How To Protect Your Marketing Job In The Water Industry

When I look around the marketing ranks of companies in the water and wastewater industry, it’s reassuring to see so many familiar faces that have been with their companies for years. Unlike many industries where turnover is very common in marketing departments, water and wastewater equipment companies tend to hold on to their marketers more than most. 

Could it be that we’re all so phenomenal that our employers would be foolish to try to replace us? As much as I know this to be true, I think it also speaks to the unique set of skills required to market water and wastewater-related products and services. We work in a somewhat insulated industry and have to position products in unique ways to attract the attention of a complex web of characters from engineers to contractors, operators to elected officials.

It may also be that change comes slowly to our industry. We work in a risk-averse business where sudden change is usually unwelcome. Our customers don’t appreciate quick variations in flow, pressure, pH levels etc. and that penchant for the status quo often carries over to the way we market and who gets the marketing work done.  

However, whether we like it or not, change is coming to marketing. That change is being driven by machines involved in programmatic media, marketing automation, artificial intelligence and heavy marketing analytics. It’s not a disruptive wave but marketing automation systems such as Hubspot, Marketo and Eloqua are being adopted by large water and wastewater equipment manufacturers. More efficient and affordable systems will follow and change the marketing activities that you are currently involved in.

Writing for Advertising Age, Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, recently suggested three steps to future-proofing your marketing career for the long run. The essence of Fetherstonhaugh’s post is that we need to move from the “repeatable” tasks of marketing and towards the “creative” tasks.

As I think about marketing to the water industry over the last couple of years, I’m amazed at how quickly our world has been moving from a focus on creative marketing techniques to the more machine-oriented world of marketing analytics. Without strong brands in the marketplace, companies are in danger of investing too heavily in the software to analyze their marketing ROI and not enough in the marketing tactics themselves to generate the results they wish to analyze. It’s like buying a shiny new Mercedes but not purchasing the gas to fuel it.      

And how do you build a strong brand in the water market? By educating the market using the creativity of your people. That’s what brand publishing is all about. It’s about recognizing the subject matter expertise you have on staff to answer the concerns and challenges faced by your customers. And it’s about creative marketing approaches to create and publish the content and get those answers to the water and wastewater market at large.

Machines will help you market better. They’ll take care of tedious tasks that have to be done and in doing so, will give you the time to apply your creativity and judgement to the human element of marketing: developing a narrative, building trust and differentiating your brand from the competitors.