The buying landscape has changed in B2B manufacturing

These four photos represent the ways most manufacturers have approached new sales development over the past decade (or in the cases of images A, B and C, since the beginning of time!):

• Image A: The Three Rs (relationships, referrals and repeat business)
• Image B: Trade shows
• Image C: Calling on prospects and past customers (phone, email, knocking on doors, etc)
• Image D: Getting discovered through Google searches

First of all, kudos to those of you who have successfully built your companies on the backs of these go-to-market methods. Your success to date is a testament to the fact that you have something your audience needs and you’ve figured out how to construct a profitable business around it.

That’s no small feat.

But as someone who has advised well over 200 B2B manufacturing leaders, here’s my warning as I look down the road:

For many of these companies, what got them where they are today won’t get them where they want to go in the years ahead.

I’ll use each of the four images above to illustrate why.

The Three Rs (relationships, referrals and repeat business)

As of 2024, 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day.

And as those who have been our loyal customers for many years walk out the door, so do the relationships we have with their companies.

Meanwhile, members of the workforce who grew up with iPhones in their pockets are moving into their seats and acquiring more buying authority. They collect and consume information differently. And they buy differently.

Trade shows

Consider some of the best things a trade show represents from a business development standpoint:

• A venue for building human relationships with a meaningful number of targeted prospects and customers
• A stage for showcasing your products and exposing them to those individuals
• The opportunity to come home with a stack of business cards for lead development

For three days, you can be in your element.

But here’s my big question:

What about the other 362 days of the year?

I’m not anti-trade show. In fact, I share the sentiment with many of you that nothing replaces being in a room with a human being.

But I am anti-trade show when a manufacturer spends $100K on a three-day event, only to invest a fraction of that into earning attention and trust with their prospective future customers over the remaining ninety-nine percent of the calendar year.

Right now it’s more possible than ever before to humanize our brands, to showcase our products, to articulate our value propositions and to tell our stories to the people we need to reach and influence.

All of this cannot be confined to a three-day per year effort.

Calling on prospects and past customers

Not long ago, my nine-year-old daughter Grace asked me, “Dad, who is Spam Risk? And why do they always call you?”

Not a bad question, Grace.

There was a time when sales professionals could warm up a receptionist to get to the decision maker. Then came email inboxes, ripe for us to invade. But today our phone and email service providers filter out the spam for us.

Even when a sales message does slip through the cracks, our guards are up by default. I don’t want an unsolicited sales pitch. And I’ll operate under the assumption that my prospects don’t either.

Now pair that with this:

If you Google search “how much of the b2b buying process happens before a sales call?” you’ll find numbers derived from a variety of studies that range from 50-70%.

Whether your future customer is buying a computer or a car in his personal life, or he’s buying a six-axis cnc machine or an inert atmosphere industrial batch oven in his manufacturing engineering life, chances are his first move is not to call a sales person.

The immediate access we all have to a wealth of information in our business worlds today is astounding, especially compared to a short decade ago.

We (and our future customers) would be foolish not to start our research before we talk to a salesperson.

Getting discovered through Google searches

I’m often frustrated to see “Google” or “SEO” used as synonyms for “digital marketing.”

Take 30 seconds right now to think hard about your answer to this question:

“When do you go to Google in a business setting?”.

I’ll bet it’s some combination of the following:

• 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
• When you encounter a problem you haven’t seen before

In other words – when you’re being triggered to go find a new solution.

And these triggers only come about so often (in many cases, no more than once a year). So if 99% of our audience isn’t going to Google this week or even this month, why is Google so often our default digital marketing channel?

We’re at a fork in the road

B2B manufacturing leaders have a choice to make in the years ahead.

Some will keep doing what they’ve been doing (the things I’ve already illustrated).

But I’m locked into my belief that 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

Those winners will:

• Go into their respective markets and proactively educate their audiences at scale
• Position themselves as the most helpful, most knowledgeable experts in their product categories by showing, rather than talking, about themselves
• Start building awareness and establishing trust now – before those buyer triggers pull their prospects into buying mode

Imagine this future state…

Consider how much more quickly and effectively you could scale if the tens of thousands of Design Engineers, Plant Managers, Project Managers, Operations folks, CFOs, CEOs, Owners or whoever it is that you need to reach:

• Knew who you were
• Understood your value proposition
• Considered you the expert in your category
• Believed you could help them solve their problems or achieve their desired outcomes

In this world:

• Your sales team would reallocate the time they spend slinging product on one-sided sales calls into facilitating deeper, more engaged conversations with right-fit prospects who actually have buying intent
• Your prospects would come to you with their guards down, already informed and excited to talk about how you could help them
• You’d elevate your status with future customers from vendor to expert advisor and solution provider
• You’d be seen as much less interchangeable in the minds of those prospects, which means you’d command a pricing premium that your prospects would defend when their procurement managers try to erode your margins

So how do you start making this shift?

First, let’s talk briefly about what not to do.

Hands down, the number one mistake most B2B manufacturers make is bypassing strategy and starting with tactics:

• “We need a new website”
• “We need to do some SEO”
• “We need content”
• “We need to run Google Ads”
• “We need to post more social media updates”

When you start with tactics, you’re throwing darts.

And more often than not, you’re throwing those darts with a blindfold on.

Always, always, always begin by identifying and prioritizing the business problems your company needs to solve and the outcomes you need to achieve.

Then you build the plan.

Here are the types of business problems and desired outcomes we’ve focused on with our manufacturing clients time and time again:

• “Our leadership team is focused on growing from $20M to $30M over the next 24 months and we need to support our sales team on the path to getting there.”
• “We close 90% of deals once we get in the room with the right prospects. But we’re just not getting enough good leads in the door.”
• “We have the best product in our category, but only a small percentage of our potential customers even know we exist.”
• “We’re really well known for A and B, but our customers have no idea we can also help them with X, Y and Z.”
• “We see a big growth opportunity in a new product segment and we need to get ahead of it while there’s market share to capture.”
• “We have a new product launch coming up and we need to get the word out to the right people.”
• “We have one customer that represents 50% of our revenue. That scares us and we need to diversify our customer base to balance things out.”
• “Our products are cutting edge in our marketplace, but our brand image and website make us look like we’re operating in 1995.”
• “We’re dabbling in all kinds of things from SEO to Google Ads to content, but we don’t really know what’s working.”
• “Even though we have an amazing culture, we’re not showing it to the outside world. And we’re afraid that’s contributing the the challenges we’re having hiring great people right now.”

Some of these might sound very familiar. And you’ll almost certainly have others to add to your list.

Identify them. Prioritize them.

And then we can start thinking about a plan for addressing them.

What’s an effective plan typically entail?

Although we don’t believe in a “one-size-fits-all” marketing approach, here’s how things tend to flow:

1. Strategy: Instead of tactics, start with your desired business outcomes and reverse engineer the marketing program to get you there
2. Audience: Identify the buying process influencers from the right companies, establish where to reach them and validate through research what matters most to them
3. Messaging: Craft north star messaging that aligns with those customer insights, while communicating how you create value and what makes you different
4. Content: Support your messaging with the most essential content that will educate your audience, demonstrate your expertise and provide social proof that makes them believe
5. Distribution: Precondition your audience for sales by distributing that messaging and content at scale, at the right frequency, in the places where those individuals already consume information
6. Measurement: Install a system for measuring both business impact and the leading signals that show whether you’re on or off track all along the way

We can help you get there

Understanding what to do is one thing. Getting it done is another.

Most B2B manufactures are sales-driven organizations with limited marketing resources. Some may have small marketing teams. Others might not have anyone in that role (somebody is simply “wearing the marketing hat”).

Regardless, from strategy and messaging to content and campaigns, there’s too much to get done, too many unique skills required and too little time available.

We’re here to help.

We can meet you where you are and be your guide to where you need to go.

