Methodology and pricing
Because we’ve been helping B2B companies in the manufacturing ecosystem (OEMs, machine builders, contract manufacturers, robotics systems integrators, industry 4.0 service providers, etc) for well over a decade, we’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t.
Our methodology was born from these experiences, and our job as your agency is to apply it to your unique business case.
Methodology
We always start in the same place:
Let’s identify together what business outcomes you need to achieve and by when. Then let’s reverse engineer the marketing program to get you there.
The faster we go, the sooner you’ll see impact. And usually, the more fuel we throw on the fire, the greater that impact will be.
That said, we can move at the right pace for you and work within a range of marketing budgets – as long as both parties are aligned around expectations for results. Here’s how typical client engagement unfolds.
Road Map
Strategic and tactical plan to get from point A to point B
We begin all new client engagements with a strategy project that delivers an actionable marketing plan based on research and a discovery workshop. Think of it as aligning on design before manufacturing.
We’ll identify the business outcome you need to achieve (example: Land 10 key growth customers in the next 12 months) and reverse engineer the marketing program to get you there.
This stage is all about building momentum — no 100-slide deck or pristine presentation. Expect us to dive deep to learn everything we can about your business before we bring you in to co-create a strategy that will move the needle.
Go-to-Market Messaging
Positioning and customer research to get the messaging right
This process is about creating the messaging strategy that communicates who you help and how you create value for the right people from the right companies. To determine that, we’ll conduct workshops with your internal team, talk to your customers and refine as we go. Deliverables will include:
- In-depth customer call reports revealing why you win, why you lose and what sets you apart
- Positioning that clearly defines the thing you can do that nothing else on the market can do (or do well)
- Product messaging that captures the core problems your product/service addresses, capabilities it unlocks and benefits it provides
- Your content strategy, which plots the written and video content that will tell the story of how your product/service delivers value to your target audience
- Your campaign map, which documents the content distribution channels and campaigns that will drive your desired outcomes
Essential Content
Creating the content you’ll need to go to market
With a documented marketing plan, customer interviews, messaging, content strategy and campaign map behind you, it’s time to physically create the content you’ll need to go to market.
Our content team (writers and videographer) spend their days talking to engineers and technical professionals to harvest what’s in their brains, extract that knowledge and turn it into content that will speak to the things we’ve learned matter most to the people with the job titles inside of the companies you need to reach and influence.
Your content will likely include a mixture of thought leadership blog posts, product/service pages or other website copy refinements, case studies, expert explainer videos and landing pages.
Campaigns
Generating brand awareness at scale to bring new business in the door
Once we’ve created content, our job is to make sure everyone who can buy what you sell sees it, at the right frequency, in the places where they already spend time. To do that, we’ll run two complementary campaign strategies for you side by side.
One to reach the small percentage of your audience that’s actively looking for a solution right now.
And one to proactively push content to the tens of thousands of people who fit your ideal customer profile but are not actively in buy mode. As they enter the buy cycle, they’ll know who to turn to — you.
Then, with the foundation in place, we’ll analyze and report on our findings in regular strategy calls, learn as we go, refine and keep going.
Typical pricing
Most of our clients spend somewhere in the range of $150K to $300K per year total (including our agency fees and media) if we’re designing and implementing a full-scale program for them.
For some clients who have internal marketing teams, we may limit our role to coaching/consulting. We’ll help you design the strategy and action plan, and then be by your side while you implement. In these scenarios, because you’ll do the hard work under our guidance, our fees will be lower.
Variables that will affect pricing include:
- What business outcome you want to achieve (usually quantified as a pipeline, revenue or new customer acquisition target)
- How quickly you need to get to that outcome
- What internal resources (marketing staff, existing content, etc) you have available to support the program
- How fierce your competitive landscape is
- Your current position in that competitive landscape (and as a result, how big a hill you have to climb)
Make sense to have a conversation?
If you think there might be a fit, we’d love to talk. You can request a strategy call here.
Our marketing philosophy
In a transformed B2B buying landscape, what got most manufacturers where they are today won’t get them where they want to go in the years ahead. In this article, we offer our perspective and provide some guidance: How to adapt in a changing B2B manufacturing buying landscape
Success stories
Below are are a few case studies that illustrate how we’ve helped and the impact we’ve created.
Case study: driving $9M in pipeline for an industrial oven manufacturer: Learn how we helped this custom-engineered CapEx equipment manufacturer turn their marketing program into a revenue machine. Read/watch case study
Case study: building a marketing program for a cable assembly manufacturer: Learn how we helped this custom contract manufacturer implement their first true, sustainable marketing program, focused on marketing-sourced pipeline. Read/watch case study
