Many times manufacturers serve a niche client base and are largely reliant on in-person sales. In many cases, these companies believe their customers aren’t even online. However, we find consistently this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s time to pull back the curtain on this belief forever.
Your customers are online. You just have to employ strategies and put in the work to find them. The secret? Successful manufacturing digital marketing.
Why Manufacturing Digital Marketing is Essential for Your Business
Gone are the days of successful cold call sales or the hustle and bustle of trade shows. Consumers know they have options for whatever they need and, to an extent, they’re willing to work to find it. Consumers do more research than ever, but you have to show up in their results. Manufacturing digital marketing makes it possible.
Let’s review some of the top reasons why your business needs digital marketing.
Adapt to a New Buying Process
Your sales process has radically changed. How we interact with each other every day is different. Everything is digital now. The shift online already well under way was pushed over the finish line with the pandemic and we may never see face-to-face selling or trade shows succeed as they did again.
Think about early adopters. The ones who embrace technology and new ideas first. Now think about their antithesis — late adopters. The luddites slow to come around to new ideas and the latest technology. It’s now impossible to be a late adopter and be successful. You have to have a successful online presence to survive. No more avoiding crossing the digital divide. Customer behavior is different forever now, and there’s no turning back.
Establish Credibility
While COVID-19 gets all the credit, the manufacturing buying process was already beginning to shift. Think about what the workforce looks like. Older generations are starting to retire as younger ones begin to take over.
Potential customers now complete massive amounts of their own research. They’re less interested in speaking to a salesperson. They want to get to know you on their own terms without any pressure.
Earn their trust by establishing yourself as an industry thought-leader and expert. Position yourself as a valuable part of their online buying journey. Provide them with the answers they need to solve their problems.
Build Loyalty
Manufacturing sales is a notoriously slow process. The key to success lies within your ability to build strong rapport with your potential customers. Digital marketing allows you to stay in regular contact with new and prospective customers alike.
Whether keeping in touch through email campaigns or regular posts on social media, sharing more with customers helps you. As you share more with them, they consider you to be more credible. As you become more credible, they’re more likely to trust and choose you.
Set Yourself Apart from Competitors
In a niche market like yours, your customers already know what they’re looking for and why they need it. You don’t necessarily need to tell them about your products. You need to tell them why to choose you. Establish credibility through blogs and case studies to share your expertise. Show off your company culture through feature pages and social media.
Failing to provide customers with reasons why to choose you over your competitors means you ultimately fail yourself. Potential customers with no association or previous connection to your brand likely make their choice on price alone. If you offer the best price, excellent!
However, you may have a higher price but a better value and that means customers need to read your story. They don’t want or need a salesperson. The want to consume what you have to offer at their pace.
Expand Your Online Presence
Users expect to be able find you online. They expect to find you on a few different social media platforms. They’re already looking for you. Guide them to you with the help of manufacturing digital marketing. Research the phrases people use to find your specific product or service. These specific words matter more than your sales language. If you don’t use the words they use, they’ll never find you. You won’t even have the chance to deliver your strongest selling point.
Consumers know they have options, no matter how small your niche is. Be visible at all parts of the sales funnel. Be present wherever they’re researching your product or service. The consumer’s buying journey is more fragmented than ever before. It spans a longer length of time across more platforms and more devices than many businesses plan for.
Generate More Qualified Leads
Maybe you have too much website traffic but not enough leads. Perhaps you have no traffic at all so you have no leads. You might have plenty of leads but no actual sales. Manufacturing digital marketing allows you to better target your most valuable and profitable audience.
Stop marketing to everyone. Hone in on your ideal customer with successful manufacturing digital marketing. Use the data to research the qualities of your best leads. You may not realize it, but you probably have the data you need to develop a pretty accurate persona for your most ideal customers. Digital marketing offers laser-precision targeting for your best customers. It’s hunting with a finely tuned laser, not a shotgun.
