As the world has become more digital, the industrial buying journey has become more complex. It’s an elongated, non-linear process that usually involves multiple stakeholders from each prospective company or current client. The stakeholders are doing massive amounts of online research independent of each other before anyone engages with the seller. That means it is more important than ever to understand who you are marketing to and when those touchpoints are taking place.
As the world has become more digital, the industrial buying journey has become more complex. It’s an elongated, non-linear process that usually involves multiple stakeholders from each prospective company or current client. The stakeholders are doing massive amounts of online research independent of each other before anyone engages with the seller. That means it is more important than ever to understand who you are marketing to and when those touchpoints are taking place.
Welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of the industrial Marketer Podcast. This is your place for the tips, tech trends and tactics for industrials who care about driving leads to their companies and their brands. I am excited to be back to talk more with you. I am one of your hosts in industrial marketer fan at large Joey, and I am joined as always by my cohort and favorite time of year the Ides of nails are upon us. It's March and we're getting into spring time now and and their iPads. We've got eyes I don't know what IDE czar anymore, but we've got them. And we're gonna talk about them. How are you, man?
Nels Jensen:Great. There's there's kind of signals right there kind of it's a very appropriate whether we're, we're talking about, you know, the the luck of the Irish or the March Madness. Right, right. Hey, and for our today's topic, you need some of each madness in, in luck. So there you go. I,
Joey Strawn:I love that. And that is what a wonderful way to dive into today's topic because we are spending this quarter we've had the last handful of episodes really diving into the foundations of what make a good industrial marketing strategy. And so I am I'm pumped to dive in and get into our topic today, which is how to understand the industrial buying market and your target universe, and some ways to really build the right personas and frameworks to get your messaging to the right people. This is an exciting topic. Now, this is something you and I talk about internally a lot, because we want to make sure that whatever content we're producing, we're doing it for a reason, and that it's answering somebodies questions. And so understanding like, why we're doing the things and building the things and making the things that we're making is a big part is a critical piece of any strategic, you know, approach to marketing and for industrials. You know, we're trying to hit, you know, in a needle in a stack of needles. So it's a bit, you know, we have to be pinpointed. We have to be targeted. I mean, now, how important is it for you, when you're crafting a piece or a strategy or an article to know who's going to be reading it? Or who should be reading it? Yeah, what they need out of it?
Nels Jensen:Exactly. And I think that one of the fascinating things for me as doing the client work, the discovery when you get to these questions that we're going to be talking about asking, so you go through the process with the client, and frequently it's a small group, let's say it's five, six people, and you're going through this process. It's fascinating to me, that in many cases, they haven't thought about these things within their separate silos. And so it's, this is this is a real opportunity to align people within your manufacturing company, and how to approach this. And it's really great when there's debates or when it's like, oh, I didn't know that, you know, yeah, the the marketing, we've talked about this before marketing, sales enablement, it all ultimately becomes a team sport. But you know, you have you have to get, you know, everybody in your lineup to run the same place. So yes, the questions that you're asking, you know, are going to be really about, you know, who in the process do we need to touch in order to, for this journey? And again, and we've talked about this to the industrial buying journey, oh, my goodness, go off. So elongated, cyclical? And yes, he will tell you and, well, yeah, well, we'll talk we'll spend a bunch of time today talking also about, you know, who you are engaging, and how it's from very disparate parts of a company. Talk about team sports, industrial buying is a team sport. And also one of the frustrating things for a lot of people is that the purchase cycle is not linear, right? Oh, what what you communicate to different personas is at different times. And you know, it's Have you seen some of these diagrams of the industrial buying, you know, cycles that crazy the arrows here back over,
Joey Strawn:I have every share, some of them are jokes, but the problem is, none of us know which ones are because they all look some version of real. Yeah, it's like that couldn't be true. You know, we and the way to thread all those needles together. I mean, we're talking about these grand visions and grand plans. And and I love that you started this by talking about alignment, because one of the things I do want to stress right up front in this episode, if you're listening to this, and you're an industrial marketer, you're like, great, they're going to talk about buying personas. I have already done a buying persona for Eric, the engineer and Alicia the accountant and whatever, no one cares. This we are going to talk about buying personas, but trust us, we live in the industrial world. We know that it's not a single person that you're dealing with that you have to convince we know that a buying career is involved. So Nelson Not only are we going to be talking about the alignment that has to happen on your industrials side within the team and knowing how you're approaching your audience, but man, we're going to be talking about alignment on the other side of really understanding who is in that decision making committee or process or group. Because those are the bigger questions that really drive home a b2b or an industrial strategy. Because let's be honest, if we're selling, you know, candles to a procurement guy at one store, is going to be a different process than trying to sell, you know, a million widgets to a global manufacturer that has 47 different divisions and eight silos that you have to navigate between Sure. It's not only is it a different world,
