Why great design is essential to marketing for B2B manufacturing

You cannot afford poor design. It makes you forgettable, ignorable, and untrustworthy.

· 94% of visitors will leave a site because of poor graphic design

· When people hear a message, they will probably remember 10% of the information after three days. However, when the information comes with a visual, people can remember 65% after three days

· 30% of businesses see an increase in revenue when they improve their packaging

In B2B manufacturing, those with poor design get left behind. If competitors are using design and marketing better than you are, then you’re losing business.

Here’s why marketing in B2B manufacturing must be brilliantly designed, and how to do it.

Download our Guide: ‘Marketing for Manufacturers’

The product is complex

When you’re marketing a manufacturing product, the amount of information that you need to convey is enormous, and it’s usually very technical.

Few manufacturers can explain their product verbally and expect it to make effective web copy, packaging information, or marketing collateral — nobody would engage with or remember the vast amount of text it would involve. Even if it doesn’t put them off completely, people only tend to read 20-28% of what’s written on a page.

The answer is visual

· The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text

· 80% of people remember what they see, and only 20% of people remember what they read

· 95% of B2B buyers want shorter, visual material

Remember also that because the B2B audience is so busy, and many things are competing for their attention, your marketing needs to command attention and communicate a lot in a short period.

Trust is essential

Your website, marketing material, packaging, and communications need to communicate competence and authority.

B2B sales is highly emotional — there’s more money involved, decisions affect more people, and people’s careers and professional reputations are ultimately at stake. It’s no surprise that there’s a lot of emotional investment in the decision to buy, and a lot of fear about making the wrong choice.

In that context, no trust means no sale.

A badly designed website communicates nothing but negatives. It leaves the impression that you’re incompetent, lazy, and unprofessional, and it’s even worse in manufacturing — if you can’t design a website, how can you design a product? What processes led to this webpage, and what does it say about your business and manufacturing processes?

94% of people distrust a website because of poor design, and the effect is immediate — it takes 0.5 of a second for a visitor to form an opinion about a web page.

Throughout a sales cycle, a bad website will present lots of opportunities for prospects to make a negative judgement about your business.

Sales cycles are long

B2B sales cycles are long, and those in manufacturing are even longer. The average B2B sales cycle is 102 days, but B2B manufacturing sales cycles typically take from five months to six years. Months and years are very long periods to try and sustain a prospect’s excitement and motivation, and you stand a much better chance of maintaining those emotions through design. Visuals do a better job at inspiring emotional responses, and a common instinct is to scan text, not to read it fully.

Over the course of the buying process, your prospects will consider multiple manufacturers, so one vital principle in your marketing is visual consistency. We’re hardwired to notice patterns, and because when we’ve seen something once, we’re more sensitive to it and we’re more likely to notice it when it next appears. So, if your packaging, website, and marketing materials are visually consistent, they stand a far better chance of being remembered, and you will be more prominent in the minds of your targets.

On the subject of consistency, you can expect around seven people to be involved in the buying decisions. If your branding and design isn’t consistent, then each could have a very different impression of your business, and will be less likely to agree on a buying decision.

Finally, remember that at least 60% of the B2B buying process happens before the prospect interacts with a sales or marketing team. That means that your design has to sell your product, because your prospect will have made a large part of their buying decision before they engage with you.

How to create design that delivers results

Unfortunately, the rise of templates and drag-and-drop design platforms has led a lot of people to believe that they can deliver a great brand design. It might be passable, but it won’t be memorable or effective. Effective design:

· has a distinct identity

· is created with the prospect in mind

· is restrained — it does what it needs to do without excess

If you don’t have a truly expert designer working on it, it’s very unlikely to be effective. They know the principles and how to implement them — they’ll get your design right, and they’ll do it more efficiently than anyone else.

Nutcracker creates unforgettable design that connects you with your audience, builds brand loyalty, and leaves a long-lasting impact on your target market. Get in touch now and bring your brand to life.

020 3941 0305

hello@nutcrackeragency.com