How to Improve Your B2B Industrial Marketing Strategy by Speaking an Engineer's Language
Summary
TLDRThe speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding the industrial environment for effective marketing, especially when it comes to complex products. They discuss the need to engage with engineers and SMEs to ask the right questions and provide valuable, industry-specific content. The speaker highlights the value of product information, technical articles, and how-to videos in the decision-making process for engineers. They also suggest repurposing presentations into written content to overcome challenges in content creation and stress the importance of a documented strategy to align marketing efforts with customer needs and business goals.
Takeaways
- 🧐 Understanding the industrial environment is crucial for effective marketing, especially when starting out without a background in the field.
- 🔍 To market industrial products effectively, one must dig deep, ask the right questions, and learn from SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) and engineers.
- 🤝 Working closely with engineers in a manufacturing facility provides a unique opportunity to understand the products and their applications.
- 📚 Educating senior management and product leaders about the value of marketing is essential, as it can be challenging for them to grasp its importance.
- 🛠 Engineers seek knowledge and solutions, so providing them with the right information about product categories, industry applications, and systems is key.
- 📈 Offering tools that simplify comparison and decision-making processes for engineers adds value and can help push them through the buying cycle.
- 📊 Product information is highly valued by engineers, as it helps them determine if a product meets their specifications, especially in the early stages.
- 📈 CAD drawings are a key indicator of interest and potential specification, as they are often downloaded when an engineer is considering a product for a project.
- 🎥 Creating content such as technical articles, white papers, and how-to videos is valuable, but it's important to focus on the value provided to the audience rather than just meeting content quotas.
- 📝 Repurposing presentations from SMEs into written content can be an effective way to create detailed and informative material for engineers.
- 📋 Having a documented content strategy helps in understanding customer pain points, aligning with business goals, and prioritizing marketing efforts.
Q & A
What was the initial challenge the speaker faced when starting to learn about industrial products?
-The speaker initially found it hard to understand the industrial environment and the products they were marketing, as they were just big boxes going into various applications that they didn't comprehend.
How did the speaker approach learning about the products they market?
-The speaker had to dig deep, reach out to SMEs and engineers they work with, and learn how to ask the right questions to understand the products and their applications better.
What is the speaker's role in the manufacturing facility?
-The speaker works in a manufacturing facility and has the opportunity to interact with two to three hundred engineers daily, which aids in their learning process.
Why is it important for an industrial marketer to understand the product they are marketing?
-Understanding the product is crucial for an industrial marketer to be effective, as it enables them to provide accurate and helpful information to customers and stakeholders.
What was the speaker's strategy to educate senior management and product leaders on the value of marketing?
-The speaker focused on educating senior management and product leaders by demonstrating the value marketing brings through knowledge sharing and solving problems.
What type of content do engineers typically value according to the CFE Media survey mentioned in the script?
-According to the CFE Media survey, engineers value product information the most, followed closely by technical articles, white papers, and how-to videos.
Why is product information considered so important for engineers?
-Product information is important because it helps engineers determine if a product meets their specifications, which is crucial in the early stages of their decision-making process.
What is a key indicator for the speaker when engineers are downloading CAD drawings?
-When engineers download CAD drawings, it is a strong indicator that the product is either being specified or has made it onto the shortlist for consideration.
How does the speaker suggest capturing content from SMEs who are reluctant to write technical articles?
-The speaker suggests recording presentations given by SMEs and repurposing the content into technical articles on their behalf, as a way to capture detailed and valuable information.
What is the importance of having a documented content strategy according to the speaker?
-A documented content strategy helps in understanding customer pain points, aligning them with marketing and business goals, and prioritizing content creation effectively.
How does the speaker address the challenge of stakeholders requesting more content without a clear strategy?
-The speaker emphasizes the need to show stakeholders the real priorities based on a documented content strategy, which helps in focusing on what truly adds value to the audience.
Outlines
📚 Understanding the Industrial Environment Through Deep Learning
The speaker emphasizes the importance of having a deep understanding of the industrial and environmental background when marketing industrial products. Initially, they found the products they marketed to be complex and difficult to comprehend. To become an effective marketer, they had to engage with subject matter experts (SMEs) and engineers daily, learning to ask the right questions. The speaker discusses the challenge of educating senior management and product leaders about the value of marketing, especially in an industry where the understanding of marketing's role can be limited. They highlight the need to provide engineers with the right tools and information to facilitate decision-making, such as product comparisons and specifications, which can streamline the buying cycle and add value to their work.
🎥 Leveraging SME Expertise for Content Creation
This paragraph discusses the process of capturing and repurposing expert knowledge into valuable content. The speaker shares a strategy of recording presentations given by SMEs, which can later be transformed into technical articles or other content types by content specialists. This method is presented as a way to overcome the challenge of obtaining detailed and useful content from SMEs. The speaker also stresses the importance of having a documented content strategy that aligns with customer pain points and business goals, which helps in prioritizing and justifying content creation efforts to stakeholders. The paragraph concludes with a mention of the importance of understanding and documenting a content strategy for effective marketing.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Industrial Marketing
💡SMEs
💡Engineers
💡Product Managers
💡Technical Content
💡Marketing Value
💡Product Information
💡CAD Drawings
💡Content Strategy
💡White Papers
💡How-to Videos
Highlights
Importance of understanding the industrial environment for effective marketing.
