Marketing teams are under increased scrutiny today thanks to the advent of Big Data. Executives can analyze everything from overtime cost/benefits and depreciating machinery assets to the return on investment of a single employee to the advantage of healthy vending machine options versus junk food choices. It’s no wonder that business leaders are looking for better, more exact return analysis for their marketing budgets, as well.

Summer in Wisconsin means spending the three warmest (and least likely to have snow) months outdoors taking advantage of the beautiful weather. As a kid, one of my favorite activities was my family’s annual camping trip to Door County. 

Complete with a four-hour road trip in an eight-passenger van, a massive tent, nightly campfires, and plenty of gear, the trip was quite the undertaking. There were lists (thanks, Mom!), weeks of organizing and packing, and lots of planning.

Like those camping trips, creating successful inbound strategy for B2B businesses also requires a number of essential elements. I’ve assembled the essentials here in the form of an Inbound Survival Guide, just like we created for our summer camping trips.

B2B marketers know that marketing a complex product like an automated manufacturing system - whether it’s integrating already-built solutions, building a new solution from scratch, or recommending a solution to meet a machinery need - is a constant challenge. It’s not as easy as a Pinterest post or a tweet with a relevant hashtag. Instead, you’re marketing to a specific set of buyers. These buyers do months of research, make decisions with a team of people, and want to know the exact reasons why your automated system is better than any other on the market - in extreme detail.

Myth Debunked: As the #1 content marketing tactic for manufacturers, 87% of manufacturing brands create videos and put them on their website and YouTube. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

A picture is worth a 1,000 words, but imagine if it was a video; how much more you could say? One minute of video equates to 1.8 million words. (Source: Forrester Research). Resonating with a visitor: priceless.

When you're creating your marketing materials, do you know for whom you are creating them? Your audience should be a defined group - or groups - of people. These are commonly called "buyer personas." HubSpot defined this term as “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” 

The concept behind buyer personas is simple: a persona is a defined audience member where you have identified the persona's role, concerns, questions, and search patterns. Basically, the concept shows how your “perfect customer” would behave if he or she existed and made buying decisions. A buyer persona is an imperative part of your marketing strategy—the secret sauce as you put together a recipe for success.

The manufacturing industry contributes $2.09 trillion to the economy,  so it is no surprise U.S. manufacturers are the most productive in the world. While this figure has steadily risen since 2009, a vast majority of companies still continue to struggle with generating qualified leads.¹ Why?

YouTube isn’t just for funny footage of cats. The video platform is the #2 biggest search engine in the world, just behind Google (which owns it!) It processes 3 billion searches monthly: 100 hours of content are uploaded every minute!

One of the fundamentals of Inbound Marketing is content creation. Put simply, content is the message that your inbound marketing strategy delivers to your buyer personas and customers. Without a good message, your inbound strategy won’t work the way you expect and want it to work.