The UK manufacturing scene is booming, hitting a 30-year high in 2021. While production roars, competition roars louder. Many manufacturers prioritise scaling output, leaving digital marketing on the back burner. Big mistake!
Forget relying solely on trade shows and outdated tactics. 70% of manufacturing shipments happen online! Today’s B2B buyers crave personalisation and nimble supply chains, both hallmarks of a strong digital presence.
Ready to rethink your approach and stay ahead of the curve? Buckle up! This guide explores how digital marketing can supercharge your manufacturing business.
Forget print ads and phone calls – digital marketing is the new powerhouse for B2B success. Coined in the 90s, it’s simply: marketing your products and services online through websites, email, social media, and other digital channels.
Why the shift? The buying journey has transformed. Today’s savvy B2B buyers research online – a whopping 59% do so before hitting “buy.” They seek personalized options and nimble supply chains, both fueled by a strong digital presence.
So, are you ready to join the digital revolution? Dive deeper into three key strategies:
This is just the beginning! Mastering these strategies will supercharge your manufacturing business.
The stereotype paints manufacturing as a dull, industrial landscape. But let’s be honest, from spaceships to smartphones, every innovation starts right here! So, why not showcase the excitement and passion behind your brand? In today’s competitive market, where demand soars but some still see declines, digital marketing holds the key.
Here’s why it matters:
Ready to unlock the true potential of your manufacturing brand? Stay tuned for specific digital marketing strategies and examples tailored to your industry.
In a perfect world, manufacturers would make it their mission to show off their products and technical capabilities at any given opportunity. However, the reality is that most manufacturers are reluctant to boast about their successes and would rather let the numbers speak for them. Yes, the numbers are important – particularly in such a results-driven industry – but branding is a big part of standing out from the competition.
What makes your business unique? How do you want your customers to perceive you? You need to give potential customers a reason to choose you when your competitors offer the same products and services. Using a highly impersonal tone of voice when sharing information about your brand is unlikely to generate the number of quality leads you’re looking for, or at least not long-lasting relationships.
Branding is a big part of standing out from the competition
To build strong connections with prospective customers and also retain existing ones, manufacturers need to humanise themselves. Whether it’s sharing your goals, founder’s story or unique offerings, you need to use your digital channels to connect with customers. Remember, it’s not just about the product and what you can do! It’s all about building a story and creating content that resonates and ultimately converts into leads.
If you’re a B2B company, the buyer’s journey will likely be much different to that of a B2C company. Building trust with retailers is extremely important as research highlights that many retailers actively seek and develop alternative sources of supply and leave manufacturers in the dark.
Don’t forget, that building trust is a two-way street. However, given the fact that the balance of power is constantly shifting between retailers and manufacturers, it is often up to the manufacturer to lay the foundation and make the first move.
When manufacturers build high trust with retailers, retailers are 22% less likely to develop alternative sources of supply. Of course, this benefits the manufacturer, but high trust benefits the retailer as well. Retailers who had high trust in manufacturers reported sales of the manufacturer’s product line of up to 78% higher than those with low trust in their manufacturer. So, building trust and creating a strong brand identity pays off for both retailers and manufacturers.
When it comes to market, “there is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market” – Phillip Kotler.
It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on your marketing campaign or how aesthetically pleasing your website is. At the end of the day, it’s all about making sure that your campaigns reach your target audience.
Creating a personalised and well-thought-out digital marketing strategy will ensure that you reach the right customers.
Given that manufacturing is almost exclusively B2B, lead generation is an integral part of the buying journey. 53% of marketers say that at least half of their budget is dedicated to generating leads, with 37% using marketing automation to generate quality leads.
There are so many moving parts involved in lead generation and – let’s face it – marketing in general. So understandably, it’s not always easy to know where to start. But that’s where digital marketing for manufacturing comes in.
At the top of the agenda for many manufacturers is the drive to boost quality, productivity and innovation – all of which are important. However, there also needs to be an emphasis placed on marketing – or digital marketing – for that matter.
