The Thomas Blog

5 Signs Your Industrial Marketing Efforts Aren't Working

In today’s digital-driven world, industrial buyers expect brand and product information to be easily accessible, and they prefer to self-educate online rather than speak to a salesperson over the phone.

This makes it critical to establish an engaging, strategic digital industrial marketing plan for your company. Without one, it can difficult to meet the needs of your prospects and, in turn, pretty impossible for you to generate the leads you need to grow your business.

The 4 Biggest Industrial Marketing Challenges Of 2017

Now is an ideal time to check on your progress toward your 2017 marketing goals. Are you on track for lead generation? What about spending? More importantly, have your efforts shown signs of profitability?

5 Digital Marketing Tips To Reach More Buyers

As technologies continue to advance and industrial buyers increasingly turn to the internet for the information they need to find suppliers and source products, digital marketing has become indispensable in the B2B manufacturing and industrial sphere. Sending out mailers or relying on word of mouth is no longer enough to attract and convert valuable leads; now, a multifaceted approach is necessary to stay relevant in today’s shifting B2B landscape. 

Takeaways from IMPACT Live 2017

The punchline of every presentation at the first annual IMPACT Live, a two-day conference for sales and marketing executives, this week seemed to be "If there's one thing you can takeaway from this to bring back to your own company..." Which, of course, means I have more than 15 "one things" as action items in my brain — in addition to the dozens of ideas I tweeted about and my boss logged in Trello.

Ineffective Marketing Results? Try Inbound Marketing

According to HubSpot, just 67% of companies in North America believe that their marketing strategy is effective. Even worse, 61% of marketing professionals — the very people responsible for implementing and executing these strategies — agree. 

4 Steps To Get Started With Social Selling

Looking to generate leads and connect with more customers? Of course you are!

All manufacturing and industrial companies want to grow. Unfortunately, many of them are missing out on an amazing resource that can make this goal a reality — social media.

If you don't have any social media profiles, or if you're just using them to share updates about the company softball team, then it's time to get started with social selling.

At Thomas Marketing Services, we've helped hundreds of companies just like yours turn social profiles into sales generators. Based on our experience, here are some first steps that can put you on the path to social success:

An Investment In Marketing Is An Investment For Your Whole Business

Producing results without the right resources is a huge challenge, especially when you’re under extreme pressure to do so. When budgets get tight, it’s even more important to be able to prove your worth.

Luckily for industrial marketers, when it comes time for budget evaluations, we can produce quantifiable results demonstrating the value of our efforts. In fact, a 2017 ENGINEERING.com market research report found a direct connection between digital marketing investment and company revenue. As a result, the majority of respondents reported being rewarded with a boost in resources.

If you find that your marketing team is still fighting for funding, here are a few things you can take to your department heads to make the business case for it.

Insight on the Top Marketing Challenges in 2017 for Manufacturing Companies

While most industries jumped into using social media, email marketing, SEO and other digital marketing tactics almost a decade ago, manufacturing is finally coming around.

Unlike traditional print placement and ads, we all know that creating an online presence isn't a "one and done" mentality. More and more companies in the industrial space are building up their websites and traffic — the marketplace is quickly getting crowded, so marketing is now more important than ever.

How Much of Your Industrial Marketing Budget Should You Allocate to Print Media?

Maybe you’ve been buying print advertisements for years and you are trying to decide how much budget to allocate this year. Or perhaps you have seen your competitors running print advertisements and wonder whether you should try it. Both are common in the industrial marketing space.

In recent research, we found that for 2017, 46% of all engineering marketers plan to dedicate zero budget to print.