Even industry leaders benefit from well-placed expertise.
When we published our “From Believing to Achieving” marketing report, we identified three mindsets that describe businesses within the manufacturing technology industry: Achievers, Believers, and Cynics. If you’ve followed our previous articles breaking down the Cynic and Believer profiles, you can probably imagine the kind of photo-negative contrast the Achievers represent:
- Whereas Cynics don’t believe it’s important to understand their customers, Achievers take great care to understand their customers, solicit their feedback, and anticipate their needs.
- Whereas Believers struggle to untangle their data and build a functional tech stack, Achievers have identified the metrics that matter and the reporting tools they trust.
- Whereas Cynics question the value of marketing, Achievers are able to demonstrate ROI—or at least deliver a compelling case.
- Whereas Believers are underfunded and overworked, Achievers are well-resourced and well-rested.
In fact, while we’re singing their praises, why not let them take a victory lap. Our research discovered that:
- 100% feel seen as experts in their field
- 91% value customer feedback as essential for improvement
- 89% are satisfied with their tech stack
- 85% report a frictionless relationship between sales and marketing
- 32% had mastered marketing metrics, compared to a 2% for Believers and 3% for Cynics
In short, Achievers are characterized by confidence, and by a positive outlook rooted in industry experience.
If that doesn’t describe you, don’t despair. Roughly two thirds of our respondents fell into either the Cynic or Believer buckets, so you aren’t alone. You may have more work to do to turn your ship around, but progress is possible. We’ve outlined recommended first steps in our previous articles.
If you are seeing yourself in the above description: well done. You’re in a category that includes roughly 1 in 3 of our respondents. While our survey focused on manufacturing technology, respondents were broad enough that others in this category with you could include your clients, your business partners, and—yes—your competition.
As an Achiever, you are by default succeeding. That naturally begs the question: if you’ve already head of the game, is an outside investment with an agency the right move?
We won’t lead with a blanket recommendation for all manufacturing tech businesses. What we will say is something you already know: The market is tight out there, and it’s essential not to overlook any resource in your marketing toolbox that can sharpen your competitive edge. So let’s take a moment to examine how your partners, peers, and prospects view agency relationships—and whether it’s time you explored one yourself.
1. 40% of Achievers are already working with an agency.
Our industry research shows that 40% of Achievers in the manufacturing sector are already working with a marketing agency, 17% have worked with agencies in the past and plan to again in the future, and a final 6% have not worked with an agency but plan to in the future. Cumulatively, 63% of Achievers include agencies as part of their marketing strategy. We consider that an excellent show of confidence.
Let’s dig a little deeper into our survey research, though. When we looked at the responses of those who said they either had already developed a marketing department or were planning to in the future, there was a strong overlap between those groups and those who said they either had or were planning to work with an agency. Moreover, the people most likely to say they had never worked with an agency AND had no plans to work with an agency in the future were also the ones most likely to say they had no marketing department.
Finally, while 77% of respondents across all segments have developed an internal marketing department, 65% of Achievers have someone in a marketing leadership role. (Believers show similar numbers, whereas Cynics are the most likely to have no designated marketing leader, even if they have a marketing department.)
Putting this all together, we can say that Achievers are the mindset most likely to 1) have a marketing department, 2) have a marketing leader in that department, and 3) have included agency relationships as part of their marketing plans. Furthermore, while there are some Achievers who don’t plan to work with agencies, these are also the organizations who haven’t invested in marketing at all.
In other words, manufacturers who invest in marketing also invest in agencies.
Specifically, marketing directors at manufacturing technology organizations who fit into our Achiever mindset are the most likely to include agencies as part of their marketing strategy.
2. Achievers understand the foundations of a successful agency relationship.
Achievers set a high bar for agency expertise—perhaps because the businesses who choose to work with an agency are also those who have appointed marketing leaders. In turn, those marketing leaders know what to expect from an agency: they may have prior experience working with an agency, or they may have worked at one themselves.
What are the foundations for a successful agency relationship? Speaking from experience on the other side, this is what we expect manufacturing technology leaders to expect from us.
- Knowledge of your industry. 49% of manufacturing Achievers expect their marketing agency to have expertise within the manufacturing industry. It’s possible that if you’re only working with an agency to expand your grunt work capacity, then you may not need them to know much about what you do. But if you’re expecting collaboration (over half of Achievers expect their agencies to bring fresh ideas and work as partners), your agency should understand your field.
- Knowledge of your customers. 51% of manufacturing Achievers expect their agency to understand their customers and prospects. This number looks low to us, but possibly because Achievers are already confident in their knowledge of their customers. By contrast, Believers, at 63%, held this as an even higher priority—perhaps a reflection of their own difficulty meeting market expectations. Only 14% of Cynics listed this as a priority, because they’ve already divested from the idea that they need to understand their customers.
- Communication and partnership. The #1 reason (36%) respondents gave for why agency relationships broke down was “they didn’t communicate well with our team.” This is partly why we encourage manufacturing businesses to fill their marketing leadership gap: it’s hard to gain traction if no one is paying attention. Tellingly, only 11% of Achievers reported “collaborating effectively with agencies” as a challenge for their organization.
Hiring an internal marketing director or marketing manager is perhaps the best thing a business can do to establish a strong foundation with an agency. However, we’ve also had successful relationships with plenty of businesses who had not taken that step—usually because they were such a small team that we were working with the owner directly. In these instances, the relationship worked because the owner committed to being the internal marketing leader, rather than foisting the job onto someone with other priorities or without sufficient mandate to approve work.
3. Achievers know when to call for outside help.
One final outlier in our report: 44% of Achievers were looking to agencies to help with faster marketing collateral completion—a priority for only 33% of Believers and 28% of Cynics. It’s not hard to see why: whereas Believers and Cynics are still trying to get their act together, Achievers are prepared to execute. The simply need an efficient way to expand capacity, and recognize agencies as supercharged switch hitters.
Generally, we find that businesses need help in three areas:
- Specialists. Marketing is a multi-skilled profession—and Achievers know it. There are no marketing polymath unicorns who can develop a multichannel marketing strategy while also handling video and photography, web development, graphic design, content writing, and a fully-fledged paid media campaign—not to mention mastering the tech stack needed to deliver, track, and report on all these initiatives. An internal marketing department can usually handle some portion of these needs, but an agency can fill in the gaps.
- Process experts. A fair amount of marketing work relies on the reliable, repetitive execution of baseline deliverables such as article writing, social posting, sending email newsletters, and managing paid media. This work is essential, yet time-consuming, and is often neglected by the buffeting winds of internal priorities. To simplify, marketing directors offload this work on an agency. Believers and Cynics often do this with an eye on cost, viewing content as a commodity, and shopping around for the lowest bidder. Achievers are more focused on quality—ensuring their agency of choice understands them and their customers, has a regular reporting cadence in place, and leads on content strategy.
- Capacity absorbers. We work on a monthly retainer with rolling hours. It’s not uncommon for those hours to build up during the slow season, only for the client to burn them down in a month or two around a key product launch or tradeshow event. It’s difficult for our clients to manage these fluctuations internally, because it would leave some employees idle for large stretches of the year only to overwork them during the crunch periods. Agencies allow manufactures to shift smoothly between gears.
In short, your marketing agency is your best multitool—and a good agency will offer a mix of solutions to handle your specific needs.
Follow the leaders.
Manufacturing Achievers know what they’re doing right. That puts them in a position of strength as they build a productive agency relationship. Achievers recognize quality work, which means they are not going to panic and assign blame at the first bump in the road. They understand metrics, which means they can ask the right questions and maintain a flexible strategy. And—most crucially—they are in organizations who recognize the value of their marketing, and fund it accordingly.
The question “Do manufacturing Achievers need agencies?” isn’t really for the Achievers. Achievers already know the answer. But if your organization is struggling to gain the traction you know it deserves, Achievers have laid out an unambiguous path forward:
- Appoint a marketing leader.
- Fund your marketing team.
- Hire an agency.
Marketing success isn’t won through divided attention and an anemic budget. If you want your efforts to flourish, give them the resources they deserve. And know went to call the calvary.