Why is marketing for manufacturers so undervalued — and what can industrial marketers do about it? According to the 2018 CMO survey, a survey that assimilated information from almost 3,000 marketing executives in various industries throughout the U.S., marketing spending across all industries averages 11 percent of total company budgets. This average accounts for 6.9… Read more »

Customer engagement online is changing. Content is becoming highly interactive and is distributed in ways that allow people to access it from wherever they are via their laptops or other portable devices such as smartphones. Industrial brands can’t ignore this shift toward greater interactivity across numerous kinds of devices; they have to adjust to these… Read more »

One of the questions industrial marketers often have to grapple with is: How is industrial marketing different from consumer marketing? Does it really make that much of a difference? The answer is “Yes.” The differences between industrial marketing and consumer marketing are subtle but significant. Consumer marketing focuses on individuals using demographic research and other… Read more »

Why set marketing goals? Well, let’s start by making this personal. What’s the last goal you set in your life? Maybe it was to lose five pounds before summer so you could fit into last year’s bathing suit. Or maybe it was to start calling your mom every Sunday so she stops cranking about how you… Read more »

Say you have a particularly complex B2B web development project. How will you approach it? This is an important question to ask because any B2B website really needs to be done right. B2B websites consistently play pivotal roles in purchasing and decision-making processes. Current and potential customers are constantly being funneled to websites through channels such as social media,… Read more »

Let’s admit it. Most people hate writing proposals. To avoid the hard work of creating this all-important deliverable, we fall into the trap of cutting and pasting from previous documents, dumping in pages of data in an attempt to overwhelm the prospect, talking about ourselves and what we know best, or selling an easy deal… Read more »

We could all learn a thing or two about negotiation from Princess Leia. And JFK, too. Actress Carrie Fisher once wisely remarked: “Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.” Negotiating with vendors is something of an art form, something of a science. And indeed, it’s almost always a testing… Read more »

A strong industrial website is important for setting the tone with your customers, regardless of your industry vertical. Long gone are the days when you could get by with a sub-par industrial website. Everything from the look of the site to the messaging to — most importantly — the site’s ability to convert your visitors into prospects… Read more »