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one of those areas of sales where they have the ability to scale their efforts and they're just not used to having that ability they're used to door knocking cold calling in the old days they can scale that if they learn how to do social selling on platforms like LinkedIn social media is social social so your salespeople should be commenting on that content should be sharing it and should be getting on their prospects and your customer social feeds in creating community and conversation and it needs to be human you're talking about a real human being being a real human being on social and getting your entire team to just give anywhere from 5 minutes to 50 minutes a day and the ROI is huge as long as you're creating [Music] Community hey everybody and welcome to the marketing blender show I'm Dacia and I'm Daisy now today we are talking about B2B manufacturing marketing so examples tips tricks and what you need to know if you are in manufacturing marketing for manufacturing is very complex you're dealing with supply chain issues potentially a globally competitive landscape you may have specialized vendor requirements you're probably going to have very long buying Cycles so what are some of the things that you can do to help make your marketing more effective if you are in the B2B marketing space first of all you need to understand you're probably dealing with multiple buyer personas and not all of them may be making the final purchase decision for example if you manufacture building materials you need an architect Persona who's going to desire the product enough to design it into whatever it is they're creating you need an engineer or someone else to specify that you've probably gotten a construction person or a contract or installing it and then you've got the property owner and all of the people who use that property who need to be able to understand the benefits of and enjoy the product that you've created that's a lot of people that you need to engage and persuade with your marketing so let's talk about some of the ways that you can make your marketing more effective if you're a manufacturer I I love this because I think immediately what comes top to mind for me is you have to be Omni Channel now obviously maybe I'm sliding into a little bit of marketing jargon so back up it just means multiple places be a part of the conversation on multiple Platforms in multiple stages so that you are adding voice and thoughtfulness to all of these different influencers or decision makers in making sure that you're a part of the ecosystem that when they need you you're top of mind and I would say for most of the manufacturers that we work with Omni channel is a little bit aspirational if we can just get them to multi- CH Channel where you're in multiple places even if it's not one cohesive seamless transition from one to the other just be more than one place and over the past few years finally B2B manufacturers are starting to realize they need to be online they need to be doing digital marketing but it needs to be more than one type of digital marketing so for example yes you need to be on LinkedIn you need to be probably running ads on LinkedIn if there's any Google search intent that you can run ads on that's absolutely a place to be as well as display marketing so retargeting the people you've already touched I also usually encourage B2B manufacturers to have an engagement with at least one major publication where they can put out some thought leadership it could be a an organization a Professional Organization it could be an expo that happens on a regular basis but obviously don't forget email that's the one that so many manufacturers Miss it's like well we're we're online and we're putting stuff out there but they're not re-engaging people routinely through the email Channel what are some of the other channels that you like for manufacturers you know I think think you covered some of the really big ones but speaking is a huge one that we like to activate because if we've got a dynamic or even just very intelligent person that's comfortable in front of audiences in the company that can bring unique insights holy game Cher and typically for that person it's really really fun and satisfying to finally go wow I'm actually saying the things that I've been fighting for and advocating for this entire time and then repurpose right it turns into really fantastic content across those different places that you just mentioned so that's definitely one of the other ones but you know one other thing that I would add to this is do it on purpose it's not about just throwing stuff out there oh we've got to be all the different places no it's going back to who are the exact humans you're trying to reach then why are you communicating to them in this specific place so for instance is this a place of awareness where they're doing research and they're trying to inform their understanding of their problem or the market or are they starting to be aware that they are going to make a business decision a buying purchase and so now they're trust building and they're making sure that they're vetting different options or are they the final stages of a decision and you're just trying to get them to not ghost you or to really trust you and to make a great decision about how they decide to launch a relationship with you long term so being really intentional and strategic about these multiple places that you're communicating not only is healthier for your marketing but it is massive massive value for the people that you're trying to guide towards a great business decision I'd like to add a couple of things the first one is about speaking so a lot of Manufacturers like to think of it their product itself as thought leadership and that leads to all of their public speaking being about selling their product that's actually not the position you want to have as a thought leader who is a manufacturer you need to be talking about your point of view there's something about how you created designed built tested your products that's different than the rest of your Market is doing there's a reason behind that there are lessons that your target audience can learn from that so when you're thinking about presentation and speaking you need to be thinking about what is that larger perspective what is that thing that's unique about your point of view that you can bring to your target market that they can benefit from in terms of Education the other thing I'd like to talk about is seeding ground to the competition and I see this a lot sometimes manufacturers dig their heels in like we don't do XYZ because we shouldn't have toh good case in point bidding on their