Not all leads are the same. Tracking your lead-to-sale conversion isn’t as complicated as many people make it. Once you determine the patter of what leads convert better and where they come from, you will be on the precipice of a giant leap in reducing your marketing costs.
Working with a Manufacturing Digital Marketing Agency
Connect with industry experts to help you where you need it most. A manufacturing digital marketing agency presents you with a direct line to expertise. They build a process for digital marketing success like you build an assembly process.
Why Do I Need a Manufacturing Digital Marketing Agency?
No need spend your time trying to learn what digital strategies work. They change too fast. An experienced digital agency has a continually revised playbook revolving around proven methods that work. It would take you years and lots of money to catch up and match their expertise on your own.
Manufacturing is all about effective and efficient processes. Digital marketing works the same way. If you do one thing incorrectly, it skews all of your results. Working with a digital marketing agency the whole process from the strategy to the content creation to the content and advertising distribution is done in the most efficient manner.
The assembly process of digital marketing produces a very valuable byproduct – data. That data is the key to refinement. You have to set up the right data collection tools, and you have to do it correctly. And of course, you have to know how to analyze the data.
This is where a digital agency can propel your success. An astute agency reads the data to adjust your strategy in near real time. Faster corrections save money and improve efficiency.
Better data leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to better results. Where manufacturers typically stumble in doing digital marketing in house is missing the signs this data presents.
Why you should rely on Google Analytics data
Google Analytics isn’t a digital marketing method per se, but it’s a critical tool to acquaint yourself with. This free tool from Google helps you track and interpret essential data on your website. Tracking key performance indicators, or KPIs, reveals the success of your efforts. Easily analyze what is and isn’t working. Monitor the how effected the methods you test are.
Can I Just Hire an In-House Expert Instead?
Hiring an in-house manufacturing digital marketing expert seems like an appealing solution. You have your own personal expert on your team. You’re the only company they worry about, allowing them to truly get to know your brand. For many, upper management also enjoy being able to keep an eye on their marketing expert.
However, the cons of hiring an in-house expert outweigh the pros. For starters, working with just one in-house marketing person limits your resources and expertise. An agency allows you to tap in to the skills and experience of many people for just one price. Speaking of price, the cost of an agency’s monthly retainer is often much less than an in-house expert’s salary.
Best of all, working with an agency saves you time. No, you’re not completely off the hook from weighing in on important decisions. But an agency does mean no longer spending your free time tirelessly researching the latest marketing trends. No more trying to force generic trends to work for your niche industry. It also eliminates the time you would spend training or monitoring an in-house expert.
How Do I Choose a Manufacturing Digital Marketing Agency?
Deciding to work with a manufacturing digital marketing agency is exciting, but may even feel scary. Where do you even start? How do you know the agency is the right one for you? Do what your buyers do — research.
Look for Niche Agencies
You have a wealth of choices for digital marketing agencies. However, why not work with an agency who already understands the ins and outs of your business? Look for a niche agency. When you work with a manufacturing digital marketing agency, both you and the agency win. You have the added peace of mind that they understand your unique industry. They get to demonstrate their skills and tap in to their existing knowledge to deliver you the best results.
Check Their Reviews
You can’t deny the power of word-of-mouth. Whether they love or hate something, when people are passionate about something, they want to talk about it. Browse their website for reviews as well as simply searching Google.
Long-standing agencies are successful for a reason. It should be easy for you to find testimonials straight from their clients. Pour over each review and consider what could apply to your business.
Search for Case Studies or Examples
Dive into their website. Get to know their work better. Any long-standing manufacturing digital marketing agency should have plenty of case studies or examples of their success. See if they’ve worked with any niche manufacturing clients with you. Search for specifics of how they helped them or the results they achieved. This is a good sign they could help you.
Talk to Them
Any manufacturing digital marketing agency worth their weight should be happy to talk to you and demonstrate their expertise. Not only can you get to know them better, but you have the chance to ask them tough questions. Ask them to analyze your current digital assets. Pick their brain about your current strengths and weaknesses as well as ideas of how they could help you. Also, if you couldn’t easily find case studies or examples of their work, request them.
