As the customer preference for sourcing information moves from face to face contact to search engines and digital resources, the time is ripe to re-imagine how you communicate with your manufacturing prospects.
And as we move into an increasingly connected and switched-on digital age, personalisation is becoming one of the more powerful tools at our disposal.
One of the many advantages of working in an open-plan office is the opportunity to bounce around B2B blog ideas with fellow inbound content writers.
And a frequent topic of conversation is how to finesse our blog titles so they're pertinent, attention grabbing and search-engine friendly.
While the bulk of our creative efforts goes into constructing the blog post itself, it's surprising how much attention we also need to pay to those first few words that our potential customers are going to see - our headline.
Featured snippets are becoming a growing area of focus within the competitive and constantly evolving world of search engine optimisation (SEO.)
And, according to HubSpot research, content that is selected to appear as a featured snippet can achieve double the click through rates of organic search results.
Well-crafted, purposeful and informative B2B blog posts are essential tools to help build your community and create the foundations for long-lasting relationships.
But in the midst of a demanding blogging schedule it can be easy to lose sight of why it is you're doing what you're doing; who you're doing it for and what it is you're looking to achieve.
In this blog post, we highlight five key questions that can help keep your content creation efforts on-task and on track.
Video continues to dominate the digital landscape - from its prevalence on company websites, social media and news sites to the popularity of online streaming services.
And according to research from Wyzowl in ‘The State of Video Marketing 2018,’ video has established itself as a highly-rated and successful medium for increasing traffic, engaging with B2B prospects and encouraging action.
Among the report’s key findings was the fact that eighty-one per cent of businesses have used video content as a marketing tool.
Of these, a substantial 97% of respondents said that video had helped them to increase user understanding of their product or service. And 76% confirmed that the use of video had helped them to increase sales.
Topic clusters are an essential content strategy tool to help you simplify your content creation and concentrate your efforts around the manufacturing subjects that matter most to your customers.
In this blog post, we explore how topic clusters work, why they’re so useful for your content strategy and how you can go about creating them.
Generating quality content, actively promoting it and keeping those creative juices flowing can be a challenge at the best of times.
The great news though is that your blogging strategy needn't feel like a chore if you keep a few simple and practical content creation ideas in mind.
Here are 12 strategies to help you produce relevant and engaging blog content that will delight your manufacturing prospects and keep them coming back for more
At the heart of a successful strategy for blogging for manufacturing is the ability to be able to write about often highly technical subjects in a way that communicates your expertise, but that remains fresh, accessible and enjoyable to read.
A key element of this process is to agree on a clear and consistent ‘tone of voice’ for your company or brand.
But what exactly is your tone of voice?
And how can it help you to engage with your audience, increase rapport and better tell your story?
A successful manufacturing marketing strategy relies on creating and publishing relevant content that appeals to your “buyer persona” through the different stages of their buyer’s journey.
So what exactly is content marketing? And how can you use it to build your brand, nurture relationships with your prospects and convert those leads into customers?
OK, so you’ve spent precious hours creating a rich resource of remarkable content for your manufacturing prospects.
You've shaped it to address the specific needs of your buyer personas and you've tailored it to suit the individual stages of their buyer’s journey.
But are you missing a crucial piece of the puzzle? These days it’s simply not enough to assume that, in amassing this wealth of fresh and high quality content, it will automatically find its way to your target audience.
In order to ensure that your content is seen by the right people, and as many of the right people as possible. you’ve also got to have a dedicated and consistent strategy for promoting it.
The way that we search online is evolving. And for many manufacturers, there's a growing realisation that the traditional, keyword-centric, SEO methods that we’ve typically used to drive our content creation efforts may not be delivering the same results that they once did.
So what’s changed? One answer lies in the intent of our online search queries.
When we ask a search engine a question we’re looking to solve a problem. But these days we’re also being increasingly more specific about what it is we want to know.
Video content has the power to be one of the best assets on your website.
From new product demonstrations to animated explainer videos, facility tours or customer testimonials, it’s a vibrant and engaging form of content that can enhance the customer experience, build brand awareness, encourage retention and generate leads.