Nels Jensen:But the questions to ask, I mean, really, so why, why are they looking for something? So there's always going to be a solution pain point perspective, it's like, you know, what is it? What it what are they looking for, not just in terms of the solutions, but at some point, it's going to be capabilities and features? At some point, they're asking, Hey, how much does this cost? And how does it? How does it work with my other equipment or fit into our operation? Or, you know, what are the indirect costs of whatever product or service I'm going to buy? And even if it's software, it's like, you know, how is how is this going to be, you know, integrated and implemented? Or just how am I going to train people, whatever the so there's, they're definitely, you know, writing out the questions, is a good drill, because, and there's going to be it's a long list, right? Until Yes. And that's why these teams, as we will talk about later, are involved in the process, what's the ROI? How long is the ROI? What is the you know, and you can get in the industrial buying so often is around capital expenditures. So then, you know, you're bringing in a whole facet of a finance department because something costs $100,000, you know? So, yes, there, there are many questions. And it's important to understand the scope of those questions
Joey Strawn:Well, and that's and one of the things that you've just illustrated extremely well is that when it comes to an industrial cycle it when it comes to the worlds that we live in, the questions that are being asked aren't straightforward. They're not one size fits all. They're across the board. So with whatever industrial industry, whatever sector, whatever codes you have, that you're working under whatever your audience looks like, it's going to be a very specific one, you're going to know the very technical questions that they're asking, and hopefully, the types of questions that you get asked on a repeated basis, and there's no better way to understand a group of people or an audience of people than to know the types of questions they ask on a regular basis, and the types of things that you need to be ready to answer. Now, hopefully, the position that your brand has, and the services and the products that you offer, do solve those problems, and you answer those questions for your, for your prospects. But that's really is like, if you're a good fit for your audience, and you've got that a handful, you've got that part of it covered, then what you really need to be focusing on is knowing what they need, and who is involved in those processes. Now, one thing and now's you know, this better than than most is, when it comes to industrial processes. Not only are there a lot of people involved, but we're talking long cycles. So the types of content we need, the depth of content we need and the wealth of it across the different kind of committee members, you know, we're talking 18 month buying cycles, it can be really years buying cycles,
Nels Jensen:Well, even the our machine broke, we we can't fix it anymore, we need to replace it still may end up being a several week cycle. And that's and that's a I'm gonna not panic by but that's an urgent buy. Is it for need? Yes, it's an urgent need. But yes, and so sometimes these cycles are, you know, capital acquisition driven, which means, you know, a whole separate vetting process for some large companies. And, but, but frequently, yes, they frequently can be more than a year because it might also emanate from a trade show or somebody sees something and they're coming back and they've got to sell the concept or the product, you know, within their organization. And so how do they bring other people up to if you're looking around a corner to okay, we know we want to automate something so you know, you've got to get some buy in back home. I mean, there's, there's lots of different purchase cycles. So
Joey Strawn:My, my favorite are the ones that are like, yes, we need this but we are locked in with a contract for the next 18 months that won't that if we do this will void the warranty that is live for another six months. So what we need is a nine month window and the next 15 months that we can sign this deal, get it prepped and then launch it on the 16th Today, those are the types of sequences that I really enjoy. Because that really makes things super easy. And yeah, yeah, all of us.
Nels Jensen:And oh, by the way that, you know, normally we have a six month turnaround, from sign contract to implementation, but we have the supply chain issue. So it might take a couple more months, and we won't know for sure.
Joey Strawn:See, and so all of this, like these timing questions, these are all like we're throwing out examples. But these are real things. If you're an industrial marketer, or you're an industrial, you have heard these or you have dealt with these personally. And one of the other aspects is that we know that these time periods and these timelines, and these timetables are important for our audience, we know that they're locked into those contracts when they're dealing with it. So we will have to as well. And then one of the other elements is there are just seasonality realities that are that are true for industrials that are not true for other industries, shut down seasons machine refurbed times just seasonality of certain industries that aren't you that are unique to those industries. So to understand the audience that you're going after, understanding the timetables, and the timelines that they live within, can give you a really good idea of when to reach out to them what types of things you need sure journey, and when to start those journeys. So it you know, understanding their timelines really helps you get insight into that audience.
