Tags – Manufacturing Marketing Priorities
As a manufacturing business, it can be difficult to know where to allocate your marketing budget and what marketing strategies will be the most effective.
There are many different factors to consider when making this decision, including your target audience, product offerings, and competitive landscape.
In this guide, we will walk you through the process of determining your marketing priorities and creating a plan that will help you achieve your business goals.
Marketing Priorities
Marketing is a key function in a manufacturing company since it links distributors, manufacturers, and wholesalers, ensuring that your product gets to the end user.
On the other hand, selecting the finest methods to advertise your manufacturing business may need more work and time.
The majority of businesses still use antiquated approaches that don’t generate results and don’t require much effort.
That might explain why investing in a comprehensive B2B marketing plan hasn’t been as popular as you’d expect.
Manufacturers can, nevertheless, reach their objectives and interact with new audiences by using innovative marketing tactics like better inbound marketing that includes lead generation, social media, content, and others.
Manufacturers are successfully capturing new prospects, keeping current consumers, and increasing revenue by utilising content and thought leadership to promote their items and services online.
A manufacturing firm can build its reputation as a thought leader by hosting a webinar, putting out a whitepaper that displays industry expertise or product training, establishing a corporate blog, and participating in industry events and trade shows.
Manufacturers’ digital marketing plan differs significantly from that used in other sectors since the audience is unique.
It’s critical to acquire the following information from your clients in order to receive relevant traffic and improve your ROI:
- Competitors
- Target market and audience
- Keywords
- Industries they serve
- Complementary services or products
Manufacturing Marketing
Manufacturing marketing is B2B marketing, and it can be more complex since the sales cycle is longer than B2C.
- Target Audience: Other businesses such as down line supply chain manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, or business end-users such as restaurants or building firms. You should know what industry you’re aiming for, the size and kind of organisations that require or want your goods, and who within these groups has the power to make purchasing decisions
- Customer Needs: Customers in the B2B environment want high-quality goods that are compatible with their operational and financial constraints. They need to be able to give and supply clients with confidence while also turning a profit
- Drivers: If a business chooses your products, it will be based on factors like price, credit, and terms; the perception of your brand; how much support you provide via technical, marketing, and other resources; and if you can get buy-in from the right decision-makers
- Purchase Process: Procurement can be complicated. The process includes discovery, comparing prices, quotes and final purchase decisions. Often, you’ll need to prove your worth to more than one decision maker – especially if the purchase is large – like managers, purchasing agents, accounting and finance teams etc.
Creating a Manufacturing Marketing Plan
Direct marketing, print advertisements, and brochures might get results, but they are less focused and more time-consuming for businesses to target their ideal consumers.
Here’s how to create a successful marketing strategy for your manufacturing company.
1. Set Goals
The very first step is to establish attainable goals for your marketing strategy.
For instance, do you want to double your market share over the next few years, increase revenue from £5 million to £9 million, or generate more sales in specific sectors?
Ultimately, your goals will determine the direction of your marketing strategy, and will influence which channels you use and the type of content you will create.
By establishing short- and long-term objectives, you may begin to work backwards in order to figure out how to get your business where you want it to be.
2. Market Research
Market research will assist you in determining how to stand out from your competition, which marketing channels you should utilise, and what your target audience truly wants and desires from your company.
During your research, you will need to establish your:
- Competitors: who is your competition and what platforms are they most active on? What do they offer that you don’t? How are your products or services better than theirs?
- Target Audience: Be clear on who your target audience is, what they want and need, and what their preferences are. Plus, you want to know what their buying habits are and what platforms they spend most of their time on
- Keywords: keyword research will assist you in creating content fit for purpose and provide value to your target audience. Also, research into the keywords your competition is targeting, identifying those with less competition to generate more short-term business
3. Digital Marketing Strategies
For any modern business, digital marketing is key.
It drives website traffic, builds brand awareness, acquires new leads and generates more conversions. Some important elements of digital marketing include:
- SEO: driving organic traffic to your company’s website
- PPC: generate paid traffic through digital ads, allowing manufacturing companies to target specific audiences
- Content: your efforts should consist of blog posts, social media and videos to connect with distributors, wholesalers and consumers through entertaining but informative content
- Email: manufacturers can nurture leads by sending relevant content straight to their inboxes
These four marketing techniques, when used together, assist businesses to develop larger audiences and generate more qualified leads.
4. Website Optimisation
Your website is critical in converting leads into sales.
It should be quick, user-friendly, SEO-friendly, and contain a variety of valuable and informative content, including blog entries, FAQs, videos, and anything else that may help your consumers.
Test your website to ensure that all buttons and links operate as expected. Test your page load speed to make sure it doesn’t take longer than it should.
Your site should be mobile-friendly as well.
Websites that don’t perform well on a smartphone are not only less appealing to visitors, but they’re also less likely to rank highly in Google and other search engines.
5. Social Media
Another way to increase brand recognition and consumer loyalty is on social media.
It also allows you to interact with potential clients in a natural manner – often where the prospect is already found online.
While Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter may be strong platforms for B2B marketing, manufacturers might want to start with LinkedIn and maintain a robust presence there.
6. Track Metrics
After your marketing strategy has been put into place, it’s critical to track its performance over time and make adjustments as needed to improve your results.
You may evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign in real time by monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs).
To assess the impact of your marketing plan on website traffic, track your customer retention rate, organic traffic, and clicks on paid ads.
You can keep track of phone calls, email list sign-ups, web form requests, website bounce rates, and the average amount of time visitors spend on your website with conversion tracking.
The Bottom Line
Determining marketing priorities can be difficult, especially for manufacturing businesses.
By taking the time to establish your target audience, understand your competition, and develop a sound digital marketing strategy, you can create a plan that will allow you to connect with more consumers and generate qualified leads that result in increased sales.
Don’t forget to track your progress along the way so that you can make necessary adjustments to improve your results.
With a little bit of effort, you can take your manufacturing business to the next level.
For more information, please contact us today.
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