Online Marketing Trends in Manufacturing

According to a study by Forrester Research, over 90% of B2B buyers begin a search for any product on the Internet. In the B2B Content Marketing 2010: Manufacturing/Process Industry Report produced with Content Marketing Institute, 84 percent of B2B manufacturing marketers use content marketing. This includes 80% writing articles for the Web, 73% using social media and 48% using video. Imagine what business opportunities you are missing if you do not have an active presence on the Web. This is the new reality of the manufacturing sector. Gone are the days of establishing a website and hoping customers will find you.

Let’s explore ways your marketing partner can help you adapt to this fast paced and demanding media:

Has your market changed?

Even if it hasn’t, the way your customers make buying decisions has. They are looking for more sophistication, more market knowledge and more options, not to mention a good price. Manufacturers must cater to the new ways customers can be enticed into buying from you and not your competitor. Find out what your customers want by conducting an online survey. Determine what you need to turn online prospects into customers.

Developing an online marketing plan

There are a number of steps you need to take in order to formulate a marketing plan for your product or service on the Web: 1) Identify the social media platforms that your audience participates in. 2) Start feeding these markets with relevant content that highlight your unique products or services. 3) Target your potential clients directly through email. 4) Remember that ultimately, everything should drive traffic to your website.

Determine keywords

What are your customers likely to search for? This is not an exact science, but check out what other companies are using and hold a strategy session to come up with as many keywords as you can. Your marketing partner should have a good handle on just the right words to use to get your company the best SEO. You can also test out your words on Google, Bing and Yahoo platforms.

Standard marketing

Besides the Web, you need to continue standard media buys, tradeshow participation, public relations and targeted direct mail. These marketing efforts can still play a big part in your media plan because there is nothing stronger than a brand message.

Yes, the Web is taking more of your time, but it is worth the investment. Web design, SEO, social media, pay per click and video marketing are some of the best marketing tools today. Knowing how to capitalize on them will be the key to creating ROI moving forward.

Looking for a marketing partner with experience in the manufacturing business that can help create a targeted marketing plan for you? Email us today.

Jeffrey Barnhart

President and CEO

jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

Put Twitter to Work for Your Business

You first opened a company Twitter account because everyone was doing it. You started to tweet because it was fun to try to get a full thought out in 140 characters or less. It probably didn’t take long before the honeymoon was over and tweeting became just one more thing on your to do list.

Before you let that Twitter account go cold, consider these tips for getting the most for your business out of this social media site.

Get Linked Up. Chances are if you are using or thinking of using Twitter, you probably already have a LinkedIn Group, Facebook Page, a blog or all of the above. Programs like TweetDeck integrate all of your social media sites allowing you to post content across multiple sites easily. Not only will this save time, but it will ensure your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections are all receiving your posts.

Strike the Right Balance. Resist the urge to be overly promotional or "salesy." Your customers know that you are on Twitter to promote your business, but if you treat your account like a 24/7 infomercial, no one will be listening when you have something important to say. Start a conversation with your followers and give them a reason to listen.

Make Friends with the #. You’ve probably seen hashtags peppered through peoples’ tweets. Hashtags are a simple way to connect tweets about a specific topic. They make it easier for users to find tweets on a given subject. So why is this important to you? Twitter users often search hashtags for content from people they aren’t currently following. Using hashtags can be a great way to extend your reach and connect with your current audience in a new way.

Twitter can be a valuable way to communicate with your customers (and prospects) online. While it’s not a panacea, it can play a key role in an integrated branding and awareness campaign.

Still unsure how to get started? We can help!

Kaitlin Friedmann

PR Manager

kfriedmann@cmasolutions.com

Revisiting Your Brand

As we approach the end of 2010, it is important for business owners to revisit their company’s brand identity. Does your brand still represent your company’s mission and goals? Does it continue to effectively showcase your company’s products and services? Does it appeal to your target audience? Once you’ve determined how your brand measures up, it is important to evaluate whether your company’s marketing pieces reflect this direction. Consider these tips for evaluating your brand.

