Recently, GlobalSpec and TREW Marketing released the 2023 State of Marketing to Engineers research report. A live webinar was held to share insights on the findings, and around 480 professionals from marketing, sales, and engineering registered to attend. Many questions were asked about how engineers and technical buyers find the information they need to make purchasing decisions. Although not all questions were answered during the webinar, all the questions were compiled into one resource that is organized by category.

Understanding Survey Respondent Demographics

What demographic information were respondents asked to share?

Respondents were asked about age, gender identity, background, company size, primary job function, and industry focus. Each demographics question offered an aided list for respondents to select what best described them and their workplace.

Are these global respondents?

Yes, these are global respondents. Here is the breakdown: 51% from North America, 28% from EMEA, 12% from APAC and 8% from LATAM.

Have you thought about breaking out responses to correlate to the industry they belong to?

Yes, we have! You’ll see an example of this on page 24 of the research report. In the vast majority of cases, when we analyzed responses by industry, we found that the results were highly similar to the findings as a whole.

Can we get a breakdown of the engineer respondents by title and geography?

To see a breakdown by job title and industry, download the full report. We plan to release additional demographic breakdowns in the coming months, specifically for the respondents in the European market.

Seeking Answers

The statistic about search results seems to contradict every basic assumption of SEO which says the top result is the most clicked link, and results not on the first search results page (SERP) are irrelevant. Are you suggesting SEO is not an important strategy we should be using?

SEO is definitely important. Your company still needs to show up for those searches, and those top results pages still see the most clicks in this audience. The main difference with engineers and technical buyers is that they will also go deep and look at multiple resources, which means that a ranking on page 2 isn’t the equivalent of sudden death like it is for many other industries.

Would you use paid search to promote assets instead?

Paid search provides value in competitive product and service spaces, and can be a good channel for content promotion as well. We’ve seen success using paid search ads for content on popular topics in a vertical, or items related to something like a new industry standard. For example, we ran an ad for an evergreen webinar on the development of smart cities, and lessons learned from a smart city program. This ad produced a click-through rate (CTR) of greater than 9% due in part to the high level of interest in the impact smart cities can have across public safety and sustainability. The content does need to be on a relatively popular topic, though, since all traffic and downloads depend on a user searching for terms related to that content.

Thoughts on LinkedIn ads over paid Google ads?

Both have value. If you are targeting a specific audience, such as a key account or particular job title, LinkedIn is a better fit. If you are looking for broad brand awareness on a certain topic, Google AdWords would likely be the better choice.

Google ads are a good option when promoting a service with buying intent or a technical topic with a lot of current interest. These ads are successful when you have an audience actively searching for them, and your content or page answers that need.

LinkedIn interrupts the user where they are, so the ad has to be highly relevant and engaging to capture their attention. Think very topical resources and timely events for this channel vs something like a service page or product listing.

I noticed that you didn’t ask about Display Ads. High bounce rates are very frustrating and awareness is hard to measure. Any ideas?

The best way to measure display ads is to layer specialized technology on top of them. Understanding performance for awareness-based advertising is a common issue, but thankfully a couple of tools exist that improve targeting and visibility into meaningful metrics on how users are seeing and interacting with your ads. Rollworks is one of these platforms that we recommend, and there are a few other ABM-focused tools that make your advertising smarter all around. There are also a variety of engagement and social listening tools out there to better grasp awareness and share of voice, although they tend to only be available at enterprise prices.

Content Preferences

In your opinion, how much attention should be devoted to events versus digital marketing?

This is a difficult question and one that is specific to the industries and applications you serve. The data is clear that digital marketing (i.e. your website filled with relevant content) is the #1 source for technical buyers. BUT they are also willing to attend some events. Events are quite expensive and once they are over, they don’t continue to “give” as digital marketing does. Measure, measure, measure and find the right balance for your company. Don’t overlook being “at an event” without a booth through presentations and online posts.

For more insight into in-person events, download the full report.

What’s the most effective form of gated content? Consistent with years past, engineers find content with specific technical detail (e.g., datasheets and CAD drawings) to be the most valuable in their decision-making processes. Secondary to technical documentation, engineers find value in content that provides information on use and implementation (e.g., product demos, reviews, and case studies). This information can be found on page 13.

Are engineers ready to give their contact information to obtain documents or should they be left freely accessible?

If you take a look back at our 2022 State of Marketing to Engineers research report on page 20, you’ll see that 83% of engineers are willing to fill out a web form in exchange for meaty technical content. The types of content that were most likely to entice a form submission included white papers, CAD drawings, webinars, in-depth case studies, product configurators and video tutorials.

