The key to sustaining and growing your manufacturing business comes down to increasing your sales. Fortunately, there are small tweaks you can make to your sales processes and general approaches to business that will yield great results.
Let’s continue and take a look at 9 things that you can do to take your sales game to the next level.
3. Digital marketing
One major part of increasing your sales is by aligning your sales efforts with marketing. Digital marketing is becoming more and more important in the B2B space, and it is a great tool for taking your manufacturing business to the next level.
There are several approaches to digital marketing, but which ones you employ should depend entirely on your target audience. As a manufacturer, your target audience is other businesses, but in order to be successful with marketing, you have to get more specific than that.
If you haven’t already, it is a good idea to build an ideal buyer profile. Develop your marketing strategy to reach this persona. Not sure where to start? Take a look at what your competitors are doing and use those ideas to develop a strategy that makes sense for your unique brand and offer.
Here are a few general digital marketing approaches that you can use in your strategy.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Remember the on-brand website we talked about before? You can use search engine optimization (SEO) to extend the reach of that website to people who are looking up terms related to your business.
SEO works by optimizing your website for specific keywords that your target audience is searching. For example, if you’re a shoe manufacturer, you could aim to rank for terms like “best shoe manufacturer” and “how to find a shoe manufacturer.” You’ll likely have even better luck with more niche-specific keywords like “high heel manufacturer” or “running shoe manufacturer.”
For best results, you should hire specialists that are skilled in both SEO content creation and backend technical SEO development. These specialists will work with your marketing team to determine which keywords to target.
Please remember that your optimized site should not only be designed to generate traffic but to convert readers into buyers. Use appropriate calls-to-action, email captures, and contact forms to push viewers in the direction that you’d like them to take.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is huge in the B2C world, and it is becoming more important in the B2B world. Although you may have a presence on all of the major platforms, it is a good idea to focus on the one or two platforms where your ideal audience is “hanging out.”
Manufacturers can create both organic contents and paid ads on social media.
Since social media marketing has many different layers, we recommend hiring a social media specialist to give you direction in this arena.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to connect with warm leads and customers who have bought from you in the past. These blasts can be general with tips and other valuable content, or they could be super targeted with unique offers and promotions.
Another approach would be to set up automated emails to remind your past customers to purchase more stock once you determine how quickly they go through each order.
4. Optimizing your sales pipeline
So much can be achieved by making small tweaks to optimize your sales pipeline. Take a look at your current sales pipeline and identify any leaks or blockages. Assess what is working and not working and adjust accordingly.
Optimizing your sales pipeline takes a bit of observation and tracking trends over time.
5. Global expansion
Breaking down geographic borders on your business and going international is a great way to increase sales. This grows your pool of potential clients exponentially.
Entering the global market with your business will open many doors since it will expose your brand to new prospective clients around the world.
Thanks to innovative tools for real-time translation and automatic currency conversion on platforms like Alibaba.com, global expansion is attainable for manufacturing businesses both big and small.
Source: Alibaba
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