Marketing Insights
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Online Analytics And Independent Sales Reps: A Powerful Combination
1/23/2020
Many companies in the water and wastewater markets sell their products through 3rd party representation. For overseas manufacturers, it has proven the means over many years for entering the U.S. market. Even for U.S.-based manufacturers whose executive talent prefers to focus on the engineering discipline of product innovation and development over the softer skills of persuasion and negotiation, independent representation remains central to their business development success.
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The Importance Of Research In Marketing To The Water Industry
1/22/2020
The market in which we operate is a skeptical one, and that’s putting it mildly. It is slow to adopt, slow to trust and slow to move. Content has finally become the path of choice for many manufacturers as a way of chipping away at the fog of distrust that surrounds the marketplace. As we continue down this path it’s important to know how field data can help fuel your thought leadership content. Data, especially third-party data, is tough to ignore, and more convenient to trust.
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The Difference A Decade Makes
1/7/2020
As we enter a new decade, a reflection on how different the media landscape is today in the water and wastewater markets from what it was back in 2010.
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49% Of Buyers Never Talk To The Vendor
11/22/2019
I came across this new research about B2B technology buyers and thought that despite a different vertical, a lot of its findings are relevant for the water and wastewater industry.
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What Does Good Thought Leadership Look Like?
11/1/2019
I recently had a discussion with a water and wastewater solutions provider about where to start when producing an early buyer’s journey piece of content. It’s not a new conversation for me to engage in and I’ve probably had similar conversations with other companies at least 100 times over the past three years. I’ve written numerous articles and given several presentations around its importance but have given little direction on what it should look like when completed. In other words, I haven’ shown you what GOOD looks like in the form of Thought Leadership content that you need to engage readers in the early stage of their buyer’s journey.
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Follow Your Buyer: An Introduction For Innovative B2B Marketers
10/15/2019
We think marketers – when armed with the right strategy and actionable data – are the lifeblood of successful B2B companies. The Follow Your Buyer methodology reminds marketers why that is true. It’s a methodology developed from more than four decades as a B2B publisher, with insights gleaned from some of the brightest minds in B2B sales and marketing.
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Timely Email Ahead Of The Storm
9/3/2019
Today I received an email from Florida Aquastore, a provider of water storage and treatment solutions based out of Boca Raton, FL. I’m not a customer but we’ve interviewed the company a number of times over the past few years to inform Water Online editorial and I’m on their email distribution list.
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Marketing Lessons From The Shore
7/29/2019
I just got back from a week’s vacation at the New Jersey shore. And what a vacation it was. A true getaway from the information overload that has become the daily and the common. For the entire week, I didn’t watch TV, listen to the radio, stream anything, read any news and most of all, answer any email.
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Overcoming A Lack Of Product Differentiation – Lessons Learned From The Water Disinfection Market
7/16/2019
For years, manufacturers in the water market have followed a similar marketing process to tell the world about their new products and services. In fact, I’d argue that this traditional marketing approach has been applied the world over across all industrial markets by manufacturers introducing new products.
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Why Lead Nurturing Doesn’t Work
7/9/2019
By now, you’ve probably heard the term “lead nurturing.” As defined by Marketo, lead nurturing is “the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel, and through every step of the buyer's journey. It focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects and providing the information and answers they need.”
That seems a little passive to me. From what I’ve seen, there is something more purposeful to the practice. It’s not just listening to the needs of your prospects but also anticipating them based on analyzing previous engagement (or lack of). And constantly testing out those assumptions to better tailor the content you provide to satisfy your prospects’ informational needs.