Digital Marketing For Manufacturers: Evenbound's Exhaustive Guide
If you're new here, you're about to learn a whole lot about digital marketing for manufacturers. If you're not new here, then you know we've been working with manufacturers since day one. In all of the years we've been supporting manufacturing companies with digital marketing services, we've used what we've learned to develop, publish, edit, and republish dozens of blogs about digital marketing best practices for manufacturers.
In this Exhaustive Guide to Digital Marketing for Manufacturers, we've gone ahead and pulled out just the very best blogs from our years of experience, and combined them into one comprehensive guide.
How to Use The Guide: It's comprehensive. That also means it's long. Read through it from start to finish, or use the menu below to jump to the topics you're most interested in.
A Quick Note: The Exhaustive Guide to Digital Marketing For Manufacturers is split into inbound and outbound marketing sections. If you know us (Inbound + Outbound = Evenbound) you know that we believe inbound and outbound marketing together produce the highest quality results for our clients. Check out this blog for more info on the Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing debate.
All right, let's get to it!
Menu: Digital Marketing for Manufacturers
- Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers
- Outbound Marketing for Manufacturers
- Case Studies: Digital Marketing For Manufacturers
Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers
20 Blogs To Help You Get Your Manufacturing Company's Digital Marketing Strategy Off the Ground
Word of mouth marketing just isn't doing it for manufacturers anymore. I'm willing to bet that's why you're here. Maybe your company was the first to develop a revolutionary part or component. Maybe you've been on top of the industry for decades, but are starting to see the leads dry up. Whatever your concern, most manufacturers struggle with a common issue — your leads are looking for your products online now, and you just don't have an online presence you're proud of. That's where inbound marketing comes in. Inbound marketing:
- Helps you draw in more of the right leads
- Boosts your digital presence
- Improves your position in the market
- Can get you in front of your competitors in search results
If you've ever asked someone:
- How to get on the first page of Google
- How to make your name show up ahead of your competitor's
- How to get the leads to call you
Then inbound marketing is your answer. This guide to digital marketing for manufacturers starts with inbound marketing because that is the methodology that will set you apart online and help you draw in more of the right leads. Each of these resources will help you improve on a specific part of your manufacturing company's inbound marketing strategy, starting with how you define your buyer personas.
Market to the right people:
Start With Your Buyer Personas
It's hard to have a good digital marketing strategy if you don't know who you're marketing to.
If you're not very familiar with buyer personas, start with the first blog. If you've heard of them, but want help figuring out how to define them, go with the step-by-step guide.
Inbound marketing for manufacturers:
The Basics
Now that you know who you're marketing to, you can dive into the how-tos of inbound marketing. Remember that inbound marketing is all about working smarter, not harder. The goal here is to draw more of the right leads to your website and manufacturing company, so your marketing and sales team can focus their efforts on converting those leads to sales. Here are some of the basics to know about inbound marketing: Why Inbound Marketing:
- What's the ROI of Inbound Marketing?
- Why Inbound Marketers are the Right Choice for B2B Manufacturers
- Inbound Marketing for Industrial Manufacturers
Inbound Marketing Tips & Tricks for Manufacturers:
- 5 Essential Inbound Marketing Tools for Manufacturers
- 10 Inbound Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking
Convert More of the Right Leads:
Functional Website Design & Intuitive Lead Generation
Inbound marketing revolves around your website. Why? It's the only space you own on the internet. Your website is the place where you can convert all of those visitors into leads. To do that, it needs to be functional. A mix of lead generation strategies and website design tips can help you draw more of the right visitors to your site, and then convert them into leads.
Bringing the Right People in With Lead Generation Strategies for Manufacturers:
- 4 Lead Generation Strategies That Deliver Measurable Growth for Manufacturers
- 5 Outbound Lead Generation Best Practices
Why Your Manufacturing Website Isn't Working:
- 5 Reasons Why Your B2B Website Isn't Generating Leads
- 3 Ways Your B2B Manufacturing Website Kills Lead Generation
Website Design Tips and Tricks To Boost Lead Gen:
- Website Design Best Practices for Manufacturers
- Optimizing Your B2B Manufacturing Website Page Content
- Make Your B2B Manufacturing Website a Lead Generation Machine
Draw in Leads & Boost Your Digital Authority:
Content Marketing
If your website is where you convert leads, your content marketing strategy is what gets them to your website in the first place. There's no doubt about it — content marketing is one of the most successful ways to draw the right leads to your site. When you put out high-quality content consistently over time, it has the added bonus of boosting your manufacturing company's digital presence. (That means you rank higher than the competition.) Here's how you do it: Content Strategy for Manufacturers:
- Simplifying your B2B Content Marketing Strategy For Success
- SEO for B2B Manufacturers: Why it Matters
- 5 Steps to Successful Content for Industrial and Manufacturing B2Bs
How the Sausage is Made — What Makes Great Manufacturing Marketing Content:
- 7 Business Blogging Tips to Help You Rank Higher
- Creating Compelling Content [Without Giving Away Company Secrets]
- Manufacturers: How to Leverage Employee Experts for Quality Content
Outbound Marketing for Manufacturers
17 of our best outbound marketing blogs to help you draw in more of the right leads.
