Marketing For Non-Sexy Industries

Heavy machinery, engineering jargon, niche markets, kind of unknown products...

It is not an easy task for a marketer or a communication person to get the attention of the media or of the public when the product or the industry is everything but sexy. Right?! If you feel represented, trust me, you are not the only one struggling with it. But, what are you doing to make your content more interesting?

It does not help just giving up and falling into the trap of thinking that your brand is too boring or too traditional. 

Remember even in the weirdest industries, 

there is an audience waiting for information 

and getting ready to make a purchase. 

 Make it happen. 

Be brave, take risks.

 

8 Marketing tips for challenging industries: 

1. Share useful content: Remember the content main goal is to inform, educate and entertain. You should give your customers what they actually need (not just what you want to share or -better to say, to sell).
2. Make the content appealing: the content should be interesting and relevant but, please, do not forget using the right font, good layout, and the visuals. There are so many channels and tools out there, that you can try new things even at low cost. No excuses.
3. Focus on one topic at the time: The more common mistake when writing about a product that is not that "sexy", is that you try to say too much. Just visualize for a second a brochure with too much text and too many pictures, well you know the feeling...Forget to try to speak about everything. That will not increase your blog readership, either. Instead, focus on main points.
4. Write for a wider audience: rather than writing from engineers to engineers, (sorry for my honest example), try to make your topic more interesting for other people. Forget that technical jargon. It is not making you look as an expert or smarter. This is very relevant if you want your content to be shared on different channels. If more people understand your content, you will have more readers and therefore, more chances to get shares, likes, and comments. This approach will help you when working with the media, too. A journalist will not write about something that is too difficult to understand or that needs many hours to get deciphered. Keep it simple.
5. Stop measuring a number of readers (or likes); focus instead on quality leads: I know you think I am contradicting myself but, my point here is that you need to get more readers, but a number of readers does not guarantee the sell. You need to create content that will attract the buyers, too. A funny picture can get thousands of likes, however, they are not buying your product. 
6. Stop selling or advertising: Nobody wants to read a blog post that is only an advertising in plain text. What about talking about cases or examples in which those benefits are shown? Don't push your products. Make your customers discover the benefits between the lines of your stories.
7. Make your employees your ambassadors: If you are running out of ideas why not to talk to your own people. They can help you finding great ideas, new perspectives, new topics and why not, they can help you creating the content. What about getting a great picture from your factory, or the story behind the guy who creates your latest hit... Your company is not only about selling products, there is much more happening inside the organization. Share it! 
8. Track the results: You have the chance to try many things, but the only way to know if those have an effect on your results is by measuring. You can measure the changes to the sell, the reach of your stories, the media coverage, changes to the brand awareness, etc. Decide the measurement tools according to your goal.