Nels Jensen:And the other to connect the dots here to what you know, if you come up with a list of 10 questions that people are going to be asking, then also there is different types of content for that buyer and dividing in you know, at some point there is going to be ROI content directed toward the finance department. At some point, there is going to be or should be a comparison of benefits or capabilities that the engineer can show the facility manager and kind of go over together to So hey, you know, right? Option A does XYZ, Option Z does 123? You know, there, there there is for every one of those questions that you're asking there is content, it might be similar content, and the same piece of content might work for multiple questions. But at some point when somebody's saying, Hey, what are my options? What else? am I considering, besides your machine? That yes, you should account for that, in your content plan? How do how do we, you know, focus on capabilities as opposed to price, you know, are some factors, right?
Joey Strawn:We need, you know, understanding, like the types of content that though that our audience is going to take in, if we're, if we're making 100% downloadable white papers, and then we find out that our audience are engineers who only watch YouTube, there's a huge disconnect there. So making sure that we have the answers to end throughout the different types of ways that we can answer the same question. And knowing what those are. So we know that our audience is procurement managers, and all the procurement managers that we talk to subscribe to a single publication that we should probably pinpoint that as a focal point of our drive, right. So those are the understanding our audience types and placements. And what they take in is a he is a huge, very important piece of being able to create a persona or a group understanding that's going to matter, it's going to drive results.
Nels Jensen:So there's there's two to me, there's two facets that make industrial buying so much more complex than most b2b buying and what it means the elongated cycle that we already talked about. The other, the other is the disparate nature, we're going to talk more about this about the different people looking at the process. And so yes, the engineer doesn't really want the white paper as much as they want to YouTube because they already know what they're looking for. But that white paper might be very valuable for somebody else who wants to understand a little bit about how this integrates, or how the tech works and the specs and the floor space and some you know, so no, the purchasing manager may never read your white paper. But but that doesn't mean that you that that if the engineer really wants, you know, your product or your service, how can you arm them with things to take throughout their organization to help us sell so one of the frustrating things about this with the content piece of it too is also well, of course it can work almost everything can work, it's how you execute it right? But yes, it's the different types of content is also part of what makes this such a high degree of difficulty in terms of industrial buy.
Joey Strawn:And I agree and I think that kind of takes us right into the second area of our of kind of the foundations is where let's go real we went we talked real big, like these are all the things is all the questions. There's a A lot of stuff that we just went through. Let's try and focus it down. And this is where we talk about the buying personas. But let's talk about like how we take all those questions that we just talked about, and figure out an individualized way of looking at them to make it scalable. for marketing. That's really what this is all about is to try and give us focus give us direction, and give us realistic things that we can drive and create content and marketing assets towards now, you know, this is we're going to talk about buying personas, but then we're going to blow it back out and talk about how those personas fit into committees, because that's really what the b2b lifecycle is is that's going to be focused on is we know that there's not just an engineer that you're talking to, we know, it's not just a facilities manager, it's not just an owner slash CEO, there's gonna be a lot of people that touch a lot of different pieces. But of those individual people, you know, let's narrow it down, we've got our personas that we need to develop. So how do we go about doing that? This whole second half of this episode is going to be five concrete steps that you need to build your buyer personas that then you can put together in committees but in general, all the questions that we asked just a second ago Nels, that's what we want to boil down into the buyer personas. Now, whether you choose to create your persona, where it has a human name and a generic stock photo face. So it's like Dan, the designer and Bill, the builder, or Angelique, the accountants, whatever you want, that's, that's up, that's gonna be up to you. But you need, you know, you need to understand what those demographics are the types of people that work in those positions, the types of areas and the fears that they have, honestly, for us, psychographic and technographic are going to be big deals, you know, what are the things that they worry about? What are the, you know, the questions that they need answered, and the things that on a day to day basis they are thinking about? And then what types of technology they're using? Are they on their smartphone? Are they on a desktop, you know, are they getting things through email or through social, like some of the technology in play is going to be important for for us, just to create those types of the generic assumptions about the earth for science.
