How do you rebuild a company that is over 100 years old, has lost its charismatic CEO, experienced significant turn-over in the sales channel, and is led by a young and untested leadership team?
You build an inbound organization.
Thirty-year-old Glenn Williams faced the above scenario with an added twist; his father was the leader who passed away far too soon and left him to guide the family company and reputation.
Williams did have several advantages. He knew the industry and target market very well, having been a part of Bell Performance for many years. He also knew that the world of fuel additives is frequently perceived as an industry dominated by unethical companies who sell snake oil and push dubious claims and sometimes shady products.
There is general uncertainty among consumers about what a fuel additive is, what it does, and when it is appropriate to use one. Williams understood this market dynamic better than anyone because Bell Performance invented the fuel additive market back in 1909.
Glenn decided that to achieve success, he needed to change the general perception of the fuel additives industry. He needed to help both B2C and B2B buyers cut through the fluff and address the confusion once and for all. He decided to make Bell Performance the most helpful brand in its market by providing education, information, and evidence for every claim made about fuel additives. He decided to execute a strategy built on the idea of helping buyers first to understand the causes of engine issues, and then offer fuel additives as a way to fix the problem.
Before Glenn took over, Bell Performance relied on a sales and marketing strategy that leveraged small, independent distributors who each covered a specific geographic area. Each distributor was responsible for moving a small quantity of product every year. This distribution model was somewhat inefficient and started to run out of steam through the 1990s. It came to a full stop once the management team who built this network on personal relationships was no longer active.
Under Glenn's direction, Bell decided to advance the educational strategy on their website. He also decided to build a brand new B2B distribution network to use a more effective sales process and take better advantage of the changes in buyer behavior he had observed.
Bell's challenges relating to their digital marketing strategy are common to many traditional companies. Bell outsourced the management of the website to an IT provider and had no direct control over the content, optimization, or results. Making changes to the website was a costly and time-consuming process. Bell had a website because they needed an online brochure. It wasn't strategic, and it certainly wasn't generating any revenue.
Glenn realized there was an opportunity to generate leads directly from B2C buyers and cultivate interest from select B2B companies using this education-oriented target approach.
Bell rebuilt their sales and marketing team around this strategy. They hired experts in engine and fuel technology; they added inside salespeople to support the distribution network (as opposed to people in the field who spent a lot of time driving to visit customers). They dedicated significant time and content to understanding the issues with engines affected by fuel and helped by fuel additives. The team learned how to convert their expertise into content that could be shared and consumed by the target audience that needed it.
Bell assembled their people into teams that aligned with the target buyers and let each team follow the customer through the entire buying journey. Everyone at Bell learned the details of the buyer persona, what the expectations are of that persona at each stage in the buyer journey, how to be helpful to start and not pushy to get a quick transaction, and their role in delivering the best fuel additive solutions to each customer.
Glenn Williams describes the company's focus:
Our goal was, and still is, to create a significant online presence that generates sales revenue, educates consumers and businesses, and convinces them to allow us to help them with their fuel-related issues. We wanted to expand our influence and increase the number of people that knew about Bell. We achieved those goals by building a marketing platform and content development process that allowed us to create amazing content that continues to expand our presence online and support our sales team as they build relationships and work with our customers to solve their problems. The focus on educating and helping is a different experience for Bell buyers. They come away from our website feeling that they received the helpful information they needed as well as a proven product to improve their engine's performance. And then our employees reinforce that feeling.1
Bell adopted an inbound marketing strategy eight years ago, in 2010. Back in that era, fuel additive companies fought for shelf space in automotive supply stores, big box retailers, or specialty stores to service vertical markets like boating or trucking service. Bell decided to focus on two markets: the end user who was motivated to buy directly from the industry leader and distributors outside of the traditional retail model. Bell understood the changes in buyer behavior toward favoring more online research and chose to become the magnet that attracted that type of buyer.
Erik Bjornstad, Bell Performance product manager, describes this shift:
Inbound marketing powered by HubSpot allowed us to differentiate ourselves from our much-larger and more resourced competitors. Our competitors don't have focused strategies centered on the topics that consumers and businesses are looking for. Even the large national brands we compete with focus on the product and not the persona. We do that routinely, and the benefits have been significant.2
Bell developed, and often updates, specific personas for both B2B and B2C buyers. Bjornstad continues:
There are unique attributes of B2C buyers of fuel additives. Not everyone uses these products because not everyone has issues with their fuel. We target consumers that are very particular about their engines and engine performance. We also understand and help specific businesses that have mission critical functions that are affected when faced with fuel related problems, such as bacteria accumulating in a diesel fuel tank used for a backup generator at a hospital.3
A core part of the Bell content strategy is a blog on their company website. Bell has a separate blog for each of their high-level personas: one for the B2C end user and one for the B2B business buyer. The consumer blog focuses on fuel and engine issues for cars, classic vehicles, boats, jet skis, motorcycles, small equipment, generators, and home heating. The business blog deals with fuel storage, fleet management, heavy trucks, power plants, large backup generators, and other engines used in and by companies. Each blog focuses on solving the problems that those end users have every day.
Starting from zero blog traffic and less than 500 unique site visits per month in 2010, Bell has grown their online traffic to over 175,000 visits per month with over 90% of those visits starting their journey by reading a blog post. Bell's blog posts are often given primary status by Google as the featured snippet for the topic, further broadening their reach.
Bell continues to keep their content fresh by answering buyers' questions and adds blog posts to inform the readers about new product updates, the impact of additives on new engines, and checklists for getting a better ROI. Many of their posts are now ranked number one for a specific search topic and have remained at the top of the rankings for many years. These anchor posts drive increasing amounts of traffic month over month.
Williams describes the impact of his company's blog:
Our top performing blog posts are an asset to the company, and we view them that way. These posts drive new traffic, convert visitors to leads, and drive product sales to our online store. The key is to make sure we always keep the customer in the front of our mind when we are creating content and talk to them like we are talking to one of our friends or a customer who we met at a retail store. Helpful, informative, honest, and clear.4
Bell publishes other strategic content including e-books, infographics, videos, and white papers all designed to follow the same process. Bell takes their engineering and technical expertise and translates that asset into actionable content and suggestions that the reader uses immediately.
“Fuel and engine performance is complicated and filled with incomprehensible technical detail. Our job is to take the complex, make it straightforward, and provide evidence based on fact and data that our solutions deliver superior performance and solve the issues our customers deal with every day,” says Williams.5
Bell knows that adding a new product line is an investment for a distributor. To help them understand the opportunity, Bell creates unique content to educate prospective distributors. The content for distributors focuses on the ideal target markets needing Bell's help, the personas that best fit the Bell solutions, as well as specific content for onboarding, training, and support of distributor teams. Bell shares customer success stories, so distributors learn how best to approach their marketplace. Bell encourages distributors to engage with them through their blog and social media so that they stay connected and informed.
Few companies can say the words “since 1909,” but Bell Performance does. Since that very first day, they have pursued a vision summed up like this: “May the world be better, because of Bell Performance.”
Inbound marketing and sales are helping Bell extend their reach and improve the understanding of people struggling with fuel-related engine issues all over the world.
Bell Performance is an inbound organization.