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Digital marketing for manufacturers is a strategy that enables you to promote your products online and reach more customers or clients. Learn more about manufacturing digital marketing strategies below!
No matter what your company manufactures, a steady client base is what keeps your business running smoothly. And today, the best way to reach your customers is with digital marketing for manufacturers.
Here’s a quick overview of everything we’ll cover on this page:
If you’d like to speak to a specialist about using digital marketing to drive leads and revenue, you can give us a call at 888-601-5359 or contact us online!
Digital marketing for manufacturers is the use of strategies like SEO, paid ads, email marketing, and website content to generate leads and drive sales for manufacturing businesses.
Do manufacturers need digital marketing?
In today’s Internet-driven business environment, digital marketing is essential for manufacturing companies.
With a robust digital marketing strategy, your manufacturing company can reach more clients, sell more products, and outperform your competitors online.
The 9 best digital marketing strategies for manufacturers
Ready to reap the benefits of manufacturer digital marketing? Here are nine of the best digital marketing strategies for manufacturing companies and how they can help your business succeed:
For any type of business, SEO — or search engine optimization — is one of the most important digital marketing strategies. That’s because it allows your website to rank high in search engine results for searches related to your services. It also helps attract more traffic.
For many businesses, SEO can be an effective way to drive immediate conversions. If you sell kitchen appliances, for example, you might look to draw someone to a page in the hope of getting them to buy one of those appliances then and there.
It doesn’t work like that for manufacturers, though. As a business-to-business (B2B) company, you’re typically marketing to decision-makers at other companies, not to consumers. That means you need to play the long game by slowly leading those decision-makers toward a conversion.
Thankfully, that’s exactly the kind of thing that SEO is built for. You can produce a plethora of engaging content on your site, such as:
Whitepapers
CAD file libraries
Case studies
Manufacturing process explainers
And more!
Then, with a good SEO strategy for your manufacturing company, you can draw people in to view that content each time they make a manufacturing-related search in Google. Eventually, they’ll come to see your business as the manufacturing expert that they should trust.
SEO involves researching keywords to determine how your potential clients search for your services. This way, you can ensure that your site ranks for the keywords that mean the most to your manufacturing company. In particular, be sure to target local industry terms (e.g., “manufacturing companies in Pittsburgh”).
SEO also involves optimizing your on-page elements to create a good user experience on your site. We’ll talk more about that when we look at web design.
Bonus: Need help reaching the top of the search results? SEO services from WebFX can help you outshine your competitors and drive more traffic to your website!
Pay-per-click is an advertising model that allows you to set an exact budget and only pay the platform when people click on your ads. You can display PPC ads at the top of search results, on third-party websites, or on various social media channels.
At WebFX, our PPC services are designed to help you maximize your ad spend and reach the right audience effectively.
PPC ads are targeted. That means that you can serve them to users that are already looking for your products and services, giving your ads a higher chance of clicks. You can also target specific demographics like age, location, occupation, and more.
Your audience may differ depending on what you manufacture, but common clients for manufacturers include construction, aerospace, and agricultural companies. Strategic PPC for manufacturing companies tailors messaging to these specific industries and their unique needs.
You can even use PPC ads to help you find fresh talent. On LinkedIn, for example, you can run ads to target specific job titles (like “procurement manager” or “supply chain director”).
Bonus: Launch revenue-driving PPC ads that boost your product sales with the help of WebFX! Our PPC experts can help you manage every aspect of your campaign, from optimizing your bidding strategy to creating engaging ad copy.
Web design is another important part of marketing your manufacturing company online. The design of your website is the first thing that users see when they enter, and it’s often how they create a first impression of your company.
Your web design should include an organized design, images of your work, and an easy-to-access navigation bar that helps users get around your site.
It’s also beneficial to include a testimonial section that shows off satisfied customers talking about your business and the work you’ve done for them. Plus, you can feature downloadable resources (like spec sheets or CAD drawings) to support your target audience throughout the buying process and offer more value.
Additionally, as a manufacturing company, you should be aware that the visuals are very important. Be sure to show off plenty of images of the types of products or parts that you manufacture.
You might also want to consider using colors and shapes that reflect not only your branding, but the manufacturing industry in general. That might include site components that look clean-cut or mechanical.
Bonus: Partner with an award-winning web design agency like WebFX to craft the website of your dreams! Our web designers will help you create a site that ranks at the top of the search results and drives product sales for your business.
Social media is another great tool for expanding your business – especially because it allows you to market your service to billions of users every day.
Social media includes platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that allow you to post and share information about your business. You can use these platforms to share company updates and photos and interact with potential clients.
Expert insights from
Adam G.Lead Ongoing Strategy Consultant at WebFX
“We find that [manufacturing prospects] are spending more time in the early to middle stages of the marketing funnel, doing more research, and being more prudent with their dollars. So, it’s going to take more touchpoints than before to win them over.”
