Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 27, 2012

This has worked great in the past but the Internet and digital marketing have changed how that process works today. There are many ways that digital marketing can help industrial companies make their consultative selling process more productive. How do you use digital marketing to improve your industrial sales process?

RFP 60

RFP Peer-to-peer High Quality Lead Lead Scoring 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 22, 2011

They are prospects by my definition. This is a critical step in making your lead generation and management an objective, quantitative process instead of a purely qualitative exercise. Track 1 should be for those prospects that you believe are good early stage non-SQL leads. One example would be inviting them to a webinar.

Sales Qualified Leads 60

Sales Qualified Leads Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Top of Funnel 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Sales cycles are longer in a down economy: Marketing automation supports drip marketing campaigns for lead nurturing to maintain top of mind awareness over a longer sales process. B2B sales processes are becoming “consumerized.” Some marketers also refer to it as content marketing. It is not an either–or proposition.

Marketing Automation Services 60

Marketing Automation Services Inbound Marketing Marketing Automation Top of Funnel 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 1, 2012

I don’t want to overgeneralize the process of developing a good content marketing strategy because it varies from company to company. Building on that foundation, my process is based on the time-tested principle of “the Five Ws (and one H)” of good journalism. Your content must match stages and roles in their decision making process.

Paid Search Agency 60

Paid Search Agency Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Work Management 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 14, 2010

How do you shift the focus from you or your company to your prospects and customers? Here are seven content marketing strategies that you can use to engage your prospects and move them forward in their buying cycle. The best example of an expertise blog that I know of is the Emerson Process Experts blog moderated by Jim Cahill.

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Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Product 60

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 26, 2011

Their pipeline of leads would dry up quickly and sales would come to a grinding halt if they depended entirely on inbound marketing for prospects to come to them. For example, a Process Design Engineer is already aware that s/he needs an eletromatic ball valve that will provide overpressure protection.

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Inbound Marketing Paid Search Agency Companies Ad Frequency 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 7, 2012

Manufacturers and industrial companies cannot be content with just publishing content, their content marketing needs to drive the sales process. This interim action step moves them forward in their decision-making process and helps you collect leads that are more qualified. See Industrial Marketing Content that Helps Buyers ).

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Content Sales Qualified Leads 60

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

The big hurdle they face is in engaging and converting readers into prospects, leads and ultimately customers. Passive reading of your content will not move the prospect along in his/her decision making process. Once you have done your content audit, you can begin the content mapping process. What is a content audit?

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Buying Cycle Buy Marketing Budget Web 2.0 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MARCH 1, 2011

After lead nurturing: Salespeople only call those prospects that have sent a clear signal of their readiness to buy with their online interactions with your marketing content. Prospects are fed relevant content of their choice, in their preferred format and with their permission. Ah, we’ve achieved sales and marketing Nirvana!

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Lead Nurturing Cold Calling Leads Lead 60

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 1, 2012

Marketing does a lot more by building trust among your customers (branding) and sets the table for prospects to engage in more meaningful conversations with your sales team (See Inbound Marketing Must Set the Table for Industrial Sales ). Marketing is a process that takes time to gel and produce results. Measure, refine and repeat.

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Tactics Planning Paid Search Agency High Quality Lead 60

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

In Needs Awareness and Research phases, the first two stages of the industrial buy cycle (see my earlier post Deconstructing the Four Stages of the Industrial Buy Cycle ) your prospects and customers use a variety of online content to find solutions to their current problems and needs.

Buying Cycle 60

Buying Cycle Marketing Automation Services Peer-to-peer Web 2.0 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Especially now since industrial and technical buyers are relying more and more on online resources for their decision making process. Marketing’s role in interacting with prospects has expanded and goes further into the buy cycle than before. Lead scoring has become very important in today’s B2B marketing.

Lead Ranking 60

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring Sales Qualified Leads Marketing Qualified Leads 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 1, 2011

It is up to marketing to create relevant content, optimize it for search engines, promote it online via social media and other outlets, score prospects, nurture leads until they are “sales ready” before handing them off to sales. It needs to do all the heavy lifting for creating qualified opportunities for industrial sales.

