If the mind of an industrial buyer was a room, I’d guess it would be organised, Spartan and there’d be a big checklist fixed on the wall with solid criteria outlined. These people don’t buy on emotions, whims or trends. And if you sell equipment or services to them, your sales and marketing material must reflect that.
When you develop content for hard-nosed engineering buyers, facts,
figures and rationale work like no other sector. These are buyers driven by common sense and often feel they are ‘marketing-proof’. Here’s a few tips on developing content to help you sell to engineering and industrial buyers in processing and manufacturing.
Things to consider when selling to engineers and buyers in
processing and engineering
- Audience and needs –if you sell a specific piece of machinery that delivers a real process or organisational benefit or advantage, you need to clearly define and extrapolate on that benefit. For example, an automatic production line device may result in fewer staff required on the line. This means these workers can be redeployed somewhere else and add value in another part of the facility. Identify the top three needs and fully explore the absolute benefits/knock-on benefits right across the organisation. Use your own experience and knowledge of the typical buyer scenarios to flesh out genuine sales arguments in direct sales letters, brochures or indeed any of the content marketing tools outline below.
- Language – a target audience that is famously direct, your language needs to be too. Keep your sentences short and ensure your main selling points are clear to see and laid out in plain language. You can engage your audience without being boring. Your prospective customers have a problem that you can fix. Think in these terms as you develop sales and marketing materials.
And the content marketing tools you can use…
- You can use blogs to address very specific product advantages and try and build up a mailing list of relevant buyers. If you work in a small market like Ireland, there may be a target market of 400 or less and you may know many of them personally already. Blogs can help you engage with them on a regular basis and ensure your brand stays on their radar.
- Case studies also work well for complex engineering products or services. Telling a prospect about how you solved a problem similar to theirs, adds enormous credibility and accessibility to your offering.
- Newsletters with genuine industry news and insights can also play a role in gaining the complete trust of your prospects.
- How-to-guides – it seems like every week there’s more red tape, QA, H&S standards and protocol required for manufacturers and processors of all sizes. Some are absolutely required, some are perceived as over-the-top and both types can enforce major organisational change on a factory or facility. It’s up to you to thoroughly understand the consequences of any new legislation and identify if your product or service can play a role for your target audience. How-to-guides are a good option which show your ability to advise on specific situations or problems your audience are having.
If you sell machinery, equipment or services to production managers, engineering buyers or anyone in industrial processing, you can use content marketing to give you an edge on the competition. Have a think about some of the options outlined above and if you’d like a bit more insight on how to get into the mind of an engineering buyer using content marketing…get in touch.