Once emerged as communication networks, today, social media is much more than that. Easily connecting billions of people across the globe, social platforms have become a potent marketing tool that keeps gaining popularity.
Businesses widely use the social web to build and enhance their brand awareness, promote new products, and generate leads to boost sales. The best thing is that public networks have something to offer to all industries.
Social media marketing might seem the least suitable tool for industrial companies since their products don’t match the aesthetics of social platforms, and their perfect customers are not a part of social network users. It’s the most common myth, though.
The truth is that social media have a huge marketing potential for industrial companies. And manufacturers can get the most out of it when using the right strategy. Let’s find out how to get the best out of the social web for your manufacturing business.
Does Social Media Work for Manufacturing Businesses?
First, let’s consider some figures. Statista reports that as of 2022, over 92% of U.S. companies larger than 100 workers used social media (SM) for marketing. Over 97% of Fortune 500 companies rely on SM platforms in their marketing efforts. 85% of manufacturers overall make SM a solid part of their marketing strategies today, and over 52% of industrial marketers plan to increase their budgets for SM promotion.
For a better understanding of how SM platforms work for manufacturing companies, simply look at the most popular brands, such as Apple, Ford, Nike, and Coca-Cola. All of these brands are manufacturers operating in different industries. People across the globe use their products on a daily base. And all of them have solid online presence maintained by social networks. Actually, this is one of the main reasons why they keep making noise in the world.
Of course, these brands have the highest probability of experiencing a hacked Instagram account. Such accounts are always hunted by hackers.
And the 6 biggest industrial leaders on social media include such giants as General Electric, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, ArcelorMittal, Direct Energy, and Con Edison. These companies are far from being broadly advertised brands consistently popping up here and there.
How Will Manufacturers Benefit From Social Media?
We’ll take a quick sneak peek at the figures again. To realize the power of social media (SM), it’s enough to consider the stats that are self-explanatory. As per Dateportal’s 2023 annual report, SM users account for 4.76 billion people across the world, which is over 59% of the global population.
This chart should give you an idea of the SM’s global impact and the potential the social web can offer to industrial companies by providing access to a larger target audience. So, the direct benefits of SM for manufacturing businesses are as follows:
- Enhanced brand awareness: Utilizing social networks, manufacturers can increase their brand exposure to a wider audience which will result in better enterprise visibility and better brand recognition. Thus, over 55% of consumers learn about brands from SM.
- Encouraging customer engagement: Allowing for direct interaction between manufacturers and their customers, SM enables companies to get in touch with their clients, answer their questions, react to their comments, and address any issues and concerns they might have. By maintaining continuous contact with customers, companies build stronger bonds with them and gain loyalty. The Social Habit study has shown that over 53% of American customers demonstrate better loyalty toward brands they follow on SM.
- Increased lead generation: B2B companies need to generate leads to promote business growth, ensure revenues, and stay competitive. Social platforms greatly increase manufacturers’ chances to identify and reach potential clients, generate leads, and convert them into paying customers in the end.
- Cost-effective marketing: SM is a more affordable alternative to traditional marketing tools. Targeted ads will enable you to embrace more target audiences and reach qualified customers at a lower cost. Besides, you’ll be able to track your ads performance in a real-time format.
- Competitive advantage: Social networks are huge trendsetters and opinion-makers in the modern world. Hence, presence in SM will give manufacturers an opportunity to enhance their reputation and position themselves as industry leaders. By sharing valuable content, promoting their products, and bonding with customers, industrial companies can win priority over their competitors.
The Best Social Platforms to Get Quality Leads for Manufacturers
A brief remark on leads before we look into which SM platforms best work for the marketing efforts of manufacturers. A lead is a person or organization that shows interest in a company’s product or service. Building a reliable customer base starts with lead generation.
Leads promote revenues. Yet, not everyone potentially interested in a product or service will become a buyer. Hence, for manufacturing companies and B2B organizations, it’s essential to cover high-quality leads that will convert into customers. And social networking platforms bring opportunities for manufacturers to reach and attract the clients they want.
Coming back to SM channels, here is an SM popularity rating as of 2023, according to Statista.
Obviously enough, the platforms with the biggest number of active users should come up with the best target audience potential. However, the list of the top SM platforms for manufacturing businesses is a bit different.
As you can see, the majority of manufacturers using SM marketing tools favor Linkedin, Facebook, and YouTube as their favorite content distribution channels. Let’s try to find out what makes these very platforms good for industrial companies.
Despite not having the biggest number of users, Linkedin is a prominent location for manufacturing marketers. They save companies a lot of guesswork by preparing a target audience for them. Manufacturers just need to come up with relevant content to get their leads hooked.
Here are a few prime benefits of Linkedin:
- You’ll find millions of professionals in one place;
- The ability to search by industry enables marketers to quickly identify pools of relevant quality leads;
- Knowing the titles and positions specialists take in the companies, manufacturers can directly contact those who make decisions and are responsible for supplies and purchases.
All in all, Linked is a fishing spot for B2B marketing efforts aimed at attracting qualified leads with a high conversion potential.
A huge active user base alone makes Facebook an attraction for businesses, including manufacturers. Professionals, employees, and customers tend to follow manufacturers to stay informed about company events, news, and updates. As such, Facebook helps establish valuable connections and reach potential leads sharing your company culture.
