While many manufacturers may not sell their products online, that’s where the buying process starts for a lot of people. An effective digital marketing strategy, presence and profile will help make sure your business is visible when people begin their search for your products and services, and will help position you as a respected market leader and expert in your field.
The Partners Group is a Yorkshire PR and digital agency, with over 30 years’ experience of supporting manufacturers across the UK and beyond in the food processing, building products, construction and industrial products sectors.
Here’s our advice to get you started:
- Establish your starting point: What are people searching for in your industry, right now? And is your website ranking for those keywords? If not, there’s work to be done to make sure you are appearing in the right searches, and not losing out to competitors. Get to grips with Google Analytics: it can tell you so much about what people are looking for and how your website shapes up.
- Be useful: You might be ideally placed to advise on a niche product or application, but if your company doesn’t appear when people search for it, you could be missing out on a future customer. Prospective customers want to work with businesses that know their niche, and demonstrating your knowledge in the digital world is important for engagement early in the buying cycle.
- Keep up: If you pivoted production and started to manufacture new products during Covid-19, does your website show that? Making the products is one thing; getting them in front of potential buyers is another. Your website and wider digital footprint – social media, email marketing, online PR, SEO – will all help you gain visibility and attract enquiries, provided you’re using them well.
- Don’t ignore social media: LinkedIn, in particular, is a platform often overlooked by manufacturing businesses. And yet it provides opportunities to maintain the relationships built by sales teams and keep your company and products front of mind. Make sure your sales team is comfortable using LinkedIn, and put a good content strategy in place to give them useful and relevant information to share. How to guides, new contract wins, advice and case studies will all help keep current customers engaged and draw prospective customers closer.
For help with digital marketing, feel free to get in touch for a chat with one of our experienced team.