Strategy. When revisiting your brand, it is important to take the time to meet with the decision makers in your company to evaluate your company’s strategic direction and if it still holds true. Through CMA’s Marketecture™ process, we take clients through a strategic planning session to determine an appropriate direction for branding and marketing their company.

Logo. As your logo is an important element to your company’s brand identity, make sure to evaluate whether it continues to standout in the minds of current and prospective clients. Does your logo format, color and design represent your company and speak to your target audience? You ultimately want to ensure your brand is identifiable throughout your targeted market.

Sales brochure. Your company sales brochure is consistently utilized by your team during the sales process. Make sure you determine whether it effectively showcases your company and its products and services, as this is a main tool in helping to bring in new business. Also, evaluate whether the information in your brochure clearly explains to your target audience why they should select your company’s products and services to fulfill their needs.

Need help re-establishing your brand? Give us a call today.

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

Brandished Brands: How Yours Can Be a Household Name

A brand can be so strong, you don’t even use the general name for an item—“pass me a Kleenex,” “I’ll get you a Band-Aid,” “I owe you a Coke.” These are all excellent consumer success stories, but building a brand in the business-to-business space requires much more careful strategy to make sure you communicate your value well.

Whether you’re focusing on tapping new markets or maintaining existing ones, it’s important not to lose sight of how the right strategy and effective marketing tactics can position your brand as an easily identifiable entity. Even in complex B2B markets, keeping it simple sends a clear message. Cisco Systems, for example, has a vast product offering of network systems, collaboration/voice/video services and data center components, which can seem overwhelming to the prospective customer. But their brief, memorable taglines “see it, live it, share it” focus on the solutions they can provide businesses, automatically enhancing the perception of the brand.

In the business-to-consumer world, becoming a household name means you’ve created such awareness and positive perception that customers believe they have no other alternative. In the B2B world, your marketing approach is obviously more targeted to specific market segments. Often the most effective brand strategies are those that zero in on becoming the household name of a certain price class, geographic area or vertical market. The brand is brandished with creative key messages to instill certain beliefs in the customer.

For example, CMA recently worked with a 102 year old manufacturer of sound proof wall board made from recycled newspaper. With 4-5 other competitors vying for the loyalty of the same market segments, CMA advised the company to take the approach of being the “premium performance alternative for sound control.” This way, the company staked claim to the middle of the road price point and built brand loyalty among a specific clientele who would keep this in mind long term.

Let us help you become a leader or maintain your brand loyalty with fine-tuned strategies and tactics that communicate and resonate. Check out www.cmasolutions.com to learn more about our expertise.

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

Like a Well-Oiled Machine

There are so many teamwork clichés. “Two heads are better than one.” “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” The list goes on. But we take teamwork very seriously at CMA, especially since developing and executing a marketing plan, for instance, often entails a lot of moving parts. It’s extremely hard to be creative without different sounding boards to bounce ideas off of. For us, it’s three basic ideas that define our teamwork philosophy:

Brainstorming
Last week alone, CMA held multiple brainstorming sessions for different client projects. These sessions are often interdisciplinary, where it’s common for someone from the PR department to contribute to the development of an ad, or an event planner to sit in on a marketing strategy session. We look for fresh perspectives and draw on the experiences of one another regularly.

Quality Control
Every piece, whether it’s a press release, a capabilities brochure or website home page, is circulated to different members of the account team to ensure quality. Each team member takes time to review the material and add suggestions. With this process in place, a consensus is formed, quality is assured and the final product presented to a client is a collective team effort.

Responsiveness
People go on vacations, get sick and take business trips—it’s a part of life. But we never want a client to feel their needs have to wait until their main contacts are back in the office. Prior to any anticipated travel, CMA team members work out who will provide back-up coverage to assist with certain projects. These support people are brought into meetings and cross-trained on time-sensitive projects early on to ensure they can take the reins when needed.