We opted to not ask this question this year because we haven’t seen that data change in a number of years. In past years we found that engineers are willing to give their contact information, as long as it’s for the right kind of content.

Is it possible to get any kind of contact info without filling out form?

In order to obtain the contact information necessary to interact with and nurture a prospect, an online form is necessary. A form submission can also act as consent to receive communication from your company.

Do you ever ask respondents if they register on manufacturers’ websites to access additional documentation or online tools?

We haven’t asked a question specifically about registering to access a data library. This would be interesting to consider including in a future research study.

For online publications, do you feel engineers look at digital magazines or online articles?

While we did not specifically ask which elements are favored within a technical publication website (e.g. reading the digital magazine versus jumping straight into online articles), our data shows that technical publication websites and the online articles they contain are favored by technical buyers. 48% of respondents cited online technical publications as a valued resource, and 23% of respondents indicated they find trade publication articles a valuable form of content. Online articles are easy to digest, readily shared, and promote thought leadership.

Can you give some examples of Technical Publications?

There are numerous! A few include:

• Design News
• EE Times 
• IEEE Spectrum 
• Control Engineering
• Machine Design
• Elektor
• Jane’s Defence Weekly
• NASA Tech Briefs
• Photonics Spectra
• Plant Engineering

Newsletters

 What are your thoughts on a cadence for regularly automated emails, weekly emails outside of newsletters?

It largely depends on the content that you are pushing out – is it relevant and informative to the groups you’re messaging? That may help define how often your email list will be okay with receiving your emails. I would recommend looking at your open and click-through rates for the emails you send to get a sense of how often your users are engaging with your emails.

Social Media and Sharing

Should we be formatting LinkedIn company pages to seem more social-based or keep it technical-based?

Your company pages need to be authentic to your brand. For instance, you may have an approachable casual tone, but also present the company as a deeply technical solutions provider. Your social pages would then be a reflection of this. We do find taking a more conversational “human” approach works well on social, but again shouldn’t be jarringly different than your online presence elsewhere.

Do you feel LinkedIn Navigator is in its early stage and therefore the acceptance is low or is it simply not going to be an effective lead generator?

We definitely do NOT think LinkedIn Navigator is in the early stage of adoption at this point. We are seeing a lot of abusive “cold call” type behavior on LinkedIn, which is causing more and more people to ignore messages completely. We’re not suggesting sales ignore it completely, but just like reaching out to a prospect, hold off until they are warm and receptive.

On LinkedIn, do you have any comments on the number of people who view your post versus comment or repost? Are there industry standards?

LinkedIn views and engagement vary widely depending on the number of followers you have, how broadly the post is shared, your brand awareness, and the quality of content. Focus on relevant, educational content, and tag relevant people and companies in your posts. Encourage company leadership to engage with your company posts as well. This will help boost engagement.

LinkedIn seems to be becoming more social with people sharing more personal info, events and opinions. Is there value in forging personal deeper personal connections with customers or perhaps risk alienating someone over something that has nothing to do with the product?

What a great question! Putting on the hat of a technical salesperson, start with a helpful mentality instead of trying to sell a product or solution. Share information as a resource. This might look like posting opinions on threads where you can add value to the conversation and demonstrate expertise. This may be sharing industry research that you found interesting and would be helpful to your prospects. Committing yourself to the platform and interacting with intentionality has proven to be the most successful.

On page 19, we asked respondents what type of content would entice them to stop scrolling on LinkedIn. Research data, product/service information, and industry news were in the top three.

Is it a good idea to use transcriptions of expert interviews, discussion panels, and/or webinars used as long-form articles on LinkedIn (1,600-2,000 words)?

I would say that long-form content within a post might not be the best solution, as someone will likely keep scrolling. I would recommend including a link in your post that leads back to your website where that content can be placed, and include unique and relevant data within the post in order to entice a user to click the link.

However, this would be worth trying if you already have a large and engaged LinkedIn audience looking at you as an influencer on the platform. We see LinkedIn-specific content work best for individuals vs brands, especially those positioned as thought leaders or influencers in their space.

Podcasts

In one of your slides you mentioned that only 1% of technical influencers are found by engineers through podcasts.

73% of engineers listen to podcasts weekly for work (page 25). 1% of engineers discover technical influencers through podcasts (page 22).

Interaction With Sales

What role, if any, do virtual (i.e. Zoom) interactions play in closing sales?