Here’s what makes us different than the typical agency:

1. We’ve embedded ourselves in manufacturing

Our team of industrial marketers at Gorilla 76 has been helping B2B companies in the manufacturing ecosystem (OEMs, machine builders, contract manufacturers, robotics systems integrators, industry 4.0 service providers, etc) drive growth for well over a decade.

We know how to talk to engineers and plant managers, just as easily as sales professionals and CEOs.

2. We bring a focused outside perspective

Sometimes when you’re constantly working in the business, it’s hard to see the big picture.

Across our team, we’ve consulted well over 200 B2B manufacturing leaders over the past decade.

We’ve identified patterns, implemented wide variety of strategies and tactics, seen what works (and what doesn’t), rinsed and repeated.

We’ll bring all of those experiences to the table for you and eliminate the overwhelming and wasteful guesswork up front.

3. We’re outcome-driven

Before we start anything together, we’ll define the future state you want to reach (problems solved and outcomes achieved) and quantify how we’ll know we’ve made it there.

And we’ll agree upon the milestones and KPIs that will let us report back all along the way. You’ll always know where things stand.

4. We’re flexible

We understand that launching a new marketing program is intimidating (and maybe even scary), especially for B2B manufacturers who have done very little marketing in the past. We’re ready to be flexible, as long as we align expectations together accordingly.

Let’s simply start at the beginning by nailing the strategy and go from there.

Not our first rodeo

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

Make sense to have a conversation?

If you’d like to talk about how to apply all of this in your own business, please consider requesting a strategy call.

When you want to get from one place to another, you often use a car. But when it comes to how to get there, you likely won’t directly ask your vehicle, “Can you drive me to the nearest Super Target?” (We’re going to ignore the existence of Siri and self-driving Teslas in this piece).

The same goes for the ad platforms we use. When we want to reach a certain business goal as a marketer, the ad platforms are typically where we go. However much like your car, you don’t want to take its advice on how to get there.

I know it sounds kind of wild. “Wait, this guy whose literal job is to use the ad platforms is saying they’re NOT my friend?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. But I’m not saying they aren’t the best option to get you to your destination. Even if your car isn’t your friend, it’s still better than using a unicycle to get to a destination 20 miles away.

This article will go over some examples of how the ad platforms might be the best vehicle for you as a marketer, but often not the best advisor.

“Your ads would do better with more budget”

Let’s start with the most common and most dangerous example when it comes to the platform trying to take advantage of you as a marketer. This message may be worded differently depending on what platform you’re using; however they all have the same reason for existing. Remember, your ad spend = the ad platforms’ revenue.

They technically aren’t wrong when they tell you this, because whether your cost per acquisition is $5 or $500, if you increase your ad spend by a lot you will see more conversions. But they’re also not going out of their way to tell you the reason why you’re getting this notification. For example f you see this coming from your paid search campaigns, you either A) are using too many broad match keywords or B) you’re bidding on keywords with too high of volume for your budget.

Thankfully, there are ways to get more conversions out of your current budget instead of simply handing them more revenue. A better solution here would be to switch your keyword match types or focus on lower volume/higher intent keywords to get better results out of your budget.

Misleading results

I have seen paid digital campaigns do incredible things for businesses. Paid search leads becoming $100,000 deals for clients, large numbers of customers saying they heard about a business from paid social, and so on. Sometimes these platforms like to make recommendations for you to “boost your results.” But what those recommendations would actually do is boost what your results on their platform look like.

When running paid social campaigns, you’ll likely run into random representatives from the platforms saying they’ve “seen some aspects of your campaign that are alarming,” then tell you the solution is using a MUCH larger audience or switching your bidding optimization.

Say you’re running an on-platform lead gen campaign on paid social. Making your audience huge would significantly increase the amount of leads you’re getting from that campaign. However they wouldn’t be the high intent leads you’re after.

So while you and your sales team are dealing with ten times the leads and 95 percent of them have absolutely zero interest in buying from you, your platform numbers are saying,“Hey look how many leads I got you, you should increase your budget and get even more!”

*Head to desk, multiple times*

You absolutely can bring in fantastic leads using paid social or search, but don’t just go by how many leads you get in the platform. Pay attention to quality, see what is causing it, and then you’re set to scale it.

Hiding some of their best tools

Pro tip: When shopping for a car, if you ask the salesperson whether that’s the best deal they can give you, there’s a high chance they can “ask their manager” and get you a better bang for your buck.

The same goes for the digital ad platforms.

Some of the ad platform’s best tools and offerings are not front and center by the cash register or on the price tag. You have to look deeper.

An example of this is paying attention to what the platforms suggest as the default option when selecting different optimizations or audience strategies.

When starting a Brand Awareness campaign on LinkedIn, you have a choice between selecting your specific Brand Awareness goal as reach or impressions. One option will have your campaign trying to hit as many people in your audience as possible, the other going for as many impressions as possible.

If you select reach as your goal, LinkedIn might be forced to focus on hitting more people (even though not that high of a percentage of your audience is on the platform) instead of “going with the flow” and getting you as many impressions (a.k.a. exposure) on their platform.

What’s the default selection LinkedIn gives you? Reach. But why?

Well, if you generate more impressions from your campaign, you will likely get a lower CPM — good right?. But that also means more ad inventory taken up by your campaign that LinkedIn could offer other advertisers, driving demand (and your CPM) up.

We recently tested this on a few campaigns and saw an 18 percent decrease in CPM, a 12 percent increase in frequency, and you guessed it: almost ZERO change in the reach our campaign was generating.

The reason the platform is set up like this is the same reason paid social platforms tell you to use other sub-platforms such as “audience network” or “audience partners” for your ad inventory. Your ads get delivered on other websites where they don’t perform well in terms of conversions, but your CPM shows as lower. But this also means less ad inventory taken up on the platform, which in turn they can then sell to other advertisers.

Boosting posts

Just don’t do it, not even if there’s a fire.

You should try this instead!

Given that the digital ad platform landscape is hyper-competitive, each platform is constantly coming out with new tools to offer advertisers. Sometimes these new offerings are great — think of Facebook making it more user friendly to upload ads, or LinkedIn adding offline conversions. But sometimes these new offerings are only beneficial for certain advertisers, or in some cases the new offering is launched more like a “beta test” to see if it actually works.

A shining example of this? Google’s Performance Max campaigns, which launched last year and took the Google Ads landscape by storm.

No matter what campaign you were uploading, it encouraged you to select Performance Max as the campaign type. Why? They’ll never admit it, but Google likely needed as many advertisers as possible to try their shiny new toy to get data on how it can work. If you’re a B2B company running Google Ads, you should be focusing on high intent search campaigns, not top-of-funnel display campaigns. And most B2B companies don’t have an e-commerce offering, completely eliminating the Shopping Ad placement that generates a lot of results in Performance Max campaigns.

There is also very limited reporting, so you can’t tell what someone is searching when they convert from your campaigns, which is crucial for marketers to know.

Another recent example of this would be Facebook running “multi-advertiser ads”. Shiny name right? Well, essentially what this does is put your creative in carousel ads with other advertisers showcasing similar products and services. You read that right: Your ads will literally be shown in the same ad unit as your competitors!

This would be frustrating for a local burger restaurant to deal with, let alone a B2B marketer in a hyper competitive space. And Facebook has made it a default selection when uploading new campaigns, meaning you have to remember to toggle it off (until enough angry digital marketers write articles about how bad of a feature this is).

A heartfelt apology to the ad platforms….

Although this piece may have come off as a thousand word op-ed about how much I hate the platforms, that’s the last thing I want you to take from this. When it comes to reaching your business goals, there’s no better group of vehicles in the marketing world to help you efficiently get to your destination.

It’s like taking your car to a body shop. That mechanic will probably do a better job than your attempt following watching a five minute YouTube tutorial on how to fix an engine. But if you take every recommendation the mechanic makes, you’re going to walk out with a much longer receipt than you actually needed.

