engineering marketers' 2016 campaign plans research report
TRANSCRIPT
Engineering Marketers’ 2016 Campaign Plans Research ReportENGINEERING.com
With comments from Tiecas, TREW Marketing, and ThomasNet RPM
Table of contents
1. Executive summary
2. Meet our expert panel
3. Challenges and priorities in engineering marketing, 2016
4. Allocation of marketing budgets
5. Review of 2016 trends in marketing tactics
• Trade shows
• Content marketing
• Webinars
6. Top tips for 2016
7. Demographics
2
Executive summary
More than 100 engineering marketers shared their plans for 2016. They say that it will be a big year. For starters, 38% of them said that they would have more budget than in 2015.
Some other key findings from the survey were:
• Lead generation and content creation are the biggest marketing challenges in 2016
• 68% say that marketing is becoming more important relative to sales
• Top performing marketers allocate a larger portion of their budgeting to creating content than laggards
• Similarly, top performers understand and believe in the value of content marketing.
In this eBook we’ll share more insights from engineering marketers, including expert commentary from some of the top engineering marketers in the industry.
We hope you find it useful,
John Hayes
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Meet our expert panelJohn HayesJohn is CEO of ENGINEERING.com and author of the Digital Marketing for Engineers eBook, Blog and host of the LinkedIn group of the same name.
He has run countless marketing campaigns for marketers who need to reach an engineering audience.
Contact John: [email protected] | LinkedIn | Twitter
Achinta MitraAchinta is the President of Tiecas, Inc., a Houston-based industrial marketing company. He has over 25 years of experience working with a variety of manufacturing, engineering and technical services companies. Achinta is the author of the Industrial Marketing Today Blog, aManufacturing Marketing Blog.
Contact Achinta: [email protected] | LinkedIn | Twitter
Rebecca GeierRebecca is CEO and Cofounder of TREW Marketing, an Austin-based marketing firm uniquely serving B2B companies targeting highly technical engineering and scientific audiences. She is the author of Smart Marketing for Engineers: An Inbound Guide to Reaching Technical Audiences, and her team regularly writes about marketing to engineers on their Smart Marketing blog.
Contact Rebecca: [email protected] | LinkedIn | Twitter
Shawn FitzgeraldShawn Fitzgerald is the Founder of ThomasNet’s Results Powered Marketing team, the Vice President of ThomasNet’s Digital Marketing and a mechanical engineer.
He leads the team in working with manufacturers and industrial businesses to generate leads, penetrate new markets and target growth goals. As HubSpot's 2014 Agency of the Year and Diamond Partner, the team continues the 110+ year ThomasNet tradition of generating ways to get industrial buyers and sellers together by bringing the latest inbound marketing approaches to U.S. manufacturers.
Contact Shawn: [email protected] | LinkedIn | Twitter
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Challenges and priorities in engineering marketing, 2016
Evaluating marketing performance
0%
20%
40%
60% 53% 50%41% 38%
31% 27%17%
Which metrics are you measured on?
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Shawn: While the focus on leads has increased, companies can’t ignore the downstream tracking on what happens to those leads. The best lead won’t convert without a strong sales process for follow up.
Achinta: Most of my clients are focusing on generating Sales Pipelines instead of just quantity of leads. There is a good reason for that. Industrial companies deal with a much smaller pool of prospects and most are known to them. They want their digital marketing to reach these people and set the table for productive conversations for their sales team. That is not to say that top of the funnel (TOFU) activities like traffic and getting unknown prospects into the funnel are not important, they just happen to be lower in priority.
Rebecca: The most important metrics to measure are the relationship of metrics through a funnel model. By tracking visits to leads to opportunity and ultimately revenue, you can analyze the full picture of how your marketing investment is driving the bottom line, and create greater accountability between marketing and sales to optimize investment in both.
As marketing moves online, marketers are increasingly being held accountable to measureable metrics. We surveyed engineering marketers to ask them which metrics they are measured on.
