Automakers Investing in American Facilities

Article | May 20, 2021

The transformation of raw materials through mechanical, physical, or chemical processes into a new product is the definition of manufacturing in the U.S. These businesses include plants, mills, factories, and warehouses and they rely on power-driven equipment to produce their products. Small businesses and home-based businesses are included in the scope of U.S. manufacturing - this includes sectors like tailor-made clothing, bakeries, candy stores, or toy/crafts creators. Additionally, companies that contract with the businesses in these industries are included in the sector of American manufacturing. It is worth noting: U.S. manufacturing does not include anything relating to housing or commercial construction. Read more...

Article | August 6, 2020

In the last two weeks, global manufacturing production has continued to climb, reaching 91% of pre-pandemic rates of activity as of August 2. As reported last month, activity in 2020 (indicated by blue line, below) continues to resemble trends seen in 2019 (see orange line, below). However, not all regions are experiencing the same rate of growth. A variety of different influencers are impacting the activity within plants in specific countries.

Article | April 6, 2021

Inbound marketing has become a vital part of the manufacturing industry, especially after the pandemic. Marketers want to get more business, more high-quality leads, increase revenue, and expand it into new markets. A lot of opportunities are arising for manufacturers to embrace its effectiveness—especially online. Unlike other industries, the manufacturing industry is not safe from the continual pendulum swing of updates, new platform creation, and changing buyer preferences. Manufacturing marketing has its own blend of deliverables and initiatives that can spell the success of your business. Until now, you must have realized that your traditional marketing tactics are obsolete and would have planned to get the inbound marketing program off the ground. Now what? Here comes the critical part—understanding how to implement inbound marketing for your business to generate high revenue. With the help of these five steps, you can stay ahead of your competition. Before you approach the steps, first you need to: Identify your Customers’ Pain Points Understanding what frustrates your buyers gives an insight into how to answer the queries they look for. To determine what queries your buyers may have, you can: Interview your customers: Your customers are your leading source of information. Ask them what solutions they are searching for. What content did they read to solve their solutions? What information, insights, FAQs, or product details can help them? This way, create content that answers all of these questions. Talk to your sales representative: Your sales team is on the front line with your buyers/customers. They very well know what content gaps can be filled. Identify the gaps and work accordingly. These considerations will help you to stay updated in the competitive landscape of manufacturing marketing. Now, start your inbound marketing program by following these steps. Update Website When planning inbound marketing, your website becomes the center of the universe. It’s where all your marketing efforts, like great content for your prospective buyers come in. After all, this is how you’re going to start ranking on search engines and driving in leads. Before you get to this part, you’ll need to do a basic audit to ensure your website is in tandem with your targeted audiences’ expectations. The website interface is the focal point that helps buyers to interact. This will help them to interact with your business. And if their experience is negative, they’ll probably never bother to read further. To avoid such circumstances, here are a few critical web design tips you should know and implement: A Clean Look Keep your website simple and embrace spaces to make it more appealing to the eyes. Too many visuals and color combinations will make it hard to find the information they’re searching for. Creating a simple yet appealing website neither costs your pockets nor makes it hard for your audiences to contact you. Mobile-friendly Design Tablets and smartphones have overtaken desktop computers. So, creating a mobile-friendly design will ensure your website looks impressive on any screen size. Your audience does not feel lost, and it helps to scroll information from your website. Move from HTTP to HTTPS With massive data breaches becoming common in the internet world, your audience will be more concerned with security and privacy than ever. Converting your website from HTTP to HTTPS will protect their information. Also, it will help you get ranked on the Google search engine. Create Informative Content Content is the backbone of inbound marketing efforts. It’s how you can build a strong audience base for your business and convert them into leads. To market your business effectively, you need to provide informative yet relevant content at every stage. Think of creating a blog to inform rather than a sales tool. With this notion, your content will rank and stay on top of the mind throughout your customers’ buyer journey. This means your industry-related content has to be interesting and attract visitors to become your leads. To understand how your content needs to work, list these funnels of content ideas and try implementing them. Content Ideas: Top Funnel Include content in these ways: Blogs eBooks Industry research Social media posts Videos on factory products tour Content Ideas: Middle Funnel While the top of the content funnel is the widest, the middle of the funnel is often the deepest. It includes content type such as: Comparison guides Case studies ‘How to’ guides Content Ideas: Bottom Funnel The bottom funnel creates chances to close the deal and convert visitors/buyers into leads. This includes content ideas such as: Brochures Product reviews Call to action So, in the marketing competition landscape, many manufacturers are busy updating their inbound marketing strategies like you. Many others have overhauled their business. While you have a lot on your end, inspire yourself to create that excellent piece of content now! Invest in Marketing Technologies and Automation One way to grow your business through inbound marketing is automating your marketing efforts. This way, you can devote more time focusing on the bigger picture. There are tons of tools online to help organize strategies, create content, schedule emails, campaigns and publish to your website. Use them! Marketing technology usage can help your business to operate faster and more accurately. Here are some automation tools to use: G Suite: Google’s products are becoming just ubiquitous with a bonus—everything is in the cloud today. You can find your work easily and access it from any device. Also, manage all marketing efforts from one place and collaborate globally in no time with clients. Sales and Marketing CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, like HubSpot CRM, gives you a quick view of your marketing funnel and sales channel. Not only does it enable transparency all across, but it gives you hours back in the day by starting different events and marketing flows automatically. Email Marketing: Emails are the most effective marketing channels in terms of ROI. Email usage endures growing around 4% year-over-year. And has no signs of slowing down anytime soon. In this case, many emailing tools are available. Like HubSpot is well known for its CRM and inbound marketing software. It boasts exceptional deliverability for emails. With about 2,000 email sends/month, contact lists, a drag-and-drop email builder, and ready-made templates, you can start right away. These are some examples to decide what's best for your industrial inbound marketing efforts. Get started today! Keep Tracking your Marketing Efforts You’re spending your time, energy, efforts, and resources on marketing to grow your business. So, it’s essential to track your marketing initiatives and see if it’s functioning as expected or not. Here are some crucial aspects with which you can keep track of your marketing program: Get an ROI measuring tool:For measurable goals, you’ll want to select KPIs to measure ROI. Some common ones include the cost per sale, per lead, overall marketing program, and overall customer relationship length. You can also set points for channel performance with campaign-specific KPIs, including email open rate or social media impressions. Google Analytics:This is a free tool. It will help monitor your website's health by tracking site metrics such as page views, visits, and clicks. With this, you can easily set up customized reports to monitor specific metrics of interest for your campaigns. Lastly, get a lead generation tool that tracks who is in-market for your services. How they’re interacting with your online presence and where they are in their solution journey. Inbound Marketing Case Study: Get Inspired! If you ask your competitors what their main goals are for their company, the answer would most likely be related to increasing sales and leads. Even if they mentioned other purposes, such as improving website performance and SEO or redesigning a website, the main objective would be to get more traffic. And it will lead to more sales. For Corrugated Metals, Inc., these were the goals. This manufacturing company deals in roll formation. It manufactures products for the equipment, construction, transportation, and defense industries. The company used inbound marketing strategies during the pandemic and found success with it, resulting in: Increased quality leads Increased sales revenue More opportunities from the manufacturing industry for long term sales potential Redesigned their website to bring design and UX (user experience) up to date and increase engagement Maintained and increased SEO Through the implementation of inbound marketing, the company saw a 198% hike in website traffic and an implausible 285% increase in leads. But that wasn’t all. The quality of leads radically improved by 321%. Since they were able to identify and target long-term sales prospects through persona-based targeting and lead nurturing, they lined up a potential million dollar per year customer. This created a possibility of 20 years of recurring sales. Let’s Recap In a nutshell, using these inbound marketing tactics can bring high revenues to your business. To recap: 1) PLAN! Do as much research as you can. Know your industrial customers. Find what’s trending. Analyze what worked, what didn't work, and why. And start with these ways to boost marketing for your business. 2) CREATE! Use the information as the backbone to create a stellar inbound marketing plan. Be patient, and do one project at a time. 3) OPTIMIZE! There are ways to improve. And if you’re testing correctly — no industrial marketing strategy will ever fail. In a recent 2020 Thomas Industrial Survey, there has been a 12% surge in website usage by manufacturers using inbound marketing campaigns to connect with more buyers and customers since the outbreak of COVID-19. Therefore, adjusting your manufacturing inbound marketing strategies today will perhaps help you win more business down the road. Frequently Asked Questions What manufacturers should follow to do inbound marketing? Manufacturers implementing inbound marketing should follow some crucial aspects before they start. These attract customers—don’t interrupt them, measure all activities, nurture leads, do SEO and social media activities precisely. What are the four stages manufacturing marketers should know about inbound marketing? There are a lot of relatable things to do inbound marketing. But along the top four things, manufacturers must know to drive business growth are attract, convert, sell and create leads. Does inbound marketing for manufacturing works? Absolutely. Inbound marketing for manufacturers has been fruitful. If you are willing to include it in your business, you will reap its benefits and see your business growing with time. Creating a proper strategy is foremost. { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{ "@type": "Question", "name": "WHAT MANUFACTURERS SHOULD FOLLOW TO DO INBOUND MARKETING?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Manufacturers implementing inbound marketing should follow some crucial aspects before they start. These attract customers—don’t interrupt them, measure all activities, nurture leads, do SEO and social media activities precisely." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "WHAT ARE THE FOUR STAGES MANUFACTURING MARKETERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT INBOUND MARKETING?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "There are a lot of relatable things to do inbound marketing. But along the top four things, manufacturers must know to drive business growth are attract, convert, sell and create leads." } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "DOES INBOUND MARKETING FOR MANUFACTURING WORKS?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Absolutely. Inbound marketing for manufacturers has been fruitful. If you are willing to include it in your business, you will reap its benefits and see your business growing with time. Creating a proper strategy is foremost." } }] }

Article | June 25, 2020

The benefits of applying textures to injection molds are well known — they allow companies to curate the aesthetic of a product and avoid expensive post-processing operations. Designers can control how matte or shiny their molded part is and cover imperfections such as flow lines or sink marks left on the A-surfaces of the part. Textures can also impart functional benefits such as improving grip and paint adhesion. Companies like Mold-Tech have books full of sample textures that make it easy for designers to flip through and choose a suitable finish. Many teams use standard set of textures to ensure a common design language throughout their product lines