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B2B Marketing Case Studies

Working for the success industrial businesses

Branding

Strategy

Web Design + Development

Advertising

Product Marketing

Manufacturing

Biotech

Building

Energy

Chemical

Heavy Equipment

Association

Home Services

&#8220;As much as I wasn&#8217;t sold on the brand from the start, I came to understand that branding is about how other people &#8211; our customers view us. BlackBean got it exactly right on the first try, and we have received nothing but compliments about our new look. Now, I love it!&#8221; &#8211; K. Frame, General Manager

A brand is how people perceive you

top b2b brands

A rocking new brand for an aggregates company

The new owners of Kelowna Sand and Gravel took over from the founder, after many decades of good management and no marketing whatsoever. It was time to send a strong message to the market: there are new players in town, they are young(er), hungry and innovative. The team came to BlackBean because of our expertise in the industrial sector and strong, minimalistic design aesthetic. The objective was to create a strong brand that would represent their values, and look great on signage and merchandise.

Out with the "ew," in with the new

Kelowna Sand and Gravel&#8217;s main challenge was understanding the purpose and objectives of branding. BlackBean had to demonstrate that what a brand is (and isn&#8217;t!), and who it is designed for. It&#8217;s a common misconception that a business owner has to like their brand. Jeff Bezos is widely quoted as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Those other people are your customers, present, past and future. Everything a brand does or communicates must be rooted in authenticity and alignment.

Challenge

To work through common misconceptions and create alignment between the internal and external stakeholders, BlackBean held several meetings and hosted conversations around digital marketing, B2B branding and customer perception. By staying true to the main target audience of Kelowna Sand and Gravel &#8211; landscapers and construction companies, we designed a minimalistic, no-frill brand with a sans serif font with colours representing the main products of the company: basalt, mountain ash and gravel. The three slants represent the three letter of the abbreviated name.
We tested the brand on several digital products such as social media icons, and on promotional items such as caps, hard harts and shirts to make sure it stood the test of reality.

Solution

The positive feedback and reviews started pouring in as soon as the clients launched their new brand. Their clients came back asking for stickers (we can&#8217;t order them fast enough!), and it is now considered one top B2B brand in the local aggregate industry. It is strong, authentic, modern and stands out among the competition.

Results

&#8220;The work BlackBean has done for us looks great. It&#8217;s really neat, it&#8217;s professional, and it&#8217;s creative.&#8221; &#8211; General Manager, VEGA Instruments Canada Ltd.

Testimonial

B2B manufacturing marketing

Massive marketing optimization effort for manufacturer

VEGA Instruments is a German-based manufacturer of industrial smart sensors. We worked with their Canadian division to clarify their product offering, better support their sales team, and develop better marketing visibility for their team.

Top-to-bottom marketing cleanup

VEGA Canada faced several marketing challenges. First, their data lacked integrity. Many records in their CRM were inaccurate, poorly segmented, or incomplete. Their sales team felt unsupported by marketing, and their marketing materials were often clumsily translated from German.

We worked with members of VEGA&#8217;s team from leadership to admin and support to build out better processes, clean up their CRM data, segment their customers into accurate and meaningful lists, and provide superior sales resources to close more deals.

<ul>
<li>CRM: Audit, review, tiering and optimization to generate and measure true marketing efforts and results</li>
<li>Sales: Playbook for sales team, sales enablement and meeting handbooks to bridge the gap with marketing and ensure optimal flow of information to increase revenue.</li>
<li>Brand: Awareness increased through sellers&#8217; vehicule branding, personable videos, and innovative trade show design.</li>
</ul>

Result

A strong and compelling brand establishes trust, differentiation, and credibility. If your marketing isn&#8217;t performing the way you&#8217;d like, a weak brand may be part of the problem. We can help!

Branding for any B2B organization

digital marketing for manufacturers

Manufacturing association giant gets an updated look

Our task involved rebranding a significant manufacturing consortium with a focus on giving it a modern look while preserving the legacy equity built over 25 years. Our objective was to maintain certain essential brand elements, such as the color and theme of the logomark, while refreshing and simplifying the overall design to align with current design sensibilities.

Leaner and cleaner, but still familiar

Our goal was to modernize and streamline the visual identity of a large manufacturing consortium while preserving its 25 years of legacy equity, requiring careful navigation of maintaining key brand elements while refreshing the design to align with current trends and design sensibilities.

We embarked on a careful process of streamlining and refining the consortium&#8217;s visual identity. We began by analyzing the existing brand elements and identifying key components that held strong recognition and association with the consortium. The logomark&#8217;s color and theme emerged as crucial aspects that had to be retained to preserve the brand&#8217;s heritage and familiarity.

