Gates Corp. Refocuses Marketing on the Customer

Posted on by Beth Negus Viveiros

gates-corpGates Corp. moved from a product-focused to a customer-focused marketing strategy by getting buy-in from the sales force and channel partners.

“Customer don’t care about the products as much as we do, but they do care about how it impacts them,” said Mike Haen, vice president of marketing, industrial markets, at the recent BMA15 conference in Chicago.

The over 100-year-old industrial manufacturer markets products such as belts, hydraulics and hoses for a number of industries, including automotive, agriculture, food & beverage and mining.

The sales teams within Gates had knowledge of their specific market’s products, but often had trouble translating to customers how the products could help their particular businesses. This meant discussions often moved right to price, because that’s something everyone can understand.

Gates Corp. set on a journey on 2012 to better understand customers and their businesses, and listen to their challenges in their words. Then, these insights would be used to differentiate the company. “Project Odyssey” was the internal name for this shift to a customer focused approach. “It’s about them, not us,” he said.

It was a challenge to change the organization’s approach, particularly since it had been successful with the old approach. Each market within the company was handled differently, said Haen. There were consistent themes—training presentations were created for each market, as was a marketing automation program—but the approach for each market segment was unique to cater to their particular needs.

The new approach took the tactic of leading with a “disruptive insight” for the market in question, and talked about products that would address going down a new path for future success. Email campaigns as well as accompanying assets such as whitepapers, webinars and infographics were created for each industry, as were dimensional direct mail campaigns for key accounts.

Change takes time, and adoption was slow, he said. But this type of approach works if a company has a clear definition of what they want to do differently, and has ambassadors within the organization who take ownership and bring enthusiasm for the initiative.

Distribution partners for Gates saw the value of the approach from the start, said Haen. The challenge was just sometimes getting them the materials they needed—if a sales rep was hesitant about the new direction, the client sometimes didn’t get support in a timely manner.

 

 

 

 

More

Related Posts

Chief Marketer Videos

by Chief Marketer Staff

In our latest Marketers on Fire LinkedIn Live, Anywhere Real Estate CMO Esther-Mireya Tejeda discusses consumer targeting strategies, the evolution of the CMO role and advice for aspiring C-suite marketers.

	
        

Call for entries now open

Pro
Awards 2023

Click here to view the 2023 Winners
	
        

2023 LIST ANNOUNCED

CM 200

 

Click here to view the 2023 winners!