Industrial Marketers Shift To Online Marketing

Acquiring new customers and generating leads and during the economic downturn remains both a top goal and a top challenge for industrial marketers, many of whom are turning to online marketing tactics to find new prospects and ways to generate revenue, according to the fourth annual survey of marketing and sales executives and managers in the industrial sector conducted by GlobalSpec.

The report, “Trends in Industrial Marketing 2009: How Manufacturers are Marketing Today,” says that 44% of respondents stated that customer acquisition is their primary marketing goal, with another 29% choosing lead generation. An additional 13% of respondents selected customer retention as their primary goal, up from 5% in 2008.

While lead generation is a key initiative for industrial marketers, lead quality outranks lead quantity when deciding where to allocate marketing budget. The survey also found that three out of the top four marketing channels for generating quality leads are all online.

The proven ability for online marketing to deliver high quality leads has encouraged many industrial marketers to shift to online marketing. Forty-eight percent of respondents reported that online is a greater portion of their marketing budget in 2009 than in 2008, and nearly one-third surveyed said they will be spending more than 50% of their marketing budget online. At the same time, 30% of respondents are reducing trade show attendance and 28% are reducing print ads.

Despite the increased shift of marketing dollars to online media, respondents still face a number of challenges in their marketing efforts. More than half of all respondents selected "too few marketing resources" as one of their top three marketing challenges in 2009, with "generating enough high quality leads for sales" and "need to improve my marketing ROI" rounding out the top three.

Other top findings from the Survey include:

• 63% of respondents will closely evaluate the performance of marketing programs and reduce or eliminate those that don't perform well
• 43% will expand marketing efforts to reach new industries
• 88% of respondents will spend the same or more on online marketing in 2009, as compared to 2008

About the survey: The fourth annual survey of its kind was conducted among US marketing and sales executives and managers in the industrial sector. Of the 555 survey respondents, 66% hold management positions in sales or marketing and 12% indicate they are a president/CEO. The respondent pool represents a variety of company sizes, with annual marketing budgets ranging from less than $50K to more than $1 million.