Embrace Digital Transformation to Support Industrial Equipment Marketing
Industrial systems are often large capital investments that last years. Upselling or reselling to the same customer year after year isn’t an option. With near-term sales goals on the horizon, your focus is likely on generating new leads and sales. The opportunity to win new business inevitably shifts your focus away from post-purchase engagement, a common and costly oversight for industrial manufacturers.
As sales, marketing or operations professionals, your goal is to contribute directly to the bottom line. By taking advantage of post-sale engagement strategies, you build brand loyalty and nurture more meaningful customers connections that will lead to future sales.
Your website is likely the single most important tool in your arsenal. A recent Thomas Industrial Survey noted a 12% increase in website usage by manufacturers and industrial companies to connect with more customers since the outbreak of COVID-19. With such rapid digital acceleration, it’s necessary for your department to ‘up its game’ and provide experiences that foster long-term loyalty.
Here are three ways a manufacturer stay engaged with their customers after large capital purchases.
An Effective eCatalog for Industrial Products and Parts
Today’s B2B professionals expect you to provide modern tools that simplify their life. Customers don’t have the time or the patience to flip through a digitized version of your old paper catalog. A robust online parts catalog gives them the option to easily search, discover and select parts from their desktop, mobile phone or tablet.
Digitized catalogs show all the details customers need to make informed sourcing decisions. You can include items such as CAD files, configurations, parts lists, accessories and more.
A well-organized, easy to navigate parts ordering solution will also help increase your efficiency as a company by reducing calls to your customer service center from frustrated customers who either didn’t order the correct part, or cannot find the correct part while trying to order.
The Self-Service Maintenance Portal
Industries that use complex machinery have a daily challenge to keep those machines in working order, and it carries very real consequences. For example, nearly every factory loses at least 5% of its productive capacity from machine downtime, and many lose up to 20%.
The last thing you want is your customers associating loss of productivity to maintaining your product. A self-service maintenance portal can mitigate these challenges in several ways:
- Provide easy access to online manuals, maintenance plans and parts lists.
- Make it easy to purchase parts or schedule maintenance from the shop floor.
- Provide maintenance recommendations to further reduce downtime.
- Allow customers to log maintenance and view past maintenance.
- Provide manufacturer supported asset management.
With readily accessible manuals, how-to videos and instructional documentation to help troubleshoot and replace parts, you will cement your reputation as a trusted partner.
Better Leverage the Technology you Already Have in Place
If you’re like most industrial manufactures, it’s likely that you’re using several disparate systems to track sales, customer information, warranty details and product data. There’s no single source to easily access information.
Fortunately, there are ways to connect internal and external disparate systems, applications, and partner platforms to deliver key information. When it’s seamlessly packaged for the right business teams via a single pleasing interface, it becomes easier to leverage data and intelligence. You’ll have a stronger understanding of what’s driving growth and how you can better support customers.
Developing a better digital experience for your customers is imperative for industrial manufacturers. If you’re goal is to create long-term value for customers, it’s worth exploring ways to support post-purchase engagement. If you’re interested in exploring this further, please share a few details and we will be in touch.
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