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B2B Market Research: Methods, Questions and a Four-Week Process Small Teams Can Run

Posted on May 23, 2020September 30, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Originally published May 2020. Updated September 2026.

B2B market research has a reputation problem. Say the words in a planning meeting and people picture a 60-page report from a firm with a Swiss-sounding name, a six-figure invoice and one very confident pie chart.

The fancy version has its place. The cheap version is a survey sent to 3,000 contacts and answered by eleven people, four of whom work in your sales team. (One of them was just checking that the link works.)

Most B2B marketers live somewhere in between.

And the pressure comes from above, as usual. Someone at the top read that the best companies are “customer-obsessed” and would like you to be obsessed too, by the end of the quarter, with no budget and the same calendar you had last week. (In my imagination, the obsession gets its own Slack channel and nobody ever posts in it.)

Truth is, the research that changes your marketing rarely costs much. It takes a few honest conversations, a close look at data you already have, and someone willing to write down what they heard, even when it contradicts the website.

So this is B2B market research at the size most teams can actually run: the methods that work, the questions to ask, and how to turn the answers into something your team will use.

What is B2B market research?

B2B market research is the work of learning who buys what you sell, why they buy it, how they decide and what else they consider. It covers your market, your customers and your competitors.

It differs from consumer research in three ways that shape everything else. First, the audience is small. You may have a few hundred real prospects, not millions. Second, buying is a group decision, usually involving several people with different concerns. Third, the cycle is long, so the reasons someone buys are often set months before they ever talk to sales.

As a result, B2B research leans on depth over volume. Ten good conversations usually teach you more than a thousand survey responses.

Why most B2B companies skip it, and pay for it later

Most B2B teams believe they already know their customer. In a sense, they do. The founder knows the early deals, sales knows the objections, and marketing knows what gets clicks.

The trouble is that these views rarely match. So the website describes one customer, the sales deck describes another, and the ads target a third. Then, when deals slow down, each team blames a different stage of the lead funnel.

Research settles the argument with evidence. It also gives you the raw material for everything that follows: your ideal customer profile, your positioning, your messaging and your content.

B2B market research methods that work for small teams

You do not need all of these. Instead, pick two or three and do them properly.

Customer interviews

This is the most valuable method, and the one teams skip most often. Talk to recent customers, ideally within six months of their decision, while they still remember how it happened. Thirty minutes each is enough. Aim for eight to twelve.

Record the calls if they agree, because the exact words customers use are the most useful thing you will collect. Later, those words become your headlines.

Lost-deal conversations

Next, talk to prospects who chose someone else, or chose to do nothing. They are harder to reach. However, they tell you what customers never will: where your story broke down. Even three of these conversations can change your messaging.

Sales call reviews

Your sales team hears buyers every day. So listen to a handful of recorded calls, or sit in on a few live ones. Note the questions buyers ask, the objections that come up and the words they use to describe their problem.

Your own data

Before spending anything, look at what you already have. Search Console shows which searches bring people to your site. Your CRM shows which industries and company sizes close fastest. Meanwhile, your support inbox shows what confuses customers after they buy.

Competitor research

Read your competitors’ websites, pricing pages, case studies and reviews. In particular, look for the promises everyone makes, since those are the ones buyers have stopped hearing. We walk through the full process in our B2B competitor analysis guide.

Short surveys

Surveys work best after the interviews. Use them to check how widespread something is, once conversations have told you what to ask. Also, keep them to five questions. Response rates drop fast after that.

The B2B market research questions worth asking

Good questions ask about past behavior, not opinions or predictions. “What did you do?” gets a more reliable answer than “What would you do?”

These are the questions we come back to most often.

About the problem

What was happening in the business when you started looking for help?
What had you already tried?
What would have happened if you had done nothing?

About the decision

Who else was involved, and what did each person care about?
What other options did you consider, including doing it in-house?
What almost stopped you from going ahead?

About the result

What changed after you started?
How would you describe what we do to a colleague?

That last question is often worth the whole interview. The answer is usually clearer than anything on your website.

How to run B2B market research in four weeks

Week 1: decide what you need to learn

Write down the three decisions this research should inform. For example, which industry to focus on next year, why deals stall after the demo, or how to describe the product on the homepage. Research without a decision attached tends to end as a slide deck nobody opens.

Week 2: collect what you already have

Pull the numbers from your CRM, Search Console and past campaigns. Ask sales for their five most common objections. Then list the customers and lost prospects you want to interview, and send the invitations.

Week 3: run the conversations

Hold the interviews and the call reviews. Keep a shared document open and write down the exact phrases people use. After each call, add three lines: what surprised you, what confirmed what you already thought, and one quote worth keeping.

Week 4: find the patterns and write them down

Read all the notes in one sitting. Look for anything that came up three times or more. Finally, write a two-page summary: who buys, what triggers the search, how they decide and the words they use. That document is the output, and everything else builds on it.

Turning research into something your team will use

Research only matters if it changes what people do. So translate it into three things.

An ideal customer profile. The research shows which companies get the most value from you and decide most easily. Our guide on how to create an ideal customer profile shows how to write one.

Buyer personas, kept practical. A persona earns its place when it describes a real role, the problem in that person’s own words and what they need to see before they say yes. For that reason, skip the invented hobbies and the stock photo.

Your messaging. Put customer language into your homepage, your sales deck and your content. If customers call it “chaos in the handoff” and your website calls it “pipeline optimization,” use their words.

These documents are also exactly what AI tools need to write well for you. We explain how in brain files: how to teach AI your brand voice.

How often should you do B2B market research?

Run a full round once a year, ideally before annual planning. In between, keep it light. Two customer conversations a month and a quarterly look at lost deals are enough to notice when the market shifts.

In addition, run it again whenever something big changes, such as a new product, a new market or a sudden drop in the share of deals you win.

Frequently asked questions

What is B2B market research?

B2B market research is the process of learning who buys your product, why they buy, how they make the decision and which alternatives they consider. It usually combines customer interviews, sales insights, your own data and competitor research.

What are the main B2B market research methods?

