In the world of manufacturing, having a sound digital marketing strategy is just as important for lead generation, brand awareness, and thought leadership as it is in any other industry. Specifically, successful digital marketing for the manufacturing industry allows organizations of all sizes to connect with their customers in a meaningful way, and not have their sales team solely rely on outbound marketing to connect with their ideal customer. Simply put, companies that use digital marketing for industrial products have a leg up against their competition. At the same time, digital marketing for manufacturers doesn’t always come so naturally, creating an effective marketing plan for a manufacturing company can be difficult. This is where having a marketing team to help can make all the difference.
The most effective methods of internet marketing for manufacturers are:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
- Content Marketing (According to Demand Gen Report 73% of B2B buyers consume 3 to 7 pieces of content before speaking with a salesperson)
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
Unfortunately, nearly 50% of organizations today (manufacturing businesses included) do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy, and will not see the lead generation results they are probably looking for.
A clearly defined digital marketing strategy will include the following:
Knowing Your Target Customer: Build your digital marketing campaign around their interests, pain points, what they search for, and what type of content they would want to see, read, and engage with.
Setting KPIs: Set key performance indicators based around exactly what you want to achieve with your digital marketing campaign. Whether it is sales, or brand awareness, it is important to know exactly what you want to achieve.
Auditing Your Company’s Current Digital Marketing Success: See how your website, current email campaigns, and social media profiles are performing. This will illuminate both areas for improvement, and areas for quick marketing wins.
Setting Your Budget: Determine how much you can invest into digital marketing. This will determine which goals your campaign can attain.
Selecting The Proper Channels: Choose which digital marketing channels will bring the right leads to your business. This could mean SEO, social media, PPC, content marketing, email marketing, a combination of all of the above or just some of them
Creating Engaging Content: Create content via case studies, blog posts, whitepapers, videos, webinars, and more that addresses your ideal customers needs, and interests.
Tracking Campaign Progress: Regularly review how your campaign is performing with various marketing tools to ensure it’s trending in the right direction and brining in the right visibility and leads.
Regularly Optimizing And Improving Your Strategy: As new digital marketing challenges and opportunities arise make the proper adjustments to ensure maximum success.
By implementing online marketing for manufacturers, your company can enjoy a number of digital marketing benefits.
1. Establish Credibility
In the manufacturing industry especially, it’s important not just to have specialized expertise in your field, but to be able to demonstrate this as well. After all, prospective customers want to work with a business they trust knows their niche well. This can be accomplished through industrial online marketing. By utilizing online platforms, such as blogs and how-to tutorials, your organization can build a strong reputation for being a thought leader in the world of manufacturing, and have potential clients met at trade shows and the like be warm leads from the very beginning.
2. Increase Lead Conversions
Digital marketing strategies, such as marketing automation and even email marketing, give your manufacturing business a greater opportunity to convert leads. You could consider, for example, using marketing automation to send out specific emails based on a prospective customer’s activity on your manufacturing company’s website. This can be an extremely effective strategy, resulting in conversions of up to 77%.
3. Achieve Repeat Customers
Returning customers are the backbone of any manufacturing business, and it’s always easier from a financial standpoint to retain an existing customer than it is to onboard a new one. With this in mind, using digital marketing strategies to keep customers coming back is a great use of your resources and marketing budget.
Digital marketing makes it easier to establish and build customer loyalty. By being active and engaging with customers on social media, for example, your brand will actually be more likely to be recommended to others.
4. Establish and Spread Brand Awareness
Perhaps one of the best ways to use digital marketing in the manufacturing industry is to build a brand identity and spread awareness of your brand through the many platforms available. This can be done by implementing an industrial digital marketing campaign that utilizes platforms like social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), taking advantage of email marketing opportunities, developing an SEO strategy, and even creating engaging “shareable” or viral content online.
And the greater your online presence, the easier it will be for new prospective customers to find your manufacturing business. Most manufacturers either don’t have social media accounts or don’t use them optimally, but social media marketing and manufacturing can work well together and increase sales and brand awareness if performed correctly!
