What is industrial marketing: Strategy & ideas to boost!

The marketing approach has evolved as buyers have become more digitally savvy. 

Study shows 94% of B2B buyers research products online before buying. 

The shift demands a solid online presence, high-value content creation, distribution, and everything that establishes your brand value and credibility. 

However, you need a strong sense of industrial marketing if you are aiming to sell your industrial products massively.  

Plus, you require a deep knowledge of how a solid industrial marketing strategy can work in your favor, from identifying your potential buyers to persuading them to pay you. 

Want to know the right way?

Let’s go into the details.

What is industrial marketing? 

Industrial marketing is a typical B2B marketing approach where business promotion and selling are driven by focusing on materials, components, and products.

Industrial marketing mainly promotes the product by emphasizing quality and effective manufacturing efforts taken during the production of the goods.

This is an effective marketing strategy for B2B manufacturing companies, especially when dealing with decision-makers well-versed in industrial goods knowledge.

Industrial marketing vs. consumer marketing: What are their characteristics? 

Industrial marketing (B2B) differs from the consumer marketing (B2C) approach. The below table will help you understand the specific characteristics of industrial marketing:

Characteristics	Industrial marketing	Consumer marketing
Target audience	Businesses and organizations	Individuals or households
Purchase behavior	Production, operation, or resale	Personal use
Purchase volume	Larger quantities	Smaller quantities
Decision factors	Rational, quality, reliability, cost-effectiveness	Emotions, personal preferences
Marketing approach	Product expertise, technical support, value proposition	Brand awareness, emotional appeals, loyalty
Buying cycle	Longer	Shorter
Marketing channels	Industry trade shows, direct sales, websites, B2B online platforms, social media	Website, advertising, social media, influencers, etc.
Relationship building	Key decision-makers, long-term partnerships	Individual customers

Benefits of industrial marketing 

An industrial marketing strategy can boost your manufacturing business by persuading your target industrial buyers with precise details about your products.

Look at the below image to discover how industrial marketing is beneficial:

Also, industrial marketing greatly enhances the effectiveness of work inside the manufacturing firm when teams from varied departments contribute to the marketing efforts.

Industrial marketing characteristics

Industrial marketing carries a specific approach focusing on the target market potential in the buyer’s persona to make an impact. The industrial marketing features involve: 

1. Fewer yet larger markets

Fewer buyers in these markets than consumer buyers, but they make bulk purchases.

2. Well-established relations

The connection between buyers and sellers is much stronger than between consumers and sellers. This is because changing sellers requires significant time, money, and effort once a relationship has been formed.

3. Complex process

The entire buying and selling process is highly intricate, involving multiple approvals from various officials.

4. Derived demand

Industrial goods demand is derived from the need for the finished products sold to customers. If the demand for the end product increases, so does the demand for industrial goods, and vice versa.

5. Demand is inelastic

Changes in the price of industrial goods do not significantly affect their demand. This concept is inelastic demand, particularly applicable in the short term.

6. Fluctuating demand

The demand for industrial goods is more unpredictable compared to consumer goods.

7. Professional buyers

Industrial goods are often purchased by professional experts with extensive product knowledge.

Understanding these industrial marketing features is crucial as it enables businesses to target those fewer clients, effectively making substantial purchases.

Moreover, with solid industrial marketing, you can effectively communicate technical stuff and support for informed decision-making.

Let’s move to the most key steps of a successful industrial marketing plan to follow for success.

6 Steps to a winning industrial marketing strategy 

Step 1: Conduct in-depth market research and identify niche segments 

Industrial marketing begins with a proper understanding of your target customer. You must be clear about who you’re going to sell or who can buy your product.

Being specific is crucial as you can better understand their needs and buying persona to tailor your marketing message and content.

Additionally, you can also use the technique called web scraping to gather valuable insights from online platforms to enhance your understanding of the market landscape and refine your industrial marketing strategies.

Here are the best possible ways to discover your ideal target audience and their persona:

• Conduct market research and analysis 

This will help you identify areas where your product can be positioned or new opportunities to introduce new products.  

