Industrial manufacturing sectors face a defining moment, with increasing pressure to complete digital transformation. It is no coincidence that 96% of executives recognize the critical role of digitalization in the sustainability of their companies.
Regulated markets such as automotive, pharmaceutical, and energy face challenges such as multi-stakeholder purchasing committees, legacy systems, and stringent regulatory compliance requirements. These elements prolong sales cycles and make it difficult to realize the value of the solutions offered by these organizations.
Such challenges require relentless prioritization: after all, strategy is not just about what we decide to do. Strategy is, mainly, to decide what we will not do. To do so, we must emphasize our target audience in fact and communicate in a targeted way to these people to stand out amid the noise.
This process has accelerated in recent years, and now 80% of B2B leaders say that omnichannel sales are as effective as or more effective than traditional methods. This scenario forces companies in industrial sectors to fundamentally rethink their methods of engagement with customers.
This is where we find an opportunity as leaders: compliance with standards and regulations is generally seen as a cost, but we can reinvent it. But how to do this? Transforming it into a competitive catalyst driven by a narrative-driven marketing strategy that translates technical demands.
The unique challenges of marketing in regulated markets
In my work at SoftExpert, assisting clients in regulated markets, I have observed that marketing challenges are unique and deeply rooted. In regulated industry sectors, purchasing committees often involve multiple stakeholders, such as IT, operations, legal, and risk management. This multi-party involvement can significantly delay the decision-making process.
For example, negotiations involving compliance requirements tend to take about 35% longer, and certain agreements in healthcare typically extend up to six months. As a result, instead of relying on generic messaging about compliance, successful marketers adapt their approaches.
It is critical to understand that the motivation for regulatory compliance has radically different origins. In the pharmaceutical industry, compliance with Anvisa’s Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) is not an option, but an essential condition for operating. It’s a matter of business survival and extreme risk mitigation.
In the automotive sector, compliance with standards such as IATF 16949 is a requirement to be an approved supplier by automakers. For them, the competitive advantage lies in using their supply chain compliance management as a powerful tool for cost reduction, efficiency, and innovation.
A survey by the BCG consultancy https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/increasing-odds-of-success-in-digital-transformation reveals that only 30% of digital transformations achieve their goals. According to McKinsey, in traditional industries such as oil and gas, automotive, infrastructure, and pharmaceuticals, the success rate is even lower: ranging from just 4% to 11%.
Siloed data from legacy systems (chemical reactor sensors, process simulation software, and compliance management) obscures pain points, forcing marketers to fill in gaps with audience-specific narratives. For instance:
- Automotive: “Reduce costs per unit with AI-based CAPA automation.” This pitch is aimed at operations managers.
- Pharmacist: “Reduce audit preparation time from weeks to hours with document traceability.” This one, on the other hand, resonates with quality directors.”
Another BCG report points out that those companies that implement the six critical factors (such as integrated strategy, engaged leadership, and agile governance) generate up to 21% increase in EBITDA compared to the others.
In addition, McKinsey found that when digital transformation is executed well, high-performing companies can capture up to 74% of the expected benefits within the first 12 months.
This presents yet another facet of marketing complexity in regulated markets. After all, we need to make it clear what results our clients can expect within the first year after signing the contract.
Read more – Digital transformation in Brazil: regulated sectors need to go beyond technology
Turn compliance into your competitive advantage
It is imperative that regulatory compliance is positioned as a tool to gain market leadership, reduce risk, and accelerate growth. After all, one of the biggest mistakes of traditional marketing strategies is treating regulatory compliance as just a generic cost of doing business. That turns out to be a defensive message that doesn’t resonate with anyone.
This shift must be driven by content that anticipates customer pain points and prepares the market for consultative sales, dramatically shortening complex cycles. By developing deep relationships with customers, you’ll find that your product protects their core operations.
When it comes to that, the costs of ending the business relationship become prohibitive. From there, managing regulatory compliance is no longer a sales obstacle and becomes the ultimate retention tool.
One of the keys to reaching this tipping point is your team’s ability to translate technical jargon into tangible business results. For instance:
- GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance): Stop saying things like “give us a chance and implement our framework” and start saying “avoid operational downtime during audits and ensure enterprise licensing”.
- QMS (Quality Management System): don’t just say “manage quality processes”, but impact phrases such as “reduce product recalls by 45% and decrease CAPA resolution time from weeks to days”.