On page 31 of the research report, we asked about the preferred method of communication when first interacting with sales. 7% preferred a video call at this stage in the buyer’s journey. This finding doesn’t point to what role Zoom interactions play in subsequent sales meetings, however. This would be an interesting area to explore in a future research study.

Analyzing Results

I am wondering how set benchmarks for very niche sectors, and how to articulate that to Leadership. For example, if they ask “How did that press release perform” and I say “Well, 105 people clicked and it was shared by 10 people” how do I respond when they ask “Well can you provide some perspective on how that compares to our industry standards, etc?”

This is tough because every industry is different, especially if you offer a niche product or service with a smaller addressable market. High performance will look vastly different from market to market. I recommend benchmarking your own performance as the best starting point. For instance, of the people that clicked the press release and shared it, what does their journey look like following their engagement? Use that information to set benchmarks for your next press release. You can find industry benchmark data for many digital marketing tactics in the book, Content Marketing, Engineered authored by Wendy Covey (though press release performance is not among them for the reasons above).

How are you able to measure ROI on content?

Calculating an average ROI for B2B content marketing can be tricky. As previously mentioned, it is important to benchmark your performance. It’s also important to determine the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

We recommend creating a marketing scorecard that measures overall marketing health metrics.

While a marketing scorecard may not show you the actual revenue generated from these efforts, it will show you which activities are working the best, which activities you can stop spending time on, and identify any problem areas in marketing that may be preventing you from achieving your goals.

Depending on the system your company uses (i.e. HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo), you can use attribution reports to see which pieces of content are tied to deals or opportunities. This will help determine the revenue generated.

General Research Questions

My previous experience is in e-commerce (B2C). Now that I am working in B2B with a new niche crowd, what do you recommend for rewiring my brain to work with this group and this new consumer journey?

Start with what surprised you most about the research results. A great example would be how deep engineers are willing to go in search. B2C behaviors stop at page 1 on a search results page. Technical buyers and engineers are willing to go deep for credible information! If you get in the mindset of the technical buyer, many are trying to solve complex problems that impact people’s lives. They have to do a lot of due diligence. Many team members are involved and buying cycles are long. It’s all about understanding your audience and their pain points – get to know your buyer personas, talk to sales, and use that information in your brand’s messaging. Whether you’re working in B2C or B2B, marketing is simply communicating with your audience.

We market to manufacturing plant managers and maintenance managers. Is there anyone out there that does this type of research for these groups?

While this group has its own unique needs and challenges, engineering-focused research is a great place to start. I’d also suggest reaching out to industry publications that cover your industry such as Plant Engineering.

Is there a difference in the data between marketing to engineers for a product versus a service (consulting/training)?

We did not ask what type of solution the engineer was seeking in this research study so, unfortunately, we don’t have a breakdown of data by product versus service. I do think there would be a difference in responses for some questions, such as valued content and why you first choose to interact with sales. We’ve considered making this distinction but found it difficult to do while striving to keep the survey brief. We will re-examine the idea of this for future research.

Missed the live 2023 State of Marketing to Engineers webinar? Watch the webinar on demand. 

To follow along as Wendy Covey and CJ Haight dive into this year’s research findings, download the full report.

Customer testimonials are the little siblings to case studies. They aren’t as in-depth, problem/solution oriented, or focused on demonstrating quantitative results.

However, testimonials offer a number of advantages as marketing content: they are quick hitters with real people behind them. Potential customers can relate to them. They provide legitimate support for your company’s claims. And they’re tremendously versatile.

Satisfied customers who say good things about your company, products, and services are like having extra sales reps on your team. Testimonials typically center around a single theme: why a customer chose to work with your company, what’s special about your product, or a major benefit the customer realized.

You can acquire customer testimonials in a number of ways: they can show up on product review websites. You can solicit them from loyal and satisfied customers. They can filter through your customer support and service departments. However you acquire customer testimonials, make sure your customer agrees you can use them in your marketing efforts, and then treat those testimonials like gold.

Here are nine ways to use customer testimonials:

1. Website customer testimonial page

It’s common to find such a page on almost any company’s website. Be sure to create prominent links to this page and populate it with quotes, photos of your customers, and visible customer logos. If your company offers a wide variety of products and services, you may need to segment the testimonials accordingly or even create separate testimonial pages.

2. In social media

You can publish customer testimonials to one of your social media profiles, and while you’re at it do your customer a favor and link to their website. You could use a particularly powerful testimonial in a graphic header on your profile page. Or stick the testimonial to the top of your feed.

3. Press releases

Most company press releases about product launches include a quote or two from customers. If one of your customer testimonials fits with the message for the press release, paste it right in.