The most useful methods are customer interviews, conversations with lost prospects, sales call reviews, analysis of your own data (CRM, Search Console, support tickets), competitor research and short surveys. Small teams get the most from interviews and their own data.

How many interviews do I need for B2B market research?

For most B2B companies, eight to twelve customer interviews are enough to see clear patterns. If the same themes keep coming up after the first six or seven, you are close.

How is B2B market research different from B2C research?

B2B audiences are smaller, decisions involve several people, and sales cycles are longer. So B2B research relies more on in-depth conversations and less on large surveys.

What questions should I ask in B2B market research interviews?

Ask about past behavior: what triggered the search, what they tried before, who was involved in the decision, which alternatives they considered, what almost stopped them and how they would describe your product to a colleague.

The firm with the Swiss-sounding name will still be there next year.

By then, you may not need the pie chart.

5 Industrial Marketing Challenges – and How to Overcome Them

Posted on January 30, 2020September 27, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

If you’re responsible for marketing, sales or business development for your B2B company, you have a unique and different set of challenges than businesses looking to market directly to consumers. While B2B marketing uses many of the same techniques as B2C marketing, the application is very different and marketing to other businesses requires a different content strategy focused on different channels. It’s essential to set good metrics and make sure you’re tracking the impact of your efforts. While there are a number of challenges of industrial marketing, here are a few common ones, and how you can overcome them.

Producing Quality Content

Content marketing, as part of a broader inbound marketing system, is an incredibly effective way to draw in an audience of potential leads, showcase your expertise, and get leads reaching out to you. However, producing that content, especially in an industrial setting, can be a challenge. The content has to be technical enough to show a clear understanding of the material without being so complex as to turn off potential leads who come from business backgrounds, like a VP Purchasing or CMO, who aren’t experts in the technical side of your product. The solution is to have content marketers work closely with technical staff to ensure that content produced is both accurate and readable. With the directive from upper management to participate, technical team members often enjoy explaining everything they do.

Promoting Your Content

Putting out great content is only the first step. Once you’ve written an article that you think will resonate with potential leads, you have to publish it in different channels that will get their attention. Your business needs to have a presence in a number of different content channels and plans to attract leads to your content. It’s key to think about your target market and to understand what channels they use most for industry learning and research. For example, in the US LinkedIn is a primary content channel for serious B2B companies. However, in India, Facebook and Youtube are extremely relevant even for highly technical businesses. Making a good content distribution plan based on your target audience before you start publishing content is a good way to ensure that what you write gets read by the right people.

Setting Expectations

Everyone, including upper management, reads stories about runaway successes with internet marketing, so it’s important before you begin your marketing campaign to research what is typical for your industry and set expectations accordingly. Then, revisit your plan periodically and compare your expectations to actual campaign metrics. Show how many people are viewing your content in different channels and how many are clicking through to your website or reaching out for follow up. If you can, work with your sales team to track how many of these leads convert into sales so you can show, with a dollar amount, the impact of your marketing efforts.

Maintaining Publishing Schedules

Once you’ve started a successful content campaign, you need to continue to develop content so that fresh material containing the correct keywords appears on your website and in your content channels. Someone on the marketing team has to take responsibility for researching and creating content and making sure it gets out on time. If you don’t have an in house marketing team, consider outsourcing your marketing to an external agency that specializes in B2B companies – sticking to a publishing schedule gets challenging if there is no one dedicated to the project. Don’t think you need to publish daily for success. Instead, focus on quality, reliability and applicability so that your articles have the biggest impact.

Trying New Channels

If your organization is having success with one content channel, it may be difficult to get them to consider trying a different or new channel. This is often a place where recycling old content can be useful to establish yourself on the channel or, if you’re looking at something like YouTube where you’d have to create video content, that content can then be used on your existing channels. Shaking up the type of content offered can get the attention of your existing audience and give you a great way to cross-promote your efforts.

While inbound marketing for industrial B2B businesses can be challenging, with good planning and execution, it can be very effective. Bringing in a team like StepUp can help meet this challenge. We take the time to understand your business and brainstorm content ideas that will resonate with your leads. Then we work with your staff to ensure our content is accurate but we take the responsibility for keeping the good content coming. If you’d like to learn more, reach out to us for a free marketing strategy session and learn how to apply inbound marketing principles to your business.

How To Create an Effective Marketing Plan For B2B and Manufacturing Companies

Posted on January 6, 2020September 28, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

In today’s B2B landscape, marketing presents an opportunity that is too good for manufacturing companies to ignore. However creating a marketing plan for manufacturing companies is key to achieving success.

Many B2B and manufacturing companies struggle with finding the right approach for their company. In this article, we’ll provide you with our manufacturing marketing plan template, broken down in five simple steps.

Dive Deeper: The Global Growth Methodology for B2B and Manufacturing Companies

Smart Goal Setting

Time to get specific. The start of any solid marketing plan is setting SMART goals. This well-known acronym for goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) should be overarching throughout the whole marketing effort. Setting specific and measurable targets helps manufacturers identify the strong and weak points of their plan. This way they can gradually improve upon their marketing strategy and become more effective, pivoting towards actions that are the most effective.

Aligning Marketing & Sales

When working on creating a marketing plan for manufacturers, alignment of marketing and sales goals is required. Oftentimes businesses overlook this factor and marketers end up working towards vague targets such as website traffic and SEO ranking. This is just one example of many activities a marketer can carry out without knowing how it will practically affect the company’s bottom line when there is no alignment with sales.

A good starting point is to define the required number of sales opportunities per period. Using that number and considering an assumed conversion rate, you will be able to define how many leads you need to capture through marketing. By setting goals in this fashion, marketing efforts will directly benefit the company in a clear and effective way.

Setting an Annual Plan

Creating a marketing plan for manufacturing companies that is outlined for less than a full year is insufficient. Setting a full-year plan provides a structure that enables companies to move forward with marketing. It is most effective to segment the annual plan into 4 quarters, listing the general content topic and marketing direction for every quarter. This provides consistency and a better focus for the marketing efforts throughout the year.

