For manufacturers, having a sound content strategy is crucial to effectively communicate with customers, generate leads and drive business growth. Yet many struggle to create content that truly resonates.
That’s where Creatives On Call comes in. As an industry-leading marketing and creative consultancy, we empower manufacturers to master content marketing strategies and unlock their full potential. With over 15,000 seasoned marketing and creative professionals, we assemble targeted dream teams to address each client’s unique content needs and challenges. Read on as we explore content marketing mastery in the manufacturing sector.
Why Content Strategy Is Crucial for Manufacturing
For manufacturers, content serves a range of important functions:
- Educating customers on products and services
- Communicating brand values
- Generating quality leads
- Building awareness and trust
- Promoting capabilities and expertise
- Demonstrating thought leadership
With so much on the line, manufacturers can’t afford to treat marketing efforts as an afterthought. A sound content strategy lays the groundwork for materials that educate and compel target audiences to take action.
On average, business-to-business (B2B) buyers consume 13 pieces of content before selecting a vendor. For manufacturers selling complex products or services, that number is likely even higher. Content marketing plays a major role in moving prospects through the buyer’s journey.
Without strategic planning, manufacturers end up with content that:
- Fails to resonate with target buyers.
- Doesn’t speak to buyers’ pain points.
- Is difficult to find and consume.
- Doesn’t convert visitors to leads.
The repercussions show up directly on the bottom line in lost sales opportunities, wasted marketing spend and diluted brand equity.
Defining Content Strategy in the Manufacturing Industry
What does an effective content marketing strategy look like for manufacturers? At its core, a content strategy is a high-level plan for creating, distributing and governing content to achieve business goals. It asks key questions like:
- Who do we want to reach?
- What messages will resonate?
- What content types make sense?
- How will we distribute content?
- How will we measure performance?
For manufacturers, the same principles apply, but execution looks different. Most sell complex B2B offerings to niche audiences. Their content strategies must account for longer sales cycles, targeted buyer personas, technical product specifications and multifaceted customer education needs.
Rather than chasing vanity metrics like social media followers, manufacturers must zero in on content that nurtures prospects toward becoming customers. This requires intimate audience and industry knowledge.
Key Objectives of Content Strategy for Manufacturers
So what should a content marketing strategy actually accomplish for manufacturing companies? Key objectives include:
- Attracting and engaging prospects: Content should entice relevant prospects and move them into and through the buyer’s journey. Manufacturers need optimized on-page search engine optimization (SEO) so content ranks high on Google and other search engines. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) ensures visitors can easily consume content and convert to leads.
- Educating customers: With complex offerings, manufacturers must continually educate customers across the entire customer lifecycle. Content keeps customers informed on product updates, features and benefits, training resources, use cases and more.
- Demonstrating thought leadership: Content positions manufacturers as trusted subject matter experts (SMEs). By consistently publishing technical guides, case studies, trend reports and other high-value materials, they build brand authority in their niche.
- Promoting specific offerings: Product sheets, brochures, spec sheets and other collateral ensure customers fully understand manufacturers’ offerings versus competitors.
- Supporting sales teams: Content provides sales reps with informative materials to share with prospects. This increases sales efficiency and close rates.
With bespoke strategies tailored to your specific audiences, offerings and goals, Creatives On Call creates manufacturing content that delivers across all of these fronts and fuels sustainable growth.
Developing a Comprehensive Content Plan
The foundation for impactful content is a documented content marketing plan. This provides an overview of what content will be produced, as well as when and why. To build an effective plan, manufacturers must first understand target buyer personas and what motivates them. With customer insights, they can determine which content types and topics map to each persona’s interests, questions and pain points throughout their journey. The Creatives On Call team can audit existing content to identify gaps and outdated materials to be updated or replaced.
Armed with these inputs, our expert marketing teams can construct holistic plans spanning different content types and campaigns over months or years. Plans outline all content deliverables, owners across internal teams, production timeframes and promotion strategies. They provide guardrails for keeping content initiatives on track and calibrated to overarching business objectives.
Of course, this level of coordinated content planning presents challenges for most manufacturers. With Creatives On Call as your content strategy and production partner, our experts handle the heavy lifting. Our extensive experience developing strategies for manufacturers ensures your content marketing plan checks all the boxes for audience alignment, achievability and return on investment (ROI).
