Electrical products are technical, and the marketing often reflects that. Spec sheets, certifications, catalog pages, and product photos all serve a purpose. But contractors don’t make purchasing decisions based on product specifications alone. They have their own priorities, including getting the job done and keeping projects on schedule.
That's where buyer-centric marketing comes in. Instead of leading with the product, it starts with the person buying it and what matters to them.
Trade Hounds Vice President of Marketing Jeanette Abrahamsen discussed that approach with Kelli Joseph, Channel Marketing and Communications Manager at Eaton, during the NAED Marketing Summit in Indianapolis. Joseph's team develops campaigns and content that electrical distributors can use to reach their own customers.
Electrical products come with plenty of technical details, and buyers need that information. But leading with specifications alone can miss an opportunity to connect with the people making purchasing decisions.
Joseph pointed to a lesson from storytelling strategist Mary Czarnecki, who has spoken at the summit two years running. Even in a highly technical industry, Joseph said, marketers still need to connect with their audience on a human level.
“We’re still marketing to people, and we need to connect with people in order to sell our products,” she said.
That doesn't mean leaving the product out of the conversation. It means showing buyers how the product fits into their priorities, rather than making its technical features the whole story.
“You can kind of make the product almost secondary to that messaging that you’re leading with,” Joseph said.
Research supports the value of that approach. Gartner reported in 2024 that B2B buyers were nearly three times more likely to have high levels of brand commitment when they perceived personal benefits from a supplier, beyond functional benefits alone.
For Eaton, putting that idea into practice meant starting with the people buying and using its products.
Eaton put this approach into practice with its Home in Time campaign. Through contractor research and surveys, the team found that contractors wanted to finish work sooner and get home to the things they enjoyed.
“They always tied it back to the fact that they wanted to be off the jobsite faster. They wanted to be home to do the things that they loved,” Joseph said.
That feedback shaped a campaign that put contractors, rather than electrical products, at the center of the message. The creative has featured themes such as hockey and pets, reflecting contractors’ interests outside work.
The approach isn't limited to contractors. Eaton uses similar thinking when marketing to industrial facility managers and maintenance managers, whose priorities look a little different.
For those buyers, downtime can mean more than a production problem. It can also mean an after-hours call, a missed family event or an unexpected trip back to the facility.
“They’re the ones who are getting the phone call when their system goes down. They’re the ones who have to leave their kids’ soccer game to now go and deal with that,” Joseph said.
For this audience, reliable equipment becomes part of a broader story about keeping operations running and protecting time outside work.
The product still matters. But the message connects its value to a problem the buyer knows firsthand.
Building Content Distributors Can Use
Understanding the buyer is one part of effective marketing. In the electrical industry, manufacturers also need to help distributors deliver that message to contractors.
In the industry's two-step go-to-market model, manufacturers often rely on distributors and manufacturer representatives to reach end customers. Eaton gives their channel partners ready-to-use content to support their customer relationships. For that content to work, it needs to sound like it comes from the distributor, not the manufacturer.
“We can’t give a distributor a brochure that says, ‘Here at Eaton, we believe.’ They’re not Eaton,” Joseph said.
It also needs to be ready to deploy in the channels distributors use, without extra work to resize or reformat assets for a campaign.
“We don’t want them to have to send an email and say, ‘Hey, this is great, but I need to resize so that I can deploy it through this programmatic campaign.’ We want it to be ready to go for them,” she said.
Joseph said Eaton works with individual distributors to adapt content to their priorities while keeping the broader message consistent. “Having that consistency out in the field is so critical to building that kind of brand awareness and that brand image,” she said.
That familiarity can matter well before a customer is ready to buy. Research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute suggests that 95% of potential B2B buyers aren't in the market at any given time. Building brand awareness before a need arises can help a supplier stay top of mind when a purchase decision does come around.
Understanding buyers and delivering usable content are important, but Joseph also encouraged distributors to try approaches beyond the industry's usual playbook.
She said she wants to be a partner distributors can turn to when they're considering an idea that hasn't been tested.
“Anytime I talk with a distributor, I say, let me be the one to throw spaghetti at the wall with you,” she said.
Not every campaign will work. But Joseph sees that as part of learning what resonates with customers.
“If the campaign flops, at least we tried it and then we can learn and evolve from it,” she said. “I don’t want to keep doing something just because it’s what our industry has considered the standard for the last ten years.”
That openness to experimentation is especially relevant as the industry's workforce changes. Experienced electricians are retiring, and manufacturers and distributors need to consider how their messages and resources will connect with the next generation of workers.
Joseph said that means being willing to move forward without waiting for every detail to be perfect.
“If you’re waiting for the exact right moment, in the exact right time and for everything to be perfect, you’re probably never going to launch it.”
For electrical manufacturers, effective marketing goes beyond explaining what a product does. It connects the product to what matters to the people buying and using it. That means listening to contractors and channel partners, giving distributors content they can use, and making room to test new ideas. At the end of the day, it’s about looking beyond the spec sheet and understanding what matters to the person on the other side of the sale.
Buyer-centric marketing puts the customer's priorities at the center of a campaign instead of leading with product specifications. For electrical contractors, that could mean focusing on finishing jobs efficiently and getting home on time. For facility managers, it might mean preventing downtime. The product remains part of the message, but its value is explained in terms of what matters to the buyer.
No. Contractors and other buyers still need accurate specifications, ratings and certifications to evaluate and use electrical products. The difference is what the marketing leads with. A buyer-centric campaign starts with a relevant customer need, then connects that need to the product and provides the technical information buyers need to make decisions.
Manufacturers can develop campaigns that distributors can deploy under their own names, using language that fits the distributor's relationship with its customers. Content should be formatted for the channels distributors use, such as email and programmatic advertising, so it can be deployed without unnecessary rework. Manufacturers can also collaborate with distributors to tailor campaigns to their individual priorities while maintaining a consistent overall message.
Watch the full conversation below.