This kind of annual plan is especially important for manufacturing companies who’s educational content will often involve highly technical industry jargon.

Creating a Detailed Quarterly Plan

Detailing Marketing Actions

The first step is to define the most impactful actions that will help reach our goals. Deciding which persona your company is targeting for each quarter and what content campaign is needed to run for lead generation. Moreover, it is important to have clear content and distribution plans. A content plan should include details beyond just the essence of the copy but also where will the relevant content be published. A checklist should be made for the factors to include for attracting the most qualified traffic to the website.

Creating a Content Plan

A clear content plan allows manufacturers to define exactly the content that will be created about each quarter’s topic. A well-thought-out quarterly content plan is the best way of ensuring systematic, timely publishing of high-quality content.

Defining KPI’s

Defining the quarter’s KPIs allows manufacturing companies to track marketing results. By working toward a KPI, marketers can focus on creating a funnel and specify which actions were most effective at converting leads to sales opportunities.

Measuring the Results

No amount of marketing effort is complete if it cannot be measured quickly and effectively. The recommended approach is to use a platform to track and analyze your marketing activities. Although many such platforms exist, we prefer using Hubspot because it provides us with tools to monitor and track results for any type of activity all in one place (for example social media, content, analytics, and SEO), all in one place.

Is Your Company In the Loop?

How effective is your company’s marketing plan? Does your strategy provide enough sales leads, separating you from the competition?

At StepUp, we offer marketing services designed specifically for B2B and manufacturing companies like yours. With a diverse team of seasoned inbound marketers and content specialists, we help build authority and create predictability for increased sales.

Marketing for Engineers: Why Your Technical Team Belongs in Sales and Marketing

Posted on July 11, 2019September 27, 2026 by Elisheva Weiss

This guide to marketing for engineers was originally published July 2019. Updated September 2026.

Your best marketing asset is sitting in an engineering standup right now, and nobody has asked them to write a word.

This is the structural problem in industrial and technical B2B marketing. The people who understand the product are not in the room where the product gets explained. Consequently, the people writing the copy have to guess. And technical buyers — who spot a guess instantly — quietly disqualify you before anyone in sales knows they existed.

The fix is not “have engineering review the blog.” It is a defined operating role for technical people inside the marketing and sales process. Here is what that looks like, what it produces, and how AI changes the economics of it in 2026.

Why marketing for engineers is different from ordinary B2B marketing

Because your audience can audit you. In most B2B categories, vague copy is merely weak. In industrial, manufacturing, and deep-tech categories, vague copy is disqualifying.

A technical buyer reads your page the way a reviewer reads a paper. They are checking tolerances, units, standards, operating conditions, and integration constraints. A specification quoted without its conditions gets noticed immediately. So does a claim with no mechanism behind it. They notice hedging, too.

Three things follow from that:

Precision outperforms persuasion. A specific, correct, bounded claim converts better than an enthusiastic general one.
Omission reads as ignorance. If you describe a solution without naming the constraint it operates under, technical readers assume you do not know the constraint.
The buying committee is technical-led. Engineers may not sign, but they shortlist. Marketing that fails the engineer never reaches the person who signs.

This is why “marketing for engineers” is a genuine discipline, not a tone of voice. You are not writing at engineers in engineer-flavoured language. You are producing material that survives technical review.

What engineers actually contribute, role by role

Content creation: the source of the specifics

Technical content is hard to write well without technical grounding. Your audience, however, spots errors, misplaced information, and evasion immediately, and they read less charitably than a general business audience.

But the common failure is asking engineers to write. Most will not, and the drafts you get back read like documentation. The productive version is narrower:

Ask engineers for the specifics, not the prose. A twenty-minute interview yields the failure modes, the numbers, the “everyone gets this wrong” corrections, and the real-world constraints. A writer then turns that into the article. Engineering reviews for accuracy, not for style.

That division of labour is the whole trick. Engineers supply what only they have — the ground truth. Writers supply structure and clarity. Neither does the other’s job.

Lead qualification: better fit signals

Engineers can tell you which prospects your product genuinely suits, based on technical fit rather than firmographics alone.

This matters because most B2B lead scoring runs on company size, industry, and behaviour — none of which capture whether the product will actually work for that buyer. Instead, engineering can define the disqualifiers: the integration that will not work, the volume below which the economics fail, the regulatory environment that adds nine months.

Feed those into qualification and you stop spending sales time on deals that were never going to close on technical grounds. That is margin recovered, not just leads filtered.

Sales and marketing strategy: specification of the target

Engineers are used to writing specifications. A target account definition is, in fact, a specification.

They can help define which technical characteristics identify a good-fit company, which roles inside that company hold the real evaluation authority, and what the incumbent solution probably is. That produces a sharper target list than persona work built from job titles alone.

Sales support: the credibility multiplier

Once a deal is in technical evaluation, the challenge shifts from communication to fit — identifying the configuration that actually serves the buyer’s requirement.

Engineers in late-stage conversations do two things at once. Simultaneously, they solve the technical question and signal that your company takes the buyer’s problem seriously enough to send someone who understands it. Some manufacturers formalise this by moving engineers into sales engineering roles with commission attached.

The twenty-minute interview: what to actually ask

The interview is the whole system, so it is worth being precise about it. Most marketers waste the twenty minutes asking an engineer to explain the product, which produces a worse version of the datasheet. Ask instead for the things that never make it into documentation.

Open with the failure, not the feature. “What goes wrong when someone specifies this incorrectly?” An engineer will answer that question in detail, and the answer is usually the most useful paragraph in the finished article.

Five questions to work through after the opener

Then work through five more:

“What do people consistently get wrong about this?” This produces the corrective content that ranks, because it is what buyers are searching for at 11pm when something is not working.
“What is the number that actually matters here, and under what conditions?” Specifications quoted without their operating conditions are the single clearest signal to a technical reader that the writer did not understand the subject.
“Where does our solution genuinely not fit?” Uncomfortable, and enormously valuable. It gives you honest comparison content, and it feeds the disqualifiers described above straight into qualification.
“What does the buyer usually have in place already, and what breaks when they switch?” This is the migration and integration content nobody writes, and it is frequently the real reason deals stall.
“If you were evaluating us, what would you want to see that we do not publish?” Engineers are buyers of other technical products. They know exactly what is missing.

