Here are two key takeaways which stood out to us from Gardner Business Media’s newly released 2020 Industrial Buying Influence Report:
Supplier – Vendor websites the #1 channel for buyers researching products and services
79% of industrial buyers indicated vendor websites are one of the most critical channels for making purchase decisions.
Your website needs to clearly communicate your company’s expertise, as well as build trust and authority.
In addition, your marketing strategy needs a defined lead generation strategy — one that drives quality leads to the website through search. Figure 4 shows the top marketing channels, with 74% of buyers indicating they use Google, Bing, etc. in their research phase.
Figure 4
Social media, chatbots deemed “not very valuable”
The Gardner report includes data from a survey conducted by a large engineering association. Again, websites and search play key roles for engineers when seeking information, as well as trade publications, tradeshows, and emails.
For the most part, engineers deemed chatbots, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram “not very valuable” (Figure 5). Reactions to LinkedIn’s value were mixed.
Figure 5
About the report:
Gardner Intelligence’s Industrial Buying Influence (IBI) series is a comprehensive analysis of how media and marketing impact the industrial buying cycle in discrete parts of manufacturing. Industrial Buying Influence 2020 is the fifth installment of the series and takes a direct look at the industrial buying team. Specifically, the pace and the process by which buying teams evaluate, research and decide on purchases; and, how media and marketing influence and inform each stage of that purchase process.
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