The Thomas Blog

5 Ways To Redefine Your B2B Manufacturing Marketing Strategy This Year

Although 2020 is drawing to a close, there's still time to look ahead and start setting your industrial marketing plan for the future. As we've all learned from this year, you can't just recycle the same old tools and tactics and hope for the same results.

Here are five ways you can boost your manufacturing marketing strategy to meet the demands of today's buyers and get more leads.

Pitching Digital Marketing To Your Manager (For Manufacturers)

Digital marketing has become the most scalable, measurable, and effective channel to drive sales. As technology continues to advance and marketing best practices evolve, industrial companies are continuing to adopt digital marketing tactics at a much higher velocity — further sped up in 2020 by COVID-19 and the cancellation of trade shows. Thus, more manufacturers are using digital marketing to match their competitor’s ability to connect with buyers in the digital space.

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.

How To Meet The Needs Of B2B & Industrial Buyers

No matter your role — sales, marketing, operations, or leadership — you have a lot to accomplish.

So do your buyers. 

By understanding what your buyers have on their plates, you can more easily accomplish one of the most important things on yours — generating more leads and contributing to your bottom line. Here’s what you should know to meet their needs and create more meaningful connections to win more business.

2020 Ultimate Guide To Marketing For Manufacturing Companies

Marketing isn't a new practice (actually it has been around for centuries) but for some companies in the industrial space, there is still an opportunity to completely embrace its effectiveness — especially online.

For the manufacturing industry, marketing is a crucial part of the business that touches prices, product, and sales. So it’s important to understand how to use marketing for your business’ success if you: 

• Want to get more customers
• Want more high-quality leads
• Are interested in increasing revenue
• Are looking to expand your business into new markets.

In this blog, we’ll break down everything you need to know about beginning an inbound marketing campaign of your own and we'll even offer additional marketing resources for deeper dives along the way.

How To Market Online To Buyers In The Defense Industry

To help the manufacturing industry be appropriately equipped for change, we launched Thomas Industrial Data earlier this year.

Our sourcing activity data coupled with our Thomas Industrial Survey results, reveals interesting insights with North American suppliers shifting their businesses to meet the new normal.

• 55% of survey participants being likely to very likely to invest in Production Performance Automation in the next 12 months
• 69% of companies across the manufacturing and industrial sectors are likely to bring manufacturing production and sourcing back to North America
• 12% increase in website usage by manufacturers and industrial companies to connect with more buyers and customers

How To Begin Successful Industrial Marketing

Digital industrial marketing drives customers to your business’ products and services through coordinated design, content, social media, and SEO tactics. Many manufacturing and industrial companies may think that digital marketing would be more suited toward consumer goods and B2C than the industry space, but that's not the case. With the digital transformation of sales and marketing, successful B2B companies are now seeing marketing as a direct influence on revenue generation and more manufacturers are aligning their efforts with today's digital world.

In fact, most industrial manufacturers are practically already set up for a marketing campaign — they just don’t know it yet.

How To Measure B2B Marketing Success

Measuring the return on investment for marketing is challenging in even the best cases. Many industrial marketers mistake commonly used online B2C metrics for effective measures of their efforts. But marketing effectiveness can affect business outcomes like revenue growth and customer retention — so with so many variables and items to test, how can industrial marketers measure the success of their marketing campaigns?

The Role Of Color Theory In Marketing

The concept of "color theory" is not new. In fact, the term first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci way back in the 1400s. 

Today, color theory is still prominently taught in disciplines like art and science. However, marketers can certainly benefit from learning about it as well. After all, no matter what industry you are in, colors can define your brand, influence your audience, and prompt people to take action.