Why industrial businesses still need digital marketing

"Our customers don't buy off the internet." It's a fair thing for an industrial business owner to say, and in a narrow sense it's usually true. Nobody adds a forty-tonne press to a shopping cart. The deal closes in person, on site, over a quote that went back and forth three times, with someone the buyer has actually met.

The catch is that the sentence is about the end of the sale. The decisions that matter most to a supplier get made well before anyone picks up the phone, and more and more of them get made online.

The shortlist comes first

The research firm 6sense surveys B2B buyers every year. Its 2025 report, from nearly 4,000 buyers worldwide, found that 95 per cent of the time the winning vendor was already on the buyer's shortlist on day one. Buyers also said they first contacted suppliers about 61 per cent of the way through the buying process.

Those are self-reported answers from a global sample, so don't hang too much on the exact numbers. The pattern rings true, though. It's how plenty of us buy anything expensive. You do your homework, form a view about who's worth talking to, and only then start ringing around. If you're not on that early list, you rarely get the chance to change their mind, because they never call.

Gartner found something similar. In a survey of 645 B2B buyers published in May 2026, 70 per cent said they'd prefer a completely digital, self-service buying experience. They still wanted a sales rep at the important moments, but they wanted to do the early research on their own.

Most of your future customers aren't buying today

There's a second reason, and it's less obvious. John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has argued that at any given time, up to 95 per cent of business buyers aren't in the market for a given product or service. If a business replaces a major machine or a key supplier every five years or so, only a small slice of your potential customers are looking in any particular quarter.

Dawes is clear that 95 per cent isn't a precise rule, and it shifts with how often something gets bought. The point still stands. Most of the businesses that'll buy from you in the next few years aren't looking right now, and when they start, the suppliers they already know, and the ones they find easily, get a big head start.

What it actually looks like

For most technical suppliers, digital marketing comes down to a handful of unglamorous things done properly. Posting on social media every day isn't one of them.

Start with a website that answers the questions a buyer has before they'd ever call: what you supply, the specs, the standards you meet, the brands you carry, where you service and roughly how long things take. A buyer doing their own research is looking for exactly that, and a site that hides it behind "contact us for more information" gets skipped.

Then make sure you can be found when someone searches for the problem or the product. That's SEO, and paid search where it makes sense.

Stay in front of the people who already know you, like past customers, people you've quoted and contacts from trade shows. A useful email every month or two keeps you on the shortlist for next time, and given the numbers above, next time may be a while away.

And measure which of it brings in real enquiries, so the money goes to what works.

Sales still closes the deal

None of this replaces your sales team or your reputation. In a technical sale, someone who can answer the hard questions is often what wins it, and Gartner's buyers said much the same. Digital marketing decides whether that person gets the call in the first place.

If you're busy off referrals and repeat work, that's a real strength. I'd still ask how the next generation of buyers at your existing customers will find you, and whether a newer competitor with a better website is already on their shortlist.