Content Marketing for Manufacturing to Drive ROI

Most manufacturers know content marketing matters—but few have the time, team, or strategy to do it right. If you’re struggling to turn technical expertise into leads and long-term customers, consider these actionable insights from our marketing experts.

Contents

• Content Marketing for Manufacturing
• Spend Time Being a Thought-Leader
• Build Your Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy
• Create content for multi-level decision makers
• Build an Outsourcing Partnership

Content Marketing for Manufacturing

Content marketing has become a universal marketing tactic, but content marketing for manufacturing is not always the same as it is for other industries.

Finding relevant content ideas can be challenging for manufacturing brands, but content marketing has still proven to be one of the most impactful game-changers for the industrial world. In fact, 78% of companies in the manufacturing industry see and understand the importance of content marketing.

Above: As we’ve seen in past years, content marketing helps most B2B marketers at the top of the funnel, with 87% reporting that it helped them create brand awareness in the last 12 months.

Seventy-four percent say it helped generate demand/leads; 62% say it nurtured subscribers/audience/leads; 52% say it grew loyalty with existing clients/customers; and 49% say it helped generate sales/revenue. Thirty-seven percent say content marketing helped grow a subscribed audience, and 9% say it reduced customer support costs.

Yet, while 82% of organizations have dedicated content teams, the majority are small — just two to five people — and overburdened. Nearly half of organizations without a dedicated team scatter content responsibilities across departments or outsource it. And while 96% say they have a content strategy, only 29% call it highly effective.

Not tying their content strategies to the customer journey, not having a data-driven strategy, and a lack of clear goals are some of the top reasons manufacturing marketers say their content strategy is ineffective.

So, how do you tackle these issues to increase your manufacturing content marketing ROI?

Spend Time Being a Thought-Leader

Globally recognized brands with strong reputations for thought leadership and innovation (think Google, IBM, Apple) are seen by consumers and businesses as reliable and forward-thinking.

A large percentage (83%) of consumers found that thought-leadership content positively impacted their perception. In total, 83% of those polled said they realized that there are other suppliers that are smarter, more informed, or more visionary than their current suppliers, and a whopping 87% of c-level decision makers felt that other suppliers better understood their overall needs compared to their current suppliers due to the supplier’s investment in thought-leadership content.

While the creation of thought-leadership content may not immediately win new business, the development of this type of content builds a foundation for a long-term relationship with your consumer and is mandatory to boost your content marketing return.

Build Your Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy

Having a documented strategy is vital to boosting your ROI. An increasing number of businesses in the industrial world are starting to build a systematic approach to their content marketing efforts.

During a 2024 survey among business-to-business (B2B) marketers worldwide (but predominantly based in North America), approximately 47 percent reported having a documented content strategy. The exact number of B2B marketers in manufacturing isn’t explicitly stated; however, content marketing can both build loyalty with existing customers and help nurture new leads.

As an agency that specializes in manufacturing marketing, DOM can help put your strategic planning process in play using a few simple steps:
• Determine your goal
• Find your mission statement and unique value proposition
• Find out what topics your audience cares about
• Decide on format and distribution plan
• Establish a means to track KPIs
• Build a content score system for quality assurance
• Design Content For Multi-Level Decision Makers

Create content for multi-level decision makers

With a comprehensive content marketing strategy under your belt, now is the time to venture into the content creation world.

Designing content that is both diverse in its presentation and is designed for multi-level decision-makers will significantly increase your content marketing ROI. This means you should pay attention to consumption behaviors of consumers with different positions within the organization.

Recent trends seen in 2024 show that manufacturing brands had success when focusing on things like:
• Blog posts
• Case studies
• Whitepapers
• Infographics
• Social media posts

In fact, 92% of B2B marketers used short articles/posts as their primary content marketing tool just last year. This list includes great examples of easily digestible content that users can read and interact with. The more a consumer interacts with your brand, the bigger the chance that they will do business with you.

Recent research supports this: 44% of people report consuming three to five pieces of content before doing business with a brand.

Build an Outsourcing Partnership

While 82% of organizations have dedicated content teams, the majority are small — just two to five people — and overburdened. In fact, 77 percent of creative teams developing content find the work-speed challenging, and 72 percent also struggle with the volume of work.

Nearly half of organizations without a dedicated team scatter content responsibilities across departments or outsource it. And while many say they have a content strategy, only 29% call it highly effective.

With the importance of content marketing for the manufacturing industry, solving these issues is imperative.

A dedicated content development team with digital marketing expertise can be the difference between a minimally effective content marketing plan and content that establishes you as a reliable expert in your industry.

Combining your industry expertise with DOM’s expert digital marketing team will save your team time and money. Agencies can take your knowledge and take it to the next level with knowledge of the technical side of content marketing, such as how to increase your SEO efficiency.

Working with the right agency partner may be the last piece you’re missing to double your content marketing ROI.