Joe Sullivan’s Post

Content creation is a waste of time... ...if the right people never see it. Making great content is hard work. Not only does it require deep expertise from your people, but also someone who can extract all that knowledge and package it up in a way that will resonate with the individuals in your audience that you need to reach and influence. Very few companies make it that far. And those who DO usually miss the second half of the job: Proactive distribution of that content at scale. As you look at the drawing here, which side (left or right) do you think will have more impact on your business? I'll take the right side any day. Volume and reach both matter with content marketing. But your return on effort will be FAR stronger if you put as much energy into your distribution strategy as you do your creation strategy. #industrialmarketing #b2bmarketing #contentstrategy

I have a question for B2B sales leaders: How different would these two sales calls feel for you and for the team working under your lead?... 👉 SALES CALL A: You cold call a prospect from a Zoominfo list and he answers. You quickly introduce yourself, tell him who you work for, state a problem he may have because of his job role at his type of company and introduce your solution. Thankfully, you're able to verbalize all of that before he hangs up. 👉 SALES CALL B: A prospect calls YOU and reveals that he's been been closely following your business for the past year. Now he's in market for a new solution and you're the first one he called. He says he and his team love the content your company publishes to educate around your product category. "We see you everywhere", he tells you. They all read your newsletter (because it's helpful). They all watch the one-minute video snippets of your SMEs educating about your product category (because even though those video snippets are ads, they're helpful). They all attend your webinars (because instead of product pitches, they receive advice that's... helpful). I know I sound dramatic here (that's what we do on LinkedIn, right?!), but I field calls that sound like the latter EVERY single week. Often multiple times. And the contrast in tone (and more importantly, the outcomes) of those two types of conversations is astounding. So what's difference maker here? It's marketing. I'm NOT talking about blasting bottom-of-funnel-we're-the-best-buy-now messaging at thousands of people day after day and week after week. Instead, I'm talking about helpful, informative, highly targeted, consistently published messaging and content that's delivered at scale. All of this information stems from the things that matter most to the buying process influencers from the companies you need to reach and influence. Marketing's job is to precondition your audience for effective sales calls. Marketing, done right, is sales' best friend. Because when marketing is done right, sales gets to replace 50% or 75% or 95% the first type of sales call with the second type of sales call. Collin Stewart recently invited me to be a guest on the Predictable Revenue™ Inc. podcast and we went deep on this topic. This short clip is a just snippet from an episode where we packed a lot in. You can find a link to the full conversation in the comments. Thanks for giving me the spotlight, Collin! #industrialmarketing #b2bsales #b2bmarketing #marketingstrategy

I often use these 4 images in advisory conversations with CEOs, Presidents and Owners of B2B manufacturing organizations. These photos represent the ways in which most manufacturers have approached new sales development over the past decade. But as someone who has advised well over 200 B2B manufacturing leaders, here's my warning: For most of these companies, what got them where they are today WON'T get them where they want to go in the years ahead. Here's why... 👉 IMAGE A: Relationships, referrals & repeat business: 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day. And as they walk out the door, so go the relationships we all had with them inside the walls our of our best customers' organizations. Meanwhile, the younger generations (who grew up with iPhones in their pockets) are acquiring more buying authority. They collect and consume information differently. And they buy differently. 👉 IMAGE B: Trade shows: I'm NOT anti-trade show. But I AM anti-trade show when a manufacturer spends $100K on a 3-day event, only to invest $20K into earning attention and trust with their prospective future customers over the remaining 362 days of the year. Though nothing replaces being in a room with a human being, we all have a massive opportunity in front of us to humanize our brands, showcase our products and demonstrate our value props 24/7/365. It's more possible than ever before to tell your story to your audience at scale, at the right frequency and in the places where they already consume information. All of this CANNOT be a 3-day per year effort. 👉 IMAGE C: Prospecting: 60-70% of the B2B buying process happens before a sales call. And it's not just the younger generations who are buying differently. It's almost all of us. The sheer availability of information at our fingertips today (compared to a decade ago) means we'd be foolish NOT to do the research before we talk to a salesperson. 👉 IMAGE D: Google: I'm often frustrated to see the words "Google" or "SEO" used as a synonyms for "digital marketing". Take a moment to answer this question: "When do YOU go to Google in a business setting?". When your current vendor drops the ball? When your equipment is reaching end of life? When you're developing a new product? When you're expanding your facility? These triggers only come about so often (maybe no more than once a year in many cases!). The same is true for prospects and customers. So if 99% of our audience isn't going to Google this week or this month, why is Google our default digital marketing channel? B2B manufacturing organizations today are at a fork in the road. Some will keep doing what they've been doing (represented by the 4 images above). But the winners will be those who: 1. Accept that the buying landscape has changed 2. Reengineer their go-to-market strategies to align with it If you're ready to make this transformation, send me a message. #industrialmarketing #b2bmarketing #b2bsales #manufacturing