Of course, as a manufacturing company, you probably sell to other businesses, not consumers. That means LinkedIn can be one of the best platforms for you to market yourself on. You can use LinkedIn to share case studies, engineering insights, thought leadership content, and more.
YouTube is another good social platform to use. There, you can publish video content like behind-the-scenes looks at your processes and machinery.
Bonus: Need help launching an effective social media campaign that engages your audience and drives product sales? Social media services from WebFX can help you expand your online reach, launch highly-targeted advertisements that promote your products, and engage your audience with custom content.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies for marketing your manufacturing company.
Sending monthly newsletters helps you stay in touch with potential clients and keep your business at the forefront of their minds. Even though they might not be ready to contract your services when they first subscribe, you’ll be the first business they think of when they need manufactured products.
Within email newsletters, you can include company updates, special offers, and information about upcoming services to become available. Compare open rate, click-through rate, and MQL-to-SQL progression to manufacturing marketing benchmarks to identify segments that need new messaging or offers.
The best approach to email marketing is to segment your audience so you can make your emails as specific as possible. For manufacturers, that might mean separating by industry (e.g., automotive, aerospace, agriculture, etc.).
Bonus: Improve your return on investment (ROI) by partnering with revenue-driving email marketing services from WebFX. We’ll help you craft personalized emails that resonate with your subscribers, promote brand loyalty, and expertly nurture your subscribers toward purchasing from you.
Geofencing is a digital marketing strategy that involves setting up a geographical boundary around your business location(s) and sending notifications to users who enter that boundary.
You can set up geofencing through certain social media platforms, or through your own app (if you have one). You can also use paid geofencing ads, which are just regular paid ads that only show up for people within a particular geographical area.
Geofencing is a great strategy for manufacturing companies because it helps you save on your trade show budget. When you attend trade shows, you can target geofencing ads to everyone in that vicinity. That means you’re able to reach people at those shows even if they don’t visit your booth.
7. Account-based marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that focuses on marketing to specific prospects rather than targeting a broad audience.
Say your manufacturing company sells primarily to automotive companies. You might identify a specific automotive business in your area that you want to bring on as a client, and then build an entire marketing campaign specifically customized to that business.
B2B manufacturers commonly see success with this method. Due to how highly personalized it allows your marketing to be, it has the ability to generate high conversion rates and dramatically improve RFQ-to-order rates.
To launch an ABM campaign, start by creating a list of specific businesses you want to target. Then build out personalized campaigns for each of those businesses across multiple channels, like email marketing and LinkedIn outreach.
8. Trade show and event marketing
Not all of your marketing efforts have to be strictly digital. Trade show marketing, for example, remains one of the most effective ways of reaching your target audience. Attending industry events allows you to show off your products and meet prospective buyers directly.
This marketing strategy enables you to:
Provide live demos of your products in action
Network with distributors, buyers, and more
Build out your brand awareness among your target audience
Trade shows are also a great place to generate new leads. If you acquire those leads’ contact info at events, you can follow up with them afterward to drive sales.
9. Customer and distributor relationship marketing
Some industries rely on one-time purchases from their customers, which means all their marketing is dedicated to wooing new leads. But for manufacturers, a lot of revenue comes from existing, long-term clients. That means you should dedicate a certain amount of your marketing to maintaining relationships with customers and distributors.
You can do that in numerous ways. For one, you can keep in touch with them through channels like:
Email newsletters
Webinars
Social media outreach
Phone calls
And more!
You should also make sure your customer service is top-notch, so that if your clients ever need help with anything, they have an easy time getting that help from you. You might even consider setting up a loyalty program to reward longstanding clients.
Overall, customer and distributor relationship marketing helps you go beyond one-time transactions to maintain clients for the long haul.
How to get started with digital marketing for manufacturing
Now that you know about the different manufacturing digital marketing strategies available, learn how to use those strategies successfully to market your manufacturing business:
Keep reading to learn more about each of those tips.
Step #1: Create a modern website
The first part of launching an online marketing campaign is to create a modern website. The word “modern” is important here since it implies that your website should follow current conventions and best practices in order to succeed.
So, what are those conventions and best practices? First, there are web design conventions. You should make sure that your site is mobile-friendly — which you can do by using responsive design — and you should also make sure it has fast page load speeds.
Then there are manufacturing conventions and best practices. By keeping up with the latest trends in your industry, you can make sure those trends are reflected on your site. For example, sustainability is a big concern in manufacturing right now, so you could feature something about that right on your homepage.
Following these best practices will give you a sleek, attractive, and highly-functional website that allows users to find exactly what they want. And when users can find what they want, they’re much more likely to become customers.
Whether your customers are suppliers of raw materials or large market distributors, you can establish the connections you need with a clean, attractive, and engaging website.
But simply having a website isn’t enough. To make your website work for you, you need to draw your audience to it.
