When I talk with manufacturers who are new to the concept of content marketing, they are excited to hear about how powerful it is when it comes to attracting and engaging prospects and ultimately turning them into customers. They ask about what kind of results they can expect. They ask about how success can be measured. They ask all kinds of great questions. And then, as they reach the decision that content marketing is something they want to pursue, I can see the question in their eyes even before they verbalize it: “What kind of content can/should we produce?”
You May Not Know it, But You’re Swimming in Marketing Content!
For manufacturers especially, the opportunities for producing meaningful content abound. For a prospect who wants to understand what it is you do and who you are as a company in order to decide if you’ll be the right fit for their project, pretty much anything you can show them or tell them is helpful.
Here are some ideas for content you might consider producing, just to get the creative juices flowing:
- A white paper about one of your processes. An interesting explanation of how you produce a particular type of item gives a prospect a better sense of your expertise. And the beauty of a piece like this (and all good content marketing materials, really) is that there doesn’t have to be any marketing spin at all. If you’re good at what you do and you can demonstrate that, your services sell themselves.
- A case study of a successful project. Prospects love to hear about how you’ve helped other companies like theirs achieve success. If you’ve got a customer who’s willing to let you share their story with your target audience, that’s fantastic. Even if they’d rather not go “on the record,” you can always write (or have written for you) an anonymous case study that covers the particulars of the project without ever naming the client.
- A video of a manufacturing job underway. People sometimes don’t consider video as a content option for themselves because they have big (and expensive) Hollywood productions in their mind’s eye. But today’s consumers understand that even a low budget (or no budget!) video shot on your smartphone can provide some great information.
- A checklist that your customers use to prepare their projects for handoff to you. Here again, marketing content doesn’t have to have a lot of polish. The standard today is more about whether a piece is useful. If a simple checklist proves to be food for thought for a prospect who is thinking about working with you, that’s a win!
- A SlideShare presentation showing pictures of finished products. One of the great things about images is that oftentimes they can speak for themselves. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a slideshow with a dozen images is worth… well… 12,000 of ‘em!
And this is just the tip of the content iceberg, so to speak. There are SO many ways you can make what you do engaging and informative.
Ready to Start Stocking Your Marketing Content Library?
If you’ve reached the conclusion that content marketing can help you take your sales to the next level, we applaud that decision! And our staff in Colorado Springs, CO, Olympia, WA, and Springfield, MO, are eager to help you. Let’s talk about your pain points and objectives.