The top metric that marketers are measured on is how many leads they generate, followed by how much traffic they drive to their company’s web site. The second most popular metric is generating sales pipeline. The popularity of that metric shows that company executives are counting on marketing to drive sales, and that they are investing in tools to make sure that they can prove the connection. As you can see, the fourth most important metric is revenue. For companies with a long sales cycle, that can be a really tough metric to measure.
Top marketing challenges in engineering marketing, 2016
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This chart shows the biggest challenges for industrial marketers in 2016. Not surprisingly, it’s “I need more leads”. This is consistent with most marketers being evaluated on the leads metric. The next most pressing challenge, as reported by 44% of markers, is that they struggle to create enough content to feed their content marketing programs.
“I need more leads!”
0.0%5.0%
10.0%15.0%20.0%25.0%30.0%35.0%40.0%45.0%
44.4% 43.6%
34.2%29.1%
18.8%16.2%
13.7%
What do you consider to be your biggest marketing challenge(s) in 2016?
Achinta: Top performing companies have realized the importance and the impact of branding on the quality of leads. I find branding means something different to these companies. They tend to look at it as a way to create/build stronger relationships based on trust. They want their brand to truly represent their technical expertise and knowledge. I have always believed in and advised my clients to put their Subject Matter Experts in the forefront and let marketing do the heavy lifting in the background. One engineer to another is a very powerful method for building credibility and trust with this audience.
Shawn: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are not as highly valued as they should be. This is largely due to legacy sales processes. Marketers and executives need to educate sales on how to leverage these early stage opportunities.
Rebecca: Both brand awareness and lead generation are critical to driving marketing effectiveness and ultimately generating demand. However, you’re not going to generate leads if the market is not aware of your company and its offerings. So biasing your budget slightly toward awareness can be a good strategy, and is clearly paying off for the top performers.
Marketers’ top priority in 2016 is generating Sales Qualified Leads
8
Generating sales qualified leads is the top priority reported by industrial marketers in 2016. That is different from prior years and may reflect the rise of importance of marketing as the critical driver for sales growth.
When we look at the top growing companies (blue columns), we see a bit of a different pattern emerge. They say that their top priority is branding and awareness, and that generating sales qualified leads is second. Fully 65% of marketers at top performing companies say that awareness is one of their top priorities for 2016.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70% 61%55%
41% 41% 39%
29%
57%
65%
43% 43%38%
30%
What are your top marketing priorities for 2016?
All engineering marketers Top performers' responses
Allocation of marketing budgets
Why are marketers getting more budget?
Rebecca: Marketing budgets are growing as business leaders become confident in their ability to measure ROI through technology such as automation and a shift to online and content marketing. With the majority of the buying process now occurring online before sales is engaged, marketing is viewed more and more as a critical investment to drive business growth.
John: Marketing is proving its ROI. In the old days it was a fuzzy connection at best. Now, with the rise of marketing automation, marketers have the ammunition they need to make a business case for a greater investment in marketing.
10
Marketers report increasing budgets in 2016
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Smaller About the same Larger
12%
50%38%
Compared to 2015, will your 2016 engineering marketing budget be:
The good news is that more marketers reported that their budgets were going up rather than down, by a margin of 38% to 12%. That’s more than 3X as many budgets going up as going down. And a whopping 20% of marketers said that their budgets weren’t just going up, they were going up by a lot –more than 20%. For years we’ve asked a question about “what is your biggest marketing challenge” and for years the top answer has been “not enough budget”. That is no longer the case in 2016.
Marketing departments have become increasingly important
No, marketing is about as
important as ever, 30%
No, marketing is becoming less
important relative to sales,
2%
Yes, marketing is becoming more
important relative to sales,
68%
Do you believe marketing is becoming more important to your company relative to sales?