Much like the mechanic needs to fix your car in order to make you happy with their service, the ad platforms can most certainly help you close deals if used right, but their main goal internally is still to make them as much money as possible. Remember that.

As we covered in part two of this series, Google Analytics 4 offers essentially an entire department store of reports and metrics for analyzing your advertising efforts. 

But if you’re only viewing these at their basic level, you’re not using this platform to its fullest potential.

Part three of this series will walk you through how to get the absolute most from Google Analytics 4 by utilizing additional tools this platform offers.

The compare date range feature

This one is a complete softball, to be fair. But it genuinely boggles my brain how many digital marketers don’t use the compare feature in GA4’s (and other platforms) date range tool regularly when analyzing performance. 

Whether you launched a new landing page, campaign or audience, or simply upped your spend on a certain platform, this tool is essentially an easy button for judging performance before and after the date you launched it. This way, you can see if the change you made increased sessions, engagement rate, conversions or any other metric within GA4. 

And if your business experiences up/down swings due to seasonality or sees different traffic during the week vs the weekend, don’t fret. You can adjust the comparison time frame to options such as the same period from last year or have GA4 use the preceding period but matching the day of the week. 

Multi-dimensional breakdowns

When viewing reports in GA4, you can use different dimensions such as channel, source, device, location, landing page and more. Think of these as the “lens” through which you look at your GA4 metrics from. 

But what a lot of marketers don’t take advantage of is using more than one of these at once. 

A prime example of using this feature would be to see how certain channels/platforms are performing on specific devices by using “Session Source” as the main dimension then “Device Category” as the secondary dimension for the breakdown. Your Facebook or LinkedIn campaigns might be performing alright on desktop, however their mobile performance once users get to your landing page is very subpar. You now know that the landing page for your campaign is not mobile friendly, and adjustments need to be made.

To utilize this feature of GA4, simply hit the “+” sign that appears next to the main dimension that your report is already being broken down by (by default this is “Session Default Channel Group, but there are many options to use), shown below.

Some other options for secondary dimensions are demographics, location, specific campaigns, and more!

Filtering reports

This next little “trick” isn’t as much about diving deeper into your data, but more so making it easier to visualize it (which in turn, makes it easier to dive deeper). 

By utilizing GA4’s report filter and multi-dimension functions, we can easily look at just our paid social advertising’s performance between each of the device categories. 

Let’s say you notice your paid social channel isn’t working quite as well as you’d like it to. In this case, you want to only view data from the channel that’s struggling — without all of the other clutter. 

To do this, select the “add filter” button under the title of the report you are viewing. This will open up a pop up on the right side of your screen, where you can select to view data in that report within a specific dimension. 

For this example, we’ll look only at data from paid social by filtering the “Session Acquisition” by Session Default Channel group. The data is broken down by Session Source, with the secondary breakdown being Device Category.

Eliminating the clutter in this report to only look at my paid social performance made it much easier to notice an issue-my Average Engagement Time on LinkedIn is very poor both on mobile and desktop. If done correctly, Average Engagement Time from your LinkedIn Ads should outweigh your Facebook ads due to Facebook being more of a volume play instead of a higher intent strategy.

Customizing reports

The first two features we’ve gone over help you look at your GA4 metrics from different angles. One more feature GA4 offers that a lot of marketers might not be utilizing is the customize reports feature. 

Select the pencil icon in the top right of your screen when in a GA4 report, and it will bring up a toolbar on the right side of your screen.

Is there another metric or dimension you wish you could view in this report? Or perhaps you’d like to see some of the data provided in the report in a different visualization option, such as a pie graph? 

No matter what type of data you’re looking into or whatever metric you’d like to analyze, this feature allows you to make it happen. 

Scroll depth and session duration events

Do you have landing pages that include a lead form midway down the page? Or perhaps an explainer article on your site and you’re curious how far down users are reading?

You’re in luck because through Google Tag Manager, GA4 now has the ability to provide you that information. It just takes a little technical legwork, and you’re rewarded with data worth 10x what it took to set those events up.

Step 1. First go to your GA4 property and go to the admin panel. Under property settings, select “Data Streams.” In the “Enhanced Measurement” section, make sure that “scrolls” is toggled on, pictured below. If not, go ahead and turn it on.

Step 2. Go to your Google Tag Manager account, and go to the variables section. Ensure that the variables labeled “Scroll Depth Threshold”, “Scroll Depth Units” and “Scroll Direction” are toggled on, pictured below. 

If they are not, select the Configure button in the top right and toggle them on.

Step 3. Next you will have to set up triggers using these variables, that we will then use to make tags to fire events into your GA4 property. Here is a video walking you through how to create these triggers for both Scroll Depth and Session Duration.

Step 4. Now that we have set up the triggers for our site to start tracking scroll depth and session duration, the last thing we need to do is set up tags that fire events based on those triggers into your GA4 property. To do this, go to tags within Google Tag Manager and select “new tag”. There are many different tag configuration options available, but for this one we need to select “Google Analytics 4 Event”. 

From here all you need to do is give it an event name that will show up in your actual GA4 property for this event, and select your Google Analytics 4 configuration tag. 

Last, select the trigger that you want to use for this tag such as the 60% Scroll Depth one we created in the video. 

Your tag setup should look like this:

Note: You should be creating a separate trigger/tag for each Scroll Depth/Session duration threshold you want to measure.

Now all that’s left is to hit save, then submit your updates in Google Tag Manager for the events to start firing into your GA4!

Now go take on the world

You have now learned that the date range compare feature is one of your greatest weapons as a marketer, how to make any report give you the exact information that you need to optimize your digital campaigns, and even learned how to set up some fancy custom GA4 events to show off to your boss. 

You’re now capable of solving almost any issue possible when it comes to your digital marketing using GA4 (unless you’re not able to upload campaigns because you spilled coffee on your computer). 

All that’s left to do is to take this knowledge and run with it.

Have you ever been watching a great TV show and when one episode ends on a cliffhanger you think to yourself  “I can’t wait to find out what happens next”? Google Analytics is that next episode.

You see, platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google offer plenty of insight on how your ads are performing on the platform. But what you need is insight on what users are doing on your site after leaving the ad platforms you’re using.

GA4 offers what those platforms can’t: Showing what happens after they click on your ad. 

Part one of this series walked you through some key changes between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. Part two of this series will go over the core metrics in GA4 that can help you analyze your advertising performance, as well as the main reports we use here at Gorilla to help us make informed decisions. 

The metrics

Users

This measures the amount of individual people landing on your site whether it be from different platforms, campaigns, etc. 

GA4 also breaks this down by new and returning users, which is definitely something to keep an eye on if you’re running retargeting campaigns on paid social/search. 

However it is important to mention that due to how the tracking technology works, some users can be labeled as “new” when they are in fact returning if the user uses a different device or clears their browsing history. 

The takeaway: pay attention to new and returning users within GA4, but don’t let it be the end all be all when making decisions.

Sessions

Instead of individual people, this focuses on every session on your site. The same user can record as many sessions as they want on your site (this part of how GA4 will calculate new/returning users). 

Engaged Sessions/Engagement Rate in GA4 is any session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, results in a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews (i.e. did they click to multiple pages on your site). 

Engagement rate is simply what % of sessions on your site result in an engaged session.

If users aren’t doing that once they click through the ad to your site, it’s likely due to one of the following misalignments: 

• Your landing page isn’t appealing to your audience.
• The landing page doesn’t line up well with the content from your ad. 
• Your audience doesn’t line up well with the content you are advertising. 

Avg. Engagement Time/Avg. Session Duration

Average engagement time is how long your site was the focus of the user’s browser. Session duration is simply how long the average session lasts. Sometimes someone can leave your site open but move to a different window/screen, so engagement time can sometimes be more useful. 

If you’re in the B2B space, chances are you have a landing page where the user can learn more about your brand, a product you offer, etc. You just might even have a form on the page where they can give you their information to potentially give your company a lot of money. 

