| VERTICAL MARKETING GUIDE | |
Industrial buyers shopping online |
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Story posted: October 13, 2008 - 6:01 am EDT Companies selling their products or services to manufacturing professionals face the challenges that marketers in any industry do: determining who, exactly, the audience is and how best to reach them. These hurdles can be particularly complex in the manufacturing market, however, because business has rapidly moved online and overseas, and many marketers are struggling to keep pace.
“The No. 1 thing to keep in mind in terms of trends is the shift of sourcing to the Net,” said James Soto, president of b-to-b agency Industrial Strength Marketing. “We've conducted studies here that show that 90% of industrial buyers go to the Internet at some point during the buying process, and well over 50% start the buying process online.” Because buyers are gathering so much information online, they're contacting suppliers much later in the buying cycle, Soto said. “By the time buyers contact them, they've probably filtered out a few other companies,” he said. “They've extended the buying process deeper without asking any questions, so when they do finally call, [the leads] are hotter.”
That shift makes in-depth product information more important than ever, Soto said. “Many times you're dealing with an engineer who needs very technical, specifications-based data,” he said. “Is it big enough? Fast enough? Does it cycle this many times? Those are things that are being considered. There better be good information for them, and it better be within your Web site.”To drive prospects to the Web site, marketers should be using an integrated approach that incorporates traditional media, such as print advertising, as well as online tactics, such as search engine marketing and search engine optimization, said Stacy Whisel, VP-strategic media programs at b-to-b marketing communications agency Godfrey (see Q&A, this page). “You can't assume there's one best way to reach your audience,” she said. “Even within a particular company, you might have one guy who has been there 20 years and is not getting online and using vertical search engines [when researching products]. But there may be an up-and-comer [at the same company] who's downloading podcasts and attending webcasts to learn about things. Keeping content up to date is crucial for marketers that use search engine marketing, whether through general engines such as Google or through vertical search engines such as GlobalSpec or ThomasNet, Whisel said. On their Web sites, marketers should offer content that engages prospects and builds a relationship with them, she said, whether it's a white paper, a podcast or e-mail newsletters. Online video is particularly promising, Whisel said, because buyers in the manufacturing space are often looking for details that are hard to explain in print. “Being able to see how things work—that's what engineers like to do,” she said. For both videos and webcasts, marketers must remember not to do a hard sell, she said. “You have to make sure the message is tailored to what's going to help solve a problem for your customer,” she said. Also remember to limit the time you're asking participants to commit; online videos should be two minutes or less, and webcast talking points should be 30 minutes or less, she said.Many companies looking to reach manufacturing professionals are discovering the challenges of marketing to international audiences. Steve Roth, chief marketing officer for MFG.com, a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers in manufacturing, said his company has been working with a provider of globalization and outsourcing services, Lionbridge Technologies, to localize and translate site content in 12 languages. “It's a huge undertaking for us, but this is a global manufacturing economy and all of the regions are so tightly bound,” he said. “Business is being transacted in areas of the world where, quite frankly, we in the U.S. aren't accustomed to doing business. It's increasingly important for us to be able to deliver relevant content to those individuals, to those demographics, in those regions of the world.” Even fundamental business questions—such as who manufacturers are, where they are located and what their capabilities are—can be difficult to answer when doing business abroad, Roth said. “We hired a call center in China of about 50 people to do nothing for a year but build a database by calling into these companies to find out who they are and where they are,” he said. Roth said having local representatives has been important. To reach buyers and sellers for its marketplace in China, for instance, the company opened an office and invested in local management. “I don't think there was any other way to have done that successfully without making that investment,” he said. Roth also stressed the importance of brand consistency when selling across borders. “It's a very difficult thing to do, but you need to be relentless about that as an organization to make sure you have consistency of brand no matter what geography you're selling into,” he said. |
Optimism about the economy is slowly rebounding
among U.S. industrial manufacturers, according to the
first quarter edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers’
“Manufacturing Barometer,” a quarterly survey of 62 senior executives at large U.S. industrial
manufacturing companies. The Q1 survey was conducted from Jan. 17 through April 14.
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