What is industrial marketing and how to get started
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What is industrial marketing?
Over the years, many have underestimated the importance of industrial marketing, especially when it comes to businesses that are in B2B industries. However, industrial marketing can help a business get its unique offering in front of the right people; helping it to increase its overall audience and subsequently, sales.
But, what exactly is industrial marketing? And why should businesses prioritise it within their growth strategies?
We discuss this and more in our blog below. Discover the industrial marketing meaning, why it’s important, and the different components involved in these strategies…
Definition of industrial marketing
Industrial marketing – more commonly known now as B2B marketing – is a way for companies that sell products/services to other business owners to attract a bigger audience and increase their brand awareness.
For example, this type of marketing is used by businesses in the construction and manufacturing industry, where their products/services help other companies produce the goods they eventually sell to customers.
Ultimately, this type of marketing focuses on engaging with business buyers and key decision-makers within a company or organisation. So, the approach needs to differ, focusing on how the products/services the business is advertising can help the company they’re targeting with their everyday operations or product manufacturing.
What are industrial goods?
Put simply, industrial goods are products or services used by businesses to make their own goods. These are unlike consumer goods, which are bought by individuals for personal use.
Some examples of industrial goods include:
- Machinery or equipment, such as welding machines
- Raw materials such as chemicals and metals
- Waste management to help a company with its disposal
These types of products/services might also help a business with its everyday operations. For example, an HR consultancy firm will advertise to companies in need of HR services.
Why is industrial marketing important?
Industrial marketing should be a key component of your business growth and expansion strategy. It’s important for a variety of reasons, including:
Targeted approach
One reason why industrial marketing is important for businesses to utilise is because it allows them to refine their approach to audience profiling. In other words, they can better attract and engage with those who are likely to purchase their products/services. For example, if they use a PPC strategy, they could target keywords that they know their audience will be searching for – allowing them to position their business in front of them. So, less time is wasted on targeting people who aren’t likely to convert.
Client nurturing and retention
Another reason why industrial marketing is important is because it helps to nurture clients and retain them. For example, these types of strategies work to engage prospects through tailored ads and content marketing. This means businesses can better address the specific pain points of their specific audience and help solve their issues. As a result, they become a trusted figure in the eyes of their demographic, which allows the customer to better connect with them and encourages them to use their products/services.
More brand recognition and awareness
Industrial marketing also helps increase brand awareness and recognition for the business. In fact, in a recent survey, 83% of B2B marketers achieved brand awareness goals through content marketing. By utilising different platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, businesses can position their brand in front of a wider audience. This allows them to advertise to different demographics based on their offering. For example, if they’re looking to attract more senior figures in a business – LinkedIn might be the best platform for them to utilise.
Key characteristics of industrial marketing
So, what does the industrial – or B2B business market look like? Well, for a better understanding, let’s take a look at some of its key characteristics:
Fewer markets, more spend
Unlike the more traditional consumer marketing, there are fewer markets and customers for you to target. However, industrial buyers are more likely to make a larger purchase.
When it comes to industrial marketing, only 20% of leads convert to sales with lead nurturing. This is why client nurturing and retention are so important. B2B customers are more likely to buy from a business with which they have a stronger and more trusting relationship. The process can sometimes be more complex and involve multiple approvals, and with a larger budget, they often do their research in detail before buying.
Unpredictable, derived demand
Another characteristic of industrial marketing is the fluctuating market demand. For example, if the demand for a particular B2C item grows, this may have a chain reaction leading to a demand for a B2B product or service.
It’s important to monitor industry trends closely to anticipate shifts in demand. There are two tools provided by Google that can support this: Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. However, it should be noted that these rely heavily on online searches and therefore need to be used in unison with experts such as Demand and Merchandise Planners.
For example, in the past seven days “cow print sambas” increased in online searches by over 200% as ASOS x Adidas sold out in minutes. This could potentially be a sign that the manufacturers of the products may need to increase their stock quickly.
Different approaches from B2C
While marketing to B2B and B2B are similar in many ways – you’re trying to resolve a problem – how you market can differ. For example, with B2C you will often be targeting personal wants and needs, highlighting the emotional appeal and benefits in a more transactional approach.
