Launch an effective digital marketing strategy for manufacturing

If you own or manage a small or medium-sized business in the manufacturing industry, you’re probably looking for ways to improve your digital marketing strategy. After all, digital channels such as email marketing, social media, and website design are more important than ever and a major part of a sound and solid marketing plan.

Nevertheless, manufacturing companies are not the only companies prioritizing digital marketing to gain competitive advantage in a dynamic and rapidly changing space. Just check out the following digital marketing statistics for 2022:

• Email marketing offers, on average, a return of $44 for every dollar spent.

• A whopping 98% of sales reps who have 5,000+ LinkedIn connections meet or exceed their sales quotas.

• More than 1.5 billion people shop online every year.

Your current and potential customers are online, which means you need to be there too. Here we share six key steps to take to launch an effective digital marketing campaign for your manufacturing business:

Launch an Effective Digital Marketing Campaign in 6 Steps

Step 1: Define your strategy

Marketing is a must in business – it’s a widely accepted reality. This does not mean that an organization’s marketing goals are all the same.

While most manufacturers will have universal marketing interests such as driving sales and building their corporate brand, they will also have unique objectives, such as recruiting employees, attracting new suppliers, or product diversification. Being very clear about your overall goals and your strategy will help you best optimize your marketing efforts.

Step 2: Know your audience

Digital marketing is an essential tool for manufacturing companies, allowing them to reach a large audience of potential customers and which is not limited by physical borders. However, digital marketing is only effective if marketers take the time to understand their audience.

A thorough understanding of these different aspects is essential. It allows businesses to create digital marketing campaigns that speak directly to their target audience.

Step 3: Create quality content

So what constitutes quality content in manufacturing? When identifying content, it’s always helpful to consider your readers’ pain points and how you can help address them. For instance:

• What types of questions does your sales team receive?

• What queries arrive in your general inbox and social media accounts?

If you see common themes, that’s a good starting point for creating content that will proactively answer those questions. There are standard topics that all manufacturing companies should keep a close eye on. Produce quality at scale. Predictable lead times. Cost management. Find creative ways to approach these topics in a relevant and useful way.

Step 4: Optimize for search engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential part of the digital marketing framework. SEO is the process of making your website more visible to potential customers who use search engines like Google and Bing. By incorporating keywords and phrases related to your product or service, your site is more likely to appear in the top results when someone searches for those terms.

Step 5: Use social media to reach more people

There are several reasons why your organization should be active on social media.

First, social media platforms provide an efficient and cost-effective way to reach potential customers. You can also use social media to build valuable customer relationships and build brand loyalty. Finally, social media platforms offer powerful tools for tracking customer behavior and measuring the success of marketing campaigns.

What platforms should your business be active on to reach your audience? This goes back to step one, which requires knowing your audience and where they hang out.

Step 6: Measure your results and adjust your strategy if necessary

Sales teams are notorious for using “always close” as a rallying cry. The marketing folks put their own twist on it saying, “Always test.” This speaks to the rich and valuable insights provided by reviewing the data.

There are a number of different metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns, including website traffic, leads generated, and conversion rate. By tracking these metrics, manufacturing companies can better understand which digital marketing strategies are working and which are not. Then they can adjust the course accordingly.

It’s time to go digital

Is your organization looking to up its digital marketing game? There’s no need to go it alone, not when there’s a huge world of marketing software and platforms out there designed to support your digital marketing journey – 1,734 such tools, to be precise. From campaign management to marketing analytics to lead generation, these tools have you covered.

You can research, review, and compare many types of technologies, including content management, customer relationship management, and manufacturing. There’s no shortage of options when it comes to finding software solutions that best meet your organization’s needs.