The five critical elements of a manufacturing marketing plan

So, what are the five critical elements of a manufacturing marketing plan?*

The truth is most small to medium, family owned manufacturing businesses are notoriously poor at marketing. It's not their fault. It's just a skill set that has passed them by and never been deemed to have the importance of other functions. There is often a feeling that we've never needed to. Reality check: If Toyota (current world no 1) does, you do too.

Sales as a function is getting harder

We know that sales in a conventional sense is dying, and smarter promotional approaches involve a blend of push/pull, where customers find their way to a business just as much as being targeted and contacted first. It is much harder to get past gatekeepers and to get to the people that make decisions.

1. Know your customer

Firstly, we need to know who the customer is. How do we define who the customer is? Is the customer in a specific vertical market. Or set of users or specifiers? Is the customer a known and identifiable target company? Is the customer actually the people in decision making or influential roles in these companies? Or a blend of all the above? Once we understand who makes the decisions we can set about creating more opportunities.

2. Know their pain

The second thing we need to know is what they need or what problems and challenges they are wrestling with. A lot of decision-making criteria is based on the relative merits of changing a supplier, switching a supplier and/or buying new parts, products and services. So, we need to understand what the problem is, the challenges they are facing and perhaps have an understanding of where they want to be aspirationally. Helping businesses improve process, performance, quality, measurement are all aspiration sells (as well as problem solving ones).

3. Know where you find them

The third element is knowing where we can find them. Where do these people hang out? Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, watching YouTube videos, reading industry magazines, attending events, members of specific associations? How can we find ways to get in front of them, whether physically digitally? Identifying where they hang out allows us to understand their problems, challenges, aspirations and also identify those who need help. It also throws up topics we can become spokespeople on.

4. Understand their world

The fourth element is to show understanding of their world. This means not just turning up occasionally and broadcasting (selling), but also showing that you are an active and engaged member of that community. They can see you liking, sharing, commenting on and helping others as well and generally acting as a person of influence and a person of interest

5. Share experience

The final point is to share expertise and experience. For people to want to move suppliers or to change commercial partners, they need to see evidence of you working with people like them. You need to share evidence, case studies and testimonials of the benefits working with you can bring. This helps people to choose you.

These five critical elements of a manufacturing marketing plan are the foundations to then help you crystallise your brand, your marketing communication messages and which tools and platforms you will use to maximum impact. They will enable you to start to actually use the marketing mix in a more integrated, efficient and effective way.

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If you like the sound of this, I run marketing strategy days for manufacturing, engineering, industrial and scientific businesses who may not be getting the most from their sales and marketing.

If you're waking up and winging it; if you are are not getting enough leads through your website; if you are not getting enough clicks from your email marketing; and if your social media audience is disengaged, click the link below or message me directly to find out more. Sessions available for November and December.

Vision B2B Marketing Plan In A Day

*This article was written and published in under 45 minutes using the Speech Note app, Linkedin Publishing and Unsplash. Ask me how.