As mentioned earlier, B2B marketing often relies upon longer-term relationship building between the seller and buyer. The advertising of the goods or services is focused on solving larger problems such as increasing performance and/or reducing cost.
Industrial marketing strategies: important components
Let’s take a look at some key components of industrial marketing strategies:
Content marketing
As we can see from the characteristics above, targeting an industrial marketing audience can differ from your standard B2C customer. This can create a unique challenge for content marketers.
“Industrial marketing requires a specialised approach – how do you take a complex product or service and turn it into a clear, jargon-free solution to a business problem? Industrial content marketing needs to speak to your potential customer and every step of the journey to build the relationship and trust in your brand while also highlighting the problems you can solve for them” – Shona Worman, Content Lead at Embryo
Industrial content marketing is a key strategy for industrial marketing, allowing you to increase your brand awareness by highlighting your experiences within the industry and nurturing the relationship with your potential new customers.
Email marketing
Due to the nature of industrial marketing, your potential new customer might not require your service/product straight away. This is where email marketing comes in.
A B2B email marketer will understand that often the people they are emailing are not the same people who will make the decision to purchase. However, they will be the ones who will benefit from their goods or services.
Convincing this individual to write a business case doesn’t happen overnight, having a defined email marketing strategy allows you to engage with your potential new or repeat customers over and over again, building your brand awareness and industry expertise.
Unlike quick sales-focused B2C email marketing, industrial email marketing should focus on educational resources, industry reports, case studies, and samples of the services on offer.
Social media marketing
Similar to email marketing, industrial social media marketing is a channel that allows you to engage with your customers repeatedly before purchasing.
A clear social media marketing strategy will highlight how your product or service has supported existing customers to resolve a problem and achieve results. High quality images, customer testimonials, and videos of your products in action create multiple potential touchpoints.
This is also where you can continue to highlight your E-E-A-T. For example, the LinkedIn company page can be used for posting updates, industry news, and thought-leadership content. With the use of hashtags, paid advertisements, and staff reposting, you can reach a large audience rather quickly.
Trade shows and offline marketing
While we are a digital marketing agency, it’s important to touch upon how trade shows and offline marketing can support your digital industrial marketing strategy.
Offline marketing can increase brand awareness within your industry, often being the first point of contact with customers before they land on your website to find out more.
Our top tip: make sure your sales team has a strong online presence – whether that is on LinkedIn, your website, or guest posting, make sure that when a potential customer searches for the person they met, the SERP clearly highlights their industry expertise.
For example, on Embryo, our staff have years of experience in digital marketing so we use their expertise and knowledge to grow our user-focused blog content:
PPC marketing strategies
When it comes to PPC industrial marketing strategies, a lot of the same characteristics as above remain: target the decision makers with problem-solving keywords and ad copy, etc.
So let’s focus on what makes PPC B2B marketing unique.
Your target audience is likely to be operating during business hours, mostly 9 to 5, but check your industry. Therefore it’s essential to schedule your ad campaigns during peak hours.
Increasing the touchpoints between your brand and customer helps to build brand awareness and touch, and having a paid strategy that retargets website visitors through PPC or paid social media adverts can support this.
What are some challenges businesses can face when industrial marketing?
Every marketing strategy can face some obstacles along the way. Let’s take a look at the common challenges within industrial marketing:
Niche markets
One of the challenges that businesses can face when it comes to industrial marketing is how niche the market is. Having a small, focused audience can help when it comes to market copy, however, the customer pool is often very short.
For example, at first glance, the search volumes might seem small, or even non-existent in your organic SEO strategy. Nevertheless, targeting these keywords will have a high search intent and even one customer landing on a page can bring in significant revenue for these targeted terms.
Long sales cycles
When multiple people are involved in the buying journey it can create a long sales cycle.
From the initial discovery and extensive research through to the final budget sign-off, there are often multiple members of a business looking into your company. It’s essential to have targeted marketing strategies for each stage of the journey.