Watch for Red Flags
As you choose your manufacturing digital marketing agency, trust your gut. Avoid companies who are difficult to reach even for a simple discussion. If they’re hard to reach to discuss possibly working together, what happens if you have a marketing emergency?
One of the biggest red flags are false promises. Manufacturing digital marketing is a strategic process, but you can’t guarantee exact results. If an agency promises you exact — and huge — numbers within a specific timeframe, run.
Manufacturing Digital Marketing Methods for You
“Manufacturing digital marketing” means a lot of different things. The core lies within strategic efforts to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. While the manufacturing sales process varies from the traditional process, the same idea rings true.
Here are some of the essential manufacturing digital marketing tools and strategies to include in your strategy for success.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You cannot have successful digital marketing campaign without a strong SEO strategy at the core. Every aspect of this carefully crafted custom strategy helps you reach your most ideal target audience. Your product exists within an extremely niche market, and you have an equally niche ideal customer. Ensure they find you through effective SEO techniques.
Good SEO strategies help you rank higher on Google, beating out your competitors and helping you attract more leads. More users see you on their buying journey, ranging from broad to specific searches. Higher rankings on Google also reflect your website’s credibility, reinforcing your place as a trusted name within your industry.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns/Paid Search
Standard SEO methods are unpaid efforts to improve your rankings on Google. However, with the help of expert Orlando PPC management, you pay to appear higher in the results with pay-per-click-advertising . Experts develop these strategic campaigns to target carefully researched and chosen keywords. This helps you better reach your extremely specific audiences.
PPC advertising also allows you to test certain keywords or phrases to see how audiences respond. You can also test things like:
- Appeals
- Messages
- Visuals
Think of it like quality testing for manufacturing digital marketing. By seeing how audiences engage with certain PPC results, your marketing experts better craft and strengthen your SEO strategy.
Content Marketing
In many cases, buyers now prefer to do their own research rather than speak with a salesperson. They want to get to know your company, your products and, most of all, why they should choose you.
That’s where content marketing comes in.
Good content reigns supreme within the manufacturing digital marketing space. Well-developed content pages and blogs solidify your expertise to buyers. The best approach to content marketing, however, goes beyond just what you offer.
Manufacturing digital marketing blogs offer a range of benefits. Expand how you educate prospects on complicated purchases or niche products. Guide users as they research your products and recommend why your products are the best. Beyond helping users, blogs help you. Just like users crave new and engaging content, Google does too. Well-written original copy targeting a specific keyword helps with your rankings.
Content marketing today takes many forms, including video. YouTube is the second largest search engine. Users are more likely to share video content rather than written content. Don’t miss out on critical opportunities to engage users. Videos can be as simple as product explanations or warehouse tours shot on your smartphone! Take things a step further by exploring livestream video options to engage you audience in a new way.
Email Marketing
Manufacturing sales revolve around strong relationships built over many discussions. How does that translate into the digital space? Email marketing.
Strategic email campaigns remain one of the most powerful and effective ways to build rapport. Stay in contact with potential customers, engaging them through the entire long sales cycle. The relationships you create through well-crafted email campaigns turn those leads into customers.
As you develop your email marketing strategy, it’s critical to consider your most ideal customer. Focus on inbound strategies rather than outbound strategies. Inbound strategies target smaller groups who consented to receiving messaging and show greater potential to convert. On the other hand, outbound strategies cast a wider net. However, you’re wasting time and effort having one-way discussions with users who don’t care about what you’re saying.
Social Media
Many manufacturers look at social media as a marketing light weight. Our caution would be that what’s important to consumers, should be important to you. Consumers don’t expect you to be on every platform. However, they do expect to find you on at least three or four platforms. Common platforms to choose include:
Consider your target audience and most ideal customer. What do their Internet habits look like? How much time do they spend online? What are they using social media to accomplish?