Manufacturers can expand their professional circles by joining specific Facebook communities and engaging audiences via industry-relevant expert content.
One of the best methods of collecting leads on this platform is via ad campaigns. Though payable, Facebook ads are fairly affordable and often prove to be more effective than other advertising tools.
Youtube
The largest video content platform regularly used by over 2 billion people across the globe, YouTube is a highly effective tool for business-to-business marketing. The platform’s algorithm suggests visitors similar content, thus, increasing the chances of the manufacturer’s videos hitting those who are really interested in their products.
Manufacturing companies often overlook YouTube video ideas and video content in their marketing strategies, yet YouTube visuals can become a real game changer for manufacturers Video descriptions, product demonstrations, virtual tours, educational videos, and interviews with experts are much favored by viewers and greatly contribute to the manufacturer’s professional image and reputation.
How to Get Started on Social Media: Tips for Manufacturing Businesses
If you seek how to increase sales and revenues of your manufacturing company and SM marketing is not part of your general marketing strategy yet, it’s high time to embrace a winning punch of social media-based lead generation.
Here are a few tips that will help you start on the right foot and make an SM marketing strategy for your manufacturing business a success.
Identify Your Audience
Business-to-business SM marketing is not the same as that for B2C marketers. In other words, promoting a steel manufacturer on social media is a more challenging task than selling aroma candles or kids’ staff, for example.
Thus, B2B marketers can’t rely on random audiences. To generate leads, they need to know their potential customers and where to find them. So, your SM lead-generating strategy should start with outlining a circle of clients that might be interested in your products.
The following questions will help you identify your target audience:
- What companies do you seek to attract?
- Where are they located?
- What are their challenges and needs?
- Who are the decision-makers in those organizations?
- Are they active on social media?
- What SM channels do they prefer?
- What are their interests?
Notably, only nearly 56% of manufacturer marketers define customer personas to create relevant content. Yet, this will make your SM strategy focused from the start and let it evolve in the right direction.
Set up Professional Social Media Profiles
To generate leads on the social web, you should outline your presence there. Operating in a higher business league, manufacturing companies tend to have professional websites that work as their business card, promo, catalog, and informational profile. They are initially meant to demonstrate expertise and hit a specific audience.
The same is true for social media (SM). Once you’ve identified your customer pool, you should sign up with the above-mentioned SM platforms and nail your social media profiles to perfection. Your company SM pages should clearly align with your corporate website and be informative, engaging, well-organized, and stylish.
Speaking of style, stick to the same profile design across social networks to maintain recognizability. Use your logo and branded colors, good-quality images, and well-balanced language.
Create a concise yet interesting bio that will represent your company in the most positive way and add your website link to it. Other important aspects your SM pages should embrace in the best manner possible are consistent branding, product descriptions, and professional achievements to establish a professional company image and gain credibility.
Good examples of professionally designed manufacturer profiles on social networks are an ArcelorMittal page on Linkedin, an IBM channel on YouTube, and a Bosch profile on Facebook.
Create Valuable Content
Irrelevant content will rather repel than attract leads. When people are not interested and bored, they are unlikely to learn more about your brand and products. SM users are bombarded with all types of content, so it’s important to create content that stands out and provides value.
Work on your brand voice to set yourself apart from the competition and draw the attention of the right audience. Research SM trends to come up with what gets people hooked. Complete texts with photography, imagery, videography, charts, infographics, and other visuals.
Make sure your content is fresh, authentic, and informative. Blog posts and videos should be not only advertising and promotional but also addressing your target audience’s pain points and suggesting solutions.
Do the Planning
This point is often disregarded by many marketers, yet, it’s a crucial one for successful lead generation. The first rule is to avoid “pouring out” all your content at once. You might have a wealth of creative and interesting ideas. Yet, they need to be organized into a posting plan to ignite and maintain the audience’s interest.
Basically, manufacturers should work out an editorial calendar to accurately schedule posts and maintain posting consistency across their social networks. To continuously collect leads, an SM campaign should be well-planned and work on a constant basis.
The posting schedule should be arranged in a way to leverage customer engagement. For example, if you notice an increase in audience interest, you can increase the posting frequency accordingly. However, if the engagement trend is decreasing, you should slow down a bit and return to your primary schedule. There are different tools for calculating and analyzing engagement rates.
Build Relationships
Production and manufacturing industries rely on relationships and strong connections like no other. To generate leads and convert them to permanent buyers, you should engage with your audience and consistently stay in touch.
Social media implies a two-way conversation by default and make it easier to establish and maintain connections. Respond to comments and messages, ask questions, and encourage discussions. Join groups and communities relevant to your niche and be active there. Track your followers and investigate their areas of interest to generate engaging content.
Staying on the same page with your potential customers helps build trust and strong bonds that will eventually convert into sales.
To Conclude
Social media marketing proves to be a highly functional tool when it comes to generating leads for manufacturing businesses. An effective social media lead generation strategy will help a manufacturer connect with the desired audiences and build perspective relationships with promising customers.
So, it’s no wonder that currently, multiple manufacturers put every effort into embracing SM marketing to boost their lead generation and grow their customer bases. Don’t miss the trend!