Discover specific challenges and needs of companies that your product can be a good fit to resolve. 

• Create and develop buyer persona based on buyer’s needs 

Now that you’ve identified a market for your product, it’s time to define the ideal customer fit.

Begin by identifying factors such as demographics, organizational needs, decision-making authority, budget, and need for technological advancements. 

• Analyze your competitors to discover whom they are selling 

By doing so, you can better understand what kind of businesses they are targeting. Plus, what are their strengths, weaknesses, and USPs?  

Identify possible competitive advantages your company has and turn them into your USPs.

Moreover, when analyzing competition in the industrial space, it is important to consider the following: 

• Look at your competitors’ content: This can help you identify opportunities to differentiate or improve your content strategy. 
• Study their audience: You can easily find out by analyzing their content voice. More technicality means they’re possibly dealing with a technically intelligent audience. 

Also, look at their website’s design and usability – Is it easy to navigate and visually pleasing? 

You can take inspiration from them if they are best and implement similar aspects to your website. 

Step 2: Conduct product analysis and propose value propositions 

The industrial buying journey is somewhat complex and requires high-end efforts, so you should be precise about your unique value propositions.

Ask yourself a few following questions to define your unique value: 

• What makes you different from your competitors?  
• Why should they choose you over so many others? 
• What are the unique benefits you offer to solve your prospects’ problems? 
• How is your product the ideal solution for your prospects? 

Conduct a thorough product analysis to understand the unique value proposition of your offerings. 

Then, communicate your products or services’ benefits and advantages to industrial customers.

Also, you must use customer testimonials, case studies, and ROI calculations to demonstrate your solutions’ positive impact on their businesses. 

Step 3: Discover potential offline and online marketing channels 

With the major shift of B2B buying from offline to online platforms, manufacturing businesses are identifying the potential digital channels to market their business.

Then, industrial marketers focus on being at their best to all those potential digital channels. 

You must explore various marketing channels, look for your potential audience, and try your best to be there.

Utilize tools to analyze the potential platforms that your target audience is using.

Moreover, industrial marketing professionals can effectively use offline and online marketing channels to reach their target audience.  

So, research industry-specific publications, trade shows, and conferences for potential offline advertising opportunities.

Once you’ve identified your leading marketing and advertising channels, you can develop content to promote your business and generate high-quality leads.

Click here to learn the 9 best tactics for lead generation for manufacturers!

Step 4: Create technical content and demonstrate expertise  

Visitors reading your content are already interested in the topic, and if you manage to pique their attention through quality and value, then conversion rates are guaranteed.  

Ensure you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. That way, you can address every query a reader has, whether informational or transactional.

Develop content to educate, boost awareness, and establish your company as an industry expert.

Share valuable insights and solutions to address the challenges faced by your target buyers. 

Here are a few content types that you must leverage in your website and other promotional activities.

Follow the below tips for effective content marketing: 

• Use digital channels like social media and emails to distribute and promote content to a wider audience.
• Repurpose your content in short and interesting ways to expand your reach.
• Add images, videos, and gifs to make your content more engaging and interesting.
• Leverage other communication platforms like email and social media for content distribution to enhance engagement with potential customers. 

Moreover, consistency with your good content delivery will help you stay on top of your prospects’ minds and build strong relationships.

Must read: Content marketing for manufacturers: Strategy, ideas, & tips!

Step 5: Implement ABM and personalize communication 

Adopt account-based marketing (ABM) approach to target key accounts within the industrial sector.

Personalize your communication to establish meaningful connections and build relationships.

Here’s how to do it: 

• Identify your key accounts that align with your target market and research their pain points. 
• Craft personalized messages that directly address their challenges and offer tailored solutions. 
• Create targeted content such as industrial blogs, newsletters, and landing pages to improve conversions.
• Utilize email marketing and automation tool to boost engagement and responses.

Step 6: Measure your results and optimize marketing efforts 

Evaluate your industrial marketing campaign to discover areas to improve your strategy.