Nels Jensen:And it's, you know, interesting, we hear it all the time. Now, people want the same conveniences on the job that they have in their, you know, non work life. So they want to be able to do stuff via the phone, they want to be able to, you know, have self help, they want to be it right. So that's
Joey Strawn:Those should be those should be the types of questions that people are answering in their personas. Nels in my mind is not so much like oh, well how many kids do they have? And do they live in a cul de sac? And you know, what type of car do they drive? It's, you know, what questions do they answer on a regular basis? What types of things do they take in? Do they watch more videos than they read more papers? Do they? Do they subscribe to trade publications versus going to webinars or trade shows? You know, and then where along the path? And what types of questions they need answered, is it very educational content that they need? Or do they need quick sound bites and quick turnarounds?
Nels Jensen:So this is this is where the the team sport also comes in? Because in the discovery process, if you will, you really are finding out that these different personas, types of personas anyway, people, people have different challenges and hurdles, but it's important to understand what they have people have different needs, there's ultimately how can this person look good? So how can you address that? You know, if, you know, Angela, the accountant is always focusing on, you know, cash flow, and just sort of costs controls, whatever, then how does this help her do her job if, you know, George is always the person who's he just loves bringing new technology to the table, that he's that guy at the company who's always Hey, I, you know, saw this, this is cool, you know, arm him with something, whatever. So there's, there's literally for every persona, you're going to want to look at a same set of questions about their role, you know, some of its personality can be personality driven, just in terms of, oh, the, you know, stereotypical engineer wants to know, the specs, versus the, you know, executive doesn't care as much about being in the weeds but wants to be able to articulate the how this fits into the vision and the mission kind of thing. You know, but yes, those are, those are important considerations is ultimately what are these people asking for? How can we help them? We can do the tech homework for the purchasing manager to explain this in a way that she or he doesn't have to go to somebody else that they can get the Basics of oh, this machine does this and our old one doesn't, you know, whatever. So
Joey Strawn:Well and that's an understanding those those placements should be another element in those persona documents is knowing where in the organization or within the industry that they activate themselves, because it can help you make marketing decisions. This is what we're all here about is industrial marketing, and getting those tips and tricks and trends out there. But it can help you make a decision of you know what, maybe we shouldn't spend $10,000 In Google banner advertisement, to get our finance white paper in front of accountants, because we realized during our persona work, that accountants never click on banner advertisements, and always are given documentation from internal resources that they consider. So we need to get them this white paper through an engineer. So we need to get in front of them. Like it can help you make those marketing decisions to know where you're going to spend money in the smartest possible ways. Because we're industrial marketers, we don't just have billions of dollars sitting around.
Nels Jensen:Right? So we've touched on this a little bit, we're trying to reach groups and teams of people, right, it's not a simple sell.
Joey Strawn:It is I mean, and studies have shown and this is where we're gonna now, with this, we're gonna focus on personas and how to build those in the second half. Let's talk about what b2b and industrials really know is that no persona is an island. Nothing happens in a vacuum when it comes to industrial sales or purchase decisions. And I mean, even recent studies have shown that four to nine is the average numbers of buyers in a b2b purchase. So anywhere from four to nine people, there'll be a purchasing manager and a facilities manager and an accountant and an engineer and a CEO, and a CFO, there will be a group. And we all know this, and this is a reality that we all live in every day. And we need to start talking about it as industrial marketers, we need to start acknowledging how these committees work together. And how as marketers, we need to answer that commit those committee's questions, you know it because it's going to be a balance of decision makers and influencers and asset finders and peripherals, you know, they're gonna be all over the place.