Step #2: Expand your website with content
The next to step to digital marketing for manufacturers is content marketing — one of the most popular online marketing strategies. It includes conceptualizing, creating, and promoting blog posts, videos, graphics, and other original content on your website so you can attract new potential customers to your brand.
That may sound complicated, but the process is relatively simple.
You can create a blog by using a platform like WordPress to manage all of your content. Then, you can regularly update your blog with current events, industry news, or even updates about your company.
Regardless of what you do, you’re showing users and search engines that you’re an active presence online — and that means more traffic for you. This fits right into the SEO tactics we talked about earlier.
So, what types of content should manufacturers create? Well, you have several different options. Some pages can be dedicated to informational manufacturing content, while others can be more about your own brand. Examples of content you can create include:
Product and service pages explaining what you manufacture
News about changes in your company
Expert insights from
Adam G.Lead Ongoing Strategy Consultant at WebFX
“Weseetimeandtimeagain that usingmicrographics, videos, bolded and numbered lists, etc… is great for users (as well as search engines), so then [your manufacturing site] can be featured in the knowledge panel in Google search results.”
Those are just a few examples of good manufacturing content. Of course, for that content to benefit you, you should always include a call to action (CTA), which tells users what you want them to do next.
If they’re reading the blog, for example, you might tell them at the end to sign up for a newsletter you create. If they’re reading a page about your industry, you might tell them to contact you directly for more information.
Step #3: Don’t neglect off-page SEO
Creating website content and optimizing it to rank in Google search results is only half the battle when it comes to SEO. You should also practice off-page SEO, which involves tactics that happen off your website to get you into search results.
One example of off-page SEO is link building. That involves getting third-party websites to link to the content on your website. These links (called backlinks) can increase your rankings, but only if they come from reputable websites. That’s because if Google sees a reputable site linking to you, it assumes your site must be reputable as well, so it ranks you higher.
You can earn backlinks by going to reputable manufacturing websites, looking for broken or missing links, and recommending that the site owners replace those links with fresh ones to relevant content on your own site.
Another form of off-page SEO involves creating profiles for your business in different online directories. There are many online directories that list manufacturing companies, from MFG to IQS, and you can benefit from getting listed there.
Perhaps the best directory, though, is Google itself. By creating a Google Business Profile and filling out as much information as you can there, you can give yourself a chance at appearing in a local 3-pack. A local 3-pack is a set of three Google Business Profiles that appear at the top of search results when users perform a search for local businesses in a particular industry. It looks like this:
If you manage to appear in 3-packs and online manufacturing directories, that’s a huge boost to your online visibility, which can drive a ton more revenue.
Step #4: Repeat and grow
Once you’ve made improvements to your online marketing, you can’t rest on your laurels. Instead, you have to keep up with the rapidly-changing scene of online marketing. That means adding to your website, regularly updating your blog, testing your calls to action for efficiency, and speaking with potential business partners via LinkedIn.
Online marketing is incredibly helpful for any manufacturing company — but it’s not a one-and-done strategy. Consider partnering with the best manufacturing marketing agencies. If you want to keep growing, you have to keep going.
Manufacturing marketing FAQs
Here are the answers to some of the most common questions about manufacturing marketing strategies:
Industrial marketing refers to the practice of manufacturers and other industrial companies promoting their products and services to their target audience. Manufacturing marketing can take many different forms, from traditional methods like trade shows to digital strategies like SEO.
Some of the best manufacturing marketing strategies include:
Geofencing
Account-based marketing (ABM)
Email marketing
Trade show and event marketing
Customer and distributor relationship marketing
In addition to these manufacturing-specific strategies, you should also use more standard digital marketing strategies like SEO, PPC, and social media marketing.
There are many ways for manufacturers to use marketing to boost their sales and revenue.
For one, strategies like paid advertising and ABM can help you directly encourage conversions. Additionally, methods like trade show marketing can spread brand awareness, planting your business in people’s minds for later on.
Finally, customer and distributor relationship marketing can lead to ongoing relationships with existing clients, providing your manufacturing company with a steady flow of revenue without having to rely solely on winning new leads.
Drive leads with digital marketing for manufacturers
At WebFX, we know that in a competitive industry like manufacturing, every lead counts. That’s why you should consider choosing us as your manufacturing marketing agency.
We have 750+ digital marketers dedicated to creating more leads and conversions for your manufacturing company, and they’ll work with you to create custom digital marketing solutions to your goals. In the past few years alone, we’ve helped our clients earn more than $10 billion in revenue.
Contact us today for more information and a free quote!
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The WebFX team includes 750+ digital marketing specialists across SEO and AI search, PPC, web design, analytics, and beyond. Using proprietary RevenueCloudFX technology and transparent, data-driven strategies, we’ve collectively generated $10 billion in revenue and 24 million leads for our clients in the past five years.@webfx
