With all the things to pay attention to with industrial marketing, these are the three areas that I find to be most important.

Use Content Marketing to Engage Your Audience

The first one is creating content. You must create content. This has been trending for at least the last six years, but the key is what type of content you create. Half of your content should be written and half of it should be video because you need to play to those audiences that want to watch or read. However, if you don’t have a good content marketing strategy, then you’re going to be completely lost. The best way to do it is to turn to an agency like MFG Tribe where we can do it all for you. Alternatively, if you can’t use the tools and resources available today to generate content calendars, you can use SEO tools. You can use AI these days to do it, but you have to figure out:

“What type of content should I produce?”

They should fall into one of two buckets. Bucket number one is going to be: It’s highly searched for on Google. There are a lot of search phrases, terms, volume behind it. On a monthly basis, people are looking for answers to these questions. They’re searching after these services.

On the flip side of it, bucket number two is going to be: It’s highly valuable; It’s going to provide a significant level of value to somebody once they read it or watch it. Maybe it’s an engineer. Maybe it’s somebody in purchasing. Maybe it’s a guide. Maybe it’s specifications or a calculator- something like that. It’s going to be highly valuable.

The goal would be that it serves both purposes. It is highly valuable, and it’s highly searched for… but in all reality, that’s typically not the case.

In manufacturing, the search volume behind the things- unless it’s something that’s new and upcoming technology- is not really high from an industry standard standpoint, so there’s not tens of thousands of people searching for an answer to this question. When it comes to manufacturing, it could be 500, 700, maybe a thousand. That is still high in the industrial manufacturing world, so you have to look at it from a standpoint of: Who’s searching for stuff? What are they searching for? Or ask your sales team: What are the top questions that you’re getting asked from our customers and potential customers? What are the top issues that they’re facing? Then figure out: How can I shape that into an article? and reach out to either somebody internally to write it for you or like I said partner with an agency like MFG Tribe and we’ll just do it all for you.

The flip side of that needs to be video. Video is going to be able to tell a story faster. In a short amount of time, you’re going to be able to capture their attention and make them stay engaged while watching it- if your videos don’t suck. If they are good quality videos, you should do a significant level of frequency. Even with articles- I’m not going to say you should be doing two of them a week, but at least a couple of them a month, consistently.

For videos, if you have a video team like ours then you can create a lot of content. In one video shoot, we create 30 to 40 pieces of content- a couple of them long, and a lot of them short. You can send those out to social and all the platforms where people are paying attention to and really drip out that content over time. You want to give them bite-sized pieces. Put that content on your website to make them stay, watch, engage, and drive traffic to it.

Effective Digital Marketing – Target Your Audience

The second area is going to be marketing on platforms where your target demographic is. What does that mean?

The days of doing trade shows in only one area are gone. You have to look at it this way: where are my engineers that I’m trying to sell to living? The purchasing people- where can I get their attention in the fastest and easiest way? Are they searching so I should run ads? Are they not searching and they’re just on LinkedIn occasionally, browsing through it? Are they sitting at their desk?

You should look at it from the standpoint of: you created content, now you want to put it in front of them to provide value.

To do that, you need to put it on platforms where they’re actually going to pay attention. It could be something on social media or with LinkedIn email marketing. It could be picking up the phone and calling them to follow up on those emails, going to some strategic trade shows, possibly even sending out some snail mail (you might miss them there because they’re not working in the office anymore). Maybe they’re still remote from the COVID days- but you have to do research. Look at it and say, “Where is the undervalued attention of my demographic? Where can I easily get a hold of them?” Try multiple methods. Figure out what works for that industry, for that job persona, for that title, whatever it is- and market to them.

Data Must Drive Your Marketing Strategy

Then you should look at step number three, which is going to circle everything back together. Area number three is going to be paying attention to your data.

You can create content, but if it’s not getting engagement you need to change your strategy.

You can market to platforms where you think that you’re going to get the attention from, but if you’re not paying attention to your data, how can you possibly make pivot adjustments in your schedule? If you’re not looking at that, look at your data on a weekly and monthly basis. See what is working, what isn’t, and what changes do I need to make? What micro adjustments or complete pivots away from something do I need to make? We still have people come to us all the time and say, “Hey, should we post this on Twitter too?” and I say, no that ship has sailed years ago because nobody’s engaging back on Twitter. It should be on LinkedIn.

“We spend $300,000 a year on trade shows.” Have you looked at the data? Is the data there to support the investment that you’re making? Are you getting leads that actually turn into business? Are you just having conversations with people?

All that stuff has to be decided based on data. You and your industrial company and people that work at the same company that you do are basing all their production decisions and engineering decisions on data. So, why should marketing be any different?

You should allow something to have enough runway to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, you make a change immediate and adjust your focus and your attention into something new. Test that out and then adjust it after 90 days again until you get into the perfect situation.

Want to get the most out of your industrial marketing strategy? Consult the experts here at MFG Tribe. We are a specialized

industrial/manufacturing marketing agency that understands the ins and outs of your product and what you do.