HubSpot

The new marketing essentials for manufacturers

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Simon Lemire
Partner, Buisness Development
27/4/2020

Modernizing Marketing Strategy in the Manufacturing Sector.

Is there a broader word than “marketing”? This field encompasses many aspects within a business, ranging from selling price strategy to product placement strategy on supermarket shelves. Of course, not all businesses use marketing in the same way, but the appropriate and recurring use of marketing helps to stimulate sales by creating leads. All you have to do is focus resources on marketing essentials according to the market in which the company operates.

What is a lead?

A lead is someone who has, in one way or another, shown interest in your company's product or service.

Manufacturing companies certainly use marketing in their product development strategy. However, they are not known to generate leads. They are more positioned as being innovative in terms of the products they offer to their target audience. On the other hand, the marketing process is often neglected, which can affect the effectiveness of marketing a unique product. It is encouraging to see that change is beginning to take place in the face of this situation. B2B buyers acquire autonomy by turning away from sellers in favor of information found on the web. That said, manufacturers need to modernize their approach and apply a well-established strategy to effectively exploit their sales potential, either to increase the number of orders or to attract labor.

Adapting to new market realities

To adapt, a manufacturer must pay more attention to customers and not just focus on the features and specifications of their products. The customer is the key element in lead generation. A manufacturer that can understand and demonstrate the customer buying process benefits from using their product and is more likely to acquire new leads. Developing a persona — a robot portrait of the ideal consumer whose problems related to your product or service offering you are fully aware of — is a crucial element of any marketing strategy. However, only 44% of manufacturers use the personas of their buyers to define their target market. Take advantage of this COVID-19 downtime to establish your persona, focus on your customer in order to have more effective and efficient communication with them and, at the same time, generate better leads.

The must-haves

Web site

At first, it may seem trivial, but it is imperative to have a website that allows the company to be seen at all hours of the day, every day. Your site should be appealing, clear, and effective. After all, people shop with their eyes first, so it's essential that your website reflects the quality of your products or services. Even without a transactional website, the virtual window plays a key role in making its mark on the market and reaching your target audience. In this period of pandemic, it is more true than ever that people in lockdown buy and shop via the web; so if you are not present online, your customers will certainly be, and in the end you are losing sales opportunities.

Marketing automation platform

You might be wondering what the word “automation” refers to. In fact, marketing automation refers to computer tools that allow tasks to be performed automatically without requiring a person to enter data manually. Communicating with your customers and potential buyers, managing your social networks, sending your emails and more, all of these tasks can be automated using a platform. Plus, all of your data and growth activities are in one place; there's no longer a need to travel from platform to platform and get lost in different software packages. A platform like HubSpot would allow you to focus your efforts on the real challenges of your business, especially in times of crisis. You can no longer waste your time on daily tasks that can be done by marketing software, you need to develop your plan for future years.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

A CRM is software that contributes to the relationship you have with your customers based on four important pillars: communications, operations, analytics, and collaboration. It becomes easy to organize all your timelines and to have an adequate understanding of your projects in order to allocate your resources to the right place at the right time. You will have an overview of your sales pipeline in real time. Thanks to this essential support provided by a CRM, you have all the data you need to effectively guide your team to success.

The link between marketing and sales

In manufacturing, the link between marketing and sales is critical. An effective CRM, such as HubSpot, makes it possible to synchronize the efforts of these two departments. For example, marketing can use CRM to track customer interactions with marketing content and forward this information to sales for personalized follow-up. This integration reinforces cohesion between teams and improves the conversion of leads into customers.

Marketing according to manufacturing business models

Manufacturing companies need to adapt their marketing according to their specific business models. For example, B2B manufacturers may focus on content marketing to educate potential customers about the complex products they offer. By using blogs, case studies, and white papers, businesses can demonstrate their expertise and build trust with their prospects. B2C models, on the other hand, can benefit from an approach that focuses on social media and targeted advertising to reach a wider audience.

In short, these three marketing essentials can bring you back to the map effectively, ensure visibility at all times — which is essential in times of lockdown, like today — and increase your sales gradually. What's even more interesting is that your website, marketing automation software, and CRM can be interconnected through a platform like HubSpot. The uniqueness that you can create in your business will facilitate contact with your prospects. Your marketing strategy can be executed. Your arrival in the digital age will be able to compensate for the absence of trade shows planned in 2020, so you will maintain visibility to counter the COVID-19 situation, you will be able to continue to communicate with your customers and even create contacts with potential buyers.

Addressing an operational change to enter the digital age will contribute to the increase of your orders and sales, but also to a modern approach that will support the conversion of your prospects into customers through technologies such as a website, social media, social media, marketing automation, organic search engine optimization (SEO) and others. Moreover, there will be another positive consequence of this change. By having an up-to-date corporate image, it becomes easier to attract new talent. The importance of having the right tools and good visibility is undeniable, and this is all the more true when a company has to deal with an unexpected situation over which few people have control; on the other hand, you can always influence your customers and prospects using an adapted marketing strategy.