Back in March, while our clients were focussing on what lockdown meant for their businesses, our first job was to draft COVID-19 statements for their websites, reassuring their customers and informing them about changes that were being made and what the impact would be on service and production levels.   Although our clients are all industrial businesses, thus sharing common ground in manufacturing and engineering, during lockdown they’ve faced very different challenges. Overcoming these have  ..read more

An effective inbound marketing strategy depends on a number of factors: detailed customer and market insight; the ability to create authoritative materials and content; and a reliable platform through which to manage the interaction with prospects and customers.  Customer insight  Once, this might have been called market research! Today, however, we need to dig deeper, to understand both the market conditions and, most importantly, the challenges our customers face.  These might be driven by market conditions, such as new legislation or standa ..read more

There’s an interesting anecdote told by Dan Tyre and Todd Huckenberry, the joint authors of ‘The Inbound Organisation’, about a company called Tube Form Solutions, from Indiana in the United States of America.  Tube Form Solutions manufactures pipe and tube bending, cutting and finishing systems. During a company open house, one of the directors was approached by a prospective customer who said, “We’ve researched a bunch of laser manufacturers online & narrowed it down to two companies: you and one other. We eliminated others based on feat ..read more

Demand generation practices are normally categorised as inbound or outbound; ideally, the two should be combined to create the optimum conditions for lead generation, nurturing and sales conversion. The challenge businesses face, is to get your offering in front of potential customers and then, given that most B2B purchases have sales cycles measured in weeks, months or years, to find methods of building and nurturing a solid relationship that keeps your business at the front of the prospective customer’s mind. Ultimately, a successful ..read more

There’s a great scene in the movie ‘There’s Something About Mary’ where Ben Stiller’s character Ted picks up a hitchhiker on his way to Miami to find Mary, the love of his life.   They start chatting and the hitchhiker says he’s a salesman. “You heard of this thing 8-Minute Abs? Well this is gonna blow that right outta the water. Listen to this… 7-Minute Abs”.    I got a good laugh, and happily it gave me something to open this post with.  I’d promised Nick at 4CM a blog post to support our event on Inbound for Manufacturers on 18th Sept, and have bee ..read more

Who is in control of the customer?  Way back in the early nineteen eighties, the first car I bought from a car dealership, as opposed to Exchange and Mart or from a friend of a friend in the pub, was a Lancia Beta 2.0 Spyder.  It was second hand but looked the business. Silver, Targa top, twin-cam engine, twin Dellorto carburettors, 5-speed gearbox and, you’ve probably guessed, a lovely case of rust; this developed happily from the inside outwards during the year or so that I owned the car, to the point where there was more rust than metal.  My point ..read more