11 Top Content Marketing Ideas For Manufacturers (For Each Stage Of The Buying Process)

So you’ve realized that your traditional growth tactics just weren’t working, and you're ready to get your inbound marketing strategy off the ground. Great! To refresh, inbound marketing focuses on creating educational content that pulls people toward your industrial website.

So what do you need to drive qualified buyers to your website? Content! Let's go through some of the best content marketing ideas for manufacturers and industrial companies.

Is There Value In A Manufacturer's Website In 2021?

If you're an OEM, industrial distributor, or custom manufacturer, these statements might sound pretty familiar: 

• "We need to talk to prospects in order to qualify them."
• "Too much information on my site would give my competitors an advantage."
• "We get all of our new business from word-of-mouth."
• "A new website won't help me get new business because my current website doesn't, either." 

If you're looking to grow your business, you may wonder why all the advice you find points you to something about website efforts. Well, that's because more of your buyers and competitors are doing business digitally. Supplementing your traditional growth methods with an updated website, online presence, and inbound marketing strategy helps out when cold calls and word-of-mouth fall short. 

PPC And Paid Advertising: Display vs. Search vs. Social Ad Differences

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and other forms of paid advertising have become popular — and effective — marketing tools for many manufacturing companies. 

However, if you're new to paid advertising, it's important to know that several disciplines fall underneath this umbrella. Understanding the differences and figuring out which industrial paid strategy will work best for your company isn’t always easy or straightforward. We’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of each below.

OEM Website Design Examples & Tips To Help Increase Leads

The best and most successful salespeople today are those that go far beyond a good pitch. They are the ones that know their market and their products inside and out. More importantly, they speak to a customer's main question: "What's in it for me?" Many times, though, your website is the first "salesperson" a potential customer will encounter. Is your website built to grow qualified website traffic and leads? Whether you serve as a resource to distributors or sell products directly to the end-user, your website needs to provide technical information built to convert qualified leads. Below are OEM website examples and tips you can employ to help make your website a highly effective 24-7 sales channel.

Key Elements Of An Effective Website Design For Manufacturers

When it comes to industrial marketing, first impressions are incredibly important. You need to instantly build trust and credibility with potential customers, lest they take their business elsewhere. That's why updating and maintaining your manufacturing website is so critical — it's often the first point of interaction buyers have with your company. 

How To Increase Clicks To Your Manufacturing Website

It’s no secret that your website is the most important aspect of your lead generation strategy. But are you taking the time to continually optimize its pages and features?

Studies show that we have less than 15 seconds to make a good first impression with our website visitors.

If your website’s headline, call-to-action, or even its color scheme doesn’t hit all the right notes, your prospects will simply find a company whose brand better resonates with them — which, unfortunately, could be your competitor’s. While you may rely on your products or services to close the sale, your website design should leads prospects to the beginning of that sales journey. 

Why Is Website Quality More Important Than Quantity For Industrial Website Traffic?

Many companies get fooled by statistics showing heavy site traffic and essentially disregard how qualified — or unqualified — those visitors actually are.

SEO and PPC tactics can be extremely effective in getting the right people to your website, but you also need to have some metrics in place to discern how many of your visitors are serious buyers and how many are merely tire kickers.

Below are a few key reasons why it's more important to focus on quality than quantity for your industrial website traffic.

Thomas Factory Tours: Industrial Video Production Examples for Custom Manufacturers and OEMs

For industrial manufacturers, giving prospects a tour of their factories or plants helps showcase their processes and capabilities, and it lends legitimacy to their businesses. The most effective way to scale these tours is to use video content that can be posted, shared, and housed in the digital space, ready to be viewed at the click of a button.

The videos below, divided into sections based on each company's offerings, highlight strong examples of how industrial companies from different industries have given buyers a front-row seat to see their operations' inner workings and show what makes them a strong partner for their customers.

 Skip to:

1. CNC Milling and Machining Services
2. Spinning, Forging, and Casting
3. Stamping, Sheet Metal, and Tubing Fabrication
4. Plastics and Rubber Fabrication
5. End Product Production
6. Heat Treating and Finishing

**When you purchase video advertising on Thomasnet.com, we include video content production for FREE for OEMs, Distributors, and Service Companies

New and Noteworthy Categories on Thomasnet.com for September 2021

One of our latest Thomas Index Reports takes a look at the digital transformation of the farming industry. This transformation is achieved with technologies including Artificial Intelligence, one form of which is machine learning software, a featured category this month. Whether you're looking to find more intriguing products changing industry like AI or just need the basic stuff your company runs on, our 13 favorite new categories below can help you find what you need.