Industrial marketing is a form of B2B (or Business to Business) marketing. Its goal is to promote the value of industrial products and services and ultimately sell more to business customers.
Even when it occurs between companies, buying and selling is a phenomenon that always occurs between human beings. Modern industrial marketing strategies cannot lose sight of this fact, but it must also be taken into account that we all behave differently when we buy in our private lives than when we acquire something for our business. It is in this difference that lies the key to a completely successful B2B industrial marketing strategy.
Characteristics of industrial marketing: what companies want
B2B sales present completely different challenges:
They are usually high-cost products.
The target audience is small, but the lifetime value of each customer is large.
The sales process is long and requires multiple interactions.
The purchasing decision is a very thoughtful and reflective one, and it usually involves several levels and different people.
Purchasing motivations are always pragmatic: survival, growth and cost savings. There is no such thing as impulse buying.
Given these characteristics, the main objective of B2B industrial marketing is:
Reduce perceived risk.
Gaining customer trust.
Maintain customer confidence, who are often reluctant to change suppliers due to perceived risks.
Strategies that no longer work
No matter what sector your B2B company works in, chances are that the marketing strategy india email list that was most successful ten years ago simply doesn’t work today. Trade shows, cold calling, advertising in technical and professional magazines… They are all still valid strategies and have their uses today, but digitalisation has completely changed the rules of the game.
Nowadays, most B2B purchasing decisions are made online, and each customer does their own research when they decide they need a product or service: they search online, compare, read reviews… By the time they get to contact the sales department, they have already selected at most two or three suppliers that they think can help them. What's more, companies are increasingly making more purchases directly online, and many professionals prefer not to interact with a salesperson.
With the digital revolution, marketing has gone from supporting the sales team to shouldering the burden of a large part of the sales process itself.
Industrial marketing strategies that work best in 2022
Transparency
A clear pricing policy that matches the characteristics of products and services is one of the best ways to gain the trust of B2B customers. Contrary to what some still believe, low prices are not the main purchasing decision-maker for business customers. However, clear and easy-to-understand conditions are one of the most highly valued factors.
Personalize the customer journey
B2B buyers are increasingly looking for experiences similar to B2C, with more personalized interactions that help them discover the products and services that best fit their needs. To do this, it is necessary to develop a conversion funnel that accompanies prospects from the moment they first visit the website until they finally make a purchase and thus become customers.
CRM automation tools such as Salesforce and its Pardot solution, which allow you to control the actions of leads and use its lead scoring system to identify those most likely to make a purchase.
Create content
Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to attract, retain and achieve purchasing actions among B2B audiences. To do this, it is necessary to consistently create valuable, attractive and relevant content over time. These can be distributed through social networks, blog posts, newsletters, downloadable studies, infographics, webinars…
Getting the most out of LinkedIn
It is no surprise that LinkedIn is the most used and effective social network for industrial marketing. It is the best for distributing B2B content, providing value to buyer personas and creating a relationship with them, with the support of LinkedIn Ads . A type of content that is very successful on this social network and is underused by industrial companies is slideshares or slide presentations.
Investing in digital advertising
SEM search engine advertising campaigns, banners on specialized websites, promoted posts and social media ads are four digital advertising strategies that typically offer a high return on investment in the B2B field.
Email marketing
It is one of the oldest digital marketing methods, and yet it remains among the most effective. Email marketing is the cheapest and easiest way to support other strategies such as content marketing or conversion funnels with a high level of personalization for each client.
Rely on experts
One of the main difficulties of modern marketing is its complexity and the high level of specialization required to get the most out of each tool. For this reason, it is advisable for B2B companies to have a partner specialized in industrial marketing such as BCM Marketing , to whom they can entrust all or part of their strategy.