5 Demand Generation Tips for Attracting OEM Leads

Over 90% of B2B buyers begin their research on Google – HubSpot

The key to successfully marketing to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) is to speak their language and meet them where they are.

The reality is that OEM CIOs, CTOs, technology directors, and VPs are researching business solutions and new technologies online. This is especially true of device manufacturers and OEMs in the electronic, telecom, and Internet of Things (IoT) niches, whose success relies on staying abreast of rapidly evolving technology.

If your company appears high in search results as a trusted advisor providing guidance and industry trends, you’ll get on their radar. And if your content successfully demonstrates how your company can help OEMs reduce costs, streamline operations, improve efficiencies, and power their offerings, you’ll make the shortlist.

To attract OEM leads and get them excited about your company’s products and service offerings, you’ll need to embrace a digital marketing strategy that specifically targets this market--it's topics, concerns, language, opportunities, and technological infrastructure. To that end, here are five demand-generation tips for attracting OEM leads.

Five OEM Demand Generation Tips

1. Know your OEM audience.

To effectively reach CIOs and VPs at electronic, telecom, and IoT OEMs, you must tailor your lead generation outreach to solve the unique challenges of your target audience. Conduct target buyer research including:

• An analysis of job descriptions and roles to better understand different buyer motivations across various stakeholders.
• Scope out the competitive landscape. Analyzing close competitors can give you ideas on differentiating your demand generation efforts and identify targeting opportunities your competitors may have missed.
• Look into industry research to gain valuable insights into the current trends and challenges faced by OEMs in the electronic, telecom, and IoT sectors. Industry research can provide valuable information about the priorities and goals of top prospects in the market. By aligning your marketing efforts with their needs, you can tailor your messaging and content to resonate with OEM decision-makers.
• Identify top prospects for an account-based marketing approach. Create a list of ideal OEM customers to specifically target using a highly personalized messaging strategy. This list can also help to refine lead qualification criteria and expand targeting efforts using lookalike audience tools from various advertising platforms.

2. Create educational and authoritative content.

The reality is that traditional sales techniques are out. CIOs, CTOs, technology directors, and VPs at OEMs are increasingly less interested in cold calls and hard sells. They simply don't want to be bombarded.

And brands that bombard only become antagonists--alienated and shut out. Today, business managers are researching the market, solutions, your company, and your competitors online. They are drawing their own conclusions – and they won’t reach out to a sales representative until that research is near complete.

To attract OEM leads in this new landscape, companies must stand out during the research stage by demonstrating that they are experts in their category. Your content marketing strategy should center around solving prospect problems, offering solutions, and helping OEMs make informed decisions. In addition, you’ll also want to create content that directly communicates how your products and service offerings can help OEMs reduce costs, streamline operations, and improve efficiencies.

To begin, we recommend posting case studies, product specs and definitions, webinars, FAQ content, white papers, data sheets, and blog content. For topics, you’ll want to build your content around OEM pain points, goals, interests, and needs.

3. Use gated content to generate qualified OEM leads.

Gated content is premium, branded content that can only be accessed after filling out a form and providing contact information. This typically includes fields like name, email, job title, and company name among others.

Once they’ve submitted the form, the lead gains access to the content, and your company can use the information they’ve provided to nurture the relationship with targeted communications. From there, you can use progressive profiling to collect more detailed information from leads over time, helping them dive deeper into their needs, problems, and opportunities.

When using gated content to attract OEM leads, the key is to provide a wealth of in-depth, valuable resources that directly address their specific needs and interests. Make sure OEM prospects will immediately understand that this piece of content was designed specifically for their market. For example, a white paper on “how OEMs can use Internet of Things technologies to generate cost savings and improve efficiencies.”

Learn more: How To Improve Lead Generation Using Gated Content

4. Promote content using social networks and your website.

After you’ve created your content, the next step is to promote it. To begin, identify the social media channels your target market is most likely to use. For IoT, telecom, and electronic OEMs, those channels are likely to be LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

From there, share your content across those networks and ask your advocates and influencers to do the same. Promote your content on your website, in email newsletters, and at the bottom of your blog posts using call-to-actions.

5. Leverage pay-per-click (PPC) and targeted ads.

PPC and digital targeted ads are an excellent way to drive qualified OEM leads to your site and supplement B2B inbound marketing efforts. To begin, you’ll need to identify the keywords your audience is searching for and configure your PPC ads to send prospects to your website’s gated content landing pages. Once they arrive, they’ll be prompted to enter their email address and personal information to gain access.

When creating your keyword strategy, we recommend incorporating broad (highly competitive) keywords like “M2M solutions” and longtail keywords like “M2M device management for OEMs”. In general, longer keywords are less competitive than broad keywords however both will drive quality traffic to your site.

SOURCES:

HubSpot, Can Industrial Manufacturers Benefit From Inbound Marketing?, https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/inbound-marketing-for-industrial-manufacturers