Trade shows can be one of the most valuable sources of quality leads for manufacturers.  We all understand the benefits of being able to shake hands and build trust with a lead in person.  In this post, we share how to generate a high return on your trade show investments.

Pause and think about this…

What do you think “BRANDING” is?

You're not Coca-Cola.  I'm pretty sure you knew that already, but just in case.  But, what that means is your marketing dollars need to be spent targeting very specific people.  Specialized manufacturing in the USA has become an efficient market. Creating and maintaining a competitive edge means staying innovative when it comes to your core business and improving all aspects of the business - including design and brand.

With the rise (and domination) of social media, your website has not lost importance, it has gained it.  Manufacturing CEO’s, the goal of your social media should be two fold: build trust and send people to your automated marketing and sales funnel.  And, the most effective automated marketing and sales funnel is still your website - partnered with an email system and a CRM/Database.

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!

As a manufacturing organization, filling your sales pipeline with the right customers who will pay well and create repeat, long-term business is important for your bottom line. Marketing - especially digital marketing - can play a huge role in filling your manufacturing, packaging, and shipping schedules so your plant is running as efficiently as possible. 

As I go around speaking attending conferences, and working with our manufacturing clients, I’m often asked questions about what marketing technology is best for a medium-sized manufacturing firm. For context, I tend to think of companies with $25-100MM in revenues as medium-sized companies.  There are SO many choices now, your head will spin.  As you know, software as a service (SAAS) is now normal.  With that normalcy has come a market inundated with constant new technology and software applications.

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.

This is the final part of our 4-part series on specialized construction marketing plans. Particularly when it comes to content marketing, you have 4 steps to see success:

The Internet exists for only a few purposes: Curating a perfect life on social media and videos of people being scared by other people!  Ok...that’s not the real reason obviously. The internet actually exists to get the best, most relevant information to people searching for it.

There are a few “search engines” that exist to help people find this information. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are some of them. When you search for something using the search engine, it crawls the web (it’s actually called “spidering”) and “reads” all of the information on every website.