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When I was eighteen, I joined the United Auto Workers Local 677 to earn money for college. I wore a hard hat, safety goggles and steel-toed shoes and was paid three times more than the current minimum wage. Coming home sweaty, smelly— and if I worked on the axel line, covered in grease —was well worth it. Manufacturing paid very well. It was on that Mack Truck assembly line that I saw the value of teamwork—what I did or didn’t do directly affected my co-workers—something essential for every employee, in every type of work setting. This important lesson stayed with me in the decades since, but so did my misconception that manufacturing is still a boring, dirty profession. This all changed last year, when one of our clients, Aerotech, gave me a tour of their facilities. I was shocked. The place was clean and quiet. And, as they told me the tasks the workers performed, it became clear that this was … Continue reading
Posted in: manufacturing myths
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It used to be that a face-to-face meeting and a classic hand shake was all it took to seal the deal. Nowadays, manufacturing marketers realize that it takes a bit more to land a lucrative contract and is why digital is playing such a large part in manufacturing marketing strategy. According to The Content Marketing Institute (CMI), digital content marketing which includes social media, video and email newsletters has become the fastest growing segment of results driven manufacturing marketing and sales. In 2015, CMI told us that manufacturing content marketers relied heavily on the following three digital marketing channels: YouTube was the top social media tool for manufacturing content marketers in 2015. Manufacturing content marketers named the following social media platforms the most effective for their 2015 campaigns: So this year, hop on the manufacturing marketer trend wagon by elevating your social media, video production and e-newsletter output. Learn more about manufacturing marketing strategy and how to improve lead generation … Continue reading
Posted in: Manufacturing Marketing, Social Media
Recently I was reading an interesting SME article about 3D printing technology and its emergence in the medical industry. Stryker Orthopaedics, a leading medical technology company, is partnering with hospitals to manufacture a 3D printer that will allow for the creation of customizable implants for patients. The long-term vision is to have 3D printers in hospitals, where 3D “print engineers” will have the ability to receive patient data, design a unique implant, print it in six hours, sterilize it, and send it off to a surgeon for implementation. How cool is that. A customized, patient-specific implant designed to comfortably fit a person’s body. I imagine this adaptive solution will lead to a more effective product and a more satisfied recipient. This got me to thinking about Elliance and how, similar to custom implants, our most successful manufacturing marketing campaigns are those that are user-specific. We know that marketing is more effective when it “fits” a person’s digital activity and lifestyle. … Continue reading
Posted in: Inspirations, Manufacturing Marketing
1. Digital Content Marketing Strategy – We know that Google and other search engines want to deliver the best quality content to their users. Top manufacturers recognize the need to produce the content “goods.” But creating top notch content doesn’t just happen; it requires a strategy, and it takes time. Blogs, white papers, and infographics are great ways for manufacturing brands to provide informative content. But it also helps to expand your portfolio of digital assets when considering a content strategy. Think about the results pages you see when performing a search. Often they include images, instant answers, news and local information. Ensuring your company’s visual assets and business information are optimized for search engines helps your content reach users. Now, think about the reason you perform searches. Usually there is intent involved: the need to answer a question. For example, the first time I had to board my dog while I was traveling, I couldn’t figure out how to … Continue reading
When choosing manufacturing marketing tactics, one thing to consider is habits of target audiences. Here’s some data which shows how habits are changing.
In a recent article, the National Association of Manufacturers reported on manufacturing statistics. Emphasized were the merits of pursuing a career in the industry. Some highlights of the post included: There are currently 12.3 million manufacturing workers in the United States. The average annual salary for manufacturers comes in at $79,553 — above the national average for all industries at $64,204. 92 percent of manufacturers are eligible for employer-provided health care benefits. These impressive statistics were in stark contrast to a recent survey by SME, a nonprofit organization promoting manufacturing technology. The survey painted a bleak picture of the opinions parents have of the manufacturing industry when considering it as a career path for their children. Revealed were the following sentiments: Upwards of 20 percent of surveyed parents perceived manufacturing as an outdated and/or dirty work environment. Half of all survey takers did not view manufacturing as an exciting, challenging, or engaging profession. Nearly 25 percent of parents surveyed did … Continue reading
Mark Twain is rumored to have said: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”1 We believe the same holds for the U.S. manufacturing sector. Pundits would have us believe that manufacturing is dead in America, but we beg to differ. Working in a former “Rust Belt” city like Pittsburgh gives us a unique perspective on this. Clichés aside, manufacturing in Pittsburgh (and indeed in the rest of the country) took a big hit in the 1980’s and struggled for a while. But, we are all tired of hearing that American manufacturing is dead. It would seem that manufacturing has found a way to adapt and overcome. Quality at Scale Ford Motor Company, arguably one of the America’s largest manufacturers, realized that the old way of painting cars (by hand) was not working at scale. Rather than limit production in order to preserve the old way of doing things, they created robots to paint the cars, with human overseers ensuring that … Continue reading
Posted in: Manufacturing Marketing
According to a recent Gallup report, 71 percent of B2B customers aren’t engaged. Meaning, they are readily willing to take their business elsewhere should an opportunity arise. Content marketing, a tactic that is widely used to boost engagement and aid many B2B challenges that underpin this problem — customer centricity, relationship building, strategic positioning, etc. — has hardly worked for B2B marketers, particularly those in midsize and small companies. In fact, according to a recent study by MarketingProfs, only 6 percent of B2B marketers rated their use of content marketing as very effective. Why? The answer lies in a number of factors that hold to be true across B2B companies. B2B marketers lack content production capacity Traditionally, B2B marketers have focused on analytics, sales and quantitative side of marketing to support their customer acquisition strategies, hence not needing superior writing talent. Forced to adapt to the rise of digital marketing, many scrambled to assume the role of content experts, with … Continue reading
Posted in: seo agency for manufacturing
One of our clients, a small manufacturing company located in southwestern PA came to us with a problem of not getting enough calls for growing their business. Our initial response to their request was to help them with their website and grow their presence on search engines to gain more visibility. However, as algorithms changed, we suggested an updated strategy for the client, focusing on content and social media. The Updated Strategy Apart from the website, the client had no other content or social media channels. Our strategy focused on creating a content machine and gaining visibility on social networks through great stories and content. We created a blog along with supporting networks for social media on all major networks Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus. The Results The result was continual increases in rankings for optimized phrases, rise in organic traffic, and higher traffic from social networks. Here are some numbers to show the success of this campaign: Organic traffic increased … Continue reading
In looking at the B2B world of marketing, trends are indicating that Millennials are now very much in command of B2B research and decision-making. Who says? [1]Google partnered with Millward Brown Digital and conducted a B2B Path to Purchase Study in 2014. It’s a really interesting study chock full of information that indicates that these Millennials are fast becoming B2B influencers. What the study discovered is that a significant demographic shift has occurred from 2012 to 2014 as shown below: Knowing this, will that change what you are doing to market your products and services? Reading or watching? Watching video. Period. For many B2B researchers, video is preferred for information gathering more than visiting a website. One of the most interesting statistics pulled from the Google/Millward Brown study is that that video has exploded as a medium, let me rephrase that, video has exploded as the medium that B2B researchers prefer throughout their search. … Continue reading
Posted in: b2b marketing