About the client and why they came to us
Multi-Tek is an engineering-driven custom cable assembly manufacturer based in Portland, Oregon. They approached us in 2020 with three key goals they were looking to accomplish:
- Improve and scale their inbound pipeline of qualified, high-margin opportunities
- Diversify their customer base to be less dependent on a few flagship customers
- Implement their first true, sustainable marketing program
Challenges to overcome
Any new client engagement presents its challenges. In this case, we knew we were up against the following:
First, Multi-Tek looked like a generalist. No strategic brand narrative articulated who specifically they helped and how they created value for those companies. This undifferentiated messaging was failing to reach and capture the attention of the right people from the right companies, leaving Multi-Tek with a high volume of low-quality leads (most of which had little-to-no buying intent).
Second, Multi-Tek’s website was your classic brochure. Lots of “I, me, my, we, us, our”. Very little “you”.
We knew that in order to earn and sustain the attention and trust of their core audience, we had to flip that messaging on its head and speak to the buying triggers, problems, questions and goals of their audience.
Our solution
As we do for any client, we began by speaking directly to a handful of Multi-Tek’s customers to learn about their buying processes, how they evaluated solutions and partners, what mattered most to them in their jobs and so on.
Compiling our findings, we crafted positioning language (as represented on this Who We Help and How page) to guide their outward-facing communications. We then disseminated this customer-centric messaging throughout a total website relaunch that involved design, copywriting and development. Here’s a quick scroll through of some key pages:
While developing the new website, we guided Multi-Tek through the process of planning and implementing a thought leadership content program, entirely focused on the customer.
Part of this content implementation involved bringing a professional videographer on site and filming Multi-Tek’s subject matter experts teaching about the topics that matter most to their core audience.
Here’s one example from this set of these videos:
You can find a variety of both written and video content that we helped the client produce here in Multi-Tek’s learning center.
With a sharp brand narrative in place and a base of customer-centric, problem-solving, question-answering content now at our disposal, it was time to proactively go out and get in front of the right people from the right companies.
We had two jobs to do on this front:
- Capture demand where it already exists
- Generate demand in front of the rest of Multi-Tek’s total addressable market
Consider this key point:
A majority of any B2B manufacturer’s future customer base is not actively buying at any specific moment in time. They will be at some point. But that may not be for another week, month or year.
So among the small percentage of Multi-Tek’s audience who is currently in a buy cycle, we need them to discover our client and understand very clearly how Multi-Tek can help them get where they’re trying to go.
But simultaneously, among the vast majority of their audience who isn’t currently seeking a solution, we need Multi-Tek to establish themselves as the best resource possible by teaching, educating, creating value, and in the process of doing so, positioning themselves as the expert in their category. By doing this, Multi-Tek will be the obvious first phone call when those individuals do enter a buy cycle.
To address the first of those two jobs (capturing existing demand among active buyers), we focused on what we call “intent channels” like Google. People go to Google when they’re actively looking for a solution:
To address the latter (companies that fit Multi-Tek’s ideal customer profile, but aren’t necessarily in a buy cycle), we focused on targeting these individuals where they already spend time online and creating value for them there.
In this case, we learned that we could reach the Senior Mechanical Engineers, Design Engineers, Mechanical Design Engineers, Electro Mechanical Designers, etc inside of categories including Electrical Manufacturing, Industrial Automation and Machinery via paid demand generation campaigns on LinkedIn.
Here’s a screen shot of a customer audience we designed in LinkedIn Ad Manager:
Because these technical professionals carry the most influence in the buying process, we knew we had to reach them early – before they ever went to Google to look for a solution.
Here’s an example of content we deployed to reach these specific individuals.
We effectively told LinkedIn, “Show this content to people with these job titles from these types of companies in these geographic regions with these interests.”
Results to date
At the time of publishing this case study (late 2021), all signs are pointing in the right direction.
A few notable wins so far:
- We’ve transformed the marketing mindset from low-intent lead generation to high-intent demand generation, focused on marketing-sourced pipeline
- We’ve built a demand generation machine that helps Multi-Tek effectively track, measure, and optimize sales and marketing alignment for streamlined revenue operations
- We’ve improved both month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter performance using data to guide what marketing levers to pull
There’s been a steady increase in our existing customer business, as well as getting enough qualified leads from Gorilla’s marketing efforts that I haven’t really had to spend a lot of time prospecting or looking for new business.” – John Ferguson