Cornerstone content is high-value, next-step content that is core to your industrial marketing goals, that establishes your authority within your industry, and that acts as a foundation for your brand.
Case studies are just one way to create compelling cornerstone content for your manufacturing company that can help you to earn trust, to generate new leads and to communicate to your prospects the value and usefulness of your product or service.
Creating evergreen content is a proven strategy for upping your search rankings and driving traffic to your site. But what exactly is it? Why is it so useful? And how do we go about creating it?
In this blog post we explore what makes certain content “evergreen”, why it’s so worthwhile, what differentiates it from other types of online content and how we can harness its benefits for our content writing efforts.
What makes content evergreen?
Evergreen content, as its name suggests, is any form of online content that is long-lasting (eternal or sustainable,) that is not time-sensitive, that offers tangible value and that addresses the needs of your audience.
May 2017 marked my first foray into the exciting and challenging world of inbound marketing. I arrived with a background in journalism, creative writing and PR - but pretty much green to the world of inbound and excited to learn everything I could.
Suffice it to say, its been an incredible few months of listening, learning, reading (and reading) and immersing myself in a vast array of new topics.
On the one hand, marketing seems so much has changed since my first foray back in the 90s in New Zealand - and yet at its heart so much is still the same, with the time-honoured focus on building positive relationships and the solid value of providing audiences with “what they really want.”
This blog post summarises five key new topics that have particularly struck a chord over the past few months - and that look to be just as hot for inbound in 2018.
With massive thanks too, to the Equinet Content Team for their combined wealth of resources on the subjects.
A thank you page is the web page that your prospects are directed to after they’ve filled out a form on a landing page. But while it’s the final stage of the conversion path it’s no means the end of the story.
At the heart of a thank you page is the simple act of saying “thanks." But beyond that it has the potential to do so much more - in creating a great first impression, enhancing your prospects' experience of your website and building on the trust that they’ve demonstrated in you.
Crucially too, your thank you pages can be invaluable in helping you to qualify your leads, to decrease your bounce rate and to improve engagement with your brand.
In this blog post we explore the 6 best practices of successful thank you pages that will enable you to further engage with your B2B prospects, improve your conversions and bolster your inbound marketing efforts.
Landing pages, when done well, are highly effective conversion tools that enable you to transform your B2B marketing prospects into customers by capturing their information through a lead-capture form.
They are action-oriented, stand-alone web pages that serve a single and highly focused purpose - to move your potential customers through each stage of their buyer’s journey, from the top of the funnel (or the awareness stage) where they may be seeking out information to solve a problem, right through to the bottom of the sales funnel (or the decision stage) where they are ready to “buy.”
Well designed landing pages enable you to segment your prospects, to direct them to a specific product or service and, most crucially of all, to encourage them to take action.
So why are they so pivotal to the success of your inbound marketing strategy? And what are the key attributes of great B2B landing pages?
Social media can play a vital role in marketing for manufacturing, demonstrating your authority within your industry and connecting you with prospects who are looking to buy.
But how can you be sure that you're devoting your company's valuable time and resources to the social media platforms that are going to be the most beneficial for your business?
In this blog post, we debunk five myths that may be standing between you and your B2B social media success.
1) We need to have a presence on ALL social media platforms
Time is precious so don’t waste it focusing your efforts on social media platforms that aren’t connecting with your prospects and bringing you tangible returns. Far better is to find which channels your prospects are active on and focus your efforts on them.
Think about your buyer personas. What are their challenges or pain points? Where do they tend to search for information? And what sources of information are they likely to find most useful? Considering these key questions will help you to position yourself where you can achieve the most engaging presence.
Dedicated, targeted and consistent blogging can help immeasurably in building your company's authority and establishing you as a thought leader in your industry. But what’s the secret to coming up with consistently great ideas that will engage and delight your manufacturing prospects?
If your blogging for manufacturing is in a content creation rut, here’s a guide to 24 pain-free ways to generate a host of new blog post topics that will rejuvenate and enliven your efforts.
What’s the purpose of your blog? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Are you looking to drive conversions, increase subscribers, boost revenue, build authority, raise awareness or convey information? Or maybe it’s all of the above? Having a clearly defined goal will ensure your content creation efforts stay relevant and targeted.