5. Demonstrate Your Products and Services
These days, there are so many easy-to-use online platforms that make it possible for you to demonstrate your company’s product and service offerings. In the manufacturing industry, this is especially useful, as it may not always be easy or possible for prospective customers to see first-hand how your offerings can help them. With tools such as online video demonstrations and live Q&A sessions, you can grow your potential customer base while also showing off your ability to keep up with the latest technologies at the same time.
Overall, the primary benefits of digital marketing for the manufacturing industry include:
- An increase in brand awareness
- An opportunity to demonstrate products and services
- A means of achieving repeat customers
- A way to increase lead conversions
- A method for establishing yourself as a credible thought leader
Feeling overwhelmed by the need to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy for your manufacturing business? The Ballantine team is here to help! As a top digital marketing agency, we can take your manufacturing company’s marketing strategy to the next level. Contact us today today to learn about all of our creative & digital services and we’ll formulate a manufacturing marketing strategy that can help your growing business.
6. Building brand awareness
Manufacturers can leverage digital marketing to grow brand awareness. By building your site and ranking well for important terms, you can introduce people using organic search to your organization. Similarly, building your social media pages can help people get to know your company.
To build brand awareness consider:
- Inviting current and past customers to follow you on social media
- Host social media groups or build conversations using hashtags
- Employ a quality content development and SEO program, like the one we offer at Ballantine
- Build an email list from forms filled out on your computer. According to
- Let Ballantine guide you to create a PPC strategy that complements your organic and social efforts.
7. Improve customer loyalty
Customers today are highly likely to engage with brands online as they progress through the buyer’s journey– 95 percent of online adults between 18 and 34 follow a brand on social networking sites. This presents these organizations with the perfect opportunity to engage with prospects and build strong relationships.
When brands master this aspect of digital marketing, they establish strong customer loyalty. Seventy-one percent of customers who report having a positive social media experience with a brand say that they are likely to recommend the company to others.
8. Establish thought leadership in your industry
Digital marketing provides you with a platform to showcase your understanding and expertise in manufacturing. Customers use the internet to find answers to their problems, and the brands that consistently provide them with the information they need lay the foundation for a strong relationship. Digital media allows you to offer your opinions on events in your industry as well as advice and answers, letting people know that you are a helpful professional who understands the material. When a manufacturer is able to establish themselves as a thought leader, potential customers can already trust them before they even engage with a salesperson.
9. Show off your capabilities
Digital marketing, particularly social media, provides an outstanding platform to demonstrate your capabilities. Since customers have such a strong affinity for posts made with images, using visual content can promote your business and what you manufacture. Images can be a powerful means of communicating with your prospects: people only remember about 10 percent of information they hear three days later. When that information is combined with a relevant image, however, their memory jumps to 65 percent of the material. Use appealing product images to tap into these capabilities and demonstrate your value to customers.
10. Nurture Leads
Through digital marketing, you can take advantage of the power of marketing automation. When customers visit your website, you can track their behavior on the site, particularly what resources they download. When they convert to a lead and provide you with their information, you can nurture your lead through the rest of the sales cycle with marketing automation.
By triggering emails based upon consumer behavior, you will have a better chance of engaging the prospect and convincing them to become a customer. Among brands that use marketing automation, 80 percent saw boosts in their number of leads and 77 percent saw their number of conversions grow.
Overall, the primary benefits of digital marketing for the manufacturing industry include:
- An increase in brand awareness
- An opportunity to demonstrate products and services
- A means of achieving repeat customers
- A way to increase lead conversions
- A method for establishing yourself as a credible thought leader
Feeling overwhelmed by the need to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy for your manufacturing business? The Ballantine team is here to help! As a top digital marketing agency, we can take your manufacturing company’s marketing strategy to the next level. Contact us today today to learn about all of our creative & digital services and we’ll formulate a manufacturing marketing strategy that can help your growing business.