Can they read that content or fill out that form instantly? Not possible, unfortunately — so it’s kind of an issue if users aren’t spending time on your site once clicking through your ads. 

Average engagement time and session duration are crucial to pay attention to in GA4. If you’re running paid social and paid search ads, your paid search engagement time should be much longer than your paid social ads. If you’re running paid social on both LinkedIn and Facebook, you can expect your LinkedIn engagement time to be longer than Facebook.

Conversions/Events

GA4 automatically creates some basic events such as pageview, first visits, user engagement and more to track on your site. Events are essentially specific actions taken on your site by the user. 

So on top of making sure users are taking action on your site through engagement rate mentioned above, this allows you to track what actions they’re taking. 

For example if you’re a B2B marketer, form submissions from inbound leads are likely an integral part of your business. Setting these up not only as an event within GA4 but also a conversion event allows you to analyze where your conversions are coming from, but also what other events/pages may be leading to those conversions.

And there are limitless custom events you can set up on your site such as scroll depth, clicking specific buttons on your site, and more. These can give you even more insight on the actions your users are taking on your site (jump ahead to part three of this series to set up these advanced tracking metrics!).  

Reports

All of the above metrics can be extremely useful when analyzing your advertising performance to make informed decisions. But what really makes them useful is the different ways you can look at these metrics. 

Think of each of these core reports within GA4 as a different “lens” through which you view GA4’s data.

User/Session Acquisition

This report arguably offers the most information on what users from your ad campaigns are doing on your site. 

These two reports offer most of the same metrics such as engagement rate, engaged sessions, average engagement time, etc. The main difference is one pulls data based on each individual user, while the other is based on individual sessions. 

This report is most useful if you are running campaigns on multiple platforms. Below is what this report looks like, broken down by Session Source.

Let’s say you’re running paid social ads on both LinkedIn and Facebook using the same creative assets and messaging. Using these acquisition reports, you notice that although Facebook is driving far more sessions, LinkedIn is generating a higher engagement rate along with more conversions. 

If it’s the same creative on the ad and landing page, but the users are behaving drastically different on your site, this can clue you into the differences between audiences on Facebook vs. LinkedIn. 

This is just one of many ways you can use the User/Session acquisition report to diagnose issues with your digital campaigns.

Event/Conversion Reports

Similar to the User/Session Acquisition reports, these two reports show a lot of the same information. What makes these so useful is they help you recognize what events “feed” into other events, i.e. do your form submissions result from a high engagement rate, session duration, etc. 

You might see here that a lot of your lead conversion events are coming from sessions that occur on a desktop. However other events such as engaged sessions/pageviews are all coming from mobile with few leads coming in. You could be getting all of those pageviews from say, paid social ads. 

But if people aren’t converting you may need to take a look at the landing pages for those ads to ensure they are mobile friendly (does the page load fast, is the form easy to find, how well does the page read on your phone, etc.).

Conversion Path Report

If you are running ads on multiple digital channels, this report is one of your best friends. 

Hidden away outside of the reports section, the Conversion Paths report is stationed under the Advertising section of GA4. 

This report shows you

• What channels are contributing to the beginning, middle, or end of your customer’s journey to becoming a lead
• How many touch points on average it takes in each different “path” for your potential new customer to convert
• Data that can be broken down by channel, source (such as different social media platforms), or even campaign if you’re utilizing UTMs in your ads

Below is what the report can look like broken down by channel.

Here’s a potential scenario for you:

If you’re only paying attention to leads coming “directly” from paid social, you risk cutting off a channel that was getting you a ton of traction — it just wasn’t getting all of the credit from good ol’ Google.

Users might be simply searching your company’s website later on to submit their information, even converting through one of your paid search ads. Your well-written LinkedIn ad might be contributing a lot of leads to your pipeline, but none of those lead conversions would “show” as coming from paid social. 

Analyze your advertising in a whole new light 

If Google Analytics is your digital marketing hospital, these reports/metrics are your tools —and the doctor’s in.

Google Analytics gives you the tools to look at your advertising from almost any angle possible. so you should use it to make the most informed decisions possible for your advertising. 

That way you can avoid giving your marketing a misdiagnosis, or pulling the plug on a campaign too early.

If you’re a marketer in the B2B space, hopefully you’re aware by now that Google has officially taken away our dear friend Universal Analytics and replaced it with their new baby- Google Analytics 4.

Compared to Universal Analytics, GA4 can seem complicated at first: It’s a completely new user interface, and the terminology that GA4 uses leans more technical than UA. 

To get you started with your best foot forward, part one of this series will walk you through the main differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4, along with what you need to set yourself up for success and maximize what you can get out of GA4.

What’s new?

The Metrics

At first glance you might think to yourself “what is this entirely new world Google is forcing me into?” However, a lot of the same metrics that we all know and love are still in GA4, they’ve just simply been “rebranded” to different names by Google. For example Bounce Rate in UA has been replaced by Engagement Rate in GA4 (they’re not 100% the same thing though, think of Engagement Rate as more of an upgrade for you). Here is an article they provide comparing the new GA4 metrics to their counterparts from Universal Analytics.

Data Collection

If you are in the digital marketing world, you hopefully are also well aware of all of the “red tape” being added surrounding data collection in the past few years. New regulations being introduced, software that protects a user’s information, and of course my least favorite: Apple’s release of iOS 14 in 2022. To combat this, GA4 is built to not rely so much on data from cookies (it still uses cookies for some of its data however), and leans more on what they termed Google “signals”. So a lot of the data collected is from the user being signed into a Google account on one or multiple devices.

Events, events, and more events!

In Universal Analytics actions that the user took on your site could be broken down into multiple main categories such as a pageview, a timer, e-commerce, and more. In GA4, things are a bit simplified.

Notice anything? Yes, everything in GA4 that happens is labeled as an “event”. There are a lot of events that are automatically set up whenever you create your GA4 property, along with a few extra so long as you have “enhanced measurement” turned on for your GA4 property. This likely is Google trying to align GA4 more with other actual ad platforms, where mostly every conversion you set up is labeled as an “event”. Here is a link from Google walking you through all events that are automatically set up for you once your GA4 property is created.

Account Structure

In Universal Analytics the account hierarchy was Account>Property>View. Your data was collected at the property level specifically, so if you had multiple websites you wanted to collect data from, you had to view them in separate properties.

In GA4, Google has changed the account structure to improve digital marketer’s options for data visualization.

The account hierarchy for GA4 is Account>Property, with a new feature called a data stream (essentially what web asset are you pulling data from). Instead of data being collected/reported on at the property level, it is now collected at the data stream level. What this allows you to do is if you have multiple websites under your company umbrella (i.e different brands, divisions, or locations) you can create a separate data stream for each site, allowing you to view the data separately or all at once if you want to judge overall marketing channel performance.

Do Not Freak out

The bottom line is, don’t be too scared of GA4. A lot of the same useful information is still in there from Universal Analytics, along with a lot of new tools at your disposal. 

Getting Extra Juice Out of GA4

Google analytics on its own is an extremely useful way to analyze website performance and user behavior from different sources. However once you connect your GA4 property with your other Google accounts (Google Ads, Search Console, etc), it’s kind of like upgrading to first class on your next flight. Here is a link to an article walking you through how to execute this (however there are endless articles and videos that can show you how to get it done).

Now the reason this is so important to do is it gives you access to additional reports that, although they aren’t automatically set up in your GA4 property, are extremely useful. 

For example if you connect your Google Ads account to your GA4 property, you now are able to see all of your favorite GA4 metrics broken down by your Google Ads assets. As a B2B marketer your landing page is one of the most crucial points in the customer journey, so being able to see what keywords, ad groups, campaigns etc are generating the best engagement metrics once the user lands on the site can really aid in optimizing performance. 

Fun fact: we’ve actually found that metrics stemming from what users do after they click on your ad have a much stronger correlation to conversions/conversion rate than any metric you see in the actual ad platform! Below is what one of our client’s gets to see broken down for each and every one of their keywords they’re targeting in Google Ads.

