No matter your industry, there is a good rule of thumb for great marketing: the rule of one. This is a guideline for remembering you are marketing to a human being. In other words, people don’t read a website, landing page, SMS message or an email. Rather, a person reads a website, landing page, SMS message or an email. Right? In manufacturing marketing, you’ll certainly broadcast messages, but nobody reads them as a group. The process of marketing is very personal, and if you’re looking to build trust, you’ve got to find a way to take advantage of the most important manufacturing marketing trends, including marketing automation, which allows you to personalize, segment and reach for the rule of one.
Pay Attention to Your Database
Databases have a reputation as soulless repositories of personal information, but “collecting data isn’t the goal. It’s a means to a specific end. The real opportunity is customer intimacy.”
The truth is, your database is the only way to get to know what your customer cares about and find out exactly where they hope to go. That’s what makes it the launching point for your manufacturing marketing plan. To gain deep customer insights, manufacturing marketers need to keep a clean database, so the information is accurate and centralized. This starts with managing and updating email lists frequently throughout the year to ensure consistent deliverability.
Since up to 30% of email addresses are either deactivated or changed every year, it’s vital to know who is active in your list. Otherwise, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) decide who receives your messages. ISPs use sensors and spam traps like bouncers at the gate, rejecting even valid email addresses as low-quality or unwanted based on their inactivity.
Improve Your Email Deliverability
When you have a clean, updated database, you can start to look at email deliverability. You can get the best possible email delivery rates and keep pace with manufacturing marketing trends by:
- Validating your email addresses with a list verification service to prevent hard bounces. Act-On has an effective integration with Neverbounce that cleans lists up, so you hit the inbox consistently.
- Leaning on real-time validation services to prevent bad addresses from getting on your lists. Act-On partners with Webbula to compare your email marketing lists to a historical database of known traps, reputation threats, and other delivery hazards.
- Minimizing spam complaints by making it easy to opt-out from your email list and ensuring the relevancy and frequency of your content matches the recipients’ expectations.
Plan and Create Relevant Content
Relevancy and curated content are where the rule of one comes in handy for your manufacturing marketing plan, because of all your customers, “62% prefer to interact with content that’s heavily research-based and tailored to their specific needs.” Remember, your content is consumed by one person, not a group. The best way to build the messages they, as individuals, want to hear, is to let a best-in-class marketing automation software solution to do the heavy lifting of…
● research
● reporting
● distribution
● lead generation
● and data collection
…as well as segmentation, so you can focus on each component of lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your audience at every stage of their buying process, which is vital to your manufacturing marketing strategy because only 27% of B2B leads are ready for sales when first generated by marketing. To convert, you need to deliver the right kinds of content – segmented by demographic and behavioral data – at the right time.
Since you’re in multiple relationships with leads and customers - each at a different stage – a message’s relevance is based on who you’re talking to, what they want and how long you’ve known them. Segmenting your lists allows you to send exactly what they want to hear exactly when they need to hear it. For example, a technical-minded message may resonate with an engineer but fail to connect with the COO. Two different people with two different worldviews and priorities demand two different, distinctly relevant pieces of manufacturing marketing content.
Segmentation as a practice also provides the agility you need to respond to the manufacturing industry’s ever-changing market demands.
Seize the Benefits of Marketing Automation Software
Now that you can find your way to the rule of one, keep in mind context varies. The 21st century means you’re a multi-channel marketer, adept at creating the messages your manufacturing customers want to hear through websites, landing pages, social media marketing, and (personalized) email automation. That’s a lot for anyone to handle, which is why it’s important to take advantage of manufacturing marketing trends like marketing automation software and make it the foundation of your manufacturing marketing strategy.
The right software solution is your marketing concierge, armed with tools and analytics to help you enhance customer experience, increase engagement, collect in-depth information to interpret target audience behaviors, and deliver exceptional buyer journeys that nurture long-lasting customer relationships. Additionally, many manufacturing marketers are still taking their first steps toward using marketing automation software. If your organization is on the fence about implementing new solutions, consider the opportunity to gain a significant advantage over the competition by adopting a marketing automation platform.
Sharp Europe, for example, made marketing automation software the cornerstone of their marketing plan for manufacturing. It helps Sharp to execute marketing efforts across a broad and diverse B2B audience, unite distributed teams, and effectively manage inbound demand generation, lead nurturing, and segmentation – all while adhering to the rule of one.
Stay Human and Implement Manufacturing Marketing Best Practices for Continued Success
There are lots of leads out there, but you can only talk to one at a time, not business-to-business, but human-to-human, which may be one of the most important manufacturing marketing tips. Because reaching for the rule of one, with help from a robust marketing automation platform, means you can make the message matter.