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Marketing

Common Industrial Marketing Challenges

by | Jun 14, 2022 | Tradesmen Insights

by Emma Jones, guest blogger

From populating email lists to leveraging automation, discover the most common industrial marketing challenges and how to overcome them.

As the pandemic slowly recedes and the marketing world takes a breath of relief, the manufacturing industry remains cautious. Perhaps rightly so; B2B salespeople have not been performing according to expectations, all things considered. In fact, just two days before this article was written, Deloitte released its 2022 manufacturing industry outlook corroborating this. It outlined surprising growth but found “optimism around revenue growth is held in check by caution from ongoing risks.” For this reason, risk mitigation and “business agility” will substantially inform the industry’s future, one could safely argue. So, to help you do so, let us explore the most common industrial marketing challenges that may lie ahead.

#1 Populating email lists

Starting with the lead generation phase, email lists remain notoriously hard to populate. It’s increasingly hard to populate them with meaningful, engaged leads. There are ample reasons for this, including diminishing audience trust, fragmented customer journeys, outdated business websites, etc. Simultaneously, the gradual eclipse of third-party cookies weighs on marketers of all industries, hampering audience data acquisition further.

The manufacturing industry is no exception to this, and in many ways, it may have it worse. As some manufacturers remain resistant to digitization and the Industry 4.0 movement calls for its own attention from those who embrace it, the lead acquisition may suffer in turn.

Solutions

As a mainstay among industrial marketing challenges, there are a few different measures against this issue. Here, let us outline the three most substantive ones for text economy:

  • Avoid purchased lists at all costs. Such lists rarely perform or pay off at all, as your email recipients have not opted into them. In addition, using such lists carries serious risks with email carriers and may even come with legal ramifications.
  • Engage in Landing Page Optimization (LPO). Instead, you may polish your landing pages via LPO to craft enticing signup forms. For B2B specifically, you may frame them with phase-appropriate offerings like case studies and industry reports to encourage signups.
  • Constantly cleanse your lists. As you do, remember to discard leads that needlessly bloat your email lists. You should, of course, follow up with valuable leads manifold beforehand, but cleansing your lists will ensure they perform better.

For a visual example of phase-appropriate offerings, we may cite the following graph by HubSpot:

Alt. tag: An illustration of the three customer journey stages by HubSpot.

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/b2b-marketing-buyers-journey-hubspot.png?width=600&name=b2b-marketing-buyers-journey-hubspot.png

#2 Taking up SEO

Similarly, still in the early lead generation phase but also beyond it, come industrial marketing challenges with adopting Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This set of practices allows your website and content to be visible in search engines by adhering to Google’s criteria. Needless to say, any marketer of any industry can reap tremendous benefits from higher Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) rankings. Time and time again, research has shown that the top results get the vast majority of all clicks, and the same applies to its now-prominent local SEO subset. Ensuring such visibility can help your brand grow by raising brand awareness more effectively and expanding your reach.

What’s more, contrary to the belief of some, SEO is far from a B2C mainstay alone. To cite HubSpot again, consider the following findings on B2B campaign goals:

Alt. tag: A graph on B2B marketers’ primary campaign goals by HubSpot.

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/what%20is%20a%20b2b%20marketers%20primary%20goal%20in%202022.png?width=1104&name=what%20is%20a%20b2b%20marketers%20primary%20goal%20in%202022.png

Not only is brand awareness the primary goal, but engagement, advertising, and lead generation all benefit from SEO as well. And yet, the manufacturing industry struggles to embrace SEO long-term. Some find its 200+ ranking factors too expansive, and others quit soon after seeing poor short-term results. Finally, some understandably lack the resources for it and choose to engage minimally, if at all.

Solutions

Such industrial marketing challenges are not easy to overcome, unfortunately. They often stem from deep-seated resistance to SEO, a lack of resources, and other understandable circumstances. Still, as initial steps, you may consider the following:

  • Prioritize SEO subtypes. First, you may examine which SEO subtypes make the most sense for you, among on-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO. They all serve their purposes, and ideally, you should neglect none of them – but some prioritization may help ease the strain on your budget.
  • Prioritize ranking factors. Similarly, Google’s 200+ ranking factors do not welcome SEO newcomers much. Again, you may best neglect none of them, especially not core ones like website speed and content optimizations. Still, starting with small and calculated steps may offer an easier route and a smoother learning curve.
  • Adjust your expectations. Finally, SEO is a long-term commitment and a continuous process, and this should be clear throughout your company. Expecting quick results will only set you up for disappointment and possibly sway you from it.

