How Digital Marketing Has Changed the Landscape for Manufacturing Companies

Many manufacturing companies continue to heavily rely on traditional marketing, word of mouth, and trade shows to reach new prospects. These techniques may still be effective, but the buying behaviour has significantly changed over the years: buyers spend more than 70% of their time doing research online before ever contacting a company.

Buyers have access to an ocean of information and are more educated about their options. If they don’t know something, they will go online and conduct the research on their own. As such, prospects are in control of the sales process before you even know they exist.

Enhance Your Credibility

Probably most of the businesses by now understand the importance of a professional website that conveys their brand credibility. That’s only the start, since a strong online presence also entails relevant and informative content. You should be producing content that answers questions your buyers are researching online.

In the early stages of the buyers’ journey, people are looking for answers to questions. This opens up an opportunity for you to provide content that addresses these. Prospects might not be ready to buy yet, but you’re building your credibility by helping them.

Showcase Your Capabilities via Case Studies

As the buyer progresses through the journey, the type of content they are looking for changes. If at the start they were looking for alternatives, when they’re ready to make a choice you want to have plenty of great content to meet their needs. Keep in mind that they’re doing most of their research online before they ever contact a company. It’s also likely they will visit your website several times before contacting you.

A highly effective piece of content at the consideration-stage for manufacturing companies is case studies. You can create a number of case studies that show how you helped a customer fulfil their needs or overcome a challenge.

Retain Existing Customers

As a manufacturing company you’ve worked hard to close deals and build your customer base. In B2B industries it’s much tougher to gain a new client versus retaining an existing one. It can cost businesses as much as 5 times more to attract a new customer than keep an existing one. As such, manufacturing companies should strive to keep existing customers continuously interested.

Communication and education can help you maintain your customer base via digital marketing. Continue building credibility by educating and communicating with existing clients so that you remain a valuable resource for them. One easy way to do this is through a monthly email update.

Provide customers with content they want to read and updates about your service and/or company in a monthly newsletter. These customer-focused newsletters may include things like:

• Company announcements
• Most popular blog articles
• New products or features
• Industry updates
• How-to videos

A monthly email update is an effective way to do this and it doesn’t require a huge amount of effort.