How can digital marketing help an industrial business?

Could your industrial business benefit from digital marketing?

Digital marketing can help an industrial business in a number of ways, from attracting new customers to grow your business to providing a better customer experience and improved customer loyalty.   

We have listed some of the ways a well thought out digital marketing strategy can be used to develop a competitive advantage below:

• • A well-presented creative campaign will raise your brand awareness, helping you to put yourself in a different league to your competitors.  You can do this by working with an industrial marketing expert that has experience of developing a strong proposition, visual identity and carefully crafted sales copy that makes it clear why your customers buy from you and what they are missing.
  • A carefully crafted digital marketing strategy will include delivering your brand promise and USPs to all website visitors, and into the inboxes and smartphones of your prospects. 
  • A consistently executed email marketing and LinkedIn outreach campaign will also ensure customer loyalty and upsell and cross selling opportunities. 
  • If you include search engine marketing in your digital marketing strategy it will help your prospects to find your industrial business website instead of your competitors’. 
  • If you include a remarketing and retargeting strategy you will also be able to display your messages directly to your prospects and website visitors long after they have left your website. Helping you to find and close more new customers. 
  • Your digital strategy should also consider your existing and lapsed customers by structuring information funnels and silos to enhance your customer journey eg by providing useful information to existing customers who need technical information such as your plant list, health and safety documentation, datasheets, or ISO certificates. 
  • Like many B2B sectors your customers and key persons of influence in their organisation are likely to have different job roles and the job role specific information you offer to your customers will have a direct impact on your customers understanding of your brand promise. You might want to consider animated graphics, face to camera videos, webinar recordings or a drone fly-through. 

What are the advantages of an industrial marketing agency? 

• Experience, knowledge, understanding the language, the processes and the technical side to ensure that the information is pitched at the right level. 
• They should hit the ground running, with minimal input or onboarding and will be able to bring strategies to the table that are already proven in the sector. 
• Choose a well-established, straight-talking agency that will de-mystify the industrial marketing process.  Better still choose an award-winning Industrial Marketing Agency. 

What is the difference between industrial marketing agency and a regular marketing agency? 

• A regular marketing agency will likely be functionally led. They will likely have a strong graphics team that have worked on B2C and e-commerce websites and retail campaigns. They will likely be good at Facebook social media marketing.  
• An industrial marketing agency will have a different approach that is functionally agnostic. It will establish the gap between the situation now and the growth goals. It will then develop the proposition, establish the target job roles, then the messaging and finally the methods of delivering those messages. They are likely to be good at integrating industrial content creation, LinkedIn, telemarketing, email marketing, direct response sales copy writing, CRM systems, marketing automation and targeted mail. 
• An industrial marketing agency will understand the supply chain, the industrial job roles, the R&D and purchasing processes, the sampling and quality control considerations and the right tone of voice when information is pitched to engineers and managers with budgetary responsibility as well as Board-Level Directors.  
• A generic marketing agency will not have this deep understanding of routes to market, the importance of smooth material flows, programme management and packages of work, contract manufacture, procurement best practices and tiered supply chains, let alone the risks involved in scope creep in the construction, energy and aerospace sectors. 
• A good industrial marketing agency will have technical copy writing skills, a B2B culture and experience in the industrial sector.  They will have visited many processing plants, manufacturing facilities, and construction sites.  
• An industrial marketing agency will pick things up quickly, will already have sector specific insights into the buyer’s journey and will understand the language. They will know their ISOs from their IATF, the role of trade bodies, the macro environment, the pros and cons of off shoring and re-shoring. The difference between a tool and tooling, plasma and laser, a plc and PLCs, LEAN and KAIZEN, a process and production engineer.  Or at least they should! 

How much does an industrial marketing agency cost?

• The cost typically depends on the size of industrial agency, the size of the company and the scope of work.   
• The average marketing budget for an established business in the UK is around 6%-12% of annual revenue.  For start-up companies it is between 12% and 20% Source: Experian 
• Large industrial conglomerates will have marketing budgets running into many millions of pounds and will happily spend 6 to 7 figures with a multitude of specialist agencies including PR agencies, branding agencies, SEO agencies, web development companies, printing companies, design houses, exhibition companies, email marketing agencies.  
• The average cost per hour for a UK marketing agency is between £85 and £100/hour and is generally higher in the southeast and London. You will find agencies charging between £850 and £1000 for 10 hours of work.  Whilst agency teams aren’t lowest cost, they are efficient and are usually highly skilled at their specialisms and will always out-perform a low cost in-house hire with a few years’ experience.  
• Many large agencies won’t work on projects smaller than £50k. Source: The Wow Company 
• Smaller agencies working with established SMEs, may work on a project-by-project basis or on a monthly fee basis.  
  • A price for a standard 10-page website project will usually fall between £2000 to £4000.  
  • PR campaigns are usually charged on a monthly fee basis typically between £1000 and £3000 a month.   
  • Most decent SEO campaigns will typically cost anything from £1000/month to £3000/month depending on the number of keywords, the amount of content to be created and whether off-site SEO is included in the plan. 
  • Telemarketing campaigns will cost between £1000 and £5000 a month. 
  • Email marketing campaigns will typically be charged at £1000 to £3000/month. 

• Smaller agencies are likely to charge less but will not possess the wide range of skills required to offer a full service at a high level. 
• Some agencies, like Stratique, offer grow together packages which essentially gives you both outbound and digital support on the basis that the plan moves upwards, the more customers are won.  Stratique has plans from £595/month to £3995/month and everything in-between. 
  • A basic LinkedIn lead generation service starts at £595/m.   
  • An effective telemarketing campaign will typically start between £1495 and £1995/month  
  • SEO packages will typically range between £795/m and £1495/month 

• Some agencies (like Stratique) will offer a virtual marketing department for around £2500 – £5000/month where our team become your team. 
• Some industrial agencies will also offer a good discount in exchange for a commission on sales, typically, between 5% and 15% of recurring sales revenues generated, depending on the sales value, volumes and margins involved.