#3 Modernizing websites and content marketing

Next, approaching the lead acquisition and conversion phases, we may explore deeper industrial marketing challenges that overlap with SEO. Namely, website and content modernizations that digital marketing mandates. The two primary challenges with both are resistance to change and resource allocation. Some manufacturing businesses may believe their B2B focus does not warrant website optimizations and instead rely on marketing outreach alone. Established ones may also find content marketing changes unappealing when their current approach has seemingly performed well enough so far.

Thankfully, both are slowly diminishing. The industry has largely heeded Google’s warnings on bounce rates, and Content Marketing Institute finds B2B content marketing taking priority:

Alt. tag: A pie chart on B2B content marketing budget changes in 2022 by Content Marketing Institute.

Source: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/B2B_2022_Research_Budgets-600×521.jpg

Solutions

Still, the problem lies less in embracing change and more in how one can best implement change. Here, we may suggest the following fundamentals:

  • Polish your website for first impressions. Loading speeds are crucial, but only one component of your leads’ first impression. Remember to polish your web design to denote professionalism, offer valid Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) information, feature your mission statement and accreditations prominently, etc.
  • Address the entire customer journey through content marketing. Remember that your content should frame the whole customer journey, from awareness to conversion. Craft logical, hierarchical journeys through website structure and internal links and cater to each stage with informative, valuable content.
  • Always remember B2B’s focus on decision-makers. On that note, always remember you are targeting cautious decision-makers; B2C’s emotional responses won’t suffice for them. Frame your offerings with as much value as possible, and don’t shy away from moderate jargon to establish authoritativeness.

#4 Expanding marketing channels

Of course, after content marketing, we may delve into industrial marketing challenges that relate to marketing channels themselves. In this regard, too, digital marketers across all industries are slowly embracing the need for multichannel and omnichannel marketing. What many perceived as a primarily B2C-focused philosophy is now finding its way to B2B marketing, as the latter confidently expands to social media. Of course, B2B and B2C favor starkly different platforms, as research finds:

Alt. tag: A graph on popular social media channels among B2B marketers.

Source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4Wd4NzgCguI_p6k7oxoLcBcNtlXJ2UXhdToWO26nPVaQnsgwJM_Dlzn89NN2lNZFMNTE7tgnaK2ENqEAjgypB_tWg6bcwDo07Wn3PlDH7_lHMdaY2MFoKN9xHp26rjRjJhKpU0iZ

Thus, with marketing prioritization in mind, the manufacturing industry and B2B, on the whole, are turning to LinkedIn. With continuously flattering statistics substantiating its popularity, it’s arguably the most valuable marketing channel to begin expanding to in 2022.

Solutions

Here, the primary challenge lies more in leveraging LinkedIn effectively to secure a good Return on Investment (ROI). Here we may cover the fundamentals:

  • Carefully define your goals. As with all new marketing channels, you should begin with a robust outline of your S.M.A.R.T. goals. Determine your campaign’s purpose, metrics to monitor performance, and strict time frames.
  • Polish your company page and Showcase pages. Similarly, you may polish your company page just as you would your business website. It will inform your leads’ first impression, so it should immediately denote professionalism and inspire trust. You may also dedicate Showcase pages to specific products or services for more focused campaigns.
  • Leverage sponsored content. Finally, LinkedIn’s sponsored ads, and InMail can serve to further augment your campaigns, just like how paid marketing can enhance your organic marketing efforts.

To further explore these industrial marketing challenges, you may also consult our article on LinkedIn best practices.

#5 Managing and monitoring marketing campaigns

Finally, the core challenge with such extensions comes in plain management and monitoring. The average B2B business of any industry will have to manage each qualified lead carefully. Doing so across multiple channels while managing SEO and monitoring paid ad campaigns can naturally overwhelm even seasoned marketers. Of course, this kind of expansion can also stretch budgets, resources, and teams too thin in the process.

In this regard, the simple solution lies in marketing automation. The manufacturing industry continues to embrace it, thankfully, and this massive software industry continues to expand uninhibited – as GrandViewResearch finds:

Alt. tag: A graph on the expansion of the digital marketing software market in the US by GrandViewResearch.

Source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/static/img/research/us-digital-marketing-software-market.png

And yet, there lies the primary challenge, too; only 1 in 5 marketers use such tools to their full potential. So the issue does not lie in finding solutions to manage and monitor campaigns but in using them effectively.