Also, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy and tactics if you’re not hitting your targets or not getting a positive ROI.  

Here’s how you can do it:

• Continuous testing and optimization

This involves A/B testing with marketing content, calls-to-action, and other variables to see what works best. You should continuously test and optimize your industrial marketing campaigns for better results. 

• Data for informed decision-making

Leverage data analysis tools to gain insights into your target audience preferences and the performance of your marketing campaigns.

This data can help you decide where to focus your efforts, plus it tells where the need is to make the optimization.

Always be willing to learn and make changes to ensure your industrial marketing efforts are successful. 

10 Industrial marketing ideas to boost your manufacturing business

When done right, industrial marketing can bring the most promising results for you. Here are some best ideas that you must consider for effective industrial marketing. 

1. Set targets to measure your industrial success

Setting targets helps marketers establish what they want to achieve. It helps them focus on the end goal. You can consider the following targets for industrial marketing.

• Revenue targets 

You must determine how much revenue you want to set revenue targets. Plus, also consider other tangible or intangible factors.

This way, you’ll have a faint idea of how many deals you must close to achieve your revenue target. 

• Website conversions and traffic 

Measuring traffic and conversions and identifying how much you want to achieve is essential to count success or failure.  

• Number of required SQLs (sales qualified leads) 

Marketing is mostly about generating leads and qualifying them for the sales teams. So, we need to determine how many sales-qualified leads we need to meet our revenue goals.

And to determine this, you must know the value of a new customer and your sales team’s close rate for a defined revenue target. 

For instance, assume you have a monthly revenue target of $40000. Now, if the value of a new customer is worth $2000 and your sales team close rate is 50% of the total SQLs monthly.

Then, you will need 40 sales-qualified leads to achieve the monthly revenue goal.

2. Mapping your customer journey for industrial marketing success 

With a well-defined customer journey or by visualizing the path your customers take, you can identify touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for engagement. 

Start by defining key stages in the customer journey, such as awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

Then, analyze your target audience’s actions, behaviors, and expectations at each stage. This allows you to tailor your marketing to their specific needs. 

Furthermore, mapping the customer journey enables you to optimize your messaging, content, and channels. You can deliver the right information at the right time, nurturing prospects into loyal customers. 

Related read: Mapping a customer’s journey to achieve better sales results!

3. Targeting with personalized email marketing campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are easy to keep your audience informed and engaged with your company, products, offers, and valuable resources.

Research indicates that only a quarter of the leads you receive are immediately ready to purchase, while half are qualified but not yet prepared to buy.

By nurturing these leads through well-crafted email campaigns and providing them with valuable content resources, you can guide them to close.

4. Creating videos to demonstrate effectively

Videos are powerful ways to demonstrate the company’s product, manufacturing processes, and usage.

Manufacturing marketers can showcase product values and applications by creating dynamic visual demonstrations.

Moreover, these videos simplify complex concepts and captivate potential buyers, leaving an everlasting impression that persuades them to buy.

Videos can also increase brand visibility, drive leads and boost brand credibility by strategically leveraging them on various marketing platforms.

5. Utilize SEO to boost organic website traffic

SEO stands for search engine optimization. This digital marketing strategy helps you rank higher on Google or Bing (search engines).

You need to optimize your content with specific keywords (searched by your target audience), ensuring Google suggests your product on specific searches.

Below three elements of SEO work together to create a comprehensive SEO strategy. 

You need to write your product information in a search-engine-friendly way so that potential buyers are more likely to find your website for exact search terms.

Effective use of keywords, meta tags, and other SEO techniques can improve a website’s SERP rankings and visibility. 

It would be best if you optimize your…

• Landing pages
• Performance characteristics
• Industrial blogs
• Testimonials and case studies

Moreover, if you’re targeting a local audience, perform local SEO.

Regularly updating and refreshing content on a website can also help boost your site’s SEO performance and attract more organic traffic.

6. Industrial search engine marketing 

Considering the competition in industrial business, utilizing paid search advertising to promote your products and services is necessary.

