Many industrial manufacturers are so focused on their products that they often put marketing on the back burner. Industrial marketing is vital to the success of manufacturing companies, and your marketing plan is your backbone. It’s hard to grow sales without one.
I recommend following these tips from Ruwena Healy at The Business Journals to help get you on the right track when developing your marketing plan.
1. Figure out where you stand presently.
It really is true! In order for you to move forward, you have to figure out where you are right now. This means taking a serious look at the inner workings of your marketing and social media plan.
Doing an internal and external audit of where your business really is, and not where you think it is, will give you a real picture of where you stand.
This would also be a good place to examine your strengths and weaknesses. What are you doing right and what have you done that hasn’t worked?
2. What are you trying to accomplish?
Too often businesses think that if they advertise everywhere and post everything on social media, they will magically receive countless leads, more loyal customers and increase their bottom line. In order for you to craft the right messages to get concerted results, you must identify what outcome you are looking for and then proceed to target the right market with the right message through the right medium.
3. Identify your target market and plan how to reach them.
The best way to identify your target market is by investing the time to create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is an example of a real person you need to influence crafted from information you retrieve from interviews you conduct with customers or potential customers, or website and social media analytics. From this information, create a persona of an individual within that median group and make a plan that targets your messages toward him/her to gain more engagement and interest in your business.
4. Have clear objectives and goals and research, research, research.
Be specific about your objectives and goals. Do they align with your business’ mission and priorities? How will you get there? Which team members will be accountable for implementation? What are your competitors doing?
Research is a critical component that too often is left out of the planning process.
Research is a continual part of the process that you have to take time to achieve if you want your overall plan to be succinct and, most of all, successful.
5. Evaluate.
You’re not done. You must evaluate. Put benchmarks in place (i.e. quarterly) to review what you’ve done, measure your success, research some more and evaluate your successes and failures.
Strategic planning is a vital part of any business and if you want to use marketing and social media to help brand your business, you need to take the time to think things through and get the most out of your time and resources.
Photo credit: USDAgov
