Digital sales automation for manufacturing

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hey hey Galen etland from actone software here today we are talking about one of the toughest marketing nuts to crack manufacturing if you're a manufacturing marketer hats off to you your job's not easy you're probably dealing with complex products skeptical customers and maybe even outdated marketing technology and of course you're not alone in this more than 50 percent of manufacturing marketers say one of their biggest challenges is overcoming a traditional sales and marketing mindset and 75 percent of manufacturing companies are not even using marketing automation that's a big problem because marketing automation is a powerful tool that could help actually connect you with your hard-to-reach customers automation creates a better customer experience drives conversations and saves you tons of wasted time so let's dive in here are five things you need to know about marketing automation for manufacturing number one there's a big difference between email marketing and marketing automation the whole batch and blast tradition of email marketing so sending the same message to your entire contact list at the same time it doesn't cut it anymore today people are used to seeing personalized and customized recommendations in their shopping carts and on their Netflix accounts and they want that same kind of personalization when they're buying products for their businesses so we marketers really have to step it up your buyers should be getting the right content at the right time to help them learn about their problem and how your product can solve it that's where batch and blast falls short the content you're sending to your customers needs to show up at just the right point in their buyer's Journey so for example they should read an intro article early on then get a detailed data sheet once they're seriously interested but it's way too time consuming for you to have to do all of that manually that's where marketing automation comes in clutch you can segment your audience and customize your campaigns to deliver relevant messages at the right moment for each contact which is of course the total opposite of batch and blast plus marketing automation isn't just email we're talking online ads text messages social media landing pages lead forms the whole shebang anywhere your potential buyers interact with your content that's for marketing automation is Magic it helps tell your customers exactly what they need to hear right when they need to hear it and ideally gets them from content to conversation much faster number two knowing your buyers is the foundation of great marketing automation if marketing automation means giving your customers the right content at the right time how do you know what that content should even say it all starts with buyer personas and Industrial buyers are a special breed you have design Engineers procurement managers mro managers that's maintenance repair and operations production managers safety and compliance directors and engineering VPS just to name a few those people all have really different problems and different points of view so before you even think about creating content or sending out campaigns make sure you have your industrial buyer personas dialed in and you don't need dozens just three to five of the most important types of buyers that your product is made for here's a pro tip if you're only focused on Executives and managers you're missing out industrial marketers almost always need to court the specifiers specifiers are usually design Engineers that will need to design in your components to their larger products they may not have mine Authority but they have a ton of influence in deciding what the purchasing department well purchases you want them on your side arguing that your product is the best choice for their business so that means creating content just for them number three automation can make your sales and marketing teams best friends I know I know sounds too good to be true but hear me out here mark automation isn't just about personalizing content it also works behind the scenes with tools like lead scoring to smooth the handoff between marketing and sales because when you're not on the same page that handoff can be rough lead scoring works like this marketing and sales teams come together to assign scores to different buyer behaviors like watching a demo video or downloading an ebook the higher the score the warmer the lead your marketing automation software assigns every lead a score based on how they interact with your content and once a lead has scored high enough they get assigned to the sales team for a one-to-one conversation all based off the rules that you came up with together so everyone has accountability for when the handoff happens and when it all works right this means that the sales team gets more qualified leads they stop wasting time on unserious buyers they're happier with marketing conversation rates go up sales Cycles get shorter everybody wins best friends forever number four you have to use your in house marketers to create content that matters now I know you've heard it before Engineers hate marketing now that's not entirely true but they do hate fluff and they can spot it from a mile away but you are not an engineer you're a marketer so how do you create content that Engineers will actually pay attention to and appreciate it's all about using your company's technical subject matter experts or smes but that's easier said than done even without the handy acronym smes are busy like really busy couldn't get them in my video over half of manufacturing content marketers say it's challenging to get SME time and they're not going to create that content for you so put your journalist hat on do your research first then interview those smes make it easy for them to share knowledge with you and to pay attention to how they talk the lingo they use and the buzzwords they hate then you write your first draft it'll sound like they wrote it which means it'll be easier for them to sign off on your content with their name on it it's content their fellow Engineers will actually pay attention to and number five use your data to do better marketing marketing automation isn't just about doing more marketing it's about knowing what's working so you can do more of the right things to close the deal so pay attention to the data that marketing automation gives you you should be able to answer this question how are your buyers interacting with your content this matters like a lot because industrial buyers are in self-serve mode they're going to spend 60 to 70 percent of their buying Journey on their own before even trying to contact your sales team so the more you can track their behavior to see what captures their attention the more you can fine tune your content for the future so what pages do they visit on your website what videos are they watching what emails do they open when you know these answers you can use that data to drive your marketing forward so if everyone who comes to your website watches your videos but ignores your ebooks double down on what's working and stop wasting time on what isn't there you have it five things you need to know about marketing automation for manufacturing of course there's a lot more to the story so please click the link below to get our full manufacturer's guide to data driven marketing automation or just to visit Acton's website act hyphenon.com to learn more happy marketing