Nels Jensen:You touched on one of my pets, pet subjects within the persona world is decision makers versus influencers. And it's, this is where you get interesting debates, when you start asking questions around companies. Is that the not, you know, not everybody is a decision maker, but they certainly may have tremendous influence around the organization. And it's gonna be different at different companies, too. Right? The old it depends is, you know, always the answer. Right? Yes, the, the you talk to some of these companies, and you get these different departments talking to each other. And all of a sudden, you hear some of this, well, wait a minute, at Company X, they do it this way. And the people on the shop floor are actually making the decisions. And then over a company why it's like, no, it's like, they certainly guide the discussion, but the decision is made by the owner and that nothing's changing about that, you know,
Joey Strawn:And I think that's a very valid point to your to your comment of it's going to be an It depends, one thing that it's not going to depend is there's not going to be seven decision makers, there is going to be some hierarchy, and some person that has the final thumbs up and understanding and having like, let's say you have six personas that you've created for your entire organization, and you know, for a particular machine purchase, that four of those personas are going to be involved in that purchasing decision. You can now look at those four and identify Well, which ones are going to be the decision makers and which ones are going to influence the decision of those decision makers and you can create marketing assets accordingly that answer the questions for each of those members at the stage that it's needed to address like that's where this becomes really actionable is not just a matter of creating everything it's a matter of looking at it and knowing the the hierarchy knowing the relationships and then placing the correct pieces of content or assets in front of them at the right time
Nels Jensen:Right and this also dovetails not to go off on too much of a separate tangent here, but this also dovetails with Account Based Marketing where okay at some point you realize that four different people from company X have been checking out your product, you know, being you know, yeah right. There may be you may be you know, trying to mirror their buying group, but that also gives you sends you signals in terms of possible next steps and How to engage and things like that. So that's also where your you know, your CRM is gonna, you know, play a really huge role in leveraging what you can out of your work on, you know, personas.
Joey Strawn:I agree and we would be remiss or I would be remiss if we didn't at least mention Account Based Marketing or ABM on this episode. You know, it is a very hot topic nowadays, it is something there's a lot of technology vendors and platforms and in conversations popping up around it, and honestly, we're gonna probably do an entire episode on Account Based Marketing and really diving into what it looks like and how it works for industrials, most industrials, think of Account Based Marketing, like we've been doing that for years, like we look at an account and figure out people and try to impress them. But you know, the ways that we're able to go after it nowadays, and the ways that really understanding these buying committees, we can use technology to our benefit for Account Based Marketing. That's where it starts to get really inspiring and really powerful to say, Okay, well, one of the things that we do know is that people don't love to talk to salesman all the time, they like to go as far as they can, and get confident, as confident as possible. Before, you know doing those touch bases. I mean, Nels was, I forget what the study says now, but it's like 70% of the way or through the buying process before they actually reach out and talk to somebody. It's somewhere in the high levels that you'd be like, That's not that's do I. But it's right. That like the ability for marketers to create a universe of content, where anybody in the buying committee could answer their own questions at their own pace is like a Nirvana, that would be ideal if we could know exactly the members of every buying committee and the exact pieces of marketing materials that they needed to answer their questions, and then just point them to the right direction. Yes, is the golden nugget here is the ideal. And that's what ABM is really going after it's let's engage every person at the right place at the right time. At the right journey stage.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and self directing is is another phrase to put it so that you know, you make it easy for them to find it. But, you know, let's the makeup of these committees, we talked about different people from different departments. And we talked about decision makers versus influencers. You know, I think one of the keys is as we go forward with this is understanding that the overall goal is going to be about marketing. And so you cannot possibly target market to everybody right now. So you want to seek out commonalities and and trends if you can, as opposed to differentiation. Yes. At Company X, the frontline manager, you know, wields unusual influence. If that's not normally the case. If in going through your customer list that is more of the exception than the rule, then you don't have to have an official persona for the frontline manager.
Joey Strawn:No, yes, that's those are adaptable situations, we as industrials are nothing if not adaptable, so those outliers deal with them as they come. But yes, the real goal here is to have that
Nels Jensen:Here's here's the here's the tricky part is but you want to have content that everyone on that buying group can benefit from. But you know, you aren't necessarily going to market specifically spend money on trying to reach everybody in that buyer group. So what are the commonalities? How do you? What do you need for these key personas? And I believe that's what we're gonna jump into next. But it's you're not marketing to everybody, right? You're not have key personas, how do we figure out these key personas?
Joey Strawn:I agree, I think it's time that we head down to the shop floor, because we really want to make this big convert, we have a big conversation so far about all these factors and these personas and how they fit in to not only the industrial buying cycle, but these buying committees that are a reality in our world. So what we want to do is in the shop floor segment, we're going to go through five critical elements that you have to have to truly understand the industrial buying persona that you need to build to then put into those buying committees. How do you put those together? And how do you understand their relationship? We have to understand the individual elements. And so now, let's head on down to the shop floor. Let's answer that question. All right, we've made it section two on the shop floor nails. We're here. It's hustle and bustle. We've been talking about a lot of Persona based stuff, but I think it's time to really break it down into the five major elements that people need to consider when building their b2b Industrial buying profile, or persona. So I'll just start the number one he got to know the graphics, I'm talking about the techno graphics, the demographics, the psychographics, you've got to know, and this has to be based on data, this is going to be a big point I'm going to make on this one guys listen to this, it can't just be a crazy wish list, or one of your salesmen being like, Well, I think most of them like to use Outlook, and they never want to get a call on a Friday. It's not that it's not a wish list. And it's not a gut reaction from some of your sales guys, we need to know based on data, the industries they work in the locations, they frequent, the types of technology that they use mobile versus desktop, versus browsers, we we want to know, the types of, you know, the types of questions they ask, we need to know all of those graphics. And so and those all have to be based on some version of data to have a realistic expectation and nails to find the commonalities that you reference, because that's what that yeah, needs to show.
