Content Marketing for Manufacturing Relevance

The key to successful landing page performance is to stay focused. Don’t provide too many options for the prospect since they have already made a decision to follow your lead by clicking on a link. You have to save your sales people from FOMO (fear of missing out) and prevent them from adding extra offers.

B2B MANUFACTURING MARKETING PERFORMANCE METRICS

The return on a manufacturing content marketing plan can be forecasted and tweaked to reach expected levels. We utilize data to develop inbound workflows and even website experiences. Relequint assists manufacturing companies in developing detailed buyer personas and identifying the contacts that are truly sales qualified. We develop an entire year of content based on the buyer persona and then make adjustments monthly to keep content relevant.

BUILDING A B2B2C MANUFACTURING BRAND

Many industrial firms struggle with creating strong brand awareness and differentiation. Relequint’s work with Rational Foods started from scratch with a brand personas workshop, a brand mantra workshop, brand positioning, brand architecture, naming, product lines, multiple brand identities, package design, and ideal B2B and B2C customer personas. Once the customers, brand, and products were clearly defined, we developed a content plan that establishes thought leadership and follows a well structured sales funnel with marketing automation and lead qualification workflows.

Engaging new customers is the name of the game. It can be a difficult task in the overly commoditized manufacturing industry. The difference is that the customer you are seeking will appreciate what makes your company different. Content that anticipates the customer’s needs and provides answers to their pains will stand out again and again to them. Your digital content strategy will position your company as a thought leader, build brand awareness, and increase website conversions.

CUSTOMER CENTRIC

Anticipating your buyer’s needs means really understanding their challenges from day to day. Whether it’s green manufacturing for solar or HVAC, industrial or contract packaging, food manufacturing, or medical level requirements, the customer is equipped with a scorecard of criteria to make a decision. Putting your persona’s requirements at the center of your content strategy creates a framework to address all stages of their journey.

B2B BLOGGING AS AN ASSET

A key difference between B2B content and advertising is the understanding that your content continues to be a source of qualified leads long after it goes live. That next big account may come in through a blog post from two years ago.

You need to convince leadership that the short-term and long-term benefits of working on blogging will make the challenges worth it. Make sure you provide plenty of metrics and research, along with feedback from your team members.

B2B blogging without measuring results and acting is a complete waste of time. We recognize that the number of metrics can seem overwhelming. The most important metrics you need to track are:

• Visitors

• Leads

• Subscribers

• Inbound Links

• Social Media Shares

“Before working with Relequint, we relied on traditional sales tactics like cold calling, trade shows and purchased email lists. Once we started working with Relequint, we shifted our focus to developing high-quality content that attracted prospects to us, instead of us going out trying to find them. After only a few months, the leads and customers started rolling in, and we closed many deals that were in line with our company's growth strategy. We're now true believers in the power of inbound marketing and targeted advertising to grow our business.”

In their first five months with Relequint, Deufol generated more leads than they had in the past five years, combined:

• Increased leads by 500%

• Increased website traffic by 167%

• Increased company revenue by 10% in first 8 months

• Total marketing ROI = 30x initial investment (3,315%)

• Developed new blog presence and engagement

• Developed new social media presence and engagement

BACKGROUND

Deufol’s North American offices, based in the Midwest, help businesses of all sizes and in a wide range of industries find the perfect packaging and distribution solutions for their products. Deufol designs, develops, and manages packaging and distribution processes, including contract packaging, thermoform, gift cards, and industrial packaging. Headquartered in Europe, Deufol has more than 3,500 employees in 100 locations in a dozen countries.

For years, Deufol had relied on using a traditional sales force and outbound techniques to generate sales. In addition to cold calling, they were investing in print collateral, direct mail, trade shows and conferences, frequently traveling to follow up with leads.

Using these tactics, Deufol wasn’t attracting the kinds of clients they wanted and were seeing low conversion rates. They realized they needed to start thinking in a more holistic, strategic way about how to reach their target buyer personas. Although Deufol wasn’t knowledgeable about how inbound marketing could generate sales-qualified leads and was using their website primarily as a digital brochure rather than as a sales tool or lead generator, they were open to new ideas.

Challenges identified

• Website not optimized and lacking in content

• No real conversion points or CTAs (Calls-to-Action)

• Needed to better leverage marketing to drive the sales and new business development process

• Sales field teams needed better tools and strategies to identify qualified leads

• Helped the client identify realistic goals and objectives tied to traffic conversion ratio and ability to close sales and ultimately revenue targets

• Leveraged inbound marketing tools to drive sales qualified leads into sales funnel

• Fed quality content that drives higher conversion rates and prioritize

• Tracked and reported on ROI from lead generation efforts

Solutions provided

• Developed detailed buyer personas to better align business efforts to meet customers' needs

• Aligned buyer personas with robust digital marketing program encompassing multiple content channels, including blog, premium downloadable content, landing pages, web pages, emails and social media posts

  1. Created calls to action to convert traffic produced from comprehensive new PPC ad campaigns and organic search

  2. Optimized paid advertising traffic