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Digital marketing for suppliers and manufacturing

It has taken a while for manufacturing companies and suppliers to start using digital marketing to generate more leads.

Having worked for many years with companies in the manufacturing industry, I would now like to share my knowledge to help you as a manufacturer or subcontractor to grow your business.

Below, I will therefore tell you about the approaches and strategies we use for our clients that have been the most effective in increasing the number of deals.

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Marketing strategy for manufacturing companies and subcontractors

Before we get into how you can work to generate more leads, I want to give you some advice. Make sure you have a user-friendly and mobile-friendly website. It doesn't have to be the best looking website but it should at least have the following information:

  • Products and services (one page for each category and separate pages for each product), including images and videos.
  • Your history, mission, vision and what sets you apart from your competitors (unique skills, technology, etc.)
  • Team - highlighting the qualities of your employees
  • Contact form. Can be a long form or a short form but it should be easy to contact you.
  • Easy to find phone numbers and other contact details
  • News blog - to enable you to tell how you have helped your customers and how you can help your customers
  • Space to fill in Title tag and meta description
  • Call to Actions. Buttons that allow you to convert your visitors into leads.

Digital marketing for manufacturing companies and suppliers

Once your website is up and running, the next step is to drive leads to your website using some tried and tested digital marketing methods.

To be successful, you need to measure the return on investment (ROI) of each campaign and approach. If you want to learn more about the measurement tools available, check out the Quick Google Guide by clicking here! Here are some of the digital marketing strategies we recommend for manufacturing companies and suppliers:

GoogleAds

Remarketing Ads

content marketing

Email Marketing & Marketing Automation

Account based marketing

Google Ads for manufacturing companies and subcontractors

You're probably familiar with the text ads that appear at the top of Google search results. This golden territory continues to be one of the best areas (ad-wise) on the internet.

If you develop the right keywords that your potential buyers are likely to use to look for components, equipment or products you manufacture and have a compelling ad for them to click on, you're almost certain to have a conversion! That is, a click through to the website.

Then it is also important that people who click from the ad are also engaged on your website and then convert to a hot lead.

An essential part of running a good and result-oriented Google Ads campaign is to use the right keywords in the ad and that the landing page that you get to when you click on the ad is linked to the ad and the intent of the searcher/clicker.

In other words, it's important that you use the keyword you're paying for both in the ad and on your landing page. If you don't do this, you will get a lower Quality Score and therefore have to pay more per relevant click.

To improve results, make sure you have separate ad groups for each component, product or equipment line you want to promote. Start with one or two groups, see how they work and then add more products.

The types of keywords that a potential customer would use to find each type of product/component/machine should be as unique as possible.

For example, you could have an ad group of metal bending machines and within that group have keywords specific to metal types, amount and type of bending, length, width and thickness of the metal.

Another important thing to remember is that as soon as you stop paying for the ad, you disappear from the search results. Therefore, this method in combination with other methods such as content marketing is usually the best. But I will come back to that later in the text.

Remarketing ads for manufacturing companies and subcontractors

Remarketing ads are ads that appear to people after they have visited your website and can remind them why they visited your website in the first place! In most cases, you can segment your remarketing ads to show certain ads to specific audiences that meet your potential customers' criteria.

If you are looking to promote a specific new product or component, this type of ad can generate new traffic to your website and bring back visitors who may have seen that specific product page on your website recently.
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Contentmarketing for manufacturing companies and subcontractors

Do you want to be found in organic search results on Google? Then be prepared to invest in developing a really good content plan to continually produce relevant content for your customers.

When I say continuously, I mean at least four blog posts per month.

We recently reviewed the Content Marketing Institute's Report - "Manufacturing Content Marketing 2018: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends-North America" which highlights various statistics on how manufacturers are using content to generate more traffic to their websites and ultimately more leads. Nearly 70% of marketers say their content marketing is working well, with 11% saying it's extremely successful.

