Manufacturing
How to overcome content marketing challenges in manufacturing
The prime focus area of a manufacturing firm is creating high-quality products that meet the expectations of its buyers. Often, in a manufacturing company, marketing is not treated as a key function. This is because most of their resources are directed toward enhancing manufacturing-related activities. However, in a highly competitive marketplace, manufacturing companies need to have an effective marketing strategy to reach a niche audience.
The backbone of any marketing strategy is content marketing. Manufacturing companies need to address the pain points of their buyers with the right content strategy. This will help them establish authority in the subject matter in a highly competitive marketplace.
However, content marketing is not as simple for a manufacturing organisation as it is for a service-based organisation. This is because a service-based company has direct access to data about its consumers. On the other hand, in B2B marketing the consumer is not defined. It is very difficult for the marketer to define a buyer persona in the client company.
A manufacturing company also finds it difficult to build a content strategy that is aligned with the different stages of the buyer’s journey. Besides, in this sector, it is difficult to align content marketing efforts with sales and marketing to build a content marketing plan. Another bottleneck as far as content marketing is concerned is the difficulty in finding subject matter experts to create quality content. Manufacturing companies need to overcome such challenges and build a strong and effective content marketing strategy that boosts their business.
Content marketing helps a manufacturing firm in the following areas:
- Brand awareness creation
- Credibility building
- Audience education
- Customer retention
- Lead generation
- Promotion
- Nurture and growth of email subscribers, and more!
How to Develop an Effective Content Marketing Strategy?
Step 1: Align sales, marketing, and content marketing teams
For a successful content marketing strategy to function, the sales, marketing, and content marketing divisions must come together. When they work in cohesion, it is easier to develop a marketing strategy. This implies that the sales and marketing departments must have a collaborative approach to building a marketing strategy. This means that the marketing strategy developed must have a common goal and a clear roadmap to achieve the goal.
Step 2: Understanding the buyer
The first step to developing a content strategy is understanding the buyer’s needs and journey. The question is “How?”
In B2B marketing there is no single buyer. Different entities in the client company take care of the purchase activity. Sales professionals are in direct contact with the client company. It is a good idea to conduct interviews with the representatives of the buyers. The interviews can be conducted with different client organisations to identify the pain points at different stages of their buying journey. These inputs can be provided to content marketers to develop content that addresses the needs of the buyers.
Step 3: Keyword research
Every format of content must be optimised with relevant keywords so that it ranks high in searches. Therefore, it is imperative that expert digital marketers are asked to identify the relevant keywords for content creation.
Step 4: Competitor analysis
Competitor analysis provides insights into the marketing strategies of your competitors. It helps you understand what strategies are providing results and which ones are not. This will help you fine-tune content creation and development.
Step 5: Content creation and distribution
Content can be created in different ways. An effective content strategy includes the creation of content in different formats across multiple channels. In other words, the content strategy must include a comprehensive content calendar that includes the sequence of blog posts, social media calendar, email marketing content, guest blogging and the like. While written content is important, there is a need to develop content in other formats like video content, interactive graphics and other such formats.
For the manufacturing sector, making a case for the need for a content strategy, as an important business need, is an added challenge.
Step 6: Promotion
Content marketing does not end with content creation. The content created must be promoted on relevant channels, by subject matter experts in relevant sectors, to reach a wide audience.
Additionally, identification of relevant channels, for the manufacturing sector, needs specialised focus.
Final Takeaway
Content has the power to establish content creators as a subject matter expert and differentiate their brands from competitors’ brands. Manufacturing companies must leverage this channel to become leaders in their sector. An effective content marketing strategy can be developed when sales and marketing come together to understand the customer better and develop high-quality content in different formats. The content created must resonate with the buyers for a higher conversion rate. And this, in turn, will lead to high visibility for the brand in the relevant customer segment.
