As a manufacturing company leader, you know that trends are constantly evolving. You also know that keeping up with the latest digital marketing best practices is a full-time job, with overtime! That’s why building a marketing machine is essential for your industrial b2b business. But what exactly is a marketing machine, and how can you build one that drives results for your company? In this manufacturers guide to building a marketing machine, we’ll explore the different components of a marketing machine. We’ll also show you how to choose the right marketing initiatives for your business.
What is a Marketing Machine?
A marketing machine is a series of tools, strategies, and activities designed by your marketing team and business leaders. When implemented, your marketing machine carries out a series of actions and events that generate leads for your business and support your team in converting them to closed sales. This machine is one of the best ways to increase conversions on your industrial B2B website.
Beyond making the lives of you and your team members easier through the standardization of marketing and sales activities, your marketing machine is a powerful analytics tool. If configured properly and integrated with your ERP system, your marketing machine will give you more visibility into the behavior of your target audience. With this insight comes data that you can leverage to your advantage.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are a few essential components of a successful marketing machine for manufacturers. Each marketing machine should include workflow automations for B2B companies, a variety of marketing activities across the marketing channels used by your target audience, and several trackable conversion points. To get started with building your own marketing machine, we recommend following an easy-to-implement marketing recipe as your base template. From there, you will need to experiment until you find the perfect combination of marketing machine components for your business.
Read on to take a closer look at which components your manufacturing marketing machine should include.
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The Components of a Marketing Machine for Industrial B2B Companies
No manufacturer’s guide to building a marketing machine is complete with mention of automation for an industrial B2B business. There are many repetitive tasks that can be easily automated to decrease the likelihood of human error and allow your team extra time to innovate within the company. You can automate most digital communications, including the sending of sales follow-up emails, distribution of marketing content pieces, and social media marketing activities.
As a manufacturer, you understand that certain essential tasks can’t be automated. Your marketing machine has similar tasks that need a human touch. This includes search engine optimization (SEO), the practice of creating content around keywords frequently used by your target audience. Other processes that can’t be automated include manual sales activities, public relations (PR), marketing analytics, and the production of creative elements.
All of these essential components work together to ensure your marketing efforts are consistent, effective, and agile enough to change with the digital marketing landscape. To choose the right components for your marketing machine, you need to consider the needs of your target audience, your budget, and how you can leverage that budget to optimize your marketing strategy.
Tip: To learn more about how to create compelling content that drives results for industrial businesses, read our blog on how to write a marketing plan for a manufacturing business.
How to Integrate Your Marketing Machine and ERP System
Building a marketing machine can be a complete process, but this process can be simplified by working closely with the capabilities of your ERP system. Your ERP software, regardless of if you’re using HubSpot, Pardot, or Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM, is instrumental in the construction of your marketing machine. Most ERP systems can implement workflow automation for B2B companies. These tools will also present you with resources for how to use workflow automation to improve marketing results and close more sales.
Within your ERP system, you may consider workflow strategy that automatically email your customers. You can also create workflows to assign leads and tasks to your team with no manual effort. For tasks that can’t be automated, like analyzing your marketing results, you will need to pursue integration differently.
When integrating your marketing machine and ERP system, explore which of your tools can communicate with the platform. Analytics Tools like Google Analytics and documenting software like PandaDoc are common ERP integrations. By connecting the resources that make your marketing machine run, you create a central hub to implement and track your marketing machine.
Get a better understanding of a great marketing strategy for your business.
How to Use Your Marketing Machine to Achieve Your Business Goals
By this point in our manufacturer’s guide to building a marketing machine, you’ve defined which components you need and integrated them into your ERP system. That can only mean one thing – it’s time to test it out! Below, we’ve included a marketing campaign recipe to get you started.
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- Define a Campaign for Your Target Audience: Before you make any big decisions, you need to know who your target audience is, and how you can best serve them.
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- Create Website Conversion Points: Define what premium content, no risk, low risk, and direct business offers will help your audience members become leads.
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- Develop a Content Marketing Plan: It’s an old adage at this point, but content is king in marketing. You need a strategy and plan to develop and distribute valuable content to convert leads.
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- Implement Workflow Automation: Workflow automation can streamline your process and help you track leads throughout their customer journey. You can’t afford to miss this component of your marketing machine!
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- Plan Your Sales Activities: Your sales team is instrumental in achieving your goals. These are your closers! Work with them to define what sales activities work best for your marketing machine.
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- Track Results & Refine: You need data to know if your marketing machine is working. Analyze the results of your campaigns on a quarterly basis and refine your methods from there!
By following these steps, you can develop a successful marketing campaign that tests your marketing machine. These steps will help you identify what parts of your marketing machine work, and what parts need refinement. For a more detailed map of marketing machine success, visit our resources page to download our Marketing Strategy Flowchart.
By this point in our manufacturer’s guide to building a marketing machine, you’ve defined which components you need and integrated them into your ERP system. That can only mean one thing – it’s time to test it out! Below, we’ve included a marketing campaign recipe to get you started.
-
- Define a Campaign for Your Target Audience: Before you make any big decisions, you need to know who your target audience is, and how you can best serve them.
-
- Create Website Conversion Points: Define what premium content, no risk, low risk, and direct business offers will help your audience members become leads.
-
- Develop a Content Marketing Plan: It’s an old adage at this point, but content is king in marketing. You need a strategy and plan to develop and distribute valuable content to convert leads.
-
- Implement Workflow Automation: Workflow automation can streamline your process and help you track leads throughout their customer journey. You can’t afford to miss this component of your marketing machine!
-
- Plan Your Sales Activities: Your sales team is instrumental in achieving your goals. These are your closers! Work with them to define what sales activities work best for your marketing machine.
-
- Track Results & Refine: You need data to know if your marketing machine is working. Analyze the results of your campaigns on a quarterly basis and refine your methods from there!
By following these steps, you can develop a successful marketing campaign that tests your marketing machine. These steps will help you identify what parts of your marketing machine work, and what parts need refinement. For a more detailed map of marketing machine success, visit our resources page to download our Marketing Strategy Flowchart.
How Digital Marketing Agencies Build Marketing Machines for Manufacturers
With the digital landscape evolving each day, you need a marketing machine that can change with the times. Innovation in all areas of business is essential for manufacturers to stay ahead of the competition.
As a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO and marketing automation for manufacturers, we understand the challenges of building a marketing machine for industrial B2B businesses. That’s why we’ve undergone the training necessary to become both a Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM Platinum Level Agency and a HubSpot Solutions Partner. When you need assistance building and refining a marketing machine tailor-made for your business, contact us for intentional support.