Audience Analysis in Manufacturing Content Strategy
Audience analysis is the process of understanding and evaluating the characteristics, needs and preferences of the people who will receive a specific message. It involves gathering information about the target audience so that the content can be tailored to effectively communicate with them.
For manufacturers, conducting detailed audience analysis is a must. Their products, services and technical specifications require content fine-tuned to niche buyer personas. Otherwise, they risk wasting resources producing content that misses the mark.
During audience analysis, manufacturers must define demographic details on their target buyers, including:
- Firmographic data, including industry, size, location, etc.
- Role, department and seniority
- Goals, challenges and motivations
- Content consumption habits
These inputs feed into rounded buyer personas that humanize target prospects. With specific personas crystallized, manufacturers can create tailored content that aligns to individual concerns, interests and preferences. This level of personalization establishes trust and drives conversions across the buyer’s journey.
For many manufacturers, the problem isn’t lack of customer data but rather resources to parse the data. Creatives On Call offers deep audience analysis expertise with proven frameworks to help manufacturers discover actionable insights that shape high-performing content programs.
Types of Content That Resonate in Manufacturing
Equipped with keen audience intelligence, manufacturers can determine the right content mix to fuel their strategy. While options are vast, core content types that generally perform well include:
- Case studies: Proof is power when selling B2B offerings. Detailed use cases demonstrate how manufacturers have solved problems for customers. Case studies should outline key challenges, product implementation details, and qualitative and quantitative results achieved. These validate credibility and get prospects envisioning similar success.
- E-books and guides: Long-form content establishes thought leadership and provides detailed education. E-books and guides work well for complex product information, industry overviews, technical processes and best practices.
- Infographics: Visual content conveys intricate details more easily than dense text. Infographics can be used for many purposes, including simplifying complex manufacturing operations, comparing product capabilities and illustrating technical specifications.
- Product videos: Manufacturing lends well to rich multimedia formats. Short videos can showcase manufacturing facilities, demonstrate machinery and systems, provide equipment tutorials and more. These should live on YouTube and other social media channels and be embeddable on-site.
- Blogs: Regular blogs keep customers continually informed and engaged. For manufacturers, these may explore topics such as industry trends, product releases, client success stories and executive perspectives.
The ideal mix varies across manufacturers based on offerings, audiences and campaign objectives. With our talent team’s expertise across all major content formats, Creatives On Call will help manufacturers pinpoint exactly which content types move the needle.
Practical Steps To Execute an Effective Content Strategy
Even armed with thorough content marketing plans, manufacturers must still do the work to bring strategies to life. Seamless execution requires focus across these key areas:
Content Creation and Distribution Workflow
First, manufacturers need streamlined systems for content creation and distribution. This starts with collaborative editorial calendars to plan content across internal teams, including SMEs, designers, editors and more. Centralized asset libraries store all content for easy access. Digital asset management (DAM) platforms allow creators to manage workflows, track content usage and pull production reports.
When pieces are published, manufacturers should actively promote them through owned channels like email marketing, social media, paid ads and website banners. Syndicating content expands reach further through trade media publishers, industry associations and event partnerships.
Documenting the end-to-end content lifecycle in standard operating procedures (SOPs) provides consistency as strategies scale over months and years. At Creatives On Call, we draw from expansive experience building and optimizing content engines for global manufacturers. We handle each step so clients can enjoy the results without the hassle.
Incorporating SEO and Keywords
B2B content must be search-friendly and easy to discover. This requires on-page and technical SEO across all content types. On-page elements like title tags, meta descriptions and alt text improve click-through rates from Google and Bing.
Keyword research informs topics and themes aligned to buyer searches. This fuels content that ranks high organically for relevant queries. Content strategy experts at Creatives On Call employ proven SEO frameworks tailored for manufacturers. We interweave targeted keywords throughout client content for visibility with every piece.
For information about successfully addressing changes in marketing strategy, read our blog on Change Management Strategy in Marketing.
Metrics and Analytics for Manufacturing Content Strategy
The proof of effective content strategy lies in performance data. Manufacturers must establish processes to track key metrics and analytics across the content lifecycle. Key performance indicators (KPIs) show content’s impact on lead generation, customer engagement and bottom-line sales growth.
KPIs for Manufacturing Content
KPIs are metrics directly tied to strategic goals used for measuring performance against set objectives. Manufacturers leverage many KPIs, including:
- Website traffic: Shows content’s influence driving visitors on-site.
