How Manufacturing Marketing Increases Sales Through Content
According to IEEE GlobalSpec, 82% of manufacturing marketers attribute increased success to content creation, but only 31% of manufacturing marketers have a content marketing strategy.
It’s proven that consistent marketing produces big results for manufacturers, so why don’t almost 70% of them have a content plan?
There’s a roar of information out there that makes marketing seem more complicated than it is, leaving many manufacturers feeling they don’t have the time or resources to properly market to their target audience.
This just isn’t the case.
Let’s remove the noise, and focus on manufacturer marketing 101. You will find that with a simple mindset shift, you can create a successful content marketing strategy.
To cut down the intimidation of marketing, start by looking at your target demographic as two groups; people searching for your services, and people who aren’t searching for you. Simple, right?
Before you go deep into any marketing efforts, research your current target demographic to see what percentage comes from people searching for you vs. people found from “pushing” content toward them. It’s important to know where your customer originated from so you can justify where and how to spend manufacturer marketing dollars.
After you’ve simplified your mindset, it’s easier to remove the roadblocks that once stopped you from constructing a consistent strategy.
Your manufacturing marketing plan should include tactics that attract attention from both groups.
If a consumer is searching for you, they have a need or problem, and are actively looking for a solution. Though your company offers the perfect solution, prospects won’t find it if you’re not at the top of their search results.
With search-based marketing, your strategy will focus on:
- Optimizing web content for SEO – Search engine optimization best practices can grow traffic by 571% when done correctly.
- Paid Google AdWords campaigns – According to Wishpond, every $1 spent on Google AdWords generates $2 in revenue.
Search-based content marketing requires you to invest resources and money upfront to build a presence. This tactic is a long-term sales solution because it often takes many months and marketing dollars to get your website consistently ranked.
Based on my manufacturing client’s experience, only about 30% of their new clients come from searching, so it’s important to invest time into the second group as well.
If your target audience isn’t searching for you, then you must disrupt their day with content.
Combine brand awareness and content to drown out the competition with your disruptive inbound marketing by doing the following:
- Cold Calls – Don’t just call 3 times and push people to the bottom of the pipeline, stay consistent with periodic calls and “check-ins.”
- Email Marketing – Send unique client-centered emails along with automated drip campaigns to stay at the top of inboxes.
- Cold Visits – Stop by a prospect’s office with coffee, lunch or marketing materials to jumpstart a conversation.
- LinkedIn Posts – Content Marketing Institute found that LinkedIn is the top social media platform used for content marketing purposes. LinkedIn is a proven way to attract high-paying clients when valuable content is shared daily.
Tactics used for this group involve “pushing” content, because the only way to get discovered in todays saturated market is to prove you are quality by sharing quality material. If people aren’t looking for you, you have to make them wish they would have by disrupting their mundane day with create content.
There is no secret pill. There is no singular tactic that you can use to drive traffic, increase conversions, or increase your top of line sales. Each of the mentioned facets of content marketing plays a role in the grand scheme getting new clients and increasing revenue.
Again, take away usual stressors by getting to know your two groups.
After you establish clarity, it’s all about brand awareness and content. Once you connect those two together and hit prospects with distribution…that’s where the magic happens.
When’s the last time your manufacturing marketing created content marketing magic? Share it with us on LinkedIn or Facebook!
Kyle Milan is a well accomplished Industrial/Manufacturing sales and marketing professional with over 20 years of experience. He is the CEO of MFG Tribe (Industrial Marketing Agency) and Technical Sales University (https://technicalsalesu.com) and is considered the leader of Sales and Marketing Strategy & Social Media Marketing for industrial companies. He has published several articles in major news media outlets on various topics of; Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing & Advertising, Industrial Marketing, Manufacturing Marketing, and Entrepreneurship.
