5 Ways Manufacturing Companies Can Grow RIGHT NOW with Inbound Marketing

If you are reading this article, it is because you work in manufacturing sales, marketing or leadership and want to learn how Inbound Marketing can help your company grow.

• Maybe your sales pipeline is shrinking.
• Maybe sales to existing customers are drying up.
• Maybe Industry 4.0 is motivating you to act.

Regardless of the reason, this article describes how Inbound Marketing can help your manufacturing company take advantage of digital marketing best practices to generate new business, increase revenue, and grow.

This article identifies five things you can implement quickly. Think of it as a checklist of best practices.

Want to know more? To learn all the things Inbound Marketing can do to help your company grow, Book a Meeting with an Inbound 281 Manufacturing Marketing Consultant.

The Definition of Inbound Marketing

First, to make sure we are all on the same page, here’s a definition of Inbound Marketing:

“Inbound Marketing is a data-driven strategy that attracts buyers to your brand and converts them into customers. It uses many marketing tactics to attract and nurture prospects by providing them with educational information at each stage of their buyer’s journey. Inbound marketing delivers the answers prospects are looking for at the time they need it, thereby building trust, reputation, and authority for you. This results in shorter sales cycles, more qualified leads and an easier sale for your sales team.”

Questions Prospects Ask During the Buyer’s Journey

There are four stages in the buyer’s journey. These are the questions prospects ask themselves at each stage. Inbound marketing helps provide answers to these questions.

• Awareness: “Who are you?”
• Consideration: “Why should you make my shortlist?”
• Decision: “Why should I choose you?”
• Delight: “Why should I stay/renew with you?”

The 5 Things You Should Do RIGHT NOW! to Grow

With that common understanding out of the way, here are five Inbound Marketing strategies you should implement immediately to get your manufacturing company on a path to growth.

#1: Optimize Your Website

Website optimization occurs in three ways:

• Content optimization. This involves producing content that prospects want to find and writing it so that Google and other search engines can easily find it. This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It helps you outrank your competitors in search results so that you get more clicks, more visitors, and more conversions.
• Conversion Rate Optimization. This involves organizing your website so that your most-preferred personas take the action you want them to take. Prospects don’t come to your website to just “look around.” They come in search of something. You want to make sure your website makes it easy for your prime prospects to find what they are seeking.
• Technical Optimization. Technical optimization is “under the hood” stuff. When Google evaluates a website, they not only look at the written content, they also evaluate how your website performs – how fast it loads, is it mobile friendly, does it not contain coding errors. Sites that run better and faster rank higher.

#2: Develop a Sales Process

Sales is no different than any other manufacturing process. There should be a plan. Then, you work on the plan. A successful sales process should include the following:

• CRM. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database is at the heart of all good sales processes. The CRM lets you capture and store prospect data, which you can then use for a multitude of purposes. A CRM is far better than Excel spreadsheets or email address books.
• Sales Playbooks. Sales playbooks are a means of capturing sales best practices and communicating them to salespeople. A sales playbook can engage marketing and sales in a systematic review of assumptions and a distilling of best practices.
• Lead scoring. Lead scoring allows you to rank prospects according to their characteristics and behavior. Then automate the process of knowing which prospects are most engaged and worth pursuing.
• ABM. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospects or customer accounts as markets of one. ABM lets you zero in on key decision-makers.

#3: Create and Amplify Content

Inbound marketing uses content to attract and engage prospects. For that reason, content creation is critical. Best practices for content creation include:

• Conduct Keyword Research. Conduct keyword research to determine which topics and phrases your prospects are interested in.
• Create Content. Use the findings of keyword research to identify topics for which you can create content. Create content (blogs, white papers, videos, infographics, emails) around those topics.
• Amplify Content. Share the content on platforms and in ways your prospects receive it. Track who opens what and use that to know which prospects are interested in what, as well as their buyer’s journey stage.

#4: Implement NPS

An often-forgotten stage of the prospect's life cycle is after they become customers. It’s easy to take customers for granted. Implementing a customer feedback mechanism like Net Promoter Score (NPS) will let you stay in contact with customers and know exactly how they feel. You can head off any issues before they become a sticking point in why a customer may not renew with you or may not repurchase. Regular NPS feedback lets you respond in a timely, proactive manner.

#5: Report, Analyze, Refine

Marketing today is so data-driven that the real challenge is identifying the metrics that matter and putting them into a format that makes it easy to understand. The bottom line is all that matters, of course. But the metrics from contributing activities like email or web visits or form completions can help paint a fuller picture of what’s taking place and why. Analyzing the trends that are taking place allows you to refine your efforts and optimize the results.

Get the Most from Inbound Marketing for Manufacturing