4. Articles and blog posts

Whether you’re writing an article for a media pitch or a post for your company blog, weave in a customer testimonial that’s relevant to the topic. If your blog design allows for it, use a semi-permanent sidebar that displays a number of customer testimonials, much like you would on a website page of customer testimonials.

5. Display ads

Digital or print display ads are excellent places to include a short customer quote. The quote could be a component of the ad or the entirety of the ad itself (along with a call to action, of course).

6. Sales presentations

Offer your sales team a number of slides with customer testimonials to include in their client presentations. Depending on their length, several testimonials could fit on one slide. Or you can create single slides with customer photos and quotes—these can make great transition slides between sections of a presentation.

7. Product packaging

Yes, this is post-sale usage of a customer testimonial, but it’s always a good idea to reinforce to new customers that you have many satisfied customers who have also purchased your products. Print directly on packaging, slip an insert into a box, or display a testimonial or two while a software product downloads and installs.

8. Job listings

It’s a competitive market for good talent. Tip the scales in your favor by using customer testimonials in your recruiting efforts. Job candidates will be more interested in working for a company that has satisfied customers willing to publicly attest to the benefits of your products and company.

9. Videos

Customer testimonials can take the form of short videos. Fancy production values are not required. Your customers can even film themselves talking about the value and benefits they’ve experienced working with your company. Use the videos on your website, in email marketing, and in social media.

Lack of needed parts. Labor shortages. Shipping delays. Global conflict. Multiple factors are contributing to the current supply chain crisis, putting many suppliers and manufacturers in the difficult position of being unable to market and sell certain products and fulfill some orders.

It’s understandable if companies are tempted to pull back on marketing efforts if they can’t manufacture products or meet customer demand, but we would caution against reducing your visibility in the market.

Historical data is quite clear in showing that companies that reduce marketing and advertising during challenging times fall behind competitors and have difficulty catching up when conditions improve. Conversely, companies that continue to advertise often gain market share and emerge from a crisis in a stronger position.

But you can’t simply continue marketing in the same fashion as before. When conditions change, like they have during this supply chain crisis, your marketing must change as well. As Charles Darwin noted, adaptability is the key to survival and success.

Here are marketing tips to help you weather the current situation:

Focus marketing on what you can still fulfill

If you have products not negatively impacted by supply chain woes, this is a good time to take a look into your database and create lists of customers and prospects who make viable prospects for those products.

The point is not to push what you do have on customers who aren’t interested, but instead working your database to find the target audience that might be receptive to what you currently have to sell. To reach this specific audience, you may need to adjust the marketing channels and programs you use, transferring budget from areas that are currently unproductive to those that still offer opportunity. Media partners such as GlobalSpec that have deep insight into your target audiences can help you make decisions about where to focus your dollars.

Take names

The tip above is a short-term solution to sell what you can. But you might have other, important product portfolios where you can’t fulfill orders right now. What you can do is take names. When customers inquire about products not currently available, let them know you will add them to a priority list for when the products are ready. Communicate with these customers often via email. Stay ahead of what they might hear from other sources about the supply chain.

Exhibit honesty and transparency

One thing you definitely don’t want to do is make promises you can’t keep. Instead, demonstrate you are a brand that can be trusted. Be honest and transparent by telling customers the status of the situation, what you’re doing to help alleviate the situation, and when they might expect their orders to be fulfilled. Show empathy for their plight. After all, we’re all in this together.

Focus on services

Chances are pretty good that if customers are trying to order products you don’t have, they might have to find ways to extend the life of what they do have or do more with what they have. This might be a silver-lining opportunity to focus on marketing technical services, consulting, or other services such as repair (if you have access to parts). What might start out as a stop-gap measure could turn into a robust and profitable line of business even when supply chains have been repaired.

Keep your website updated

Customers and prospects might keep checking your website to find out the latest information on product availability. It’s a smart idea to create a custom banner or section that you can update on a regular basis to communicate product availability or other news related to the supply chain situation. This crisis will pass, and you can come out stronger on the other side.

It’s easy to say you must invest your marketing budget on campaigns directed to your target audience. On the other hand, it takes hard work to find those specific buyers most interested in the products and services your company offers.

Consider the task a two-step process: know them, find them.

First, know them

Before you can find your target audience, you have to make sure you know who your audience is. Not just a generic “mechanical engineers who work for large companies” type of knowledge. We’re talking deep insight and understanding of who these people are; their needs, hopes, and fears; their roles in the buying process; their criteria for choosing a vendor.