Nels Jensen:Right? Well, this is where you're a really effective CRM is like a force multiplier, because you can go back and you can look at, you know, what types of interactions lead to specific sales in your past, and you can look at, where did things drop off, in other cases, whatever. So right, that, you know, sort of overlaying that over who you were dealing with, and what kind of encounters you had might lead you to some more information about that. But yes, the demographics. So I mean, some of it is, you know, the, the psychographics, right, we're clear that engineers like to look at YouTube videos, how tos, whatever, we know that at some point, people want the self directed, answer my questions without me having to talk to somebody we know that, you know, you download a white paper, and you don't want to get hit up with for touch. Right away. Definitely. Gonna talk about some of those goals and, and, and tight preferences. But I tell you, I load, I download a lot of white papers, and I do not want to be put on three email is just because I downloaded your white paper. So it's like, come on, come on, folks. It's like
Joey Strawn:Expectations that fall into those demographics as well. But yeah, like this, these are the these are the ones that we can actually pinpoint by how they fill out forms. We want to know like the things that they're doing, and the questions they're answering, and then those demographics, and Technographics get us there. This bleeds a little bit though nails with our number two, which is a lot of what we've talked about today is, and this involves a lot of the psychographics, too, but where, and what is their function within the company. So I want to blend these two, because when you're putting your persona together, and it doesn't matter, like we said earlier, if you're going to give them a very specific, you know, human name, or if you're going to do it by a job type, or or whatever it may be, but understand their their job title, understand who they answer to. And if they're a decision maker, or an influencer, understand, you know, how long they have been in the industry. And if this is an industry kind of focused job, what location of the country they may be in, or what timelines you know, they may be working on, those types of things are all very, very important. When you're putting these personas together. I mean, announce, we've talked about, you know, the placement within these committees, that's a big deal. Like there's a lot of different layer levels they could be at within these committees.
Nels Jensen:And sometimes these committees are not actual real well, usually they're not actual real, it is something everyone knows, it's a group of people who at some point will be weighing in on the process. And that's important to understand, too. But, and this is where you seek out commonalities, as opposed to as opposed to differences, right, every company is going to do things a little bit differently. You can't get stuck in the weeds about the one or two that you know of who have, you know, their their own process, but you're usually gonna have somebody from leadership, right could be the president, especially a lot of manufacturing firms, it's somebody with a background from the shop floor, second generation, whatever it might be, but you're gonna have some type of leadership, bigger companies, it may just be the CFO may not be the right. The mic might not but it could be the CEO a lot. There's lots of possibilities, but there's often you know, some type of leadership decision maker, the operational side, right, your engineers, your facility managers, the people and you know, it could be somebody in charge of, you know, more of the efficiency side, but it could be somebody who's actually in charge of the p&l at the at the facility, but your operational side is is almost in the industrial cycle is going to be right. So what I refer to as assets, people and equipment, and oh, yeah, this is this is I'll just use a couple examples of how they might differ in titles but they have similar responsibilities. So, for instance, if you know you're dealing with transportation, right, so you're dealing with trucks, and you're dealing with drivers, right. So somebody is an asset manager, it might be a fleet manager, who is actually in charge of getting butts in seats to drive those trucks. And so if you're marketing fleet cards, that the fleet manager is going to be a really essential piece in that committee. Right. In other places, the asset manager might be around buying inventory, you know, might be in the supply more in the supply chain. But it's, it's kind of the flip side, not really the flip side, but it's, it's a complement to the operation. It's so what goes into that operation? It's not just the, you know, this machine will run faster. But it's also okay, how does this piece of equipment fit into the bigger Piazza there's, in addition to operation, there's also assets, and then there's always, you know, finance, and at some small, combining leadership, and finance might be the same person. You know, these, as we said, these are all different, but generally speaking in the industrial, that's a lot of them there, of course, there could be other ones. And in some cases, your your leadership might be, hey, we have multiple facilities. And here's somebody who actually knows what's going on at the different facilities, but I don't really
