Manufacturers are used to solving complex problems in niche markets and often have a finite number of businesses to work with. This means every single opportunity to connect with a potential lead is precious.
In 2021, 51% of UK manufacturers said generating new business leads was the most important goal of their marketing strategy with a further 22% saying increasing brand awareness was their primary marketing goal (The Marketing In Manufacturing Report).
Clearly, attracting new prospects is important to industrial businesses.
However, it isn’t always easy. The modern buyer wants to self-educate instead of speaking to salespeople. That means manufacturers need to be where their buyers are, delivering the right message at the right time – the key to the inbound methodology.
This attract stage is the first phase in HubSpot’s inbound methodology. The inbound methodology aims to solve prospect problems by creating valuable, contextual and timely content to create personalised experiences. It focuses on making a business magnetic to its ideal customers by enabling them to build meaningful relationships. The inbound methodology consists of three stages:
- Attract – Attracting a target audience by delivering content that acknowledges their needs and challenges.
- Engage – This is where new prospects are turned into customers. Manufacturers will need to provide further content and information to show prospects how to tackle their challenges.
- Delight – The delight stage allows manufacturers to go above and beyond for prospects and clients to delight them at every stage of the buying journey. This, in turn, gives prospects and clients the incentive to act as a referral channel in themselves.
This blog will focus on the attract stage of the inbound methodology and how manufacturing businesses can attract their target customer by using HubSpot’s powerful software.
Let’s dive in!
SEO Helps Make Manufacturers More Visible In Search Engines
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is ever-changing, making it difficult to understand which keywords and tactics to prioritize in order to drive traffic and conversions for manufacturers. However, it’s a crucial part of becoming more visible online. 78% of B2B buyers start their journey with a Google search and 90% of searchers say they are likely to only click on results in the first page of Google so, if your business isn’t appearing in those top results – you’re missing out on a huge number of opportunities!
HubSpot’s SEO tools provide a wealth of information and analysis at the touch of a button. The SEO recommendations tool identifies a range of improvements to be made from on-page SEO issues to security and indexing warnings. Each recommendation is tagged as low, medium or high impact, as well as being given a technical difficulty rating. The system even suggests if the issue should be resolved by a marketer or a developer, so you know whose expertise is required to get the results you need.
This means manufacturers can rely on the system to identify and raise SEO issues without constantly analysing each page! It also helpfully prioritises these issues to ensure those that will have the biggest impact can be delt with first.
When it comes to content creation for search engines, HubSpot’s SEO tools are able to suggest content topics based on the keywords you want to rank for. You'll get topic suggestions based on SEO best practices and access to monthly search data so you can estimate how ranking for specific topics will translate to organic traffic gains.
These same tools also allow manufacturers to easily build content clusters around each core topic. This will help focus search authority on specific key terms to increase traffic over time, providing manufacturers with a way of knuckling down on the terms that will drive the most traffic.
This is an SEO tactic we have used with many clients. When implemented for automotive casting and machining client, MAT Foundry, they experienced a 351% increase in organic traffic!
HubSpot’s Social Media Tools For Manufacturers
More than half of manufacturers voted organic social media promotion as the most successful marketing activity in 2021 so it’s clear to see the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are crucial to manufacturing businesses. HubSpot provides a comprehensive platform that helps manufacturers become more active on social media channels, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Manufacturers can post updates, engage in conversations, and connect with other professionals in their industry across multiple platforms using a single tool. This blending of platforms means industrial businesses can develop more meaningful relationships with prospects and show a more ‘human’ side to their brand.
Reporting tools are also available so industrial marketers can learn which platforms and channels work hardest for their business. With 59% of manufacturers having small or one-person marketing teams, using time wisely is critical. Impressions, likes, reactions, replies and shares from across platforms can be accessed within HubSpot meaning marketers are able to use this information to plan and schedule future campaigns.
HubSpot Ad Management Software
Digital advertising is a brilliant way to get in front of precisely the right audience for manufacturers. Currently, 85% of manufacturers are using paid methods to promote content be this whitepapers, blogs, landing pages etc. Similar to social media, there are a wide variety of channels a business might use for digital advertising, but the likelihood is, they’re all paid for using the same marketing budget and all promote similar products and services.
HubSpot’s ad tools mean marketers can create and manage ads across multiple platforms in one place. This holistic view of online advertising means budget can be managed more effectively so money is only spent on the campaigns and channels that are working. HubSpot is also able to link ad impressions and clicks to new contacts generated and revenue won so you can see exactly how much return your ad spend is generating.
On top of this, ads can be linked up with automated follow-up, so every single lead is looked after and nothing slips through the cracks. That’s something we’ll talk more about in the Engage article in this series (coming soon).
HubSpot’s Campaign Tools For Manufacturers
HubSpot is the one stop shop for inbound marketing success. From start to finish, their platform offers everything a marketer needs to create successful campaigns that attract prospects. We’ve already discussed online advertising and social media as part of that framework, but a manufacturing marketing campaign will also contain the likes of:
- Thought leadership content in the form of blogs, articles, whitepapers etc to resonate with the audience’s challenges, educate them and move them further along the buyers’ journey.
- Calls to action to help direct prospects in the right direction for further content and offers.
- Landing pages to host further content and offers.
- Forms that allow prospects to cross the anonymity threshold, by providing contact information in return for further content or contact from your sales team.
- A CRM system to store contact information once a prospect has crossed the anonymity threshold.
Each of these elements make up a larger picture of the buyer’s journey with a manufacturer. If just one of these is missing or isn’t performing, the whole campaign is jeopardised. HubSpot provides manufacturers with all of the tools above, making it the perfect one-stop shop for creating marketing campaigns within a single platform. Each of these elements can also be monitored for best performance. For example, calls to action can be split tested and changed, landing pages can be customised with prospect information and forms can be changed so you’re constantly collecting new contact information.
The Perfect Solution
Together, these tools allow manufacturers to target audiences with relevant, timely content and provide those prospects with the tools they need to cross that all-important anonymity threshold, ready to engage with further content.
HubSpot’s ads, social media and campaign management tools are the perfect way for manufacturers to attract new prospects!