There are multiple ways to engage in the process of thoroughly defining and understanding your audience:

• Analyze your customer database. This should be your starting point. From your customer database, you can likely find out where your customers are located, what type of companies they work for, their titles and responsibilities, what they buy and how often they buy, and how much they spend. You should be able to build a pretty good profile of your best customers.
• Conduct surveys and interviews. You can survey and interview customers and prospects to reach a deeper level of understanding about their needs, motivations, buying process, and other “human” aspects and influences that affect their decision-making.
• Analyze competitors. Look at who your competitors are selling to. Should those companies be on your target list?
• Monitor social signals. If your company is active on social media, pay attention to who is commenting, sharing, and participating in discussions. These are likely people who have an affinity or passion toward your company and products (or perhaps antipathy toward you, depending on their comments).
• Define who isn’t your audience. This process of elimination is a helpful exercise in understanding who you don’t want to target. This knowledge can help you make faster decisions when looking at a media site’s audience for potential marketing opportunities.
• Create buyer personas. All of the information above can be used to create multiple, detailed buyer personas filled with information about the audience you are trying to target. Don’t make marketing decisions without these in hand.

Second, find them

Armed with insight into exactly who you want to target, now you need to choose programs that will reach that audience and help you connect with them.

Data from media partners can help you. For example, the “State of Marketing to Engineers” research report showed the top channels engineers use when researching a product or service for a business purchase are supplier/vendor sites, online trade publications, industry directory websites, and publication emails/newsletters.

Your website is clearly a place to invest as engineers complete more than half of their buying process online. The other channels listed should receive close consideration for marketing campaigns.

The research report also found that YouTube and LinkedIn are by far engineers preferred social media platforms when seeking information on the latest engineering technologies, industry trends, and products. You might consider beefing up your presence on these platforms and possibly cutting back on others.

Another research insight that might be useful in finding your target audience is that podcasts are on the rise. Seventy-three percent of engineers listen to work-related podcasts throughout their week, a growth of 33 percent over the previous year.

Perhaps the most efficient and productive way to find your target audience is to work with a trusted media partner. GlobalSpec is the place where the world’s top engineers and technical professionals go again and again for the information they need to do their jobs. That makes your job of reaching them easier. We have comprehensive data on our audiences and GlobalSpec Media Solutions offers you great ways to reach your target audience at every point in the buy cycle, including newsletter advertising, display ads, searchable catalogs, and more. Plus, we will customize a plan for you to reflect your specific business objectives. Talk to us today.

The terms integrated marketing and multichannel marketing are sometimes used interchangeably. It’s easy to see why: integrated marketing can include multiple channels and multichannel marketing can be integrated. Think of intersecting Venn diagrams: the two strategies overlap but are not exactly the same.

The key takeaway is that integrated marketing and multichannel marketing create a powerful impact when you use them together. Incorporate both to improve marketing effectiveness.

Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing delivers a unified, consistent message to an audience through a variety of tactics and possibly across multiple channels. When you are exposed to the same marketing message and recognize the look and feel of a company’s marketing content whenever and wherever you interact with the organization, you are experiencing integrated marketing.

For example, you open a marketing email, click on an offer, and end up on a landing page that looks a lot like the email and delivers the same message. You download the white paper or register for the webinar and those also have the same message and look to them. Later you might see a display add or a social media post with the same themes and offer. You click on the ad or read the post. On the back end, the organization is tracking each touch you have with the company. That’s an example of integrated marketing.

Benefits of integrated marketing include:

• A more memorable experience for your audience throughout their buying journey due to a seamless, consistent exposure of your marketing message.
• A stronger brand image created through consistent messaging and visuals across all marketing content.
• Cost effectiveness through the re-use of content and imagery.
• Ability to track and analyze all the components of a campaign.

Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing simply means you are using more than one channel to connect with your audience. A multichannel campaign might be integrated by using the same key messages, visuals, content, and offer across each channel. This would likely be the case if you are targeting the same audience across all channels.

In other cases, you might use different strategies on different channels to target different customer segments. You’re engaged in multichannel but not necessarily integrated marketing. For example, you’re targeting economic buyers with ROI concerns when you publish an executive brief or sponsor an analyst report. But you’re connecting with engineers and technical professionals when you post data sheets and how-to videos. Or you use different channels for different product/geographic markets.

Benefits of multichannel marketing include:

• Ability to target different customer segments or customers at different stages of their buying journey.
• Greater brand awareness through a wider market presence.
• Reaching engineers and other target audience members using their preferred medium. For example, some like to read blog posts, others like to watch videos.