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Top of Funnel Inbound Marketing Bulldog Solutions Lead Scoring 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 29, 2010

The “Mapping Marketing to the Transforming Buying Process,” report released by DemandGen Report revealed serious disconnects. The majority of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) consider customer engagement as their top priority according to a recent study done by Forbes Insights and George P. Unfortunately, the answer is a big NO.

B2B Marketing 60

B2B Marketing Top of Funnel BtoB Peer-to-peer 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MARCH 23, 2012

78% of industrial suppliers indicate that their company Web site is one of their top three sources for connecting with prospects far outpacing other outlets such as tradeshows, direct mail and print advertising. Map out your sales process from the first point of contact to the RFQ and close.

Marketing Websites 60

Marketing Websites Marketing Budget Creation Budget Programs Marketing Proposals 60

Industrial Marketing Today

FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Lead nurturing is usually done by sending out helpful content to prospects and moves them from the top of the funnel (ToFU) to the bottom of the funnel (BoFU) where they are ready to make a purchase decision. Involved throughout the decision making process (just the position you want to be with lead nurturing). Still not convinced?

Lead Nurturing 60

Lead Nurturing Sales Management Top of Funnel Sales Qualified Leads 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 12, 2010

In order to get on the buyer’s short list as early in the buy cycle as possible, your B2B website needs to provide relevant information that your prospects are looking for. We want the prospect to contact us for pricing information so we can engage with them further 3. We can only provide prices after a formal RFQ process 5.

Sales Management 60

Sales Management Pricing Price Marketing Websites 60

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011

To me, those contacts are prospects and not leads. Automatically triggered emails (personalized and customized) based on certain events, dates and/or rules will make the entire process function 24/7 without manual intervention. Here I am not referring to new subscribers to newsletters and free content. There is a difference.

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Lead Generation Auto Responder Generation Marketing Analytics Tools 60

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 3, 2011

Your goal is to move prospects that are at the bottom rung of the ladder right now to the very top where they are converted into repeat customers. That’s where you begin the process of building customer relationships. Add value to them with every visit to your site and/or download and help them make a more informed decision.

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Planning Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 6, 2010

What I do want to talk about here is the how and not the why of you should translate your features into tangible benefits if you want your marketing content to engage with prospects and convert them into customers. To convert those prospects into customers, you must sell them on the benefits of the experience that they can expect.

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Features Web 2.0 Planning Work Management 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 2, 2010

They are combining video, audio and sophisticated tracking tools to deliver email campaigns with highly customized messages that engage prospects in their preferred format and measure interactions beyond just open and click-thru rates and well into website behavior. WHEN : When on the sales cycle do you expect to engage with your prospects?

Email Marketing 60

Email Marketing Planning Web 2.0 BtoB 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 9, 2010

They forgot to first set a strategy that carefully targets prospects with relevant messaging. But here’s the thing: Inbound Marketing Automation, like most complex issues, is a Process. As with any Process, the best way to design one is to follow the path of Continuous Process Improvements: Think, Plan, Do, Measure and Repeat.

Marketing Automation Services 60

Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Marketing Automation 60

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 28, 2010

Very little time is put into doing research on how their prospects and customers actually do their search. Yes, it is a time consuming process and requires heavy lifting to build many high quality one-way links from related and authority sites. Or use very broad search terms that would result in a bunch of useless traffic.

Optimization 60

Optimization SEO Marketing Websites Keywords 60

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 30, 2010

Marketers need to create a process for content planning that helps them maximize the return from their investments in developing the content resources that fuel their online marketing programs. Think about new “arrangements&# of content as resource centers for prospects and/or customers. Designing content for 1X use is wasteful.

Planning 60

Planning B2B Marketing Emarketing B2B 60

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 14, 2012

In 1998, I landed our first paying gig designing a Website for a process heater manufacturer. These are exciting times in industrial marketing with so much going on – inbound marketing, creating compelling content that engages and converts prospects into customers, social, mobile and video marketing.