When using social media for digital marketing, you must plan your content. If you deliver well-planned and relevant content on a consistent basis, users are more likely to engage with you. Your consistent presence through posts, comments and replies enhances your credibility. Users like and trust you more.
Social media empowers you to meet users’ expectations. Consumers are much more visual, seeking engaging photo content or videos. In 2021, it’s critical for you to deliver key messages via visual mediums.
The Most Important Part of Your Digital Marketing
We’ve discussed some key ways to get the attention of new customers, but what do all of those techniques have in common? They are all heavily reliant on the effectiveness of your website. It’s the hub of all things digital marketing.
Good website design is more than just an attractive layout with good-looking elements. It involves the strategic mix of design, SEO and web development features to create a website wholly with users in mind. You need a website that tells users the info they want to know as fast as possible. The ultimate benchmark of any website is its conversion rate, the per centage of visitors that are persuaded to take the desired action.
In most cases the desired action is something that reveals that website visitor to you. If a website visitor fills out a form to request a quote or speak to a product specialist, that’s the digital marketing victory. It doesn’t matter how pretty a website is; what matters is how effective it is at generating leads.
Landing Pages
In 2024, you have be to nimble. Landing pages are highly specific pages created for a highly specific purpose like a specific search phrase. Remember, searchers have an expectation that they will find exactly what they are looking for. Landing pages cut to the chase. These pages often focus on just one subject, have a stronger focus on visuals and deliver direct, succinct messages. The goal of landing pages is to encourage users to contact you to learn more. They’re a powerful tool in the buying process.
The Messages Consumer Trust More than Yours
No matter how the world changes, word-of-mouth remains one of the most powerful forces in the buying process. Reviews from your clients speak are the digital version of word of mouth. Ask your previous and current clients to provide reviews on your Google My Business profile or on your website. When potential clients see others raving about you, they’re more likely to reach out to you.
Manufacturing Digital Marketing Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
You have a lot to consider when it comes to your next digital marketing steps. While a do-it-yourself approach may be tempting, it’s important to make a well-informed decision. No matter how much research you do, without expert assistance, there’s plenty of room for error.
Let’s discuss some of the most common mistakes to avoid when it comes to digital marketing.
Thinking You Don’t Need It
The biggest, worst mistake of all is to assume your business does not need digital marketing. Writing off digital marketing as a whole could be a grave mistake to your business. In fact, when you closely look at changes in consumer behavior, it could make future success an unpleasant struggle.
The buying process changed. While it may have already been shifting online, outside forces like COVID-19 accelerated that process. Face-to-face sales are practically over. Your online presence should be one of your best salespeople now to help you attract new leads.
Your industry’s sales process is notoriously slow, and people often correlate Internet markets with instant gratification. However, the slow nature of this industry’s sales process does not negate the need for digital marketing. In fact, digital marketing tools, such as email marketing, can help you nurture leads through regular, consistent contact.
Changes to the buying process call for changes in more than just how you meet your customers. Every aspect of customer behavior is different. For starters, buyers do way more research now – because they can They’re empowered. In fact, many buyers prefer to educate themselves on a brand or how to buy rather than speak with a sales rep.
Buyer research habits drive home how important it is to establish you’re credible. Many buyers decide on a brand they want to work with before they reach out to any vendor. It’s more important now than ever before to distinguish yourself from your competition. Good manufacturing digital marketing can do that for you.
Expecting Too Much Too Soon
Pursuing digital marketing with unrealistic expectations sets you up to be letdown. You need to approach your new endeavor with a realistic outlook. If you expect too much out of the gate, you’ll convince yourself digital marketing failed you.
Manufacturing digital marketing cannot create overnight success. Your digital marketing, especially your SEO efforts, are a marathon, not a sprint. Investing in long term strategies is more likely to achieve the lasting results you want. Much like your sales cycle, digital marketing can be a slow process. It requires consistent effort, time and patience. However, with the right strategic techniques, you achieve success.
