How to generate more leads for your manufacturing company

Inbound marketing can help manufacturers close leads to sales, but how do you attract visitors to your site in the first place? In a manufacturing context, where traditional sales and marketing methods are still the default, switching to an inbound mentality can feel like a leap of faith. One of the toughest challenges a marketing team can face is getting buy-in from the C-Suite, where the norm can be to see marketing as an expense rather than an investment.   

What if you could prove that inbound marketing will not only bring your manufacturing company more leads than traditional marketing methods, but they will be good quality – sales-ready leads? Here are some ways inbound can help your manufacturing company with B2B lead generation.

Stand out from the crowd

Inbound marketing helps you stand out from the interminable sameness of traditional manufacturing marketing, where laundry lists of product or service features are the usual fare. It provides information that your customers truly care about by looking beyond your products and services and addressing your customers' fears, aspirations and needs.

But more than that – if you write about topics your competitors aren’t, optimise your posts around specific keywords or topics (more on this later), and you will get found online and generate more leads.  

Example: Marcus Sheridan, in his latest book “They Ask, You Answer” Marcus discusses a blog post that has generated more than $3,000,000 in Sales for his pool manufacturing company. How? Because it tackles a question that no other pool manufacturer was willing to write about – pricing. Marcus found that when prospects were ready to speak to him, they were already well-informed about every aspect of his products except the price. They were unwilling to get into any lengthy discussions until they were satisfied that the pools Marcus sold would be financially within their reach.

Manufacturing pricing is often complex – with many variables depending on the customer's requirements. Pricing information is also competitor sensitive. But – if you read Marcus’s blog, it doesn’t once give a definitive price; it simply explains the different elements you need to consider when pricing a swimming pool.  Although the piece was written in 2009, if you type in “fibreglass pool cost” into Google, it is still top of the search rankings.

Build long-lasting relationships

An inbound approach to sales and marketing is the perfect fit for the longer sales cycles associated with manufacturing. It can take time to close a deal, including several phone calls and meetings to understand each other’s businesses and create a working relationship. Inbound 70% of that process is done online by the prospective client.

By blogging regularly Google will notice that your website is growing (each blog post adds a new page to your website). Each post creates opportunities for links back to your site, building authority.

A well-managed, well-written blog can attract visitors, enhance your position as a trusted adviser in your industry, and draw more relevant traffic to your website.

Once you have built your customer’s trust you keep it by continuing to provide them with interesting and informative content relevant to the products or services they are using, ensuring their repeat business for years to come.

Blogging requires skill and discipline, and writing does not come naturally to all. Look beyond your marketing team and tap into the wealth of knowledge available to you throughout your whole organisation. Or you may consider employing the services of a content writer.

Harness the power of Google

In response to the more conversational style people now use when searching online, Google interprets a searcher's intent, and results will be served up to them based on the value of both the content and the context of their query. So, the quality of your content matters. This will include spelling, grammar, usefulness, uniqueness, and volume. The secret to people finding your content online lay less in optimising around a specific word or phrase and more in focusing on writing around a topic or concept.

Going back to the Marcus Sheridan example, you will notice the title is a question in the style that someone is likely to type into Google: How much does a fibreglass pool cost? The sentence is also repeated within the body of the article.

If you think about your use of Google – when is the last time you ever went beyond the first page of search results? Optimising your content around keywords and topics your buyer personas are searching for builds your authority with Google and helps bring you more web traffic and, ultimately, more leads.

Get Social

Another key way to amplify your content and get found online is through social. You need to find out where your customers are online. In manufacturing, LinkedIn and YouTube continue to be the most useful social media sites for manufacturing buyers, but Twitter is also relevant. There are pros and cons for each social channel, so take time to research and choose the ones that are the best fit for your company.

Once you’re there, start building trust by listening for opportunities to join the conversation.

Be mindful of etiquette and best practise in each platform, though – while setting up a sequence of ‘Tweets’ at different times across several days is perfectly acceptable, posting to LinkedIn in this way would not be recommended. You also need to bear in mind that, without engagement and interaction, social profiles can soon look and feel neglected, so allocate time each day to respond to any messages, comments, retweets etc.

Once you have established a social community you can share high-value, helpful content containing links to your site, bringing you more traffic and leads. Be mindful to alter your style depending on which channel you are publishing on, and do not blast all channels with identical posts, tailor to suit. Twitter has a 140-character limit, meaning only simple messages can be posted – generally, these are links to longer content elsewhere. LinkedIn allows you to post approximately 600 characters, but the text is truncated to around 150 characters and displays "...read more" to expand the text.

Inbound marketing helps your manufacturing company get found online, earns you permission to connect, builds trust and authority, and delivers marketing-qualified leads to your sales team. Developing an inbound marketing strategy is by no means a quick fix; if you do not have the expertise in-house, consider hiring the services of an inbound agency.