Marketing in Oil and Gas has changed.
Marketing in oil and gas has changed. Now when I say marketing let me clarify here, because when the rest of the world thinks marketing it’s how you drive leads. Either to your sales team or to your point-of-sale.
In oil and gas there’s a downstream part of the business, and they have used the word marketing for years to mean the manufacturing and selling of downstream products. So this video isn’t about how you sell your lubes or fuels. We’re not talking that type of marketing; we’re talking about driving leads with marketing.
So, marketing in oil and gas has changed from bunch of reasons. We’re going to go through them now and see if we can help you.
First one, this new younger workforce. This new younger workforce learns and buys differently than previous generations by a large margin. They don’t read print at all (even if it’s free), so quit spending money on print ads. They don’t go to trade shows, conferences or expos to learn. And they don’t go to lunch-and-learns.
Webinars – Small ROI When Marketing in Oil and Gas
If you can even get them to join a webinar, the truth is they’re multitasking. And if your lucky you maybe get 10% of their attention span. All the stuff that worked great for my generation, it’s worthless with this new younger workforce when it comes to marketing in Oil and Gas.
Next thing, there is no decision maker anymore. So if your marketing team is putting together personas of ideal buyers, stop it. It doesn’t exist. That ideal buyer isn’t there anymore. It’s now a decision-making team made up of different people. And quite honestly unless you’re into heavy big data analytics, it’s hard to model the way a decision-making team interacts and makes decisions.
What you much better off doing, is making sure that you put your offering out there in a way that’s easy to understand in a short amount of time, that’s digestible and shows the value of fixing the problem that your product or solutions solves. That’s how you reach these new younger buyers more effectively.
Stop the Whitepaper’s
Next whitepaper’s suck. I hate to tell you that whitepaper’s suck, as I know you have a lot of time and effort invested in them. Remember when I said we had this new younger workforce, and they don’t read print? Well, that includes whitepapers. You’re better off taking that same efforts and resources you would use to create a white paper and instead make a video short. And on that video short, have one of your real clients talk about how you helped them solve a problem. Nothing about you, or your solution, or your company. But how you actually helped them solve a problem. Make that video less than three minutes and that’s your new white paper and its an awesome way to be marketing in Oil and Gas.
Content is Black Gold
Then content is the new black gold. If your website and your online presence is still doing the old magazine style approach, where it’s basically an ad or catalog showcasing your products and services. Stop it! Start thinking about all the questions that your clients and prospects asks you. Everyone of those answers and questions are the subject for your content. Create some good content marketing around this and you are now producing black gold.
And yes it’s going to feel like you’re giving away stuff for free, stuff that you could charge for. But let me tell you, we’ve been doing this for years and it pays off times a zillion. Content is now the king of marketing in Oil and Gas. Get your teams out there to start creating content that’s useful, valuable and easy to consume, and you’ll be way ahead of everybody else.
Engagement Beats Exposure
Then engagement beats exposure every time. It used to be your marketing team would go back and look at all the likes and new page views they generated. In todays world in marketing in Oil and Gas, that doesn’t matter. Let me tell you what matters – engagement. I would rather have one person interact with my online presence and buy from me, than a hundred thousand people that come but never buy from me.
That’s engagement, the one person that interacts and buys from me. The thousands of people that come and don’t ever reach out to me, that’s a waste of my time. So quit looking at data and numbers about driving a lot of traffic, and instead look at how much you are driving engagement. How much is your marketing in Oil and Gas helping prospects engage with your sales team. So engagement beats exposure every single time.
It Doesn’t Work When Marketing in Oil and Gas
Then here’s one you have to be really careful of. What works as far as marketing in other verticals, probably doesn’t work the same or maybe not in oil and gas. I’ll give you a great example. There’s a lot of companies out there doing a lot of really good work with paid Facebook ads, selling a lot of products and services. I’m going to tell you right now, nobody in this industry will ever buy a blowout preventer, a tree or a PLET from Facebook. It just doesn’t work.
So when you’re looking at your marketing strategy, or maybe bringing in some marketing consultants, Just know that because they’ve been successful somewhere else, don’t think they can take that same success and forklift into marketing in Oil and Gas. Because quite honestly, it doesn’t work and they will fail.
Marketing in Oil and Gas Should Rely Less on Exhibiting
Then exhibiting, actually spending your money to exhibit at a trade show, conference, expo, etc. it works less and less each year. And we no longer recommend it when marketing in Oil and Gas. But you know what does work? Speaking. Let me give you perfect example. I was asked to speak at a technology trade show, and I gave really good value for the money (I got paid to do it). What I spoke about was how sales is changing in Oil and Gas. Well if you think about that, everybody that came to listen to me had an interest in learning why sales is changing.
Of the thirty seven people that listened to me speak, twenty of them reached back out to me. Why? Because as I was speaking I was effectively able to have twenty one sales calls in an hour, based upon having a room full of people listing to me. Versus me trying to go set up appointments and going to meet these 20 people one on one. So getting on the speaking circle in oil and gas is awesome and can be extremely rewarding. But exhibiting every year, it’s less and less a good return on your investment.
Thought Leader is Your Goal
Then being seen as a thought leader, is way better than spending big bucks. I know a lot of oil and gas companies have spent a lot of money in their marketing efforts. And honestly they could take a tenth of that spend, figure out how to position themselves as a thought leader and be way ahead of their competitors. Now they’re no longer a vendor, they are a thought leader. That drives a totally different engagement model and the leads start pouring in.
What happens is when you’re seen as a thought leader, you’re seen as the expert. So beating you up on price, features or functionality just goes away. So being a thought leader is much better than have big dollar marketing budget spend.
Marketing Automation is a Must
Then pay attention please, marketing automation – you got to learn it and use it or you’re going to disappear. The world is speeding up. Buyers are consuming information around products and services faster and faster. You have artificial intelligence, you have bots, you have some very advanced algorithms shuffling things around. I mean look at your Facebook feed, Google, or any another social platform. Pay attention to the ads and stories it shows you. You have to learn how to do the same thing. And I don’t necessarily mean you, but your company has to learn how to do that and use it effectively. If not, you’re going to be left behind. It’s marketing automation is coming at us like a freight train.
SEO and SER is Vital When Marketing in Oil and Gas
And then the last one, search engine results is the new lead driver. Go open your browser of choice right now, and type in oil and gas keynote speaker. Type in oil and gas speakers, type in oil and gas sales experts, you’ll see me come up number one. Think about what that does. Anybody on the planet that looks at that sees me first, and they reach out to me. That drives all of my leads for my business. And it does it really well.
So just remember you can’t fool Google, you have to put good, relative, useful and easy to consume content out there. But search engine ranking is a new way to drive leads. We spoke at GeoConvention last year, and we did the research beforehand and searches online for supply chain has grown 1700% in the last four years. Why? Because the old guys that used to know who their valve vendors were, that had and used paper catalogs, they’re gone. The new guy who is part of this new younger workforce, when his manager says “Hey, give me some one-inch ball valves”, the first thing he does is he Googles it. So your search engine rankings are dramatically important.
Right now if you don’t rank well for what you’re doing, you’re in an okay place. But what’s really happening is you’re getting ready to get left behind by new, quicker and more nimble competitor of yours. One that you may not even be aware of today and that you may not even see coming. And once they grab that number one or two spot, it’s really hard for you to get it back. So SEO (search engine optimization) and SER (search engine ranking) is a new lead driver.
I’d Love to Help You
I hope this helped. If you like what we’re doing and you would like me to come speak to your group, let me know. Just reach out by clicking here and I would be happy to share details.
Folks, I hope this helped. We will see you next time.