According to our State of Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry Research Report, the greatest challenge that manufacturing marketers are facing is producing high-quality content. This challenge can be met with a variety of solutions, but we found another key statistic that might offer a quick, engaging way to produce high-quality content: 49% of manufacturing marketers see video marketing as one of the biggest trending marketing tactics. Using video to meet the need for high-quality content production can help boost your brand’s awareness, show off company culture and create informative content to help sell your products.
Videos are awesome pieces of content that help you inform and connect with your audience in an engaging, creative and entertaining way. If you’re not using video in your content strategy, you’re missing out.
Manufacturing markers also cited social media as a growing industry trend, suggesting the need to form strategic social media plans to help set manufacturing companies apart from their competitors. As more people continue to spend time on social, it creates a perfect opportunity to reach customers in an engaging way. And the best part? Social media and video marketing work hand-in-hand to give you powerful results.
There is no one specific way to start amping up your video content — rather, there are numerous techniques you can use to implement video in your marketing and enhance your manufacturing marketing efforts. By using social media and trying out a variety of video styles, you can begin to strengthen your digital marketing. We’ve compiled a list of types of videos and how to incorporate them in your marketing strategy.
Explainer or product-oriented videos
This style of video can be as formal or informal as you’d like, and could be hosted by an employee or client, or simply animated, depending on the resources you have on hand. Regardless of the format, these videos focus in on your products or services and explain their value to the consumer.
Manufacturing marketers cited testimonials as a powerful form of digital marketing, so you could create a client testimony in a video format that explains how well a product works or what the client’s experience working with you was like. Get creative with it! By finding ways to explain your brand’s services in a way that is easily digestible for your audience you show off your value proposition and make your brand more approachable.
This video from Ziegler Cat shows how you can use a client testimonial and turn it into a perfect promotional video for your product:
Behind-the-scenes or process-oriented videos
These videos can be a blast to make, especially when you get your employees involved. Take your audience behind the scenes on a day in the life at a manufacturing company. These videos are awesome for transparency and credibility, making your brand more relatable to your audience and giving consumers a better idea of what goes into the products you’re manufacturing. You could talk about your quality standards or interview employees on what the manufacturing process looks like — the opportunities are truly endless. It’s all about learning what your audience wants to see and showing them rather than telling them.
[Read More: What Are the Top 3 Challenges for Manufacturing Marketers (And How to Solve Them)]
This video from Andersen Corporation shows the behind-the-scenes of window manufacturing while letting the audience get a feel for the company’s CEO — both extremely important in building credibility.
Go live
You can maximize your company’s social media accounts by livestreaming video content to your followers. This is a great way to interact with consumers in real time, giving your audience a platform to vocalize questions, concerns or even to sing your brand’s praises. And while this may seem intimidating, LinkedIn makes it especially seamless by scheduling live events so that your brand can promote the live event beforehand and you can plan the livestream around a specific topic.
Tennant Company went live with this event that allowed one of their engineers to talk about their position at Tennant and what it’s like working for the company. This is a great way to show employee appreciation and give your employees a voice.
Meet-the-team or employee-focused videos
If you haven’t caught on yet, it’s absolutely imperative to include your employees in your content as often as possible — after all, they’re some of your biggest advocates. If you want to take a more light-hearted, culture focus on your videos, introducing your audience to a variety of employees and having them talk about their job or company can be a great way to relate to your audience and show comradery.
Here’s another example from Andersen. By putting one of their employees in front of the camera to talk about the impact they feel the company is making, Andersen is amping up their employer branding and credibility while relating to their audience and driving home that feeling of community.
This is also a great way to show off the people behind your company and can effectively get your employees interacting with your social media platforms. Your company might be living comfortably on LinkedIn, but it might be worth checking out other social platforms, like TikTok and Instagram. You’d be surprised how many people on TikTok talk about their jobs, what it’s like working in different industries, etc. If jumping on TikTok yourself doesn’t seem worthwhile, you could also try to employ an influencer to get your brand name out there to the younger generations, whether that’s simply for recruiting efforts or brand awareness.
These platforms definitely aren’t for everyone, so do your market research and make sure you’re connecting with your target market in the right spots.
Thought leadership videos
Who knows manufacturing better than, well, you? Have some of your senior leaders speak on industry trends, talk about your company’s latest blog posts or other content, or respond to an industry article. By discussing industry matters with your audience, you can build up your credibility while showing off your knowledge, letting your audience know they can trust you with their manufacturing needs.
Thought leadership videos are also perfect to emphasize any corporate social responsibility efforts or community involvement. Posting this kind of video on social media can make your efforts accessible to everyone, and people can then head to your website to get more information. This video from 3M does a great job of quickly showing 3M’s dedication to climate change and their direct impact.
Thought leadership content is especially effective when your employees share the content. It shows that they stand behind what your leaders are saying and agree with them. As marketers, you can’t force people to post, but you can strongly encourage them. Coach your employees on what to say on social, how to share a post and the things to include when posting.
Recruitment videos
If you have open positions, creating videos to explain the position or having an employee talk about what it’s like working for your company can go a long way to help your recruiting efforts. These videos can be informal, more like a hiring conversation where you could cover FAQs, company culture, job duties, etc. — anything that helps provide a clearer image of what working at your company looks like.
Video content partners with the content your marketing team already produces. Start small by repurposing preexisting content into videos and then continue to work video into your strategy. This interactive, engaging type of content will increase your brand awareness and help you make a bigger impact by setting you apart from competitors.
This awesome recruiting video from Ecolab is perfect in showing an employee who’s satisfied with their job and happy at the company. These kinds of videos give potential employees a good look at what working life would be like at the company from a real employee, not just from the brand itself.
We’ve found that recruiting no longer falls solely on the shoulders of recruiters — marketers have a big role to play, too, and your efforts can make a big impact for your company.
[Read More: 5 Ways That Digital Marketing Helps with Employee Shortages]
There are many ways to make an impact with marketing, but focusing in on video can boost your brand awareness, kickstart communities on social media and give your brand and your employees a voice. Whichever forms of video you decide to create, make sure to utilize social media as a tool to get your videos seen by more people. Whether you’re posting on Instagram Reels, TikTok, Facebook or LinkedIn, your video content is creating a more three-dimensional view of your brand, your employees, your culture and your product.
Need help getting started? Our top-notch video production services can help your company create great videos that are sure to engage your audience. And with years of experience in the manufacturing industry, we bring industry knowledge to the table. Reach out for more information; we are always happy to help.
