Are you looking to incorporate inbound marketing into your industrial manufacturing company and don’t know where to start? Perhaps you’ve started to research inbound but are daunted by all the jargon and the vast amount of content out there. Our eBook “Industrial Manufacturer’s Guide to Inbound Marketing” is a simple, no nonsense eBook to guide manufacturers through the inbound process.

Let’s face it: inbound marketing is the future of marketing in the digital world, and, the future is now. The inbound methodology focuses on bringing prospective customers to you, rather than outwardly seeking them, as you would in traditional marketing tactics; such as print advertising, trade show marketing and direct mail. By creating content specifically designed to entice your ideal customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your website and starts the process of building relationships.

Many manufacturers have added inbound marketing to their marketing strategy and are reaping the benefits from it. However, for as many manufacturers that have successfully implemented inbound, there are just as many that have dropped the ball and made some major inbound marketing blunders. Or blog “The 5 Biggest Inbound Marketing Mistakes Manufacturers Make” delves into the most common mistakes and ways to correct them.

The Industrial Manufacturer’s Guide to Inbound Marketing is our most in-depth and comprehensive guide to educate and prepare business-to-business manufacturers for inbound marketing success. We’ve broken down the inbound process through each of the 4 stages: attract, convert, close and delight, sharing everything you need to know about the inbound marketing process and which tactics will help your manufacturing company reach its marketing and sales goals.

Learn ways to:

• Increase Visitors to Your Website
• Convert Those Visitors to Leads
• Use Email Automation to Build Trust with Leads
• Tie Sales and Marketing Together
• Retain Customers More Efficiently

So, what are you waiting for?

Inbound marketing is one of the most buzzed about topics among manufacturers, especially in Northeast Ohio. Many manufacturing companies have implemented successful inbound marketing strategies, which are bringing them more qualified leads and giving them better insight into their prospects and customers. However, for as many manufacturers that have successfully implemented inbound, there are just as many who have dropped the ball and made some major marketing blunders. Read on to learn the 5 biggest inbound marketing mistakes manufactures make and my top tips on how you can avoid these pitfalls at your manufacturing company.

1. Assuming You Know Your Buyers

One of the biggest mistakes I see manufacturers make in the inbound marketing process is making assumptions their buyer. We see it all the time. Manufacturers with 25+ years of experience, who believe they have a clear understanding of their buyer and their buyer’s communication preferences (which, have undoubtedly changed over time).

Creating a sound inbound marketing plan, starts with the process of creating buyer personas. Buyer personas help manufacturers identify their best prospects. During the process of developing buyer personas, manufacturers must get into the mindset of their ideal customers, and identify their goals, their pain points, how they search, their information search process, and demographics. Two helpful activities include surveying current customers and doing some educated speculation.

Then, and only then, will you have a clear understanding of your ideal personas. You can now create targeted, relevant content that speaks to your buyer and provides solutions to their biggest problems. Click here to read our blog about creating buyer personas.

2. Not Developing a Content Map

Developing a content map is essential to have inbound marketing success. The crux of inbound marketing is content. It is necessary to have a website full of relevant, engaging content that speaks to your buyer personas and also, the various verticals where your prospects exist. Creating a content map is a great way to make sure that you are targeting each vertical and all your ideal buyers. A content map is a plan of all the content that will be developed for your company in a 6 month to year-long stretch.

The content map delves deeply into your personas and their process through the buyer’s journey. You can map out content for the awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage of the buying process. By creating a content map, you can develop content ideas to bring prospects through the sales process on their terms, building a deeper relationship and showing your expertise.

3. Skipping on Integrating Sales with Marketing

The beautiful thing about inbound is that it ties sales and marketing together. With an inbound marketing platform, such as HubSpot, you can track your prospects and their behavior. In one, easy-to-view command center, you can look at prospects and customers individually and see what emails they’ve opened and clicked, where they’ve been on your website and what content they’ve downloaded.

When integrating an inbound strategy, it is necessary to get sales on board. By integrating CRM with an inbound platform, sales managers get a “360” view of who the prospect is and receives valuable insight on that individual’s needs, wants and goals. That way, when a sales rep reaches out to a prospect, he or she is equipped with solutions tailored to that prospect. When sales are disconnected from inbound, you will not see optimal ROI from your marketing efforts.

4. Eliminating Traditional PR & Marketing Tactics from Their Strategy

Inbound marketing allows manufacturers to track just about everything from website visitors to leads and sales. We’ve seen a lot of manufacturers dropping the ball on public relations thinking that inbound marketing is replacing the need for the name recognition and eyeballs publicity delivers. However, PR & traditional marketing (editorial, advertising, direct mail, etc.) have an important place in an inbound strategy. How you may ask? The first step in the inbound marketing process is attract.

By to exhibiting at a trade show, being featured in an industry publication or by advertising in the right magazine, you are enhancing your brand. Going to a notable industry trade show or having a case study of yours featured in a respected industry publication is a great way to intrigue prospects and attract them to your website! Read my blog “Why Manufacturers Still Need Traditional PR & Marketing in a Digital World” for more information on the importance of inbound.

5. Underestimating the Power of Social

Many manufacturers are not tapping into the power of social media. If social isn’t integrated into your inbound marketing plan, you are missing out. You can write all the relevant content you want, but you still need to distribute that content. Social provide just the right mix of channels to broadcast your message. Let’s face it: we’re living and breathing in a social media driven world. More and more people are getting their news from Twitter instead of television news outlets and making connections on LinkedIn instead of cold calling or email introductions. If you read Rob’s blog on social selling, you’ll understand the impact social has in the sales process and how easily social selling incorporates into the manufacturing sales process.