11
Here is another reason that marketers are getting more budget. For some time now marketers have recognized that their role in the sales process is becoming more important relative to sales. This chart shows that 68% of marketers believe that marketing is becoming more important relative to sales, and only 2% believe that it is becoming less important relative to sales.
John: Time was, sales people were in charge of finding prospects, nurturing them through a sales process and closing the deals. Now most engineers won’t talk to a salesperson until they are ready to buy something. They like to do their research on the Internet where they can remain anonymous until they have figured out what sort of solution they need.
Marketing tactics that marketers will spend more of their budget on in 2016
68% 65%56% 52% 51%
44%37% 34% 33% 29%
18%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%
Will you conduct the following marketing activities in 2016? If so, will your budget be
smaller, larger, or about the same?
12
The next biggest category is creating content, followed by email marketing and producing marketing collateral. Distributing content is becoming a bigger element of most marketers budgets as content marketing takes hold and marketers find that they need to reserve budget for making sure that the great content they create also gets seen by their target audiences.
This chart shows the various types of campaigns that marketers have said consume more than 10% of their budget. The column on the left, which is trade shows, shows that 68% of marketers in the survey said that trade shows were going to consumer more than 10% of their budgets in 2016.
Trade shows & events, content creation and email marketing are the three largest categories of marketing spend in 2016.
Marketing spend, top performers vs laggards
76%
64% 62%
47% 46%42% 40% 35% 33%
26%
50% 50% 47%
64% 63%
20%
50%56%
38%
21%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%
What percent of your marketing budget will go to the following activities in 2016?
Top performers More than 10% Laggards More than 10%
13
When you compare marketing spend allocation in the fastest growing companies (in green) with the slower growing companies (blue), you’ll notice a startling difference in how top performers behave. You can see that more of the faster growing companies allocate more than 10% of their budgets towards creating and distributing content and to trade shows and display advertising. The slower growing companies have a disproportionate number that allocate more than 10% of their budgets to email, producing marketing collateral, search and social media.
Rebecca: These findings speak to the growth in content marketing as way to control your own marketing and sales destiny. Creating and distributing content along the funnel – from blog posts to technical white papers to webinars – on their website or with partners like ENGINEERING.com allows companies to strengthen their thought leadership, get found in search, and build trust as by prospective engineers seek to learn, evaluate and select products and services for their applications.
Achinta: I’ve always found social media effective in promoting helpful content and as conversation starters. Most engineering companies do not consider social media as an effective sales channel.
Review of 2016 trends in marketing tactics
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0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
17%21%
40%
21%
Will you conduct the following marketing activities next year?
2016 None 2016 Smaller 2016 About the same 2016 Larger
Tradeshows
Trade show spend explainedAchinta: Most of the spend is now in digital marketing followed by selective tradeshows (smaller and niche shows instead of the larger ones). I’ll add that tradeshows still produce more direct conversations and sales ready leads. My clients have become pickier about where they exhibit and fill in some of the gaps by just “walking the floor” and/or making technical presentations at these shows.
Since trade shows are such a big part of marketing budgets, we decided to take a deeper look this year. It seems that some marketers love them and some people just don’t see the point. Only 40% of marketers said that they were going to allocate the same budget to trade shows as last year, which is a really small number considering how long trade shows have been a part of marketing budgets. 21% said that they were going to spend more, which the exact same number said that they were going to spend less, and fully 17% said that they weren’t going to spend any money on trade shows at all.
Why do marketers attend trade shows?
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0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
We get live feedback on products
We aren't doing trade shows in 2016
Trade shows have proven ROI so it makessense to go.
Inertia - we've always gone
Why do you go to tradeshows?
Rebecca: A number of TREW customers still attend trade shows for several reasons. One is industry – there are certain industries, such as such as in military and aerospace, that are still very strong in attendance by both exhibitors and attendees, and it’s where deals are still made. Additionally, targeted, vertical shows can be very valuable in terms of lower cost and greater ROI in contacts made and leads collected.
