Digital Marketing for manufacturers is conceptually simple, and a lot of research has already established best practices for the industry. Here are the best 5 digital marketing strategies for manufacturing companies to drive business growth.
1. Develop a user-friendly website
Today in 2023, a website is the most crucial and basic prerequisite of your digital marketing strategy for a manufacturer or a manufacturing company. Even having a simple site without any lucrative designs and themes can be called as a digital business card.
Explore your competitor’s websites, and you will likely notice the following elements:
Modern designs – minimalist sites with dynamic elements such as interactive video and scrolling foregrounds are standard practice for large companies today. A good web developer can integrate the aesthetic of your manufacturing company or industrial products in new and exciting ways that will capture the attention of prospects and keep them engaged.
Ecommerce storefronts – while some manufacturing companies exclusively market through contracts with other businesses, most offer some products directly to consumers. Simple platforms like Shopify are easy to set up and optimize for capturing online leads
Lead forms – websites can be used to capture lead information through simple forms, in exchange for incentives such as white papers, content, or even free consultations. This information can then be used to nurture future business deals.
CTAs – a Call to Action (CTA) is any prominent section of a site which provokes the reader into taking a certain action, usually situated after an informational article. They may prompt the reader to make a purchase, sign up for an email list or read more information.
Adding up even one from this list can boost your overall business performance through online.
2. Save money with Digital Advertising
Though traditional advertising is not dead yet, manufacturers still prefer formal events, billboards, magazines, tv and various physical advertising mediums.
But even if they aren’t dead, they are less effective than digital marketing. You cannot analyze how many people saw those ads and how many of them got converted through that form of advertising.
Whereas, digital ads like Google ads, Facebook ads allow you to target customers in highly detailed and specific demographics such as location, interests, work, age and many more without even knowing them.
Digital advertising also takes a lot of different forms. You may be familiar with some:
PPC Ads – Pay-per-Click (PPC) is a text-based ad popular on search engines and blogs. PPC allows you to get a link and description in front of many readers, and you will only have to pay if they click. A major provider of this service is Google Adwords, which will show your PPC ads on the Google search page and affiliate sites.
Display Ads – display ads are a bit more flashy than their text-based counterparts. Like an Internet billboard, a display ad shows an image or animation to affiliate sites. Along with its relative banner ads, this form is a little more costly, but makes a more lasting impression.
Social Media Ads – social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit have two important things: a lot of users, and a lot of information about their users. All of these sites allow you to promote a post to a targeted group of readers.
Video Ads – like traditional commercials, video ads are popular on streaming sites like YouTube. Unlike traditional commercials, video ads can be shown only to viewers who are likely prospects.
3. Video Production
On the subject of video advertisements, video is one of the most popular forms of content on the web. Simply producing this content and sharing it on popular sites can generate interest in your brand and industry practices.
One advantage of digital marketing for manufacturers & industrial products is the raw potential for video producers – factories, complex machinery, large workplaces, hazardous materials and cutting-edge science. Put simply, manufacturing is an interesting field of work, and people enjoy watching it.
Online video is a good opportunity to show-off what you do, and why you’re the best at it. If building a presence on major streaming websites seems like too much trouble, consider partnering with already-popular channel to run your content.
4. Lead Nurturing
As mentioned earlier, Digital Marketing is a great way to capture leads and email addresses. It is also a great central hub for staying in touch with the leads you already have, and keeping your brand at the forefront of their minds. By developing a robust sales funnel and using personalized outreach solutions, you can close more deals and bring more prospects on board.
One of the oldest and most effective lead nurturing mechanisms in digital marketing is email outreach, and for B2B companies, it remains at the very top. Dedicated nurturing campaigns can be crafted with services like MailChimp to drip information, offers, and newsletters to your prospects over a period of weeks or months.
With the advent of artificial intelligence, lead nurturing has become even smarter. Automated marketing solutions can be highly personalized to track prospects, predict response, and send customized messages at the right moments. Combined with CRM software, this functionality can help your sales team to keep track of conversations so they won’t drop the ball on a good customer.
5. Thought Leadership
New ideas generate discussion which brings a brand to the forefront of its industry: this is the basic idea behind thought leadership. When you see an enlightening guest-post from CEOs on Forbes, Gizmodo or your favorite Medium publication, this is thought leadership at work.
Any thriving brand has a story to tell. It has faced unique obstacles along the way, criticism, or technological challenges. The strategy you used to overcome these reflects corporate philosophy, and with a solid thought leadership strategy, that philosophy becomes a path for others to follow in.
Building thought leadership involves producing written content in the form of articles or interviews. Preferably, they will be credited to your CEO, or any executive who represents your brand to the public, which can then be pitched to large Internet publications in your area of research – Medium is a great place to find platforms with broad and high-profile readership.
Ideally, you will also publish these articles to your own website blog, or to profiles associated with your brand. LinkedIn Pulse is a popular choice for company presidents to publish content. Over time, good content will build your search engine rankings, bring traffic to your site, and accrue backlinks from other companies who find what you have written interesting or useful.
Conclusion
The digital world changes so quickly that it can be hard to keep up with sometimes. For this reason, it’s a good idea for manufacturing companies to invest in education from industry professionals to keep their team in the know or outsource to an experienced digital marketing agency for manufacturers.
There is no one-size-fits all solution to a good marketing strategy; but the best and most up-to-date information gives you the tools you need to craft your own.
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