An example of how this could be extremely helpful is let’s say you have a keyword in Google Ads that seems to be crushing it according to in-platform metrics. Google is spending more of your budget on that keyword than any other you’re going after, it’s generating the most clicks, and generating the lowest CPC. But you might see in here that it has an extremely low engagement rate compared to other keywords you’re targeting. That might tell you that that keyword is too broad, or simply doesn’t align with what your landing page is trying to sell the user. You remove it, and by getting Google to spend much more on the higher performing keywords within GA4, you end up seeing more conversions from your paid search ads!

Time to take the training wheels off

Now that you’ve set up your Google Analytics 4 property, connected it to all of your other Google assets, and are tracking conversions, you should be able to get all of the data you need within GA4. 

So take off those training wheels and start using that data. And if you need help using that data to better inform your digital ad strategy, that’s exactly what part two of this series is for. Get started here.

It’s tempting to get distracted by the sexy stuff when diving into a new marketing plan — flashy ad creative, cool one-off pieces of content, exciting live events, the webinar series you’ve been dying to launch. The list is endless.

However, creating great marketing campaigns starts with laying a strong foundation built on customer insights and strategic thinking. Trust us, it’s not boring by any means, but many in-house manufacturing marketers still rush to create content and campaigns without first investing in foundational marketing work to set themselves up for long-term success.

There are four crucial activities that form the building blocks for impactful marketing:

1. Customer research
2. Developing a positioning strategy
3. Crafting a brand story
4. Creating a content plan

Taking the time to do each of these well pays dividends when creating content and campaigns that resonate with your customers and differentiate you from competitors.

This article comes from a conversation on The Manufacturing Marketer Podcast. Listen to the full episode HERE.

Customer research

We know, we know, you may have heard this a million times already, but it still bears repeating:

Talk. To. Your. Customers.

The most valuable thing you can do as a marketer is speak directly to customers. Interviews reveal pain points, buying motivations, and opportunities your customers may not otherwise tell you about.

Conduct 20-30 minute interviews with at least 6 customers or prospects. Ask open-ended questions to uncover:

1. 1. • The biggest problems and pain points they face, both related and unrelated to your solution
      • How they define success in their role and jobs they do to accomplish it
      • Where they spend time online and how they prefer to receive information
      • What alternatives they consider and why they chose to buy from you
      • How they classify your product in the market

Record and transcribe interviews to capture quotes, language, and insights you can incorporate into positioning, brand story, and content.

Positioning strategy

That customer research is GOLD, but if we’re being honest, no one is going to routinely go back and relisten to a 30 minute recording.

You need to package those insights into a clear and concise positioning strategy that your whole team can easily reference frequently.

Use your research to develop positioning that defines:

Ideal customer profile: Narrow down the exact customer profile you want to target based on attributes like industry, business size, and product types. This helps focus your marketing.

Competitive alternatives: Map out alternatives customers consider for your solution, like manual processes or competitors.

Unique attributes: List your differentiators beyond generic claims of “high quality” or “good customer service.” Identify features that lead to tangible benefits and be specific!

Market segment: Determine your positioning within the larger market as a leader, niche player, subset of a category or maybe even a new category.

Link unique attributes to value: Map each differentiator to the benefits enabled by the feature and the specific value it provides customers in relation to their goals. This helps customers understand how you solve their problems better than alternatives.

Brand story

Your positioning strategy defines how you’ll go to market.

However, you need to expand on that and use language your customer is actually going to care about. Less bullet points and more human. We’ll give your positioning life through storytelling grounded in customer insights.

Frame your brand story by placing customers as the “heroes” on a journey, you as the “guide” providing a plan to succeed, and problems as the “villains” to overcome. Tell the story of the positives that happen when customers follow your plan versus the negatives if they don’t.

Use quotes, analogies and metaphors from customer interviews to make your story authentic rather than self-centered marketing speak. Frame yourself as helping rather than selling to create an emotional connection.

Create a content plan

At this point, you’ve talked to your customers, figured out what you need to say to them, and how exactly you need to say it. Now, you need a way to put it out into the world, and the best way to do that is with content.

Build a content plan informed by your new perspective on customer problems and positioning.

Start simple by listing 3 to 4 pieces of foundational content you will create in the next quarter, such as:

1. 1. • Long-form articles that address key customer problems identified in research
      • How-to guides that teach customers to do jobs related to their goals
      • Videos that demonstrate your expertise and humanize your company
      • Case studies that illustrate your brand story in action for similar companies

The depth of thinking that goes into this is exactly why we have a clear stance on how AI fits into this work.

Update continually

Foundational work doesn’t have to be set in stone. In fact, it’s stronger when you see these assets as living documents. Continually update based on new customer insights and a changing market. Share widely across functions so your brand story enables sales, customer service and product development efforts.

Drive content and campaigns with powerful value propositions by leveraging insights from customer interviews, your positioning strategy and brand story. With the right groundwork in place, your marketing will make a real impact for your business and customers.

Whether you’re advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google, there is no shortage of metrics you can use to measure the success of your ads. While this is a great feature to have, it also makes it easy for some to get lost. 

Part 1 of this guide explained what tools to use for the job when it comes to running digital ads for your company. Now we’ll go over how to make sure a) those tools are working well and b) where to look to make them work even better.

Before we begin: Know your metrics  

One metric you should track as a B2B marketer is of course conversions, specifically lead form fills. But since conversion metrics (such as cost-per-conversion or conversion rate) are heavily dependent on your company’s average transaction value and sales volume, we’re going to focus on metrics you can use to improve those conversions regardless of what space you’re in. 

In terms of campaign objectives on the platforms, we will stick to the main two that Gorilla utilizes: brand awareness and website visits/conversions.

Paid social (LinkedIn & Facebook)

CPM

How it’s calculated: Total spend on your ad per 1,000 impressions.

What it really means: On paid social platforms an impression is generated once a user stops on an ad and actually gives it some attention. While this may seem minor, it is a huge indication on if your ad is grabbing the user’s attention quickly before they keep scrolling on their feed. 

This metric is most relevant when using the brand awareness objective. If your campaign objective is conversion based, your CPM will naturally be much higher and not really a key metric you want to be paying attention to.

On LinkedIn this metric can vary dramatically depending on how niche your industry is, but on Facebook you should shoot for under $5 for a brand awareness campaign. A good CPM is more dependent on the imagery than copy. Make sure your image and your image headline scream to the user that your ad is for them based on their profession. 

Frequency

How it’s calculated: How often an audience member sees that specific ad unit on average in a given time range.

What it really means: Pretty simple here: Is your audience receiving your message enough times to have them remember you. For this you want to shoot for around at least 3x a month per ad, and max around 10x per month. Any lower and the message won’t stick, any higher and your audience will feel spammed. 

If you are too high or low, look at your campaign budgeting along with your audience size to try and drive your frequency up or down. Like CPM, this metric is more relevant for the brand awareness campaign objective.

Click-Thru-Rate (CTR)

How it is calculated: Percentage of chargeable clicks divided by impressions.

What it actually means: While the imagery is typically what makes the user stop on your ad, the copy is what sells them on clicking through to the website. On LinkedIn you want to shoot for around 1%, Facebook around 0.5%. If it is significantly lower than this, look at the copy in your ad and make sure it a) hooks the user quickly b) makes it clear you can solve a problem of theirs and c) entices them to learn more by clicking through to your site. 

If the copy looks good for the product you’re selling, you may need to take another look at your audience and make sure it reflects who is most likely to be into what you’re selling.

Cost-per-click (CPC)

How it is calculated: Total amount spent on your ads divided by total number of clicks.

What it really means: CPC and CTR both reflect a lot of the same insight. If you have a low CPC, your copy is doing a great job selling the user on clicking through to your site to learn more. The main difference here is that your CPC can vary a ton depending on your industry, so if it seems high take a look at your CTR. If this looks solid, you likely just have a very niche audience that is tougher to reach on the platform.