Search advertising offers consistent, reliable lead generation for any industry. Through search ads, you can reach international audiences, grow your brand, and generate more leads. Want to get started?
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What would you do with 10x more leads?

Google Ads B2B

7.5X ROI on paid search advertising

CaraGreen is a construction materials supplier that came to us looking to grow their online lead generation. The resulting search advertising campaign produced dozens of qualified leads and an estimated 7.5x ROI!

Measurable Revenue Growth From Search Advertising

A construction materials company struggled to grow their online lead generation. They have unique distributor relationships with a variety of leading sustainable building materials, and wanted to grow their sales in particular product categories.

We developed a search advertising campaign with three ad groups, each targeting one of the product categories they most wanted to promote. By targeting CaraGreen&#8217;s service areas across the US&#8211;particularly those with a high number of recorded housing starts&#8211;we reached a valuable B2B purchasing audience at a very competitive cost per acquisition.

<ul>
<li>7.5X estimated ROI from search advertising</li>
<li>54 marketing qualified leads in the first 90 days of the campaign</li>
<li>10x improved conversion rate, search ads vs. organic search traffic</li>
</ul>

&#8220;Not only do I appreciate BlackBean’s top-notch communication throughout the project and timely completion of tasks, I can tell that the team really took their time to understand our vision. It makes our partnership such a smooth sailing experience. You guys rock in the industrial marketing game!&#8221; &#8211; R. Alarcon, Marketing Director

Client Testimonial

Distributor marketing

A unique distributor marketing platform for heavy equipment 

Axiom Equipment Group primarily sells its products via distributors like heavy equipment dealers and equipment rental companies. Helping their distributors better market Axiom equipment increases their sales volume and revenue. We helped them provide customized spec sheets to each distributor through a custom web portal added to their website. The result? A seamless and easy-to-use web tool that enhances marketing outcomes at the point of sale.

Branded distributor marketing documents at scale via custom web application

Axiom Equipment Group wanted to provide better marketing documents to its rental outlets and distributors. Getting a designer to manually generate documents would take forever and cost a fortune. What if the process were self-serve and fully automated through the website?

BlackBean developed a custom one-page web app to apply distributor branding to a series of product documents. Distributors simply have to log in to the web portal, upload their logo in PNG format, and the application generates customized marketing documents for them. Axiom can offer custom documents to their distributor clients at virtually any scale, all without saddling their in-house design team with busy-work.

<ul>
<li>Dozens of companies using the Axiom media kit generator</li>
<li>Days of labour saved through website automation</li>
<li>Seamless integration with the existing website design</li>
</ul>

In the industrial world, slow and complex sales cycles are the norm. Each vertical deals with its own unique challenges, speaking to specialized audiences with particular interests and requirements. If your sales tactics are underperforming, maybe they require more specialization? We can help you identify what&#8217;s unique about your audience, and how to best reach them to close more deals.

Unique markets need unique strategies

B2B sales enablement

Sales enablement in a niche industry

Altec Entertainment is a ride control system provider. Featured in some of the most advanced amusement rides around the globe, Altec’s controls help parks provide safe and immersive experiences of all kinds. Their big sales and marketing challenge was to get into the inner circle of the rides and entertainment industry. As a niche industry with a handful of global leaders, getting noticed was tricky.

Entering the entertainment industry

In the rides and entertainment market, competition is high and opportunities are relatively infrequent. Sales cycles may take years to complete. The same names and faces cycle through the industry, job-hopping from park to park. With such an insular sales environment, BlackBean recognized that conventional marketing tactics wouldn’t work. There were no large lists of prospects to target. A tangled web of NDAs, hidden RFPs, and restrictive gifting policies made account-based marketing tricky.

In such a close-knit community, being perceived as an industry leader or expert would open the door to many possibilities. We worked with Altec’s Entertainment team to help them project more authority to their peers. For example, we supported a successful campaign to elect Business Development Manager Donnelly Williams to the Themed Entertainment Association’s board of directors. The tagline “a vote for Donnelly is a vote for diversity” was leveraged to great success. When Williams attended a recent industry event, we organized an off-site event at Top Golf where he could invite attendees for more intimate networking. This event alone resulted in invitations to five private RFPs.

By focusing on the human and supporting Altec’s sales leadership, we found a better way to market to a small but lucrative audience. Our campaign resulted in invitations to five private RFPs, as well as securing Altec a seat at the table via the Themed Entertainment Association board of directors.