Devaluing the Role of in Digital Marketing
Picture it: it’s time to create the annual budget. As you review expenses, where would you place manufacturing digital marketing? Is it just another invoice to pay, or is it an essential service for your company’s success?
If you chose essential service, you’re correct. Digital marketing is more than just an expense. It’s a long-term investment in your business. Your digital marketing strategies foster the growth of your company, attracting and converting more valuable leads.
It’s important to keep in mind not every digital marketing tactic requires spending extra money on media. Yes, methods like PPC campaigns do require regular monthly media spends, but not every part of a digital campaign is dependent on media dollars. That’s why it’s so important to work with manufacturing digital marketing experts. They know how to help you get your money’s worth to increase your ROI and maximize your bottom line.
Being a Bottleneck to Progress
Holding out for perfection can be seriously detrimental to your digital marketing strategy. Great digital marketing is based on a testing mindset. Experts research the best methods, test them, monitor their success, and adjust as needed. Even when your strategy is successful, it still includes defined tests to refine results even further.
Partnering with a manufacturing digital marketing agency requires several things from you to build the foundation for success. Educate them on the subtleties of your product and your space in the marketplace. Competitor analysis greatly influences your strategy, so it’s important for your partner to understand them.
Reviewing your strategy is important, but can easily hold up progress. To keep things moving, establish and agree on a clear metrics and scheduled review sessions with your agency.
Deciding the person within your company responsible for reviewing is just as important as achieving this review agreement. Avoid putting all of these duties in the hands of the highest-level C-suite positions. It can impede your strategy. A key benefit of digital marketing is how quickly you can test messages and respond to changes in patterns. Don’t sacrifice speed in the name of layered reviews.
Failing to Monitor Your Progress
As convenient as it would be, manufacturing digital marketing is not a “set it and forget it” process. It requires consistent checking of KPIs. When you work with an agency, they should provide you with regular reports covering metrics such as:
- Leads
- Organic Traffic
- Website Visitors or Users
- Conversion Rate
- Number of Sessions
- Bounce Rate
- Cost Per Lead
- Cost Per Click
KPIs indicate potential issues with your current strategy and areas of to improve. If you never set and check benchmarks for your strategy, you could miss key chances for success.
These areas of improvement emphasize the importance of working with an agency where real people work on your strategy. Put your marketing in the hands of experts with an eye for testing and detail, not software automation.
Trying to Do Too Much All at Once
Focus is one of the most important things in manufacturing digital marketing. Your strategy needs to be well-planned and cohesive. Edit your strategy down to focus on the most important and measurable goals.
Effective spending requires deciding your priorities. You have an ocean of digital marketing opportunities, and navigating them on your own may overwhelm you. A good digital marketing partner helps you determine your company’s edge in your market. For example, you may have internal team members who can produce valuable written content or you may have a healthy permission-based email list. Each of those would be a factor in your digital marketing plan.
With manufacturing digital marketing, your goal is delivering the right message to your ideal customer at the right time. You don’t need to attempt every method to be successful. You don’t need to be in every place online, just where your most ideal customers are.
How to Get Started with Manufacturing Digital Marketing
If you’ve let manufacturing digital marketing fall to the wayside, it may feel daunting to embark on the process. However, tap into your own expertise and skills. If you take an analytical, step-by-step approach to your marketing, you easily set yourself on the path for success.
Here are a few ways to begin or revamp your manufacturing digital marketing.
Analyze Your Current Situation
Step one is data collection. Are you confident you are collecting reliable data like These metrics may include:
- Cost Per Lead
- Cost Per Sale
- Website Conversion Rate
- Lead-to-sale Conversion Rate
If you don’t know have easy access to these numbers, it’s an indicator for you to seek expert assistance.
Here are a few more steps to complete an in-depth analysis of your current manufacturing digital marketing.
Evaluate Your Current Website
Your website should be your top salesperson. Just like in-person sales, you need to make an immediate first impression. Ask yourself how well your current website does this.
