As you may have heard, so-called “interruption” marketing is out. This includes things like TV commercials, pop-up and pop-under ads, non-relevant banner ads, direct mail, unsolicited email, and anything else that gets in front of a customer’s face before he’s ready to think about it.
This traditional marketing method, also called out-bound marketing, was dealt a pretty lethal blow by customers making it know that this is the kind of marketing they hated with a capital H. (This is why cable was so popular - TV with NO commercials. Yay!)
So if you can’t go to the customer, what do you do? You coax the customer to you. That is the essence of inbound marketing. So far, inbound marketing has boosted lead generation by 54% over traditional outbound marketing. In addition, inbound costs were 61% less per customer than for outbound.
Sound good? Well, inbound marketing works especially well for manufacturing companies. Inbound marketing is a perfect fit for the B2B world.
So what do you have to do? More than put up a website.
Content Production
Content drives inbound marketing. To be more specific, quality content that is highly relevant to your ideal customer drives lead generation and sales.
Content is:
- web pages
- blogs
- newsletters
- facebook updates
- white pages
- eBooks
- videos
- podcasts
The list goes on and on. If it provides information, it is content, no matter the format.
The trick is that content must be fresh and updated frequently, but there are ways to streamline the process through re-using content in new ways and knowing ahead of time the type of content you want to share.
You will also need to produce different kinds of content to map to the various steps in the buying cycle because at each one there are specific questions customers will typically have. With the right content in place you can answer these questions as they come up with no delay.
Website Optimization
Website optimization, also known as SEO, is primarily aimed at search engines. Why? Because nearly every customer will consult a search engine when looking for a product or service, including manufacturing. Continually refreshed content with appropriate keyword and phrases incorporated into it improves the refresh rate of the search engine crawler and, when done correctly, helps your business rank near the top of the first page of results.
This does not mean repeating a keyword endlessly (aka keyword stuffing) because your content must ultimately be read by a person. And that person will make decisions based on your content. It’s better to write it well for humans instead of the search engine.
Great content will also attract inbound links from other quality websites, also enhancing your search engine ranking.
Lead Generation
Once you are found you want to convert those visitors to leads. You do this by making calls to action (CTAs) for which the customer is willing to give up a piece of information of his own, like his email address. This means you need landing pages where customers arrive from other venues such as social media, ads, or search engines.
Lead generation can be somewhat delicate. Your CTA offer must be valuable enough to trade for the customer information you want. So don’t go overboard asking for more than a few fields to be filled out. If you ask for too much the customer will leave.
Lead Nurturing
Once you have converted a lead, the customer has given you permission to continue to engage with him, at least once more. You use the information you have to implement a lead nurturing email and social media campaign to keep your business in front of the lead without annoying him.
Lead nurturing is necessary for long sales cycles because of the amount of time that elapses between first contact and sale. Large projects typically have numerous decision makers and influencers involved and you must find a way to answer everyone’s questions as the sale moves along.
At each point in the marketing and sales funnel there will be an opportunity to speak to a specific question meaning you need different types of content available and mapped to each step.
Measure for Measure
You can’t know if marketing of any sort is successful unless you can measure an actionable metric. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics provides dozens of numbers for you to monitor but not all will be things you can impact.
This is why you need actionable metrics; metrics that you can change by tweaking part of your marketing program.
Promotion and Collaboration
Inbound marketing also requires marketing and sales to work closely together to realize success. Collaboration between marketing and sales will provide the most well rounded information to use in creating, launching, and promoting campaigns. Sales will be familiar with the questions customers ask and how they move through the sales cycle. Marketing will know how to take that information and turn it into targeted content.
Promotion through social media channels is another important step in inbound marketing. You want to raise awareness of your content and product by letting everyone know that you have valuable information available. Valuable information is educational, relevant, and informative.
Inbound Marketing Is Important for Manufacturing
Inbound marketing is a method of getting found through relevant quality content and customer engagement that does not include selling. Instead customers opt in to receiving your information which is targeted to answer their questions and move the sale forward.
Inbound marketing is much more cost effective than traditional marketing and much more successful. You are making your company “find-able” at the very time a customer wants or needs your services; the very time they are interested in talking to you.