Record it. Also, do not take notes — notes make you an editor while you should still be a listener, and the transcript is what makes everything downstream cheap.

One practical rule: never let the session become a review meeting. If the engineer starts correcting existing marketing material, note it and move on. Extraction and review are ultimately different jobs, and mixing them halves the output of both.

What this produces, in practical terms

Companies that make this work tend to see the same pattern:

Content that ranks and holds. Technically specific content attracts fewer visitors and converts far more of them, and it does not decay the way generic content does.
Shorter technical evaluation cycles. Questions get answered in the material instead of in a three-week email thread.
Fewer late-stage surprises. Technical disqualifiers surface early, when they are cheap.
Sales confidence. Reps stop hedging on technical questions because the answers exist in writing.

What a technical buyer checks before they contact you

It helps to know precisely what a page is being read for. Technical evaluators run a fairly consistent screen, largely unconsciously, and a page either survives it or gets closed.

What they check	What passes	What fails
Numbers	A figure with its units, tolerance, and operating conditions stated	A figure alone, or a range with no conditions
Claims	A stated mechanism — why the result happens	A superlative with nothing behind it
Constraints	The limits named openly, including where it does not apply	Constraints omitted, which reads as not knowing them
Standards	The specific standard, revision, and scope of compliance	“Compliant with industry standards”
Comparisons	Like-for-like, with the test conditions given	A comparison against an unnamed “typical” competitor
Authorship	A named engineer or a technical reviewer credited	Anonymous, or a brand byline

None of that requires better writing. Consequently, it is entirely achievable — every row on that list is satisfied by having asked an engineer the right question and then not smoothing the answer away in the edit.

The last row is worth dwelling on. Attribution has become a genuine ranking and credibility signal, and it costs nothing: put the engineer’s name on the page as the technical source. It makes the content harder to dismiss, it makes the engineer more willing to participate next time, and it is the one thing a competitor cannot copy.

The objection: engineers do not have time for this

This is the real constraint, and it is legitimate. After all, engineering time is the scarcest resource in most technical companies, and marketing is not going to win the argument for a standing share of it.

So do not ask for a standing share. Structure the ask so it is small, bounded, and clearly worth it:

Interview, don’t assign. Twenty minutes of an engineer’s time, recorded, produces more usable material than a writing task they will not complete.
Batch it. One session per quarter per engineer, covering several topics, beats a recurring monthly meeting nobody defends.
Review only for accuracy. Give them a specific question — “is anything here wrong?” — not an open request for feedback. Open requests produce rewrites; specific ones produce corrections.
Show them the result. Engineers who see their explanation become the page that sourced a real deal will make time for the next one.

How AI changes this in 2026

Here is the part that has genuinely shifted, and it is the reason this article needed rewriting.

The bottleneck in technical marketing was never ideas. It was converting scarce engineering knowledge into published material fast enough to matter. One interview used to yield one article, weeks later.

Recently, that constraint has moved. A recorded twenty-minute engineering conversation now becomes the raw material for a technical article, a spec-comparison page, a set of FAQ answers, sales-enablement notes, and the objection-handling language for outreach — from the same source session.

Two cautions, because this is where most companies get it wrong:

AI does not replace the engineer. It removes the transcription-and-drafting cost of using the engineer. If you skip the interview and let a model generate technical content unsupervised, you produce exactly the plausible, unbounded, specification-free copy that technical buyers reject. You will have automated the failure.

Accuracy review becomes more important, not less. Naturally, faster drafting means more surface area for errors to hide in. The engineering review step is the one part of the process that must not be compressed.

Here is the practical shape of it: engineer supplies ground truth → AI handles the volume conversion → engineer reviews for accuracy → publish. The scarce input stays scarce and human. Everything downstream of it gets cheap.

That is the difference between AI-decorated marketing and AI-integrated marketing. Decorated means a model wrote it and nobody checked. Integrated means the model multiplies a human expert whose knowledge was previously trapped in their head.

How to start in the next two weeks

You do not need a programme. You need one loop, run once, to prove it works.

Week one. Pick the single question your sales team gets asked most in technical evaluation — a marketing audit will surface it if you are not sure. Meanwhile, book twenty minutes with the engineer who answers it best. Record the conversation. Ask them what people get wrong, what the real constraints are, and what number matters most.

Week two. Turn that recording into one article. Send it back to the engineer with one question: is anything here inaccurate? Fix what they flag. Then publish. Give it to sales as an answer they can send directly.

Then measure whether it gets actually used — in search, and in deals. If it does, book the next interview. That is the entire programme, and it compounds.

Frequently asked questions

What does “marketing for engineers” mean?

It has two senses. The first is marketing aimed at engineers as buyers — content that survives technical scrutiny. The second is involving your own engineers in marketing as subject-matter sources. In practice they are the same discipline, because the second is how you achieve the first.

Should engineers write the content themselves?

Usually not. Interview them and have a writer produce the draft, then have the engineer review for accuracy only. Writing assignments given to engineers tend not to get completed, and when they do the output usually needs heavy structural editing.

How much engineering time does this realistically take?

Roughly twenty minutes per topic for the interview, plus fifteen minutes for accuracy review. Batched quarterly, that is a few hours a year per engineer for a substantial content library.

How do you get engineers to agree to participate?

Ask for their expertise, not their writing. Keep the ask bounded and specific. Then show them the result and what it produced — engineers respond to evidence that the effort mattered.

Can AI write technical content without engineering involvement?

It can produce content that reads plausibly and fails technical review. Language models generate confident, unbounded claims, which is precisely what technical buyers screen for. AI is highly effective at multiplying an expert’s input and poor at substituting for it.

Does this apply outside industrial manufacturing?

Yes. It applies wherever the buyer can evaluate your claims — medical devices, scientific instruments, developer tools, infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and industrial manufacturing. Anywhere the audience knows more than the marketer, this is the operating model.

The short version

Your engineers hold the specifics that make technical marketing work, and technical buyers will not accept marketing without them. The old constraint was that extracting and publishing that knowledge cost more than most companies would spend.

That constraint is gone. What remains, therefore, is the decision to build the loop: interview, draft, verify, publish — and run it often enough to compound.

StepUp builds AI-integrated marketing operations for industrial and technical B2B companies — including the content systems that turn engineering knowledge into pipeline. Let’s talk about what that looks like for your team.

7 Marketing Ideas for Engineering and Industrial Companies

Posted on June 18, 2019September 27, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Nowadays, strategic marketing for engineers and industrial professionals has changed dramatically. Engineers mostly use the internet for seeking information about technologies, products, or services, which is why industrial marketers increasingly turn to online and content marketing. And as GlobalSpec’s 2019 Smart Marketing for Engineers Survey demonstrates, the importance of digital marketing cannot be overstated. In this article, we take a look at the survey’s most effective strategies, show you exactly how engineers prefer to consume your marketing, and how to gain a competitive edge using this information.

Dive Deeper: The Global Growth Methodology for Industrial Companies

Best Ideas: Strategic Marketing for Engineers

1. Embrace Content Marketing

It is clear that engineers regularly seek to consume content, most of it in digital form. This runs the gamut from vendor websites to trade publications, newsletters and so much more. That’s why content marketing is an integral part of any successful industrial marketing strategy.

2. Use Alternative forms of Content

Datasheets, cast studies, product demos, and how-to videos are the most preferred content types for engineers. And it makes sense, knowing how engineers are bottom-line thinkers, always looking for informative, dense, to-the-point content.

3. Use Newsletters

When it comes to newsletters, the statistics are hard to argue with. Across all age groups, 86% of engineers are subscribed to 2 or more newsletters, 87% of which they browse through or fully read. So maintaining a regular newsletter and inviting engineers to subscribe, is an opportunity that is too good to pass up.

4. Keep an Up-to-date Website

The survey shows that engineers find supplier/vendor websites the most valuable source of information, outranking even search engines and technical trade publications. This is why companies must have a website with a professional look and feel, coupled with informative and original content. These factors are important in building trust with engineers and can highly influence their decision-making.

5. Strive for Brand Awareness

Maintaining a uniform brand presence throughout all media is very important. For uniform visuals, invest in your brand’s logo & visual guidelines. Equally important is to invest in having a content marketing style guide, to ensure uniformity of content as well. With those two combined, you are guaranteed to keep your message consistent. This will ultimately breed brand trust and familiarity with engineers and industrial professionals, to your benefit.

6. Reach Out to Prospects Fast

Engineers are constantly dealing with challenges requiring immediate solutions. Once an engineer shows interest in your product or service, reach out to him as soon as possible. The ideal response time is immediate and up to 8 hours, although not always possible in our connected world of different time zones. However, as a rule of thumb, it’s best to reply within 24 hours.

7. Engage With Them Regularly

A large portion of engineers are either decision makers themselves or influence the purchasing decisions of industrial companies, mainly influenced by online content. That’s why it’s important to regularly engage with engineers through valuable and informative content, mainly achieved through inbound marketing and publishing material such as articles, newsletters, blog posts and white papers.

Gain a Competitive Edge

Research clearly shows that targeting engineers and industrial professionals is a very effective strategic marketing method for b2b companies. However, companies are often hesitant to take a deeper dive into this area. After all, targeting highly technical audiences requires specialization and skill, which can be challenging to master.

Now is your chance to act on this information. Today more than ever, getting the attention of engineers from all over the world can be achieved easily and quickly, using customized inbound marketing methods. But at the same time, you need to act fast, while the market is still new to inbound marketing targeted to technical audiences. This will ensure you stay ahead of the competition, giving you a competitive edge.

Do you want to create a proven industrial marketing strategy?

Industrial Advertising: 5 Reasons to Advertise and How to Reach the Right Buyers

Posted on June 11, 2019September 30, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Originally published June 2019. Updated September 2026.

Somewhere in Ohio, a plant engineer is scrolling past an ad for a pressure valve. She will not click it. She has never clicked an ad in her life and would like that on her headstone.

Industrial advertising has always lived in two worlds. In one, the trade show booth: a ten-by-ten patch of carpet, a bowl of branded stress balls and a sales rep who has been standing since seven. In the other, a dashboard reports that 48,000 people saw your ad this week, a suspicious number of them in countries you do not sell to.

The best industrial ads turn up exactly when someone is specifying a part, and they speak fluent spec sheet. The worst are a stock photo of two hands shaking in front of a wind turbine. (Nobody has ever closed a deal in front of a wind turbine. It’s far too loud.)

It’s a strange job, marketing to people who distrust marketing.

The pressure comes from above, as usual. The CEO’s niece ran Google Ads for a dental practice and got 212 new patients in a month, so surely a company that makes industrial compressors can do the same with $2,000 and a spare afternoon. (Somewhere, a sales director is already clearing her calendar.)

Truth is, industrial buyers do respond to advertising. Just not the kind built for dentists. They research for months, decide as a committee and remember the supplier who explained something useful before anyone asked for a quote.

So if industrial advertising is in next year’s budget, it helps to know what it’s for, where it works and how to reach the people who sign the purchase order. This guide covers all three, plus how to measure it without fooling yourself.

What is industrial advertising?

Industrial advertising is paid promotion by manufacturers, industrial suppliers and technical B2B companies, aimed at the people who specify, approve and buy their products. Those people are engineers, plant and operations managers, procurement teams and, for bigger purchases, executives.

It covers more channels than most people expect: trade publications and industry newsletters, trade show sponsorships, Google search ads, LinkedIn ads, industrial directories, remarketing and video.

The role of advertising in industrial marketing differs from consumer advertising in three ways. First, the audience is small. A company selling specialized pumps may have a few thousand real buyers worldwide. Second, buying is a group decision, so one ad rarely reaches everyone who matters. Third, the cycle is long. A purchase can take many months, sometimes more than a year, and buyers often form a shortlist before they talk to any supplier.

