Content Marketing Archives – Industrial Marketing Today

Manufacturing Content Marketing—What’s Ahead in 2021

December 2, 2020November 20, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

Manufacturing Content Marketing Insights for 2021

No, I don’t have a crystal ball. What I do have is the brand-new report, Manufacturing Content Marketing, Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—Insights for 2021 published by the Content Marketing Institute.

Manufacturing Marketing in the Age of Industry 4.0

December 2, 2020November 11, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

As I was researching the topic of manufacturing marketing for industry 4.0, I found a ton of online articles when I did a Google search for “marketing for Industry 4.0.” My search yielded 192,000,000 results … Read more

Manufacturing Content Marketing Distribution and Measurement

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

That’s my take on the challenges and issues faced by industrial companies with manufacturing content marketing distribution and measurement.

Adapting Your Industrial Content Marketing Strategy for COVID-19

May 8, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

Industrial content marketing strategy needs adjusting and fine-tuning to adapt to changes during this unprecedented time of COVID-19. Life and business as we know them have changed significantly. Some of these changes are highly likely … Read more

Content Preferences of Engineers and Industrial Buyers

March 12, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

Understanding the content preferences of engineers and industrial professionals is crucial to your success with industrial content marketing. That applies to the content for industrial websites too. Compounding the problem is the fact that engineers … Read more

Content Marketing for Manufacturers: Are You Using its Full Power?

February 17, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

My initial conversations with industrial companies about content marketing for manufacturers usually start something like this, “We can’t be found in Google or other search engines. We want to rank high. We’ve read that content … Read more

Technical Content Creation for Manufacturing Marketing

March 10, 2020February 5, 2020 by Achinta Mitra

Technical content creation is a big challenge for manufacturing marketers of all sizes. Is it any wonder that content creation is the most commonly outsourced content marketing activity by manufacturing marketers? “64% of manufacturing marketers … Read more

The State of Manufacturing Content Marketing 2020

November 14, 2019 by Achinta Mitra

Manufacturing content marketing has come a long way since it is early years. There are many positive trends as seen in the latest research report, Manufacturing Content Marketing 2020, Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends published by … Read more

How Industrial Distributors Can Use Content Marketing

November 13, 2019October 7, 2019 by Achinta Mitra

Content marketing for industrial distributors can be very challenging. The biggest problem I’ve seen is that there is very little differentiation between distributors serving the same niche. Their competitors show the same line cards and … Read more

Webinar: Prove ROI and Make the Business Case for Industrial Content Marketing

September 26, 2019June 17, 2019 by Achinta Mitra

Industrial content marketing for engaging with engineers and technical professionals can be challenging. I’ve written about these problems in the past. Why not join me for a free webinar to learn first-hand about these challenges, … Read more

Manufacturing Content Marketing Can Be Confusing and Difficult

May 28, 2019May 22, 2019 by Achinta Mitra

I regularly receive email inquiries from industrial companies needing help with their manufacturing content marketing. These people are on the right track for wanting to use manufacturing content marketing for generating better quality leads that … Read more

Measuring ROI of Industrial Content Marketing is Difficult

February 18, 2019 by Achinta Mitra

Manufacturers, distributors and engineering companies are finding it difficult to accurately measure the ROI of their industrial content marketing efforts. Only 44% of manufacturing content marketers report their organization measures content marketing ROI. (Source: Manufacturing Content Marketing 2019: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs and sponsored by IEEE GlobalSpec).

Measuring ROI of industrial content marketing

While the number of leads generated by industrial content marketing is still a very important measure, it is not enough. Marketing is now held accountable for a wider range of metrics compared to previous years. Here’s a chart from the 2018 Budget Trends in Industrial & Technology Marketing report published by engineering.com.

Unique Challenges of Manufacturing Content Marketing in 2019

November 20, 2018November 19, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

I just finished reading the Manufacturing Content Marketing 2019—Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and sponsored by IEEE GlobalSpec.

Lisa Murton Beets (@LisaBeets), Research Director at CMI said, “The data suggest that manufacturers have a way to go with putting the audience’s informational needs before their own sales/promotional message. In addition, marketers in these organizations say they are uniquely challenged with creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within their target audience. Many are working to address these challenges, for example, by developing personas.”

I couldn’t agree more with her summary because that is pretty much what I find, working with manufacturers and industrial companies every day.

What is unique about manufacturing content marketing?

If you have been a regular reader of my blog, you’ve probably read many of my posts where I have talked about the differences between manufacturing (industrial) content marketing and other B2B content marketing.

There are three key differences that you should be aware of:

Making Email the Foundation of Industrial Content Marketing

December 5, 2019September 13, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

You may think email marketing is dead or passé with all the talk about social media. However, that is far from the reality that I see every day, working with manufacturers and engineering companies, especially when it comes to industrial content marketing.

Engineers and industrial professionals do read emails, provided you’ve earned their trust with valuable content and can get through their spam filters. According to the research report “How Engineers Find Information 2018” published by engineering.com, 95% of engineers will consider an email in their inbox.

You can read about this in my earlier post, Industrial Email Marketing for Engaging Engineers and Technical Professionals.

Email should be an important component of industrial content marketing

Given the above findings, it makes a lot of sense in making email marketing a key component of your overall industrial content marketing strategy. My opinion is corroborated by independent research findings.

Industrial Content Marketing that Engages Engineers

August 14, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

When it comes to effective industrial content marketing, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “One-size-fits-all content” just doesn’t cut it. How do you make your content more relevant to time-challenged engineers, deal with the age gap within your target audience, earn their trust and build stronger relationships? Those are some major challenges in industrial content marketing that can’t be overcome by just pumping out more content.

You are not alone if you are having difficulties with manufacturing content marketing meeting all your goals. According to the findings from the research report, 2018 Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America published by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 55% of manufacturers in North America reported that they were only moderately successful in achieving their organization’s desired/targeted results.

Industrial Content Marketing for Engineers to Make a Buy Decision

May 29, 2018May 22, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

Manufacturers want their industrial content marketing for engineers to generate Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and not just Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) from content downloads. There is a big challenge faced by manufacturers of components targeting Design Engineers. These Design Engineers often don’t have the final buying authority but unless the industrial parts are “designed in” by these engineers (Specifiers), the Purchasing Department (Functional Buyers) can’t or won’t issue a Purchase Order or contact you with an RFQ.

Search this blog for my earlier posts on MQL vs SQL and understanding the differences between a specifier and a functional buyer. In this post, I’ll focus on a specific industrial marketing strategy that is an effective sales enabler when targeting engineers.

Industrial Marketing – Budgets, Challenges and Performance

April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

Curious about how your peers and the competition are spending their industrial marketing dollars? You are in the right place at the right time.

I just finished reading the research report, 2018 Budget Trends in Industrial & Technology Marketing published by engineering.com. To put their findings in the right perspective, the top three segments of their demographics were:

32% Manufacturers
20% Software companies
16% were companies that provide Consulting/Engineering services

See the chart on the right for a complete breakdown.

The average industrial marketing budget is under $100,000 for more than half (52%) of these companies. There are a few (7%) with a budget of more than a million. Raise your hand if you are one of them!

Avergae size of industrial marketing budgets

Use industrial content marketing to enable sales

March 22, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

Industrial content marketing plays an important role in driving sales for manufacturers and engineering companies. Of course, going from publishing content to growing sales is not as easy as going from point A to point B.

If you are a manufacturer of custom-engineered systems, you know that it is nearly impossible to generate Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) without first having one or more conversations with the right people. To get to that point requires more than publishing a few blog posts and/or sending out emails.

Many of these industrial companies already know their limited pool of prospects who are qualified to buy their equipment and services. They don’t want to wait for these people to find them; they want to reach out to them proactively.

The fact is your target audience of engineers and technical professionals are in self-select and self-serve mode. They want to learn as much about you and your solutions before they’ll engage with your sales team. Industrial content marketing aligns perfectly with how today’s self-educating buyers want to interact with their suppliers.

Why Industrial Content Must Be More Customer-Centric

February 20, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

Industrial content on websites of most manufacturers and industrial companies tends to be heavy on product specifications. Of course, it is important to have technically accurate and up-to-date product information because that’s the first step in an engineer’s evaluation of your product or solution, especially if you manufacture a component that must be designed in.

However, product specifications alone are not enough to differentiate you from the competition. There are shortcomings to being overly reliant on product-centric content as an industrial content marketing strategy.

Proving ROI of Industrial Content Marketing is Still a Big Challenge

January 17, 2018 by Achinta Mitra

Congratulations if your 2018 industrial content marketing budget increased or at least didn’t get cut. You are in good company. 38% of respondents from the 2018 Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America survey expect their manufacturing content marketing spending to increase this year and another 46% expect it to remain the same as last year.

budgets for industrial content marketing

I’ve read other research reports that have reported a similar trend in larger budgets for industrial content marketing.

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