Why and how most manufacturers would benefit from a 12 week marketing plan

In previous marketing for manufacturer posts, I've talked about how to really understand your customers, getting your brand right, why marketing a company that makes stuff can be hard and creating buyers guides for lead generation.

Want to create a lead generating marketing campaign that attracts your ideal customer?

You'll need to commit to a period of consistent messaging and deliver expert customer focused content.

Most businesses develop their marketing to "show and tell their expertise" but this is often served up in a haphazard, self-aggrandising kind of way. And this risks switching off potential customers.

There are clear ways to talk about what you do, how you do it and who you do it for without going for the jugular.

What is a 12 week marketing plan?

Setting out to plan and implement marketing for a sustained period, like a whole year, sends most companies into chaos if it isn't something they have experience of. It also might not work in fluid organisations. So it doesn't work and leaves them with a bad experience of marketing.

That's why a focus over a much shorter period of time is so much more realistic and achievable.

Marketing in most manufacturing businesses is built around projects. It might be a product launch, an upcoming show, a major company development, opening up a new market or geography.

The central contention of a 12-week approach fits with the conventional wisdom behind well established business coaching and management processes that talk about focusing in on specific objectives for one quarter, three months, 90 days - or in my case 12 weeks.

A 12-week plan in my view is enough time to create a position of authority on anything you like, within whatever audience you like - as this is achieved by implementing a systematic and integrated approach to your marketing activity.

There does need to be a focus, of sufficient depth that it can be broken down to a minimum of ten weeks plus a launch week (week 1) and a last chance to get access (week 12). Exclusivity and scarcity marketing at play here.

Taking a 'buyer's guide' approach and adopting the thinking already outlined in previous posts, you will create a plan to run over for the requisite number of weeks related to the number of elements you have (6-10 is a good number).

A well planned week-to-week integrated marketing campaign gives you a solid foundation to marketing, enabling lots of customer and prospect touch points on a regular, multi-platform basis.

What does a 12-week marketing plan look like?

Planning aside, here is the generic approach.

It's built around a simple buyers guide (either on a list of ten things why people should buy from someone like you OR a more thorough dissection of a known customer problem, the causes and impact of leaving unresolved and some solutions), you can create a solid week-to-week marketing plan that could incorporate:-

• A tailor made website landing page for lead generation
• A weekly blog post with a link to the guide (giving you a dozen authority pages on the topic and therefore great for SEO)
• A weekly email inviting your list to come and check out your latest advice
• Content to build a social media 'swipe file' for updates to Company Facebook, LinkedIn profiles and company pages, Twitter and Instagram - includes a mixture of content types
• Content that encourage specific shares of Company Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram posts
• Optional additional video and graphical posts to support weekly blogging and drive traffic to your download
• Press releases, and third-party content around either the guide or the individual articles (perhaps a launch and a last chance to download and any testimonials that you pick up on the guide through the period in question)
• Potential advertising of your lead generating content – marketing content is one of the best ways to drive traffic and make social advertising work effectively.

The age of micro-content

We're in the age of micro-content.

Adopting a 12-week marketing plan approach where you plan to cater for a niche audience with a high value long form piece of content which can be chopped into lots of small pieces of content, is one of the smartest ways to market now.

And it doesn't have to be a written piece of content. Imagine what you could do with a thirty minute video or audio recording. Long form pieces of content come in many guises and can be repackaged and repurposed in lots of different ways.

Throughout, you maximise your visibility, promote your brand, position your expertise and market with intent.

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At Vision B2B, we can support your drive to better marketing by running Marketing Plan in a Day sessions or delivering parts or all aspects of the marketing campaign itself.

Get in touch to find out more.

Please like and share this post with people you think it could help.

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Further reading:

Setting realistic business objectives for your manufacturing business

Getting your brand positioning right as a manufacturer

How to really understand your customers - marketing advice for manufacturers

The five critical elements of a manufacturing marketing plan

Five ways to win the marketing game at engineering expos

#manufacturing #marketing #b2b #engineering #contentmarketing #leadgeneration