We often hear "Marketing? It's just communication!" and I can tell you that our reaction is usually something like this:
So, if you too are unable to really differentiate between marketing and communication, you've come to the right place!
Marketing involves knowing your business, the market, and the competition in order to develop a marketing strategy for your products or services: this is known as the "4Ps." The product, its positioning, its price, and its place are the pillars of marketing thinking!
It will enable you to deal with periods of crisis more easily, but also to work on your employer brand as part of your recruitment strategy (a major challenge for the industry).
In this article, you will discover the essentials of a marketing strategy that will grow your industrial business.
Building an effective digital ecosystem
To sell more effectively, you must first and foremost stay in touch with your customers and remain visible to new prospects. Digital marketing makes it easy to stay close to your customers and achieve your sales goals. What's more, a new era of B2B buyers is dawning, and your contacts are becoming web technology experts! They will first search for your services online and your value proposition before contacting you directly.
It's proven!
-> 67% rely more on content and research than they did a year ago
-> 80% expect the same shopping experience as B2C customers
Even in B2B, the importance of digital marketing cannot be denied. It is essential to replace outdated tactics, such as print ads, with websites and digital ads to attract new customers .
Create high value-added content
When your future customers search for your products/services on the web, your website is an important basis for generating leads. If you are not present on this channel, they will not find you, which will seriously damage your reputation among your prospects.
In addition, your potential customers like to seek advice in your sector and inform themselves before contacting you. Present yourself as a trusted leader by publishing free resources, guides, and case studies that address the common challenges faced by your buyers: in short, all the value-added content you have available and that will make you THE reference in your field.
Having a high-performance website
Today, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 33% of people abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Think about it, or risk frustrating visitors with a poor user experience!
Optimizing your website starts with encouraging website conversions. It is essential to include simple solutions on your website so that prospects and customers can contact you or submit their information. For example? A contact page, several calls to action, quote request forms, etc. Make sure they are visible at all times.
Measure and analyze marketing KPIs
After implementing your marketing strategy, it is important to monitor its progress and analyze the data before making any changes.
The goal is to dig into your reporting tools and analyze the performance of their components, including:
👉 Keywords
👉 Image descriptions
👉Page titles and descriptions
👉 Contact buttons
👉Mobile page speed
If you don't know how to analyze your website effectively, you may need to turn to industry experts to fully evaluate your website's content, SEO traffic, SEA traffic, and mobile usability, and understand what all these details mean.
Create a multichannel communication plan
When it comes to communication plans, choosing the right channels to inform your target audience is key. There is a wide range of possibilities, with numerous channels available to increase your visibility: social media, websites, email campaigns, media, trade shows, marketplaces, and much more. But be careful—you need to stay relevant by choosing channels that are suited to your offering and your personas (find out more here!).
67% of sales are influenced by digital technology in the manufacturing industry!
💡Once you have chosen your channels, you will be able to feed them with a few key deliverables that we have the secret to!
The creation of success stories, white papers, and blog articles will feed all channels, while remaining within relatively reasonable budgets, compared to paid advertising, which remains expensive and therefore inaccessible to many manufacturers.
Remember, your communication campaign should be primarily digital (whether through social media, your website, or even email campaigns), and here's why:
67% of sales are influenced by digital technology in the manufacturing industry!
