Re-engineering Growth: Emerging Marketing & Product Management Practices in Industrial Manufacturing

Drawing on insights from recent field research and client engagements, this article explores how forward-thinking organizations are evolving their go-to-market (GTM) strategies to drive growth, improve alignment with sellers and unlock the full potential of their product portfolios.

Messaging Reimagined: From General MarCom to Strategic Enablement

To evolve from traditional MarCom to strategic enablement, industrial firms must reframe messaging as a growth lever rather than a support function. Leaders can begin by mapping value propositions to specific buyer personas and customer journey stages. This process ensures messaging resonates with decision-makers and influencers alike.

When aligning messaging with product strategy and sales motions, firms must also integrate product marketing into cross-functional commercialization teams. Ensuring consistency across channels and touchpoints is also essential, so firms should also establish a centralized content governance model. To drive seller confidence and customer engagement, firms can solidify this strategic shift by equipping field marketers with modular content kits tailored to verticals, use cases and sales stages.

Demand Generation Rewired: From Events to Digital Demand Creators

To modernize demand generation, companies should shift from event-heavy calendars to a hybrid model that blends digital-first tactics with targeted customer/channel marketing. Firms can begin by segmenting their customer base and aligning demand generation strategies to account potential, deploy high-volume digital campaigns for long-tail segments and account-based marketing (ABM) for strategic accounts. To qualify and route leads, it’s essential to build a digitally enabled lead generation function that uses behavioral data, propensity models and algorithmic scoring. Investments in marketing automation platforms and integration with CRM systems is vital for enabling real-time lead nurturing and performance tracking. Refining targeting and messaging is vital for success, which is why firms must establish a closed-loop feedback system between marketing and sales.

When scaling demand generation with digital precision, organizations should implement a data-driven lead management system that integrates marketing automation, CRM and behavioral analytics. For informing lead scoring models and campaign targeting, teams can begin by defining Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas. After defining personas, firms can target digital lead generation reps towards these prospects through virtual channels (chat, video, social, etc.) and route qualified leads to the appropriate sales reps using algorithmic prioritization. During the process, teams should use funnel analytics to identify drop-off points and continuously optimize campaigns based on conversion data. In addition to the funnel analytics, leaders are further increasing engagement and pipeline velocity via predictive modeling and content personalization AI-powered tools.

Aligning to Sellers: From Disconnected Functions to Field-Ready Commercialization

For leaders to align marketing with sellers for commercialization, they must embed field marketing roles directly within sales regions or verticals. These roles should act as commercialization partners—translating product strategy into field-ready campaigns, tools and enablement assets. Alignment should start with defining joint KPIs between marketing and sales (e.g., pipeline contribution, conversion rates) and co-owning campaign planning.

When designing these new roles, firms should implement a commercial job architecture that clarifies responsibilities across field marketing, product marketing and sales enablement. For example, field marketers should be equipped with data on buyer behavior, competitive positioning and content performance to tailor outreach. To wrap up the process, create regular cadences (e.g., commercialization councils or GTM huddles) to solidify alignment on launch priorities, feedback loops and campaign optimization.

Product Management Evolution: From Engineering-Led to Market-Driven

When modernizing product management in industrial organizations, companies must shift from engineering-centric development to a market-validated, customer-centric model.  To realize this shift, it is essential to first establish a formalized product lifecycle process with clear stage gates and commercialization criteria. As part of the process, introduce Voice-of-Customer (VoC) programs that gather structured feedback from end users, influencers and internal stakeholders during early-stage validation.

Building cross-functional product councils that include marketing, sales and services to align roadmaps with commercial priorities further enhances this customer-centric approach and cross-functional alignment. Upskilling product managers in business case development, pricing strategy and competitive analysis ensures decisions are grounded in market realities. Finally, embedding product marketing roles to bridge the gap between technical development and GTM execution.

Building the Future: Operating Models and Talent for Scalable Growth

To support these emerging practices, companies must rearchitect their commercial operating model to enable cross-functional collaboration and accountability. Leaders should start with defining a unified job architecture that clarifies roles across marketing, product and sales, and aligns them to customer journey stages. Another key factor is co-developing launch plans and campaign strategies across commercial stakeholders.

To do so,  many successful firms establish commercialization councils or GTM pods that bring together field marketing, product management and sales enablement for collaboration purposes. To measure success holistically, teams must implement shared KPIs and dashboards that track performance across functions—such as ROMI, pipeline contribution and product adoption. Companies can complete this enablement process by investing in training programs to build commercialization capabilities that will foster a culture of continuous learning and feedback.

Case for Change

What to Expect and How to Invest: The Cost of Underinvestment

Industrial manufacturers that continue to underinvest in modern marketing and product management risk falling behind in a market increasingly shaped by digital-first buyers and complex solution selling. Legacy MarCom and event-heavy demand generation models yield diminishing returns in today’s non-linear buyer journey. Without strategic investment in digital infrastructure, field-aligned marketing and commercialization capabilities, organizations face stalled growth, inefficient seller support and poor ROMI. The data is clear: only 1.6% of revenue is typically allocated to marketing in industrials—far below what’s needed to drive transformation.

Where to Start

Firms should begin by assessing your current marketing and product management maturity across five growth initiatives: organizing for growth, achieving functional excellence, enhancing product commercialization, expanding digital coverage and optimizing demand generation. Throughout this process, leaders must prioritize building foundational capabilities in digital demand generation, field marketing alignment and product marketing. Firms should also establish cross-functional councils to drive upstream activation and guarantee alignment between product, marketing and sales.

Key Imperatives:

• Modernize Messaging: Shift from generic MarCom to persona-based, value-driven messaging aligned to the buyer journey.
• Digitize Demand Generation: Replace event-heavy calendars with digital-first, data-driven lead generation and nurturing.
• Align to Sellers: Embed field marketing roles within sales teams to support commercialization and GTM execution.
• Elevate Product Management: Build commercialization capabilities and governance to ensure market-fit and launch success.
• Invest in Talent and Tools: Upskill teams and deploy marketing automation, CRM and analytics platforms to enable scale.

What Does Success Look Like

Key Stat

Organizations that align marketing to sellers and invest in digital demand generation see up to 23% YoY pipeline growth, 60% increase in seller productivity and 2x improvement in marketing efficiency—all while reducing headcount by 14%.

Anecdote

A $3.6B industrial manufacturer transitioned from siloed, BU-level product and marketing functions to a centralized, cross-functional model. By establishing a product excellence council, embedding field marketers and digitizing demand generation, the manufacturer achieved consistent messaging, improved lead conversion and accelerated product launches. The result? Higher customer retention, increased upsell opportunities and a scalable model for growth.

The Path Forward

The path forward for industrial manufacturers is clear: growth will come not just from better products, but from better commercialization. By modernizing messaging, digitizing demand generation and aligning marketing with sales execution, companies can create a more agile, customer-centric and revenue-generating commercial model. These shifts require more than new tools—they demand new roles, new operating models and a commitment to cross-functional collaboration.

For organizations willing to invest in these emerging practices, the reward is a more scalable, differentiated and resilient go-to-market (GTM) engine—one built for the realities of today’s industrial economy.