Everybody expects content about refrigeration products to be boring.
Thatâs why the marketing team at Heatcraft Refrigeration Products wanted to flip the script in B2B marketing.
The division of Lennox International manufactures and sells refrigeration products such as walk-in, reach-in, and warehouse coolers, to restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, and warehouses.
So, the marketing team creates engaging, unexpected, and personable content that helps Heatcraft stand apart from the competition.
Heatcraftâs content marketing director, Pete Grasso, and digital marketing director, Tim Fletcher, detailed the experience in their Content Marketing World presentation. Letâs go through their how-to and learn about the business results achieved.
Before Tim gets to the B2B, he shares a B2C example. Recently, he bought furniture that needed assembling. Instead of reading the printed instruction manual, he scanned a QR code from the manufacturer and watched a step-by-step assembly video.
In the B2B world, Heatcraft adopts a similar strategy, making short, compelling, and educational videos on how to install its refrigeration products.
âLike Reels and TikTok, we break our videos down into shorter, consumable videos,â Tim says.
Experienced technicians donât need the content, but the newcomers do. âItâs all about making it relevant to the audience that youâre trying to reach,â Pete says.
Tim and Pete shared how to create relevant content:
You donât need a studio, high-end cameras, and a six-figure budget to create the unexpected in video. Pete and Tim use a do-it-yourself model with an assist from a freelance designer to create 20 to 30 videos per year. They write the scripts, create the storyboards, shoot the videos, and distribute them.
âWe started with a $500 Lumix camera, some cheap microphones, and no external lighting,â Pete says. âAs we started becoming more self-sufficient and producing really great content, leadership bought in.â
Pete and Tim now work from a studio at Heatcraftâs headquarters. They purchased a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K , the same kind used by reality TV shows. They bought drones.
Now, leadership goes to them for requests that go beyond marketing-related videos. âItâs nice that they bought in. They see the results, and they see the value of making great videos,â Pete says.
In the first two years of video publishing, Heatcraft generated over 1 million views. âFor a B2C company, maybe thatâs not big, but for a B2B manufacturing company, thatâs huge for us,â Tim says.
Heatcraft also takes a more typical B2C approach to its social media marketing. Visit any of its social profiles and youâll see that only 25% of its posts relate to Heatcraft products.
In three-fourths of the content, youâre likely to see videos, photos, and posts of team members and customers. Showing the people behind their products creates a stronger bond with customers and prospects, and itâs something their competitors donât do.
âWe also found that this was an awesome way to connect with the audience and gain market share through that highlighting of diversity, that family culture that we have, and showing the different ways that we work together,â Tim says.
Heatcraft has a manufacturing initiative called âQuality Always Matters.â It uses the name in a hashtag, too. Pete and Tim reworded that initiative to promote the Heatcraft team â #PeopleAlwaysMatter and created this related video, titled âFamilies Always Matter,â featuring clips of the Johnson family working on the factory floor and letting viewers see the people behind the products.
Since adopting the B2C mindset a year ago, Heatcraftâs follower count on LinkedIn and Facebook has increased by 34%, and engagement has jumped from 3.1% to 5.4%. In addition, Heatcraftâs following is 10 times larger than its closest competitors.
At Content Marketing World, Onalyticaâs Ashley Zeckman covered the six influencer types in her presentation â one of which is the niche expert. These influencers have smaller audiences but hyper-relevant content.
Pete and Tim recommend spending time to research niche experts in your industry. âItâs going to take a lot of time on the front end to make sure itâs the right fit. Donât choose to engage with the first influencer that you come across with a large audience,â Tim says.
They studied prospective influencers to ensure that their audiences matched Heatcraftâs target audience. They also observed how well the influencers interacted with their audience.
To reach the contractor audience, they partnered with Chris Stephens of HVACR VIDEOS.
Pete shares that Chris didnât set out to be an influencer but started filming service calls to educate the technicians in his company on the proper way to do things. âHe made his YouTube channel live, and it just kind of exploded because now youâve got refrigeration people from all over watching it,â Pete says.
Chris creates educational videos about Heatcraft products. âHeâs done a lot of videos thatâs gotten our message out there, but itâs coming from someone whoâs authentic and speaking to his peers,â Pete says.
In the first year, Chrisâ videos generated 400,000 views and 250 to 300 comments per video. While the high view count is impressive, Heatcraft finds the audience interaction more attractive.
Chrisâ work also gathers input. âWeâre finding out about issues in the wild, about the products that we can then bring to our engineers, to our quality teams, and our product managers to actually improve products based on these conversations that are happening,â Tim says.
Pete and Tim found a way to make content for the manufacturer of refrigeration products engaging and unexpected. They shifted to video content and worked with niche influencers. And they did it all by focusing less on the products and more on the people who make and use those products.
So, as you adopt a B2C approach for your B2B brand, keep Timâs advice in mind: âFocus on your customer, not your own greatness.â
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