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Like any other business, manufacturers must find ways to build brand awareness with potential customers. Content offers a proven way to achieve this goal. The majority of companies use content to generate new leads because it is effective and inexpensive. Content marketing for manufacturers is no different. This marketing strategy helps you build brand awareness, enhance your credibility, and connect with potential customers. Learn more about how it can help you grow your business, along with tips and tricks for effective content marketing.
What Are the Benefits of Content Marketing for Manufacturers?
Content marketing is an essential tool for achieving many of your business objectives. With content, you can reach more potential customers, improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and share your passion for your products with people across the internet.
Improved Visibility on Search Engines
When people click on your content and spend more time on your website, it helps improve your position in search engines. Google and other search engines use an algorithm to determine which search results are most relevant to specific keywords.
Helpful content based on keyword research helps the algorithm find your site and establish it as a credible result.
Increased Trust and Authority
Content marketing for manufacturing companies is all about demonstrating your authority to potential buyers. If you’re competing with multiple manufacturers, you can use content to highlight what makes you stand out. Positioning yourself as the expert in your given industry helps you build a trusting relationship with existing and potential customers.
Long-form content is a great way to go in-depth about what differentiates you from your competition. Case studies, white papers, and other educational content help you build credibility and make it easier for potential buyers to trust your reputation.
Boosts Engagement and Conversions
When you’re consistently posting high-quality, relevant content that resonates with your audience, it boosts engagement. If your target audience considers your blog or newsletter to be a “must-read,” they will be more likely to share it with others looking for a reputable manufacturer.
Use video to engage the non-readers in your target customer pool. The majority of people prefer watching videos for instructions or technical information.
Fosters Customer Loyalty and Retention
Another benefit of creating content customers want to read and view is that it can boost loyalty. Your high-quality content connects directly with your target audience and inspires them to trust you. Once you’ve positioned yourself as the authority in your field, you set yourself up as an industry leader with a loyal base.
8 Types of Content and Their Benefit for Manufacturers
Your digital content strategy should include multiple types of content. Having a variety of content allows you to connect with a wider audience. It can also save you from getting stuck in a content rut. Use these types of manufacturing content for your marketing efforts.
1. Blogs to Improve Your Visibility and Attract Customers
Blog posts are a tried and true way to enhance your SEO. Because you can embed relevant keywords directly onto your website without stuffing, this tool is an essential component of your content strategy. Use a keyword research report to brainstorm topics. Posting consistently with a wide variety of content also helps you improve your chances of being quoted by other bloggers and journalists.
When other websites quote your helpful content and link to it on their site, you end up with more organic backlinks, boosting your search engine ranking. Customers who find your blog engaging and informative will be more motivated to call you when they need your services. An effective blog writing toolkit will help you execute your blog strategy.
2. White Papers for In-Depth Analysis
White papers are a great tactic for funnel content marketing. A white paper is educational content written to inform your target audience about in-depth solutions to their problems. White papers break down your approach to how you solve a potential customer’s problems.
You can use them to address your unique processes relative to common problems within your industry. Or you can focus on one overarching problem and discuss how your product or manufacturing process serves as a solution. White papers are helpful tools for prospects comparing vendors during the decision-making process of the buyer journey.
Your white paper writing should align with your brand voice, but make sure you are using authoritative language. White papers tend to be more academic in nature than other pieces of content. However, it should still sound like it belongs with other content in your brand.
Use the introduction to spell out the main problem and your solution. Your goal is to pique the reader’s interest and make them want to read the rest of the technical white paper.
3. Videos to Explain Complex Products or Generate Engagement
Video marketing is a better way to explain complex products to your audience. If you’re using written content to break down complex topics, your audience may click off your website because of information overload.
With video content, you can make these topics easier for your audience to digest. Videos allow you to be more conversational, and you can provide visual demonstrations of how to use your products. People may find this more helpful than illustrated instructions.
About 91% of businesses use video content as a marketing tool. With video, you can let your personality shine through and better engage people through non-verbal cues. Because you are speaking directly with your audience, you can leverage eye contact and engaging storytelling skills to keep your audience interested in the subject matter.
4. Case Studies to Provide Proof of How a Product Solves a Problem
Case studies are real-world examples of how you have helped various clients. Think of them as enhanced client testimonials. In a case study, you would outline your customer’s problem and explain how you offered a solution.
You would structure a case study using a step-by-step approach that details how you and your client collaborated to develop the solution. Case studies are technical writing that appeals to people at the information-gathering and decision-making stages of the sales funnel because they offer proof of how your company could potentially meet their needs.
Make sure you get permission from a customer before using them in your case study. If your client wants to remain confidential, strip any identifying details from the case study and focus it on your approach to solving the customer’s problem.
5. Emails to Move Leads Down the Sales Funnel
Sales funnel marketing involves creating different types of content for customers based on where they are in their journey with your company. Email marketing lets you appeal to people who are already aware of your brand because they’ve signed up for your list.
Segment your audience based on where they are in the sales funnel, and tailor email content to move them to the next level.
For example, when someone signs up for emails, send a series of welcome emails thanking them for signing up and offering gated content such as white papers and case studies. Or send out informative newsletters that offer in-depth information about your brand.
These emails appeal to your potential customers who may be ready to move to the information-gathering stage and are comparing you to other manufacturers in the industry. Add a call-to-action in each email, encouraging readers to sign up for a demo or book an informational call.
6. Infographics to Make Data Shareable
Some of your audience will respond better to visual content. You’re not limited to video content to appeal to these potential customers. Infographics are a fun way to visualize data to make it more digestible to your audience.
Infographics are visual collections of data with a blend of words and images. With tools such as graphs and charts, your audience can easily compare and interpret other data without reading a full report.
