Manufacturing marketing stands out due to longer sales cycles, different targeting techniques, and a necessarily more hands-on approach to sales. The pool of potential customers is small and specialized. And, as the economic conditions shift, so too do supplies, work force availability, and consumer demand.
If you’re in the manufacturing space, here are three areas you may want to focus your marketing resources on in the short-term:
Shoring up existing customers
There’s a lot that can be read into regarding the psychology of buyers in an economic downturn, but, in short, customers will be shopping for more efficiency and lower costs. In tumultuous economic environments, buyers are more likely to set aside loyalty and look directly and objectively at the budget lines to identify where they can cut with the least amount of impact. When they look at your offerings, what will they see?
Now is the time for marketers in manufacturing to be on their front foot with their existing accounts—no matter how loyal those accounts have been in recent years. Emphasize unique selling propositions and see if there’s a way to add value so your company continues to be locked in as the go-to vendor.
If you’re primed to introduce enhancements to any products or services, don’t introduce them without proper thought or fanfare. Knowing your value and being confident in it is going to help you keep the valuable customers you have.
Equipping your sales team
If you’ve had meaningful growth in recent years, you’re likely to have done it with a capable-to-stellar sales team. But if your industry is experiencing a contraction, the manufacturer with the best equipped sales team has an amplified advantage. So, it behooves you to explore how to reach the next level.
Your sales force is smart and knows the competition. What’s next is to use data as a foundation to learn next-level information about prospects and current customers. If you can anticipate your clients’ needs, and which prospects will have new needs that you can address, then your salespeople are ready to approach decision makers with relevant content that establishes your company’s expertise.
At an even more fundamental level, it’s important that your ordering process be evaluated and strengthened. Does your sales team have needed visibility of your inventory? Do you have an accurate system for estimating deliverables? Are you quickly able to get sales samples into the hands of your team? Having the right tools and processes in place will help you avoid encountering any hiccups when a customer is deep in their customer journey.
Using automation for efficiency
Don’t let the irony get to you. Your customers are going to try to do more with less. You should be prepared to do the same.
Even as the manufacturing space often requires deeper relationships, there’s great value in automated marketing campaigns. Automated e-mails can be a supplement to the sales calls, meetings, and executive-to-executive outreach that keep your sales process and customer relationships strong. They also can keep you visible to top-of-the-funnel prospects—the very ones who will be looking at their present suppliers to see where they can adjust their budgets and improve efficiency.
The beauty of focusing on these three areas is that it also helps your long game. When the economy strengthens and there are more potential customers with more resources to invest, you’ll be better equipped to identify areas of growth and scale your operations accordingly.
ddm equips manufacturers with customized tools and strategies to grow their business in any environment. Ask us how we can assess your market situation and help you achieve your goals.