Digital advertising has been slow to catch on in the manufacturing industry—but it’s time for that to change. Here are 5 reasons why your manufacturing business should take advantage of clever digital advertising strategies.
How Can Digital Advertising Help Manufacturers?
Reach
Gone are the days of newspaper and radio ads being enough for your manufacturing company to reach who you needed to stay in business. With the millennial population now managing businesses of their own, it’s important for B2B companies to meet them where they are: online.
Digital advertising helps you do this by making it easy for those business owners to find you. Display ads, social media ads, and paid search are all strategies designed to put your company in front of the people you want to sell to.
Return on Investment
The cost of digital advertising is incredibly low compared to all the traditional ways of getting your name out there. Plus, the analytics tools digital advertising provides make it a heck of a lot easier to track the return you’re getting on your investment.
As a manufacturer, you have a unique challenge: selling to a business isn’t quite the same as advertising to customers. You don’t have the luxury of benefitting from impulse purchases or ones that don’t take much research.
The businesses you want to market to are thoughtful and careful about their investments (just like you). That means they’ll take much longer to decide on a purchase than a typical retail consumer.
Therein lies the beauty of digital advertising: instead of spending months (or even years) on exorbitantly-priced advertising methods like billboards and TV ads, you can spend much, much less on a digital advertising campaign—one that can last as long as you need it to.
The Best Digital Advertising Strategies for Manufacturers
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
You can pay for Google (or another search engine) to show your ads in searches for keywords relevant to your business.
According to Wordstream, paid search listings get almost double the number of clicks of organic (unpaid) clicks in a search for keywords with high commercial intent.
While there are a few different ways that search ads are structured and paid for, one of the most cost-efficient is pay-per-click (PPC).
As the name implies, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The way this works is that you set a specific bid, which is the amount you’re willing to pay to get Google to show your ad in a search result. You only pay this if someone clicks on your ad, so you’re never wasting any money.
Another great thing about this method is the detailed tracking it provides. Digital advertising analytics let you know how much everything costs, which ads are performing well, and where you might need improvement.
Social Media
An active social media presence makes it easier to make connections with people you want to sell to. It can also direct interested traffic to your website, helping your manufacturing company convert more leads and make more sales.
Social media benefits your SEO by letting search engines know that your company actively produces content and engages with customers. And even if you don’t want to create your own social content, there are ways to establish your company as an industry leader. For example, you can always curate content that informs and engages your customer base.
You can also pay to advertise on social media platforms. You can boost posts so that they’re seen in more people’s feeds, or you can use the platform of your choice’s digital advertising program to show ads to users that fit your needs. Social platforms have gathered a lot of demographic data over the years, making it simple to target your ideal audience.
Email Marketing
If you still want to take advantage of the leads you find from trade shows and conventions, there’s a way to do that through digital means. Email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in contact with interested leads.
Regular emails keep your manufacturing company top-of-mind with potential buyers. Your emails can be as simple as monthly company and industry updates or as detailed as periodic reminders about specific products or promotions. Either way, the inbox is a great place to be.
Online Directories
Don’t want to spend the time (or money) it takes to produce content and manage a digital advertising campaign? Register your manufacturing company on relevant online directories.
Online directories allow potential clients to find you on their own time, and you don’t have to worry about pleasing them with a constant stream of content. Just make sure your website is up to par and you’re on your way to converting new leads with hardly any effort.
Content Marketing
Quality content—such as informative and entertaining videos, infographics, or brochures—is one of the best ways to keep prospects interested. Plus, utilizing different forms of media gives a big boost to your manufacturing company’s search engine performance: videos and images show up in searches, after all!
Contact Kirkpatrick Creative Today
Kirkpatrick Creative can help your manufacturing business reach more paying customers through digital advertising.
If you’re ready to set your manufacturing company apart using digital strategies, contact Kirkpatrick Creative today. We’ll put our tried-and-true philosophy of advertising engineered to work into practice for your business.
Photo by Josh Beech on Unsplash