The best marketing strategy for your manufacturing business will largely depend on your overall business objectives but there are a number of other factors to consider. These include how confident you are about your branding, who you are targeting with your marketing and what you know about your target audiences and markets.
This blog looks into the different marketing communication strategies for manufacturers and highlights the best time to use them.
Marketing communication strategies for manufacturers
- Brand building and positioning
Having a strong brand that differentiates you from your competitors and makes you instantly recognisable, in a good way, adds considerable value to your business. However, a well-established brand can still suffer a crisis of confidence. Focusing purely on marketing to known audiences, rapid growth through acquisition, a move into new sectors or an issue with brand reputation can all have an impact on your brand visibility, image and recognition. If you are not presenting your brand in a consistent way or you are not confident that your brand perception will build trust and loyalty with your target audiences, it is time to focus on brand building and positioning.
- Building your brand
This involves looking at your reason for being as a business. What are your vision and mission, company values, customer value proposition, USPs and brand messages. How are you perceived by your stakeholders, how do you want to be perceived and what do you need to change to achieve that?
- Brand identity
Even the best and most recognisable brands review their brand identity on a regular basis. If your brand is having an identity crisis or is starting to look or feel tired, it may be time for a refresh. This will include your tone of voice, your brand colour palette, typography, your logo and any straplines, style of photos and guidelines for use of your brand.
- Brand positioning
How your brand is positioned in the eyes of your prospects, customers, suppliers and employees compared with your competitors is really important. You want to be the brand that stands out from the competition, the first website they visit, the first call they make, the first email they respond to and the first job they apply for.
To improve your brand positioning you need to be visible, actively promoting your positives and gaining third party endorsement. A mix of PR, digital marketing through your website, social media and email marketing, event marketing and internal communications to your staff will all form part of the marketing mix for improving the positioning of your brand.
- Creative marketing
A creative marketing strategy is the best strategy for breathing new life into your marketing. If you have a new product, service or project and are looking to engage with different audiences or markets or want to reinvigorate your marketing with long-term customers, creative marketing will help you achieve success.
A creative marketing strategy is how you develop and bring an idea to life that will satisfy your main marketing objectives. This includes ideation and content creation.
- Ideation
Ideation is the process of generating, developing and refining new ideas and taking them from conception to implementation. By having a core creative concept, your marketing will be more impactful and memorable.
- Content creation
Once you have a strong creative concept, this can be implemented across all of your content. Having a suite of content that fits under a strong and highly targeted umbrella creative concept will ensure you can sustain your marketing campaigns for months which will save time and money.
The design of a visual look and feel for consistent use across all of your different marketing channels such as social media, trade media and email marketing as well as for advertising and event graphics will build on your brand awareness.
- Lead generation strategies
A need to grow is usually the top reason why manufacturers want to ramp up their marketing efforts. Here are some key marketing strategies for generating leads:
- Inbound marketing – this is where prospects come to you when they have a need and are ready to buy. The marketing job you need to do is twofold – be visible and relevant. Make your manufacturing company easy to find when prospects are doing their research and have the right information in the places they are likely to look. SEO, PR, social media and event marketing are all important activities for casting your net wide with inbound marketing.
- Account Based Marketing (ABM) – this marketing strategy is for pursuing high value prospects, your key account type customers. Sales and marketing teams need to be working together like a well-oiled machine. Sharing information about your targets and personalising marketing content to make them feel special. A CRM system is important for ABM and using online channels such as LinkedIn advertising and Sales Navigator provides the opportunity for highly targeted campaigns.
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
Just as your manufacturing business evolves, so do your customers. It’s important to recognise this and not become complacent. Customer relationship management is a marketing strategy that will foster customer loyalty, help you sell more to your known contacts, encourage referral business and reignite relationships with dormant or lapsed customers.
Your customers want to hear from you, they want to know what new products you have, how your team is doing, what new equipment you’ve invested in, new services you offer and what your plans for the future are. They want to know they have chosen well and are still working with the best supplier for their business. A mix of email marketing, social media and PR is a great way to keep your customers happy and confident that they’re working with the best.
Whatever your business objectives are or whichever marketing strategy you think is right for your business. Contact one of our marketing experts. We are a full-service marketing communications agency so can help with the above and more. Get in touch.
