3 cost-effective marketing techniques for manufacturing firms

Marketing in the manufacturing sector is incredibly important

Figures released in May showed how the UK manufacturing sector slipped into technical recession for the first time in almost three years. The natural temptation is to cut costs, but be wary of hitting marketing too fast. Instead, take it as a signal to review and innovate with cost-effective, results driven approaches. Here are some ideas that can make an impact pretty fast:

1. Document your strategy

Writing down your marketing plan – that’s hardly ‘innovative’ is it? Well, as the Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) latest report showed, only 18% if B2B manufacturing firms have a documented content marketing strategy. So while it might not be ‘innovative’ per se to document your strategy, you’ll still be at an advantage to the 82% who haven’t written down how they plan to market their business. CMI found that companies with a documented content marketing strategy are nearly 50% more effective than those without one.

2. Build a mailing list

We’ve always had faith in email marketing, even when many marketers were declaring it ‘dead’. That’s because it’s not only cost effective, but fantastically aligned with buyer behaviour in 2016. If statistics are to be believed, email marketing has a return on investment of 3800%. We believe that the ubiquity of the smartphone has a lot to do with why email marketing is still relevant – mobile users can’t fail but notice their emails. So get building a mailing list of engaged clients and prospective customers.

3. Look to video

Hardly any manufacturing firms have given video much thought – just 15%, according to CMI. That’s despite studies showing that a single video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. Video is tailor-made for innovation. If you can suss out what sort of video content will have the greatest impact with your audience, you’ll be onto a winner. The future of the manufacturing industry will be shaped by firms’ willingness to innovate and take calculated risks in order to stand out from the crowd. With these options the risk is minimised and the reward maximised.

If you have any queries about the content above, or your own marketing activity, contact us at marketing@proctors.co.uk for a no-obligation discussion - we would be happy to help!