own brand name yes so if you're running Google ads and you're a manufacturer and your competitors are bidding on your brand name so they can show up with their ads above your organic search results that's not okay you shouldn't be okay with that you shouldn't say well we just rely on organic search results and we don't care about the rest of it you better get in there and own your brand name and guess what it's going to be a lot cheaper for you to get top placement for your ads for your own brand name than your competitors yeah we see we have seen so many times where a manufacturer was one of the founding members of their product right you know like they were the initiator or they really are the premium your provider and what we hear is oh everybody knows our name okay maybe now but do the buyers of Tomorrow know your name are they going to believe or care that you were first to Market probably not and so you're right I mean you have to Steward what you work so hard for that brand recognition that brand name and you have to maintain the fact that it represents something specific that you are being intentional around and so I think that's such a great point and we see people pay attention to their competitors in the wrong places right just because a competitor is on a certain platform doesn't mean like oh you need to go and run do that no that's a decision based on who you're trying to communicate and will that work for them but you're right just saying I shouldn't have to do that or no that's a waste of our time and money careful with that I mean I think that's a really really great point I think one of the other things I wanted to bring up you know especially since you were talking about thought leadership and speaking is where it is in the funnel right so everybody wants thought leadership who doesn't right of course you want to be a or the thought leader in your industry but you have to understand that this is a slow burn type of opportunity where you have to be so consistent around that and You' just got to be clear is this type of thought leadership going to drive quick leads sometimes speaking can but for instance publishing articles or doing more long-term SEO what's really educating the market or doing a podcast or appearing on other people's podcasts that is amazing thought leadership content it builds extremely high value and trust for you but does it generate leads you simply have to be clear about what is it going to do and not accidentally assign the wrong metric because you want to have a balanced approach of things that will fill your pipeline tomorrow thought leadership along with other things that going to fill your pipeline today lead generation and sales enablement so creating that ecosystem and really just understanding what's the role of this thing we're doing I agree and as you're thinking about what thought leadership resources are worthwhile to develop think about where are you leading people yes because those resources that help your buyers make progress are the ones that are going to have a more direct and a more rapid impact on your ability to fill your pel funnel yes and thank you so much much for using that word progress It's one of my favorites because one of the things I always want to do especially for manufacturers is we hear we love educational content or we need to get more educational content out there we almost always agree with this right like if you're trying to reframe or get people to think differently about their buying decision absolutely critical however what's the point of it and how are you Distributing it I think it's so important and so it's about progress for your buyer not education and if you're thinking will this educational material progress them towards their best decision GameChanger and gamechanging differentiation strategy because it's in action not just in Word by this point you guys have figured out that both Daisy and I are chief marketing officers but what you might not realize is there's a whole team of us at the marketing blender and we also have outsourced marketing teams so if you're curious about how we break Revenue plateaus how we untangle sticky messaging and how we make sure to drive exciting return on investment and profitable growth check us out at the marketing blender.com but it's not just for midmarket companies we've also figured out how to scale it down for small businesses too the marketing blender lab is our program just for small businesses looking to hit their first million in Revenue you still get to work with a real Chief marketing officer and we use the same structures and systems that work to grow big businesses to help you meet and exceed your goals so again if you're interested check out the marketing blender.com see you there the next thing I'd really like to talk about because so many manufacturing companies have not figured this piece out yet is social selling oh yes you don't just have to talk to or at people you can engage with them you can and it's one of those those areas of sales where they have the ability to scale their efforts and they're just not used to having that ability they're used to door- Knocking cold calling in the old days and even now you know cold email Outreach going to networking events and hoping there's somebody there that's a prospect for them and they don't realize that all the amazing skills that they have to reach out and connect with and relate to people and be good listeners and ask great questions they can scale that if they learn how to do social selling on platforms like LinkedIn yeah absolutely I mean so often it's like oh marketing does our social media social media is social social so your salespeople should be commenting on that content should be sharing it and should be getting on their prospects and your customer social feeds in creating community and conversation and it needs to be human like oh down with the Mast automated LinkedIn blasts that are no longer working like the ones that are so salesy that is not what you're talking about you're talking about a real human being being a real human being on social and getting your entire team to just give anywhere from five minutes to 50 minutes a day and the ROI is huge as long as you're creating Community it has to be consistent but it's definitely a cumulative effort to build and leverage your tribe online and one of the things I like to ask salespeople is when's the last time you shared content that one of your customers or one of your prospects posted when's the last time you spotlighted them when's the last time you tagged them and gave them something helpful via social media how apparent are you making it that you're there to connect that you're there to be a social human being