How Industrial Brands Can Embrace Modern Marketing
I had high hopes going into the 2025 Industrial Marketing Summit, held from February 26-28 in Austin, TX.
This was my first conference on behalf of LANC, and it blew my expectations out of the water. But, rather than giving you a play-by-play of the event, let’s dive straight into the key takeaways that can help your business.
Stephanie Pryor, CEO, and Samantha Syvret, Director of Operations, at the 2025 Industrial Marketing Summit in Austin, TX.
When we decided to focus on manufacturing and industrial companies, it was because we saw massive opportunity in the space. We live in a world dominated by FAANG companies and startups and tech bros, but what about the forgotten titans of industry; the manufacturers? Indeed, industrial companies are feeling the squeeze to step up their brands, marketing efforts, and communications infrastructure, but many are trapped in antiquated or extremely underresourced approaches.
One thing I heard repeatedly in my conversations with many passionate and motivated leaders in this space was that they simply don’t know where to start, either from scratch (no marketing function) or to scale (limited marketing function).
I want all of them to know that where you start should be defined by where you want to go. If it’s quick lead generation, then LANC is not the agency partner for you; not right now, anyway. But, we know many agency partners who could help you.
If it’s the long-term performance and sustainability of your brand—being known and respected by decision-makers in your industry—then, yes, we can help. So, here’s what we learned along those lines at IMS25.
E-A-T: Beyond Google, It’s Your Brand’s Reputation
Several of the sessions I attended focused on actions that build trust. I starred and underlined in my notes the acronym E-A-T. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It’s primarily used in search engine optimization (SEO), specifically as a way to understand Google’s ranking algorithm.
In my opinion, E-A-T has much broader applications because Google’s algorithm is meant to give you the results that best align with your needs based on what the ranking domain has to offer, mirroring the experience of building a relationship with another human.
This also leads me to the concept of omnichannel marketing. Omnichannel is “a reference to the many ways customers might interact with a company,” which includes Google search as well as social media, events, news media, podcasts, your website, and more.
All of those channels should work together to reinforce the E-A-T of your brand, your leadership, and your employees. For example, a manufacturing company that consistently shares expert insights on LinkedIn, features SME-authored articles on its website, and appears in industry publications builds credibility and trust.
According to Forrester, nearly 90% of B2B buyers (that’s your audience) consider trust a crucial factor when choosing a supplier. When you look at the full picture of your marketing and communications function, you are not just selling a product: You are selling your company and ideas that comprise it.
Three Quick Tips for Building E-A-T
Showcase deep industry knowledge through thought leadership content.
Encourage SMEs and leadership to post insights on LinkedIn.
Invest in professional brand presentation (consistent messaging, well-designed website).
Marketing Change Management: Overcoming the "Old School" Mindset
Industrial companies often suffer from a chronic resistance to change. They don’t have the flexibility and adaptability of the tech companies driving marketing trends today. The good news is that it’s possible to overcome an ‘old school’ mindset and approach to marketing through marketing change management.
Change management is “an enabling framework for managing the people side of change.” Marketing change management, then, is about aligning your marketing and communications stakeholders on a new, strategic direction for your organization. It sounds simple, but many industrial companies have employees with decades of tenure. Humans love patterns, they love predictability—and as the nature of work and marketing changes, resistance to that change is a natural reflex.
On the flip side, newer employees run into barriers when trying to bring a more flexible, agile approach to their work. This can lead to frustration, dissatisfaction, and attrition if those barriers don’t come down over time.
Marketing change management helps by influencing leadership to invest more in their marketing organization as a growth driver and helping marketing staff understand why changes are happening and the role they play in making it successful. Marketing is 100% a team sport—so concerns, skepticism, or mistrust need to be managed and addressed. Marketing change management can require collaboration from senior leadership, communications, HR, IT, and even external consultants to be successful.
Three Quick Tips for Changing Attitudes Toward Marketing
Start with small, measurable wins (e.g., LinkedIn content strategy that leads to inbound inquiries).
Use data to demonstrate marketing ROI.
Get buy-in by aligning marketing goals with business objectives.
Leadership: The Ultimate Catalyst (or Roadblock) to Marketing Success
Perhaps the most validating session at IMS25 was Jim Mayer’s talk on culture and leadership. As a strategic communications agency for manufacturers, a huge part of LANC’s mission and our work is earning buy-in from senior leadership.
I wrote on Linked that, from a brand perspective, senior leadership must be visible and engaged in company culture and values and, by extension, external communications that articulate those things to buyers, partners, and local communities. Lack of leadership involvement causes a breakdown across the brand, stalling or even slowing growth.
The questions posed by the audience during the session ranged from values being too vague to not having a mission statement at all, which reinforces my belief that brand strategy and positioning is an incredibly important investment for manufacturers.
We can help marketing teams who struggle to engage their SLT in the broader “brand” functions of their companies because, when leadership champions marketing, the rest of the organization follows.
Three Quick Tips for Getting Leadership Buy-In
Provide examples of competitors leveraging modern marketing.
Highlight case studies showing measurable impact.
Encourage leadership to be visible and vocal in industry discussions.
AI in Industrial Marketing: Work Smarter, But Make it Ethical
I would be remiss not mention all the discussions about AI at the Industrial Marketing Summit, and within the broader marketing industry. I don’t want to beat a dead horse on this subject, but it’s worth emphasizing that AI has the potential to augment and improve our work. At the same time, ethical concerns about AI are real, and we should be paying attention to them and creating guardrails to protect opportunity and advancement for the workforce.
Following the keynote from Paul Roetzer, I wrote on LinkedIn that the presentation “felt more like a warning about AI than a learning opportunity.” In the present moment, companies are more focused on what AI can do and how to implement it practically without disrupting their current ecosystems. But, the companies creating the AI technology are working doggedly to innovate as fast as possible regardless of ethical barriers.
When AI-assisted (or largely AI-driven) work becomes more commonplace, perhaps the question will shift to where and how companies want to implement AI based on their values. Additionally, I see an opportunity for companies to charge a premium on human-centered work as AI-generated work product becomes the norm. Similar to the way that “Shop Small” and “Made in the USA” create more perceived value for consumers, businesses who elevate and prioritize human creativity may be able to use that as a selling point in the future.
Three Quick Tips for Practical AI Applications
Automating repetitive tasks (email responses, report generation).
Personalizing outreach with AI-driven segmentation.
Creating content efficiently with AI-assisted writing tools.
Modernizing Industrial Marketing One Step at a Time
I’ve thrown a lot of thoughts at you in this article, but I hope you know that you don’t need to change everything overnight. As I mentioned earlier, you need to understand where you want to go before you can start actioning on that goal. You’ll also want to have a plan for implementing these changes, especially if you have an existing marketing organization that may be resistant to change. Ultimately, your marketing goals should align with your business goals and your senior leadership team must have buy-in to be successful.
Not sure where to start on modernizing your brand? Let’s chat about your specific marketing and communications challenges and explore solutions that fit your budget and growth goals.
