marketing for manufacturers19 search engine optimisation (seo) and pay per click (ppc) 20 export...

MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURERSDAVE PANNELL MCIM BA(HONS)

PART ONEA CULTURE CLASHMany manufacturing companies still rely on pre-Internet strategies to find new business, but with customers becoming unwilling to directly engage with a supplier until late on in their decision-making process, traditional opportunities to directly ‘sell’ have become limited.

FOREWORDA study by IHS Engineering 360 showed that half of industrial professionals spend at least six

hours a week using the internet for work-related purposes. Their primary use was to find components, new suppliers and to obtain product specifications and pricing.

The same report highlighted that 60% of customers no longer contact the manufacturer or vendor in the research and needs analysis phase of their buying decision, instead, relying on digital resources to decide which products they need to buy and which companies they will buy from.

Few manufacturers have the marketing experience to engage with these new buying behaviours. This guide explores the culture clash between marketing and manufacturing and looks at some of the strategies you can employ to capture these ‘Invisible Buyers’.

Dave Pannell MCIM BA(Hons) Manufacturing Ambassador for Yorkshire Chartered Institute for Marketing

CONTENTS

PART ONEA CULTURE CLASH

01 Foreword

02 The world of business has changed

04 Why are manufacturers poor marketers?

PART TWOCREATING YOUR STRATEGY

09 Market to your team before your customers

10 Brand in the digital age

12 Building a personal brand

14 Using your website to capture the Invisible Buyer

17 Email marketing for manufacturers

19 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)

20 Export marketing

21 About Dave Pannell & The Design Mechanics

PART ONEA CULTURE CLASH

Marketing for Manufacturers | 01

THE WORLD OF BUSINESS HAS CHANGEDThe world of business has changed. Not just how we communicate and manufacture, but how we find information. In the past, if someone wanted details of your product or manufacturing capability they had to get in touch, or at least send you an email asking for more information. This gave your sales team an opportunity to engage a potential customer early-on in their buying decision and build a relationship with them.

Then the Internet happened and how we gather information changed. In a recent survey by Engineering.com on how engineers find information, almost 70% said that they now

turn to search engines. Only 14% said that they used trade shows to find information or a new supplier.

of engineers looking for information turn to search engines*

use trade shows to find information or a new supplier*

68%

14%

02 | Marketing for Manufacturers

In the same study, only 20% of industrial buyers said they wanted to engage with a company in the early stages of their buying decision. 55% didn’t want to engage with a supplier until they had researched and narrowed down the options to a couple of manufacturers themselves. 25% wanted to get in touch only to confirm the price and delivery options once they had already made a decision – without any prior contact with the supplier.

This means that buyers are educating themselves, visiting potential suppliers’ websites, and making a decision based on what they find online without you ever knowing that your company may have been in the running. Your sales team have no opportunity to engage with someone in the early stages of their decision-making process. Buyers have become invisible.

Manufacturing and engineering companies that haven’t reacted to this change in behaviour struggle to generate sales leads. The challenge is not because of the technical nature of an industrial sale, it’s the cultural changes a business needs to go through to adopt new sales and (often digital) marketing models.

20%Want to talk with a supplier at

the start of their buying decision

55%Want to engage only once

they have narrowed the options down to a couple of manufactures themselves

25%Contact only to confirm price

and delivery options once they have already made a decision, without any prior contact with

a supplier

At what point in an industrial buyer’s decision-

making process do they want to talk to a supplier?

* Research by Engineering.com on how engineers find information Q4 2016


WHY ARE MANUFACTURERS POOR MARKETERS?There are many reasons why manufacturers engage poorly with marketing, and often the biggest challenges are rooted in the culture of the business.

It is an undeniable fact that manufacturing companies in the UK currently employ an aging and high-seniority workforce who can be change resistant, but research suggests that almost half of UK manufacturing companies expect 20% of their workforce to retire in the next ten years.

The resulting change in culture will be double-edged. The lack of trade skills entering the industry means that senior engineers have had to remain hands-on, and losing that skill and experience will be an operational challenge.