This transformation in the narrative reflects a crucial point: 81% of customers say that trust is crucial to believing that a brand will do what is right.
Therefore, we must demonstrate how compliance can translate into operational efficiency and revenue generation. Only then will marketing be able to go beyond capturing leads, consolidating strategic relationships based on credibility and mutual trust.
Strategies for building value narratives
Generic value propositions fall apart in the face of the complex realities of regulated markets, where distributing a single message to all verticals is a recipe for irrelevance. Success requires a radical shift to pain-based segmentation, adapting the core narrative to the specific economic drivers of each sector.
For example, I recommend focusing on cost innovation for the automotive industry and focusing efforts in the pharmaceutical industry on risk mitigation.
This segmentation allows you to work with verticalized use cases, transforming generalized functionalities into solutions aimed at specific pains. For example, a document management system is not sold as software, but as the answer to a specific, quantified operational problem:
- Automotive industry: “Reduce paper-based process costs by 20% and accelerate audit readiness.”
- Pharmaceutical industry: “Ensure 100% data integrity and traceability for faster approval cycles by the regulatory agency responsible.
As leaders, we must position our communication strategy in a way that avoids a position of fragility. Instead, compliance should be represented as a shield for the organization’s critical infrastructure.
The value lies in the complexity: managers think ten times before terminating a contract in regulated markets. At the end of the day, it’s this compliance that will protect the company’s essential operations.
In a McKinsey survey of various industries, decision-makers assigned an average of just 2.6 out of a maximum of 4.0 to their risk management capabilities. More specifically, 67% of life sciences companies reported a deficiency in the definition of risk appetite.
In my experience, I realize that we must attack the real adversary: legacy systems and spreadsheet inertia. The prerogative of marketing is to demonstrate a superior Return on Investment (ROI), focusing not only on having differentiated software, but on a way of working to redefine standards of excellence.
To get to this stage, it is necessary to produce content that educates the market about the hidden costs of manual processes. Only in this way can we demonstrate that compliance is the smartest financial and strategic choice. After all, do you have clear visibility into all the hidden costs of your manual processes, or do you still navigate in the dark?
Read more – Strategic alliances: how to expand the perception of value in complex markets
Building a Global Presence: Lessons in Strategic Marketing
Our SoftExpert marketing journey exemplifies how to make the strategic shift from being a simple tactical support to a visionary global positioning. This evolution can be summarized in a single philosophy: strategy is not what you decide to do, but what you decide not to do.
To conquer complex and regulated markets, it is necessary to abandon the generic message and embrace a deep verticalization. I advocate building different value propositions for each product or focus group, as the perceived value of a solution will vary depending on the target audience:
- Life sciences: driven by clinical research and high value-added innovation (e.g., drug patents).
- Automotive: driven by cost reduction and supply chain innovation.
Focusing on pre-sales education has the potential to shorten the sales cycle significantly, especially if this is done through content that addresses industry-specific pains. With the path already prepared and the lead aware of how their problem will be solved, the sales agent will find it easier to direct the acquisition journey.
As leaders, it is our role to sustain this strategy by nurturing a culture guided by a collective dream. For example, imagine a team that shares the ambition to become a global leader in operational excellence.
This team will be extra motivated to deal with the complexities inherent in regulated markets, while being guided by a common goal for all.
The real enemy is inertia
I reiterate that compliance is not an operational cost, but the central pillar of a sustainable competitive advantage in complex markets. This transformation requires us leaders to replace generic approaches with vertical narratives that translate technical requirements into tangible results.
The real disruption lies in abandoning the traditional competitive mentality for good to face the real enemy: the inertia of legacy processes and complacency with inadequate tools. I call on every executive to audit not only their systems, but especially their value narratives. In the next planning meeting, question your team with three points:
- Is this message generic or does it speak of the specific pain of our segment?
- Does it translate technical jargon (e.g., ‘implementation of a GRC system’) into tangible financial or operational results (e.g., ‘avoid fines of R$ X million’)?
- Is it directed at the right stakeholder (the risk-conscious Quality Director or the Operations Manager, focused on efficiency)?
The future will belong to organizations that elevate compliance from a bureaucratic requirement to a strategic asset, turning regulations into insurmountable barriers for those who insist on conventional approaches. This is not a technological journey, but one of radical strategic repositioning that redefines the very concept of sector leadership.
Read more – Compliance-centric product design: how to create scalable solutions for regulated markets
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