Control system integrator industry’s digital marketing performance.

Authentia has published an important and comprehensive study of the control system integrator industry’s digital marketing performance. Many industrial/manufacturing industries lag behind in their adoption of modern digital marketing practices, largely due to target demographics that have been slow to embrace social media and mobile computing. This has especially been the case in the control system integrator industry. However, with digital trends accelerating and workforce demographics rapidly changing, businesses are being forced to adapt quickly.

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Authentia randomly selected 100 North American control system integrators and assessed their digital marketing effectiveness against 32 separate criteria. The results indicate areas of opportunity for control system integrators to take advantage of industry-wide latencies. Owners, business developers, and marketing professionals will find this information valuable in assessing their own efforts and opportunities against their peers and competitors.

Is Industrial Automation and Manufacturing Behind the Digital Marketing Curve? Article on International Society of Automation's Interchange blog where Joel Don talks about this report. (8th June 2015)

“With my background in industrial controls and leadership positions in the International Society of Automation (ISA), control system integrators are near and dear to my heart,” said Authentia Strategic Marketing Consultant Jon DiPietro. “I have many friends and colleagues who work in that industry. Over the past few years, I’ve conducted dozens of digital marketing assessments for control system integrators and other automation companies. I thought it would be interesting to conduct an industry-wide assessment and see how the industry as a whole is adapting to digital marketing trends.”

Key findings from the report include:

• Websites are outdated in terms of messaging and technology:
• 79% of CSI websites we analyzed make site visits from a mobile device difficult or impossible, alienating nearly half of their web visitors.
• 48% of the website cannot easily change site content or even enable blogging, as they do not use a Content Management System (CMS).
• 45% of all sites studied make no attempt to establish trust with site visitors through the use of social proof, such as testimonials, awards, certifications, memberships, etc.

Search engine marketing is nearly non-existent in the industry:

• 3% of websites surveyed were determined to be paying for advertisements on search engines.
• 85% of CSI websites had a Domain Authority below 40, which is a measure of how much clout a website carries with search engines.
• 42% of websites did not have any analytics operating which track their performance.

The industry has not yet adopted content marketing as a strategy:

• 67% of those studied do not list or promote social media accounts, such as Facebook or LinkedIn
• 65% of websites have no blog or news feed.
• 12% had a blog and published industry-focused content (as opposed to company news).
• 88% of websites surveyed did not incorporate social sharing buttons, making their content difficult to find and share.

There are very few mechanisms in place to interact with prospects:

• 2% of websites were connected to a marketing automation tool.
• 84% of websites surveyed did not utilize visible call-to-action buttons.
• 95% of websites failed to use landing pages, which contain an offer designed to collect information from prospects.