with them and help them again focus on the things that they want to accomplish and things they want to be recognized for and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort and there are actually a very few automation tools that help with this piece but I don't believe in using automation to send direct messages to sell people I believe in using that as a tool to remind people why they matter yes and just helping to stay connected because really what I think this is about is it's about that servant leadership Paradigm it's about being in it with people so people love to buy but they hate to be sold right so being a guide to their buying decisions being a partner and like you said sometimes it's a shout out sometimes it's a share sometimes it's a comment but be in it with people and these are the right activities nowadays and it's amazing what this kind of engaged content does for your brand Authority where people see it and you stay top of mine and they're like wow they really have conversations going on people are listening to them I mean it's just absolutely exciting when this is added one of the things also that comes top of mind for when we're talking about activities like social selling is the fact that consistency wins in manufacturing marketing but a lot of times these are very very long sales Cycles we frequently work with manufacturers where their sales cycle on their best cases or six months so oftentimes we see one two even three yearlong sales Cycles sometimes you have changes in people where someone has left the company and you feel like you have to start all over again with that Prospect and so how do you make sure that your marketing ecosystem Can Go the Distance in something so long and slow where you have to be incredibly proactive and really thinking long term about guiding people through big big decisions so the social selling is a great example of staying top of Mind through this really long journey it is and one of the other things that I see manufacturers struggle with when it comes to Long sales Cycles is attribution and people think the right question is well how is this one little marketing activity or piece of content linked up to an eventual sale yeah now there are actually lots and lots of ways to do tracking and attribution most manufacturing companies don't have anywhere near the mtech sophistication they don't have the software in place they don't actually understand how to process siize that and act create even Frameworks for tracking but but at the very least understanding that this is the impact that social media has this is the impact that organic SEO has this is the impact that paperclick has understanding what you're supposed to be seeing even if you can only infer the results based on you know year-over-year with those long sales Cycles if we consistently improve our SEO game are we seeing more impressions are we seeing more traffic are we seeing more conversions on the website and we've actually worked with people that are in the the manufacturing sector where a year of focused effort on improving SEO has turned their website into the primary lead Source yes that's not something you can argue with we know what the right things to do are even if you don't have complete visibility across your entire sales pipeline that is a good thing to Aspire to but don't wait to do marketing just because you're like well I we're doing social media and we're not sure if we got a client out of that that's right know what the right things to do are yeah how many times have we literally heard clients say well show me the exact sale that that one social media post drove oh my gosh so especially since we're talking about manufacturing it's like it's the equivalent of when you think about your manufacturing line you know it is possible that if you optimize to its maximum capacity and capability one piece of equipment you could actually wreck your entire efficiency of your line because now you're creating bottlenecks and backups and then all the Manpower that you have to use in order to manage the over production of one part of your line it's about the entire system and marketing is the same way there are metrics and kpis that need to be optimized as a system because marketing is about filling your pipeline and hitting your outcome of your Revenue numbers right and so then you look at each aspect of the system is it optimized is it playing the role that it needs to today and tomorrow and so build that entire holistic approach not one thing at a time in attribution that actually kills Roi so really well said I think that's just so so important and we just see a misunderstanding of that I think another area of misunderstanding is around the competition the competition the yes which one what's the real competition right there's an emotional attachment to the idea of who our competitors are you know and maybe it's somebody who poached a top salesperson from you 10 years ago and that's why you're like those are our comp competitors I've worked with manufacturing companies that actually have no idea who their competitors are in the digital landscape they'll tell me about who they hear about from their their customers as being in their competitive landscape but if we do a digital audit I can show them five companies that are bidding the exact keywords that they're trying to rank for or bid on that they've never heard of before yeah we worked with a couple clients in one particular infrastructure industry and it was so frustrating because the real competition in this example wasn't just online client or competition that they didn't know about it was alternative materials and alternative products and so infrastructure was booming they were making a lot of money and so it felt good to beat or win against their direct competitor ERS but market share was being stolen by alternative products and they were not paying attention and it was so frustrating because it's like who's the real enemy who's the real threat is it the one to one that you've been doing because you're comfortable or is it something that really could disrupt your entire future so that's another one um that's just incredibly important about having a full-blown landscape of what are all of the options that your buyers could consider not just you versus someone else right you can end up squabbling over who's got the biggest piece of an Ever shrinking pie yes yes the other one the number one place that people lose to no decision no decision true oh my gosh and when we're talking about these long sales cycles for manufacturers it is not good for your prospect to not make a decision either if they need to change whether it's providers or products or any of the different conversations that