When starting your own business, you need to know what kind of products and services you want to offer and who are going to be your final customers.
Surely, you have heard about B2B or Business to Business companies, which refers to companies that have commercial relationships with other enterprises. Or B2C, Business to Customer companies, which occurs when a company sells directly to the consumer.
This is what Industrial Marketing is all about, when the trading relationship is carried out directly between industries, meaning they have a B2B relationship; but it also has other characteristics.
For example, the negotiations are very technical, the communication is very specialized, and the volumes of products or services negotiated are huge. Also, you will be looking for long-term relationships with other corporations.
You have to keep these specifications in mind if you want to start a B2B industry business and build a successful Industrial Marketing Strategy.
What are the characteristics of Industrial Marketing?
In the industrial sector there are some things that are very different from a B2C business, like for example:
- Sales processes are longer and more complex than in a B2C and require a long-term relationship between companies.
- In a B2B they are more focused on durable business relationships than in a B2C. Also, they make bigger efforts to maintain these commercial relationships.
- Even when B2B companies have less clients than a B2C, the purchase volume always will be bigger on an industrial level and more durable over time.
Where to start building the Industrial Marketing strategy?
There are several companies in the industrial sector that bet on traditional marketing strategies, but they are putting aside some digital marketing techniques that can help them grow their business while respecting their nature.
New technologies have given us multiple ways to market our business to reach a much wider audience and the industrial sector is not the exception.
1. Set the objectives
Remember that to build a successful industrial marketing strategy you have to be clear about the objectives that you want to reach. Keep in mind that at the end of the day a Marketing Strategy is the path that will lead you to conquer those objectives.
Some of the most common industrial companies’ objectives regarding a Marketing strategy are the following:
- Get quality leads.
- Increase the traffic to their website.
- Acquire new customers.
- Increase the Database.
- Take their business to an international market.
- Position their business.
2. Set the budget
The strategy that you will implement will depend on the budget that you have. Remember that to set a budget you need to consider the people you are going to work with, the tools that you are going to use and the actions that will be part of the plan.
3. Get the best team
You need to have a marketing team that clearly understands what your industry is all about. If your own team doesn’t dominate the topic how do you expect them to communicate it?
Also, your team should have previous experience working with companies in the industry and have a deep knowledge about the matter.
4. Think about the strategy
To create the strategy, you have to think about all the resources and tools you have available based on your budget. We will give you some ideas of what you can do in Industrial Marketing.
Attend a trade fair
This has been one of the most used offline strategies in the industrial sector for years to give visibility to the brand and get new leads. However, the success of this strategy has been questioned several times as it may not provide many conversions.
Still you can enhance this strategy with digital resources for it to be more effective.
Create your website
Your potential clients will visit your website either if it works as the main contact point or not. Your website is the face you show to the world, is your cover letter and it should be presented as such.
Also remember that a website that is not updated reflects how you work, for example if you offer the latest technologies and trends in your sector you cannot show a poor website, it will make no sense.
This is why you should improve the navigation, user experience, communication and design of your website.
Work on your visibility
Once your website is updated you can start working on the SEO. As you are such a specialized company in the industry you can create a blog that will help you attract potential customers and promote yourself as an expert in the field.
Also, this will help you improve your position in the search engines as well as increase your visibility.
Implement Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing let you accompany your potential customers in their buying process. This works incredibly with B2B companies as you need to stay with the prospect in all the process until they convert. It is the perfect way to seduce them with quality content and resources until the purchase.
Implement Email marketing
Email marketing is effective because of the same reason inbound marketing is effective. The purchase process is long and with this strategy, you will accompany them in the whole process. Even when they convert you have the power to make them loyal afterwards.
Have a Social Media Presence
You should be on social media as it is an excellent communication channel that will give you the opportunity to reach potential customers and partners by offering quality content.
The social media that we recommend for B2B businesses is LinkedIn and with the following statistics you will know why.
- In lead generation for B2B companies LinkedIn is effective in a 59%. Other social media are effective in a 26%.
- When launching a new B2B product it is more effective to market it on LinkedIn in 81%. In other social media effectiveness is 34%.
- 46% of B2B companies web traffic comes from LinkedIn.
5. Strengthen the long-term relationships
As we mentioned before the purchase process in industrial marketing may take a long time. Many customers are not ready to make the purchase at the moment, the process is long because the investment the buyer company is going to make is huge and they need to think wisely.
That is why you have to nurture the relationship for them to not lose interest and take the buying decision at some point.
It is true that Industrial Marketing is still unknown for many companies, but it has a great potential.
Keep in mind that to market a B2B industrial company you need to consider that you need to have knowledge of the industry-specific language, try to build lasting commercial relationships and use corporate communication.
This post is also available in: Español
