5 manufacturing marketing strategies that drive sales

Manufacturers need to switch up their marketing, or they risk being left behind (and you can find out why in our brand new guide). Here are five marketing strategies that will drive sales for manufacturers.

Developing a buying persona

Manufacturers need to put themselves in the shoes of buyers – what are their pain points? What do they aspire to have? What is their past buying behaviour? What age are they, and what are their hobbies and interests?

The answers to these questions help to determine how they can create a tailored marketing approach that markets to people, not businesses (a topic we’ve banged on about since the dawn of time, with good reason).

How can manufacturers build that persona? They can survey existing customers, conduct research or examine data across their existing leads (e.g. where are they buying from, what type of businesses do they work for). Once they’ve built the persona, they can get to work on their business objectives.

Creating KPIs to measure results

Pushing your product out into the void with no measurable way of success isn’t good enough. Manufacturers need quantifiable measures of performance that show not just how well your marketing is performing, but whether it is aligned with your sales strategy.

Manufacturers should have tangible goals for their marketing. Sending a newsletter? Set a target for click-throughs and monitor it every month. Running a campaign? Establish your purpose and the number of leads you want to generate.

Digital moves fast and competition is rising. Your marketing needs to be able to keep up. Measuring progress makes you more agile and helps you switch up and change your marketing to meet current demands.

Collaborate with sales on content

Keeping your sales and marketing teams siloed off from each other is a big no-no. That leads to customer data issues, confusion over your return on investment, and everyone working towards different objectives. The result? Less effective content.

At the end of the day, marketing is all about generating leads and creating revenue. As we’ve already mentioned, manufacturers have a lengthy sales cycle, so providing content that salespeople can use throughout their sales process (PDFs etc) helps push your product benefits (and how it solves customer pain points) under their noses.

If your sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned, you won’t realise the impact that marketing is having. If both are on the same page, you can create focused content with clear objectives, so you can measure their effectiveness and identify ways to improve.

Hire the right people for the right task

In order to market effectively, you need a team that can approach marketing in a flexible, agile way. You need people with the skills to spread your message across every distribution channel (content, email marketing, PR and social media) to maximise your reach.

However, often hiring in-house marketing teams to do this can be difficult – you might end up paying through the nose for a specialist in what you need at that moment, but when it comes to adapting/changing your marketing approach they might not have the required skills, meaning you end up back at the drawing board.

Often, in-house marketing hires aren’t specialised and have general marketing experience. Very rarely are they an excellent copywriter, a social media genius, a great designer and a talented strategist at the same time - and if they are, they’ll be wanting the big bucks.

On the other hand, agencies like Nutcracker stay ahead of current marketing trends and strategies and always have the right person with the right skills to hand when you need them. Even if you already have a marketing person, agencies can fill in the gaps, giving them the tools they need to bring campaigns to life.

Introducing ‘agile’ to your marketing

But what does ‘agile marketing’ look like? It means teams collaborating on rapidly released iterations of content. It means analysing what works and what doesn’t. It means listening to your audience and reacting to their needs. And it means building a framework that means manufacturers can rapidly shift and adjust their messaging in line with customer demands.

Want to find out more about what agile marketing looks like? That’s where Nutcracker comes in…

Nutcracker manufactures award-winning marketing strategies

We align sales and marketing in everything we do, meaning that your marketing strategy is directly focused on getting your brand leads, building your brand profile, and boosting your business.

Nutcracker gets under the skin of manufacturers’ businesses, products and buyers to help us market your business in a way that truly resonates and gets results.

If you want to find out more about where manufacturers are going wrong with their marketing and what we can do to help, download our free guide to marketing for manufacturers, or book a consultation with Nutcracker today.