However, a new generation of manufacturers will bring with them new business mindsets. Trying to maintain ‘the way things have always been done’ results in companies holding on to traditional business models (which rely on key individuals and

slow-changing markets), whereas a company willing to start with a clean sheet of paper and a growth-mindset may come up with a different / better solution.

Lack of skills entering a company means senior

engineers remain hands-on and cannot strategise.

A resistance to engage with external marketing agencies

or expertise means that no-one takes a dedicated control of the company’s

marketing direction.

A lack of marketing direction at board level means sales people sell without focus.

Resulting in wider conflict between ‘sales’ and

engineers.

Why are manufacturers often poor at marketing?


CULTURAL CHALLENGE ONE: Generational businesses and change-resistant workforces

Many SME UK manufacturing companies remain family run which can lead to insular viewpoints and a resistance to change. The directors look to replicate how their parents or grandparents found success whilst not having always had the benefit of a career outside of the family business.

In this situation, it is not unusual to find that the person in charge of marketing has little formal training: a non-technical family member who has taken on the responsibility, or the Sales or Managing Director running some marketing activity amongst their other tasks.

Indeed, few manufacturers employ a dedicated marketing manager even at the size where, in any other industry, the company would employ a full marketing team. But a perceived conflict in culture between ‘creative’ agencies and the manufacturing industry prevent companies bringing-in external help or expertise.

Almost 20% of the manufacturing

workforce are expected to retire in

the next ten years.

05

CULTURAL CHALLENGE TWO: Lack of a sales and marketing strategy

This lack of strategic marketing direction at board level means that sales teams sell in a reactive way without focus, often promising what engineers cannot easily deliver to win the order or chasing work that is unprofitable or undesirable to the company.

For example, you may get 80% of your profit from 20% of your customer base. Realigning your marketing and sales strategy to attract more of that type of customer means you may be able to increase profits whilst at the same time reduce operational costs.

Or, flipping that around, it may be that 80% of your headaches comes from 20% of your customers, so stopping marketing

that certain product or chasing a specific customer base will achieve the same result.

A fundamental marketing strategy should enable companies to increase sales without expanding their sales force - focusing the right marketing message at the customers who are most likely to buy, or who are most profitable.

80% of the profit (or 80% of the headaches)

20%80%

Customer base

06

CULTURAL CHALLENGE THREE: Not reacting quickly enough

Markets change, but companies who fail to update their strategy and marketing to match and are left chasing a shrinking marketplace. Many manufacturers see globalisation as a threat, not an opportunity - however, it is now easier than ever to take a local company to a national market, and a national company global.

Online marketing is well-suited to globalisation, and whereas operational changes may have to be planned in years not months, translating a company’s current marketing material for a new territory can be quick and cheap to implement.

The Department for International Trade is very active helping UK companies who are new to exporting through both funding and advice.


PART TWOCREATING YOUR STRATEGYYour marketing plan doesn’t just address how you communicate with potential customers, it starts with getting your team and company on-board too.


MARKET TO YOUR TEAM BEFORE YOUR CUSTOMERSWith cultural challenges being at the top of the list when considering why manufacturers struggle with marketing, it is important to engage your own staff with an internal strategy before marketing to your customers.

Marketing to your company’s staff first allows senior employees to buy-in to a new strategy before it is rolled-out. And sharing the company’s goals with every member of the workforce means that workers who are not business- or profit-focussed can see the reasons behind the tasks they are being asked to do.

For example, going from shipping a product in a blank container to one that has a branded label on

it is an extra operational demand (and a pain in the neck to the factory-floor worker who has been packing your product the same way for the last ten years). Demonstrating that labelling packaging builds brand familiarity and aids customer retention, or even better, involve the shop-floor staff in the conversation about how to do that, results in less friction.

09

BRAND IN THE DIGITAL AGEThe most visible effect of the online revolution are the changes in how a company presents itself.

