arketing does not sell,” “What is marketing really for?” or “What do those who do marketing?” Unfortunately, this type of negative opinions, false statements and prejudices are frequent among those responsible for industrial companies. Why does this happen?
Basically because, especially in the industrial sector, there is a lot of misinformation about the possibilities of industrial marketing and the optimization of its different actions and work processes.
The industrial sector is very wide, since it encompasses all companies that are dedicated to transforming raw materials into processed products through their manipulation and modification.
One of the main characteristics of the real estate sector is the long, excessive and complex sales processes. The question is … how can processes be improved to generate more business opportunities as observed in Blue world city Islamabad? Throughout this article I will give you the keys to achieve it. Come with me!
The historical problems of industrial marketing
Despite its leading, innovative and technological character, in terms of the adoption of new marketing techniques and trends, the industrial sector has, however, been immobilistic and conservative .
The traditional forms of organization of the marketing industry have hampered its development . These have been characterized by is home introduction of the digital world , as most marketing activities are often offline; marketing strategies usually very poor , often limited to the presentation of quality certificates and little else; and a general tendency for the sales team itself to perform the tasks that would correspond to the marketing department .
Despite this, in recent years we are seeing how some companies in the industrial sector have begun to bet on the new era of marketing . This change in attitude has influenced the loss of effectiveness of traditional channels and changes in the behaviors and shopping habits of its customers.
Industrial marketing is complex because, as we have said, sales usually require long and thoughtful processes until they come to fruition. It is necessary to give the information in a suitable way to a different type of client : engineers and other technical positions, managers, purchasing managers, etc. This is an important effort that is undoubtedly worth it. But to achieve our goals it is necessary to design a marketing plan . Go get him!
The marketing plan: what it is, how many parts it is divided and what it is for
As we explain in the post Marketing plan: what is it and how one is done , a marketing plan is basically a document that includes the marketing objectives that the company intends to achieve, and the strategies and concrete actions to achieve them. It must also include analysis and market studies and a subsequent review of the work performed and the results obtained.
In short, your marketing plan must contain the following 4 sections :
- Analysis of the market . It is a vision, as objective and quantitative as possible, of the situation of your company in relation to the competition, taking into account multiple factors such as: strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT analysis), customer profile, political context and economic, macroeconomic predictions, etc.
- Objectives . Goals to make them realistic, objective and measurable.
- Planning the strategy to follow and actions to be carried out . We must establish specific actions, with a calendar and budget for each of the objectives defined above.
- Analysis of results . This involves checking whether or not they are aligned with the objectives and, if necessary, make the appropriate corrections.
What do we want with an industrial marketing plan and how can we achieve it?
Although each business is different and the objectives must be customized, usually an industrial marketing plan pursues the following goals :
- Increase the visibility and
reputation of the company or brand like Capital Smart City .
- Improve sales .
- Optimize communication with partners, suppliers, potential and real customers and even with the employees themselves.
- Increase business volume thanks to marketing automation .
¿ How to reach our goals of industrial marketing?
To achieve all of the above and other objectives that we define based on the specific needs of our company, an industrial marketing plan has several tools, strategies or techniques . These should have the following objectives and key points. Take note!
Effectively define a brand image
First, we have to strengthen the brand or branding , and for this we must follow a strategy based on a series of basic points:
- The first thing you have to do is identify what differentiates your company, product or service from the competition. This will help you analyze or define a series of characteristics associated with the brand: identity, culture, ethical values, what the brand represents, what type of partners or partners interest you …
- Next, you must strengthen those attributes to make your brand really reach the audience you are targeting.
- In addition to the values inherent in your brand, you should also analyze the current market situation and its trends.
All this information will allow you to formulate a strategy for defining your brand , which allows you to enhance it and grow it in the direction you want.
Optimize the use of social networks
This is still a pending issue of most industrial companies, since there are currently few who use social networks to communicate effectively with their customers.
It is important not to simply be by being and open an identical profile in all social networks. A good social media strategy must be based on:
- Discover in which concrete social networks our ideal client profile or buyer person is , and invest in them our efforts and resources.
- Create attractive , personalized profiles that add value to the audience.
Take advantage of the advantages of CRM systems
A CRM (Customer Relatinoship Management) is an automated customer management system that, among many other advantages, facilitates the relationship between marketing and sales.