As a result, industrial advertising works best as a steady presence over months. Short bursts tend to end before the buyer is ready.

The functions of industrial advertising: 5 reasons to advertise

Industrial companies advertise for more than sales. In practice, advertising does five jobs, and a good plan decides which of them matter most this year.

1. Build awareness before the buyer starts looking

Most industrial buyers have a shortlist in mind before they contact anyone. If your name is not on it, even the best sales team never gets the call. Advertising in the right trade publications and on LinkedIn keeps your company familiar during the months when nobody is buying yet.

Remarketing helps here too. These are ads shown to people who already visited your website. However, set a frequency cap. An engineer who sees your valve eleven times in one afternoon starts to wonder if the valve is following her.

2. Reach the whole buying committee

An engineer may find you first, but procurement, operations and finance all get a say. Each of them cares about something different. So use advertising to reach the people your sales team cannot easily get a meeting with. LinkedIn is useful here, because it lets you target by job function, industry and company.

3. Capture demand that already exists

Some buyers are searching right now, for a part, a specification or a fix for a specific problem. Search ads put you in front of them at that moment. In industrial markets, the best keywords are often long and technical, such as “stainless steel ball valve for food processing” rather than “valves.” They usually cost less, and the people typing them know what they want.

4. Support deals that are already in motion

Industrial deals stall. A champion leaves, a budget moves, a committee meets once a quarter. Ads aimed at the specific companies your sales team is working with, often called account-based advertising, keep your case studies and proof in front of everyone involved while the deal waits. Think of it as follow-up that does not need a phone call.

5. Test messages before you commit to them

Advertising also gives you fast, cheap answers to questions that would otherwise take a year. Does “30% less downtime” beat “installs in one shift”? Run both for two weeks and compare. Then use the winner on your website, your trade show booth and your sales deck.

Where industrial advertising works: the channels

No company needs every channel. Instead, pick the two or three where your buyers already spend time, and run them well.

Channel	Best for	Watch out for
Google search ads	Buyers searching for a part, spec or application	Broad terms burn budget fast. Use exact technical phrases and a list of excluded terms.
LinkedIn ads	Reaching specific roles, industries and target companies	Clicks cost more than on most platforms, so offer something useful instead of a sales pitch.
Trade publications and industry newsletters	Credibility with a niche, technical audience	Hard to measure. Ask the publisher for audience data before you buy.
Industrial directories such as Thomasnet	Buyers comparing suppliers	Your listing has to be complete and current, or it works against you.
Remarketing	Staying visible through a long buying cycle	Too many impressions feel like being followed. Cap them.
Trade show sponsorships	Face time with serious buyers	Expensive. Plan the follow-up before the show, not after it.
Video on YouTube and LinkedIn	Showing a product working in real conditions	Clarity matters more than production value.

For paid search in particular, our inside look at successful B2B PPC campaigns goes deeper. And since advertising is only one way in, our guide to industrial sales leads covers the channels that do not need an ad budget.

Industrial advertising strategy: how to reach the right buyers

Targeting is where most industrial campaigns go wrong. The ads themselves are often fine. They just reach the wrong people.

Start with your ideal customer

Before choosing a channel, write down which companies you serve best: industry, size, region and the problem they are trying to solve. If you do not have this written down yet, our guide on how to create an ideal customer profile walks through it. Everything in your targeting follows from that document.

Map the buying committee

Next, list who is involved in a typical purchase and what each person needs to see.

Role	What they care about	What your ad should show
Engineer	Specs, tolerances, proof it works	Data sheets, test results, CAD files
Operations or plant manager	Downtime, installation, support	Case studies, installation time, service terms
Procurement	Lead times, certifications, total cost	Certifications, delivery times, pricing logic
Executive	Risk, growth, supplier stability	Customer names, track record, results

Each role gets its own message, because a single ad written for all four usually lands with none of them.

Use their words, not yours

Engineers spot marketing language immediately. So take your wording from sales calls, customer interviews and support tickets. Our guide to B2B market research shows how to collect it in four weeks. If customers say “changeover time” and your ad says “operational agility,” they will scroll right past.

What industrial product advertising should say

Good industrial product advertising leads with the application. “Seals rated to 300°C for continuous kiln operation” tells an engineer in two seconds whether to keep reading. By contrast, “innovative sealing solutions” tells her nothing.

Next, include one specific number or proof point: a tolerance, a certification, a result from a real installation. Specifics signal that there is an engineer behind the ad, and technical buyers trust that.

Finally, offer a useful next step. Industrial buyers rarely want a sales call from an ad. They will, however, happily download a spec sheet, a CAD file, an application note or a sizing calculator. Send the click to that page, never to your homepage.

Here are three industrial advertising examples that follow the pattern. They are composites, not named clients.

A filter manufacturer runs search ads on one application, hydraulic filters for injection molding machines, and sends each click to an application note.
One components supplier runs LinkedIn ads to maintenance managers at 200 target plants, offering a downtime checklist.
A machine builder sponsors a trade publication’s newsletter with a short video of the machine running at a customer site.

How much to spend, and how to measure it

There is no correct number. Instead, start with a test: one product line, one or two channels, a fixed budget and 90 days. That is long enough to learn something and short enough to change course. Our B2B marketing budget guide shows how to fit advertising into the wider plan.

Then measure what matters to sales. Clicks and impressions tell you the ads ran. They say little about whether anyone useful saw them. So track these instead:

Which search terms and audiences produce real inquiries
Spec sheet and CAD downloads by channel
Sales conversations that started from an ad
Engagement from your target accounts
What it costs to start one qualified sales conversation

Add a free-text “How did you hear about us?” field to your forms as well. A lot of industrial buying is shaped by forwarded emails and private conversations that analytics never sees, which we cover in our guide to dark social.

Finally, judge the results over a quarter, not a week. Industrial cycles are long, so an ad that runs in March may turn into a purchase order in September. Set one objective for the quarter with two or three measurable results, and review it every month. That way, advertising becomes part of your marketing plan instead of a line item nobody can explain.