Paid advertising strategies like pay-per-click advertising, display advertising, and remarketing are effective when you want to reach the target buyers in no time.

To make your campaign even more effective, you can use retargeting and A/B testing to increase conversion rates.

By creating effective landing pages and calls to action, you can improve the performance of your search engine marketing campaigns and drive more leads and sales. 

7. Create an online product catalog to present your goods smartly

An online product catalog contains all the detail about a company’s products.

It is a good way to educate your audience about your manufactured products, their specification, and features with the application.

It makes it easier for prospects to decide which product is ideal for them.

Ensure to create an impactful product catalog that simplifies their buying decision.

8. Introduce a website chat option

As already mentioned, in today’s digital landscape, B2B (business-to-business) buyers prefer to research vendors and suppliers online before reaching out to them in person.

A website chat tool on your homepage can significantly improve your lead generation.

By providing prospects with relevant answers to their queries, you simplify their decision-making process and position yourself as a trusted brand.

9. Outsource marketing talents 

Regarding industrial marketing, having an in-house team to manage your day-to-day operations is important but challenging with a limited marketing budget.

So, outsourcing independent marketing talents is one way to get desired results timely.

For example, you could outsource your SEO or social media marketing to an agency while keeping your content marketing in-house.

This can help you achieve better results and save time and money in the long run. 

10. Leverage CRM and automation tools to streamline your business for more sales

A robust CRM solution can greatly improve your current marketing and sales results.

It can be a one-stop solution for industrial businesses to streamline marketing, sales, and customer support tasks.

You can generate leads, manage customer data, nurture leads, and visualize sales to win more deals faster.

A robust CRM and automation platform can help industrial marketers streamline their business and boost productivity as it…

• Offers centralized customer data management and more info with auto profile enrichment
• Improves lead management for better conversion rates
• Helps to build personalized, targeted marketing campaigns for better engagement.
• Automates your nurturing campaigns, data management, and communication to save time and boost results
• Aligns your marketing and sales teams for effective targeting and sales process
• Offers analytics and reporting for data-driven decision-making
• Provides integration of all your other business-related apps for seamless workflows

4 Key marketing trends that industrial marketers must follow!

As industrial manufacturing continues to evolve, there are several future trends that companies should pay attention to stay competitive. 

• Digital transformation 

Leveraging digital technologies and marketing strategies can bring great results and enhance customer experiences.

So, industrial marketers should consider investing in digital assets like website optimization, email marketing, and social media to expand their online presence and drive more business opportunities.

• Personalization and customization 

Previously buyers looked for products and their features, but nowadays, prospects expect personalized solutions that meet their unique needs.

By leveraging data and analytics, companies can better understand their customers’ needs and preferences and deliver tailored solutions.  

• Sustainability and environmental responsibility 

As consumers become more environmentally conscious, industrial manufacturers must demonstrate their commitment to sustainability.  

This can include adopting eco-friendly manufacturing processes, reducing waste and emissions, and developing energy-efficient products. 

This way, industrial manufacturing can improve its reputation and attract new customers that are environmentally conscious.

• Use of data and analytics 

Marketing has become more data drive as it can give you insights to ease your marketing from better target audience defining, crafting marketing messages, and more.

Data and analytics are increasingly important in industrial marketing as companies seek to optimize their campaigns and achieve better results.  

This can include testing different messaging, targeting specific customer segments, and measuring the ROI of different campaigns. 

Good reads: 11 Emerging manufacturing marketing trends to follow in 2024!

Conclusion 

Industrial marketing is crucial in connecting businesses with their target customers, driving growth, and establishing a strong presence in the competitive market.

Industrial companies must leverage advanced marketing tactics like SEO, content marketing, and paid search advertising to expand their reach and drive more leads.

Moreover, for industry marketing, you must invest in advanced digital technologies like CRM software, website analytics, and marketing tools to boost productivity and efficiency.

In all, by adopting the latest marketing strategies and technologies, industrial marketers can stay ahead of the competition and drive business growth.

Frequently asked questions