The Thomas Blog

Increase Your Brand With The Story Of Your Manufacturing Business

Marketers and speech writers may be skilled at storytelling, but the tale of your business belongs to you — the manufacturer. With a little practice and guidance, you can tell it better than anyone else and create content that motivates buyers to choose working with you over other companies. 

4 Reasons Why Manufacturers Use Video Marketing

The most effective content marketing strategies incorporate various types of content, allowing companies to reach users at different stages throughout the buying journey. Offering informative blogs, white papers, eBooks, infographics, case studies, calculators, checklists, and other forms of content not only helps garner new leads, but it also establishes you as a knowledgeable thought leader in your field. Developing fresh, new content can also improve your SEO rankings, making it easier for people to find your company.

While you may be providing an ample amount of written content for your site visitors, you might be missing one crucial component — videos. Increasingly important in today’s digital landscape, video content allows for efficient dissemination of complex information while providing interactive, engaging user experience.

The Basics of Content Marketing for Manufacturers

Content marketing can persuade potential partners and influence buyers at every stage of the buying cycle, so it's important to understand the essential elements that make up a successful content marketing strategy and how they support sales.

Content marketing isn't limited to the types of content or channels you use to promote — many other moving pieces like sales, traditional marketing tactics, and brand evangelists play into it.

9 Content Marketing Ideas For Manufacturers (With Examples!)

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

Now what?

Well, now comes the hard part — you’ll need to create content that your prospects actually want to read. Don’t panic. While this can seem like a big undertaking, understanding the inbound marketing funnel can make this process a lot more manageable — not to mention a lot more effective. Let’s take a look at some content examples that have produced great 

What Is B2B Emotional Marketing?

Imagine the best marketing campaigns you’ve ever seen. Chances are, they all shared a common element — they evoked some sort of emotion within you. Whether it was nostalgia, laughter, jealousy, or even rage, those campaigns struck a nerve.

Now, were these marketing campaigns produced by a major brand targeting consumers? In most cases, they were — this falsely leads many to believe that emotion has no place in B2B marketing.

What Industrial Buyers Care About Most When Shortlisting New Suppliers

The industrial buying process can be long and complex. Buyers source, research, compare, and shortlist potential partners anonymously online, with very little interaction with sales people. Creating a shortlist is an essential component of the supplier discovery and selection process, but what kind of information are these buyers looking for, and what factors matter most when they ultimately decide to make a purchase decision?

Last year, we asked more than 250 real, verified, and registered buyers in the Thomas Network at Thomasnet.com. Here are the top 6 most important factors they consider when sourcing new suppliers:

3 Industrial Marketing Ideas That Grow Your Business

Are You Creating Quality Content?

Content marketing for manufacturing companies is a critical element to any lead generation strategy. When done right, it builds your brand image and creates a stronger relationship between you and your customer. But the last thing you want to do is crank out blog posts, eBooks, or other resources that won't be effective — it will not only waste your time, but it'll turn your prospective customers away.

So whenever you're producing content that is aimed to help drive in buyers and engineers to learn more about your company's products and services, ask yourself these key questions below and see if it pases the quality test.

7 Ways To Get Blog Post Ideas For Manufacturing

One of the best ways for you to reach out to your customers and provide them with information about your business or manufacturing processes is through valuable marketing content. A blog will not only allow you to provide customers with information, but it will also give you a chance to incorporate a variety of well-positioned keywords into your content. The keyword-rich content you produce through blogging will showcase your expertise and raise your website’s authority.