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Why 68% of Manufacturing & Industrial Marketing Agencies Struggle to Prove ROI—And What to Do About It

Written by Anna Svarney

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had more than one conversation with prospective clients in the industrial and manufacturing space that followed an eerily similar script. As FitzMartin’s Lead Strategist and Director of Client Services, I spend a lot of time talking with companies about their marketing strategies—what’s working, what’s not, and where we can help them bridge the gap between marketing investments and real revenue impact.

This isn’t just anecdotal. According to the 2024 Manufacturing Content Marketing Report by the Content Marketing Institute, 68% of manufacturing marketers say they struggle to demonstrate B2B Marketing ROI from their marketing efforts. That means nearly 7 in 10 industrial marketers feel that despite their investments, they aren’t seeing the tangible results leadership expects.

Lately, a pattern has emerged. These companies are frustrated. They’ve been following what they believed to be a "tried and true" industrial marketing strategy—content marketing, SEO, and thought leadership, designed to bring in leads over time. This approach gained traction when marketing automation for B2B technologies became widespread roughly 10 years ago and, in theory, it remains a solid play. But the reality? It’s a long game—one that demands patience, expertise, and a highly skilled marketing team capable of packaging technical knowledge in a way that resonates with potential customers.

The Challenge with the Traditional Digital Strategy

For many industrial and manufacturing companies, content creation is an uphill battle. Ask any marketing director responsible for generating expert-driven content, and you’ll likely hear the same story—chasing down internal subject matter experts for blog posts, white papers, or even an interview is like herding cats. When the product or service is highly technical, the challenge compounds.

The result? If done in-house, companies often end up with a slow trickle of semi-expert content that struggles to gain visibility. If outsourced, the process can quickly turn into a costly endeavor and, when budgets come under scrutiny, content marketing is often the first thing to be cut. And when the promised leads don’t materialize quickly, the entire approach is questioned.

So what’s the answer? How does marketing adjust when traditional inbound digital tactics are failing to deliver the instant ROI that CFOs increasingly demand?

Balancing Long-Term Brand Value with Short-Term Revenue Impact

Let’s be clear: Content marketing, SEO, and thought leadership are still effective tactics. However, the days of expecting marketing teams to churn out 10 blog posts, a whitepaper, a video, and 20 social media posts per month are behind us. Quality matters more than quantity. You should absolutely continue investing in capturing and sharing your expertise—just rethink how you deploy marketing resources to impact revenue more directly.

That’s where Account-Based Marketing (ABM) comes in.

Account-Based Marketing: B2B’s ROI Savior?

Sales teams always have target accounts they would love to close, but sometimes the list is too long for one salesperson to pursue effectively. This is where we, in marketing, can step in to scale those efforts. Rather than casting a wide net and hoping content eventually converts, we can work alongside sales using an ABM approach—actively targeting high-value accounts with messaging designed to nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

ABM allows marketing to impact revenue directly by helping sales prioritize accounts based on engagement, ensuring that outreach efforts are focused on the right prospects at the right time. Instead of waiting years(!) for inbound strategies to gain traction, ABM helps create awareness, engagement, and conversion opportunities within a targeted audience much faster.

This kind of sales and marketing alignment is what separates average B2B organizations from high-performing ones.

It’s All About Balance

The most effective marketing strategies we’ve found combine long-term brand value with short-term revenue impact. What we frequently recommend to our clients today is a dual approach:

Strategic Content & Thought Leadership – Continue investing in high-quality content that establishes credibility and provides long-term brand equity.

Targeted ABM Campaigns – Implement account-based strategies to generate sales opportunities, nurture key accounts, and create immediate revenue impact.

By balancing these two efforts, you can ensure that your marketing dollars are not just building brand awareness for the long term but also contributing directly to the bottom line in the short term. The goal is to create a sustainable marketing function—one that delivers value now while also paving the way for continued success in the future.

Final Thoughts...

If your company has been following the traditional digital marketing playbook and struggling to see results, you’re not alone. The good news? There’s a better way to drive immediate value while still building long-term momentum.

What we’re seeing with our clients is that when ABM campaigns are added to the mix, marketing suddenly becomes more relevant across the organization. The marketing team isn’t just publishing content into the void; they’re showing up to weekly or monthly meetings with the sales team to review real-time engagement data. Together, we’re scoring accounts based on engagement, identifying which ones are heating up and may be ready for a call, and which need more nurturing from marketing.

This collaboration doesn’t just make marketing feel more valuable, it makes it indispensable. Sales gets air cover. Executives see traction. And marketing gets a seat at the revenue table. It also buys time and credibility for longer-lead demand generation efforts to build the brand and authority in parallel.