- Time on page: Demonstrates ability to keep visitors engaged.
- Bounce rate: Indicates whether content delivers expected value.
- Pages per session: Suggests visitors are consuming multiple assets.
- Lead conversion rate: Illustrates content’s support nurturing prospects.
- Sales influenced: Ties content exposure directly to won deals.
Layering in demographic, firmographic and behavioral data provides further context on who is interacting with content. With clear success metrics established upfront in creative briefs, Creatives On Call tracks performance from launch through optimization. Clients gain access to intuitive dashboards illustrating how each piece moves the needle.
Continuous Improvement Strategies
Even the most watertight plans must evolve over time. With rapid technology innovation and shifting buyer preferences, what resonates today may falter tomorrow. This makes continuous optimization essential for long-term content success.
Manufacturing marketers must take an agile, test-and-learn approach to keep marketing efforts and strategies on the cutting edge. Our specialists at Creatives On Call embed ongoing optimization into the fabric of each client engagement.
Quarterly Reviews
We conduct quarterly reviews examining latest performance data with manufacturing clients. KPIs benchmarks may include:
- Website sessions, users, page views and bounce rates
- Pages per session and average session duration
- Social media engagement rates
- Email click-through and conversion rates
- Lead volume, conversion rates and sales velocity
Comparing metrics quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year provides perspective on content efficiency. These insights feed strategy adjustments to accelerate conversions.
A/B Testing
For larger manufacturers, we continually A/B test content delivery. This reveals how subtle tweaks influence performance. Testing areas may include:
- Headline and body copy variations
- Different imagery and graphic styles
- Video versus static banners
- Email send times and frequencies
- Landing page layouts and calls-to-action (CTAs)
Each round of tests uncovers optimization opportunities, from enhancing clickability to improving comprehension.
Real-Time Adjustments
In addition to structured testing models, we make judicious real-time adjustments as market factors shift. Hot industry trends instantly get tapped into through reactive content. Customer feedback flows directly into website redesigns and campaign messaging.
Aggressive monitoring of SEO algorithms and buyer keyword habits prompts changes to fuel visibility. By linking content analytics to instant actions, manufacturing brands stay primed for growth.
The Right Resources Make Optimization Achievable
For resource-constrained manufacturers, undertaking comprehensive optimization inherently vies against pressing business needs. Tactical demands threaten to override strategic fine-tuning.
As an on-demand extension of clients’ marketing teams, Creatives On Call offers dedicated resources to embed and sustain optimization. Our systematic frameworks blend manufacturing expertise, analytics acumen and creativity to keep content on the cutting edge. Ongoing enhancement simply becomes business as usual – without detracting from internal bandwidth.
Drive Success With Winning Content Strategies From Creatives On Call
Implementing high-impact content strategies requires significant bandwidth that most manufacturers simply don’t have in-house. From audience research to technical integrations, execution at scale strains resources.
Creatives On Call is purpose-built to fill these gaps. Leverage our expert manufacturing marketers to build comprehensive plans then handle all aspects of content creation and delivery. Our end-to-end manufacturing marketing strategies and solutions, combined with in-depth knowledge of the industry, empower manufacturers to win with content.
And content doesn’t stand alone. Seamless alignment with wider marketing and communications activates success across the board. From manufacturing web designer solutions and video production to user experience (UX) strategy and collateral materials, Creatives On Call strategically connects the dots across all services as a holistic consultancy. This connectivity creates cohesive campaigns that communicate compelling brand stories to every audience.
Let our team of industry SMEs provide the blueprint, muscle and insights to level up your content and sustain excellence for the long run. Get in touch today to learn more!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is content strategy in manufacturing?
A content strategy is a high-level plan for creating, distributing and governing content to achieve business goals. For manufacturers, the focus is on technical, educational materials nurturing niche B2B prospects into customers.
What types of content do manufacturers need?
Key content for manufacturers includes product and demonstration videos, case studies, technical guides/e-books, infographics, blog articles and more. Materials should focus on educating audiences, promoting capabilities and establishing thought leadership.
How can manufacturers create an effective content strategy?
The key steps include thorough audience research, the development of measurable objectives, the creation of an editorial content plan, the implementation of production workflows, and processes and ongoing optimization based on performance data.
