Who is the audience for digital marketing?
It’s young people, right? Young consumers with a lot of disposable income, wanting to know about the next big thing.
Well, yes. It’s them. But it’s not just them.
If you’re a manufacturer, your audience is getting information it wants/needs the same way the audience for most other businesses is: it’s going online and doing research, which means you need to make your company part of that process.
Consider these stats from IHS GlobaSpec:
- 74% of industrial professionals use the Internet to find components, equipment, suppliers or services.
- 73% of industrial professionals use the Internet to get product specifications.
- 68% of industrial professionals go online to seek out pricing information.
- 66% of industrial professionals are performing research.
- 48% spend at least six hours a week online for work-related reasons.
- 42% visit more than 10 industry-related websites each week.
And most importantly…modern industrial buyers have wrapped up between 60 and 70 percent of the buyers journey before they interact with your sales team.
That’s why it’s crucial for your sales and marketing teams to work together in what’s called the “closed loop” system. It describes a process in which the two teams collaborate using data that marketing gets from its analysis to generate better quality leads.
Here are a few steps your manufacturing company can take to embrace digital marketing and meet buyers along their journey.
1. Create content that engages at each step.
The journey we mentioned above has three steps:
- Awareness, in which a customer isn’t yet interested in what your business makes. In fact, the term awareness doesn’t even apply to your company. It simply means that the buyer is aware they have a problem to be solved.
- Consideration, which involves the buyer beginning to look at different companies to help solve the problem.
- Decision, in which the buyer chooses someone to solve their problem.
With that in mind, you should try to create a mix of content that matches all three stages of the journey: blog posts and e-books for the first stage, case studies and FAQ pages for consideration, and free trials/demonstrations for the decision phase.
2. Make sure they can find that content
Be sure the content you write for your site is optimized for search engines. There’s an art to this. You need to be able to attract search engines, but also write in a way that sounds human. Tools like Google Insights for Search can help you research the right keywords.
It helps to be specific, and – if most of your business is local – location-based. People tend to search for things like “Philadelphia area medical supplies.”
3. Use more than one social media platform
LinkedIn is a big player when it comes to social media and manufacturing companies. A lot of companies say it’s an important tool for researching new technologies or picking up new customers. But don’t be afraid to embrace other platforms as well.
- YouTube can help you tell the story behind your product, or educate your customers on how to use it, or simply show off how things are made.
- Instagram doesn’t just have to be for celebrities sharing vacation photos. A lot of manufacturers have used it to great effect.
- You may be on Facebook and Twitter, but it’s important to use them to do more than just share content and company news. Ask and answer questions, and see what the people who follow you are talking about. Their conversations might give you ideas for future blog posts.
If you’re ready to embrace digital marketing, but aren’t exactly sure how to do it, contact IQnection. Our marketing experts can help you create content that speaks to your audience, assist you with making sure your website is populated with SEO-friendly language, and work with you to set up your social media accounts. You can reach your customers early on their journey, and give them valuable content that makes sure they stick around.
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