Competition in the manufacturing industry has intensified. There are around 270,000 businesses in the manufacturing sector in the UK, with just over 500 of these being large manufacturers. It’s not just about survival; it’s about adapting to the digital shift.
So, which digital strategies can you use to stay competitive?
SEO is arguably the backbone of any digital marketing strategy. Through citation alignment and personalising your Google My Business profile, you can open up new opportunities for your business to get you in front of prospective customers. Plus, SEO also provides long-lasting results which can make it a mid-long strategy for your business.
One of the easiest wins in SEO is optimising your website for keywords that users are searching for that relate to your product or solution throughout your website and any content that you create – for instance, ‘textile manufacturer’. This will help you to increase your organic rankings for relevant terms to help prospective customers find your website.
Usually, manufacturers’ sites are video and image-heavy. In theory, this is a great way to generate new leads. However, the reality is that this may slow down your website and harm your rankings. Keeping the speed of the site high is vital these days as users are impatient and will leave the site if the page doesn’t load immediately. With each additional second of load time, conversion rates drop by 4.42%.
Increase your organic rankings for relevant terms to help prospective customers find your website.
Additionally, videos should be supported with the video schema that helps Google to understand better your video, as it might lead to displaying your video within the search results. If you are not familiar with video schema, it’s essentially a piece of code that is applied to your website that signals to Google that your video is just that – a video. Therefore, Google can serve it to a user that it believes may benefit from viewing it.
In an industry where order values are typically high and customers are looking for an expert company to invest in, it’s important to increase your website’s domain authority. Every website has a domain authority. It’s essentially a number – or score – associated with your website that indicates your relevance in your specific subject or industry.
A key way of increasing your domain authority is through a strong backlink strategy. Every time another website links back to your website, your domain authority should begin to creep up. Reaching out to relevant publications with interesting news about your company, exciting projects or thought-leadership articles is the best way to do this. Remember, quality over quantity!
Don’t just think of your website as a digital brochure. It’s a place to establish yourself as a thought leader, to show users that they will be dealing with people, not robots and, most importantly, a place to convert leads.
94% of first impressions are based on web design. So, it’s worth taking the time to invest in improving your website’s navigation structure – both on desktop and mobile. Your business is probably pretty complex, but keep it as simple as possible. For example, you can break content down into fewer categories such as:
Ideally, no menu should have no more than three tiers and the main navigation should have between 4-5 navigation items. Also, try to avoid positioning words that are similar to one another, such as ‘Service’ and ‘Support’, as this can be tricky for users to read. And another thing! Be careful to not use terms that are vague on their own like ‘Applications’ and ‘Solutions’ because it can be difficult for users to figure out what the difference is. Any other potentially helpful resources can be placed in the footer of your website.
No menu should have no more than three tiers and the main navigation should have between 4-5 navigation items
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. If you’re contacting a manufacturing website, you want to know that you’ll be filtered through to the correct person and not lost in the general enquiry pile. Make sure you have a clearly labelled contact form specific to the page the user is enquiring from.
If you offer support or warranty, it should be a prominent feature as it suggests longevity and helps to build trust with customers. Any partner logos should also be prominent, as this helps to establish legitimacy. And if you have case studies, showcase them on relevant pages. That way, you can demonstrate how the product works and how it helped to meet the customer’s needs or, in some cases, exceeded them. This is a critical part of the buying process and could be the difference between a retailer choosing you over your competitors.
Of course, manufacturing is an incredibly exciting industry, however, the machinery and day-to-day runnings of your shop floor may not be the most engaging thing to existing and prospective customers. A good content marketing strategy brings your business to life and showcases what you do excitingly.
Manufacturing can be quite complex. But thankfully, content marketing offers a way for you to make things understandable for your existing customers and prospective customers. By producing regular, high-quality content across your channels, you will establish your presence as an informative industry resource and, in turn, build trust. Remember, manufacturing customers don’t need the hard sell – they want to know that they are investing in a company that is a total expert in their field.
By producing regular, high-quality content across your channels, you will establish your presence as an informative industry resource
When done well, content marketing will give you a clear tone of voice (TOV) and strengthen your brand. This is important when attracting and appealing to your ideal customer and helping them form the right view of you. Being strong and consistent in your TOV will further build trust and familiarity with your current customers.
