Marketing Plan for Manufacturing Companies
To connect with wholesalers, distributors, and other businesses, manufacturing companies need to develop and implement multifaceted marketing campaigns that span multiple digital channels.
Manufacturing businesses, in particular, need to focus on B2B marketing strategies that help establish themselves as authorities in their industries while elevating themselves above their competitors.
With the right marketing plan in place, you can build brand awareness, encourage long-term customer loyalty, and grow your market share.
Here’s what you need to know about developing a marketing plan for your manufacturing company.
Developing a Manufacturing Marketing Plan
Like businesses in other industries, manufacturing companies need to focus largely on digital marketing to acquire and convert leads. While brochures, direct mail marketing, and print ads can get results, they are less targeted and make it more difficult for businesses to appeal directly to their target customers.
Here is how manufacturing companies can develop an effective digital marketing plan.
1. Set goals
First, it's important to establish attainable goals for your marketing strategy.
For example, you may want to double your market share over the next five years, increase revenue from $10 million to $13 million, or generate more sales in specific markets.
Your goals will determine the direction of your marketing strategy. They will influence which marketing channels you utilize and what type of content you create.
By establishing both short-term and long-term goals, you can start to work backwards to figure out how to get to where you want your company to go.
2. Perform market research
Market research will help you determine how to stand out from your competition, what marketing channels you should rely on, and what your target audience wants and needs from your business.
When performing market research, you need to establish your:
● Primary competitors: Determine who your competitors are. What channels do they advertise on? What do they offer that you don’t? How are your products or services better?
● Target audience: Before developing a marketing strategy, you need to know who your target audience is, what they want, what they need, and what their preferences are. Find out what their purchasing habits are and what platforms they spend most of their time on.
● Keywords: Keyword research will help you create relevant content that provides value to your target audience. On top of finding competitive keywords that your competition is targeting, you should also find long-tail key phrases with less competition to generate more short-term business.
Thorough market research is the key to creating an effective marketing plan for any manufacturing company.
3. Digital marketing strategies
Digital marketing is essential for any modern business. It helps companies drive website traffic, build brand awareness, acquire new leads, and generate more conversions.
There are several important components of digital marketing, including:
● Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is all about driving organic traffic to your company’s website. This includes using keywords and key phrases on your website and throughout all of your marketing content to target consumers interested in your products and services.
● Pay-per-click (PPC): PPC helps businesses generate paid traffic through paid digital ads. This includes paying for ads on sites like Google, Facebook, and Bing. PPC advertising allows manufacturing companies to target specific audiences across a variety of marketing channels.
● Content marketing: Content is king when it comes to digital marketing. Video marketing, in particular, is a great way for manufacturing companies to connect with distributors, wholesalers, and consumers through entertaining and informative content. Content marketing should consist of blog posts, social media content, and marketing videos.
● Email marketing: Email marketing is a great digital alternative to direct mail marketing. Manufacturing companies can nurture leads by sending relevant content right to their inboxes.
Together, these four marketing strategies help manufacturers build larger followings and generate more qualified leads.
4. Optimize your website
Your website plays an important role in converting leads into sales. It should be fast, user-friendly, SEO-friendly, and should be home to a wide range of useful and informative content, including blog posts, FAQs, videos, and anything else that might provide value to your customers.
Test your website to make sure all buttons and links work as intended. Test your page load speed to make sure it doesn’t take longer than it should. Forty percent of users leave websites if they take longer than three seconds to load.
Your website should also be mobile-friendly. Websites that do not work well on mobile are not only less desirable for users, but they are also less likely to be ranked highly on Google or other search engines.
5. Trade shows
Trade shows are valuable marketing opportunities for manufacturing companies. Appearing at trade shows can help manufacturers increase brand awareness and establish themselves as authorities in their industries.
Trade shows also give manufacturing companies the opportunity to meet face-to-face with several potential clients, which can lead to an increase in sales revenue.
6. Track performance metrics
After your marketing plan has been implemented, it’s important to track its performance over time and make changes as needed to improve your results.
By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), you can see your campaign’s progress in real-time and identify ways to improve your marketing strategy.
To measure the impact of your marketing plan on website traffic, you can track your customer retention rate, average search engine rankings, organic traffic, and clicks on paid ads.
For conversion tracking, you can keep an eye on phone calls, email list opt-ins, web form requests, website bounce rates, and the average amount of time visitors spend on your website.
Work With Digital Spark Studios
Marketing plans for manufacturing companies should focus on building brand awareness and establishing long-term relationships with clients. Video marketing plays a major role in allowing manufacturers to connect with other businesses and achieve results through relevant, targeted content.
At Digital Spark Studios, we work with companies in the manufacturing industry to help them plan and produce B2B marketing content that helps them achieve their long-term business goals.
Contact us today to learn more about our professional manufacturing video production services.
