by tradesmeninsights | Jul 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
Each month we’ll be featuring a blog post from our friends at MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network). MAGNET’s mission is to support, educate and champion manufacturing in Ohio with the goal of transforming the region’s economy into a powerful, global player. You can visit MAGNET online at manufacturingsuccess.org.
This post originally appeared on MAGNET’s Manufacturing Success blog and is reposted with permission.
Market Diversification: What Value Do You Bring? Part 1
Ken Walker, Senior Business Consultant, Program Administrator for Market Diversification
By Ken Walker, Senior Business Consultant, MAGNET
You’ve made “The Decision.”
No, I’m not talking about LeBron leaving Cleveland—I’m talking about the decision to move your company’s products and services into a new market.
Maybe it’s an allied market that uses the same type of products you produce. Or maybe you’re selling the exact same product but to a different kind of customer, for example consumer instead of industrial.
You’ve decided that, for the strategic growth of your company, you are willing to make the investment necessary. You’ve researched this new market’s key customers and key competitors. Your organization is primed, ready and willing to conquer this new territory.
However, before you go charging off, make sure the “new land” is receptive to your invading horde. In other words, in this new market, is anyone willing to buy what you are selling?
Consider: Why Might Customers Choose to Change?
When you decide to enter a new market, unless its an emerging technology market, it is very unlikely that you are the only supplier to the market. In most instances, existing suppliers will have been established for years. Even in markets where the barriers of entry are relatively low, it’s not easy to get customers to change without a compelling reason.
Here are some important reasons why a customer might be willing to change or add to their supplier base:
Not enough suppliers: Some industries have trouble maintaining a vibrant supply chain. The aerospace industry is an example of this, particularly if they are bringing to market a new plane. If you can meet standards or requirements, like AS9100 certification, a me-too product just might be successful.
Dissatisfaction with current supplier: Poor quality. Overpricing. Late deliveries. Poor service. These missteps can sink a supplier with any customer. For example, Motorola created the cell-phone market. But its lack of vision allowed new entrants to invade this exploding market space. The result: Motorola was marginalized in the market it created. Opportunities such as these can be exploited, allowing your company to be successful with a me-too product.
Supplier diversification: Sometimes customers just want to diversify their supply chain. If a customer is not comfortable having just one or two suppliers for a key component, they may be willing to slice up the pie and let you in.
Price: Customers are always looking for lower prices—and high value. If you are willing to compete on price, you may be able to buy market entry in some cases—until someone else is willing to undercut you. And there is always someone else.
Better value: In the end, customers are going to buy your products and services for the value they perceive. In most cases, believe it or not, this value goes beyond price. Yes, you have to be competitive, but if a lower price is all you have to bring, you won’t be at the table long. Someone will undercut you. Or you’ll find out that, in the long run, this market just isn’t worth your effort.
Define Your Company’s Value Proposition
So how do you define your value proposition for a new market or customer?
First, understand your own company’s core competencies. Understand what it is you do better than anyone else in your current industry.
Are you the low-cost manufacturer of widgets? Do you provide just-in-time service? Are you the technology leader? Does your product provide better performance? Lower cost of ownership? Easier to maintain?
Talk to a number of people in your organization to gain consensus on this important point. You’ll find different departments may have different perceptions on the reason for your success in your current marketplace.
Once you really understand your company’s key value proposition attribute, translate it into why customers currently buy from you, why customers keep buying from you and why new customers would want to buy from you.
Here are some examples of major corporations, core competencies and how they translated them into value propositions:
Sherwin-Williams
- Core Competency: Manufacturer and Distributor of coatings and related products
- Value Proposition: Equipment, supplies and solutions to get the job done.
American Greetings
- Core Competency: Creating expressive ideas in words and images
- Value Proposition: Enhancing consumers relationships through social expression
3M
- Core Competency: Applying technology to real world customer needs
- Value Proposition: Harnessing Innovation for your benefit
So what is your company’s core competency? What’s your value proposition?
Once you know and understand these critical attributes, it’s time to effectively communicate them to the new market and go after those new customers.
We’ll cover that in Part 2.
Click here to read the original post.