Joey Strawn:Regional quality manager that has to, you know, be involved in any purchase decision, because the owner is going to be used right at multiple locations. I mean, and one of the things like this is, this is what we're thinking, I mean, this is what we're saying is being able to identify that within the personas. So like, let's take a step back, we've got our persona that we're working on, we know the type of job they have. We know that how long they've been in the industry and the type of industry they work in, whether it's automotive, or aerospace, or pharmaceutical, or whatever construction, whatever it may be, we know what area of the country they're in, and usually how old they may be. We know whether or not they're a decision maker, or an influencer within the committee makeup. And now we know whether they play a leadership or an operational or an asset or a finance role within the organization, I would say that this persona is shaping up pretty good for us to be able to answer some questions about what they need, you know, like we're finding those commonalities, which now brings us to our third critical thing that you need to build these personas and understand them. Is their pain points in the hurdles? Sure, you know, there they are, if they are in a consistent job in a consistent industry doing consistent work, that they have consistent hurdles that they deal with. So what are those? Yeah, questions are,
Nels Jensen:Your messaging points for leadership are going to be different than they are going to be for the operational, you know, so what is the value proposition of your product or service, and you really literally can change your value proposition for each of those personas, you should be able to enjoy like, a, you know, value proposition that, you know, the the leadership, it might be, you know, what this is really going to help your, your, you know, overall equipment efficiency, oh II and allow you to replace a couple of employees that you can't find people to work for anymore with automation. So the big vision there is, okay, we're helping solve not only workforce issues, but we're helping with quality control and output, you know, a big win, and that
Joey Strawn:Your engineer does not care about that your engineer very much cares whether or not that machine is going to work with the certain CAD model systems that he is using, and how quickly he can get information to and from those systems.
Nels Jensen:But the value proposition to the asset manager might be that we are your single point of contact, you know, what we solve end to end issues in your on your floor. And so, if you have a motor starter issue, when you turn the machine on, where your point of contact, and if you have, you know, the issue that the machine, you know, is running too slow or too fast, or there's torque issues about you know, how much power you know, whatever it may be that, you know, hey, we are your single point of contact for, you know, power and electrical and motor control, you know, and
Joey Strawn:By the way, Ask that guy, we also know that your industry shutdown season is between these three weeks, and we know that everybody else is booked up solid and we can actually fit you in in those three weeks because that's when you have to have this done, because nothing else is running. Yeah, so we can do that for you. Well, those are all those types of things and so being able to list those out and list out those Okay, so we know what they do and who they are. We know how they influence the buying committee and what stage they usually play. In that funnel, and now we're actually being able to list out and say, These are the problems that they specifically have. These are the things that they specifically have trouble with, and the things that cause them to stay up at night, whether those are questions, whether those are hurdles that they fat, however you want to formulate it in your own persona, you can list those hurdles, or those pain points in a numerous, numerous ways. But that leads us now into the fourth element of, okay, well, we've know who they are, we know what influence they have and where they stand. And we know what problems they have. Well, let's figure out how to get that to them. What types of technology and information types do they like? Do? Do they only watch videos? Well, if they only watch videos, I guarantee you, you should not make an 80 page white paper with no images to that audience. And that persona number. Sure understanding if they like to read understanding if they only prefer data sheets, because they need finance numbers and specs for their warehouse or for their books. Those is that that's a huge element of your persona that we don't see a lot of people talking about, and that us as industrial marketers really, really need to understand, because if we're going to pinpoint our content and our assets, and our marketing to those people, we need to know how they're taking in that information.
Nels Jensen:Sure. So the platforms matter, the media form, if you will, matters for your messaging to and I'll get back to set my said in the previous segment to his people, people want to have the same conveniences on the work. So if you know, they want to be able to ask you a customer service question on social media? And have it answered, Yes.
