Manufacturer's Buying Group Reaches New Markets, New Growth with Public Relations

Situation Overview
A manufacturer’s buying group, based in Chicago, IL, needed to raise awareness among North American small and midsized industrial manufacturers. The company had already established itself solidly within the commercial foodservice vertical, but knew that its future success depended on its ability to expand into other vertical markets.

Problems
The buying group wanted to replicate its ability to combine purchasing power of foodservice manufacturers in order to deliver unmatched savings on materials, components, supplies and services, but was frustrated with other efforts it had used to expand beyond its core market. The company came to Pete Wiltjer Marketing Group (PWMG) seeking help establishing its brand as a leading provider of sourcing solutions for small and midsized industrial manufacturers.

The buying group also struggled in finding a way to capture interest from business media, an outlet that it badly wanted to penetrate in order to better communicate its capabilities to help North American small and mid-sized manufacturers even the playing field with Tier 1 manufacturers and foreign competitors, and also to establish company leaders as reliable and accessible sources capable of serving media queries on any related manufacturing topics.

Problems Solved
PWMG designed and executed a strategic public relations campaign for this buying group that started with efforts to communicate the group’s ability to solve the most complex sourcing and procurement issues any manufacturer would encounter, while also communicating the ease of using this service and the potentially lucrative immediate and long-term benefits of membership.

Among the strategies employed, PWMG developed case studies to highlight networking and sourcing benefits, plus the buying power that members of the group had enjoyed and realized.
Recognizing that the group’s unique make-up of small and midsized industrial manufacturers also represented a specific demographic community, PWMG also developed and coordinated an economic forecast survey for the group’s members and suppliers.

The survey responses were analyzed and distributed to the media, positioned as a study of industrial manufacturers’ buying trends and economic forecasts. Placements in Reuters, IndustryWeek, BtoB, Purchasing and 20 other media outlets followed the first survey. The Economic Forecast surveys are now executed twice each year, further establishing this manufacturer’s buying group and its executives as the “Voice of Midsized Manufacturing”.

More importantly, the PR program led to unsolicited calls from prospects that turned into customers for the company, and helped the company attract new members from a host of new vertical markets.

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