5 Steps Every Manufacturing Marketing Strategy Can't Do Without

A successful manufacturing marketing strategy is key to increasing sales leads at every stage of the B2B buyer journey. The industrial buying journey is elongated, often non-linear, and has many participants. A one-size-fits-all strategy won’t work for manufacturing and industrial operations. You need a plan that’s specific to your business.

Here are some key steps for starting your marketing strategy, to ensure your efforts are taking you closer to new business growth.

1: Set Goals for Your Manufacturing Marketing Strategy

Your manufacturing marketing strategy begins at the intersection of your company’s goals and objectives and your messaging. What do you want to accomplish with your marketing in terms of reach, leads, or sales? At this stage, you’re summarizing what your company wants to accomplish to align your marketing tactics.

Think about your goals for your marketing in the same way you think about productivity goals at a facility. What KPIs do you want to hit each week? Each month? Your ultimate goal may reach for the stars, such as doubling your business in one year. But your marketing strategy should start with realistic, measurable steps and targets.

Keep your team motivated by starting with incremental KPIs, such as increases in weekly clickthrough rates in your emails and on your website. Work toward an ultimate goal such as doubling your sales leads from website conversions in one year.

2: Define Your Marketing Strategy’s Target Audience

As you set the goals for your marketing strategy you’ll need a clear picture of the audience you’re trying to reach with your messaging. Who is your ideal customer you want to reach and what challenges and problems keep them awake at night? What products, services, and solutions do you offer that can alleviate these pain points?

Your sales and customer service teams should be able to help you paint a better picture of your ideal customer. Then start creating your customer personas, based on this feedback and from data such as your customer survey results and/or trustworthy market research and reports in your industry.

In addition to demographics and industry segments, your personas should include psychographics (motivations) to help you develop marketing messaging that speaks to their unique challenges. You can then optimize your marketing strategy to make sure your messaging will help drive the desired action you want your personas to take, such as clicking through a link in a marketing newsletter.

3: Optimize Your Website to Be Strategically Visible

According to HubSpot, while nearly half of marketers have increased their digital marketing budgets, many still don’t have a digital marketing strategy. This statistic is a bit surprising, given that every company’s website serves as the central hub for implementing marketing strategy tactics.

One of the first steps in your manufacturing marketing strategy should be making sure that your customer prospects find your website. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, as there is a lot of competition in today’s crowded industrial digital marketplace. Effective SEO requires you to understand how search engines like Google see your website, so you can adjust in real-time to account for changes in search algorithms and online rankings.

Because you’re competing with other companies in your industry for many of the same keywords, try using more long-tailed keywords that are more specific to your unique products and services. For example, if you sell PPE for metal fabrication workers, you may want to use keywords such as “OSHA-compliant welding goggles” instead of just “welding goggles,” so your keywords have less competition.

4: Create Content to Drive Your Strategy Forward

Your website content should support your keyword targets with helpful, educational information. If your keywords are “industrial clean rooms,” your content should provide information to help your audience understand how clean rooms work and how they can address your customer’s challenges at their facility.

Look at sponsored content opportunities that can help you reach a wider audience, such as newsletters and sponsored white papers. Leverage multiple digital content channels, including social content and paid advertising.

Be sure to create a content calendar to make sure all your forms of digital media play well together with your existing marketing assets, such as brochures, pitch decks, and product manuals. Make sure all these assets are updated regularly and consider adding new customer testimonials and success stories. Share your successes through multiple channels to build credibility and keep your momentum going.

5: Measure Your Manufacturing Marketing Strategy’s Success

Now it’s time to circle back to the goals and objectives in your manufacturing marketing strategy. As we noted earlier, your KPIs should be measurable, which means once a campaign launches, you should have some measurable marketing insights and analytics.

For example, page views or social media likes may have little to no impact on creating qualified leads and would therefore be irrelevant to an industrial marketing strategy geared toward lead generation. Instead, focus on how many KPIs you’ve hit, such as the number of RFQs that were submitted in a specific campaign. Employ tracking tools such as Google Analytics to measure your website’s success.

A roadmap alone is not enough to guarantee a successful industrial marketing strategy. However, having a reliable framework with the above essential steps can put you in a better position to achieve your strategy’s goals.

Does Your Marketing Strategy Include a Brand Strategy?

Creating a manufacturing marketing strategy should also include a brand strategy, so you can determine how your brand stands up to the competition in an increasingly crowded industrial marketplace. INDUSTRIAL has 20 years of experience creating digital marketing for industrial companies, including brand strategies that lead to business growth.