Adjustments you can make

Once you launch your campaign, let your ads run for around three weeks before making any major adjustments. 

Facebook and LinkedIn both take a bit to “learn” which content in your campaign is driving the best results best on your campaign goal, so making changes too quickly can hurt you in the long run. The same goes for making changes too often. If you make some significant adjustments to your campaign, give it at least a couple of weeks before giving the verdict on it worked or not.

Let’s say you have a campaign with 10 to 12 ads in it. Around three weeks into your campaign, go into the dashboard to see what content is working well and turn off the lowest performers in that campaign. Keep in mind what your campaign is optimized for — monitoring CPM and reach for awareness optimized campaigns and CTR/CPC for conversion optimized campaigns. 

If you are noticing your entire campaign is underperforming, here’s where to look to solve that for each of the metrics above:

• CPM: If this is extremely high, make sure your audience isn’t too narrow for your budget. Also remember what an impression is —they must stop on your ad. Does your image make it clear that the ad is specifically for your audience right away?
• CTR/CPC: Here is where you analyze your copy. Does the copy hook the audience right away and explain how you can solve their problem? Also, remember Facebook hides the copy behind a fancy little “see more” button after 125 characters. If your copy doesn’t have its hook in those first 125 characters, chances are these metrics will take a hit.

Paid Search (Google)

A majority of your conversions should come from Google, as this platform has the highest intent from the user.

Given that most B2B companies have a low volume of conversions compared to their B2C counterparts, you may have to look elsewhere for insight on what’s working. Luckily Google has a plethora of other metrics you can review to make adjustments that drive more conversions for your business.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

How it’s calculated: Shown as a percentage, this tells you how many times your ad is being clicked per 100 impressions.

What it actually means: If you have a high CTR, your ads are likely showing at or near the top of the page. This means you’re owning that keyword for your space, which is a major win. 

In the B2B space, we pay particular attention to this metric over CPC (which tends to be higher in niche industries). And keep in mind that CTR will likely fluctuate from seasonal demand for your product/service.

You want a CTR above 3% at least — if you’re not seeing that, make sure: 

• Keywords, ads and landing pages are consistent across the user journey
• Ad copy clearly describes what you provide
• Your budget is in line with keyword volume

Search Impression Share

How it’s calculated: The amount of impressions that your ad delivered divided by how many times your ad was eligible to be delivered (based on the search volume of your keywords).

What it actually means: This metric can vary a ton depending on your industry/how often your keywords get searched monthly. We’ve seen accounts with an impression share around 80%, others around 15%. Both can perform well. 

However, if this is dipping below, say, 10%, this essentially means you are playing Hungry Hungry Hippos for that keyword with hippos that are much larger than you (in terms of ad budget). Look into adjusting your keyword to be lower search volume/higher intent by changing the keyword match type, or making it more intent-based such as “[your product] for sale” or “[your product] pricing”.

Adjustments You Can Make

When launching a new campaign, you want to let your campaign “breathe” a little so Google’s algorithms can figure out what bidding strategy will get your account the best results. After three to four weeks of running ads, there are minor tweaks you can make to enhance the results.

The Overview section shows results based on demographics, devices, location and time. For example, you may see that 40% of your budget goes into mobile ads, while 90% of your conversions come from desktop computers (along with a much better conversion rate). Or you might see that upwards of 80% of your conversions come from males aged 25 to 45, specifically from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. 

Below is what your Overview section may look like-notice how a small fraction of our spend is coming from Computers, but a much larger chunk of our conversions is coming from that Device Category along with a much better Conversion Rate? Might be time to increase our bidding on those specific devices!

On the left side toolbar, there are sections labeled Audiences, Devices, Ad Scheduling and more. If you see you are getting more traction from certain demographics, devices or time slots, you can click into here and increase your bidding in that segment to see if it boosts your performance. We recommend increasing/decreasing bidding by only 10% to 15%, as any higher you risk bidding unnecessarily high on certain ad auctions.

Bonus section: Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) obviously is not a paid media platform. However, it offers insight on something most paid media platforms lack: what happens AFTER a user clicks through to your site. There are many reports within GA4 along with many ways to customize/filter them, but here are a couple of the basic ones that can help you the most.

User Acquisition Report

Here you can see a breakdown of how people from the different traffic sources such as Paid Search, Paid Social or Organic are interacting with your site. The main metrics to look at here are the engagement rate (% of users that actually DO something on your site once landing on it) and average engagement time (How long do they stay on the site after clicking through?). This quick video below walks you through where to find it, what you can get from the report, and also some ways you can customize it to show more specific data.

This data is important because you might generate a ton of clicks through your paid digital platforms, but if the users aren’t staying on your site and taking action, you likely need to audit your audience or creative. We’ve seen that when these two metrics are solid, the conversions typically follow.

Conversion Path Report

Under Advertising on your GA4 toolbar you’ll see an option labeled “conversion paths”. The name here kind of gives it away, as it shows you the journey users take before converting. You can see what traffic sources are driving conversions, but also how many touchpoints it took to get them there. 

What I really love about this report is that if you’re running paid ads on multiple platforms, you can actually see if conversions are coming from users that interacted with an ad on one platform, then eventually converted through another. Just because you aren’t seeing direct conversions coming from a specific platform doesn’t mean it isn’t doing anything for your business. For example a user might be hit with ads on paid social a few times, then convert directly through a Google Ad. In this instance think of Paid Social as your “starting pitcher” and Google Ads as your “closer”.

Now take your toolbox and get out of here

Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are powerful tools for your business — especially now that you know what levers to pull so they’re working in your favor. 

Are there other ad platforms out there? Yes. But they don’t provide nearly the same returns. Are there other helpful metrics within those platforms? Also yes. But now you have your foundation. So grab your tools and get to work.

What is demand generation and why is it so important for manufacturers?

Let’s walk through a thought exercise.

Think about your target account.

Which group of buying influencers is the most important to talk to? What problems do you solve for them?

For this example, imagine your answers were:

• Target account = General Motors
• Buying process influencers = process engineers
• The problem you solve = high scrap rates, which you help reduce by 5%

That GM process engineer (let’s call him Andy) is aware of his scrap problem, but isn’t in the market for new tooling. He does, however, like to scroll through Facebook on his lunch break.

Andy starts seeing a mix of ads from your company – educational articles, case studies and product videos. It’s clear you solve the exact problem he’s having at work.

Now, repeat that scenario over the course of six months.

GM’s scrap problem has been getting worse and frustrations are building.

Finally, Andy gets approval to replace the old tooling. Because of your Facebook ads, he’s familiar with your products and reaches out to you directly.

THAT’s the power of demand generation.

Why does this work?

Most of your prospective customers are like Andy. They have a problem you can help solve, BUT they aren’t currently in a buy cycle.

Yet, many industrial companies market to Andy as if he were looking to purchase tooling tomorrow.

If Andy were only seeing ads with pictures of your product that said, “Get a quote now,” that wouldn’t be memorable OR helpful for his current situation.

The scrap rate was a real problem. He needed guidance, not a sales pitch.

And upgrading tooling can be expensive and risky. He needed to trust you, too.

The ads he saw:

• Offered guidance through expert articles that actually helped Andy do his job better
• Built trust through case studies about how you solved problems for customers just like him
• Demonstrated how your tooling worked with technical product videos

Overtime, those small touch points built trust with Andy. When it came time to buy, he knew who you were, how you could help him and had some trust in your brand’s ability to solve his problem.

It’s a similar approach your top salesperson might take with a prospect. Send them helpful information over email. Take them out to dinner a few times to build a relationship. Invite them to your shop for a product demonstration. 

The touch points on social media are much smaller, but they’re also less expensive, more frequent and SCALABLE. 