Common mistakes in industrial advertising

Most wasted industrial ad budget comes from a handful of habits.

The most common is sending every click to the homepage. The buyer asked a specific question, so the ad should lead to a specific answer.

Broad keywords come next. “Industrial equipment” attracts students, job seekers and competitors, while long technical phrases attract buyers.

Then there is the single message for everyone. The engineer and the CFO need different reasons to care.

Many teams also stop too soon. Four weeks is rarely enough to judge anything in a market where buying takes a year.

And finally, there are ads that sound like marketing. Technical buyers trust specifics and tune out adjectives. We wrote more about that in marketing for engineers.

Frequently asked questions

What is industrial advertising?

Industrial advertising is paid promotion by manufacturers and industrial suppliers, aimed at the engineers, operations managers, procurement teams and executives who specify and buy their products. It includes trade publications, trade shows, search ads, LinkedIn ads, industrial directories, remarketing and video.

What are the functions of industrial advertising?

Industrial advertising does five main jobs. It builds awareness before buyers start looking, reaches the whole buying committee, captures demand from people already searching, supports deals already in progress, and tests messages quickly before a company commits to them.

Does advertising work for industrial companies?

Yes, when it is targeted and patient. Industrial buyers research for months and decide as a group, so advertising works best as a steady presence aimed at specific roles and companies, with a useful next step such as a spec sheet or an application note.

Which channels work best for industrial product advertising?

Search ads work well for buyers looking for a specific part or application. LinkedIn reaches specific roles and target companies. Trade publications and industrial directories add credibility with technical audiences. Most companies should pick two or three channels and run them well.

How do you measure industrial advertising?

Measure the inquiries, downloads and sales conversations that start from ads, plus engagement from your target accounts. Judge the results over at least a quarter, because industrial buying cycles are long.

The plant engineer in Ohio still won’t click your ad.

She will, however, download the spec sheet, forward it to procurement and put your name on the approved supplier list. The stress balls can stay at the booth.

Can Social Media Marketing Work for Your B2B Company?

Posted on May 30, 2018September 27, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Social media is not just for consumer-oriented companies targeting millennial customers. As a B2B company, you can use social media marketing to position your company as a thought leader, generate leads, and attract high-quality talent.

In fact, according to research, 79% of B2B marketing specialists rated social media as their most effective marketing channel, while 38% said that if they had extra budget for next year, they would spend it on social media.

If you think that your industry isn’t suited to social media marketing, then take a look at pharmaceutical company Novartis. Instagram might not seem like a natural channel for this type of business, but the company has built up a large following by sharing pictures of the humane side of their work.

In this article, we discuss the key ways that social media marketing benefits B2B companies and best practices for creating a strategy that wins customers.

Think quality, not quantity

If you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, you may think you’re doing social media marketing right, but who are those followers and how much are they interacting with your company? It’s important to build a following of potential customers, as well as attract attention from your customers’ customers. From there, you can start to build relationships with these companies by engaging with them in a more direct way. The more useful and relevant content they see, the more likely they are to reach out to you, or visit your website, and the better you’ll be able to generate leads.

Share content your customers care about

What works for B2C companies, and across social media in general, won’t necessarily work for your B2B organization. That’s why you need to work out exactly what your followers are looking for, and what matters to them. If you share content that isn’t relevant to your customers and followers then they will either unfollow or just not engage with your content. When you’re starting out, you may not know what kind of content this is, which is why you need to test posts, and measure your success. Make sure you’re tracking metrics beyond simple likes; it’s also important to track click through rate, shares, and engagement.

Pick the right platform

Before you rule out Instagram and solely concentrate on LinkedIn, it’s important to take into account social media usage at a local, rather than global, level. For example, while most US B2B companies focus their marketing efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter, and leave Facebook for B2C companies, Facebook and YouTube are used professionally in countries such as India. Then take China, where Facebook and Twitter are blocked or use is limited but WeChat dominates. Make sure you research your markets first to ensure you’re using the right channel for your customer base.

Position yourself as a thought leader

Your company is unique, so you have unique and useful insight to share with your followers. Through social media marketing, you can harness this insight to position yourself as a thought leader. By posting on LinkedIn, you can give your customers actionable insight and information that helps them improve their business while showing off your expertise in your industry.

Attract high-quality talent

If you want to attract and recruit the best possible applicants, then it’s important to create a social media presence that portrays a positive company culture. To do this, you need to be sharing content that represents who you are, what your values are, and how this impacts your workers.

Let’s take the example of Novartis again. The company shares photos of the core values of its company, and the kind of activities their employees–who share these values–do. This makes it easier to attract the kind of people who would work best in their business.

Do you need help creating a social media strategy? Get in touch with us, and we can help tailor a plan for your business.

Our top 5 tips for last minute trade show ROI

Posted on May 1, 2018September 27, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Choosing to exhibit at or attend a trade show such as Biomed or Agritech Israel means you’re making a big investment in marketing. Just bringing your team in to walk the floor and meet people represents time and expense. Putting together a booth and bringing in your sales team is an even larger outlay in expense for your company. So as you prepare for the Agritech or Biomed trade show this month, consider these five tips for getting the best ROI.

Download our guide to email follow up after a trade show.

#1 Know Your Target Buyer

Identifying and understanding your target buyer will help you prepare for the trade show. You’ll have the right literature on hand and your sales team will be prepared to answer their most pressing questions. Even if your business is in the early stages of gaining FDA or other regulatory approval, if you’re going to a trade show you need to start thinking about who you want to talk to and why they should be interested in you.

#2 Get Social With Your Customers

If you can find your target buyer online, connect with the socially and take the time to actually talk with them. Social media is a great way to get the word out about your product and the fact that you’re attending a big trade show, but it’s also a good forum where you can actually listen to your customer’s thoughts and concerns. LinkedIn is ideal for companies with a global focus, while Facebook can be effective for the local market here in Israel.

