When “marketing” becomes an action verb...

Industrial leaders know manufacturing when they see it. It’s a process in motion, something you can measure, understand and improve. Manufacturing is an action verb, it is what your company was founded to do.  

Then there’s marketing.

For so many small to mid-size manufacturers, marketing is not an action verb. Marketing doesn’t at all perform or look like your manufacturing operations. Its pieces are not engineered in three-dimensional space, you can’t get your hands on it to make it work right, to maybe replace the old manual hand wheel with a five-axes CNC package.

That’s not to say marketing is entirely elusive. “Marketing” is a title on at least one business card in the company. In fact, you may have several folks with product marketing in their titles. And you know exactly where to find them. Marketing is down the hall across from sales. You know where marketing is. You just don’t know where it’s going.

For many manufacturers, marketing is not at all like sales.

Sales is an action verb. Marketing is too often a noun. Your sales manager reminds you of this all the time and every once in a while, you check it out. You walk down the hall, open the door to the sales office and the sales people are out selling. But every time you go down the hall into the “marcom” office what do you see? You see a lot of big ideas swirling around, all seemingly going nowhere.

When marketing and branding become action verbs, they will perform in ways sales cannot − by building new sales opportunities and building new market share.

When marketing and branding becomes action verbs, knowledge management and content development will also become action verbs. So will web marketing, social media, event marketing, editor relations and even advertising.

When marketing and branding bring all of these disciplines together, you can see what an engineered marketing communication program looks like. You can put your hands on it, tweak the controls and improve on it.

When your marketing and branding become action verbs, your business will thrive.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com

Selling to an engineer? Use video…

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Those who have studied the engineering mind can tell you: If you want to sell to an engineer, then you need to understand the engineer’s communication cycle – or rather, buying cycle.

In 2004, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published a 179-page report called Communication Patterns of Engineers. Juxtapose the findings of this text and others since with the advancement of today’s visual media, and you are struck by a profound revelation:

Showing by way of video is not only better than traditional tell-and-sell. Video is the essential way to show, educate and sell to a new generation of specifying engineers.

The text published by IEEE documented the now often mentioned phenomena of “heads-up” and “heads- down” learning among engineers, and the steps that occur within an engineer’s well-defined problem solving process. When engineers are in a heads-up mode, they are essentially conversing with colleagues, consultants, clients and vendors. When engineers are in a heads-down mode, they are studying a range of information related to products, codes, newsletters and available research.

We are talking about a process that now begs for the kind of visual information only video and video animation can provide. Most every step of the problem-solving process can be enhanced by video-based information delivery.  This is not traditional product line-card selling, but is a truly consultative and educational approach, because when videos address engineers’ problems within their three dimensional frames of reference in ways they can see, your communications are no longer limited to the two dimensional confines of tell-and-sell.

The IEEE text referenced above conveys five categories of tasks ranging in complexity and information-seeking patterns. These are: Initial Sources, Early Sources, Sources for Details, and Final Sources. More specifically, the types of information needed by the process can range across many points of entry, including: Previous Designs, Design Rationales, Similar Product Information, Known Problems in Products, Component Specifications, Standards and Norms, Working Procedures, Production Line Characteristics, Information on New Materials and Components, Literature and Research Results, Relevant Persons, and Project Documentation.

For any of these buying cycle steps, you can see the power and potential of video to most effectively convey the information engineers are looking for.

If you’d like to “see” such information sharing, including new product teaser videos, viral videos, new product introduction videos, how-to instructional videos, customer testimonial videos and more, check out some of the video based communications our firm has produced for Siemens to support their growth in the machine tool and motion control marketplace:

Videos for Siemens

jb