The New World of Marketing in the Chemical Industry
The chemical business is changing. The competition is savvier, and buyers are getting younger. Because of geopolitical uncertainty, there is a strong need for domestic suppliers to maintain operations and eliminate supply chains disruptions.
Today’s decision makers – the scientists, analysts, engineers, and line of business managers – do business much differently than the generation that preceded them.
Unlike the OGs that did business in-person, at trade shows, and over the phone, the new generation of chemical industry professionals utilize digital tools to research solutions, educate themselves, and source vendors. The rolodex is being replaced by the Internet, email, social media, and CRM applications.
Marketing to the new chemical industry requires a mix of digital tools:
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Website
To engage, educate, inform, and convert, your website should deliver a content experience that includes blog posts, use cases, technical applications, customer snapshots, white papers, video, etc. A well-planned editorial calendar will keep the content experience fresh and improve search results.
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Search performance is dependent on relevancy and authority. You need relevant content associated with the desired key words you want to align with. Additionally, you need to implement a program to cultivate links from industry-related domains, such as news articles, awards, checklists, and directories.
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Content
As part of your content strategy, you need a steady flow of blog posts, white papers, product specs, videos, etc. This “dynamic” content helps improve your domain relevancy while providing the appropriate materials for each of the audiences your website is targeting. From a lead generation perspective, content that is educational is critical to converting visitors.
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Email Nurture Campaigns
Your organizations has customers and prospects in various databases? How are you engaging them? Are you engaging them regularly? Email provides a powerful, cost-effective medium to educate, inform, and remind, as well as cross-sell and up-sell. As content is created, email can help point target audiences to your website.
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PR
New products and services as well as other company milestones need to be memorialized via formal announcements such as press releases, blog posts, and articles. Developing a PR plan and combined with media outreach will create content that will generate press coverage. This will help improve awareness and thought-leadership, in addition to helping with SEO and domain authority via third-party links. Media coverage is another layer of content that can be used to promote via website, social media, and email campaigns.
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Social
As a business-to-business organization, LinkedIn is the best social media platform to leverage. It can be used to promote new products, services, as well as the availability of content such as announcements, white papers, and videos.
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Video
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the value of a video. Your website and social media platforms require videos to tell a story in short clips. Video is ideal to easily convey the technical aspects of products and services. It must be part of your content strategy.
As you can see all of the digital marketing items mentioned above are all connected. One feeds the other and offers a continuous experience to tell stories and convey key messages.
Utilizing these tools, in addition to participating in trade shows, conferences and industry events will increase lead generation, thought-leadership and market share. All your marketing activities must be proactive, driven by campaigns, timelines, and editorial calendars. Are they?
Also, different products may require different campaigns and the tools to support them. There should not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Are you doing this?
With the right program, your marketing investment can deliver double- and triple-digit returns.
Let’s connect!
Are you ready to optimize your marketing strategy with a proven growth framework for chemical companies? My team and I are ready to discuss your goals and objectives, and align them with a go to market plan that delivers results.
