An effective digital marketing strategy for the manufacturing industry meets potential clients where they are…online.
“If you build it, they will come” is a great motivational slogan. However, it fails to paint an accurate picture of the challenges of introducing a new manufactured product. Most importantly, this perspective completely overlooks the fundamental fact that before the value and benefits of your device or system can be realized, potential customers must know about it. And for PCB designers and engineers, cyberspace is where virtually everyone goes for information about ICs and other electronic components.
The need for manufacturers to know how to connect with customers where they are cannot be overstated. Yet, mounting an effective campaign is challenging. Success depends upon optimizing the digital marketing strategy for manufacturing industry creation and execution steps.
Digital Marketing Strategy for Manufacturing Industry Essentials
At the highest level, a good digital marketing campaign or plan can be divided into two distinct, yet complimentary stages, as shown below.
The steps for success for each stage are as listed above. And, the execution process depends on the decisions and actions made and taken during strategy creation.
Creating an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy
For a product marketing strategy to be effective, it must be based on a keen understanding of who can benefit from using the product, how best to connect with this group, and what statistics and/or KPIs will provide the most insight into how this targeting is performing.
Defining the Target Audience
For IC manufacturers, the primary audience is the engineers and board designers that typically select the components for their projects. However, decision makers may also include engineering and project managers that oversee teams of engineers or departments for OEMs and ODMs.
Choosing Marketing Channel(s)
The competitive landscape of the electronics industry demands that channel selection be a high priority. For electronic components, there is no better platform than an online components library, as this is the primary resource relied upon by engineers to search and locate the parts they use. However, it may be necessary to engage your audience through other channels as well; such as social media platforms, engineering communities, and email marketing–for previously engaged new–or previous–customers.
Selecting Important KPIs
The ultimate goal of any digital marketing strategy for the manufacturing industry is to generate revenue, increase profitability, and maximize ROI. Selecting the best customer acquisition metrics that provide meaningful feedback on how well your campaign achieves these aims is an important key for campaign success.
Executing Your Digital Marketing Strategy
The second part of an effective digital marketing strategy is its execution. Arguably, this is the most challenging part of the campaign. Not only is expertise required, but also a consistent deployment of resources to create content, monitor and analyze results, and identify and implement what changes need to be instituted to achieve the best results.
Creating Content
Engineers are a discriminating bunch. Therefore, it can be difficult to create content that engages with them. Overcoming this dilemma necessitates understanding the different content types and how to best utilize them.
Monitoring and Analyzing Performance
Similar to any engineering system, monitoring and analyzing performance is necessary to check and verify that objectives are being met, and to provide insight and direction for addressing any issues. KPIs like ROI and ROAS are good to track; however, they provide little depth into the root cause of underperformance.
Managing Your Campaign
It will be necessary to actively manage your campaign, as changes are likely to be needed. Impetus may be to address lower than expected organic traffic, number of leads and/or conversions, or sales. In response to these or other factors; such as the introduction of a new product, it may be advisable to revisit target audience criteria, channel selection, and/or content types and quality, all of which can significantly impact campaign success.
Creating and executing a winning digital marketing strategy for the manufacturing industry requires understanding the steps involved with both stages and the expertise to implement them well. The best way to meet this mandate is to leverage platforms that engineers use and forge partnerships with industry experts that have a proven track record of understanding how engineers think and how to best connect with them.
Discover how Ultra Librarian helps manufacturers. With services and resources tailored to streamline CAD creation and amplify part downloads, Ultra Librarian empowers manufacturers to boost productivity and drive part downloads. By leveraging these tools, manufacturers can achieve greater success in today’s competitive market landscape.
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