One of the great things about digital marketing for manufacturing is that it generates so many assets that sales can use and repurpose to showcase your value.
Your content marketing strategy is a great driver of organic and social traffic. When it’s optimized for SEO to effectively reach and resonate with your target audience, it’s clear how your sales team can leverage your content to nurture the prospect and close the deal.
To get more value from your digital marketing efforts, these are some tactics you can try to to support sales with your digital marketing assets.
Our Tips to Boost Your Digital Marketing Strategy for the Manufacturing Industry
1. Fortify email exchanges with helpful collateral
Salespeople are having a variety of exchanges on a daily basis. These conversations are in tune with the content you are creating: to educate and influence the audience they are talking to.
Build an organized editorial calendar that you can share with your sales team so they’ll know which blogs, eBooks and videos are at their disposal to share with prospects.
They can bolster your brand’s credibility by including a link to the asset with a thoughtful note that connects the relevance of the piece to their goals, problem or situation.
If you have eBooks or white papers that you are using as lead generation tools, those pieces are perfect to email to current prospects. They demonstrates your relevance and authority in a complex, high-stakes subject matter in manufacturing. Not to mention, these differentiate you from the competition that has not produced this valuable content.
[Read more: How Does Content Marketing Drive Sales?]
2. Build recognition and credibility through social networks
It is important for every brand to be active on the social channels where your audience is, but you’ll also want to take full advantage of your salespeople’s individual networks —– in fact, it’s not at all unusual for theirs to be larger than the brand’s. Because relationships and referrals are so critical to completing the manufacturing sales process, you’ll want to your sales team actively sharing your content on LinkedIn.
Most sales professionals are active on LinkedIn and Twitter. It sounds simple to have your sales team share the content you produce with their followers. Unfortunately, most salespeople don’t sit down at their desks and think, “Now, which blog should I share on LinkedIn today?” (At least not from a business perspective).
Make social sharing frictionless for your sales team by creating a social calendar. If they need inspiration, provide sample posts and hashtags with the links and they’ll do the rest.
In fact, the ideal time to launch a content sharing social strategy is in the leadup to an industry trade show or convention. When sales joins the effort to share content that points to your top solutions and value – pinned with the event’s official hashtag – they’ll build brand recognition and generate interest ahead of time. They’ll send clear message on the great solutions your brand offers, and attendees will know going in that your booth is well worth a stop.
3. Build on sales’ knowledge base
How often do you hear, “I wish I knew more of the research, information and data that helps show our value proposition.”
This disconnect between marketing’s knowledge base and sales folks’ thirst for this information can be solved by spotlighting the content you are producing around subjects that are important to their business growth.
As you hand off this helpful content to your sales team, connect the dots. Highlight the relevant data and share a few talking points on what it means and why prospects will care.
Also, you’ll want to keep the sales team in the loop when you’re tracking and reporting on website performance. When they know what you know about the target audience – which high opportunity search terms are trending and which content is resonating – they can craft their messaging with greater precision.
The more they buy into the content, the more they will email it, share it and use it in their sales presentations.
[Read more: 9 Website Marketing Ideas for Manufacturing Companies]
Building a plan for your salespeople will make your content reach farther and drive more value to your organization. These results will demonstrate to executive management how your digital marketing strategy is not only driving web traffic, downloads and social discussion, but it’s also helping to drive sales revenues.
Grow your manufacturing marketing strategy with Brandpoint
If you’re looking for a digital marketing partner to enhance your online presence with a strategy that’s tailor made for your manufacturing needs, contact us. Our digital marketing team will act as an extension of your marketing department and help you reach your goals.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2015 and has been updated for relevancy.