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 10, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
Although the manufacturing sector usually lags behind in newer marketing tools, it’s time for you to embrace some of them, namely social media.
I’m not saying you have to be active in every venue, but in the B-to-B world there are certain elements like YouTube, SlideShare, LinkedIn. I’m also not saying that social media will be that silver bullet that will have customers lining up to buy your products. I will say that you probably won’t sell anything from being on social media. Then why waste your time?
The key to any tool is to know how and when to use it. Manufacturers are used to having control of the message and where it goes to which is fine. Social media is just a different way to gain exposure and increase traffic. A recent post by Heidi Cohen, 31 Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips Based on Research outlines the benefits of using social as well as tips that might help you. Here are some helpful hints from Heidi:
- share content across social media platforms
- make sure social sharing buttons are on blog and website
- write guest posts
- nudging customers to rate your products
- ask customers to share their photos using your products
- educate the market and continue to be a thought leader
What are you doing to maximize social media in your business?
by tradesmeninsights | Jul 9, 2013 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
Since Google touches us all, it’s good to get some trends from “Big Brother” especially when it relates to the B-to-B markets. emarketer.com recently had an interview with Mike Miller, director of business and industrial markets at Google, and some new market research they just completed.
Here are some highlights that we, as B-to-B marketers, should consider:
- Search – Still big and this should be no surprise. Internet usage among the B-to-B sector jumped from 71% to 88% over the last year. Even more enlightening is when asked about how they used search to research business purposes; there was a 23% increase over last year from 67% to 90%.
- Videos – More companies in the B-to-B space are creating videos. They range from how-to videos to thought leadership topics. Here’s an interesting stat – the C suite indexes very high on using videos to find info.
- Digital marketing to reinforce the sales force – By the time a B-to-B purchaser actually engages with a company or sales rep, they’re 57% of the way through the decision process.
So with all our marketing challenges, hopefully these will give you some insight on what you might want to focus your efforts on.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 27, 2013 | Marketing Tips
Today we have a guest post from Michele Linn the Content Development Director of the Content Marketing Institute and a B2B content marketing consultant who has a passion for helping companies use content to connect with their ideal buyers. You can read the original post here.
Last week, when we published findings from our study, B2B Small Business Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budget, and Trends – North America (sponsored by Outbrain), reader Andy Detweiler posed a great question in our comments section:
“Any insight on how small B2B companies plan on solving the problems listed? Would be curious to understand what they see as potential solutions versus a larger enterprise.”
Andy’s question inspired us to take a closer look at some of the content marketing challenges faced by North American B2B marketers who work at small businesses (companies with 10 – 99 employees), as compared to their peers at enterprise organizations (companies with more than 1,000 employees). We’ll also share some insights on ways content marketers can address these issues — regardless of the size of the organization they work for.
1. Engagement
In general, both groups are similarly challenged with producing the kind of content that engages — and it is the top challenge for enterprise companies. In a way, I think it’s encouraging to see this as a top challenge, as it shows that marketers are focusing on the value of quality over quantity. And, there is good reason why engaging content matters: Customers and prospects who engage with content are more likely to reach out or initiate a relationship with your organization.
Ideas: Engaging content means different things to different people, so you’ll need to start out by determining your organization’s definition of “engagement” — and what metric(s) you can use to measure it. For instance, as Joe Pulizzi discussed in his recent post on the building blocks of content marketing strategy, we at CMI know our email subscribers are more likely than our other readers to sign up for our events, so “email subscriptions” is an engagement metric we focus on.
(For more on how to define, produce, and measure engaging content, check out our eBook, “Your Kick-Start Guide to Engaging Content.”)
2. Quantity
While small businesses cite producing enough content as their top challenge, it’s an issue that concerns the majority of content marketers across all business types that we’ve researched.
Idea: One solution is to simply realize that more is not better. This applies to small and large businesses, alike. That said, if you really do need to produce more content, here are three ideas our CMI consultants suggested in a video roundtable on challenges facing B2B marketers:
- Reuse content at the beginning and end of the sales funnel: This suggestion applies to any businesses that have a long sales cycle.
- Curate content: Instead of producing new content, share existing content — created by your organization or by others in your industry. This strategy can be used by businesses of any size.