There are tens of thousands of Andy’s out there seeing these same ads and having similar journeys. That scale is the advantage of a demand generation program.

But what about trade shows? Prospecting? Email?

A demand generation program on paid social doesn’t need to replace your current sales and marketing efforts, especially if they’re producing results (and, actually, we break down our approach to a comprehensive industrial marketing strategy, and how demand generation fits in, in this post).

Demand generation is an opportunity to amplify what you’re already doing.

There are a few key reasons why you should consider adding demand gen into your marketing mix:

• The buying process is changing
• Most of your buyers aren’t in buy-mode right now
• It’s an opportunity your competitors might not be taking advantage of, giving you an edge

The buying process is changing

More and more of the buying process is happening online. Young engineers are reading articles or watching videos before they’re talking to a sales rep about a solution.

As access to information increases for your customers, your “power” in the buying process decreases.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing! You now have opportunities to help and influence your customers before they even talk to you. You can generate demand.

Most of your buyers aren’t in buy-mode right now

This was Andy’s situation in our example. Only about 1-3% of your potential buyers are looking for a solution right now. If your marketing is only geared toward them, you’re missing all the Andy’s who could be buying from you in six months.

Demand generation is an opportunity

Open Google and search for the “Facebook Ads Library.” Once there, search for your top competitor. You can see all the ads they’re running.

You can do this on LinkedIn, too. Just go to their company page, click “posts” and filter by “ads.”

Are they running ads? If so, would they have helped Andy in his situation?

Most industrial companies aren’t doing demand gen.

This means you have an opportunity to talk to your ideal customers where your competitors aren’t. At a trade show, you may be across the aisle from each other, but on Facebook? Your customers are only seeing YOU. 

Why pay for ads when you can post on LinkedIn and Facebook for free?

There’s a big difference between organic and paid social media. 

When you post organically on your LinkedIn page, LinkedIn can show that to whoever it wants. There’s no guarantee that all your followers will even see it.

LinkedIn also tends to suppress company page reach, because users would rather see updates from their friends and colleagues.

For example, Gorilla 76’s own LinkedIn page has over 4,000 followers, but our posts only get about 500 to 1,000 impressions when we’re regularly posting helpful content.

Paid social media comes with two major advantages:

1. Controlled targeting
2. Scale

Just look at this audience built in LinkedIn based on our earlier example:

That’s 25,000 people…

…with the exact right engineering titles…

…working in motor vehicle manufacturing.

And that’s only scratching the surface. With some more specific information about business goals, this audience could easily be scaled up or niched down.

Don’t forget, this is also guaranteed distribution. LinkedIn doesn’t show ads to whoever it wants to like it does with organic posts. It shows them to the audience you specified, which is MUCH larger and targeted than your organic following.

The pieces of a successful demand generation program for manufacturers

Before you start, two things need to be clear:

1. How exactly does this program fit into your business goals?
2. What’s your focus going to be?

Don’t do demand gen just to do it. This strategy won’t be effective unless it ties back to business goals. If one of your goals is growing your customer base in the automotive industry, your demand generation program should target that industry.

Which brings me to the second point: focus.

You probably have five to 10 industries or customer segments you could sell to. Demand gen and paid social are scalable, but you can’t boil the ocean here. 

You need to focus on one audience to get started. Otherwise you’re going to dilute your efforts and spend way too much money on ads.

Once your goals and audience are clear, you can dive in.

There are three key components to a demand generation program:

1. Developing your messaging: what do you need to say to your customers?
2. Creating content: how are you going to communicate that message?
3. Distribution: how are you going to make sure your ideal customers consume that content?

Developing your messaging

How do you want to position yourself in your market? What differentiates you? What problems do you solve for your customers?

These are all important questions you need to answer with your messaging, and the best way to answer them is by actually talking to your customers.

As a business owner, you’ve probably interacted with a lot of customers and have some really great assumptions about the above. But you need to validate those assumptions by actually talking to your customers. I’ve seen it happen many times: the business owner assumes one thing and their customer tells them another.

Their answers to the questions above become your messaging. 

Next, you need to create content that communicates that message.

Creating content

We’ve written about content creation a LOT here at Gorilla, so if you’re interested in the nitty gritty, I’d recommend this article, or this one or even this one. However, I’m going to give the 30,000-foot view.

Content is critical for your demand gen success because:

1. No one wants to be sold to 
2. It builds trust by showing your expertise
3. It helps your customers do their jobs better, and helpful = memorable

Think back to Andy at the beginning of this piece. The ads he saw weren’t reminiscent of a used car salesman. They were full of expertise and insights from the company’s subject matter experts and customers. This content helped Andy start solving problems at work. 

THAT’S what made him remember the brand. Not a flashy “get a quote” button.

Content can work like another salesperson on your team, offering helpful info to customers and guiding them through the sales journey.

So, what content do you need to create to do this? Look back to your messaging and audience.

If the problems you solve for your customers are highly complex…

…consider educational articles written by your own engineers to break it down.

If your target audience is primarily engineers who need to spec equipment into projects…

…consider more technical product videos and spec sheets.

If your solution is a large investment for your customers…

…consider social proof like case studies or video testimonials from other customers to put them at ease.

Once you have some content, it’s time to distribute it to your ideal customers.

Distribution

Gorilla 76 founder, Joe Sullivan, has a great analogy about the importance of distribution:

Imagine you’re opening a new restaurant. Your chef has worked in the best kitchens across Europe. Your waitstaff never lets a glass become empty. The finest linens and fresh centerpieces adorn your tables every night.

It’s a really classy, 5-star joint.

But…you’re located on a quaint side street and no one knows your restaurant even exists.

In that scenario, it makes perfect sense to put a little money into advertising this amazing restaurant, right? How can you expect people to find it on their own?

Manufacturers and restaurants are apples and oranges (or maybe more like apples and CNC machines,) but the principle still applies.

You’ve put so much work into making your business great. But what’s the point if your ideal customers aren’t aware of you?

You need to target these customers where they’re already spending time and deliver the right message with the right content.

Bonus: Analyze and iterate

Even after all this hard work, it’s still probably not going to be perfect. You need to analyze your ad performance to see what’s working best.

Then, you can test small adjustments to your copy, creative and content to optimize your ad performance.

When to expect results from demand generation

You might be thinking this sounds like a lot of work. And for Facebook or LinkedIn ads? Maybe you’ve tried them before and haven’t been impressed. Where are the results?

I’ll reference back to Andy again. He was seeing ads from the tooling provider for SIX months before he finally reached out. Although that’s only an example, it’s pretty typical for manufacturers who are running demand gen successfully.

There are a couple of reasons for this longer timeline to results for manufacturers:

1. The amount of trust you need to build
2. The length of your sales cycle

Sure, maybe B2C brands like Nike can expect to see results from paid social in 24 hours – buying a $75 pair of sneakers isn’t a high-risk investment.

Spending $100K on tooling or machinery is a completely different story.

How long would you expect it to take for your top salesperson to start building a relationship with a brand new target account? Now double that. That’s how long it takes to start building trust with your ideal customers online.

Once they trust you, how long does it take them to actually buy from you? For most manufacturers, it can be anywhere from three months to over a year. The longer your sales cycle, the longer it’s going to take to see real results (read: revenue) from your paid social demand gen program.

If you quit after 30 days, demand generation is always going to be tossed aside as a failure. 

We recommend giving this type of program at LEAST six months to start gathering high intent leads. You’re literally generating demand here. That takes time, energy, and most importantly, patience.

We’ve talked about:

• What demand generation is 
• Why it works for manufacturers
• And the pieces of a demand gen plan

This article is a great place to start, but if you want to chat with an expert about how this could work for your specific business, feel free to book a free consultation.

“Ads make promises.
Promises bring people hope.
Don’t f*** with a person’s hope.”
—Seth Godin, VeryGoodCopy

Ethical marketing can be underrated in the B2B industry.

And that’s not good, because B2B is the lifeblood of our economy.