you're having it's not acceptable for them to have wasted all of that time all of that attention just to keep doing the same thing because they had a problem when they first started talking to you or they wanted change and then somewhere in the friction or the details of that slow conversation they forgot why it was important and so they will still have that problem and they are going to need to think about that but you know it's the client it's the manufacturer responsibility to hold that space for why they need to go the distance and make the change I think one of the challenges in B2B manufacturing from a salesperson's perspective is that they they see the buyer as the block to progress they're like why won't this person make a decision so yes those no decisions are very common but it's actually not the buyer that's the problem it's the no decision that's the problem that's the competition that's what you need be that's where you need to be better than the apathy better than the no decision better than the delays because you're actually on the buyer side you want to help them make a decision because you know that they're never going to get the time back that they wasted on I don't know what to do I'm not sure what comes next I'm confused about this or that or the other thing so when you're on the same side of the table looking at that no decision that inability to move forward as the competitor for your brand you're going to be able to make better decisions about how to help your buyers make the next right move without it being pushing them to do something that they don't want to do but actually working with them to make a decision they're going to be happy with absolutely the final one I want to bring up around competition is commoditization right so sometimes that's just where the industry is like intentionally or because that's how the market is gone and so sometimes you're battling commoditization right but sometimes that's just your environment and so then it's critical to think what are they really buying and we see this confusion where it's US versus them oh well we get better we give better customer service or we do this or we do that or we have better price concessions or better spiffs or whatever whatever the language is and sometimes the key is going what are they really buying yes they have to buy your product it's a commodity they need it in order to comp accomplish their project or run their business or sell what they need to however so so then inside of that why you I think people really lose that um Clarity on what's behind that like they just automatically assume it's a one for one you can find some really interesting ways to message and comp compete in a commoditized environment I agree with that I think that's actually where B2B manufacturing companies are going to find their blue ocean well said because if it's becoming more and more commoditized your ocean is getting more and more red oh now's the time to think about what's that value ad yeah that no one else has thought of yeah and for anybody that hasn't pulled out Blue Ocean strategy that wonderful oldie but goodie in a while go straight to that buyer map and look for the friction and see where you can add value and think differently oh well said okay so I'm going to do one nuanced one moving on is um the business model because a lot of our clients in manufacturing are have an element of business to business to consumer or they have one product that's consumer but then we still see the same messaging across their entire business model instead of breaking down there's very specific messaging for buyers of organization so corporate buyers versus demand generation in the market in order to get people to purchase your product or to help your real customer your distributor to sell through through their product and then how do that how does that work together right and so making sure that your total business strategy is actually communicated in the right places in the right way for Maximum Impact for all of the stakeholders and we see a lot of really huge low-lying lowcost optimization opportunities found in this blurriness of who are are real buyers when where and why are we doing what we're doing I think one of the best examples of B2B to see is pharmace pharmaceutical sales in the US and in many other countries they're not allowed to do this but in the US pharmaceutical companies they know that they can go Target their Physicians offices and hospitals with one-on-one with farmer reps but where are they spending most of their money TV yeah they're getting the consumer to go to their doctor and say why don't you have me on XYZ medication so in the manufacturing world if you have a B2B Toc play considering you know what how am I allocating my resources how much of that pressure to make a change should be coming from the enduser yeah and not from the corporate buyer so you have those two working together yeah absolutely and we we see this a lot also with larger consumer products like say for instance we've a comp you know we've got clients to sell through Walmart or Costco or any other big box or you know retail chain see stores it doesn't matter um and they've got a clear Market strategy but then they don't leverage that with a clear buyer strategy like yes they're thinking about placement and point of sale and all of this other stuff but that buyer has more and deeper reasons for why they're talking to you and how they really perceive what they're purchasing and what their role is and we very rarely see a highly organized highly strategy around how do you talk to those buyers how do you position on the B2B side correctly they just go we do all the social media we've seen this sell through and I I think there's um some depth that can be harvested frequently there once in a while yeah that i' I've seen that occasionally too where they're like well we're doing all the demand gen but yeah it's up to you to decide you like us yeah I think that actually brings us to our final point which is around distributor reseller Channel partner marketing because this is so important in so many manufacturing organizations and there is very little strategy that we see around this oh gosh I know so frequently we see that there you know the company the manufacturer goes oh we'll just pick up another distributor and they think because there was a distribution contract signed that's just going to implify multiply scale their sales that don't always happen there is a paros principle frequently with Distributors that 20% of your Distributors will sell 80% of your Revenue but often times people are abdicating responsibility for the sell through that happens through their Distributors they are we see a lot of