A Guide for the Industrial Sector
As we approach the end of FY24, it's time to start strategizing for the next. For companies in and related to the industrial sector, an effective marketing plan is essential for staying competitive and driving growth.
At Fortissimo Marketing, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities in this sector.
In case you need some inspiration on how to plan out your marketing activities for the next financial year, here’s an overview of our 5D Framework for Industrial Marketing Success.
1. Define
In this step, we start with the basics. Don’t gloss over this, it forms the foundation for everything to come!
Business Goals
First things first: you need to have your high-level business goals mapped out. Your marketing activities filter down from your over-arching business and revenue goals, so if you don’t have them set yet, make sure you get onto that, first!
Area of Focus
Most industrial companies have multiple products and services that they offer, however for the purpose of marketing effectiveness, it’s best to select one or two areas that you’d like to focus on.
True to the analogy of “jack of all trades, master of none”, having a more specific approach enables you to become really focused with your marketing message, which makes your marketing efforts much more effective in attracting prospective clients.
Client Lifetime Value
Now that you’ve selected your key area(s) of focus, calculate how much a client who buys this, is worth to your business over the course of their ‘lifetime’ with you.
Do they only ever buy once, or do they purchase periodically? And for how long?
Calculation: Multiply the value of 1 sale by the approximate number of times they buy = Client Lifetime Value
This information is critical to understand and will help you make decisions on how much you can spend to acquire a new client.
2. Discover
In this step, you start diving a little deeper to understand exactly whom you’re selling to, and where you sit in your respective market.
Target Market & Ideal Client
Knowing your target market and ideal client is very important. Write out a list of attributes that make up the perfect prospect for the area of focus you decided to work with in Step 1.
Include information such as age, gender, geographic location, job title, and go into as much detail with this, as you can.
A few more prompts:
What is important to this person?
What are their pain points?
How does your product or service address these pain points?
If you currently have ‘Ideal Clients’, what are their characteristics? What do they say about how you help them? Are there particular words or phrases that they use?
It’s really important to fully understand who your ideal client is and what's important to them, so when you’re looking to create marketing content later on, you can visualise that particular person, which will help your prospects feel understood.
Once a prospective client feels that you understand them, they begin to trust you. This trust will eventually lead to them making the decision to buy from you, when they’re ready.
Competitor Analysis
While it’s necessary to know who your competitors are and what they’re doing, our take on this is that you want to be aware but you don’t want to obsess over it.
Look at what other players in your market are doing, however approach this from a place of curiosity rather than animosity. If there are things they are doing better than you, this could form an opportunity for improvement.
Likewise, if there are things you see that you’re doing much better than them, that’s also great to know!
Unique Selling Proposition
Again, the process of identifying and developing an official Unique Selling Proposition could easily cost you way too much time.
Can you make a few bullet points as to why your prospects would want to work with you?
Have your existing clients mentioned what attracted them to you?
Perfect!
3. Develop
Now, taking all of the above information into consideration, you can make decisions on where you need to focus your marketing activities.
Important: ALWAYS keep your Ideal Client Prospect in mind!
Where do they hang out (online and/or offline)?
Which channels can you leverage to help them get to know you?
On a digital level, this could include:
Social Media
Email Marketing
Your Website
Offline, some ideas could be:
Industry events and expos
Associations
Publications
Brainstorm a mix of channels that could work for your company. The more areas you can manage, the better. That being said, if you’re a small business owner and massively stretched for time, rather work with one strategy and do it well!
4. Deliver
It may sound strange to include this in a marketing plan, however if you ‘do all the things’ and have new clients come through the door, you also want to make sure that you provide them with an excellent client experience and keep them coming back!
It costs a lot more to find a new client than to retain an existing one, so don’t let your hard work go to waste by not looking into this.
How can you create a great experience?
Can you deliver ahead of time?
Can you include something unexpected for free (obviously this would need to make financial sense to the business)?
Can you improve your communication?
Brainstorm some ideas and choose one area at a time to improve.
5. Distill
As you can see, there is so much that you can do that falls into the realm of ‘Marketing’, however you want to make sure that what you’re doing is actually working.
Some things you can easily monitor:
Engagement on social media
Email marketing metrics (open rates, click-throughs, unsubscribes)
Website visitor behaviour
Results from advertising campaigns (link clicks, conversions, cost per conversion)
Keep an eye on some key metrics to understand if your marketing activities are effective, and over time, you’ll be able to refine your work and achieve ever better results!
With this framework, you’ll be able to develop a solid marketing plan for the year ahead!
If you’d like some help applying this to your company, feel free to book in a 100% obligation-free strategy session, here. The Fortissimo team would be delighted to assist.
Here’s to your success in FY25!
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