4 Common Manufacturing Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

1. Having an Outdated Website

If there’s one component of your manufacturing marketing strategy you can’t afford to neglect, it's your website. An outdated website can give visitors a first bad impression and a slow loading speed can even affect your Google ranking.

It's also important to ensure that your website looks as great on mobile devices as it does on a computer screen. According to Statista, 50% of all web traffic in 2022 originated on a mobile device - that's a lot of potential customers to lose over a poor mobile site experience!

If you fear that your site may be due for a much-needed upgrade, then it’s definitely worth reaching out to a manufacturing marketing agency for help. Marketing professionals can bring your site into the 21st century and monitor important metrics to make sure it’s producing all the right effects.

Updating your site also presents an opportunity to add innovations that can make your life a lot easier. For instance, HubSpot’s meeting scheduler tools allow prospects to schedule meetings with you right from your website and sync with your calendar to only show time slots when you’re available.

2. Not Leveraging Email Marketing

Never underestimate the power of email marketing for manufacturers. WebFX’s industrial email marketing statistics reveal that plenty of manufacturers are utilizing email lists to achieve powerful results.

Of those surveyed, 73% of industrial marketers considered email an extremely important channel for attracting new customers and 61% said they send out at least three newsletters each month. Additional statistics show that email marketing has a higher conversion rate than both social media marketing and organic search combined.

Manufacturing marketing emails come in a wide variety of forms, which can help you connect with leads at each stage of their customer journey. You can use emails to do things like:

• Welcome new customers or leads
• Engage your audience with newsletters
• Announce a new product or service
• Offer special discounts or free consultations
• Ask for feedback
• Send out videos or invitations to webinars

HubSpot offers a free email and CRM tool that can help you effortlessly segment, track, and customize your emails for optimal results. It even comes with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that makes designing professional on-brand emails a breeze.

3. Irregular Posting on Social Media

Content marketing for manufacturers largely relies on getting your message in front of the right people. That’s where tools like social media can be incredibly helpful.

But social media marketing for manufacturing involves a lot more than simply putting up a business page and hoping for the best. In order to use social media as a lead generation tool, you’ll want to develop a strategy that includes regularly posting relevant content.

Not only will posting great content regularly attract new customers, but it will also help foster a sense of community among your followers. HubSpot's 2023 Social Media Marketing Report revealed several key trends among global marketers:

• 90% of marketers say that creating an active online community is a key element of social media marketing success
• 20% of social media marketers post daily, 22% post multiple times a day, and 34% post new content several times each week
• 45% of marketers post content designed to reflect their brand’s values, while 42% prefer educational posts, 39% target trendy posts, and 36% opt for funny content

Social media marketing tools like HubSpot, HootSuite, or SproutSocial can help take the guesswork out of staying on top of your social media campaign. When you sign up with one of these services, you’ll enjoy the ability to schedule your posts across multiple social media platforms in advance and automatically keep your audience engaged.

4. No Overarching Content Strategy

If you’re not getting the type of results you want, then it’s time to take a good look at your manufacturing marketing strategy or lack thereof. Launching a marketing campaign without a content strategy in place is a lot like setting out on a road trip without a map or sense of exactly where you’re going.

Digital marketing for manufacturers can admittedly be a complex process, but marketing automation tools like HubSpot’s free CRM can go a long way toward helping you get organized. To develop a solid content strategy, you’ll need to map out several key factors.

• Understanding your audience is an essential part of being able to create content that relates to them. Who are your viewers, what are their problems, and why does your company offer the best possible solution?
• Decide which type of content to focus on, whether it be articles, videos, infographics, whitepapers, webinars, or a mixture of any of the above. Do you want to educate, inform, or entertain your viewers and what is the best way to do so?
• Where will you post your content? It’s likely you may choose to use a variety of channels such as email, your manufacturer's website, and social media, but it’s important to map out what will be published where.
• Create a schedule to make sure that your content is posted regularly to each channel you choose to utilize. You may post to some channels more regularly than to others, but the important thing is to make sure you know what will be posted and when.
• Track your progress by deciding which metrics you’ll use to measure your success. Tools like HubSpot and Google Analytics offer powerful audience insights that can help ensure your campaign is meeting your goals.