Engineers finish most of the buying before you know they exist.

Four decisions and a plan. Segment and product priority, meaning which industries and product lines get funded and which are declined; positioning and messaging, meaning why an engineer should specify you rather than the incumbent; demand and content strategy, meaning what to publish where across a long technical cycle; and budget and measurement, meaning owners, spend by quarter and the metrics leadership will review. The output is a written marketing plan, not a workshop summary.

No. We do not advise on lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, supply chain design, plant layout or manufacturing operations, and nothing here is engineering advice. Our scope is commercial: the marketing strategy, the positioning, the demand plan and the measurement behind them. Manufacturers frequently run this alongside an operations improvement programme, and the two engagements do not overlap.

An agency executes a plan. This engagement writes one, and because we take no execution work inside it, the plan is free to say that two channels should be cut and one product line should stop being marketed at all. The deliverable includes a one-page brief written so any agency, including your current one, can deliver against it. Execution is scoped separately afterwards if you want us to do it.

A fixed fee quoted after a scoping call, with deliverables and dates written down before you commit. It varies with the number of product lines, industries and regions in scope and the state of your CRM and analytics data, so publishing a rate would mislead most readers. For budget context, The CMO Survey puts marketing at 9.0% of company revenue on average, with manufacturing well below that. Book a meeting for a scope and a number.

It has to. The plan is built around the specification and approval sequence your products actually follow, with stage-appropriate content and leading indicators such as specification requests, sample and quote volume and shortlist appearances rather than only closed revenue. Kula Partners found 76% of industrial buyers shortlist at least one supplier before any live interaction, above 90% among C-level and VP buyers, so the early stages are measurable if you choose the right measures.

Yes, within the agreed scope. Customer and lost-quote interviews are the fastest route to a positioning claim that survives contact with an engineer, and distributor or rep conversations show how the product is actually described downstream. We agree the list with you, keep the interviews short and confidential, and feed the findings into the positioning platform rather than publishing them.

Two places, both practical. First, visibility: buyers now research through AI answers as well as search, so the plan specifies the technical content and third-party evidence that gets a supplier cited. The 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers reports 69% of technical buyers using generative AI during the purchase while rating their trust in its answers 4.7 out of 10. Second, internal use, which is scoped in AI marketing advisory rather than here.

Different question. Industrial growth consulting looks for the commercial constraint on growth wherever it sits, including pricing, product mix and the sales system. Marketing strategy consulting assumes the commercial model and answers what marketing should do about it: segments, positioning, channels, budget and measurement. Companies that already know their constraint usually want this one.

Sometimes, and always with the numbers attached. Trade shows are frequently the largest single line in an industrial marketing budget and the least measured. We reconcile the cost of each show, including staff time, against the opportunities and revenue it can be shown to have influenced, then recommend which to keep, which to attend without a booth and which to replace with content, webinars or targeted outreach. Your leadership decides.

A sponsor, usually the president, general manager or commercial director; the sales leader; someone from engineering or product who can speak to real differentiation; and whoever owns marketing today, even if that is a coordinator with a long list. Expect two hours of interviews each in week one and a half-day decision session in week three. If the sponsor cannot attend that session, we move it rather than run it without them.

No, it is often the right first step, because the plan states what the first hire has to do. Where the question is really about structure and sequencing of hires, marketing team advisory covers it, and where you need someone to lead the function while you build it, a fractional CMO is the engagement. Those are quoted separately and neither is required to use the plan.

Yes, and we will say so plainly where it limits a conclusion. We work from financial records first, reconcile CRM and analytics against them, and label which findings are solid and which are directional. Where tracking is genuinely absent, part of the plan is the minimum measurement change that makes next quarter reportable, and marketing operations consulting is the engagement that implements it.

Yes. The parent engagement is marketing strategy consulting, and the same method runs in other verticals with the buying mechanics changed, for example B2B SaaS growth consulting and electrical growth consulting.

Your team runs it, and every workstream has a named owner on your side. Many manufacturers book a review at ninety days to check the leading indicators and adjust the sequence, which takes half a day and is optional. Where you want a standing numbers habit instead, scorecard advisory sets one up and hands it back. Execution, if you want us to do it, is scoped separately.

Because it is built on your revenue, your lost quotes and your interviews, and it names your product lines, industries and competitors. A template cannot say which two of your six product lines should carry next year's budget, or which certification your buyers want you to hold. Every recommendation in the document carries the evidence it came from, so your leadership can disagree with the reasoning rather than with the conclusion.