How an adhesive ingredients manufacturer built category-wide recognition with SpecialChem's Demand Creation

By the time the manufacturer began working with SpecialChem, its adhesives business ranked outside the Top 50 suppliers tracked on SpecialChem's Adhesives & Sealants platform, among more than a thousand competing suppliers. Its on-platform popularity index sat at just 0.73.

The index compares a supplier's engagement on the platform with what its portfolio size would predict. A score of 1 means a supplier draws exactly the attention its size would suggest; scores below 1 mean it is punching below its weight, and scores above 1 mean it is outperforming its category. At 0.73, the manufacturer's adhesives business was being outpaced by peers with comparable or smaller portfolios.

A search for the company's own adhesive ingredients surfaced more third-party promotion than content it controlled itself, a clear sign its digital footprint didn't match the strength of its chemistry.

The gap was being felt beyond marketing. Without a steady flow of well-qualified digital buyers already in-market, the commercial team had grown frustrated, not because the product wasn't competitive, but because too few of the right people knew it existed. Without stronger visibility, the manufacturer's repositioning ambition had nowhere to land.

The manufacturer identified three objectives for the program ahead: broader recognition across the category, a market that understood what set its chemistry apart, and a steady flow of sales-qualified leads for its commercial team.

With these objectives in mind, the manufacturer began a multi-year program with SpecialChem's Demand Creation service.

Demand Creation keeps a supplier's technology visible and trusted with material specifiers before they start actively selecting a material. Through that exposure, the brand stays top of mind and earns a place on a specifier's shortlist once the decision-making process begins. The program expanded at every renewal, with new elements added to match the manufacturer's evolving objectives.

Year one combined high-traffic banner placements with a platform listing and a starter batch of curated leads, six newsletter sponsorships, and two targeted email campaigns, all supported by dedicated customer success management.

The next multi-year renewal added a dedicated Technology Center for the manufacturer's solutions and an annual webinar with a full promotion package. It also introduced a rotating combination of high-traffic and category-exclusive banner placements. The banner rotation was designed to give the brand near-continuous visibility across the year rather than a handful of isolated bursts. Newsletter cadence increased to eight promotions a year plus recurring feature placements, and the account team introduced AI-scored lead qualification alongside human follow-up on the highest-potential contacts. Dedicated campaigns also supported two new product launches, each pairing its own Technology Center page, banners, and outbound promotion.

The program is now in its third consecutive renewal, run by a dedicated SpecialChem team. Its content library has grown into a full set of technical articles, brochures, and video content, and the account team now also tracks a running shortlist of high-interest accounts closest to an active project.

Across the full partnership, the program has generated more than 2,700 marketing-qualified leads, including roughly 1,100 rated as higher-quality, in-target opportunities. It has also produced more than 1.4 million brand awareness views in total, with over 820,000 of those in the most recent renewal phase alone. Its content now ranks among the top three most-downloaded documents in its category, two years running.

Conversion has kept pace with reach: in the most recent phase, content-to-lead conversion reached 12.1%, ahead of SpecialChem's 10.4% industry benchmark. The manufacturer's most recent webinar drew a live attendance rate of roughly a third of registrants and generated several dozen post-event content downloads. Dedicated launch campaigns for two new product lines each generated more than 200 marketing-qualified leads within months of introduction.





That engagement is reaching further than expected, too. The program has now reached nearly half of the manufacturer's priority target account list. R&D and technical teams at several globally recognized adhesive brands are engaging with its content repeatedly. That is a strong signal the brand is no longer just visible, but genuinely influential in the rooms where sourcing decisions get made. Engagement now spans close to 90 countries across EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas.