How to Develop a Business in the Mining Industry: Post-Release on the Results of the MiningConf Conference.
On September 26, the first conference on business development in the mining industry, MiningConf, was held in Moscow at the Soglasie Hall venue. The conference was attended by more than 200 delegates: directors and specialists in marketing, sales and business development in the mining industry.
24 speakers presented government support measures and development prospects for the mining industry, effective marketing tools, key challenges and trends in B2B marketing, criteria for selecting suppliers in the mining industry, successful cases of promotion and branding in the industrial market . Marketing and procurement directors, founders of marketing agencies, owners of industry media and media platforms, analysts from leading consulting companies made presentations.
Key topics at MiningConf include:
// Prospects for the development of the mining industry;
// Current trends in B2B marketing;
// Reviews of tools for online and offline sales;
// Criteria for selecting suppliers in the mining industry.
Previously, Russia had not held any specialized events on business development in the mining industry, and therefore the conference immediately found a great response from the professional audience. The event was held under the auspices of MiningWorld Russia - the International Exhibition of Machines and Equipment for Mining, Enrichment and Transportation of Minerals. The organizer of the MiningConf conference is ITE Group .
The conference started with opening remarks by Marina Chelak, Director of the MiningWorld Russia exhibition, and Yuri Sukhanov, CEO of Nautilus Technology, the general partner of the MiningConf conference. The first event of the business program was the plenary session "Mining industry of Russia as a factor of technological sovereignty: interaction of business and government" . At it, experts spoke about specific measures of state support for the mining industry. The moderator was Alexander Derevnin, Director of Development at Excellence Expert.
The first report on "State regulation and measures to support the development of mining" was presented by Maxim Dovgyallo, Advisor to the General Director of SUEK, Executive Secretary of the RSPP Commission on the Mining Industry Complex. The speaker listed the main measures of support for the mining industry from the state. These include a special investment contract, lending to key investment projects at a preferential rate, subsidizing part of the costs, firstly, for projects being implemented for the production and sale of pilot lots of means of production, secondly, for R & D, and many other measures.
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"Features of doing business with Chinese suppliers of mining equipment" is the topic of the report by Artem Oskin, head of the bulldozers department at Sinotech Machinery. The speaker presented statistics on the market of heavy excavators and heavy bulldozers for the period from 2020 to Q1 2024. The report also listed the main difficulties in working with Chinese suppliers that a Russian distributor needs to know about: a fundamentally different regulatory and technical framework, limited warranty support, low quality of technical literature, lack of price lists for spare parts, etc.
Andrey Tolstov, Business Development Director at METPROM, presented a report on "Transformation of Contract Strategies in the Implementation of Large Investment Construction Projects in the Mining and Processing Sector." The speaker presented three of the most common contract models: Multilot, EPC and EPCM, their advantages and disadvantages. The expert believes that the EPCM model is the most flexible, in which "it is possible to make the cost and terms more flexible, streamlined, in which responsibility will be divided between the customer and the contractor." The problem of personnel shortage in the industry was highlighted by Alexey Kobzev, Project Manager at Yakov and Partners and an expert in the field of mining and metallurgy. Thus, 60% of respondents consider the shortage of qualified labor to be the main challenge of the industry. In the report, the expert cited current statistics on the shortage of personnel in the mining industry and called for the establishment of an exchange of production experience in the industry.
The next session on the program was “Laying the Foundation: Marketing and Market Strategies for a Guaranteed Result” . Its first speaker, Andrey Gavrikov, head of the Completo marketing group, spoke about current strategies and trends in B2B marketing. Where to find clients, how to work with a client base, what is email outreach and how to use it - the expert answered these and many other questions in his speech. Arseniy Kutovoy, CEO of Dotorg branding & digital, spoke about branding in industrial markets and outlined the features of working in “blue oceans”. According to the speaker, to work successfully in the B2B market, it is not necessary to be famous, what is important is “knowledge among those who need your goods and services” . As for sales, the expert warned against price dumping: “nobody wants to buy cheap, everyone wants to buy smart” , and urged to personally contact the buyer, explaining the benefits of the offer.
Ilya Muratov, Marketing Director of the Digital Group, spoke about assessing customer satisfaction as the most important indicator of a company's efficiency in the B2B market. The speaker presented specific tools, metrics and instructions that can be used to assess customer satisfaction. According to statistics cited by the speaker, loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones, and their retention is 5 times cheaper than attracting new customers. Pavel Shinkevich, owner of the Excavator Ru media group, listed key trends in marketing, ways to manage reputation and retain customers, as well as simple ways to promote a business in his report.
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The industrial marketing block continued with the session "Enriching with Practice: from Global to Local or How to Become the New Liebherr" . The session was moderated by Svetlana Timchenko, founder of the industrial agency "Marketing from Timchenko", she also gave the first report, in which she spoke about the main trends in industrial marketing, the opportunities that have opened up for marketers and the most popular marketing tools. Elizaveta Tikhonova, Director of Strategy and Marketing of the technological BVR company "AZOTTEKH", drew attention to the fact that each generation requires its own communications. This is also relevant for heavy industry, in this regard, the speaker called for "heavy communications for heavy industry to learn to facilitate" .