- Produce evergreen content: I love Ardath Albee‘s quote from the video above: “I think the reasons that we change subject matters and create new content is because we as marketers get bored. We’ve said it; we’ve heard this before: ‘Let’s create something new.’ We don’t need to.” Again, instead of focusing on pumping out more new content, create a body of evergreen content that you can update, as needed. As a bonus, you may be able to curate content in a way that makes it more useful/gives it new life.
3. Integration
Not surprisingly, enterprise organizations are far more challenged with lack of integration across marketing than their small-business counterparts. As more people, products, and geographies become involved — producing integrated content can get pretty complicated.
Ideas: Large organizations like SAP, SAS, Kelly Services, and Intel have complex B2B marketing programs. At last year’s Content Marketing World, we had the pleasure of sitting down with key individuals from these teams to talk about how they manage the process of content marketing. There aren’t any shortcuts — and it involves a lot of work — but there are ways to create efficiencies to minimize the burdens.
While the following ideas will be most useful for enterprise organizations, smaller businesses can also use some of these approaches:
- Elizabeth Gaines from SAP talked about how her company has content account managers who are plugged into all of the field marketing teams and geographies.
- Pam Didner talked about Intel’s editorial planning process. Her team has an editorial calendar that they create a year in advance, and adjust throughout the year, as necessary. She then presents it to the various stakeholders across her organization (even though for her that means presenting that calendar 30 times).
- Kelly LeVoyer and Waynette Tubbs shared that everyone at SAS contributes to one large plan. They also make sure everyone knows the roles assigned to each team — and what KPIs they are being measured on — which, they have found, helps the content marketing plan come together much more cohesively.
- Michael Kirsten from Kelly Services says that he spends at least 30 percent of his time on intra- and inter-organizational communication.
4. Budget
It may seem surprising that enterprise marketers are more challenged with lack of budget than small businesses are, as they likely have more to spend overall. But, enterprise marketers also likely need to go through more internal channels to get budget approval, which may explain why a larger percentage of them feel this is an issue.
Another possible explanation is that lack of budget is just a perceived issue with some enterprise marketers who wished they had more money to work with. In contrast, small business marketers may be more accustomed to having to be resourceful in their content efforts.
Ideas: The root cause of budget issues could be lack of buy-in (see point #5, below): If management has not yet bought into the value provided by content marketing, it will be all the more difficult to get the necessary budgetary support. If this is the case, presenting information on return on investment can help justify the costs.
Kapost and Eloqua developed an eBook, Content Marketing ROI, that compares the cost of content marketing to PPC; it’s a great read if you are struggling with this issue. The eBook breaks costs down for both midsize and large companies.
5. Buy-in
This is an interesting challenge, as more enterprise marketers find themselves contending with a lack of executive buy-in, yet more small business marketers consider it to be their primary challenge.
Ideas: If you are struggling with getting buy-in, there are two posts I suggest you read: 2 Foolproof Methods for Getting Content Marketing Buy-In and Getting Buy-In for Your Content Marketing: A 3-Point Process. There is some overlap in the ideas, but here are the highlights:
- Really understand – and be able to articulate – the value of content marketing.
- Do a pilot program and report on key metrics, such as immediate gains (e.g. social followers), social rankings, back-links and leads/sales.
- Play on fear. What is the competition doing that you are not? What does your management care about most?
6. Variety
While a good portion of both small and enterprise marketers are challenged with producing a variety of content, not many consider this to be their biggest challenge. I personally consider this to be a good sign, as marketers should be focusing more of their efforts on producing content that engages, and on achieving measurable results, than on the formats their content is delivered on.
Ideas: That said, producing original content takes time, so there is no reason not to create efficiencies by repurposing the content you already have. Check out 5 Great Starting Points for a Content Recycling Program and 23 Ways to Leverage a Blog Post for Content Marketing Success to get more specific ideas on how to reimagine your content across a variety of formats.