Client service is a huge priority at CMA and the foundation for it is an organized game plan. After all, clichéd or not, TEAM really does spell out “Together Everyone Achieves More!”

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

Planting Seeds on the Internet

Erin Higgins, CMA Director of Marketing Services, recently sat down with us to discuss digital marketing for a recent issue of CMA Market Buzz. Among other interesting facts, Higgins reported an increased client focus on digital marketing strategies, not only through websites, but email marketing and social media such as blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Below are some excerpts from the Q&A.

“More clients are working with CMA to deepen their web conversations with customers and prospects,” says Higgins, who guides clients through the development and rejuvenation of websites as well as other digital marketing mediums.

“With all businesses, developing a website is typically the keystone to their initial marketing effort once we’ve worked with them to discover and establish a strategic and branding direction,” she says. “Website development or redesign also dovetails well with a public relations effort, which helps drive target audiences to the site.”

Higgins observes that in the past, companies established basic ‘brochureware’ websites, then updated them with animation. “Now it’s more of a hybrid. Websites are cleaner, there’s less Flash, more white space and brief, top of mind content. Depending on the client and target audiences, video is also being integrated more frequently.”

CMA advises clients to continually update their websites, not only to keep content fresh but as part of their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. “Search spiders recognize and gravitate to updated content, resulting in a higher ranking for a company in search results,” she says.

Ask Erin yourself! Email her at ehiggins@cmasolutions.com and find out more about CMA’s web capabilities and how they can work for you!

Do Your Research - Understanding the Green Market

According to a recent ImagePower Green Brands Survey, 80 percent of consumers believe it is important to buy from green companies, most responded they would spend more on green products. Word of mouth also leads as the way 50 percent of Americans learn about green products and services. Online search engines and television also remained popular channels for learning about green, according to a recent quarterly update from the Green Confidence Index.

Findings such as these provide valuable information to business owners when developing and executing a plan for marketing their eco-friendly products and services. Before rushing into executing your marketing ideas, it is important to take a step back and focus on the strategic direction of your efforts to ensure your message is reaching the correct target audience through the appropriate channel in a format they can easily understand.

Through our strategic analysis process, Marketecture™, we help clients identify and analyze relationships between marketplace competitors and the criteria used by target audiences in making buying decisions. Also through this process, we can provide primary and secondary research to help clients better understand their market, in this case, the green market, to gauge how their target audience feels about sustainable products and services.

Consider the benefits of conducting market research:

1. Understanding your current position in the marketplace
2. Identifying your main competition and analyzing how you stand up against them
3. Determining your products or services’ role in the strategic direction of your company
4. Analyzing your company’s strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities to grow your business
5. Evaluating market forces that influence your target audiences’ buying decisions, helping to determine how you can overcome these challenges and remain profitable

Conducting market research is an important element in the promotional process and will truly help you develop the best strategic marketing plan for your company, enabling you to effectively reach your target audience and produce the highest results.

Let CMA utilize our strategic marketing expertise to help point your marketing efforts in the right direction.

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

Are You Recycling Your Marketing Ideas?

With Earth Day upon us this week, you’ll be reminded once again of all the ways you can better serve our environment through reducing your consumption, reusing various items and, of course, recycling. But take a moment to consider recycling in another light—one that could be damaging your reputation among key target audiences.

Sometimes clients will tell us “that’s what we’ve always done” when referring to their marketing strategies. Sometimes this is a good thing. Often times, it’s not. Marketing is about innovation and keeping in touch with your audience’s needs and desires, so ask yourself how you can keep it fresh before you fall into the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” way of complacent thinking.

Here are some ways CMA can help keep your marketing messages and graphics fresh and enticing:

Just ask. When was the last time you conducted research on your target market? Have you ever sent a survey to them? Sometimes a simple e-mail survey can work wonders to help you pinpoint the right words and graphics that will resonate with key decision-makers.