Some questions to ask yourself include:
- When is the last time you updated your website with any new content?
- Is it visibly an outdated design?
- Does it load quickly?
- Can you use it on a mobile device?
- Does it bring in any traffic? Any leads?
Let’s review what your answers to these questions indicate.
If you can’t remember the last time you added content to your website, you’re long overdue for an update. New content, such as blogs or product listings, help build your credibility.
As buyers research companies, your website is your first impression. Customers want the latest technology and products. Your website should reflect your modern capabilities, no matter how dated your product may be.
Website users crave an effortless user experience. They want intuitive design that easily tells them what they want to know. Most of all, they don’t want to work or wait for it. If your website doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less, over half of your users are likely to leave.
Over half of users perform searches on mobile devices, and the number only continues to grow. It’s critical your website seamlessly translates to the mobile user experience.
Maybe your website draws traffic, but doesn’t convert any leads. Perhaps you do attract leads, but they aren’t good fits for your company. Worst of all, maybe your current website doesn’t bring in traffic at all. Any of these examples indicate it’s time to overhaul your website.
Analyze Your Current Strategy
Take a look at your current manufacturing digital marketing strategy. How did you develop your strategy? Did you seek any expert insight, or was it a guessing game based on your own research? Beyond how you achieved your current strategy, does it work well for you? Answering this requires defining what success means to you. For example, does your strategy consistently attract new leads?
Capturing data also plays into the success of your current strategy. Tools like Google Analytics capture critical data to track the success of your strategy. Properly using and understanding this tool can highlight your areas to improve.
Complete a SWOT Analysis
Expand your analysis beyond just your business. Use a classic marketing tool called the SWOT analysis. It forces you to look closer at your own business and competitors.
Four parts make up a SWOT analysis. They are:
- Strengths – what you do well, resources you have access to
- Weaknesses – areas to improve
- Opportunities – achievable areas where you can improve, trends to take advantage of
- Threats – what your competitors do, potential risks or hindrances to your success
Challenge yourself and your colleagues to develop a SWOT analysis together. Research your competitors. Complete an honest internal evaluation. White it may feel difficult, this will best serve you in the end.
Determine You Goals
Your manufacturing digital marketing strategy revolves around investing your efforts today in what you want to achieve tomorrow. To best inform your marketing strategy, you need to develop a list of goals for your business. Use your findings from your website and strategy evaluation and SWOT analysis to guide you in forming your goals.
We recommend using the time-tested and proven, SMART method for your goals. With this method, goals should be:
- Specific – Make your goals as clear as possible. Ideally your goal answers the 5 Ws — who, what when, where, and why?
- Measurable – Data is critical, and it is important the goal has reasonable parameters you can track.
- Achievable – Don’t limit yourself with your goals. However, be realistic given your time and resources.
- Relevant – Your goals should align with one another to influence a cohesive digital marketing strategy.
- Time-Bound – Give every goal a clear date of completion. Be firm with your deadline to prioritize your goal over other daily tasks.
Once you come up with your goals, consider how your current attitude toward manufacturing digital marketing impacts your success. For example, you set the goal to increase leads 10% by Q2. In a sense, your goal hits every SMART method requirement. However, is it realistically achievable without changing anything about your present strategy? Most likely the answer is no. It’s time to seek expert guidance.
Schedule a Manufacturing Digital Marketing Consultation
Speak directly with a manufacturing digital marketing expert to see how they can help you. Take advantage of the chance to pick the brain of a pro. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions about how to improve your digital marketing.
At ROAR! Internet Marketing, our greatest concerns are what drives the best results for you. We know how important efficiency is to manufacturers like you. We apply that same mindset when creating your custom manufacturing digital marketing strategy. Our results-driven approach created by real people focuses on what works best for you, not everyone else.
Don’t let yourself fall further behind in your manufacturing digital marketing efforts. Contact us today for a zero-obligation conversation. Don’t delay your start another day.