Inbound Marketing - Mechanical & Industrial Engineers and Construction & Architecture Industry

[PruvenMarketing]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently focusing in on the Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and Construction & Architecture industries. From what I have found their largest pain points are:

• Shortening the sales cycle (most important)
• Generating more wuality leads and prospects
• Content creation and marketing
• Closing more leads
• Integrating sales and marketing team efforts
• Increasing customer engagement
• Improving brand awreness
• Lowering the cost of a sale

Are there any tips and tricks you have in order to provide more value for these types of clients. It's been a struggle to bring clients on board. These industries are 10 years behind in terms of marketing and sales strategies.

How do others bring in new business, email, prospect, and engage with these type of busnesses?

Thank you,

Jonathan

[norhalma]

Hi Jonathan,

Our company provides construction accounting and bookkeeping services to contractors. We find that positioning our chief accountant as the expert in this field catering to small construction business owners (10 employees or less, with a specific maximum annual revenue) has made a powerful impact on getting qualified leads. We have built a great relationship with our subscribers and clients through insightful and engaging emails.

Handling our websites and online marketing for almost five years now, I have to believe that the contractors' businesses will improve after reading what we put out there and that they'll find it valuable regardless if they hire our services or not. I frequent contractor forums and sites to gain more information and keep myself up to date on their pain points, what concerns them at present, or any related discussions that I can include in our next blog post or email.

I appreciate your topic and will follow along with this thread. Thank you for asking this question. Have a great day!

Warm regards,

Norhalma

[Nynke_HM]

Hi @PruvenMarketing ,

Let's start by creating some structure in the 8 points you're referring to. It seems you have some marketing issues: 

• Generating more quality leads and prospects
• Content creation and marketing
• Improving brand awreness

some sales issues:

• Shortening the sales cycle (most important)
• Closing more leads
• Lowering the cost of a sale

a customer success issues:

• Increasing customer engagement

and a internal process issue: 

• Integrating sales and marketing team efforts

All of the items above a strongly related to each other. Better content improves brand awareness and will attract better suited leads. If leads are a better fit in the first place,  the sales cycle will shorten which helps to reduce time and effort spend on non-fit leads. Then those better fit leads will become better suited clients which can lead to more engaged customers. All this is only possible when the teams work toghether better!

That's why I would advise you to setup a meeting with the team leads and a c-level contributor. Show them the flywheel, explain the inbound strategy and let them fill out their parts. What force do they add to the flywheel and what friction are they causing? This is not about their level of experience with inbound or tactics, this is about how they experience their day-to-day work. What's hard and what's an easy task? What's frustrating and what's a delight to do?

When it's clear what's causing force and friction, you can start working on all parts of the flywheel. Start small. For example: make sure sales shares the most-heard questions during the sales process with marketing, so they can adapt the content they create. Let the support/customer success team tell sales what customer experience as frustrating during the sales process and make small adjustments in their working process. Keep it simple! 

Last but not least: don't tell these people what to do or how to do it, only ask them questions about why and how they are doing what they do right now. They have all the knowledge in their heads, it's your job to get it on paper and guide them to the best performing team their industry has ever seen. 

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

Nynke

[mluke]

Jonathan, 

I work for a company that provides software for small to mid-sized manufacturers, so I'm very familiar with the struggle of positioning to this market. Good news: Because it's behind, you don't have to be on the cutting edge of marketing to get noticed. Create content that is of value to your customer, position yourself as their guide through the journey, not someone trying to sell them something they don't need, and the rest will fall into place. 

I think the common pitfall is that we try to affect change in everything at once, in my experience, it's better to try to impact just one thing, and understand how that impact ripples into the other areas you're trying to affect. 

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @PruvenMarketing,

I want to tag in a few users who may have some advice on this matter. 

@Bryantworks, @Josh, @Nynke_HM do you have any suggestions for @PruvenMarketing?

Thank you,

Jenny

[Josh]

Hi @PruvenMarketing,

You're right in their struggles, but that is also very generalized. It's best to use specific examples so they can see themselves in those same scenarios. These industries are behind the times for a reason...they struggle with change. You have to be very convincing and take the time to educate them so that they understand the need for change, how it will happen, and how you can help them (if they want help).

Josh