We asked why marketers attend trade shows. A whopping 24% said it was due to inertia! Thankfully, the biggest category of respondents said that they go to trade shows because there is proven ROI.
17
Email is not dead. Who knew? In 2015 over 45% of respondents reported that they would allocate more than 10% of their marketing budgets to email. In 2016 that number grew. Now more than 55% say they will allocate more than 10% of their budgets to email campaigns.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
45%
56%
What percent of your marketing budget will go to email marketing in 2016?
2015 More than 10% 2016 More than 10%
John: The strong commitment to email campaigns might leave some marketers scratching their heads. They may be wondering why engineers aren’t avoiding email now that there is so much spam? What we found is that engineers actually do still read email.
In late 2015 we ran a survey of 580 engineers to ask about their media consumption habits. More than half of engineers scan every subject line or even read every single one.
Why are marketers allocating more budget to email?
Achinta: Simple, it works! However, I find some companies are still using the old “batch and blast” method of email marketing. Needless to say, these people are not seeing the results. Email marketing that nurtures leads in a meaningful way and start conversations is much better than using it as one-off campaigns. Email marketing should be an integral part of every industrial marketing strategy.
Rebecca: As marketers succeed in driving traffic and leads into their funnel, having a nurturing program in place to stay visible with those leads is critical. And as findings in the TREW and ENGINEERING.com survey from 2015 show engineers remain very open to and engaged with email.
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0%
50%
100% 53%
77% 70%
Will you conduct the following marketing activities next year? Respondents selecting
“smaller” or “none” for print
2014 2015 2016
19
Flight from print seems to have stabilized
John: The good news for print publishers is that the rapid decline in their customer base seems
to have stabilized. However, it may not be enough to keep the presses running at trade
publications across America. We are predicting that some trade publishers will close their doors
or sell in 2016.
For the past few years we’ve seen an alarming statistic, which is that the percent of marketers who have no budget for print has been climbing steadily. You can see from this chart that in 2014 there were 58% of marketers who said they would have no budget or less budget for print. In 2015 that rocketed up to 77%.
20
Reducing effots on
content, 3%
Is content marketing helping you deliver more
qualified leads to your sales team?
17%
10%
48%
25%
Continuing to spend or planning to spend more
Yes and weplan to keep itthat way
Yes and weplan to domore
No, but we willspend more sowe get it right
No, but wehave to keepgoing
Reducing efforts on content, 3%
Continuing spend or planning to spend more, 97%
Content marketing has become so powerful in the marketing industry that only 3% of marketers say they are going to reduce their spending in this category. That’s even more amazing when you see that 27% (10% + 17%) said that is isn’t really working. The buzz around this concept is so powerful that if it doesn’t work, marketers blame themselves. In fact, they are 3X more likely to increase their budget if it isn’t working than they are to decrease their budget.
Content Marketing
Top performers allocate more budget to content creation and distribution
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Creating content (video, blogs,white papers, webinars)
Distributing content (video,blogs, white papers, webinars)
76%
62%
50% 47%
What percent of your marketing budget will go to the following activities in 2016?
Top performers More than 10% Laggards More than 10%
21
Rebecca: Top performers know the buyer is now in charge of the buying process, and engineers are primarily using Google to search for information as they seek to learn, evaluate and select solutions to their application challenges. Leading marketers know the way to ensure their companies are found when their target persona audiences are searching is through the creation and promotion of high-quality content that helps engineers throughout their buying process.
Achinta: These companies understand and believe in the true value of content marketing. They also realize that it is a process that takes time to gel and produce sustainable results
What are your biggest challenges around content marketing?
0%5%
10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%
47%44% 42%
29%25%
15%
6%
What are your biggest challenges around content marketing?
