The Thomas Blog

Why Brand Marketing Is Important For Manufacturers

When it comes to branding, the major players probably come to mind first — Amazon, Coca-Cola®, Disney, and so on. The strength of their name recognition is immense. When these names come up, you immediately see their logo, and even if the logo doesn’t bully its way into your brain, you at least know what they’re selling. It doesn’t matter whether you consume their products or not; you know them. They’ve seared your mind with a branding iron. (See what we did there?)

Many manufacturing and industrial companies, however, don't think that they need to worry about branding. Some still prefer to rely on word of mouth marketing and referrals to attract new business, and they feel that branding isn't important in their space. 

But there's a better way to grow your business.

Environmentally-Friendly Green Manufacturers Committed To Sustainability

These days, consumers demand businesses to be "green" — from green packaging to green solutions to green food — a green company offers sustainable or renewable products or operates in an environmentally-friendly way. Adopting environmentally friendly processes and energy-efficient practices has numerous business benefits and are already at the center of many corporate social responsibility policies and marketing strategies. 

Let's take a look at some small business manufacturers who are committed to sustainability and green manufacturing.

Who Are The Industrial Buyers On The Thomas Network?

You know who your target customers are. 

You know what you can do for them and why they should choose you over your competition.

As for when you'd like them to contact you? ASAP would be nice, right?

The only problem is, you don't know where they all are. 

The good news is we do. Your prospective buyers are on our platform and enables you to engage industrial in-market buyers at every possible touchpoint in the buying process.

How To Create A Company Profile Video (For Manufacturers)

More marketers are investing in videos to share customer success stories, promote products or services, and increase their brand — most importantly, videos help sell. According to HubSpot’s 2020 Not Another State Of Marketing Report, video is the #1 form of media used in content strategy today. Here are some other fast facts:

• Video marketers get 66% more qualified annual leads
• Video marketing efforts can achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness
• Marketers that use video content grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t

With a company profile video, manufacturers can simply engage more buyers and turn them into customers.

New Suppliers on Thomasnet.com for October 2020

In the past year alone, we've added nearly 6,000 new companies to Thomasnet.com® to help industrial professionals like you find the exact suppliers you're looking for. That's a big number, but it's all a part of our work to grow industry through thick and thin. This month we're showing off our favorite 10 of the latest batch to join the platform below, ranging from PPE suppliers to manufacturers of glowing paint. 

New and Noteworthy Categories on Thomasnet.com for October 2020

Here at Thomas, we offer all kinds of amazing resources to help industrial professionals source for what they need, from the latest news to industrial guides to a direct connection with more than half a million B2B companies. Here, we're showcasing some of our latest additions to another asset: new categories to search in and source from.

This month, in addition to our favorite overall categories added over the previous month, we're also featuring nine categories of products and services related to wildfire fighting. This way we hope to better enable those who are dealing with the fires to source for what they need. We'll be diving into details on these fire-related categories first.

6 Common Mistakes That Job Shops Make

For more than 120 years, Thomas has created trusting relationships with thousands of successful job shop owners from coast to coast. Job shops across America form the backbone of the country’s economy. Unfortunately, even though they may have the right skills, equipment, and people, it’s not rare to see a job shop fail. 

In this blog post, we'll review the common mistakes job shops make and some anecdotal insights directly from job shop owners and managers.

9 Beginner Steps To Planning A Successful Responsive Website Design

In just a few years, “responsive” has gone from a buzzword to the industry standard in website design — and with good reason. Responsive design offers significant advantages over traditional design, allowing for SEO improvements, streamlined development, and, of course, better user experience across different devices.

Buying Activity for Packaging Materials in 2020

Buyers are actively searching for new supplier partners for their packaging materials needs in 2020

Buying activity from engineers & procurement professionals sourcing on Thomasnet.com has seen strong growth in 2020 for the packaging materials space. At a glance, the following major sourcing KPIs have seen a YoY increase vs. 2019:

• The number of sourcing sessions for packaging materials has grown by 25% 
• The number of RFIs submitted directly to suppliers through Thomasnet.com grew 140% 
• The number of supplier evaluations taking place on the Thomasnet.com company profiles of packaging material suppliers grew by 55%