Without a doubt, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an integral part of the manufacturing sales process. However, CRM is not a be-all-end-all to a shorter sales cycle. Why? Because a CRM by itself doesn’t generate leads. If your CRM is not connected to an inbound marketing platform, you are missing valuable sales opportunities. Keep reading to learn why your CRM should be integrated with an inbound marketing platform to improve sales and turn prospects into customers quicker and more efficiently.

What a CRM Can Do

• Be Your Contact Database
• Produce Email Conversations- (Opens and Clicks)
• Log calls or other interactions between sales people and those contacts (if the sales people are invested in the CRM and put the time in)

What a CRM Can’t Do

• Attract New Leads- CRM is only for existing databases, which may degrade 25% a year due to events such as job changes, people leaving the company, etc. It’s up to the manufacturer to add additional contacts into the database and regularly “clean up” the database when people move to different jobs
• Track Prospect and Customer Behavior- CRM can only give you information about email opens and clicks and other interactions that your client logs. It cannot tell you how a prospect interacts with your brand. Meaning what webpages they’ve looked at, if they’ve engaged with your company on social media, or if they’ve downloaded a white paper or other content from your website.

What is an Inbound Marketing Platform?

There are a few inbound marketing platforms on the market. At Felber PR, we use HubSpot for both our CRM and inbound marketing software (though HubSpot integrates with many existing mainstream platforms on the market).  HubSpot is an inbound marketing platform and sales software that helps manufacturers attract visitors to their website, convert leads, and then ultimately, close the customers.

Inbound marketing focuses on bringing prospective customers to you, rather than outwardly seeking them. By creating content specifically designed to entice your ideal customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your website and starts the process building relationship. You can and should also nurture your existing customers as well to sell more.

Why You Should Have Both a CRM and an Inbound Marketing Platform

We all know that knowledge is power and that’s what an inbound marketing platform gives you. An inbound marketing platform allows you to track your prospects and their behavior. In one space, you can look at prospects and customers individually and see what emails they’ve opened and clicked, where they’ve been on your website and what content they’ve downloaded.

By syncing your CRM with your inbound platform, sales managers get a “360” view of who the prospect is and receives valuable insight on that individual’s needs, wants and goals. That way, when a sales rep reaches out to a prospect, he or she is equipped with solutions tailored to that prospect. Isn’t that their job in a nutshell? Building deeper relationships?

Also, an inbound marketing platform allows for marketing automation. For example, if a prospect on your website downloads an Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing eBook, that prospect will automatically be sent content via email about 3D printing dissimilar metals, embedding sensors in parts or other of interest topics. Then, when that prospect has looked and multiple emails or pages on the website, a trigger will be sent to a sales manager to reach out to that prospect.

Long gone are the days of sales people reaching out to prospects that aren’t quite ready to buy. By syncing your CRM with an inbound marketing platform, sales managers save time, get further insight on who that prospect is, and ultimately, can close sales more efficiently based upon where that person is in the sales cycle.

If you haven’t heard yet, LinkedIn is making some big changes that may affect how you use the platform. The now Microsoft-owned business social networking platform is redesigning with the intention of making the desktop version look more like the recently updated LinkedIn app.

LinkedIn has already started roll-out of the updated platform and I recently was upgraded to the new interface. I learned quickly that LinkedIn is pushing some of my favorite tools to Premium. It has changed my approach to social selling and made my ability to locate prospects more tedious and time-consuming. Read on to learn the changes coming to your LinkedIn and ways to navigate the revamped platform.

What is Social Selling? 

Social selling is leveraging your social network to find the best prospects, build trust and relationships with those prospects and ultimately, achieve your sales goals.

Social selling, along with inbound marketing, eliminates the necessity of cold calling. It allows you to get insight on your prospect’s behaviors, goals and communication style. That way, you can communicate with them in the best way possible and provide them with solutions for their biggest problems.

A Change in Approach to Social Selling with the New LinkedIn

Old Way of Finding Prospects– Prior to the LinkedIn upgrade, I was able to easily mine through the contacts of my connections. By using the “advanced search tool” on a connection’s page, I could find contacts of my connections who could benefit from my services, by narrowing my search to a specific geographic area, job title and industry. Now, on the new LinkedIn interface, I am unable to click on “Bob Smith” and advance search his contacts for people with whom I’d like to be introduced. Advance searching on a connection’s page is now a tool for only LinkedIn Premium users.

New Way of Finding Prospects– Now, for people who don’t have LinkedIn Premium like myself (though I’m leaning towards the upgrade), the process of finding prospects is more labor-intensive.

First, start out with an advance search of all of your contacts. Be specific. Include job title and location or any other information that can really narrow your search. You can choose 2nd or 3rd connections (learn about degrees of connection here).

The biggest issue I’ve found with searching this way is I’m unable to easily limit my search to one specific industry. Since I work exclusively with business-to-business manufacturers, I don’t want to be populated with service or business to consumer companies. I only want to find manufacturers.

It’s frustrating to have to click on profiles, determine if the person fits into one of my buyer personas and then see who is connected with this person and could potentially introduce me. If you are in a sales-oriented role or HR, an upgrade to Premium may be worth it to save valuable time and money.

There are many additional changes coming to LinkedIn and the new desktop experience is expected to roll out globally to all members over the coming weeks. You can click here to view LinkedIn’ New User Interface or if you’d rather, below is a video which gives a more in-depth look at all the changes coming to LinkedIn.

An in-depth look at the new LinkedIn interface
Happy Social Selling!