Solutions

To address this, one needs to address the exact shortcomings that inhibit automation adoption. To cover the three main ones from our aforelinked article, here we may touch on:

  • The most fundamental challenge in adopting automation software of any kind comes in poor training and insufficient educational material. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software notably suffers from this, as Nomalys’s aggregated research finds. Thus, remember to very carefully scrutinize your candidates as regards training courses and material, and keep an attentive eye on your onboarding process and continuous training alike.
  • Management resources. Similarly crucial among industrial marketing challenges is a lack of management resources. This typically manifests in poor integration options and ongoing management support from software vendors. You may best address this proactively by carefully examining what your software candidates offer.
  • Finally, strained budgets can also make automation software hard to maintain. Proactivity offers the best option here, too; conduct careful market research in advance, and don’t rule out downscaling. You may often find yourself paying for more features than you need, so opting for more compact, affordable solutions may let your budget breathe.

Conclusion

Industrial marketing challenges include both traditional mainstays and emerging ones as digitization advances. They span across all phases of the customer journey and often include internal resistance to change, budget constraints, and difficulties in adapting to new solutions and strategies. While only cursory, this article hopefully helped you pinpoint them early and adjust proactively, ensuring continued growth in 2022 despite the looming risks ahead.

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Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Four

by | May 19, 2022 | Tradesmen Insights

By: Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect

In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The fourth macro trend for 2022 is the social commerce trend.

The Social Commerce Trend

Social becomes the heart of the post-pandemic shopping experience

Lockdowns shot ecommerce forward a decade—in three months.

That all changed overnight when consumers went into lockdown and many looked to meet basic needs by buying online.

Suddenly, 84% of consumers were shopping over the internet, according to Shopify. eMarketer reported a surge in ecommerce sales growth to 18%, the highest increase the firm had ever reported for this figure. And in what McKinsey dubbed “the quickening,” ecommerce penetration rocketed ahead more in the first 90 days of the pandemic than it had in the previous decade.

This “temporary” boom in online shopping isn’t stopping

Nearly two years since the beginning of the pandemic, this shift in consumer spending has shown no signs of slowing down. And with eMarketer projecting that double-digit annual growth will drive ecommerce sales from $792 billion in 2020 to $1.6 trillion in 2025, it’s clear that our new ecommerce habits aren’t just here to stay—they’re very much on the rise.

This growth is particularly acute when it comes to social commerce. According to Hootsuite and We Are Social’s Digital 2021 report, the global social commerce industry is currently worth more than half a trillion US dollars. Simon Kemp, founder of strategic marketing consultancy Kepios, expects that number to grow.

And it’s not just discovery that gives social commerce its business utility. Buyers are using social media to search, research and evaluate the brands they buy from, making social networks the second-most important channel for online brand research after search engines. What’s more, if we look at people aged 16 to 24, social networks actually rank even higher than search engines like Google when it comes to brand research.

While the brick-and-mortar storefront lives on post-pandemic, it’s become clear that social commerce is an opportunity businesses can’t afford to miss. Small businesses in 2022 will work to extend the experience customers have with their brands across social storefronts and real life, while global enterprises test the limits of the online shopping experience.

Younger generations now turn to social networks to research brands more than search engines.

Search engines: 51.3%
Social networks: 53.2%

Percentage of global internet users aged 16-24 who use each channel as a primary source of information when researching brands. Source: Hootsuite and We Are Social, Digital 202119

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Five Key Social Media Trends for 2022 – Part Two

by | Apr 26, 2022 | Tradesmen Insights

By: Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect

In this five-part series, we are taking a look at the 2022 social trends from Hootsuite. The second macro trend for 2022 is the social advertising trend.

The Social Advertising Trend

Marketers get creative as consumers wise up to social ads

But another more likely reason—and a bigger takeaway for marketers when it comes to advertising anywhere on social—is the fact that these networks encourage advertisers to make content that fits organically into the platforms.

Brands that advertise successfully on these networks understand that audience mindset is key. Simply put, no one wants their experience on any social network interrupted by ads from brands that are as boring as they are self-

Consumers, wise to the sameness of social advertising, are holding brands to a higher standard when it comes to creativity—but they’re also rewarding those that get it right. Brands that want to stand out in 2022 will have to work harder to create ads that mirror and enrich the distinct experience offered by each social network.

Despite historically low budgets, marketers are spending more on social ads

This year, marketing budgets relative to revenue are the lowest they have ever been, according to Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey. However, more than half (51.4%) of the marketers that we surveyed said they plan to increase their paid social spend in 2022.

Where do they plan to spend that money? Last year, most of the marketers we spoke to disproportionately pointed at Instagram. This year, investment in Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn has caught up.

The largest increases in spend relative to last year are going toward TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat. Marketers are shifting their resources to where they can make the most impact—and, increasingly, that’s on networks that typically haven’t been a priority in the social marketing channel mix.