22
Shawn: For those marketers struggling with creating engaging content – Sit and listen in on calls with your sales team or your customer service group. From this generate a list of the most commonly asked questions, biggest frustrations, and areas of high confusion. From this you can generate extremely valuable content marketing pieces and have a high engagement rate with your audience. Your mantra is: “Be Helpful.”
23
56%
58%
60%
62%
64%
66%
68%
Will spend onwebinar, 2014
Will spend onwebinar, 2015
Will spend onwebinar, 2016
60%63%
67%
Will you spend more than 10% of your budget on Webinars next year?
Rebecca: Webinars are a low-cost middle-of-the-funnel content type, and they are mostly on-demand, which fits with the buyer’s preference to be in control of when and where he consumes content. Given the time commitment required to listen to webinar, this type of content is critical to filing the sales pipeline since prospects that do attend are, by their actions, indicating a strong interest in your company and are likely qualified leads for sales to follow-up with.
Webinars
2014 2015 2016
Engineers say they are attending webinars
24
25%
76%
24%
5 or More Webinars
More than 1 Webinar
None
Engineers: how many webinars do you plan to attend in 2016?
Expert top tips for 2016
Shawn Fitzgerald, ThomasNet RPM
Industrial companies should review and refine their marketing strategy, document it and then execute it as planned. Miracles are nice but don’t expect overnight success.
Don’t completely ignore traditional marketing and social media; change their roles and purpose to fit your overall marketing strategy.
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Growth Driven Design will change the way manufacturing companies think about their website and remove the frustrations associated with new builds. This methodology focuses on acceleration to a usable website that will generate initial results. Once up and running tests are conducted on the site to increase conversions or desired activity. It’s a beautiful mix of UX/UI, marketing, and science. The engineer in me couldn’t be more excited about the approach.
Top manufacturing companies are already knocking down the wall between sales and marketing. As marketing is generating more leads that are earlier in the decision making process, sales needs to continue to adjust the conversation to focus on where the prospect is in their buying journey. Smart marketers will provide sales with techniques to use the information gained from the prospect journey to provide a more positive buying experience. Sales teams that continue to be content to be order takers will not find growth in the future.
Achinta Mitra,Tiecas
In looking to your marketing in 2016, I recommend you immediately STOP doing four things, which are further detailed in Smart Marketing for Engineers: An Inbound Marketing Guide to Reaching Technical Audiences:
1. STOP positioning your company or product as if it can do everything. You will not only lose the battle on Google, but you will lose to your competition too. Position for growth by differentiating, focusing and growing in the areas where you are differentiated.
2. Is your website fully functioning? Is it designed for mobile use with a user-friendly content management system that makes uploading new content easy? And are you regularly adding new content to your site? There is no more important marketing investment than your website, so STOP investing in other new marketing activities until it is fully functional. And remember, engineers prefer graphics and images, so use them.
3. Is your content optimized for keywords your audience searches on? Do you amplify it for greater reach on your blog and social media? Are you repurposing each piece for full leverage of your investment? STOP creating new content until you have a plan along the entire marketing and sales funnel that includes these three elements so you ensure you're getting the greatest ROI for your content marketing investment.
4. Do you have a clear picture of your expected marketing ROI, timeframe, and process and tools to measure, tweak, and improve your marketing investment? As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Do NOT invest in marketing without a lead conversion model that includes dependencies and points of accountability between both sales and marketing.
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Rebecca Geier,TREW Marketing
Don’t assume you know who all of your prospects and customers are or where to find them. A good content marketing campaign will surface prospects you never knew existed.Experiment. Nobody knows all the answers. Break with tradition. Leave some budget unallocated so that you can try new things as they arise during the year.
John Hayes,ENGINEERING.com
Demographics
Who participated in this survey?
29
Agency, 6% Consulting/Engineering services,
19%
Distributor/Reseller, 4%
Education, 3%
Electronics, 4%
Manufacturing, 35%
Other, 10%
Software, 17%
N = 116