The initial challenge of perceiving products as 'big boxes' without context.
Necessity to communicate with SMEs and engineers to gain deep product knowledge.
Utilizing daily interactions with hundreds of engineers for learning.
The need to ask the right questions to understand technical content and marketing.
Educating senior management on the value of marketing in industrial settings.
The role of marketing in providing knowledge and solutions to engineers.
Creating content that facilitates the buying cycle and decision-making process.
Providing tools to compare products and ease the decision-making for engineers.
The value of white papers and videos in marketing, but with a focus on audience needs.
CFE Media survey insights on the types of content engineers value.
Product information as a top priority for engineers in the decision-making process.
Importance of CAD drawings as an indicator of product specification or shortlisting.
Challenges in getting SMEs to create content and repurposing presentations.
The significance of having a documented content strategy for alignment with business goals.
Prioritizing content creation based on customer pain points and marketing goals.
Using a documented strategy to guide content creation and manage stakeholder expectations.
Transcripts
it's hard to understand the industrial
environment if you're not if you don't
have that background and I didn't when I
first you know started learning about
some of the products that I now market
they were just big boxes to me you know
going into a bunch of applications that
I didn't get and to be an effective
industrial marketer you really have to
understand what you're marketing and so
I had to dig deep and I had to really
reach out to the SMEs and all the
engineers that I work with I work on a
manufacturing facility so thankfully I
have two to three hundred engineers that
I work with that I see every day so what
is it I do have a lot of you know people
that I can reach out to from that
perspective but I also had to learn how
to really dig deep and ask the right
questions you know a lot of the product
managers or your SMEs have a really good
understanding of the product or maybe
your customer or the types of technical
technical content that they're looking
for but not all of them understand how
to use it and not all of them understand
what marketing is and I learned you know
I hear it a lot with a lot of industrial
manufacturers and it's this way in my
company the value of marketing and and
senior manager understanding what you do
and how you bring value can be a
challenge so I had to educate educate
senior management educate product
leaders on the value of marketing and so
marketing your marketing by nature
engineers are looking to be for
knowledge and they're looking to solve
solutions so looking at you know what
can I create and what questions can I
answer about my product and I don't mean
the benefits and features of your
product I mean the product line right
the the product category in the industry
applications the systems you know
providing tools that that help make it
easier for them to compare against all
the whether its products the multiple
products that you offer or the multiple
products that your competitors offer
getting them pushed down into that you
know
buying cycle to help make a decision
they're busy and anything that you can
provide that's going to make their job
easier
of coming to a decision or specifying a
product is going to add value to them
and they're going to appreciate it
I've heard this so many times over the
years and I'm sure you guys have - you
know you have people coming to you as
you know whether you're in Markham or
product marketing and saying we need to
do more white papers or we need to do
more videos and it's like do you do you
really know why you know you have these
quotas of needing to meet you know
videos so popular let's just push out a
bunch of videos every month right well
you really need to focus on what do you
what are what value are you bringing to
your audience what are you wanting what
solution are you trying to answer and
then you can decide what type of content
so CFE Mita CFE media puts out a survey
early from they survey about seven to
eight hundred engineers and this is a
good example as to what kind of content
engineers value and you can see still at
the top of the list is product
information now that doesn't mean that
the other types are not important you
can see that technical articles white
papers how-to videos these are all
really closely behind and they're all
really you know useful too whether
you're building a lead nurturing process
but product information is so important
to to make sure that you're at the top
of your game because if you don't have
all of the types of product information
that you need then you can be missing
out on engaging with an engineer that's
just looking to see if your product
meets their spec in the beginning
especially with product information you
really have to look at not only how much
they're downloading but you know just
the bigger picture you know when are
they downloading it what types of
product information some key indicators
for us are those CAD drawings you know
we know that and and we I hear it
you know from our distributors I hear it
from our sales engineers as well if
someone's coming in and downloading one
of our CAD drawings and there's a really
good chance that you're either being
specified or you have at least made that
shortlist when I mentioned technical
training classes and internal lunch and
learns I you know my team sometimes has
a challenge getting our SMEs to focus on
creating content and if you want you
know to ask them to write a technical
article or to even you know give you the
time to to interview it for me my
experience is it's more difficult but
they'll give a presentation they give
the presentations all the time and so
one thing I started to do is I started
to sometimes record them and I don't
mean like even for mass you know
external publication though you can do
that I meant just to capture what
they're saying you know that way you
know a content specialist can utilize it
later to repurpose it into a technical
article written you know on the SMEs
behalf it's just a nice way in a
different way if you struggle with
getting content from your SMEs to be
resourceful and to try to continue
creating content because you're not
gonna get in a slide deck really the
essence and the details that an
engineer's looking for it's gonna come
out and what they're saying if you don't
have a documented strategy it's really
going to go a long way to understand you
know your content strategy and to be
able to adjust it and to be able to
prioritize and once you have that
strategy or once you have that
documented and then you understand you
know the types of pain points that your
customers have and then you align those
with your marketing and your business
goals it becomes much easier to
prioritize and it becomes much easier
you know to tell you know the senior
managers of the world are the product
managers that are coming in saying give
me more video or I got to focus on this
because you can show them where the real
priorities should lie
you
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