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Top Content Marketing Ideas for Manufacturing Companies

by | Mar 8, 2022 | Marketing Tools, Tradesmen Insights

For many digital marketers, the ongoing pandemic acted as an accelerant for digitization. Most famously embraced by the World Economic Forum, this view holds that it didn’t disrupt per se; it pushed forward. Content marketers across industries, seeing increasingly fragmented customer journeys, agreed – and ones in the manufacturing industry corroborated it. As customers exhibited online event fatigue, they too needed to face this change along with the industry’s inherent ones. However, content marketing ideas for manufacturing companies don’t come easily in such a demanding market, let alone effective ones.

Content marketing challenges for manufacturing companies

As an introductory note, here we may first highlight said challenges. The manufacturing industry does face distinct ones of its own, which inexperienced or broader-scope content marketers may miss or underestimate. In turn, it becomes nigh impossible to produce effective content for it, let alone beat the competition with it.

To consolidate them, the primary ones include:

  • Offer complexity. A manufacturing company typically does not sell simple products accessible to a wide market. Framing such specialized offers properly for their niche audiences requires considerable industry expertise.
  • Decision-makers’ scrutiny. Moreover, manufacturing content marketers need to entice decision-makers who seek expertise and offer tangible value. As with B2C marketing, eliciting emotional responses will very rarely bear results with this audience.
  • A less visually exciting industry. Finally, the manufacturing industry offers comparatively fewer thrills for compelling visual content to thrive on. This has been changing in recent years, however.

In addition, the typical customer’s purchase decision process spans a much longer journey. Strategyn breaks down the individual steps into 6; need, research, design, evaluation, shortlist, and purchase.

A chart of the industrial buyer’s buying process by Strategyn.

Source: https://blog.thomasnet.com/hs-fs/hubfs/1MARCOMM/Blog/2018/February/workflow2.png?width=808&name=workflow2.png

Evidently, then, content marketers cannot afford to overlook this unique set of factors. The industrial buyer is cautious and knowledgeable, and requires stage-specific content across the buyer journey to court effectively.

For that matter, Content Marketing Institute offers some notable insights. It finds that half (49%) of manufacturing marketers rate their company’s efforts as “moderately successful,” and only 18% rate them as more successful than that. Among what they often lack, they find, are:

  • Prioritizing optimal content delivery times
  • Crafting stage-specific content
  • Using storytelling in their content

It is these factors that content marketers may need to address, alongside picking the optimal marketing mediums and channels. (more…)

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Battle of Nostalgia vs The Future

by | Feb 25, 2022 | Tradesmen Insights, Uncategorized

By: Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect

This year’s Super Bowl ads were dominated by “future” themed ads from the multiple crypto currency ones, the metaverse and what seemed like an electric vehicle ad during every commercial break!

But my favorite commercials brought back a little nostalgia.

Here were my top 4 commercials from the big day:

1. Chevy’s Silverado all-electric Sopranos homage was ingenious. As soon as you hear that initial beat and the “woke up this morning” music by Alabama 3, you are instantly taken back to the Sopranos series. Then of course the shots of New York skyline, the New Jersey turnpike and glimpses of a woman driving…which makes you start wondering who’s driving the truck. The entire commercial did a great job at building anticipation…with no voiceover until :50 seconds into the minute-long commercial to then payoff the tagline “whole new truck for a whole new generation”. By far, my favorite commercial of the day.

2. Rocket Homes & Rocket Mortgage Dream House with Anna Kendrick and Barbie. Such a clever way to work in finding and financing your dream house with Rocket. I loved their “competitive bid” buyer characters like Better Offer Betty, House Flipper Skipper and my favorite Ca$h Offer Carl! And then the special guest appearances by He-Man and Skeletor for the “fixer-upper” castle at the end.

3. GM Electric Vehicle line with the Austin Powers cast. How can one go wrong with Dr. Evil and his infamous pinkie finger?!?! Combined with Scott Evil, Number 2, Frau Farbissina and then a special appearance of Baby-Me instead of Mini-Me. And then having classic lines from Dr. Evil like “Help save the world first, then take over the world”!

4. Irish Spring Body Wash. As soon as you hear that Irish music you are taken back to their old commercials. And then you are peppered with witty statements such as “Were stinkiness is unwelcome” and “Smell from a nice-smelling place.” And finally the payoff, with those classic white knit sweaters after the guy appears from behind a giant bottle of Irish Spring body wash as if it were a Stonehenge-like monolith.

What was your favorite commercial?

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