Top manufacturer marketing strategies for 2021

This article focuses on the key talking points and recommendations for how the industry can move forward despite the current unpredictability of the manufacturing landscape.

Online and on-demand

The global pandemic has caused plenty of disruption for manufacturers – especially in relation to expos and trade shows where businesses normally showcase their products and services.

From this, there’s been a greater shift towards digital channels over traditional print and face-to-face methods. One of the switches to a digital-first approach has been the introduction, or increased use, of webinars.

Izy Herrera, Marketing Manager at NBS, spoke about using the resource normally set aside for physical events to host more online discussions. Herrera said: “If we look back at March and our marketing plan, we adapted it quite considerably to focus more on online activities.

“We were already doing two webinars a month. One for specifiers and one for manufacturers. We worked out that we could move the resource normally used for events and put that into delivering at least one webinar a week. Sometimes we were delivering two a week.

“I think it’s worked well for us. Some people took a step back and some people took a step forward. For us, it was an opportunity to try something new.”

The added beauty of hosting a webinar is that it can be recorded and subsequently posted online as part of an on-demand webinar library that people can watch at their own leisure. 

SEO – a key thing to focus on

For manufacturing marketers who want to improve their online presence, focusing on search engine optimisation (SEO) is key. Even as far back as 2015, Google research showed that 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the research process — highlighting the importance of a strong online presence.

Optimising your website for search engines is important when it comes to driving organic traffic. This can come in the form of technical SEO, off-site content like articles that link back to your website, and on-site content including blog posts or FAQs.

NBS’s Source platform is also an industry-specific tool that can help manufacturers with their SEO activity. 

Visual success through video

Just behind parent company Google, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. The platform processes more than three billion searches a month, 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute and is bigger than AOL, Ask, Bing and Yahoo as a search engine.

For manufacturers, this provides a unique opportunity to showcase your products on a much larger scale. Videos can be flexible in what they are designed to achieve. When it comes to captivating your audience, there’s everything from ‘how-to’ videos to animations that can work as visual content.

A way to learn new skills

As pointed out throughout the marketing masterclass, the pandemic has been a catalyst for change and opportunity. If you’re a manufacturer who’s keen to understand more about digital marketing, but you don’t know where to start, there are plenty of training resources available.

Chris Coulson, Communications Director at Mediaworks, recommends checking out Google’s Digital Garage, where you’ll find a wide range of free courses. There’s also HubSpot, which has free resources you can access to learn new skills.

Mediaworks has seen success in providing digital marketing education with its ten-hour short course in partnership with York St. John University.

Looking ahead to 2021

Digital awareness played a big part in reactive strategies in 2020, and the need to be reactive may well continue into 2021. Uncertainties still exist around the pandemic and Brexit, so a mix of short-term and long-term strategies could pay dividends in the New Year and beyond.

The panel unanimously agreed that 2021 will be another year of change, so deliverables and key performance indicators (KPIs) will be focused on the ability to adapt, collaborate and ultimately thrive.

The panel for the webinar included:

• Lee Jones – Head of Marketing Solutions, NBS
• Jo Wilmot – PR Director, The Think Tank
• Izzy Herrera – Marketing Manager, NBS
• Cathy Barlow – Managing Director, Smith Goodfellow
• Chris Coulson – Communications Director, Mediaworks
• Kay Porter – Managing Director, Smart Marketing Works

If you would like to watch the webinar in full and hear all the thoughts of the expert panel, sign up to the webinar on-demand now. Find out more, here.