Your corporate brand has to work harder than ever before because people coming to your website will typically decide if they are willing to do business with you within three seconds. You can’t prove your credibility in that time using words - it has to be on the strength of your company’s branding.

Pre-2000, people would see your logo when they visited your place of work and on your stationery and that was about it. Now, people see your brand (both online and off) in potentially hundreds of places, meaning that having a brand that is flexible and works across all media has never been more important.

On social media, a company’s logo has to be instantly recognisable at only a few hundred pixels wide

Richard Hough is an example of a 200 year old manufacturing company that has maintained a strong and confident brand in the digital age, built on British heritage and innovation

– and yet the same logo has to work five metres wide on the side of your warehouse. Because of this we’ve seen the trend of logos being simplified; anything ‘busy’ on a logo has been dropped and the number of colours in use has been reduced.

In this situation, it’s very tempting to start again with your logo, but if Skoda taught us anything it is this: it pays dividends if you are able to evolve and update a brand rather than starting over from scratch. If you have been trading using a logo for more than a few years then you should look to retain what recognition you have built in any evolution of your brand. For example, you could update the typeface to be clearer but retain a visual element, or you could keep the look and feel of your logo but simplify it so that it works better at smaller sizes.

Partially as a result of simplification, and partially because of online attention spans, logos have become a lot more confident and try to capture an emotion or association instead of saying what a company does, such as the example of 200 year-old metal roll manufacturer Richard Hough on the previous page.

Where your brand was seen before the year 2000...

Office / store

Stationery

Marketing literature

Press advert

And where your brand appears now...

Website

Mobile website

Google search results

Email stationery

LinkedIn

Social media (all of it!)

Online downloads

YouTube

And all the rest!


BUILDING A PERSONAL BRANDIn every market there are recognised experts, the people leading the conversation and shaping the direction of the industry, and if a company has a problem they gravitate towards these people for the answer. In the past, to become one of these people you had to have a career at a tier-one company and win the attention of industry journals and seminars.

The Internet changed all that. Now, anyone with true expertise can become recognised as an expert very quickly within their manufacturing niche. If you establish yourself as an authority in the mind of a potential

customer you spend less time proving your credibility and more time talking to people about solving their problems.

Building your personal brand online

We talk a lot about branding companies and products, but little about branding the engineers behind them. An easy way to build your personal brand is through having your own website (example above) alongside your company’s, using it as a platform to publish articles, share your thoughts and make industry comments.

An example of using the experience of individuals within your company to build the credibility of your organisation.


You don’t need to post something every week, you just need enough activity so that someone Googling you by name finds your website and sees that you are an expert in your field. If you are not much of a wordsmith employ a copywriter to take your thoughts, notes and insights and create a schedule of professional posts on your behalf.

Using LinkedIn

Don’t dismiss LinkedIn as just an online CV. The power comes from being able to engage key decision-makers by joining groups that they are active in, and by regularly publishing articles and industry comment.

It only takes a few months of your contacts seeing you talk about a specific topic for them to think of you as an expert in that field, even if they rarely click through to read one of your articles in full. Many decision-makers also turn to LinkedIn to get advice or recommendations for suppliers. Getting involved in conversations in relevant industry groups quickly raises your profile and it won’t take long for those conversations to turn into opportunities.

Personal brand projects

Over time you may want to look at bigger projects to build your credibility. This could be authoring industry articles or you may be able to create a report commenting on future trends from your sector (see example below).

The more defined your specific area of expertise, the quicker you can become an authority in it. If your company covers a number of disciplines, you can take the key engineer or salesperson in each and position them as an expert within that specific sector.


Your website has become the first port of call for a potential new customer - but the ability for someone to come to your site and gather all the information they need without getting in touch has created a phenomenon called The Invisible Buyer.

The positive side of a customer basing their opinion on your website is that you are in control of your site and what people find there. If your website makes you look like the leader in your field then to someone who has never encountered your company before, that is exactly what you are.

Typically, manufacturing or engineering companies have very text-heavy websites that concentrate on information and specifications over branding and marketing – but if your site doesn’t give confidence during those first few seconds, few people will go on to read that information.