Paid Search Agency 60

Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing Management Companies 60

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

This is a problem across the board for B2B marketers as reported by the same study – the largest challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” (36% of respondents). One-fifth say that “producing enough content” (21%) and “budget to produce content” (19%) are their greatest challenge in content marketing.

Peer-to-peer 60

Peer-to-peer Social Marketing Paid Search Agency Content 60

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 17, 2010

After all, that’s how your prospects and customers will find your blog and/or Web site. You need to have a process in place for your content optimization to evolve over time. Optimizing your marketing content around keywords or phrases is the first step in your content marketing strategy. See Do I Really Need a Content Strategy?)

Optimization 60

Optimization Web 2.0 Planning Buying Cycle 60

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 21, 2010

In the video below, Holly explains their process. Listen to her carefully; there are some awesome sound bites and plenty of key takeaways in it.

Budget Programs 60

Budget Programs Education Marketing Budget Lead Scoring 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 7, 2010

Even though more than half of the marketers saw their roles expanded well into the sales process, 58 percent of those surveyed met with sales just once a month or less and 8% or nearly 1 out of 10, admitted to never meeting with their sales counterparts.

Lead Generation 60

Lead Generation Sales Qualified Leads Web 2.0 B2B Marketing 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 3, 2010

We already have lots of brochures and data sheets to give to our prospects and customers. Interview them and then connect all the dots to develop compelling content that will move the visitor and/or the prospect in their decision making process. There’s nothing new we can say on our website.

Marketing Websites 60

Marketing Websites Web 2.0 Work Management Buying Cycle 60

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

Dr. Norr writes, “I want my prospect to benefit from what I have to offer. It is titled “Engineers should learn to sell” and is from Machine Design. It is written by Dr. Joel N. Orr who is the Chief Visionary Emeritus at Cyon Research Corp. in Bethesda, Md. That’s why I consider selling an act of love.

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Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency Work Management CMO 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 3, 2010

You want your business blog to become the hub that attracts traffic, establishes your credibility and ultimately, moves those readers forward in their decision making process and become paying customers. One way or another, you want it to be an integral part of your industrial marketing efforts in generating leads and driving sales.

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Business Blogging Web 2.0 Long Tail Marketing Business 60

Industrial Marketing Today

MARCH 11, 2011

Tweet The challenge for many industrial marketers is making their content relevant to their prospects and customers. Identifying where a prospect is on the buying cycle is sometimes difficult because there are long periods of silence with little to no online activity to track. Flow rate charts, dimensional drawings and CAD files.

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Relevance Terms and Conditions Buying Cycle Content 60

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 10, 2011

The other half of the equation has to do with converting that traffic into prospects and qualified leads. This is very important for manufacturers and industrial companies since their customers’ sales cycles tend to be long and complex with several people involved in the decision making process.

Marketing Websites 60

Marketing Websites Sales Qualified Leads Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 60

Industrial Marketing Today

DECEMBER 17, 2010

With 2011 right around the corner, this is a good time to finalize your website redesign plans in order to find the right prospects and begin filling your sales pipeline. Every company starts with this lofty goal but somehow during the website redesign process, it gets diluted by too many other competing needs.

CMS Development 60

CMS Development Marketing Websites Marketing Budget Creation Work Management 60

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 1, 2010

These findings were consistent across most B2B industries with complex, multi-touch buying processes. If your sales team can just get these two basics right, it can boost its share of a customer’s business by an average of 8% to 15%. The table below shows results from the study that shows what sales reps do wrong to turn off B2B customers.

Marketing Automation Services 60

Marketing Automation Services Web 2.0 B2B Lead Ranking 60

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 24, 2010

If necessary, rewrite or edit the text to address critical pain points of your prospects and customers. White papers continue to be very successful in generating registrations, especially in the early stages of the decision making process. Redesign your site around these objectives instead of doing a cosmetic facelift.

Marketing Websites 60

Marketing Websites Marketing Budget Buying Cycle Web 2.0 60