Ready, Set, Check This List!

You probably know your company’s inbound marketing campaign strategy and you have your marketing campaign protocols down pat. You know what you are marketing and who all your players are: a new product release you want to promote; which customers have their niche needs or preferences; who on your content team likes writing eBlasts over blogs; your designer’s penchant for creating fluorescent CTA buttons—all those big and little details. 

Why Do Your Customers Buy from You?

You own a small manufacturing company and you think you have the greatest products and service in your industry, but do you really know why your customers buy from you? Do they buy on price, or is there some little nuance that differentiates you from your competition that your customers have discovered?

Companies buy from other companies for many reasons. Sometimes it’s about price; sometimes it’s about convenience; sometimes it’s about quality; sometime’s its about relationships. While you, Mr./Ms. manufacturing owner, have an understanding of what sets your company apart from other companies in your industry, do your customers share that same perception?

Can you answer the following questions?

• Have you discovered what differentiates your company from your competitors?
• Is your company distinction recognized by all of your clients/customers?
• Does your distinction have value to your clients/customers and prospects?
• Are employees in your company aware of this distinction?
• Are new hires trained to communicate your company’s distinction?
• Is your distinction communicated clearly to prospects?

Catapult Your Company Past the Competition! That’s Why.

Wait … what’s a blog? First: the basics. You’ve probably been reading blog posts for some time and may not know it. Maybe you read something a friend shared on Facebook or LinkedIn by following a link to a page with a cool post about something that interested you—either business or lifestyle related. It might even have been an industrial marketing blog post.

As a B2B marketing agency we know for sure that social media plays one of the largest roles in B2B marketing. If used properly, it can have a far-reaching, positive impact on your company’s success. However, many B2B companies are not harnessing the of power social media, and in turn, these companies are losing traffic along with their much needed leads. If used properly, social media has the ability to effectively develop a new brand or aid in the rebranding of a failing company. Social media creates brand awareness: it encourages social sharing; it produces followers, promoting trust and reputation; and it drives inbound leads.

Build Your Brand Development Muscles

You know what your company does, but does the average person? When you’re at a barbeque and someone asks what you do for work, what do you say? Can you describe it in a simple 60-second elevator pitch?

As and industrial marketer you need to create relevant content in order for engineers and purchasing agents to locate your website and learn about their services. I will  share one b2b marketing statistic and one b2b content marketing strategy that can generate more quality leads for industrial marketing  websites.

Think about a consumer brand that caught your attention recently. It may have evoked a positive response, humor, or welcomed nostalgia. It is highly likely that many brand names popped up in your head.

In today’s economy and competitive environment it is very important for US manufacturing companies to be smart marketers. If you are an owner or CEO of a manufacturing company, like other B2B marketers, you need to understand what your company is good at and why it is different than your competition.

U.S. manufacturing continues to step it up with a solid gain this year of 3.5% or better according to this week’s Kiplinger Report. For seven months in a row factory jobs have increased, and there is growth in every region across many industries. Biotech has experienced double digit growth and there are steady gains in medical equipment, aviation, and auto.

There is an old expression, “Use a picture, it’s worth a thousand words”, first expressed by Arthur Brisbane to the Syracuse Advertising Men’s club, in March 1911. Numerous studies have backed that visual content holds superiority over verbal content when it comes to conveying a lot of information quickly and succinctly. It stimulates a perceptual and emotional response among viewers that ultimately influence their purchase behavior. We are now surrounded by visual images – from smart phones, web pages, TV screens, tablets, and other mobile devices. As ProfessorPaul Martin Lester points out in “Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication”, “we are becoming a visually mediated society… For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through reading words, but by reading images”. In this high-tech era where visual imagery is not just confined to images; social networking sites, info graphics, blogs/vlogs, online videos, games, 3D movies and so forth take visual stimulation to another level. Over the past few years, content marketing has developed into part of the marketing strategy of B2B companies. Business to Business marketers are using blog post with images and video, or webinars containing audio and images. There is an upward trend in content marketing toward all things visual.  Relevant findings from industry reports and trends have supported this claim –