Omnichannel Marketing

You also hear about omnichannel marketing. If multichannel marketing means using multiple channels, does omnichannel marketing mean you use every possible channel?

No. Most experts will say that in omnichannel marketing, channels are integrated to deliver a consistent customer experience across the board, even when customers skip around among channels.

For instance, a prospect might visit your website one day, read a marketing email the next day, and poke around your social media posts another time. Each time a customer interacts with you, through whatever device or channel they happen to be using, they will have a consistent, brand-recognizable, cohesive experience.

That sounds a lot like integrated marketing and multichannel marketing combined. So instead of saying integrated, multichannel marketing, let’s just call it omnichannel marketing.

There’s no need to get caught up on exact definitions. The point is to be a successful industrial marketer, you have to know how and when to create an integrated campaign using multiple channels—because those strategies working together will create the best customer experience and could lead to the best results for you as well.

Account Based Marketing (ABM) has taken on an increasingly important role for industrial marketers to help generate revenue and increase ROI.

ABM puts marketing and sales teams on the same page working together to target best-fit accounts, personalize the buying experience, turn prospects into customers, and strengthen long-term relationships.

Companies seeking high-value customers might find that a targeted ABM strategy serves them better than casting a wide marketing net or in addition to it. Primary ABM tactics companies are using include identifying individual contacts, creating custom content, researching accounts, and measuring results.

Here are six reasons why ABM should be on your marketing radar:

1. Higher Revenue and Performance

As reported in the 2021 ABM Benchmark Study by Demandbase, the average annual contract value for account-based deals was 33 percent higher on average than for non-ABM deals. In addition, 87 percent of account-based marketers say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments, according to a survey conducted by the B2B services marketing firm ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance. 

ABM deals tend to involve more stakeholders at the customer organization, which often leads to higher revenue per order. Purchasing is often a collaborative effort, with influence from engineers, management, operations, purchasing and more. Budget authority resides throughout the organization—not just with senior managers.

2. Fewer Wasted Resources

ABM is not a numbers game in the way that many marketing programs might feel. You’re not blanketing the market with expensive campaigns or wasting your time, energy, and resources on companies that aren’t a good fit.

Instead, with ABM, you use your budget strategically and perform research to identify and target companies that most closely fit your ideal customer profile.

3. Better Efficiency through Sales and Marketing Alignment

ABM requires that sales and marketing departments work together, which can increase efficiency and even team morale. Selling and marketing expertise both are needed to be successful at ABM. The two teams work together to identify accounts, devise targeting and personalization strategies, create customized content, and close deals.

The Demandbase survey reported that 65 percent of B2B companies said that both marketing and sales are equally responsible for the new customer acquisition ABM strategy. Fifty-three percent said marketing, sales, and customer success are equally responsible for their account-based customer expansion strategy.

Sales and marketing alignment helps everyone focus on the same goals, stick to an agreed-upon budget, and understand the specific roles of each internal stakeholder. Customers will benefit from a vendor whose sales and marketing teams are aligned and can deliver a consistent, positive experience.

4. Easier to Demonstrate ROI

When you target specific accounts, your marketing and sales effort is easier to track and the results of your efforts easier to measure. Either you penetrate, gain a foothold, and expand the relationship—or you don’t. In either case, you’ll know what you’ve spent on a specific account.

Common metrics for an ABM effort might be the number of ad views/email clicks/site visits by the target organization, new prospects identified, content distributed, time spent, and wins. Not only is ROI easier to measure, 97 percent of marketers achieved higher ROI with ABM than with any other marketing initiatives, according to Alterra Group (as reported by Marketo).

5. Better Content Engagement

ABM requires you to create personalized and customized content for specific people, organizations, job functions, and responsibilities. When your audience feels you understand their needs and you are speaking directly to them, you have a much greater opportunity to engage and satisfy them.

This doesn’t mean you have to create all-new content for every account you target. You may be able to use a template for popular pieces of content that you customize and personalize based on your knowledge of the target customer.

6. More Entrenched with Customers

An occasionally overlooked benefit of ABM is that once you penetrate an account, you can expand your presence and influence, possibly cross-selling and upselling in other departments. This helps you become more entrenched with your customer and more essential to them, which can create a true sense of partnership as you continue to learn and grow together.

You’ll also have multiple contacts so that if one person leaves the customer organization, you won’t lose your foothold. The same is true for your customer: if someone serving the account in your organization leaves, you will have others that are known to your customer to take their place.

Seventy-three percent of B2B companies have a content marketing strategy, according to “B2B Content Marketing – Budgets, Benchmarks, and Trends,”  a research report produced by the Content Marketing Institute.

