if your content isn’t found in search engines by your audience and/or isn’t relevant to their needs. Your site content must match the industrial buyer’s needs at every stage of the buy cycle if you want your industrial website to be an effective sales tool for generating qualified leads.  (continue reading here)