Update your brand and/or campaign. One of the most successful advertising campaigns in history is Geico’s series of “caveman” spots. Sensing that their target audience had been oversaturated with these characters (remember when there was a sit-com based on them?), Geico changed the way the cavemen were portrayed in their commercials, often showing very little of their faces and limiting their dialogue. CMA’s veteran designers are in touch with cutting edge imagery as well as what still traditionally communicates to key audiences—maintain your identity, but be sure to review it periodically.

Keep an eye on your competitors. Through CMA’s Marketecture™ strategic process, we are able to help clients set aside time to analyze the competitive landscape, ultimately helping you think like your customer. Be sure to monitor what types of messages, images, and concepts are they being hit with by your competitors. When you know it’s time for a change, make sure you’re not duplicating an idea that’s been done well by your competitors—you don’t want to be pinned as a company that recycles others’ marketing ideas, but you need to be aware of what they are doing.

Avoid non industry-specific clichés. Flip through the pages of any magazine in virtually any industry and I guarantee you’ll spot an advertisement with a goldfish in a bowl. Unless you are a pet store, chances are your audience will miss the point because it doesn’t speak to what you do. Don’t get me wrong—even images that seem overused might be perfect for your industry. Just make sure you consult with professionals who can help you make the right match and communicate effectively.

Keep in mind—Earth Day is supposed to be a time to step back and look at the bigger environmental picture. Give us a call if you think the time is right to refresh your brand for a profitable, sustainable future.

Erin Higgins
Director of Marketing Services
ehiggins@cmasolutions.com

Implementing new strategies: Where do we go from here?

Frequent readers of this blog and CMA’s newsletters have seen the word Marketecture(TM) used many times in relation to the development of a marketing strategy. Over the course of this analysis session, CMA clients play an integral role in identifying and analyzing the relationships between marketplace competitors and the criteria used by their target audiences in making buying decisions.

Where many marketing firms may fail to implement strategies discussed in these types of discovery sessions, CMA excels. Marketecture’s resulting tactical marketing plan creates a blueprint for the client’s marketing program and specifically spells out key messages and branding strategies as they relate to different key audience segments.

Our team frequently turns back to the report to keep brand consistency and guide a client through new initiatives, product launches and other types of company and/or market place changes. This is to be used as a guideline and working document as the plan may need to be amended as unforeseen developments occur.

It’s easy to become disillusioned in the current business climate and many companies may feel they have lost their way. Acting on disjointed directions, holding on to out-dated traditions or maintaining the status quo can be dangerous to a company that faces fierce competitors.

It’s hard to tell what lies ahead this year, but while it’s still early on in the first quarter, take some time to look inward to your brand, measure your ability to adapt to outside forces and move forward with tactics that work.

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

The Big Chill

Like every President of their own business, it’s hard not to feel puzzled by the uncertainty in today’s business world. The truth is today’s business environment is different than it was a few years ago because of the consolidation of roles and possibly, the creation of new positions. Many executives and managers new to this level of power feel paralyzed, FROZEN even, by uncertainty, leading to long periods of indecision.

Aldonna Ambler, The Growth StrategistTM who has helped literally hundreds of companies live up to their potential over the course of her career, recently became CMA’s strategic partner as we advise our clients on the right path to take. She says: How can you be an effective leader if you don’t want to take a chance, risk failure or disappoint anyone? And she’s right.

Businesses are fluid and always changing due to outside forces you may be unable to control. CMA’s MarketectureTM process, analyzes the best ways to position a company through marketing and advises company executives how to deal with outside forces such as technological advances, political/policy changes and socio-cultural implications. This strategy is needed now more than ever as the recession causes us all to rethink the way we approach marketing and redefine our value propositions.

Ask yourself this—will you ever know when the right time is to take a risk? Is being proactive really a risk anyway? Maybe forgetting about the “all or nothing” approach to marketing your business is the key to thawing out your business’ big freeze.

Jeffrey Barnhart
CMA President and CEO
www.GoToCMA.com