Content marketing—a popular and effective marketing strategy—has taken on an even larger role since the beginning of the pandemic, when many in-person events and meetings were cancelled and suppliers and engineers increased their reliance on content to connect and achieve their objectives.

However, despite marketers’ best intentions around content marketing, mistakes happen, mostly due to lack of insight or experience rather than lack of effort. Here are some of the top content marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them. 

Not understanding your audience

Some organizations produce generic, general content that doesn’t take into account the information needs of their audience. This type of content falls flat. Overcome this mistake by conducting the upfront research to understand your audience. Use surveys, interviews, and industry research to identify exactly who you are targeting and what type of content and messaging will be most effective to connect with them.

Creating sales-oriented content

Engineers hate being sold to. Content that tries to sell rather than educate will rarely move the needle with your audience. Sales-oriented content has a place near the end of your customers’ buying process to motivate them to get over the line, but in earlier stages, the focus of content must be educational, informative, and technical. One simple guideline: consider your audience’s needs and not your company’s sales goals to produce more valuable and effective content.

Publishing but not promoting content

The strategy is called content marketing, not content creation. Too many companies publish content—blog posts, articles, web pages, etc.—and mistakenly believe they are engaged in content marketing. Then they wonder why they aren’t gaining traction with their audience.

Publishing content is just the start. You need a marketing plan to promote the content: audience, timing, channels, tracking. Just like any other marketing campaign.

Not creating enough variety

Writing a blog and promoting posts via social media or email is not a broad enough content marketing approach. Some engineers prefer to read, others like to watch videos, some enjoy podcasts, others respond to graphics and diagrams.

Try to create content for different stages of your customers’ buying process and in a variety of formats: longer form white papers, webinars, and articles; comprehensive how-to videos; infographics and drawings; social media posts, discussions, and comments; product comparisons and ROI calculators. The more variety in your content, the greater your opportunity to create a connection with your audience.

Forgetting search engine optimization

Marketing content should be optimized for search engines. Focus on specific keywords for each piece of content. Make sure web pages have keyword-focused titles and description-rich metatags. Create incoming links to content from your social media assets or other external websites. Remember this mantra: always be optimizing.

Leaving out calls-to-action (CTAs)

Every piece of content you produce should include some type of CTA. It could be to download another piece of content, click to read the next article, register for a webinar, sign-up for an exclusive newsletter, or any other call to action that will help keep your audience active and moving along in their buying process.

The other advantage of including CTAs is the reminder that all of your content is interdependent and needs to work together. No content should be an island unto itself.

Not producing evergreen content

Evergreen content retains relevance and continues to drive engagement long after it is first published. Tips, how-to’s, FAQs, and product reviews are examples of content that can serve in an evergreen role. These types of content tend not to be time sensitive and can be optimized for search engines. Not all of your content needs to be evergreen, but a few pieces should have a long shelf life.

Lacking ROI data

Only 36 percent of B2B marketers say their teams have excellent or very good ability to demonstrate content marketing ROI (Content Marketing Institute). To overcome this challenge, you first must define your content marketing objectives, be able to carve out your content marketing costs, and track metrics related to ROI for your organization.

Because content gets published across multiple channels and is accessed by users at different stages in their buying process, having a marketing automation solution to track and measure content performance can be an extremely valuable asset for marketers. There are many low-cost solutions available on the market.

Nine Quick Tips for Stretching Your Marketing Budget

The economy is volatile, supply chains are erratic, and business remains unpredictable. In these conditions, you might be concerned about your marketing budget. It might be stable or it might be under pressure.

No matter what the status of your marketing budget, you want to squeeze every bit of value from what you have. Here are some quick tips for stretching your marketing budget to the limit—without negatively effecting your marketing results.

1. Emphasize What Works

If you’re going to pause weak programs, place more emphasis on what is working well. If email is delivering results, try sending a few more emails. If you’re earning opportunities from your presence on online directories, beef up with additional content or marketing opportunities. If webinars are popular, schedule more of them.

2. Repurpose Content

A great way to stretch marketing dollars is to repurpose existing content. Take that cornerstone white paper and create an infographic, a couple of blog posts, or a webinar. Turn a customer success story into pitch for media coverage. Repurposed content also has the benefit of helping you maintain a consistent message in your content.

3. Use Templates

If you’re creating everything from scratch, stop. Find and use a template for spec sheets, web pages, blog posts, and other content. You can save time and save money as well as ensure a consistent look and feel to your content.