Use infographics to highlight price comparisons, explain complex features of your products, or visualize customer satisfaction ratings. Because infographics are visually appealing, you can post them on social media and encourage your audience to share them with their followers.
7. eBooks to Showcase Expertise and Generate Leads
eBooks are a great way to share your thought leadership with your target audience. You can use this informative, long-form content to incentivize your audience to subscribe to your newsletter or click on a lead-generating campaign.
A well-written and thought-provoking eBook will teach your audience, helping strengthen the trusting relationship you are building with them through your other content. Since eBooks contain a wealth of valuable information, they are common tools for building up your mailing list.
If you’re unsure where to start your eBook series, brainstorm topics you feel comfortable covering in depth. You might dive into industry trends or break down industry insights for an audience that is less familiar with your industry.
8. SME Reviews To Build Authority and Credibility
As a trusted authority in your field, you likely have multiple subject matter experts (SMEs) on your staff. SME reviews are another helpful tool for distilling complicated topics into content that resonates with your target audience.
Your SMEs would review any content written by a non-expert to make sure all information is factual. They may also enhance content with in-depth explanations of overly simplified topics or help you or your marketing team dissect jargon for a general audience.
9 Content Marketing Tips for the Manufacturing Industry
Follow these tips to get the most out of your manufacturing content marketing strategy.
1. Start by Identifying Your Goals
Knowing what you want to achieve with your manufacturing marketing will guide your content strategy. If your aim is to grow your manufacturing business, you might create more content to build brand awareness and attract new customers.
However, if your goal is to convert more of your existing leads, you might concentrate on creating informational content that increases your ability to close a sale. Be realistic and specific in your goal-setting. Create specific targets you can use to measure your progress. For example, instead of setting a goal to “generate new leads,” you might set a goal to “increase leads by 30% in the first quarter.”
2. Define KPIs to Measure Performance
To know if your content marketing for manufacturing efforts are successful, you need a way to define and measure your results. Before developing your content strategy, determine which key performance indicators you will measure.
Choose KPIs that align with your goals. For example, if your main goal is to improve brand awareness, you might track social shares, keyword rankings, and referral traffic. If your goal is to get more conversions, you might track your return on investment for each campaign. Or you might track your landing page conversion rate or your percentage of return customers.
3. Identify Your Buyer Personas and Their Pain Points
Knowing your target audience will better equip you to make relevant content. Look through your existing customers and note shared characteristics between your best customers. For example, you may notice that your best customers fall into similar demographics or that they work for similar industries.
Once you’ve identified commonalities with your customers, create fictional versions of these characters and identify the key pain points your fictional character would care about the most. Say you manufacture medical equipment. Your main buyer persona might include a purchasing director for a large hospital. Their main pain points could include making sure their equipment stays functional at all times. To address this, you might create a series of content about your product and its durability. You may also delve into how to keep your medical devices online during a natural disaster.
4. Create a Detailed Plan and a Content Calendar
You should create content for your various business objectives and people in various stages of the buying process. Create a detailed plan for content outlining what types of content you will publish and when. With a detailed plan, you can coordinate social media posts with your blog or create video content that aligns with a new white paper.
Using an editorial content calendar helps you mix up your topics to keep readers on their toes. If you keep covering the same topics, your readers might get bored and stop engaging with your content. Content marketing for manufacturing companies doesn’t have to be limited to your products. Break down your process or introduce your audience to people in the plant, for example.
5. Produce Content for Every Stage of the Sales Funnel
Even if your marketing goals center around one stage of the funnel, you shouldn’t neglect people in other stages in the funnel. Consider every step of the customer journey, from awareness to loyalty. Use social media posts to build brand awareness.
Capitalize on new leads with a newsletter campaign offering content for buyers in the consideration stage. Create content for your sales team that helps them close more customers.
6. Educate Your Target Audience on How to Solve Their Problems
Content marketing for industrial companies also works for inbound marketing. With content guiding your target audience on how your product solves their problems, you attract more potential business and inspire people to call you for a consultation.
Coupled with educational content that highlights you as the expert in your industry, these informational social media posts, videos, and how-to guides will help solidify your brand and position you as the go-to manufacturing firm.
7. Satisfy Search Engines’ E-E-A-T
Google uses the acronym E-E-A-T to determine which websites are most relevant to a search query. Since Google currently accounts for more than 80% of internet searches, it helps to follow its guidelines on SEO. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
SME reviews will help you meet the experience and expertise categories because they can add touches of their first-hand experience to each piece of content. As long as your content is relevant and engaging, you can meet the other two criteria.
8. Repurpose Your Content for Email and Social
Manufacturer content marketing is most successful when you post frequently. However, you might not have time to write multiple blog and social media posts or make videos all week. When you’re short on time, repurpose your most successful posts.
Turn a popular blog post into a video. Or turn your most successful video into a series of social media posts highlighting key takeaways and linking back to the video itself.
9. Establish an Iterative Process of Evaluation and Optimization
When you set up your content strategy, you chose KPIs to measure the success of your content marketing efforts. This isn’t a one-time process, though. Set up a consistent process to review and evaluate your content marketing metrics. Look at your analytics dashboards and reports for the most successful content. Use an ROI calculator to determine if your content is underperforming.
Over time, you may notice certain topics that perform better than others. You will also get a sense of which content channels are more successful. Use these insights to make small changes to your content strategy.
Boost Your Strategy With Compose.ly’s High-Quality Content
Content marketing for manufacturing is a great way to improve your internet visibility and attract new customers. The thought of spending tons of time writing high-quality content may not align with your other business goals. Don’t try and tackle it alone.
Compose.ly partners with experienced writers who understand manufacturing. We can work with you to create engaging content to draw in your target audience. Request a sample today to get started.