Blogging is still alive and kicking. B2B companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog. And if you want to further your position as a thought leader, use whitepapers! Plus, they can be used as gated content where users need to input an email address to receive the content and therefore leave you with an email database to nurture and harness.
To attract leads, it’s well worth investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. When done right, PPC can yield a significant return on investment.
PPC advertising is all about getting your ads to show at the top of SERPs and catching the attention of potential clients. Using different channels, you can target users based on a variety of past searches and behaviours. This then allows you to guide users from higher up the conversion funnel to lower down the funnel and ultimately generate new leads.
PPC advertising can encompass every stage of the conversion funnel. For instance, you can bid on broader keywords to raise customer awareness of your business. Once customers are aware of your offering, your next step should be to entice rather than educate. At this point in the buyer’s journey, users will know what they are looking for, but won’t necessarily know which manufacturer they want to go with. So, it’s important to make sure that you appear at the top of SERPs to pick up traffic from the increased brand interest.
It’s equally important to target users across the display network with visual ads based on their recent searches, websites they visited, and other interests they have shown on Google. This helps to target users. 68% of marketers say that display advertising is important to their overall marketing strategy.
Appear at the top of SERPs to pick up traffic from the increased brand interest
Engaged users who don’t convert fully into customers or leads may need a final gentle nudge in the right direction. Try targeting them with follow-up display ads to entice them back to the site. Plus, you can use this type of campaign to advertise new offerings to previous leads and to remind users who have shown an interest in your business who you are and why they should get in contact.
Email marketing is another string to add to the content marketing bow. Think of email as somewhere else to create and distribute your content and enforce your TOV.
Email marketing also allows you to easily personalise customer experiences – an invaluable tool in strengthening your relationship with customers – be it onboarding new customers, sending out emails for customers with a certain type of product, or targeting inactive leads.
The other good thing about email marketing is that it’s easily measurable. Most email marketing platforms offer a wealth of data such as open rates, unsubscribe rates and more so that you can track the success of your efforts and learn more about the behaviours of your email list.
If you’re worried that email marketing may not be the right solution for a manufacturing company, think again. Click-through rates are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C. Investing in email marketing is something that every manufacturer should consider.
In today’s digital landscape, if you want to reach more customers and generate more buzz around your products and services, it’s well worth taking the time to invest in social media marketing.
An empty and inactive social media channel for a business can be damaging to your reputation. It’s all about communication. Use the space to monitor and respond to any questions and mentions about your company and treat it as an extension of your customer service.
For the manufacturing industry especially, LinkedIn provides the perfect place to distribute your thought-leader content and enforce your TOV and brand image. It’s the key channel for manufacturing as this is where other businesses live. It is essentially a network for professionals. Make yourself heard by regularly sharing useful industry content on LinkedIn for current and potential customers to be impressed by.
LinkedIn provides the perfect place to distribute your thought-leader content and enforce your TOV and brand image
Don’t shy away from other social media platforms either! Even if you don’t feel your company is ‘exciting’ or consumer-focused enough, you can use social media to show your human side – not just tech and robots. Facebook, for example, is good for showcasing your company culture – whether it’s what’s going on in your offices or the factory floor, job vacancies, or charity work.
Should you outsource your digital marketing? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.
Building a killer digital marketing strategy in-house sounds perfect on paper. You have full control, know your company inside-out, and can access assets instantly. But let’s be honest, manufacturing is complex. Bringing an agency up to speed takes time and resources.
Here’s why partnering with a dedicated agency committed to manufacturing can be game-changing:
Ready to unlock the full potential of digital marketing for your manufacturing business?
We specialise in crafting data-driven, results-oriented digital marketing strategies tailored to the unique needs of manufacturers.
Contact us today and discover how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
Ready to take your digital presence to the next level? We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with our team of experts today for a free consultation. We can discuss your goals, answer any questions you have, and craft a customised strategy to help you achieve online success. Get in touch via [email protected].
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