Some manufacturers respond to The Invisible Buyer by removing all technical information from their website and instead ask a visitor to get in touch for full specifications. But remember

USING YOUR WEBSITE TO CAPTURE THE INVISIBLE BUYER


that 80% of buyers actively do not want to talk to a supplier until they are past the information gathering stage. Forcing someone to engage with you to get information may work in some markets; for example, if you are the only company who can make a product or offer a very specific technical service. In most, however, all this does is encourage the buyer to click the back button on their browser and download your competitor’s freely-available information instead.

How to capture The Invisible Buyer

So how do you get buyers to reveal themselves and declare an interest, but also make sure that whoever wants your information has free access to it? In the same

way that computer-aided design and manufacture revolutionised engineering, computer-aided sales and marketing is doing the same for lead generation.

A buyer may not be willing to break cover and directly contact you in their research phase, but they are willing to make a small exchange for the information they need. This is why websites ask for an email address (and just an email address, not a phone number) in return for being able to download information such as a brochure or a product spec sheet. People feel safe behind their email address even though, in reality, anyone using a corporate address (such as [email protected]) is easily identifiable.

An example of a dye manufacturer who repositioned themselves as the leader in their field by relaunching both their brand and website. In essence, they are the same company as before but the huge change is in the perception of a potential customer when they first encounter them.

15

Instead of arriving at a website that has a traditional navigation (such as ‘about us’, ‘our services’ etc.) if instead you first ask the visitor to choose which industry they represent, or which of your services they are interested in, you can then make the information on the next page much more targeted to that viewer. This makes them more likely to give up an email address for a download because you can present them with exactly the information they are looking for.

Once you start building a pipeline of email addresses you can nurture them. For most, it will be too early in their buying decision for them to be receptive to a sales call, but you can use email marketing, LinkedIn and good old-fashioned keeping-in-touch calls (if they are a current customer) to start engaging with them.

A cold call becomes a slightly warmer one when you know they have already downloaded information on a specific product.

A website for an engineering company which splits visitors into their industry sector on the homepage, meaning it can present the most relevant information as a download on the following page.


EMAIL MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURERSWhen you consider all the messages that appear in your inbox every day, it’s easy to think that nothing your company sends out will even get opened, let alone read. However, many manufacturers use email marketing to generate new enquires, nurture existing contacts or reconnect with old customers who have gone cold.

Emailing businesses who you know have a specific interest in what you offer (because they downloaded a tech spec sheet from your website in return for their email address, or because they have bought from you in the past) will produce better open and click-through rates than emailing a cold list. This doesn’t mean that purchasing email lists of businesses in your target market doesn’t work, but don’t think potential customers are sat waiting for your email to land as the answer to all their problems.

EMAIL SOFTWARE

If you put a letter in an envelope and post it to a business, you have no idea what happens next. Sending an email from your own desktop is no different. Email marketing software (such as MailChimp or MailJet) gives you a report on who opened it and if they clicked on any links you included.

An example of a manufacturer using email marketing to raise the profile of their sales people

17

Even if someone does have an active need for your product or service, if a company has never heard of you before they won’t engage until you build more credibility and familiarity with them.

This is why email marketing should be run to a regular schedule and as a long-term strategy alongside other marketing activities. If a buyer only puts a large contract out to tender every three years for example, you want to make sure they have been receiving your email for the twelve months running up to that date.

When should you send your email?

There’s a simple answer: send it at the time that your client wants to receive it. Some businesses may even respond better if you schedule your emails for out of hours. For example, people

who are on the tools all day may spend the first couple of hours of the evening online, re-ordering materials and catching-up on paperwork.

Run tests to see what time of day your specific market sector responds to the best. If you deal with several different industries, or have very distinct customer segments, send different emails to each. Test different subject lines using ‘A/B testing’ (professional email software can do this for you) which means sending half of your emails with one subject line and the other half with another to see which gets the best open rate.