Use authoritative content that warms the initial lead and proves your authority within the industry. Then have to hand out quick keypoint material that highlights to the key decision-makers what they need to know; usually, how you will save them money.
Measuring return on investment effectively
As with all marketing strategies, it’s important to measure the return-on-investment (ROI).
Similar to B2C, a clear objective and KPIs will ensure your marketing activities remain on track. All parties need to understand the customer lifetime value (CLV) (which is likely to be much higher in industrial marketing) and the average cost per acquisition (CPA).
However, within industrial marketing, there are often multiple touchpoints that can affect this: from the organic and paid marketing strategy through to the cost and talent of the sales team.
In addition, there is the cost of retaining a customer to take into account as often retention holds a greater value than targeting new customers.
A team with a clear multi-channel strategy and objectives will increase your return on investment – using each channel in unison, rather than as a separate activity. Setting and measuring performance metrics such as CLV and AVG will keep you on track and grow your business.
Creating/implementing a strategy can be time-consuming
Having said this, creating, implementing, and measuring this strategy can be time-consuming. As mentioned, there are often multiple touchpoints that can affect the customer journey. It is important to monitor each stage of the journey to analyse what is and isn’t working.
As the industry changes, you may find that the problems change and you need to change your direction. Equally important, due to the long customer acquisition time, you can find that people leave organisations and you need to start the customer journey from the start.
As with all marketing strategies, start off by creating a clear plan of action, monitor, test and continue to flex based on what you’re seeing for the best result.
What are the future trends of industrial marketing? Predictions from our CIO, James Welch…
We’ve talked about where industrial marketing has started, and where it stands today. But what does the future hold for it? Well, our CIO, James Welch, has some predictions…
“Where I do see things improving is teams using AI to break down data more, and to use AI to tell stories with data. Dissection, and giving useful insights to business owners has – and always will be – crucial…and this is where AI can make this part of marketing better as a service to fellow businesses”
“Where AI can also help is by maintaining consistency. We humans, despite our wishes, are not consistent, so utilising AI to help keep consistency across multiple marketing channels, and over multiple campaigns, is where I see improvements could happen. An AI (after being fed a marketing team’s goals, along with useful documentation) would be able to say things like ‘This veers away from the approach you used in a previous campaign. Is this what you want to do?’.
“Using AI to coagulate and cross-reference at speed, various data is a way to create much more interesting and useful campaigns. Things that once took many hours to do, could be done in seconds, which should lead to greater creativity, with marketing teams saving lots of time in administration activities.
“Like with most uses of AI, those that use it to cut corners, and ‘phone it in’ will continue to be bland, and flatter to deceive. Those that invest in ways for AI to help them to try something different will be the marketing teams winning awards”
Discover how B2B marketing can help your company grow…get in touch with Embryo’ today…
B2B businesses need an effective marketing strategy just as much as companies selling their products and services to customers. Not only is it a great way to increase brand recognition and awareness, but it also helps your business drive sales and ultimately conversions.
If you’re interested in finding out how the experts at Embryo can create a marketing strategy for your B2B business, then get in touch with our team of experts today. Whether it’s organic content marketing, PPC, or paid social, we’re here to help your business grow its customer/client acquisition and make long-lasting relationships for years to come.
Industrial marketing: FAQs
What type of businesses can benefit from an industrial marketing strategy?
Ultimately, any business that wants to sell its products/services to other businesses needs an industrial marketing strategy. More specifically, companies within crowded and competitive markets, advertising niche products/services will benefit the most.
This is because it can provide a more targeted approach when it comes to attracting high-quality leads. As a result, you’ll be engaging with an audience that is more likely to convert and purchase your products/services.
What is the difference between B2C marketing and industrial marketing?
In simple terms, the main difference between B2C marketing and industrial marketing is the audience the company is attracting. As B2C stands for business-to-consumer, this means the company is trying to sell its products and services to everyday consumers, such as a beauty supplier advertising its product range to customers.
Meanwhile, B2B business stands for business-to-business, which means their customers are business owners in need of certain products/services to help their company’s operation. As a result of the differences in their target demographic, the marketing strategies these businesses use will differ.