After one whole year in the making, we're SUPER excited to finally unveil Industrial Marketing Collective. Here's the scoop... For years we've heard first hand from one industrial marketer after another that they often feel isolated in their job roles. B2B manufacturers tend to be sales-driven organizations with small marketing teams (if there's a marketing team at all!). It's a tough job. And often, there's no one to lean on for advice or ideas. So... In 2020, bit by bit, we started building a community that brings together manufacturing professionals with "marketing" in their respective jobs titles. We've been hosting live events for this group twice per month for more than three years, and alongside those events we've been facilitating an active forum for industrial marketers on Slack. But we weren't stopping there! Last week, we officially launched Industrial Marketing Collective – a true digital community platform to pull it all together. And we've layered a heck of a lot more on top of everything we've already been doing. Here's what's included at no cost for everyone who registers: ✅ Industrial Marketing Live Our twice/month live event series where 50-100 manufacturing marketers show up regularly ✅ Slack Group A highly engaged forum of 200+ manufacturing marketing professionals who are regularly facilitating discussions and collaborating with each other to solve marketing challenges, strategize and flesh out ideas ✅ Weekly Email Digest A weekly email roundup of discussions and other activity from inside this community We've also created a Pro membership (at $99/month or $999/year, starting with a free seven-day trial) that opens up access to the following: ✅ Comprehensive Training Course Over 10 hours of meticulously constructed video training content (57 videos across 11 lessons), organized into a course titled "Building and Scaling a Revenue-Focused Industrial Marketing Program" ✅ Office Hours Weekly ask-me-anything sessions with members of our industrial marketing team ✅ Tools & Templates The exact set of templates, playbooks, calculators and tools we use for our manufacturing clients ✅ Mini Lessons & Expert Advice An ever-expanding library of tactically-driven content, focused on topics that include positioning and messaging, creating video content, developing case studies, managing ad campaigns in LinkedIn, Facebook and Google, measuring and reporting and lots more If you’re a B2B marketer in manufacturing, this community was made for YOU. Consider getting in there to at least see what we're doing. Or if someone else inside your company is the one responsible for marketing, I encourage you to pass this along! Find a link to the website in the comments. You can request access there. #industrialmarketing #manufacturing

Just shy of four years ago, I made the decision to launch a podcast. And since that day, for 200 consecutive weeks without missing a single Tuesday morning, I've published interviews with manufacturing leaders (and professionals influencing manufacturing leaders) about the things that matter most to them. In this milestone episode, I've compiled sound bites from 21 of those 200 episodes (and referenced many others as well). I've organized what I've heard and summarized what I've learned around seven central themes. They are: 1. Supply chain 2. Labor 3. The next generation 4. Automation 5. Digitization and industry 4.0 6. Sustainability 7. Leadership I wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you who have been loyal fans and supporters of this show as it's grown from obscurity to well over 1000 weekly listeners. These first 200 episodes have been an incredibly rewarding body of work to have produced. And I have no intention of stopping anytime soon! In the comments, you'll find a link to the episode, titled "7 Central Themes from 200 Episodes of The Manufacturing Executive", along with the leaders I've referenced (or whose sound bites are sampled). #manufacturing #leadership