Manufacturers it's actually quite common to see manufacturers who believe that their business model is other people do all the sales for us we just make the thing we make the really great thing and we work with organizations that have really good sales teams so therefore we don't need to worry about anything other than making the and getting more Distributors to sign contracts with us and everything else will be taken care of that is not how it works if you're delegating your all your sales activity to resellers and Distributors and channel Partners you better be giving them the tools to help sell that you better be making it important to them that they sell your stuff and your model more than they spend their time and focus on selling anything else they need to be committed to your sales process the other thing I would say is we have have another great B Toc example here multi-level marketing companies Outsource all of their sales efforts their whole thing is we're going to just hire or create business owners of as many people as possible and that is our distributed Salesforce and guess what most of those people never make any significant amount of money and they're just playing the numbers game as an MLM saying if we get enough people some of them are going to be Superstars and it's a lot less than 20% it's it's a way less far far less but one thing that those MLM companies do really well they provide all the marketing materials they know exactly how to get their people the tools that they need so if they happen to have the right Network or the you know the stars align or whatever works for them to actually make their MLM business a success they have all the systems in place they have all the ability to sell through they've got support in terms of hey here's ideas for what you can do on social media they're being given that support yeah if manufacturers would put that kind of effort into supporting their resellers and Distributors they would see a very very different outcome agreed I mean there's culture there there's celebrations there's appropriate rewards that are not just the financial compensation I mean there's this deep engagement with their resellers and I think you're right there have been frequent times where the real buyer Persona that we documented wasn't the end user or the end buyer it was the sales rep of their most important distribution partner because the thing is is salespeople will sell what's the easiest thing for them to sell they have a number to hit no matter how amazing your product is if you have not made it easy and if you have not trained them and given them the tools to be able to trigger attention trigger interest Trigger action and decision to create progress for their buyers you're not going to get them so I love that because there's so many amazing ways where you can stay top of of mine with distributor sales reps and even their marketing teams that's another one where frequently there's very little marketer to Market marketer communication between that and wow it's magic because those marketers do want to work together and you can elevate your brand awareness and your sell through simply by being intentional being aware of what's the real competition for the sales rep and it's what's the priority for me what do I need to sell and what's going to make me most successful right now there are three things that we typically build for Distributors when we're working with manufacturing companies that need to sell through the first thing is buyer personas documented buyer personas so helping that salesperson have a documented understanding of who they're selling to I don't care if they've been doing it for 20 years having the documentation especially if you want to have more than one distributor selling for you they need to all be working off of the same Playbook number two is messaging choreography so what do you say when yeah and the final thing that I like to give people is is a a sales cheat sheet it's literally the thing that they can refresh their mind with before every conversation because they they may be selling 20 different products from 20 different companies you want yours to be the easiest to sell yeah absolutely if you can create this idea of like a sales in a box or a selling kit that is super easy to engage with for the sales rep oh my gosh I mean that makes followup I mean it makes their value prop position so much clearer and stronger on your behalf absolutely absolutely so I love this one I could keep going on and on because we have so many weird examples I am going to chase one quick squirrel before we wrap it up though is that depending on the size of the people that you're selling to the organizations that you're selling to for the manufacturer so for instance um we have some manufacturers that sell to Enterprise sometimes what they need are more nuance elements and so we have to great effect had a couple manufacturers that you know are minority owned or they align with those big um corporate initiatives where they have to have certain types of Partners or there's some cultural societal governance component to that buying comp you know to that buying decision and leveraging all of what you have inside of your messaging and sometimes looking for those relationship doors or those other values alignments that you can do I think there's just so much Nuance but again it goes straight back to everything that we've talked about being really really thoughtful and really really aware of what's really behind the decision in the humans that you're talking to and what they actually care about and one final item on that when we work with manufacturers they're selling internationally or selling into defense organizations or selling into you know know very tightly regulated areas or Global markets not everybody cares about the same thing so if we have a US manufacturer in the US we talk about that all the time made in the USA made in the USA if we're selling overseas we don't talk about that because not every country looks at the US and says that is a highly stable place that we want to do business with ironically so there may be changes in messaging just based on where your buyers are in the world that's right the differentiation changes so much much because what somebody in Europe cares about as a buyer is almost always going to be extremely different that when someone in North America let alone the US cares about so you guys thanks so much for jumping into this conversation any questions you have post them in the comments hit us up on our socials or check us out at the marketing blender.com if you liked what you saw give us a thumbs up definitely hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next week onward and upward