Industrial Marketing Is Not Consumer Marketing To succeed, small and midsize manufacturers must understand the difference between consumer and industrial marketing. Here's what you need to know.

• Product complexity
• Industrial buyers
• Advertising and promotion

It is relatively straightforward to develop a newspaper ad for impulsive shoe buyers, but it is very difficult to even identify the buying influences of dragline machines or material-handling robots. Inquiries produced by industrial advertising are only the beginning of a long, expensive selling process, sometimes lasting years before the sale occurs.

Market information

There is a lot of database information available on consumer products and an enormous amount of consumer demographic information that can identify the customer profile and market segment. However, information on industrial market niches is very difficult to acquire, is generally qualitative, and requires considerable industrial experience to gather. For example, if you are a manufacturer of a machine that stacks 50-lb. sacks of cheese whey, you will have to identify the market niche to succeed. The food industry has 23,000 plants in the U.S., but the buyers who would be interested in your machine are a niche of a niche, of a niche, of a niche like this

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