Manufacturing Blog

This is part 3 of our series for marketers creating a marketing plan. Check out part 1: create a defined strategy and part 2: create relevant content.

Blogging: that time-consuming writing practice of innermost thoughts flowing onto a digital forum to be read by strangers you’ll never meet. Or is it?

Blogging as a practice has transformed over the years from an anonymous online journaling endeavor to one that helps establish individuals - or businesses - as thought leaders and influencers through providing much-needed insight into their expertise. 

High-value publications and ebooks are (or, should be) the bread-and-butter of an inbound sales strategy for your B2B business. Not sure why? From a prospect's point of view, you're empowering them - the buyer - to learn more about your solution or product in a low-pressure way, while they research and educate themselves (read more about this inbound method for manufacturing marketing).

From your sales point of view, you're gathering information about the prospect's interests and pain points based on what they download, as well as receiving their contact information and more for additional communication.

For some of you I can understand how you might scoff at the words “social media” and “easy” in the same sentence.  It can easily feel like a young man’s game. (Or woman’s game – didn’t mean to exclude – its just an expression.) You have to keep up with the trends and the lingo… tweeting, sending snappers, likes, pokes, bitmojis, blocking, hide from newsfeed, stop sending me game invites, I don’t want to play Farm Heroes so STOP ASKING!

When you’re looking for the results of this year’s marketing budget for your specialized construction business, can you easily show what’s happened with that money? Can you show the money spent, the content produced, the leads brought in, and results of those sales opportunities?

As a CEO, you have a specific way of looking at your company’s success. You see the big picture: where you are, where you’re going, and how you need to get there. That view hinges on the ability to look at each facet of your business and see the value it brings to your company’s bottom line. A data-centric inbound marketing strategy can give you the data you’ve been looking for from your marketing investments.

Sure, inbound marketing can be great for B2C companies. Creating interesting content for those companies is a great way to increase leads with consumers. But it’s just a waste of marketing dollars for your B2B manufacturing company… you’re looking to connect with other businesses, not people. Right?

Wrong. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

The modern buyer has changed the sales process, and now the sales process is being redefined. Today's sellers are adapting to the modern buyer, and as a result, the mantra of "always be closing" no longer works. Today's buyers must always be helping.

Keep reading to learn how modern sellers are adapting to today's buyers, and how you can apply this to your own sales process.

It's the first day of spring training for our hometown Milwaukee Brewers! As they start training for this year's April 3rd home opener and we dream of firing up the grills and the stadium filling with baseball fans from all over, we're drawing inspiration from Field of Dreams - you know, "If you build it, they will come."

As a business leader for a B2B company, you have responsibilities company-wide: caring for your employees, making sure customers are happy, ensuring that sales are up and losses are down, and possibly most importantly, working toward a high return on all investments. In your budget, marketing most likely has one of the highest-cost line items - but it should also have one of the highest returns. Contrary to popular belief, you can have faith in your marketing department's ability to produce high, measurable returns on your investments through a successful marketing strategy.

But how do you know if it’s working?