Remember that any marketing will only get you 90% of the way to a sale. Once your email system shows that someone is highly-engaged, don’t be afraid to reach out to them. Connect with them on LinkedIn, put your brochure in the post or just pick up the phone and have a conversation.


SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) & PAY PER CLICK (PPC)Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of getting your website listed on search engines without paying for Pay Per Click (PPC) adverts. If PPC is the hare, letting you pay to jump to the top of the results, then SEO is definitely the tortoise.

However, Google has recently brought about what may be the death of SEO by increasing the number of paid-for listings that appear at the top of the results for commercial searches, pushing the organic (or not paid for) listings almost half-way down the first page of results.

You may say that you never click on adverts in the search results, but Google make $24 billion a quarter from advertising revenue. Pay Per Click advertising is very attractive to businesses because you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. You are in control of what exact searches trigger the advert being shown meaning you can get a good stream of visitors to your website or landing page looking for exactly what you sell.

PPC can also target business names and brands, so if someone searches for your competitor or their products by name, your company listing can appear also.

SEO...• Google is in charge, not you,

or an SEO ‘expert’

• Need to create separate pages to target individual search phrases

• Slow off-site and on-site techniques that require months and years of effort

PPC...• Instant results, you can turn

on tomorrow

• Controllable at all levels

• Only pay when someone has a genuine interest

• Can target all keywords (even legally target competitor names and brands)

19

EXPORT MARKETINGA report from The Manufacturers’ Organisation EEF reveals that 45% of all UK exports comes from manufactures. Other research suggests that one in five UK manufacturing companies sell abroad, so your export strategy and how you support agents and distributors needs to feature heavily in both your marketing and business plan.

If you don’t already sell abroad, starting out on an export strategy may require a change in mindset. Often manufacturers start selling reactively where they see an immediate opportunity, without first considering how they are going to become an export business with the resources they currently have.

Global differences in material and labelling laws means that you may have to be willing to produce short runs for specific markets, or adapt your product to run on different power supplies. And differences in language and culture may mean you should consider updating your branding to work better in a global marketplace.

UK manufacturer Control Zone Products changed the name of their insect catcher FliBlade to NoFli to work better in a global market - backing up the name with a new brand that also visually made it obvious what the product was.


Producing global marketing material, though, has never been easier. Websites can detect which country a visitor is viewing your site from and offer up content in the appropriate language, but you should make sure that your agents and distributors abroad also have translations of your marketing material, both electronically to attach to emails and as files that they can get printed locally.

“Remember that The Invisible Buyer is not just a UK phenomenon” Globally, potential customers will be learning about what you do before getting in touch, and it’s not unusual for an educated buyer to know more about your product than your distributor or agent.

If you have a wide distributor network, make sure that you have a regular email newsletter just for them - include videos of how the product is made and used alongside feedback from customers.

ABOUT DAVE PANNELL & THE DESIGN MECHANICSDave Pannell is the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Manufacturing Ambassador for Yorkshire, and the creative force behind The Design Mechanics.

Supported by his team at The Design Mechanics, Dave specialises in marketing and branding for manufacturing and engineering organisations - his 20 years of experience allowing him to understand the unique challenges that manufacturers face.

All the example companies in this guide are clients that we have worked with to rebrand, launch new digital marketing strategies and websites, or just support in their day-to-day marketing. If you would like to talk about how we can do the same for you, email [email protected] or call +44 (0)1484 841 088.

@davie.pannell

Dave Pannell

Many manufacturing companies still rely on pre-Internet strategies to find new business, but with customers becoming unwilling to directly engage with a supplier until late on in their decision-making process, traditional opportunities to directly ‘sell’ have become limited.

Few manufacturers have the marketing experience to engage with these new buying behaviours. This guide explores the culture clash between marketing and manufacturing and looks at some of the strategies you can employ to capture these Invisible Buyers.

@davie.pannell

Dave Pannell

www.tdmuk.com

[email protected]

+44 (0)1484 841 088

marketing for manufacturers19 search engine optimisation (seo) and pay per click (ppc) 20 export...

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