"People don't go to LinkedIn to buy CapEx equipment, so why would we run LinkedIn ads?" "Our manufacturing audience isn't on Facebook." "Influencer marketing? Isn't that for B2C?" These comments (that I hear all the time) have one thing in common: Business leaders dismissing a platform, channel, strategy or tactic because it doesn't SOUND right. So what do they do instead? 💰 Keep spamming "leads" from Zoominfo who have no buying intent 💰 Keep shipping equipment the size of my house to trade shows that produce a handful of business cards 💰 Keep running print ads in trade journals that collect dust on coffee tables It's time to change direction. Your prospects are out there in the digital space consuming information every day and you have tools at your fingertips that let you: 👉 Target them by job title, company, geography, industry group membership, interests, etc 👉 Deliver messaging that speaks directly to the issues they have right now and goals they're trying to achieve right now 👉 Establish awareness for your brand and earn their trust long before they even experience one of those issues or realize one of those goals matters to them 👉 Change their perspective entirely about how something can or should be done 👉 Give your sales team leads that are ready to close because all of the above have already happened! The B2B buying process has completely changed over the past decade. Let's stop resisting it and get smarter about how we go to market. #industrialmarketing #b2bsales #demandgeneration

"If I had a runny nose and didn't know what a tissue was, what would I search for?" I just wrapped up a podcast recording this afternoon with Curt Anderson that'll go live in a few weeks and I LOVED that quote. Curt's point: Your customers care about the problems they're trying to solve and the things they're trying to achieve. So instead of using your marketing communications as an information dump about your product's features and benefits, craft your messaging in the context of what matters to THEM: ⚙️ How can you help them reduce downtime? ⚙️ Or optimize throughput? ⚙️ Or improve safety? ⚙️ Or reduce defects? ⚙️ (Or stop their runny nose?) Bravo, Curt. Can't wait until your episode goes live! #industrialmarketing #contentstrategy #marketingstrategy

There's nothing worst than making a big technology investment, just to learn you're not equipped to deploy it. From the many conversations I've had with leaders in the robotics space, this is one of the fears that seems to hold back manufacturers from getting started with automation. What if the robot crashes? What if the system gets stuck? Once my integrator walks out the door, will my people have the skills and documentation to run it? In episode of The Manufacturing Executive Podcast, Malachi Greb, Founder and CEO of Elite Automation , talks about what you need to look for in an integrator so that you'll hit the ground running – with the support your need and without the in-house expert robotics expert that frankly, most manufacturers simply don't have. Find a link to the full conversation in the comments. #automation #robotics #manufacturing

"We can't list pricing on our website. Our products are custom-engineered and cost $100K+." 💰 💰 💰 I'll challenge you on that... No matter what you sell – whether it's a commodity or a big ticket, custom, complex solution, your prospects STILL care about the price. Price sensitivity will vary – I get it. But they still care. So here are some ways to talk about pricing without physically listing $159,999.99. 1. Give a range: If your product usually costs between $50K and $150K, set those expectations. You'll weed out price shoppers who will just waste your sales team's time. And you'll further qualify those who can actually afford your solution. 2. Explain the differences between the $50K and $150 version: Your answers to pricing questions probably often start with "Well, it depends." So explain what changes as your buyer spends more. 3. Compare to the alternative: How's your solution different from what your prospect is used to? When will he or she see a positive ROI? What's the total cost of ownership (TCO)? Maybe they'll pay 50% more for your product now, but it'll last 10 years longer than your competitor's. Let's stop beating around the bush and make it easy for our buyers to buy. Want to see how we do it at our agency? Find a link to our "Process & Pricing" page in the comments. #manufacturing #industrialmarketing #pricing

Reality check for today's business owners, CEOs, sales professionals and marketers: People buy on THEIR terms and timelines. Not ours. We can't control the buyer's journey. But we CAN help them through it. Meet your audience where they are. Be their best resource. Engender confidence in your expertise. And trust that if you do all of this better than your competition, they'll come to you when they're ready. #industrialmarketing #inboundmarketing #b2bsales