How Do B2B Manufacturers Drive Conversions?

Teknos delivers a “wow effect” and engages buyers with compelling product stories

23 May 2019

How do leading B2B manufacturing organizations drive conversions and speed growth? Teknos Group, one of Europe’s leading suppliers of industrial coatings, is in the middle of a digital transformation. And implementing inRiver PIM is at the core of their strategy.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling ice cream on the corner or industrial paint on a foreign market, telling your product story in a compelling way that sparks an emotional response in your target audience – that is what drives sales growth.

But today’s global, multi-channel markets mean that there is no one-size-fits-all for product stories and every buyer has different needs and preferences. You need to be able to adapt your story for different types of audiences and different stages in the customer journey. This demands both a stable foundation of product information and the ability to be agile and adapt that information for different buyers, different geographies, and different markets.

According to Outi Eskelinen, marketing manager at Teknos Group, the goal is to create a “wow effect” for their buyers. “To succeed with packaging product info such as technology, chemistry, and recipes, in a way that creates a wow effect, even for an industrial audience. That is our goal.”

How does Teknos deliver on their goal? They are constantly looking for new markets and sales opportunities. But every market is different and Eskilinen knows that Teknos’ ability to sell more on every market is based on how well they are able to tell exactly the right product story for each target audience.

Industry leaders use Product Information Management (PIM) solutions to streamline and automate the creation, enrichment, translation, and publication of product information and content. It saves resources and time across the enterprise. It’s also key to providing a compelling customer experience on a global, multi-channel market.

How does Teknos leveraging inRiver PIM to package product stories and drive sales around the world?
1.    Creating a single source of truth for product information
–      Teknos is growing quickly, and when you grow and acquire other companies or product lines, product information can quickly become very scattered. With the right PIM solution, you can collect all your product data and related information (such as product content, product assets, and creative assets) in the same central location.

2.    Building agility for product portfolios in any market
–      Once Teknos has its product portfolio in inRiver PIM, it was much quicker and much easier to adapt that portfolio for new markets. Climate conditions, legislation, and other requirements for paints and coatings can differ greatly from one market to another. And Outi Eskelinen wants to be sure that Teknos is able to offer exactly the right product portfolio for each and every market that they take on.

3.   Freeing up resources and saving time and money
–       With a PIM, product data only has to be updated in one place once, to automatically take effect across your organization. This ensures that product information is correct and consistent. And frees up resources from tedious tasks like data entry or data correction, to focus on more creative endeavors such as creating product content for each stage of the customer journey.

4.   Collaborating to build selling product stories
–      Says Outi Eskelinen, “If you want to create a great product story, you need to gather the stars from the organization – from category management, from IT, from R&D, and from marketing – and make them work together in inRiver. This is how we are going to succeed with our product stories.”

A good PIM makes it possible for teams from anywhere in the world to collaborate in the same system to build compelling product stories, together.

To learn more about Teknos and to hear Outi Eskelinen share Teknos’ journey via their PIM implementation, click here.

Written by

Erika Goldwater, CIPP

Erika Goldwater is the director of global communications for inRiver. An industry veteran, Erika lives and breathes B2B marketing, content, public relations, and data privacy. She's a Boston marketer who hails from Baltimore.