MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURERS DAVE PANNELL MCIM BA(HONS)

Transcription

1 MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURERS DAVE PANNELL MCIM BA(HONS)

2 PART ONE A CULTURE CLASH 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.

3 FOREWORD A 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 ONE A CULTURE CLASH 01 Foreword 02 The world of business has changed 04 Why are manufacturers poor marketers? PART TWO CREATING 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 marketing for manufacturers 19 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) 20 Export marketing 21 About Dave Pannell & The Design Mechanics Marketing for Manufacturers 01

4 THE WORLD OF BUSINESS HAS CHANGED The 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 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. turn to search engines. Only 14% said that they used trade shows to find information or a new supplier. 68% of engineers looking for information turn to search engines* 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 14% use trade shows to find information or a new supplier* 02 Marketing for Manufacturers

5 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. At what point in an industrial buyer s decisionmaking process do they want to talk to a supplier? 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 * Research by Engineering.com on how engineers find information Q Marketing for Manufacturers 03

6 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 Why are manufacturers often poor at marketing? 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. 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. 04 Marketing for Manufacturers

7 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. Almost 20% of the manufacturing workforce are expected to retire in the next ten years. 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. 05

8 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 80% Customer base 20% 80% of the profit (or 80% of the headaches) 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. 06

9 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. Marketing for Manufacturers 07

10 PART TWO CREATING YOUR STRATEGY Your marketing plan doesn t just address how you communicate with potential customers, it starts with getting your team and company on-board too. 08 Marketing for Manufacturers

11 MARKET TO YOUR TEAM BEFORE YOUR CUSTOMERS With 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. 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. For example, going from shipping a product in a blank container to one that has a branded label on 09

12 BRAND IN THE DIGITAL AGE The 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

13 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 Office / store Stationery Marketing literature Press advert And where your brand appears now... Website Mobile website Google search results stationery LinkedIn Social media (all of it!) Online downloads YouTube And all the rest! Marketing for Manufacturers 11

14 An example of using the experience of individuals within your company to build the credibility of your organisation. BUILDING A PERSONAL BRAND In 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. 12 Marketing for Manufacturers

15 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. Marketing for Manufacturers 13

16 USING YOUR WEBSITE TO CAPTURE THE INVISIBLE BUYER 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. 14 Marketing for Manufacturers 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

17 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 address (and just an 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 address even though, in reality, anyone using a corporate address (such as bob. smith@engineeringcompany.com) 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

18 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 address for a download because you can present them with exactly the information they are looking for. Once you start building a pipeline of 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 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. 16 Marketing for Manufacturers

19 MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURERS When 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 marketing to generate new enquires, nurture existing contacts or reconnect with old customers who have gone cold. ing 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 address, or because they have bought from you in the past) will produce better open and click-through rates than ing a cold list. This doesn t mean that purchasing lists of businesses in your target market doesn t work, but don t think potential customers are sat waiting for your to land as the answer to all their problems. SOFTWARE If you put a letter in an envelope and post it to a business, you have no idea what happens next. Sending an from your own desktop is no different. 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 marketing to raise the profile of their sales people 17

20 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 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 for the twelve months running up to that date. When should you send your ? 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 s 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 s to each. Test different subject lines using A/B testing (professional software can do this for you) which means sending half of your s 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 system shows that someone is highlyengaged, 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. 18 Marketing for Manufacturers

21 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

22 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. EXPORT MARKETING A 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. 20 Marketing for Manufacturers

23 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 s 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 newsletter just for them - include videos of how the product is made and used alongside feedback from Dave Pannell ABOUT DAVE PANNELL & THE DESIGN MECHANICS Dave 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, dave@tdmuk.com or call +44 (0)

24 @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 decisionmaking 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. hello@tdmuk.com +44 (0)