The first section of this Exhaustive Guide to Digital Marketing for Manufacturers covered inbound marketing — how to pull in more of the right leads. This section will cover outbound marketing for manufacturers. This section is all about how to get the word out about your company, in a way that makes sense to today's consumer. In the past, especially for manufacturers, outbound marketing had to do with a lot of cold sales calls and visits, and a lot of print marketing. Today, almost none of that is effective, and it's a time drain for your sales team. The new age of outbound marketing is all about getting your manufacturing company in front of the right leads in non-disruptive ways.
And you do that with modern marketing techniques like social media marketing and advertising, paid search advertising, and the big one — sales and marketing alignment. As always, let's start with the basics:
Outbound Marketing for Manufacturers:
The Basics
If you're new to modern outbound marketing, these blogs will help provide a better picture of what great outbound marketing looks like and give you some tools to try out first:
- What is Outbound Marketing in 2020?
- 5 Best Outbound Marketing Tools for Manufacturers
- Everything You Need to Know About B2B Reviews
Getting the Word Out:
Social Media for Manufacturers
Too often, we hear that social media just isn't for manufacturers. Your product isn't sexy or cool, and none of your leads are on social media. Fortunately, you're wrong. Social media has a range of uses for manufacturers, from helping you build brand awareness, to putting you in front of legitimate buyers and leads, to helping you hire more of the right people for your growing team. If that's a new thought for you, these blogs have a lot of helpful information that will show you not just why you should be using social media, but how you can leverage it for success.
- Social Media Marketing vs. Social Media Advertising
- B2B Manufacturers: How to Get More Social Media Followers, and Why You Need 'Em
- 6 Easy Ways to Make LinkedIn Work For Your B2B Marketing Strategy
- 5 Myths about Social Media for B2Bs
Pulling in the leads you want:
Paid Search Advertising and PPC for Manufacturers
Inbound marketing is remarkably effective, but it can take some time to gain traction. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, has the potential to deliver immediate results. PPC advertising, done right, is a great way to a) get your manufacturing company ahead of the competition in search results, and b) start drawing in more of the right leads, right now.
- How B2B Advertising Has Changed
- How to Use Google Ads: A Complete Guide
- Google Ads Benchmarks by Industry
- PPC for B2B Manufacturers: Everything You Need to Know
The Final Piece of the Puzzle:
Bringing Your Sales Team On Board
When your manufacturing company has a solid digital marketing strategy rolling, the final step is bringing the sales team on board. Aligning your sales and marketing teams to one set of goals will deliver significant ROI.
When both marketing and sales are working to the same goals, your efforts are laser-focused on just the tactics you know will pull in and convert more of those deals you're looking for. Start with marketing and sales alignment:
- What's The Difference Between Sales and Marketing Strategies?
- Marketing and Sales Alignment Strategies that Cut Time and Boost Growth
- How Inbound Marketing Creates a More Effective B2B Sales Team
Then implement these manufacturing sales strategies to shorten the sales cycle:
- Manufacturing Marketing Strategies that Drive Sales
- Revenue-Driving Channel Sales Strategies for Manufacturers
- Integrating Digital Marketing into the B2B Sales Mix
And that's it! With more than 35 resources and plenty of help on everything from defining your buyer personas to enabling your sales team, I hope you found a few blogs that helped you finesse your manufacturing company's digital marketing strategy.
Want to See Digital Marketing for Manufacturers in Action? Check Out These Case Studies
If you're not sold on digital marketing, or if you want to see some of these tips and tactics in action, check out these case studies. Each highlights how these digital marketing tactics produced significant results that contributed to a different manufacturer's growth:
Sales enablement and HubSpot services came together to help shorten the sales cycle for this industrial service provider. In one quarter, Vanguard Fire & Security saw 921 new leads, 96 new customers, and $2.8 million dollars in closed-won sales.
Consistent, ongoing inbound marketing combined with HubSpot's robust CRM helped this cleanroom manufacturer see a 75% increase in new users, a 355% increase in conversions, and 337 new conversions — all contributing to overall company growth.
If you're interested to see how a complete digital marketing strategy can produce results for manufacturers in niche industries, this is the case study to see. In the course of an initial 12-month engagement, this manufacturing consultant saw 241 new conversions, a 166% increase in sessions, and a 178% increase in new users.