MM8 - Pilot Program

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome back Manufacturing Marketers! Bruce McDuffee here. I bet you’re starting to recognize my voice, but want to introduce myself anyways. Now that we have a basic understanding of the foundational technology we’ll need to execute the New Way to market for Manufacturing, starting with the Pilot program. You’re not going to boil the ocean, in most manufacturing companies, and you’re usually fighting a deeply engrained culture around the product and the sales group. You’ll need to prove the concept of marketing, engaging without pitching the product. The Pilot program is the way to go.
• #3: Step 1 – Write down your goals and objectives. If the goal is to demonstrate the power of knowledge based marketing as a way to generate engagement, then you should clearly state that goal and how the results will support the goal. Step 2 – Determine the Sweet Spot of Engagement and the Audience Facing Mission Statement. Gain commitment from the expert to support your pilot program. Step 3 – Choose the particular tactic you will propose. I strongly suggest choosing a tactic that allows you to show real verifiable numbers. An educational webinar series is a great choice because you can easily show the number of registrants and attendees along with critical data about each person. You could argue that your webinar pilot program will deliver qualified leads. Step 4 – Prepare the necessary identify and procure the tools, develop the content, set milestones, select a launch date and execute. Step 5 – Share the results and be prepared to show how the results demonstrate proof of your hypothesis. Step 6 - Ask for resources and support for an extension of your original pilot or request a second pilot program to further demonstrate the concept of the “New Way”.
• #4: You must have authority to deliver the content. Should leverage your firm’s expertise and experts.
• #5: A ‘best chance’ tactic has three specific criteria. First, the tactic must easily demonstrate meaningful numbers that show engagement. Because the ability to show numbers is important, that means the tactic must have a call to action that enables counting. Second, the count must include identification of the contacts. In other words, the count should not be anonymous such as ‘clicks’ or ‘likes’. Third, the topic must resonate with and be highly relevant to the people in your target audience as defined by your Audience Facing Mission Statement.
• #7: Don’t tell the CEO or CFO about how many clicks, opens or likes you get. Tell them how many opportunities you added to the sales funnel
• #9: Unless it is an A-B test.
• #10: The pilot program assumes you need to prove the concept or The New Way to Market in Manufacturing, in other words, proving that you can engage with a much larger portion of the target audience when you stop pitching products and start helping the people in the target audience. If your organization is ready to make a unilateral change in the marketing and sales strategy, go for it and jump in with both feet you might not need to dip a toe in with a pilot program. Thank you and I’ll see you at the next lesson. This is Bruce McDuffee, signing off for today, Now let’s go out and advance the practice of marketing in mfg today!