Consider what happens when an industrial buyer begins evaluating potential suppliers.

Before contacting a salesperson, the buyer may visit a manufacturer’s website, investigate its technical capabilities, review project experience, search for industry references, and increasingly use AI tools to identify or compare suppliers.

McKinsey’s 2026 Global B2B Pulse Survey found that B2B buyers use an average of ten channels during their purchasing journey.

Think about the implications for a manufacturer whose growth has traditionally depended on its owner’s relationships and a handful of experienced salespeople.

The sales team may be excellent at communicating technical expertise once the conversation starts. But what happens before that conversation?

Can a prospective customer understand the company’s capabilities? Is there evidence of relevant experience? Does the information available independently reinforce what the salesperson will eventually communicate?

Is the company being considered at all? A manufacturer may never learn how many opportunities it missed because it wasn’t in the buyer’s research and evaluation process.

That is a commercial visibility problem that even an excellent salesperson cannot resolve alone.

Your Leadership Team’s Preferences Are Not a Channel Strategy

LinkedIn may be the only social channel they consider necessary. A newsletter may seem redundant when the sales team already contacts customers. Trade shows can appear expensive, and participating in an industry podcast may not seem like a productive use of a senior leader’s time. Viewed individually, these objections can make sense.

But they also raise an important question: Are these decisions based on how the company’s customers research and select suppliers, or on leadership preferences?

That does not mean every manufacturer needs ten marketing channels. It means customers engage with suppliers in different ways, often before speaking directly with a salesperson.

An engineer may discover a supplier through an industry presentation. A procurement manager may investigate its capabilities online. An operations executive may hear its president discuss a technical challenge on a podcast. A newsletter may remind an existing prospect of the company’s expertise months before a project receives funding.

Each interaction creates another opportunity to establish credibility, demonstrate relevant expertise, and remain visible during a lengthy buying process.

Being Present in More Channels is not Always Better

A poorly maintained newsletter, an irrelevant podcast, or an expensive trade show without a commercial objective is wasted investment. Simply adding activities creates more expense and complexity without necessarily improving commercial performance.

The questions are:

• Which channels influence the customers the company wants to attract?
• What role does each channel play in the buying process?
• How do those activities contribute to profitable growth?

Without that understanding, decisions about where to invest, or what to eliminate, risk being driven by internal preferences, or internal skills (what we know how to do) rather than evidence of how your customers buy.

How Well Do You Understand Your Customers’ Buying Process?

Before deciding whether to invest in another marketing channel, manufacturers should examine how their existing customers discovered, researched, evaluated, and ultimately selected them.

Five questions provide a useful starting point:

1. How did our ten most recent new customers first become aware of us? Was it a referral, an industry event, an online search, a technical presentation, or something else?
2. What information did they seek before contacting our sales team? Did they review our technical capabilities, case studies, certifications, project experience, or competitors?
3. Who participated in the purchasing decision? What mattered to the engineers, procurement professionals, operations managers, and executives involved?
4. Where are we losing opportunities? Are qualified prospects failing to find us, choosing competitors before considering us, or selecting another supplier after engaging with our sales team?
5. Which activities have contributed to actual business opportunities? Not website visits or social media engagement, but qualified conversations, requests for quotations, invitations to bid, and profitable new customers.

The answers may already exist within the organization. Salespeople, account managers, and technical leaders often hold valuable insights that the organization has never systematically collected. Speaking directly with recently acquired customers, especially prospects who chose a competitor, can reveal information internal reporting cannot.

This exercise will not produce a complete picture of the market. Existing customers can explain why they selected the company, but they may not be able to explain why other prospective buyers never considered it. That requires looking beyond the current customer base.

The objective is to establish enough evidence to make informed decisions about where the company should be visible, what information buyers need, and which commercial activities deserve investment.

Only then can leadership evaluate whether another social channel, an industry podcast, a newsletter, a trade show, or even a monthly LinkedIn article, like this one, represents a genuine commercial opportunity or simply another expense.