Ekaterina Parshikova, Director of Affiliate Network Development and Affiliate Marketing at UltimaTek, shared insights on how to extract maximum profit from an exhibition as a marketing tool. Head of Marketing Development at SKAI Ekaterina Galustyan presented her company's experience on how to be closer to the client and how to get new leads. One of the effective tools for this is your own business community, its advantages include customer loyalty and high NPS, low cost per lead, the ability to engage new users, etc. Maria Martsinkovskaya, Marketing Manager at the EVOBLAST Group, spoke about how to use the synergy of HR tools and marketing activities to promote a brand.
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The program continued with the session "Getting Clients: All About Promotion in Industry" . The use of artificial intelligence in marketing was the key topic of Dmitry Loginov's report. The speaker presented a list of neural networks that can be used to create text and visual content, creatives for advertising, photo editing, branding, and even training sales managers. The next speaker was the author and host of the YouTube channel "In the Process" Nikolay Khramov. In his report, he highlighted the importance of self-promotion, participation in collaborations with industrial bloggers - this helps to find new partners, employees, and increase awareness of yourself among the target audience. "If it seems to you that you are doing something familiar and everyone understands everything, then nothing of the sort. There are a huge number of people who will be super interested in learning about this ," the speaker convinced.
Anna Demidova, head of the dprom.online project, gave advice on creating high-quality content for B2B in the mining industry and talked about the specifics of preparing content for different platforms (Internet media, social networks). "Can social networks attract leads?" - Maria Kostina, editor-in-chief and founder of the media for geospecialists "GeoConversation. Salt of the Earth", answered this question in her report. In her report, the speaker cited her case when an application for $ 2 million was received from a Telegram channel. Social networks of companies, as a rule, cannot achieve such a result, but this can be corrected with the help of high-quality content and using one of the strategies: "PR strategy, talking about customer pain points or creating a community - your own media" . At the same time, the task of content is "to make people know about you and trust you. This is not direct sales" .
Georgy Kartvelishvili, partner at Paper Planes agency, leader of the Industry, Distribution practice, described in detail 7 stages of expert sales in B2B in his report – from Account based marketing to BCG scoring and work with progress. The speaker focused on the third stage of expert sales, following the client scoring – the concept of the total cost of ownership. This tool allows you to answer the question: “How to sell more expensively if prices are lower on the market?” and emerge victorious from a situation where competitors are putting pressure on you with a low price on the market.
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Procurement directors presented their reports at the final session of the MiningConf conference "Making a profit: big sales in grief" . The session was moderated by Denis Belsky, Executive Director of the procurement and supply chain management practice at TeDo (ex PWC). Yuri Naumov, Procurement Director at OKTO Group and JSC ZDK Lenzoloto, shared his experience in working with category procurement and highlighted three points in his speech: reducing the savings corridor on strategies, the increased influence of logistics, the need for a complete revision of KPIs and already developed strategies. "Category management: effects, mistakes and lessons learned, rethinking approaches" is the topic of the report by Natalia Telenchak, Deputy Director of Procurement at UK Sibanthracite LLC. The expert presented two cases, the first on the purchase of PPE - in 2022, the company switched to outsourcing services in providing employees with special clothing, due to which "transaction costs in terms of organizing the entire process decreased several times ." The second case concerned the optimization of transaction costs - 10-15% of the company's costs were accounted for by non-strategic, low-value purchases, while a large paperwork flow was created. The solution was found in purchasing on the marketplace. As a result, the procurement cycle was reduced to 2-6 days, operational costs and document flow were optimized, warehouse stocks and delivery costs were reduced.
Denis Kosyanenko, Head of International Business Development at DAS GLOBAL LOGISTIK, spoke about trends in logistics, logistics solutions, and project transportation in the mining industry. Denis Belsky made the final report, the expert presented the results of an exclusive study of trends in procurement. The report listed five key trends in the development of the procurement function: import substitution, demand planning, digitalization and AI, development of "natural intelligence" and cross-functional interaction.
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The evening entertainment program started after the reports, full of insights, trends and practical cases on marketing promotion in the mining industry. During three hours of informal communication, the delegates managed to discuss many interesting topics with each other and make useful contacts. The evening buffet was accompanied by a concert of a jazz band with a rising star of the jazz scene, 23-year-old Sofia Atsbekha-Negga.
The MiningConf conference was held with the official support of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs .
We would like to express our gratitude to the partners of the MiningConf conference:
// General partner of Nautilus Technology ,
// Partner of the plenary session SINOTECH Machinery ,
// Partner of the session DAS GLOBAL LOGISTIK ,
// Session partner METPROM .
We thank the intellectual partner Women in Modern Industries, the strategic partner of the session “Marketing from Timchenko” and the Association “Electrokabel”.
Information support for the event was provided by: "Mining Industry", Dprom.online, Excavator Ru, GeoConversation. Sol Zemli, "Mining Industry", "Industry of Eurasia", ProfiMiner, "Mining Exchange", "Gold and Technology", PRIME, "Globus: Geology and Business", Russian-German Chamber of Commerce, "Mir-Expo", "RusKabel".