If you do a quick Google search on “B2B marketing best practices,” you’ll find a plethora of links to resources that are, for the most part, promoting the same old message: get on social media, don’t be too sales-y, create content that speaks to your buyers’ needs, and so on. These are all great pieces of advice that are certainly relevant, but wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to go above and beyond the standard best practices for even bigger and better successes in your B2B marketing strategy?
In fact, there is a way – by breaking down your marketing strategy and developing it around specific, targeted industries. Sure, you could use the same general marketing materials and techniques for your entire target market, but segmenting your efforts by industry using specific marketing content sets or campaigns for specific industries will allow more thorough engagement with your prospects.
Say you’re an industrial manufacturer of a specialty product (let’s use rubber gaskets as an example). You may be seen as a business that produces only one type of product – rubber gaskets – but the reality is that your one product actually takes on a lot of different uses for different types of businesses, serving a variety of industries in unique ways. An automaker will have different needs for rubber gaskets than an appliance maker, just as a company manufacturing lawn and snow removal equipment will have different needs for gaskets than a restaurant with an industrial kitchen.
Finding the ways to pinpoint those industries to market your specific product types, rather than marketing your business as a whole, will be beneficial to winning over more prospects and, eventually, customers. If you’re just marketing the same general product to a variety of industries, you’re surely missing out on key opportunities to engage those prospects with the targeted, specific messaging that they need to hear (whether they know it or not).
Let’s take a look at a real-life example of someone who’s been using specific industry targeting in their marketing efforts. You may have seen our blog post about the incredible success Fisher Tank Company has had since implementing an inbound marketing strategy. Fisher Tank is a full-service welded steel tank manufacturer – certainly a company who could be seen as “someone who just makes tanks.” Instead, they segment their specific types of tanks by industry type and provide valuable pieces of information that answer the questions that visitors to their site may be asking. Take a look at the screen shot below that shows one of the 12 pages on their website that is dedicated to tanks that serve a specific type of industry:
In addition to segmenting the information on their website, they also target specific industries in their blogging efforts. Using your blog to reach specific industries is one of the easiest ways to start putting specific industry targeting into practice. You know how each of your products can benefit various industries, so write a blog post that speaks directly to that. Answer the questions and address the pain points that your buyer persona is experiencing so they’ll be able to find you when they start searching for answers. Take a look at Fisher Tank’s list of recent blog posts, comprised of a variety of topics that speak to different industries, as well as some general tank information:
Breaking down your products and marketing them to the specific industries that they can serve is a great way to take your B2B marketing efforts to the next level. Segmenting your website and providing content or writing blogs that speak directly to specific industry types will not only make your information easier for prospects to find and understand, but it will prove that you’re focused on providing the best possible service to your customers.
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing
