We conducted original research into marketing mindsets in the manufacturing technology industry. The results shaped how we view the industry—and they’ll change how you see yourself.
Take a moment to think about your organization’s marketing. Do you have a marketing department? How active is it? Do you like how it portrays your company? Has it delivered results?
Now check in with how you feel. What emotions have risen to the surface as you’ve thought about your marketing? Do you feel confident? Assured? Energized? How about anxious, frustrated, or disappointed? Or do you feel nothing at all because your organization doesn’t really invest in marketing and honestly you don’t really think about it all that much?
Depending on how you answered these questions, you probably fall into one of three segments that we identified during our recent survey of leaders within the Manufacturing Technology industry. What’s really exciting, however, is that the mindset you hold is statistically correlated with a range of beliefs and behaviors that are tied to your organization’s success, the health of your internal culture, and the relationship you have with your customers.
We’re excited to unveil our research, but we also know it’s a lot to unpack. We’re starting with an introduction to mindsets, but we’d also encourage you to dig into the report itself, or explore the raw data on your own. And if that’s all a lot to digest at once, don’t worry: we’ll be teasing out insights from this data for a while.
So, without further ado, the mindsets.
Achievers: Proud, knowledgeable, and on their A game.
- 97% strongly agree that they feel positive about the future of their organization.
- 80% strongly agree that their organization is more successful than others in their industry.
- Achievers have a strong grasp on their metrics and feel confident in their data.
If you feel good about your current standing in the manufacturing market—opportunities are abundant, your team is well prepared, you’re in touch with your customers, and you’re not anxious about any looming unknowns in your marketing data, then you likely belong with the Achievers. This is a formidable cohort who are fully equipped with the skills and resources to hit their goals and see results.
Their one potential weakness is overconfidence. It’s easy to become complacent when things are going well, and to fall into a routine that eventually grows stagnant. Similarly, it’s possible to be so satisfied with your success that you overlook opportunities to do even better. In an industry where innovation is a constant, this oversight can quickly become an Achilles’ heel. Overall, though, this group keeps their finger on the pulse and has a lot of ground to lose before they’re in trouble.
Believers: Determined, hopeful, but floundering.
- 67% have lost staff in the past year.
- Only 44% have a functional sales/marketing relationship.
- Believers are more likely to cite many marketing challenges: they’re attempting more than Cynics but are less successful at it than Achievers.
In contrast to Achievers, the Believer cohort have little working in their favor save for the desire to improve. While their organization may not be in imminent danger of collapse, they are certainly in a place where change has become a necessity. This turbulence is reflected in increased turnover, internal disconnects, and a lack of connection with their customers.
Our hearts truly go out to the Believers. More than the other cohorts, they’re aware that something is wrong and they desperately want help in righting the ship. Moreover, many are doing some things right: they’re beginning to invest in their marketing again, they’re working to understand their metrics, and they care about improving their customer relationships. They just need someone to throw them a lifeline.
If this hits home, then our marketing report is for you more than anyone. We’re here to tell you that you’re not crazy: this stuff is hard to work out, but there is a path forward.
Cynics: Apathetic, disinvested, and uninterested.
- Only 37% have a marketing director in their organization.
- Only 25% of Cynics are currently working with a marketing agency (compared to 40% for Believers and Achievers), while 41% have no marketing department and have no plans to develop one.
- Only a slight majority felt strongly that they were seen as trusted experts by their customers.
Finally, we have the Cynics, the cohort most likely to view marketing with a jaded eye. Maybe they’ve been burned by bad experiences in the past, or maybe they’ve done so well without marketing until now that they view it as a waste of time. Regardless, without something to inspire them, they have little motivation to alter course.
Unlike Believers, Cynics aren’t necessarily in a moment of crisis. It may be that their organizations are slowly winding down, or they may be quietly chugging away with no interest in picking up the pace. Only they can know the truth, and our only word of caution is that inaction is its own risk.
So, now that we know who the mindsets are, what does this mean for their marketing?
Insight #1. You may not know that you hold one of these mindsets—and that could be influencing your marketing efforts.
Our audience segments were revealed by the responses to our survey. We didn’t ask anyone to self-identify as one of these three mindsets because we didn’t know they existed before the research. Instead, we asked a series of questions, and then looked at the responses to identify areas of statistical correlation—and from that data, the mindsets emerged.
What this means is that, even if you didn’t take part in our study, it’s likely that the marketing beliefs you already hold correlate strongly to one of these three segments. And if that’s the case, you could already be following practices that position your organization for success—or doom it to failure.
If you’re wondering where you fall, no worries: we’ve put together an assessment quiz to help you identify your mindset. Check it out! (It takes five minutes and there are no strings attached!)
Insight #2. Mindsets are malleable: They are not destiny, but they can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Another observation we’ve made about our mindsets is that they’re clear-headed: we aren’t seeing organizations with perspectives on their organizations that are wildly out of line with reality. Achievers have confidence in their marketing because it’s working well for them. There’s as much cold-eyed pragmatism in that outlook as in that of the Cynics, who lack confidence in their marketing specifically because it hasn’tworked well for them.
Meanwhile, the Believers know they can’t achieve miracles through wishful thinking alone—but the actions of their organization (high turnover, disconnect between sales and marketing) are undermining their efforts. They can see the problem, but they just don’t know how to address it.
That said, while the mindsets describe the current state of organizations, they don’t predict the future. Achievers have figured out what works, and they’re likely to stick to it—but if adversity strikes and they can’t adapt, they could backslide. Cynics currently see little reason to stick their necks out for marketing, but a change of mindset could see them trying new strategies—and succeeding.
This is especially true for Believers, a group at a perilous crossroads. If they can identify the actions that can pull them out of their current rut, they are poised to become Achievers. But if they can’t crack the code, their efforts are more likely to sour them into Cynics.
Insight #3: Correlation is not causation… (but it’s still correlation).
Finally, a dose of healthy skepticism: just because a mindset is statistically linked to a real-world outcome doesn’t mean that mindset caused that outcome. In fact, Believers are a case in point that faith alone can’t move mountains.
However, mindsets are also linked to behaviors. And the specific actions or inactions that organizations of different mindsets take do form probable narratives for their success or lack thereof:
- We would expect that a group who has tasked a specific person to be in charge of their marketing, taken the time to know their customers deeply, and invested in a close handoff between Sales and Marketing would see results from those efforts—and those actions describe Achievers.
- We would expect that a group high in theoretical knowledge but lacking buy-in in terms of budget, staff, and stakeholder mandate would see their efforts fail to gain traction—and this scenario best describes Believers.
- We would expect that a group which doesn’t invest in marketing at all, with little curiosity about their customers, and with a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset to maintain a consistent (if stagnant) business—and this best describes the Cynics.
So while we can’t say for certain which actions lead to what outcomes, we can say that the mindsets organizations have about their marketing are linked to behaviors which are linked to outcomes which reinforce the mindsets.
Know thyself.
We suspect that the mindsets we’ve described are familiar to you. Perhaps you can feel the ring of truth reverberating in your bones. You may even know exactly what mindset best characterizes your own organization—and perhaps that’s giving you ideas about your next steps. We hope so.
These insights are just the tip of the iceberg, however. If you’d like to learn more about the behaviors illuminating these mindsets, read our full research report: “From Believing to Achieving: 2024 Marketing Mindsets.” In it we unpack the data more fully, take a closer look at the different actions and beliefs associated with each mindset, and offer our own recommendations for how organizations in the Manufacturing Technology industry can apply our research to their own marketing efforts.
Download the Research Report »
And if you’d like to explore our data yourself, be our guest! Our full research report is available in an interactive visual format that you can use to check your own assumptions, test theories, or discover new insights for yourself.