I’m not digging deep into the subject of industrial branding, except to say there is a ton of material on the web about industrial branding. Go ahead and type “industrial branding strategy” into Google.
Knock yourself out.
One of the better discussions about industrial branding is from friend and fellow industrial marketer, Kerry O’Malley in Texas. Kerry’s tells us an industrial brand “must come to life”. Kelly provides a compiling argument and an excellent example on her blog, The Key to a Great Industrial Brand Strategy?
My blog post from several years ago, Your industrial brand? WHY?, illustrates Simon Sinek’s approach to branding. Sinek’s approach has terrific value for the industrial marketer seeking to elevate his brand above the typical “best quality”, “best service”, “best prices”, etc..
I know and understand industrial branding well and have participated in many industrial branding projects with my friend & branding expert, Greg Miller at Maxwell+Miller. You can see some of their excellent work on their website.
The point is, everyone has a little different take on the best way to improve an industrial brand. Most industrial marketers realize it is time to improve their brand because of the web’s amazing transparency. If their competitor is lookin’ good on the web, they must keep up.
No matter how you approach industrial branding, managing your online brand and all the content needed to get that message across has become easier with the explosive growth of marketing automation. After all, market research tells us industrial marketing budgets are shifting and more resources are allocated to the web. Marketing automation connects the dots of your online branding efforts. In one digital dashboard, you can quickly see what is working and what is not and make critical adjustments on the fly
Flying by the seat of our pants has been the traditional way to manage your industrial brand. Now, in real time, you can see what brand message resonates & which one falls flat.
We recently created an e-book for industrial customer and promoted it using an e-mail blast from a “cleansed” database and also promoted the e-book within 25 LinkedIn industry groups with a market reach of over half million. Our group also promoted the branded content via twitter. We met our goals, but nothing to write the home office about.
We then repurposed the same e-book and changed the title, the graphics and the keyword focus, but remained consistent with the customer’s brand theme. Our customers enjoyed a 500% increase in customer conversions. That is, contacts that filled out a form with their name and e-mail address. This all happened in the span of 6 weeks.
I wrote a blog post in 2013 about the Indium Corporation using the web to promote their brand theme. Indium Corporation develops and manufactures materials used primarily in the electronics assembly industry. Clearly, their primary audience is the engineering group. At the time I wrote the blog post Indium was promoting the brand theme, “From One Engineer to Another”?
There is no doubt, Indium’s brand message would not have been possible had it not been for the web. Search, mobile, social, blogs, e-mail, etc. makes it possible to deliver Indium’s brand message, “From One Engineer to Another”
Let’s be clear, managing your industrial brand using content is crazy, hard work and it takes a lot of it.
Managing all that content would not be possible without the robust capabilities of marketing automation that connects all your online (and offline) marketing assets.
I would only ask any industrial marketer this; In the past, was it possible to deploy branded materials to a half million, industry-related recipients, with one click? Was it ever possible to measure uniquely different messages to determine which message resonated…in the span of weeks?
If you are thinking about reworking your industrial marketing strategy, including your industrial brand, great.
But, don’t forget the most efficient way to create top-of-mind, brand awareness is by leveraging the web and using the robust capabilities of marketing automation software.
Need more information, reviews etc., on marketing automation for industrial? Check out an earlier blog post: Which Marketing Automation is Best for Industrial Marketing
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