Effective inbound marketing strategy for manufacturers

In this short guide, we discuss the strategies and tactics that B2B manufacturers should be considering in 2023.

Let’s talk ‘The 95:5 Rule’

Within B2B, it’s generally accepted that only 5% of your potential market is truly ‘in-market’ at any given time. The other 95% either don’t know you, haven’t connected your brand with their challenge, or simply don’t feel the timing is right to engage.

This is why it’s so important to plan Demand Generation campaigns alongside your Lead Generation activity. Demand Generation campaigns must work hard to anchor your brand in the minds of those 95% of potentials so that when the time comes, your Lead Generation campaigns can scoop them up and move them onto the next stage in your acquisition journey – which is Nurturing.

What does all this activity look like in practice?

Key activities for Demand Generation include blogging, SEO, content marketing, advertising (digital, print, OOH, broadcast), social media, and attending events (whether in-person or online).

To nurture leads into high-value Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and eventually, become paying customers, Lead Generation should utilise gated content, offers, paid search/social, and email nurturing.

Post-sales activities nurture customers and build relationships through email nurturing, case studies, testimonials, and surveys.

A bit about Cite

We have 20+ years experience working with manufacturers, such as Continental Tyres, Saint-Gobain and Knauf, as well as others less well known outside of their industry but very successful in their own right. We harmonise brand, user experience, and performance marketing. From strategic brand services to web design and day-to-day marketing, we can support your journey to success.

And you’re off!

So now you’re ready to get your campaigns underway. A good agency can help you carefully manage your media budget, and ensure the frequency and relevance of content is exactly right for your audiences. Creativity and high-quality content are crucial – strategy alone won’t engage buyers.

So how will you get there?

A deeper customer understanding should always be your starting point. Alongside scrutinising the profiles and behaviours of existing customer data, you should look to build up careful audience profiles (personas) that define goals, challenges, frustrations and personal characteristics. Not surprisingly perhaps, Artificial Intelligence is proving to be very useful in this area – enabling the creation of deeper, more sophisticated personas than traditional methods offer.

Planning – strategic, content and media

Of course, we believe that working with an exceptional creative agency, who specialise in B2B, will get you better results, and quicker!

Early in the process, you should be collaborating with your agency on strategic planning, content creation, media selection, and innovating new creative ideas that will get your campaigns noticed. You’re going to achieve the best results if your whole team is involved, so internally, you should be prepared to bring on board your senior management, as well the product and sales teams.

Technically, you’ll need your agency to set up templates for emails and landing pages and there’ll be asset templates to consider for digital advertising and social media posts.

You’ll also need to establish workflows – automated journeys that process data (like form completions) and drops prospects into email nurturing journeys and services them the right content.

Marketing Technical Stack

A proven marketing-technology platform like HubSpot or Pardot, with a robust CRM, is vital. Integration with existing sales systems (like Salesforce, for instance) streamlines data flow. As well as providing a CRM, systems like HubSpot allow you to manage key activities and workflows. You can create landing pages, email nurture journeys, and even manage your paid advertising like PPC and social media posts.