To gain efficiency and achieve the intended objectives, it is important to optimize these systems with proposals such as smarketing , which we develop in this article .
The objective of the smarketing is to improve the collaboration between the marketing and sales departments to achieve objectives such as knowing our target better, and personalizing the content and avoiding providing the same information to different clients and with interests or knowledge of our products or services very different.
Use email marketing based on a well planned strategy
Despite being one of the most veteran internet channels, email marketing is still one of the most powerful communication tools with customers that exist.
To gain efficiency, email marketing must be planned based on a strategy where nothing is left to chance: target segmentation, responsive design that allows them to be opened and read comfortably from any device, frequency and timing of shipments, personalization of content …
Use current clients as influencers
There is another strategy that, despite being very novel, is giving remarkable results. It is about using customers of industrial products as influencers , that is, taking advantage of their presence on the network, their experience and / or their prestige to expand the visibility and relevance on the internet of our company or brand.
Another methodology that can be of great help to the industrial sector is inbound marketing, which we will develop below.
Inbound marketing for the industrial sector
What is inbound marketing? It is a methodology composed of various techniques of content marketing and online marketing whose objective is to attract your potential customers or buyer person in a non-intrusive way to a website or blog and, subsequently, convert them into records or leads of our database on which to track them.
To launch an inbound marketing strategy, the first thing you have to do is answer the following questions:
- Do I have my buyer person properly defined?
- What companies do I usually interact with?
- What are the concerns of the companies and clients I work with?
- What kind of questions do prospects have when they arrive at the sales department?
Inbound marketing is based on the generation of valuable content . That is why it is an ideal methodology for the industrial sector, since it is an area where purchases are normally made after a strong period of reflection, and the client needs a lot of data and information before making the decision.
Some data on inbound marketing industrial projects
It is not that we say so, it is that they corroborate objective data .
In the last study of inbound marketing 2018 we have analyzed the trend of results of industrial projects in which contents focused on satisfying the needs and solving the problems and concerns of customers have been used.
These are some relevant figures related to industrial projects managed by our agency:
- The average of final visits of the first year surrounds the 7,500 monthly .
- The collection of visits from semester 1 to 2 is multiplied by 2.73. These visits have allowed capturing records and generating business opportunities.
I encourage you to download the full study to learn more about the evolution of these types of projects when they bet on inbound marketing.
There are numerous success stories of companies of all kinds, some of the industrial sector, which have achieved great results with inbound marketing, gaining visibility and relevance on the internet, increasing their prestige and, more importantly, getting many more customers and sales
Account Based Marketing (ABM): the alternative solution to
traditional marketing
The account-based marketing (ABM) is a tactical customer acquisition can be very effective when products or services are too specific and not get the results we seek with traditional marketing.
It is more precise than traditional inbound marketing and has a series of additional advantages:
- It allows you to access the accounts and profiles of the target customers of a business efficiently and immediately .
- It is a more precise and immediate system because the type of customers captured can be transferred directly to a sales team to contact them.
Who is the Account Based Marketing or ABM aimed at?
Basically to companies that, due to their special characteristics, have difficulties in attracting the traffic that really interests them with traditional content strategies. This usually happens for two reasons:
- Your potential customers are very small .
- Your ideal customer or buyer person is not used to or does not have time to search the web .
Many of the organizations with one or both characteristics belong precisely to the industrial sector.
How does Account Based Marketing or ABM work?
The Account Based Marketing implements very personalized actions focused on the different profiles of an organization with decision-making power in the business line that interests us.
In this way it is possible to contact and capture the attention of the key profiles to subsequently implement more typical inbound marketing actions such as scoring or lead nurturing. This is why ABM can be complemented so well in an inbound marketing strategy.
The transformation of industrial marketing is a fact
Despite the historical reluctance of the sector, the era of marketing is transforming at high speed in the industrial sector . This change will revolutionize commercial relations, that is, the way of selling, in the coming years.
This transformation will be especially evident in the techniques used , with a much greater prominence of digital strategies , such as inbound marketing, to the detriment of traditional offline actions.
Another important change will occur in the relationships between the sales and marketing departments , with greater specialization and a much more coordinated work that will allow more and better projects to be launched efficiently and quickly.
I hope that reading this article has helped you to understand the great possibilities of marketing in the industry . But surely you have some doubts or want to make suggestions, so we continue in the comments section!