4. Be Choosy with Social Media

If you’re burning time, resources, and budget posting to multiple social media channels, it might be time to scale back. LinkedIn is the social media network that engineers use the most. YouTube is important for video. Everything else takes a back seat. Instead of posting to a bunch of social media accounts, pick the best performing ones and post more to them.

5. More Email

Yes, old-fashioned email is still a great way to connect with the engineering audience. You likely already have a good house list and an email marketing platform. It doesn’t cost much to send extra emails. Don’t annoy your audience, but if you can come up with relevant and useful content, your marketing dollars spent might have a bigger impact.

6. Focus on Retention

If things are really tight, focus your marketing efforts more on customer retention—cross-selling and upselling—than on demand generation. Every marketer knows it costs a lot less to keep a current customer than it does to gain a new one.

7. Earn Media Coverage

A little attention in industry media can go a long way—without having to invest in advertising. Contact editors and establish relationships with them. Pitch ideas for stories that will interest their reading audience. Distribute press releases. Public relations is a bit of a long game, but it doesn’t have to be a budget-intensive activity.

8. Conduct Joint Marketing Programs

Collaborate with a partner in your industry that has complementary products and services to yours and develop a joint marketing program. You will be able to reach a broader audience (your partner’s as well as yours) and will only need to shoulder part of the costs.

9. Ask for More

If you’ve already been acting the savvy marketer and stretching your budget with decent results, why not take the bold step and just ask for more budget? This could work as long as you are able to demonstrate the return you are getting for current expenditures. This is yet another reason to use measurable digital marketing programs and always track performance.

Bonus Tip: Work with Media Partners

Media partners such as GlobalSpec know your target audience well and know how to reach them. We can help you develop an integrated marketing program that makes best use of your budget based on your goals. We’re just a click away if you want to learn more.

At the Maven, we generally write about B2B markets and the engineering audience. But many industrial companies sell to B2C markets as well. One thing both markets have in common is the importance of using content marketing to connect with potential customers.

Consumers rely on content to make purchasing decisions as much as engineers and technical professionals do. Both audience types read blog posts, success stories, and social media content. They also both watch videos to help make purchasing decisions.

Still, there are differences in how you should approach content marketing for B2B vs. B2C audiences. Some of those differences are subtle, while others are significant.

Customer Motivation

B2B customers and B2C customers do not have the same primary motivations when considering a purchase. While both customer audiences are motivated to solve a problem through their purchase, B2B buyers are concerned with achieving value for their purchase and demonstrating ROI. They are drawn to data, facts, and statistics. Customer success stories in the B2B arena should include quantifiable results and ROI.

B2B buyers can also be motivated by the fear of making the wrong decision. They need to be able to trust their vendor. Therefore, familiar brands and respected thought leaders are high on their list of potential vendors.

B2C consumers are certainly brand conscious, although their motivations are more emotional-based than data driven. They want to feel good and feel satisfied by their purchase decision.

It’s not that B2B buyers are data geeks and B2C buyers are fraught with emotions. Data and emotions play a part in purchase decisions for both groups. But for B2B, data and facts are the primary motivator, then emotions. For B2C, emotions likely come first, followed by data.

Content Uses and Channels

The top uses of content in both B2B and B2C marketing are for building brand awareness, building credibility, educating the audience, and generating leads, according to a research study conducted by the analytics firm Parse.ly.

The study also found the most digestible and searchable content was blogs, with 91 percent of survey respondents using that type of content. The next most popular content types for both markets were social media and email newsletters. White papers and webinars, which are content mainstays in B2B markets, are negligible in consumer markets, where display ads and paid sponsorships are more widely used.

Social media content marketing looks different for B2B and B2C markets. LinkedIn is by far the most used and effective social media channel for B2B marketing. Posting articles, asking questions, sponsoring stories, and contributing to discussions are all popular tactics. On the consumer side, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are effective channels for reaching target audiences.

Purchase Journey

The B2B purchase journey can be several months long and involve multiple decision makers and influencers. Companies must craft content for different stages of the B2B buying cycle. For example: educational articles, white papers, and blog posts for the needs awareness and research phases; data sheets, how-to’s, case studies, and ROI calculators for later phases. Marketers must send their content out to prospects in timed waves.

On the consumer side, the purchase decision is typically made more quickly. The decision can be made with careful consideration and comparison, but at other times it is made impulsively. B2C content reflects this with more calls to action, special offers, and time-limited discounts.

If your company sells to both B2B and B2C markets, content marketing must be a top priority. Note the similarities and differences between your two audiences and craft your content marketing plan accordingly.