7. Measurement
Our research is conducted annually, and this year is the first time we asked if content marketing measurement was a challenge. Truthfully, we expected this number to be higher, but, as Jay Baer aptly surmised in our B2B measurement roundtable:
“If you, as an organization, are measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing with something so rudimentary as website traffic, then I guess in your own land you are measuring content. Is website traffic the optimal way to measure the effectiveness of content? No, absolutely not. I think there’s a delta between what people think they should be measuring and what they actually should be measuring.”
Ideas: If you are struggling with measurement, take a look at our online how-to guide that walks you through fundamentals and provides specific suggestions on what you should measure. But if you only have time to view one resource, make it the eBook, A Field Guide to the Four Types of Content Marketing Metrics, in which you’ll learn about the best metrics to monitor for consumption, sharing, lead generation, and sales.
8. Training
Approximately one-third of both small-business and enterprise marketers feel they lack the appropriate knowledge, training, and resources to execute content marketing well. Considering that this field is quickly evolving, and there is no silver bullet, this is not surprising.
Ideas: I know this is a shameless plug, but if you are in need of training, there is no better event than Content Marketing World, which will be taking place in Cleveland from September 9 – 11. CMI’s entire mission is to provide training and education (through our blog posts, magazine, webinars, and more), so if you have a question about content marketing, I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do to help and/or we’ll cover it in a future blog post.
9. Professionals
While finding trained content marketing professionals is not a key challenge for many marketers, it is still a concern — particularly for enterprise companies.
Ideas: Another shameless plug (sorry!) but CMI has a fantastic group of consultants led by Robert Rose that help companies with their content marketing programs. If you are a large organization, you may also want to consider hiring a content marketing agency. If so, see what Joe Pulizzi had to say as he explained the 4 Truths About Content Marketing Agencies, and take a look at Doug Kessler’s advice on how to get the best results with your agency in his post, 4 Truths About Content Marketing Clients. If you have a smaller budget, or are only looking for a single writer for your content, consider hiring a journalist.
Are there other content marketing challenges you are facing? Or do you have other suggestions for those facing these issues? Let me know in the comments.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 26, 2013 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools
We did a survey to marketing/sales folks in the manufacturing sector who sell through either industrial or construction distributors to see what their biggest challenges are.
From the manufacturer’s point of view, their biggest challenge is getting the distributor’s salespeople to focus on their products. Sound familiar?
Here’s another interesting note. The manufacturers biggest marketing challenge is getting in front of the ultimate end user (contractor or MRO professional).
So it seems that we are in a catch 22 scenario. Manufacturers sell through distribution for many reasons. One of the most important ones is that they have an active loyal customer base that we want to reach. The issue is how do we get more of the distributor’s salesman’s time and attention? I’ve been in this market for over 30 years and have been trying to address this on a regular basis. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day.
Here are some tips that we’ve initiated over the years that might help you:
- Training – over half of the folks we surveyed didn’t have a formal training. It’s hard to imagine anyone trying to sell something they don’t understand. While most people focus on products, don’t overlook the opportunity of how to sell and look for application opportunities when on a job site or in a plant. A good resource for training modules is BlueVolt. They focus on distributor training and focus on marketing and buying groups for the industrial/construction markets.
- Promotions – plan them well enough in advance so the distributor can incorporate it into their normal correspondence to their customers. So many times we give them too short of a lead time and we wonder why they don’t do well. SPIF programs work if they are easy to understand and manage. Note that you don’t have to have one for a promotion to be successful. What you need to do is communicate to their marketing and sales force.
- Inside Sales & Customer Service – we normally focus our efforts on the outside sales folks since those are the ones we usually ride along with. But in the real world, CSR’s and inside sales talk to 10 times as many customers a day than the outside guys. These are the people you want to train and incentivize. When taking an order, they have the ability in most cases to enter an order for the products they are most familiar with. Not often (although we’d like to think so) that someone calls in and says I want 10 Acme Widgets. They normally say I need 10 widgets and the person taking the order has the discretion of sending them yours instead.
The key is planning and communications. I’d like to hear what you’re doing to make your distributor relationships better.
If you like this post, you might want to read:
Trends in Distribution and What it Means to the Distributor/Supplier Relationship.
Podcast: Manufacturers and Distributors – What are you Doing to stay Relevant? New rules of Engagement