Joey Strawn:So yeah, if that's where they engaged, like if we know that all of our engineers or all of our, you know, finance Junior assistants that we have found as a very influential persona type, you know, all of our junior finance people engage on Tik Tok, then it may not be as silly to have a tick tock as you think, you know, if that's the finance, if that's the information that you need to get to them early on in their journey. So it really makes a difference to understand if they prefer social versus a blog, or a newsletter or an email, you know, depending on and this is where, you know, it's not ageism, but it's it's it younger generations, and the up and coming markets don't read email. So maybe don't have that be a primary driver of information you need to those markets, use email for your moral leadership, and the more seasoned and the longer standing members of those who were showing in email engagement, you know, use the metrics to your benefit. And so the last thing that you have to consider is now that we know all of this, is what are the main goals that they are trying to accomplish. And this is usually answered by having the rest in place. But for a finance guy, its ease and stream and, you know, lowering costs. For an engineer, it may be ease of use and design, mobility. For a CEO, it's gonna be, who knows you've met CEOs, they're all crazy. You know, it's, who knows what that's going to be. But it will be based on growing his business and making things function better, and making his brand stronger. So those are the messages and those are the goals that your pieces should speak to, in the channels, you know, that will work for them.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And and again, the hard part, the high degree of difficulty is that crafting different messages for different personas based on they all have these five similar, you know, issues areas to account for. But yes, the goal, the goal of the asset manager is different than the goal of the CEO. So understanding the pain points and the hurdles, and the challenges is essential. And so as understanding what's their what does success look like for them? And how do you craft your messaging around that they're very related to point number three, you know, in terms of what are their what are their challenges? And then how you reach them. Point number four, is certainly valid too. So yeah, so you had demographics, the function within the company, the main pain points and hurdles, how they want to get their information. And ultimately, what are they trying to accomplish? Here are five keys to the messaging for each persona.
Joey Strawn:And I would say that if people start with understanding their buying committees and who which individuals are on those committees, then you go down and create those personas for those individuals and then look at them as a collective understands like, oh, well, it seems like everybody that's an influencer. really relies on video based or image based information, and they like to get it through social media, and YouTube. And then everybody that's on a leadership or a decision making stance, doesn't have a lot of time and wants datasheets and summaries and etc, etc, etc. Even just having that amount of knowledge will really help you craft a better strategy to get your marketing and your brand and your services in front of the people that need to buy it. All of the people that need to buy it.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, so this looks daunting. There's Yeah, I'm gonna have to go and build up a much bigger content library to accomplish all of that. And, you know, my response would be, well, yeah, how are people going about their buying journeys right back where we started at the you, whatever the current number is, 70% of the research is done before, you know, reaching out to the company, I saw something the other day that said, you know, 90% of buyers are doing research online, you know, at some point, so everybody in this process is online looking. You know,
Joey Strawn:I think I think recent research that I did from Google was showing that b2b buyers in particular, are doing something like 12 Google searches before ever going to a website. I've even mentioned that earlier. I just it's people aren't doing it, the ways that they were and our goals as industrials, and as industrial marketers specifically, is to get our messages and our solutions and our products in front of the people that can and will buy it. And that's the landscape of that is changing nowadays. And so if you have questions about how to implement any of this, or if you know, we've sparked some ideas that you just want to know more details about how we would go about certain ways of doing this is shoot us an email, you know, we we love to engage with, with industrial marketers around the world. So email us at podcast at industrial marketer.com And we would love to answer some questions. And if you have episode topics, we want to hear those two, you know, this is a community so if you haven't already, head on over to industrial marketer comm there's a lot of articles, so much knowledge and information there. You know, we try to have as much as you can need, it's the self guide yourself to whatever answers you want. In the future, we're going to be doing episodes on Account Based Marketing, on media planning on website building and how industrials need to focus around different CRM and technology solutions, we're going to be doing reviews of different products. This is going to be a big, very helpful influential season of industrial Marketer Podcast, and we hope that you're along for the ride. If you haven't subscribed already, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. Also, take three of your friends phones, and subscribe to our podcast on their phone as well. That would be great. Your your your efforts are very much appreciated. Now, I can't tell you how fun it is to talk about this stuff with you. We talk off air about targeting and personas and content maps a lot. I love and we get to record and share this out with other people who I know are asking these questions too. Now, if you had fun today,
Nels Jensen:Yes, this is this is hard stuff. But you know, that's where that's where the good stuff is, you know that it's it's a long it's a it's a long, complex journey with lots of moving pieces.
Joey Strawn:I agree and, and I love going on that journey with others and other industrial marketers. So guys, reach out to us, connect with us, fight the good fight, stay out there and keep creating awesome stuff. Until next time. This is Joey and Nelson for the industrial Marketer Podcast and we will see in the next episode