The Thomas Blog

6 Social Selling Tips: For Sellers In Manufacturing

Facebook? Check. Twitter? Check. LinkedIn? Check.

If you’ve already put in the work of building out profiles on these major social media platforms and have gained some followers, you’re off to a great start. But even more important than gaining followers, of course, is gaining customers — and simply having a social media presence isn’t enough to reliably convert connections into leads.

Below, we’ve outlined six tips to remember when developing and optimizing your social media marketing strategy. These tips will help you to better leverage your professional online brand to create more relationships with buyers through social media interactions — the process known as social selling. Here's how you can keep your social selling on point.

Opportunities For Business Growth During The Summer Slowdown

Every year, thousands of manufacturers around the country shut down their plants and facilities for a few weeks in the summer. They do so for a variety of reasons — to allow for vacation time, to take care of deferred maintenance, or to retool for the second half of the year.

While these activities are certainly important, too many manufacturing companies let the summer slowdown distract them from one of the most important activities of all — generating new business.

8 Wordpress SEO Plugins To Optimize Your Website

Search engines are a major source of website traffic — 93% of all internet experiences start with a search engine. So it makes sense that many manufacturers are stepping up their online presence by using Wordpress for their website and implementing smart SEO to get their website found.

If you think about your own behavior when you type in some keywords or key phrases, you probably click on one of the first few results on the page. If you’re serious about having your business' website make it to the top spot on Google, make SEO one of your priorities. In fact last year, 61% of companies listed growing SEO as their biggest priority. Luckily, you don’t need to be an SEO expert to begin.The following list of plugin recommendations can help improve SEO on your Wordpress website.

Inbound Marketing and ROI: For Industrial Companies & Manufacturers

As the digital world reshapes the industrial world, marketing budgets are on the rise. According to ENGINEERING.com's annual survey of engineering marketers, twice as many respondents reported that their budgets were growing rather than shrinking in 2017.

Like with any investment, marketers and manufacturing companies want to ensure that they are receiving a positive return. We’ve outlined two major areas of return on investment (ROI) that illustrate the effectiveness of inbound marketing — but first, what exactly is the difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing?

9 Tips For Video Marketing Campaign Success

Video marketing is on the rise, and for good reason; videos have been shown to capture attention  more effectively than plain text or static pictures, and videos are shared more than any other type of content on social media. Today, 61% of content marketers are putting videos into play in order to keep up with the competition and establish their brands as cutting-edge thought leaders. If you haven’t yet made use of video in your content marketing campaigns, it’s time to get going. Or, if you’re already utilizing video, it may be time to kick it up a notch and use videos to increase sales.

With solid production value and engaging content, your video will position you as a knowledgeable, current, and trustworthy brand. Below, we’ve outlined tips industrials should keep in mind when using videos in your marketing campaigns.

The 5 Types Of Marketing Emails You Need To Be Sending (And Why)

Whether you are just starting with email marketing or you're already sending marketing emails every week, you know that emails are one of the best channels to sell. But smart marketers are always looking for new ways they can build relationships and grow revenue.

Should you nurture your subscribers with weekly newsletters? Are dedicated sends (stand-alone emails with one offer) better at optimizing your sales and marketing funnel? What about email digests?

These are all valid questions marketers find themselves asking when selecting the right format to meets their email marketing goals. In this post, we're review the different types of marketing emails you can send, and their respective advantages and disadvantages. This information should help you make an educated decision about picking the most appropriate email type and how to go about using it.

7 Quick Ways To Check If Your Website Is Out Of Date

It used to be that simply having a website would set you apart from the competition. You could create a handful of pages, add a little background about the company, sprinkle in some images, set it, and forget it. Unfortunately, a website that works for you requires a lot more upkeep than that.

As a key driver of new business, your website is the centerpiece of your digital marketing efforts.

For manufacturing and industrial companies, establishing a digital presence is no longer merely an option; it’s critical to staying relevant in today’s increasingly connected, online-focused B2B world. Today, users expect more. They want to know that a company is actively invested in keeping their processes, technologies — and their website — current and up to date, reflecting shifting trends and market changes.

SEO Basics for Manufacturers and Industrial Companies

You know you want more new customers, and you know your website is key to getting them to your company, so how can you connect the dots? When you do a Google search, you’re likely to click on a link from one of the first five results. Have you ever given any thought to exactly how one of those sites gets to a top slot?  It's a lead generation tactic fueled by organic search and search engine optimization (SEO) to drive your target audience to your website. 

The Basics Of Instagram For Manufacturers

When it comes to content marketing, social media plays an undeniably huge role in how businesses manage their online interactions with consumers and partners. You’re likely already familiar with the “Big Three” social media channels — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

These networks are just the tip of the digital iceberg; the social media landscape is vast and teeming with a wide variety of platforms. In order to master your social media game, it’s important to understand these networks and how they can be utilized.

One of the most popular social media networks is Instagram. Synonymous with ethereal, nostalgic filters, and heavily edited photographs, this image-based platform might not seem like an obvious choice for an industrial social media marketing strategy. However, with its high popularity and excellent engagement rate, integrating Instagram into your social media marketing strategy is definitely worth considering.