Online Marketing Plan Overview for Manufacturers - Part 1 (video)

Hey sales and marketing professionals! Are you a small to medium-sized manufacturer but you're the best-kept secret? That can be a huge challenge if you're trying to increase revenues hit new profit goals every year! In this video series I'm going to walk you through setting up an online marketing plan for manufacturers.

Here's a list of the other steps in this series on Building and Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers:

• Step 1 - Overview of the Process
• Step 2 - Setting SMART Goals and Understanding Key Metrics
• Step 3 - Building Your Buyer Persona
• Step 4 - Applying the Buyer's Journey with Examples
• Step 5 - 3 Month Plan to Attract Visitors to Your Website
• Step 6 - How to Convert Website Visitors into Leads
• Step 7 - Close More Website Leads into Customers
• Step 8 - Generate Referrals Through Customers Delight

This is part one of our video series on building an Online Marketing Plan for Manufacturers. In this video I'll give an overview of the framework we're going to use for your online marketing plan, called inbound marketing. Inbound is all about focusing the myriad of web tactics like social media, email, and your website towards one goal = Lead Generation.

Inbound marketing is broken down into four distinct stages:

• Attract
• Convert
• Close
• Delight

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

But, before we jump into those stages we want to define some S.M.A.R.T. goals. We need to understand what we're shooting for and where are we trying to go with our website traffic, the number of leads we generate, and ultimately the number of customers our website influences.

Buyer Personas

We'll also take a deep dive into your buyer personas, or your best buyers. Not just their age range, their occupations, and things like that. We're going to get into their psychographics. What really makes them tick? What sends them to Google looking for a solution that you can provide?

Buyer's Journey

We're also going to break down their buyers journey. So, what happens from the moment they recognize they have a problem or an opportunity, to the moment that they decide that they need to pull the trigger and make a buying decision?

Inbound Marketing Methodology

It's only after those two very important steps that we're going to dive into the inbound marketing methodology.

Attract

We're going to start with attracting your best buyer to your website. The most common way that's going to happen is your best buyer hopping on Google and doing a search, and then finding your website through relevant content that you've posted on your blog or your website pages.

We're also going to look at capitalizing on an existing customer list or any prospects or leads that you already have, and communicating with them through email also using educational content to drive those eyes to your website and hopefully push some RFQs.

When it comes to attracting people to your website we can't forget about social media. We're going to distribute our great content, and we're also going to find resources that we think our buyers would love or that we they will find useful through their buying process. We're going to share that content, hopefully tag those people along the way and drive more eyes to our social channels, thus leading to our website.

Convert

Getting eyes on the website is one thing, but turning them into leads is a whole new ballgame. That's something that most manufacturers really struggle with. They've got the RFQ option. They've got the contact us option, but most of the website visitors just aren't ready to reach out to a salesperson yet.

Think about all the research you do when you buy a car. You don't just walk on the sales lot and find the first salesperson you can to have them show you around. You do as much research as possible. So do your buyers. 

So, the convert stage is all about getting them to your website and having them turn into leads before they're really ready to buy. That way you have a role in guiding them through their buying process until they are ready to request a quote.

Close

Because not all leads will be ready to buy, we need some sort of methodology with our marketing to nurture them through their buying process. To help them take step by step through the awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage, until they are ready to buy. We do that through workflows, lead nurturing, and all sorts of educational support that we can provide for these prospects along the way. Until ultimately they're ready to be closed into a sale.

Delight

Then in the final stage of the inbound marketing methodology, delight, we're focused on taking our existing customers, and helping them in any way we can. Whether that's through further education, making connections to other prospects for them, and just getting them to become our raving fan that's willing to refer us. We all know a happy customer, a referring customer makes for the best and easiest follow on sales.

Bring It All Together

So, again the inbound marketing methodology is all about attracting your best buyers, converting them into leads, nurturing them along to close them into sales, and then turning them into raving fans that are willing to refer you.

At the end of this video series, after we've gone through all of these stages, you should have an awesome Online Marketing Plan for your Manufacturing company.

The next video will be all about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals and really making sure we're clear on where we're headed.

To make sure you get all of the videos in this series, be sure to subscribe to our blog (above) or our YouTube Channel.