Here are proven content marketing materials to include on your website and blog page:

  • Case studies (white papers and guides)
  • Blog posts and articles
  • E-books
  • Video clips and professionally photographed product and equipment images
  • Detailed product specifications

Here's an example of how content can help you rank high in Google's search results:

A Google search for the search term "sensors for industrial applications" brings up these organic results on a page for one of our manufacturing customers. This customer appears here because they have written several specific pages with content on this particular topic and now we have position 2 for that search:

You should also consider sharing your content on your social media pages. However, if you want to get more of your potential customers to see your social posts, for example, allocate 1.000 SEK/month in advertising money to increase the number of views on e.g. LinkedIn or Facebook. You don't necessarily have to spend a lot to get good results when you pay to increase the visibility of your posts.

Email marketing& Marketing Automation for manufacturing companies and subcontractors

What? A manufacturing company that sends emails to existing and potential customers? That's right, email is still one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience and keep your customers informed about your new or improved products/components and goals for you as a company. You can also get feedback from them by including a short survey in an email.

As many manufacturing companies and subcontractors attend trade fairs, this is also an excellent way to use the contacts you make there and gives you a good way to follow up on an ongoing basis. According to the Content Marketing Institute, email is still the number one way for manufacturers and suppliers to distribute content.

The next step after you've started sending newsletters is to automate your digital marketing to save time and deliver leads to sales people straight into your CRM. Sure, it sounds amazing.

Once a potential customer has visited your website and become engaged, they are probably ready to download something in exchange for an email address. An example of this might be that you have a guide/white paper on your website about the importance of quality components in engine manufacturing. Or where to look when buying new machines for your fleet. This should be interesting enough material that a potential customer will want to download it in exchange for an email address.

Once this is done, you will have an email address and an indication of what the potential customer is interested in. From this, you can put together customised email responses that are sent out automatically with even more content and information that you think might be suitable for this decision-maker. In a flash, you have automated marketing and potential customers are processed in a non-salesy way until they are ready to be contacted by a sales person.

If you want to learn more about Marketing Automation, please download our guide on Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation here

Account based marketing for the manufacturing industry and Subcontractors

We know that many companies in the manufacturing industry have a smaller and niche audience to communicate with. In other words, it does not work to advertise widely. Here we see that many manufacturing companies have a great benefit from working with Account Based Marketing , which is about working more niche and precise with marketing towards selected companies and selected decision makers. You can read more about Account Based Marketing here.

How doI reach my marketing goal?

The suggestions above represent some of the most effective marketing strategies for manufacturers that we have used to attract new customers and retain and sell more to existing customers online.

Of course, you don't have to implement all the suggested actions right away. Start with one or two of the suggestions and continue with the other suggestions when it works for you. Then when you have the resources and marketing budget to implement them on a continuous basis and with high quality, that is preferable. Whatever digital strategy you use, the goal should be to provide and present solutions to the problems that your existing customers and prospects are grappling with.

With Google Ads you can reach users just when they have specific needs. Executives, engineers and others turn to search engines for answers and solutions. Your ads can reach these people just when they're looking and ready for an answer.

Remarketing and display ads can deliver a quick set of ads at a relatively low cost and to the group you want to reach.

New and up-to-date content can ensure that your manufacturing company is well represented in organic search results when customers are looking for products and equipment that meet their requirements.Email marketing can be a relatively simple way to inform your customers and potential buyers about your company's products or equipment and provide you with a platform to keep in touch with anyone who shows interest in your company.

Don't forget to set up metrics for all the activities you do so that you can easily measure ROI. This way you can see what is working well and what is working less well. In this way, you can optimize your efforts on an ongoing basis to create an even better result. Also remember that nothing happens overnight. If you are going to make an investment, do it wholeheartedly and give it at least 6 months.

If you want help getting started, feel free to book a free consultation with one of us at Contitude by clicking the button below.

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SICK AB, one of our customers, says this about us:

Contitude has helped us to be a sounding board for setting our market strategy for how we should do to increase visibility on Google, among others, and thus drive more traffic to our website.Traffic that we then convert in order for the sellers to get more leads to process. They also help us produce content for our Content Marketing based on our most important keywords. With the help of Contitudes MaaS, we get more done and we can reach our marketing goals faster."

//Johannes JinderMarknads- och kommunikationsexpertSICK AB

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