#3 Spread Information About the Show

When you’re attending a major trade show, you want to get the most mileage possible out of the event. A series of focused blog posts before a major show like Agritech or BioMed can help raise awareness among your customers of your attendance and bring in new customers looking for information. Similarly, during the show, you can share what you’re learning at the event on your website and social media. This is a great way to further engage with the audiences you’ve built and to remind your target customers that you are just an arms-reach away.

#4 Prepare Your Event Follow-up

If you’ve caught someone’s interest during the event and collected their information, then they’re expecting you to follow up with some additional information. Prepare these marketing materials beforehand so your sales team can tell customers what to expect. Catalogs of the products you offer, detailed specifications, or white papers about your products are great follow-up materials.

#5 Get Some Marketing Support

Especially when dealing with complex and regulated industries such as agtech, biotech and medtech, it’s vital to build a marketing system that addresses your unique needs, challenges and goals. Consider working with experts in complex marketing – you want a team that understands the challenges you face, the timeline driving your products, and the unique specifications of your product and market.

The experienced marketing team at StepUp Media Group is here to help you build your agtech, biotech or medtech marketing system. Get a taste of the work we do by downloading our Best Follow-Up Email Templates for use after a trade show, and get a head start on planning your trade show follow-up for maximum ROI.

If You are Planning for Agritech Israel (or Another B2B Trade Show), Remember 3 Key Tips for Maximum ROI

Posted on March 20, 2018September 27, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Attending a tradeshow like Agritech Israel (or any major B2B show in your industry) is a serious commitment of time, money, and other resources. In the past, trade shows used to be the main source of lead generation for B2B companies. While they are still vital to any B2B marketing plan, in order to achieve maximum ROI it’s vital to approach trade shows differently than you did 5, 10, or 15 years ago.

To get the most out of your trade show investment, think of it as a complete marketing campaign rather than just an event. You’ll need to actively market your presence both before and during the trade show to ensure potential leads walk your way. Then you’ll want to follow up after the event to nurture your leads once the event is over. Done correctly, a trade show can be a great chance for you to talk with new potential customers, spend time with existing clients, and build your brand. Here are just three tips to maximize your ROI.

Pre-Show Marketing

Identify who you want to connect with at Agritech Israel and prepare a marketing campaign to reach out to them before the event. You may have an existing client or lead list that is your primary target or you may want to build a list. Your goal is to create a buzz around your company through email, press, and social media. You can promote promotional giveaways, an event you’re hosting, or new technology you’ll be showcasing to get people’s interest and make sure attendees see your brand name a few times before they arrive.

Be Different at the Show – Inside and Outside Your Booth

The location, size, and setup of your booth play a large part in whether people walking by notice your booth and feel invited to stop and chat for a few minutes. You want your booth to grab the attention of people passing by and encourage them to look closer. Don’t be afraid to do something different, bold, or wacky – a trade show is a great temporary environment to test out a new marketing strategy.

Don’t forget that the trade show itself is not just about the booth. Attendees often steal breaks to drink a coffee and check their Facebook and LinkedIn. Catch them online with focused paid campaigns and turn digital traffic into foot traffic with compelling offers related to the trade show – a demonstration, giveaway or personal consultation are all valuable offers.

Follow Up Strategy

Once Agritech Israel (or your industry’s main trade show) is over, you want to make sure you continue to maximize the effort you spent at the trade show by promptly reaching out to leads. Your sales team should reach out to promising leads promptly and everyone should receive either an email or a letter from your company, or both, shortly after the event. You can continue to follow up with information they might find helpful such as white papers, company catalogs, and other educational content.

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Attending a trade show is a huge investment, so you want to ensure your strategy encompasses both pre- and post-show outreach in order to maximize the number of times a lead interacts with your brand and the ROI of the event. If you’re interested in working with an experienced industrial marketing agency that can help you design and implement a high-quality strategy and metrics to track its success, reach out to StepUp for a free marketing and sales strategy consultation.

An Inside Look at Successful B2B PPC Campaigns – And What Makes Them Work

Posted on March 13, 2018September 28, 2026 by Moshe Pesach

Setting up a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign can be a huge investment, so it’s important to look at what strategies actually work. One advantage of building marketing systems for numerous B2B businesses is that we work on many different types of campaigns simultaneously and when we find something that is working well for one client, we can apply it to others.

Setting Expectations

First, it’s important to note that the process of generating a lead is more complicated than it seems. Leads rarely do a search, see an ad, click on it, and make a purchasing decision, especially in a B2B marketing setting. It takes more time and generally several interactions with the same lead before they’re even ready to start the quoting process.

B2B PPC campaigns can also be very expensive. In an effort to not only cut costs but to have a more effective marketing program, it’s important to pair your PPC campaign with a remarketing campaign. Once a lead visits your website, you can place a cookie on that lead’s device. This cookie then allows you to target them as they visit other websites that display advertising including social media.

It generally takes a lead several times seeing your ads before your presence really begins to sink in and remarketing is the best way to continue to target the same leads without hoping they stumble onto your more expensive PPC ads regularly. It’s important to set expectations accordingly. While PPC allows you to sit front and center before a desired lead, simply serving up ads for a day is unlikely to result in increased sales.

Educate and Raise Awareness

The process to go from the first click on a PPC ad to buying decision can be a long one, so it’s important during that time to help educate and raise awareness of your brand for the potential lead. This means you may create and promote educational content that is connected to awareness keywords to help your leads better understand what your business does, the value you offer, and most importantly, how you can help them solve problems.

As you remarket to a lead, creating value for them even when they are not ready to buy means they will associate your brand with that information and value. Spend time thinking of the common questions your leads ask and answer those using blogs, infographics, or white papers. A blog post that gives an overview of an answer to the question can then link to a detailed white paper that a lead can download in return for their email address. Once you’ve captured an email address, you now have the ability to reach your lead directly with educational content or be even more personalized and have a member of your sales team reach out and see what their needs and concerns might be.

Setting up a PPC campaign can be an integral part of your overall digital marketing strategy, but it’s important to understand that it’s only one piece. To learn more, reach out to the team at StepUp to learn what components your business needs to build a successful marketing strategy that brings in the right leads.