A pilot program can help overcome a strong product or a strong anti-marketing culture in your manufacturing firm. Use a pilot program to introduce the idea of marketing without pitching products.
2. Pilot Programs
get Approved
Don’t try to boil the ocean or
change Rome in a day.
Tie your pilot proposal to
innovation.
Choose a best chance tactic.
Be ready to show meaningful
numbers.
Align with your AFMS.
Do not build a pilot around a
product.
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3. Success Indicators
1. Must show meaningful numbers
2. Must be capable of capturing contact
information
3. Topic must resonate and be highly relevant
to the audience
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4. Best Chance Tactics
Subscription eNewsletter
Educational webinar or webinar series
Combination eNewsletter + blog
eBook series
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5. Align with your AFMS?
1. You might get pressure to include product promotion
with the pilot. DO NOT AGREE!
2. The most successful pilot programs address a
common pain point with basic knowledge.
3. Educational webinars can be extremely successful as
“New Way” pilot program initiatives.
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6. Shout out your success!
Don’t be shy about sharing your success.
Share meaningful numbers, especially not
marketing vanity metrics.
Talk about revenue metrics.
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7. Be ready to ask for more.
Be prepared to expand your pilot program or
propose a new pilot program.
Strong product cultures will take time to convert.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time.
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8. Takeaways
1. Do not promote a product as your pilot.
2. Choose a tactic that will prove results.
3. Good tactics are
◦ Webinars
◦ eNewsletter
◦ eNewsletter + blog
◦ eBook series
4. Be prepared for success and pilot expansion.
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9. Congratulations, you’re on your way to a New Way
to Market!
Join the Manufacturing Marketing Institute – MM Academy today!
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Editor's Notes
Welcome back Manufacturing Marketers! Bruce McDuffee here. I bet you’re starting to recognize my voice, but want to introduce myself anyways.
Now that we have a basic understanding of the foundational technology we’ll need to execute the New Way to market for Manufacturing, starting with the Pilot program.
You’re not going to boil the ocean, in most manufacturing companies, and you’re usually fighting a deeply engrained culture around the product and the sales group. You’ll need to prove the concept of marketing, engaging without pitching the product.
The Pilot program is the way to go.
Step 1 – Write down your goals and objectives. If the goal is to demonstrate the power of knowledge based marketing as a way to generate engagement, then you should clearly state that goal and how the results will support the goal.
Step 2 – Determine the Sweet Spot of Engagement and the Audience Facing Mission Statement. Gain commitment from the expert to support your pilot program.
Step 3 – Choose the particular tactic you will propose. I strongly suggest choosing a tactic that allows you to show real verifiable numbers. An educational webinar series is a great choice because you can easily show the number of registrants and attendees along with critical data about each person. You could argue that your webinar pilot program will deliver qualified leads.
Step 4 – Prepare the necessary identify and procure the tools, develop the content, set milestones, select a launch date and execute.
Step 5 – Share the results and be prepared to show how the results demonstrate proof of your hypothesis.
Step 6 - Ask for resources and support for an extension of your original pilot or request a second pilot program to further demonstrate the concept of the “New Way”.
You must have authority to deliver the content. Should leverage your firm’s expertise and experts.
A ‘best chance’ tactic has three specific criteria.
First, the tactic must easily demonstrate meaningful numbers that show engagement. Because the ability to show numbers is important, that means the tactic must have a call to action that enables counting.
Second, the count must include identification of the contacts. In other words, the count should not be anonymous such as ‘clicks’ or ‘likes’.
Third, the topic must resonate with and be highly relevant to the people in your target audience as defined by your Audience Facing Mission Statement.
Don’t tell the CEO or CFO about how many clicks, opens or likes you get. Tell them how many opportunities you added to the sales funnel
Unless it is an A-B test.
The pilot program assumes you need to prove the concept or The New Way to Market in Manufacturing, in other words, proving that you can engage with a much larger portion of the target audience when you stop pitching products and start helping the people in the target audience.
If your organization is ready to make a unilateral change in the marketing and sales strategy, go for it and jump in with both feet you might not need to dip a toe in with a pilot program.
Thank you and I’ll see you at the next lesson. This is Bruce McDuffee, signing off for today, Now let’s go out and advance the practice of marketing in mfg today!