Many of the clients that we work with have a small marketing budget and a smaller staff. However, they can still make a big impact if done right. Let’s talk about a few ways to more effectively market your industrial company.
Outsource: Many of the clients that we work with have a tiny or non-existent marketing department. If this is the case for you, utilizing a firm to outsource particular strategies or tactics that you want to pursue may be a good fit for your business.
For instance, you don’t need to have a videographer on staff 24/7 for the few video project you might do a year. The same for photography. The same for social media. However, you can also outsource most if not all of your marketing functions.
We’re talking to a few of clients now about utilizing 366 consulting to create the overall marketing strategy. The in-house junior marketing associates actually execute the plan. We help train the junior staff to make them even more effective and check in every month to make tweaks to the strategy.
Stay on focus: Instead of trying to do everything, pursue every social media platform and every new tactic, it’s best to narrow your focus.
What we have found useful is to look at the types of customers that make the biggest impact on our business and focus on them.
That’s why we tend to concentrate on industrial, material handling, construction, and professional services. These are the clients that we feel we can do the best job for and have the best return on our time.
So a good exercise is to look at what niche or service you provide that gets you the best bang for the buck and spend your marketing dollars there. I know that’s scary because you might lose out on another opportunity. However, focusing on a niche makes you much more powerful in the long run.
Message: In addition to staying focused you need to stick to your message. Make sure that your messages are strong and that your USP makes you stand out from the pack.
Be sure that you focus on strengths that make you more valuable to your customers.
Key in on your most valuable message and making sure that it resonates with your customers.
Technology: Marketing technology gets better every year. You can use marketing automation and other tools to multiply your bandwidth.
Using technology, you don’t necessarily need more people grinding out more marketing; you just need a relatively inexpensive piece of technology.
For instance, for marketing automation, we use HubSpot which is an all-in-one platform, using Hubspot we have more than doubled our efficiency. And a marketing automation plan is much cheaper than hiring a full-time employee.
Not ready for a full-scale solution? In the past, we have used HootSuite, Google Alerts and various other tools for social media to make us more productive without having to add more permanent staff.
Want to learn more about how you can make your marketing more effective? Contact 366 for an assessment.