Unethical business practices (in marketing or otherwise) make our economy less efficient. That has ripple effects for everyone.

Take for example inflating the efficacy of an electrical efficiency system. This redirects investments from more effective technologies that offer greater global benefits. We’d all love lower electrical bills, right?

That’s why we’ll all be better off with ethical B2B marketing practices.

So, how can we make that happen within our organizations?

What does ethical B2B marketing look like?

“Good products can be sold by honest advertising.” —David Ogilvy, The Father of Advertising

Unethical marketers practice deception, manipulation and puffery that promotes materialism, wastefulness and debt.

Ethical marketers promote products and services that solve real problems.

They provide customers with complete and honest information. They clearly show when the product will meet customers’ needs. And they’re open about how the business functions throughout the entire buying process.

The pillars of ethical marketing: honesty, clarity and transparency

— Honesty means everything you say is completely true.

— Clarity means the information is concise, easy to understand and not at all misleading.

— Transparency means providing any relevant information that could impact a buyer’s decision.

Every marketing strategy should serve your target customers’ best interests.

Say you distribute a news roundup billed as “Everything you need to know in the industry to succeed.”

You can’t leave out bad industry news that hurts your bottom line. Nobody makes solid choices on incomplete information. Customers will lose trust in your newsletter after it leads them to make unwise business decisions.

If you only want to share the good news in your industry, be honest about it. Call your newsletter something like, “The sector’s best news stories”.

Winning from mistakes: The subcontractor case study

I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business. —Harvey S. Firestone, founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company

There’s no such thing as a perfect company, and everyone knows that. Yet many companies spurn the imperfect.

Highlighting how you overcome adversity allows you to turn mistakes into wins.

And on the flip side, not being honest, clear and transparent can be a major risk if you’re called out in public.

Let’s look at an in-house example.

A subcontractor wanted G76 to write a case study about one of their big construction projects.

Senior Writer Rose Hansen interviewed the project’s general contractor. He said our client delivered a great final product. But there were problems with the workmanship in the early days.

To their credit, the client corrected every mistake. The project finished ahead of schedule despite early delays.

Such a tight turnaround seemed like an ideal focus for the piece. Stories about a business owning its mistakes are novel enough to attract attention.

And that’s what content marketing is all about.

Rose wrote a case study about an honest and forthright contractor that takes feedback well and works hard until the job is done right.

“It’s a beautiful story to share on social media, because we see all these ‘We’re so great at everything’ kind of stories all the time,” said G76 Thinker & Senior Strategist Mary Keough. “It was really nice to see this real plot find a happy resolution, and they wanted to cut out all of the plot.”

From the account manager’s perspective, admitting those faults would be a stain on the resume.

The client asked Rose to omit all their mistakes from the narrative and stick to the good stuff. It left the case study feeling hollow. Their most impressive feats were made to fix those mistakes.

On top of that, the general contractor and other people within the project knew that wasn’t the full story. If they got called out, Rose was afraid it could tarnish the client’s reputation.

“We were using the general contractor’s testimony to twist the story to support a version of events that did not happen, taking his quotes out of context,” Rose said.

She worked to find a solution, but the client wouldn’t budge. Neither did Rose. It was for their own good.

G76 eventually gave the client the version we supported. They could do with it what they would. But in the end, they saw it our way.

The story went live, showing the team’s incredible efforts to correct honest mistakes.

Ethical content distribution

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. —Warren Buffet, American business magnate

Digital marketing offers many ways to accrue and leverage people’s contact information. You could host a webinar, attend a conference or offer gated content. But no matter how you get it, only use someone’s contact information for the reasons they provided it.

If they haven’t opted in for the information, don’t send it to them. You’ll only waste their time and make them think less of your brand. And they could pass that perception on to their friends and peers. And next thing you know, your company has an awful reputation.

“First, you’re invading the individual’s control over their own buying process. Then you’ve got a bad reputation on channels that you can’t control,” Mary said. “Come at this with a sense of empathy first. There are better ways to get people to sign up for your newsletter than buying lists or adding them without their permission.”

Annoying marketing methods could have immediate consequences at major B2B companies.

If your email address gets directed to the spam folder at a company like Honeywell, you may never get out.

“All of a sudden, they say, ‘I can’t talk to anybody at Honeywell anymore because my emails are getting bounced,’” Mary said. “And it’s like, ‘Yeah. Because you blasted them with emails and now their server has you on a block list.’”

The G76 process for ethical considerations

Never deceive others in business or in life. In 1995 I was deceived by four companies that are now closed. A company cannot go far by deceit. —Jack Ma, Chinese business magnate

There’s a lot to think about when addressing ethical concerns. That’s why we follow a list of considerations such as the impact on all stakeholders, legal considerations and, ultimately, if we should participate in the project.

Gorilla 76 scrutinizes ethical issues with every marketing strategy. Clients should do the same.

We often find an approach that meets business needs and ethical policies. If it violates our obligation to ethical marketing, we’ll walk away from the project.

Let’s walk through another example together.

The tobacco case study

In another ethical conundrum, one of our clients wanted to highlight a promotion that was intended to skirt laws against tobacco coupons. Rose didn’t feel right about the strategy.

Marketing around harmful products like tobacco can be tricky enough, but Rose had other concerns. The client could gain a reputation for dubious business practices. They wanted to foster their image as a trustworthy company, and this didn’t fit the bill.

“The client wanted to illustrate how they exploited a loophole in federal regulations to deliver business results for a tobacco company,” Rose said. “They already had so little market space, we were afraid if they highlighted this tobacco project, it could turn off other prospective clients. And tobacco is not a growing market either.”

Rose brought her concerns to the client. It took a lot of back and forth. But they decided to develop the case study on a similar project for a different company.

Considering all the angles

Here are the guiding questions that G76 uses to interrogate ethical issues:

• Are there deceptive and/or otherwise untrue elements of this marketing strategy, including untold truths?
• Does anything about this marketing strategy/product/service conflict with Gorilla 76’s code of ethics?
• Who are the immediate stakeholders of this product, service and/or marketing strategy?
• Who are the more remote stakeholders and how much may they be impacted?
• How vulnerable are the impacted populations to harm?
  • Ex: Impoverished communities are more likely to experience long-lasting negative consequences as compared to affluent communities.
• How vital are tobacco products to the overall function to the wider economy?
  • Ex: Steel, oil and electricity are essential components of a functioning economy, whereas it is much more difficult to argue that we need cigarettes to function as a society.
• What is this industry’s overall effect on and responsibilities to the wider economy?
  • Ex: Does the tobacco industry have an overall positive or negative impact on the function of our society and economy?
• Are tobacco products harmful?
• Are tobacco products subject to government regulation?
  • Is there potential for the government to impose regulations if problematic issues related to this product/service/strategy go unchecked?
• How may this product/service/strategy affect stakeholders and the wider economy in unintended ways?
  • Ex: The more cigarette smokers in a population, the more state-funded healthcare expenses are accrued for medical coverage.
• What was the intention of this marketing strategy/product/service?
• What are the most likely outcomes to this strategy/product/service?
• What are the most severe potential negative outcomes of this strategy/product/service?
• What are the established cultural perceptions and norms regarding this kind of product/service/strategy among the stakeholders and wider society?
• How will this strategy/product/service likely affect the public image, stakeholder perceptions and brand positioning of our agency and the client?
• Should we participate in this project?

All these questions aren’t applicable in every case but take the time to consider every angle.

Take the truth to your market

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” —Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize economist

We all benefit when B2B marketers foster an honest and transparent buying process. But it’s easier said than done. Especially for small businesses with limited experience in content distribution.

Sometimes, you need a guide to help navigate all the ethical problems that can befall B2B brands with the even purest intentions.

Reach out to us at Gorilla 76 when you need help. We’ve worked with dozens of B2B companies and know the common pitfalls.

Let’s put your content marketing into perspective, strategically and ethically.