&#8220;In 10 years of working with marketing companies, [BlackBean] is the only one that has generated quality leads!&#8221; &#8211; J. Hart, Sales Director.

Delivering value is what we do.

Google ads for B2B

$1.5M lead from Google ads in less than three months

Search advertising provides near-instant results for B2B companies looking to boost their lead generation. After upgrading Royale&#8217;s website with strong conversion pages and highly relevant content, we built a targeted search campaign to promote their key services across the United States.

Immediate ROI from search advertising

Once we completed our positioning exercise, it was time to generate leads. Although Royale had plenty of contracts around their home base in New York City, they struggled to push into other markets like Texas, Chicago, Miami, and Baltimore. They needed a targeted, efficient advertising campaign to get their upgraded messaging in front of the right clients across the country.

Royale&#8217;s customers could be found in dense metro areas across the country, particularly in areas where real estate development is high. We targeted a dozen metro areas ranging from Texas to Baltimore, keying in on specific zip codes that best fit their customer profile. As we collected data from the campaign, we adjusted targeting, keywords, and bids to maximize performance.

<h2>Over $1.5M in leads generated</h2>
Through the campaign&#8217;s first 90 days
<h2>$55 average cost per lead</h2>
<h2>More online leads</h2>
Than any other channel since campaign launch

In B2B sales, the little details matter. In a highly competitive market, salespeople must work every advantage at their disposal to close the deal. Whatever you sell, we can help ensure your sales materials&#8211;from brochures to white papers and beyond&#8211;are compelling, attractive, and above all else: effective.

Sell smarter, not harder

Selling metal fab to mining with strong sales material

For many years, Goodman Steel relied exclusively on local industry for business. Based near one of the world&#8217;s largest and most productive potash mines, a handful of mining related accounts kept their business afloat for decades. In recent years, they looked to broaden their reach, leveraging expertise in mining and industry to the benefit of companies in forestry, oil and gas, agriculture, and other sectors. We worked with them to produce high-quality sales material and documentation to improve lead generation as they pushed to expand their targeting.

Superior sales and marketing materials to aid lead generation

Goodman Steel had a few sales resources such as basic brochures and pamphlets. However, these materials were years out of date and their designs were amateur. Additionally, their existing materials featured an outdated version of their logo and brand.

Our solution involved a comprehensive audit of the client&#8217;s existing sales materials to identify areas of improvement. Leveraging market research and customer insights, we crafted refreshed and compelling content, integrated persuasive visuals, and streamlined the presentation to effectively communicate the client&#8217;s unique positioning and value proposition.

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&#8220;It has been an absolute pleasure to work with BlackBean and we look forward to continuing our relationship with them moving forward.&#8221; &#8211; S. Chase, Office Administrator
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 Ignite Your Trade Show Presence

Marketing Trade Shows

Innovative trade show design for metal fabricator

Goodman Steel, a full-service engineering and fabrication shop situated in Rocanville, Saskatchewan, has established a strong reputation within the local potash mining industry. However, they aspired to extend their reach beyond their small-town roots while embracing their prairie heritage. Seeking new opportunities across the Canadian prairie region, Goodman Steel engaged our team for assistance.

Helping a prairie metal fabricator break new ground

Our challenge was to help Goodman Steel find new markets and create a memorable presence at trade shows, ensuring that their exhibit stood out and enticed meaningful conversations. It was crucial to align the strategy with their laid-back, outdoorsy personality, avoiding conventional corporate displays or flashy setups that would be incongruent with their brand vibe.

To support Goodman Steel&#8217;s goals, we devised a unique trade show approach that would captivate attendees while reflecting their brand persona. For the Saskatchewan Mining Supply Chain Forum in April 2023, we designed an &#8220;indoor campsite&#8221; concept for their exhibit. Departing from traditional booths, we incorporated comfortable camping chairs, theme elements like coolers and a faux firepit, and thematically aligned roll-up banners and displays. This unconventional setup would create an inviting atmosphere and leave a lasting impression on visitors.

By implementing this innovative trade show strategy, we achieved remarkable outcomes for Goodman Steel:
<ul>
<li>Their &#8220;indoor campsite&#8221; exhibit garnered significant attention, standing out amidst conventional displays.</li>
<li>The unique and relaxed atmosphere at their booth facilitated engaging conversations and built stronger connections with attendees.</li>
<li>The off-site axe-throwing event created a memorable networking experience, fostering a more personal connection with potential clients.</li>
<li>Thematic branded merchandise served as impactful marketing collateral, extending their brand&#8217;s visibility beyond the trade show.</li>
</ul>