Grant Marketing Blog

What You Can Do About the Current Impacts on Your Business and Budget

Let’s start by stating the obvious: life now looks nothing like it did two months ago. And two months from now … who knows? Every piece of our existence feels the impact—our lifestyle, our business, and our ability to adjust to change. In addition to learning the ins and outs of Zoom conferencing, setting up home offices, being a parent/teacher/spouse/employee/regular-everyday-human simultaneously, and adjusting to a possible long-term change in our way of life, the situation has also brought to light how able we are to adjust our strategies in order to stay afloat during a time where it’s very difficult to maintain “business as usual.”

Rethinking Business Models for Manufacturers

The current pandemic is a massive disruptor for the world economy, as we all know. For the manufacturing industry, it looks something like this: factory closures, supply chain disruptions, reduced production capacities, and remote work, among many other things are significantly impacting businesses in manufacturing. Let alone companies struggling with illness—and even death—among their workforce. (Of which, we offer our warmest thoughts.) While the world will eventually return to face-to-face interactions and normal shipping and production schedules, the habits that are being formed now will set a new baseline for our behaviors and expectations as consumers and professionals.

Measure, Analyze, Update! 

In 2018, companies spent an average of 11.2% of company revenues on marketing.[i] It is anticipated that global media spending will reach $2.1 trillion in 2019, up from $1.6 trillion in 2014.[ii] Companies rely upon marketing to transform interest into profitable transactions, and ideally, long-term customer relationships.

An Efficient, Effective, Affordable, and User-Focused Web Strategy to Complement Your B2B Inbound Marketing Efforts

The purpose of a website has transformed drastically over time—what was once considered optional, high-tech, and even fancy, is now indispensable to even B2B industrial manufacturers. And, so is the need to constantly update it.

Basic web redesign is just not efficient enough to keep up with the dynamics of the marketplace, changing customer expectations, and advancements in technology.

Do You Have the Right Tools to Catch 'Em All? We're Talking Inbound Leads, not Pokémon!

Inbound marketing relies heavily on content creation to attract target audiences. However, attracting is just the first step of the process. To be able to transition from attracting to converting, and then from closing to delighting, you will need much more than just content.

Grant Marketing Workshops and Webinars Provide Demonstrable Marketing Strategies

We’re in the business, and even we know that the amount of information (about everything, everywhere) available to you is overwhelming. Yup, we’ve been known to close our laptops at the end of the day and swear off any more incoming anything—no more blogs, eBooks, case studies, emails, LinkedIn posts, well-manicured marketing messaging—nothing.

Get Better Training and Buy-In for B2B Inbound Marketing

B2B Inbound marketing, while extremely effective, comes with challenges. Year after year, companies seem to struggle with the same efforts. While proving the ROI of marketing activities is still the top challenge, finding an executive sponsor and team training are rapidly rising to the top of the list. Companies need both executive buy-in and appropriate training of sales and marketing teams to achieve the inbound marketing success they strive for. While all other challenges mentioned in this survey have declined from the previous year, these two have increased. HubSpot’s “State of Inbound 2015” report examines these developing trends.

Uncovering 2015 B2B Marketing Trends and Challenges

As the spread of digital media and mobile technology continues to transform the B2B buying process, integration of the latest B2B marketing technologies and tools into a seamless cross-channel marketing strategy has never been more critical to driving revenue and growth. The companies that fail to focus on digital channels—particularly interactive communication channels like social networks and blogging—may struggle to retain customers, inspire conversions, and win new sales.

Write a Post to Boast About

Social media posts are an essential part of any industrial marketing strategy for manufacturers. You read that right. Yes, social media is an intrinsically viable channel for you to get new customers and retain customer loyalty. Not only do these posts connect your business with the appropriate audience, but they also attract visitors to your website and can eventually turn strangers into customers and customers who align with your brand identity into evangelists for your products.

Responsiveness, Quality, and Speed Feed the Spiderbots!

Many industrial marketers still depend on SEO and PPC (pay per click) as the core of their industrial marketing strategy. Their goal is to outperform their competitors by outranking them with specific keywords and keyword phrases. While there is a larger framework for SEO-related concerns like blogging, backlinking, and updating title tags and meta descriptions, which are still important markers for spiderbots to locate web pages, the latest trends focus on mobile-friendly websites, content depth and quality (the spiderbots focus on “contextual search” algorithms), and website speed.