Inbound Marketing for Manufacturing: Why It Works

Today’s manufacturers are facing an enormous, and frankly daunting series of marketing challenges that are more than enough to keep sales executives, managers and specialists up at night worrying about the future. These challenges include: 

• The fact that most manufacturing-related marketing will be evaluated (at some point) by engineers, and let’s face it: engineers typically HATE marketing, and will go to great lengths to demonstrate their anti-marketing sentiment.

• The manufacturing sales cycle is typically months or years in duration, which gives prospects ample opportunity to fall off the radar screen and lose focus.

• Manufacturing purchase decisions are always made by a group and team – never by a single person – which adds to the complexity, and increases the risk that marketing messages will not accurately make it through the chain (think of the “telephone game” that kids play, and how “have a nice day” whispered in one kid’s ear can turn into “muffin Tuesday sandwich” by the time the 5^th or 6^th kid gets the message).

• Prospects are busy, highly selective, and difficult to notoriously engage in the first place. As IndustrialMarketingToday.com notes: “Today’s industrial buyers are in self-serve and self-select mode, making them virtually invisible and hard to reach. They don’t need or want to talk to your sales people to get product information. Your buyers will engage with your sales team only when they are ready. Hounding them with cold calls or unwanted spammy emails is not going to make them choose you over the competition”.

Now, based on these huge challenges, you might think that manufacturers would hoist the white flag of marketing surrender, and rely on old fashioned tactics like word-of-mouth marketing, or getting their name and contact information into a dusty industry directory.

However, that’s not what successful manufacturing companies are doing. Rather than trying to hold onto the past, they’re embracing the present and future – which means they’re using inbound marketing – to generate unprecedented bottom-line results. 

For example, as highlighted by HubSpot, inbound marketing enabled:

• Sauna manufacturer Finnleo to increase web traffic by 113 percent
• Printing manufacturer Plastic Printers to increase revenue by 24 percent
• Fuel and oil addictive manufacturer Bell Performance to increase customer acquisition by 80 percent
• Aluminum and plastic manufacturer Northern Engraving to increase leads by 142 percent
• Heavy duty plastic sheeting manufacturer Global Plastic Sheeting to increase sales by 100 percent

These quantitative results are more than impressive – for an industry that faces permanent, systemic marketing obstacles, they’re outright astonishing.

But are they surprising? Nope. We know what inbound marketing can do – both for our own company, and for our customers across the country – and the only thing that surprises us, is that more businesses don’t get on the inbound marketing train ASAP; and this certainly includes manufacturers!

Below, we highlight the 5 key reasons why inbound marketing works for manufacturers:

1. Inbound marketing lets manufacturers get and stay on their prospects’ radar screens, but in a “non-aggressive, non-spammy and non-salesy” way.

2. Inbound marketing is not (repeat: not!) sales collateral. As such, engineers don’t go shields up the moment they see it. Instead, they open their minds to learning something useful and important. And if there’s anything that engineers love, it’s learning new stuff and getting smarter.

3. Inbound marketing helps manufactures send out a consistent message, because the content they create – whether it’s a blog post, ebook, white paper, report, checklist, video, or anything else – can be easily shared among “buyer groups”. The 10^th person who engages the content will get the SAME message as the 1^st person (so no more “muffin Tuesday sandwich” problems).

4. Inbound marketing allows manufacturers to target different buyer personas – such as engineers, C-level, independent consultants, etc. – and then track engagement across the customer journey. This data can then be leveraged to push out relevant, timely content.

5. Inbound marketing can be fully automated, which makes it VERY cost effective and inherently scalable. Manufacturers can run inbound marketing programs and campaigns in one location, several locations, or worldwide – without having to hire a single additional staff member.

The Bottom Line

Manufacturers need inbound marketing as much as any other business in any other industry. In fact, a rational, logical, engineer-friendly argument can be made that manufacturers actually need inbound marketing more – because they face major obstacles that aren’t going away anytime soon. 

Fortunately, inbound marketing works for manufacturers. We’ve seen the results with our own customers. And we can show you the way forward, too. To learn more, contact us today and schedule your free consultation.

Need more great information about inbound marketing? Download our "Guide to Inbound Marketing Best Practices" for FREE now: