If you were to ask Mr. Wonderful from the hit tv show shark tank, he would probably answer this question from an old class he used to teach at college. He once had a college student who had to choose between his girlfriend or his startup company that was generating roughly $1million a year. Mr. Wonderful response to the student was: “Which one is easier to replace?”
The same adage goes for manufacturing and marketing. On one hand, you have a manufacturing company that needs constant attention. On the other hand, you can’t give any attention to a manufacturing company that doesn’t have any business/clients to give attention. Another way to put it: What came first? The chicken or the egg? What we are getting at is, where do you start? Manufacturing or marketing?
It’s pretty clear we are only half-joking as most companies started from the hard work and dedication towards their passion/business. It was only later that the marketing followed to continue expanding that hard work, dedication, and passion to a full-time profession. It seems like only yesterday you were operating out of your garage right?
Today, most small to medium manufacturers run their marketing and sales through the owner him or herself. The ones who started the business through their passion have all of a sudden found themselves in a completely different environment focusing on marketing more than their passion just to keep their business expanding. Having worked with several manufacturers, we know this can be quite irritating for the owner. The owner wants to focus on their business, their team members, their employees, and making sure their products are manufactured to the customer’s expectations but how can they do that with 100% focus if they are being pulled away to focus on marketing and sales?
That is a great question and we are glad you asked.
How do manufacturers get back to focusing on what they do best with minimal marketing efforts that still produce winning results?
The answer: Marketing Automation
Today’s advancement in marketing automation technologies has allowed manufacturers to reduce overhead, eliminate redundancy and reach more qualified leads and customers than ever before. So to answer the main question in this post: which is tougher, manufacturing a product or marketing it? Upfront, marketing the product is certainly tougher, but in the long run, it will still be tougher. Why? because human behaviors are constantly changing. We can’t predict the future or human interactions, but using data-driven strategies we can come close to predicting human behaviors and interactions.
That is where Marketing Automation comes into play. No longer do you need to focus on spending hours following up with your qualified leads. Let an automated CRM (Customer Relations Management) system do that for you. Take the guesswork out of human behaviors by automatically tracking your website and digital advertising data. Strategically discover and give a one-of-a-kind experience with optimal messaging and branding catered specifically to each website visitor based on their interactions.
Just like manufacturing, you focus on being efficient and strategic to help you create more products, pieces, or solutions at a cheaper rate and faster turnaround time than your competitors. The same goes for digital marketing automation. Create more touchpoints with your client/customer, at a higher frequency rate, with more efficient delivery methods and more opportunities and call to action to close that customer from a lead to a contract or sale. Marketing Automation isn’t the future, it’s already here and if you aren’t putting your best foot forward now, the door to chances of your manufacturing catching up to your competition in the future is and will exponentially close. Before you know it, your business has no visibility to customers.
So what are you waiting for? Are you one of the people who is constantly saying: “We already have too many clients and can’t handle any more business!” If that is the case, then why can’t you nurture those new potential clients to be a customer in the future? Is it because you simply just do not have the time? Well, thankfully, marketing automation has alleviated that problem.
Tacktical Marketing can set up, implement, and run your manufacturing marketing automation needs. It starts with a discussion and a very thorough review of your company. From there it goes into an exhaustive, yet intensive, deep-dive strategy session between Tacktical Marketing and our Manufacturing clients. Once established, we take the plan and optimize your marketing efforts to constantly be at the forefront of your ideal audience/customer. We have heard it over and over from more manufacturers than we would like to hear it from but the reluctance to implement marketing automation has several cost some manufacturers to be years behind their competitors. On the other hand, manufacturers who have stepped up to the marketing automation challenge have had an exuberant amount of success. We have case study upon case study, that shows just how successful our marketing automation strategies have been for each and every one of our manufacturing clients. We simply can’t stress enough, the importance of marketing automation for your manufacturing company.
Please, if you are on the fence, give us a call today and let’s just have a simple conversation. Whether you’re interested in learning more or would just like to understand the types of automation that are readily available to your manufacturing business, Tacktical Marketing is here to help accelerate your business to not only win more website traffic, but more business.
Tacktical Marketing is a full-service marketing automation agency that helps manufacturing and professional service firms win more business. Recognized as Midwest’s leader in advanced digital marketing automation strategies; Tacktical Marketing provides the tools, resources, education, guidance, and expertise to help you close more deals. We implement technological tools such as Ontraport, SEMRush, WordStream, Google, AdRoll, YEXT, Social Platforms, Digital Advertising, and more.
The beauty of digital marketing stems from the ability to reach anyone and everyone with the use of good SEO strategies, keywords, marketing tools, and great content. Unfortunately, we understand the hardships of manufacturing companies being able to produce great and engaging content. Let’s be honest, a small percentage of those using social medias want to spend their time studying and watching manufacturing equipment, robotics, plastic injection molding machines, and rubber recycling equipment process material to form a molded or fabricated part that will go on the outside or inside of an RV or vehicle. However, at Tacktical Marketing, we believe this not to be true. We believe that one can make any piece of content engaging with the right point of view and lead in to what is about to be presented.
If you aren’t looking to automate your marketing and would rather just get your toes wet with some smaller types of marketing efforts, Tacktical Marketing can produce excellent videography and photography that isn’t just informative but engaging to your core audience. Tacktical Marketing would like to invite you to connect with our digital marketing team to help your manufacturing brand win the social game today.
