Signals from the Field

As a B2B manufacturing company are your marketing, sales, and service functions integrated and automated? An effective CRM increases sales revenue because it:

Does your manufacturing company rely on sales team activity to drive revenue? You’ve likely heard about HubSpot as a CRM but do you wonder if it can really add enough value to the sales process to justify the expense? You may already use Salesforce or another CRM so think there’s no need to use HubSpot as well. 

Your member service team likely shines at personalized service when members walk into the branch, but how does the credit union interact with members who perform a large percentage of interactions digitally? It takes a concerted effort to maintain relationships with members who aren’t frequent visitors and to stay top of mind for financial services.

Are you a B2B manufacturer who thinks your target audience is too narrow or niche for online ads? Although the number of people searching for your product may be small, you only are charged when they click your ad. So a campaign that targets the specific keyword phrases (and is well-researched to prevent wasting money on search terms that are intended for a commercial product or different purpose) will be inexpensive. But you'll want to closely track the metrics that are tied to revenue and aren't simply "vanity metrics".

Listening to potential customers and tracking their inquiries is beneficial to manufacturing marketing for many reasons. A primary benefit of documenting questions (by phone, form submission, email, and chatbot) is to gain ideas for future content but it also shows how the content that marketers created attracts new prospects or reveals opportunities to enhance (or pivot) the approach.

B2B manufacturer marketing is not flashy because unlike B2C it is not about new trends and selling an irresistible product to people with disposable income. In B2B, there has to be a justifiable business need for someone to seek out products or services and since the investment is usually large, the buyer has no room for purchasing errors. That means the buyer needs a lot of clear, organized information that instills confidence that the product or service will work well in their process, integrate with the existing system, and solve their problem.

The US regained a sense of normalcy in 2022, until inflation became the primary concern - causing interest rates to rise and the volume of loans to decline for the financial sector.

In the ever-changing economy, it was more important than ever for WebStrategies to conduct the newest edition of our annual survey pinpointing how credit union marketing dollars are being spent and what digital tactics reflect the strongest return on investment.

Our survey found marketers are still growing digital marketing efforts into 2023 but as in-person events are returning, marketing dollars are also increasing to offline channels such as events and sponsorships.