Manufacturing Blog

When you’re looking for the results of this year’s marketing budget for your specialized construction business, can you easily show what’s happened with that money? Can you show the money spent, the content produced, the leads brought in, and results of those sales opportunities?

As a CEO, you have a specific way of looking at your company’s success. You see the big picture: where you are, where you’re going, and how you need to get there. That view hinges on the ability to look at each facet of your business and see the value it brings to your company’s bottom line. A data-centric inbound marketing strategy can give you the data you’ve been looking for from your marketing investments.

Sure, inbound marketing can be great for B2C companies. Creating interesting content for those companies is a great way to increase leads with consumers. But it’s just a waste of marketing dollars for your B2B manufacturing company… you’re looking to connect with other businesses, not people. Right?

Wrong. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

The modern buyer has changed the sales process, and now the sales process is being redefined. Today's sellers are adapting to the modern buyer, and as a result, the mantra of "always be closing" no longer works. Today's buyers must always be helping.

Keep reading to learn how modern sellers are adapting to today's buyers, and how you can apply this to your own sales process.

It's the first day of spring training for our hometown Milwaukee Brewers! As they start training for this year's April 3rd home opener and we dream of firing up the grills and the stadium filling with baseball fans from all over, we're drawing inspiration from Field of Dreams - you know, "If you build it, they will come."

As a business leader for a B2B company, you have responsibilities company-wide: caring for your employees, making sure customers are happy, ensuring that sales are up and losses are down, and possibly most importantly, working toward a high return on all investments. In your budget, marketing most likely has one of the highest-cost line items - but it should also have one of the highest returns. Contrary to popular belief, you can have faith in your marketing department's ability to produce high, measurable returns on your investments through a successful marketing strategy.

But how do you know if it’s working?

Let me tell you a story. It’s one that my team and I have heard about from many prospects, and have seen from almost every one of our clients to date. It’s not unique to a specific industry, though it does seem more prevalent (or perhaps just more obvious) in our manufacturing clients. This story is about a reformed marketing team’s path to success.

SMarketing, sales and marketing alignment, is critical to your manufacturing organization’s success. Both teams are responsible for your company’s growth and success. Both can now be held accountable for their contributions to revenue, and the gap between the teams has closed. With sales and marketing working close together, it’s critical that they work well together.

Marketing attribution: the quest for information and data that allows marketers to pinpoint the assisting marketing messages, formats, and channels that lead a purchasing customer to their buying decision.

To optimize your marketing investment to get the best return possible, attribution is a priority. It’s the ability to analyze the data you have to differentiate how marketing techniques affect the sales cycle, which allows you to choose how to optimize across silos to improve the end result: your bottom line.

Marketing teams are under increased scrutiny today thanks to the advent of Big Data. Executives can analyze everything from overtime cost/benefits and depreciating machinery assets to the return on investment of a single employee to the advantage of healthy vending machine options versus junk food choices. It’s no wonder that business leaders are looking for better, more exact return analysis for their marketing budgets, as well.