When marketing your Executive Education program, you have creative demands, budget limits, and...
Very few industrial manufacturing businesses rely on a single source for marketing leads. Most of us will look to at least 4 or more platforms to engage with prospects - Print | Email | Digital Banners | Social. You must get a good understanding our your Target Audience so you create content they will resonate with and place it where they are.
Industrial Marketing Today recently wrote a blog on Proving ROI of Industrial Content Marketing is Still a Big Challenge. We will discuss content further in our next blog but I would read what they had to say
Beyond planning and execution, one of the biggest challenges is bringing channels together into a cohesive marketing mix, rather than operating as separate marketing silos.
How marketing silos negatively impact performance
We often work with clients who are trying to improve their messaging and ultimately their response rates. This is a methodology we whole heartedly embrace as testing and measuring will ultimately lead to improved results on each of your b2b marketing campaigns.
However, a big challenge is getting all your information into one place, drawing conclusions and then taking action to bring about the improvement in your results.
Any industrial business that is lucky enough to have an in-house marketing team will probably have 1 or 2 people who are specialists in a particular area, perhaps email marketing or social media, so this work generally falls to them and can be managed independently.
Other businesses choose to outsource their marketing and will generally approach one agency to manage their social presence, another to run their email advertising and possibly even a PR firm to manage their press releases, and so on.
When marketing channels are managed independently opportunities can be lost. Communication needs to be at the top of the agenda to ensure that lessons learned from testing and measuring can have an equal impact across all channels. It is important that all the channels have a cohesive message so that they can play off of each other and help improve the response.
Not all marketing channels are equal
‘But hang on a minute’ I hear you say…’the language we use on social is totally different to our corporate adverts that run in the financial papers’. Yes, this is true of many businesses. Social tends to be less formal with a more conversational tone, there is a time and a place for everything. This is a great blog to reach "Social Media Etiquette in the B2B Marketplace". However, there are still valuable lessons to share.
Here’s an example to illustrate.
A business selling Industrial equipment promotes their product through email marketing and on their social networks. The social team have discovered that the production announcements have a superb response rate and have been able to trace actual sales as a result. The headlines that have worked best are ‘This equipment decreases production time’ and ‘This equipment decreases manufacturing costs’ - the critical elements here are Time and Money.
Now by passing this on to their email marketing team, they can set to work on creating a series of last-minute emails, highlighting the savings of cost and reduce time. Enhance the subject line to attract them to open the email.
Continuity matters
If your business has long term repeat customers, chances are they are exposed to more than one of your marketing messages during a promotion period.
A prospect might receive your emails, as well subscribing to your social feeds. For clarity, it is essential that your messaging is congruent throughout. You messaging should also help nurture your lead into becoming a buyer.
Managing multi-channel communications will help achieve a consistent, timely message that connects with your customer and brings them back to you time and time again.
Next steps
To discuss how your different industrial marketing silos can be brought together call Donna today on +1 860-210-8088 or email Donna directly.
