There’s a ton of reasons to swing into the drive-thru and grab yourself a quick bite of a seasonal McRib sandwich. You’re thinking about the "right now"… the fact that you didn’t plan for your meal and that you want to fulfill your immediate goal of food in your belly. But, think about this… what do you actually prefer?  The fast food or a slow cooked, juicy, healthy, delicious pork tenderloin?  If you are willing to invest a little bit more, including time, into what was going into your face, you could have been able to be dining on some delish healthy option. Also, the food would be much more beneficial to you in the long run and I guarantee – much more worth the investment.

Alright, first of all, get on board with “expertise marketing”. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what that is – cause we kinda made it up. Basically, it’s marketing that utilizes your industry expertise on your specific product or service. You use that sought after knowledge and organized it into content that is on your site to attract your ideal buyer by answering their common questions, or triggers.

The best thing about this (besides the fact that you are attracting exactly the kind of person that you want to your business) is that all the while, you are fueling and empowering your website for now and years to come. Fueled by relevant content for your ideal customer, your website should be your #1, round-the-clock, best salesperson!

I am sure that there are a ton of people thinking… what the hell is a buyer persona and why is this important to me? Well, honestly, those are great questions. Kudos to you for admitting that you don’t know and taking a step towards enlightening yourself.  Trust me – this topic is worth the read!

When someone is online searching for answers, they want the most relevant information possible.  When you are online, isn't that what YOU want? Well, in order to make sure your marketing investment is being spent on providing and pushing out relevant information to attract the right people, first you need to know exactly who those RIGHT people are.

A B2B marketing strategy for a manufacturing business HAS to utilize premium content such as eBooks! It allows your website to become your #1 salesperson, all while providing the exact knowledge about your service or product that you want to be sharing.

If your manufacturing company’s website isn’t utilizing premium content guarded by forms, YOU ARE MISSING OUT ON POTENTIAL QUALIFIED LEADS! I can break this down to two main reasons to jump on board:

Earlier this week, I wrote about why inbound marketing works for manufacturing. I walked through the buyer’s journey, from discovery, to consideration, to making a decision about a solution for a problem they’re facing. In the case of manufacturing, the buyer always feels an acute need for the solution prior to purchasing; buying a huge piece of machinery is not a week-long decision. The process could take months, with input from many other decision-makers in the company.

Once a potential solution has been identified, the buyer is ready to talk to a sales professional at your manufacturing business. Here’s how a sales team enabled through inbound succeeds more often.

Marketing for manufacturing companies is not an easy job. Traditional marketing methods focuses on the seller - what you have in stock, what you need to move, what’s been popular most recently, and where you think the buyers ought to be. While that method may work for some companies, manufacturing companies are a different case.

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. 

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!

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.

SMarketing, sales and marketing alignment, is critical to your manufacturing organization’s success. Both teams are responsible for your company’s growth and success. Both can now be held accountable for their contributions to revenue, and the gap between the teams has closed. With sales and marketing working close together, it’s critical that they work well together.