You want to make the most out of every single dollar you spend on marketing and advertising if you’re an industrial company or manufacturer, especially if you have a young business. To have an idea of how much your business should be spending on marketing, the U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that businesses with revenues less than $5 million a year should be spending 7% to 8% of this revenue on marketing.

Many growing businesses fail as a result of poor sales. And if there’s a problem with sales, often times it’s partially due to a problem in marketing.

As an industrial marketing agency with insight into these common issues, we’re going to give you some tips to be able to develop your advertising strategy early on so you can scale your business and allow it to grow without sacrificing in other critical areas. This will make you more strategic in terms of where to spend your valuable time and money.

Here are 5 tips on how to make the most of your advertising budget:

1) Invest in your company website

You need to invest time and money to get your website right. Your website is often the first impression your customers will have of your business. It is a foundation and at the forefront of your company. Take note of two important industrial marketing considerations for your website:

a) Focus on SEO – Think of it like no one knows about your company and you need them to be able to find your site. SEO is an industrial marketing must for any website. If you have the time and the skillset, you can do optimize your website yourself. There’s a lot of material online to help you do it. However, if doing it yourself is going to take you away from other important aspects of running your business, it’s best to hire an industrial marketing professional to do it.

Don’t be shocked if you receive an industrial marketing agency quote that is upwards of $7,000 for an optimized website. This is an amount you’ll have to invest in once, and if you choose a good agency to handle it for you, you’ll only have to update it again a few years down the road. You can probably find a freelancer to do it for $1,000 to $2,000, but they most likely won’t be experts at SEO or your industry. Consider the amount of money you spend on your website as an investment that is an integral part of marketing.

Want to get the most out of your industrial marketing strategy? Consult the experts here at MFG Tribe. We are a specialized industrial marketing agency that understands the ins and outs of your product and what you do!

b) User Experience – How do your online visitors navigate through your website? Is it easy to book an appointment? Make sure that you pay close attention to the UX of your website.

On the other hand, if your business caters to B2B, most clients still use desktops to visit websites. These are probably managers or salespeople who are working at their desks. In this case, being mobile-friendly can take a backseat to how your site looks and works on a desktop or laptop. Take note of these two important aspects when planning your website.

2) Pay attention to your Google rankings

SEO will help you get your website higher in rankings on Google. This should also be followed up with great user experience and good content. Make sure that someone is keeping track of the website’s performance. You can find an agency to monitor it weekly or monthly and see if rankings improve.

You might think that you’re not competing with any other business in terms of keywords because no one else has the exact same business as you. However, your competition here is what your potential clients are currently using or used to doing. You need to make sure that your business is discoverable online. This is a high priority for an industrial marketing strategy.

3) Utilize social media

Whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, you have to be active on social. Don’t bother with Twitter because it’s not relevant for businesses and industrial marketing. Take a look at your target demographic and see where they spend their time. Is it LinkedIn? Or more of Instagram? Once you know where your prospects are, decide if you’re going to do it yourself or hire someone else to post for you. You need to be posting multiple times a week.

Also, pay attention to what you’re posting. Don’t bother posting memes or cute videos you found online. Focus on creating branded images that will work as a brand awareness campaign. Once you have content, you can start running Facebook ads to get more page likes and get your business name and brand out there.

4) Create content

The bottom line here is that you have to create a ton of content. Articles, blog posts, images, and videos – whatever kind of content you can produce, create it. The more important thing at this stage is quantity, not quality. Content is a way of getting people to notice your company and when you produce relevant or helpful content, you start becoming seen as an expert in that particular field.

Don’t worry if your videos are simple. You can even just use your phone with a tripod to shoot your videos. It’s all about producing content that is relevant and engaging. You might find it strange at first to be on camera but with practice, you’ll begin getting used to it.

5) Content distribution

Once you have your industrial marketing content, put a distribution plan in place. The cheapest way to distribute content is organic posting which will cost you time. If you work with an agency, they can be in charge of posting your company’s social media accounts, including the content you produced in your email marketing and the company website. As you become more consistent, you’ll see more engagement. Post content at least 5 times a week, even every day if possible. Even for companies that are B2B and in industrial marketing, this step is important.

In this situation, it’s a game of patience. Don’t make decisions with only next week in mind. You need to think long-term. If you stop posting after a few days because you don’t see instant results, you’ll never be able to reach the number of people you want. Consistency is what builds the brand and creates that muscle memory.

When you get past this point, you should consider advertising. All the industrial marketing content you’ve created can become the material for your ads. If you work with an agency, you might even be able to ask them to edit an existing video, add branding, make it shorter and make it more engaging as an ad.

For value for money, Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are cheap in terms of cost per click and cost per impression. LinkedIn advertising is very expensive, so if you’re not doing 7 figures yet or at least half a million dollars a year, it may not be worth it. Focus on running brand awareness ads at the start to introduce your brand to more people.

It’s not easy to help potential customers discover your brand. But once you make these tips a priority, you will absolutely start seeing results.

Industrial marketing strategies don’t develop overnight. And the best ones are backed by years of experience and careful planning. If you feel stuck, consider reaching out to an industrial marketing agency with expertise in your industry. If you want the best in the business, give MFG Tribe a call. Visit our website to learn more now!