Now that your web presence is in order, let’s take a look at some of the marketing channels available to manufacturers that are capable of reaching and winning over the “new customer.”
As a marketer attempting to reach a new audience with a wider breadth of resources and a shorter attention span, you need marketing channels that work by:
· Getting attention quickly
· Giving people information they need
· Being more attractive than your competitors, even on a national level
· Enticing people to work with you
And as a manufacturer with a limited budget, you also need to find marketing channels that:
· Consistently perform over a period of time
· Demonstrate a strong ROI with a minimal upfront investment
· Serve multiple purposes
Utilizing a combination of content marketing and search engine optimization strategies is the best way to accomplish all of these requirements. Content marketing, the practice of regularly publishing informative content to potential customers, and search engine optimization (SEO), the practice of improving your company’s rank in major search engines, have a synergistic relationship that will drive more people to your site and convert more visitors to paying customers.
First, we’ll look at an example of a content marketing strategy and how it can be such a significant tool in the manufacturing marketer’s toolbox.
Your content marketing strategy must include:
· Regularly published content. Once a week is a minimum, and twice a week is better. Be consistent with your publishing and you’ll be rewarded with loyal readers.
· Content that people want to read. This isn’t the place to be posting sell sheets or long winded monologues about how great your company is. Post content that will get people to say “I need to read this!”
· Images to accompany your posts. Posts with images get far more clicks than those without.
· A means of sharing. The most common trend is using social sharing icons that allow users to share your article on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In addition to these characteristics, your content marketing strategy can be enhanced with:
· A syndication channel. This could be a social media channel, which we’ll discuss later, or a spot as a guest blogger for an external network. Post your work regularly, even after its initial publication, and you’ll be able to reap the rewards several times over.
· Guest bloggers. These are outside authorities who post to your blog or latest and updated shiksha news feed with their own pertinent content.
The advantages of a content marketing strategy extend far beyond the minimal effort it takes to keep up with it. On average, content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing campaigns, and if done correctly, can generate up to 3 times as many leads. Furthermore, B2B companies that blog produce an average of 67 percent more leads per month than those who don’t.
Many marketers cite a lack of available time and a difficulty with producing enough engaging content as reasons for not having a content marketing strategy, but finding an expert to handle the scheduling, writing, and publishing of your blogs is relatively simple and inexpensive. Today, more than 49 percent of B2B marketers have no documented content marketing strategy. Don’t let yourself be one of them.
