Are you a marketing-shy manufacturer? It’s not as scary as you think…
25 January 2024
Think manufacturing and marketing don’t mix? Think again. Manufacturing Advisor Chris Manka busts the myths of marketing and shares how our fully-funded Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers training helps you create a rolling series of small habits that will put you on the path to marketing success.
Join the next one-day Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers course
(plus optional onsite support with a specialist Manufacturing Advisor)
Thursday 21st March 2024 in Trafford Park, Manchester
As a manufacturing business, you’re already brilliant at making. But what about talking? If you want to thrive in a highly competitive market you have to be good at this as well, and that requires getting your hands dirty with marketing.
If marketing is a word you’d rather not have to think about, you’re not alone. There’s a widely held belief that marketing and manufacturing don’t mix.
But that’s a myth. Marketing is essential for manufacturing success, and thankfully it’s not as alien as you might think.
Marketing can be done the manufacturing way, and our new fully-funded Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers course will show you how.
Release your inner marketer
Over a single day of group learning, plus an optional follow-up one-to-one session, our experts demystify the world of marketing and give you the tools to create an effective marketing strategy, including:
- Understanding what makes you different, and why that is good
- Standardising your corporate identity and being confident in your business’ ‘personality’
- Learning how to connect with clients, prospects, and sector stakeholders
- Creating processes that seamlessly build ‘marketing’ into everything you do.
Together, we’ll bust a number of other marketing in manufacturing myths along the way…
Fox Timber – read the case study
“You need a marketing agency”
The truth is, not all marketing agencies understand the intricacies of manufacturing. Many of the activities we typically associate as ‘marketing’ – adverts, promotional campaigns, endless social media – just aren’t that useful to manufacturing and engineering.
Agencies like to chase the numbers, focusing on activities that get you as many ‘hits’ as possible. This might work for consumer brands where the typical turnaround from contact to sale is pretty short. But as a manufacturer, your world moves a lot slower. Some companies operate in decades, not days, and there’s probably only a limited number of people looking for your services. This means quality over quantity.
As you’ll learn on Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers, you can achieve a lot of success yourself, without a big budget.
This is not to say that an external agency or consultant can’t be useful. They can provide a brilliant return on investment, especially if they have experience in your industry. Our course will help you get the most out of engaging with marketing professionals – you will leave with a much better understanding of the services you need and be able to provide better briefs, which lead to better outcomes.
“It takes a lot of time and effort”
The truth is, marketing is just a Standard Operating Procedure like any other. Good marketing is about little habits. Once they become routine, you’ll hardly notice them.
For most SMEs, dedicating just a couple of hours a week to marketing is enough to build up a rolling series of events that will add up to make a big difference.
Consistency is key. Every touchpoint with your customer is an opportunity to send a message that you are a professional, quality outfit. Is your email footer up to scratch and unified with your branding? What about your invoices; do they look the same? These are minor things but they all contribute to how your customers and prospects feel about you.
It’s also important to be active online, but that doesn’t mean joining every social media platform under the sun. The only social media you really need is LinkedIn, and a regular post once a fortnight or so is enough to build up an archive of content and ideas you call upon and recycle again and again. It could just be updates about what’s going on in your factory or stories about happy customers. The important thing is getting into the habit of doing it.
You will very quickly develop a library of things you can talk about that form the underlying narrative of how you present yourself and your business. When it’s time to go to an exhibition, for instance, you’ll have ready-made messages to take with you.
If you can allow yourself 1-2 hours a week to get into this mindset, you’ll soon find yourself naturally needing to put less effort in because all the templates will already be in place.
“Marketing is just about sales”
The truth is, a good marketing strategy should not only have a positive impact on sales but also on productivity and wider growth opportunities.
For example, good marketing sends a good message to potential new employees, especially the younger generation. If people can see that you’re active online and looking for new challenges, you will automatically attract a better quality of candidate because they can see you’re pushing the boat out; you become a more exciting prospect.
Having an online presence that conveys activity and an interest in engagement, rather than being static and silent, is really powerful in more ways than one.
Is our course right for you?
If you’re new to the world of marketing or feel you could be doing better – whether that’s talking to prospects in-person or online – our one-day Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers course will give you the tools to kick-start a successful strategy. You’ll learn alongside others facing similar challenges, so if you’re not sure where to start you’ll feel right at home!
Senior leaders will leave more comfortable making strategic marketing decisions and leading marketing activities. Employees doing marketing as part of their job role will leave with a better idea of what is important for them to focus on.
Following the workshop, an optional one-to-one with our experts will help you to tailor your strategy and identify the best opportunities for growth.
Looking for something else?
In addition to Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers, we are also running two other one-day training courses throughout 2024:
- Lean Champion is an interactive, enjoyable way for anyone in a manufacturing role to develop the foundations of what it means to be a lean business.
- Manufacturing Culture and Leadership is designed for manufacturers wanting to improve their leadership skills and drive their team to success.
All of our courses are fully-funded and come with the option of follow-up support from our specialist manufacturing team. Get in touch today to find out more.