Operational excellence alone no longer guarantees growth. The manufacturers who thrive will be those who match precision on the production floor with precision in their front-end strategy.

That requires more than trade shows and refreshed brochures. It demands a modern, data-driven marketing approach built into your overall business strategy.

Together, commercial teams need to understand how their capabilities match customer needs so they can generate demand and build more sustainable pipelines.

Research the market

Market research and sizing can reveal opportunities - identifying untapped opportunities and highlighting where your business can make a significant impact.

Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Personas

Deep knowledge and research about ideal customer profiles and buyer personas can show you how to reach and market to them more successfully. Build detailed buyer personas that capture their pain points, needs, and how your manufacturing solutions can address them.

Conduct competitor research

Understanding your competitors is as crucial as understanding your customers. Identify your closest competitors and consider where the unique strengths and weaknesses in these rival offerings lie. With competitor research, you can identify gaps in the market, benchmark your offerings, and differentiate your brand.

Craft a unique value proposition

Every manufacturer has something unique to offer, but understanding and articulating that uniqueness is where many fall short. Questions to ask yourself are:

• What specific value do you bring to your customers when they engage with your manufacturing company?
• How do you address their challenges and pain points more effectively than your competitors?

Armed with this information, manufacturers can understand the unique value they represent to their ideal customers and the buyers they are selling to. There are lots of tools that can help manufacturers identify their customers’ fundamental needs and map them against their products and services to define their unique value proposition. The value proposition canvas (invented by Strategzer) is a simple but powerful tool to help with this process.

Begin with understanding your customer's 'jobs to be done' (JTBD) - the core tasks they aim to achieve with your business, which can be functional, social, or emotional. For instance, an OEM might aim to deliver products on time, maintain quality, and win suitable clients. They face challenges like factory upkeep costs and supply chain management but can gain benefits like meeting quality targets and focusing on sales.

The value proposition canvas helps manufacturers map out how their offerings alleviate these challenges and provide these benefits. By aligning their services with the customer's JTBD, manufacturers position themselves as a unique solution in the market, transcending commodity status and establishing a competitive edge.

With all this in place, manufacturers can develop a marketing strategy focused on growth.

Develop strong brand messaging

Your brand messaging communicates your brand identity and helps potential customers decide whether you can meet their needs. It should attract OEMs whose problems you can solve while subtly signalling to unsuitable OEMs that you would not be a good partner for them.

It should include information about how your specific services and company culture alleviate the customer pains you have identified. Be explicit about customer gains and what you are uniquely able to provide.

AI also changes how brands are perceived. When buyers encounter your company through AI-generated summaries and recommendation engines, consistency and clarity in your brand narrative become even more important.

Digital marketing is no longer a single tactic - it’s an ecosystem. For B2B manufacturers, success depends on how well your website, content, social media presence, targeting strategies, and revenue operations work together to attract, convert, and retain right-fit customers.

1. Turn your website into a digital growth engine

Your website is more than just a digital business card. It's a pivotal tool that can make or break potential partnerships.

Intuitive navigation, responsive design and fast-loading times are all important. But a user-friendly design isn't just about aesthetics. It's about creating a holistic digital experience that resonates with visitors and builds trust.

This means taking a customer-centric approach. Creating a successful manufacturing website isn’t about showcasing your company’s achievements but about addressing the needs and concerns of the OEMs you want to work with. By focusing on User Experience (UX) design, you can put customers first by creating a flow and journey that is meaningful and relevant.

Adopt Growth-Driven Design

Growth Driven Design (GDD) is a dynamic approach to website design that emphasises continuous improvement and agility. It involves constantly researching, testing and learning about visitors to your website to inform a programme of continuous improvements.

Instead of relying on assumptions, GDD focuses on real user data to guide design changes. This ensures that every tweak or overhaul addresses genuine user needs and preferences.

For example, by monitoring the percentage of visitors who take a desired action (like signing up for a newsletter or downloading an ebook), you can gauge the effectiveness of calls-to-action and other conversion elements and make tweaks as you see fit. 

2. Master content marketing for manufacturers

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating content (like blogs, guides and videos) to attract, engage, and retain right-fit customers - and ultimately drive revenue.

On average, content marketing strategies cost 62% less than traditional B2B marketing programmes, while generating approximately three times the volume of leads - Content Marketing Institute (CMI)

Use inbound marketing as the bedrock

Inbound marketing serves as the foundation for content marketing, emphasising the attraction of right-fit customers through genuine value rather than direct promotion.

While content marketing provides the means - the blogs, guides, videos and other content - inbound marketing provides the strategy that guides how, when and why this content is produced and shared.

Create content with a point of view

In the AI age, everyone can generate content - but not everyone can create credibility. That’s why your content must come from a clear, consistent, and confident point of view.

Whether you’re creating a technical explainer, a whitepaper on compliance, or a video walkthrough of your production capabilities, you need to ask yourself:

• What do we uniquely understand about this issue?
• How does this help our buyers make a better decision?
• Are we simply adding to the noise - or cutting through it?

Generic content no longer earns attention - or clicks. You need to create a recognisable voice, show up consistently, and offer real insight that reflects both industry knowledge and commercial empathy.

Optimise for the new search landscape

Search engines are no longer just ten blue links - they're evolving into AI-powered answer engines. 

For contract manufacturing companies, this means:

• More competition above the fold – AI summaries, featured snippets, and visual carousels often appear before organic listings.
• Fewer clicks, but higher intent – Buyers may get basic answers instantly, but will click through when they see something uniquely valuable, credible, and in-depth.
• Topical authority wins over keyword density – Search algorithms increasingly reward brands that cover their specialist topics comprehensively and consistently.
• Multi-format discovery discovery is rising – Search isn’t just Google anymore. LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and even TikTok are becoming discovery platforms for complex B2B topics.

Manufacturers can no longer rely on sporadic blog posts or keyword-stuffed pages to drive visibility. Instead, success comes from building a deep, interconnected content ecosystem - pillar pages, topic clusters, downloadable guides, and video explainers - that reflects your domain expertise and aligns with how modern buyers actually discover and engage with content.

In today’s landscape, optimising for SEO alone isn’t enough. You also need to optimise for GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation - ensuring your brand, expertise, and content appear in AI-generated search results and summaries.

Utilise different content formats

By producing content assets across a range of mediums, you will engage customers in ways they value. At a time when noise is the enemy, this matters.

• Blogging: Make your website a valuable resource for customers through regular blogging.
• Pillar pages and topic clusters: Craft a central resource page, or pillar page, that delves deeply into a topic and links to related high-quality content, enhancing SERP rankings.
• Podcasts: Elevate your insight and knowledge in more digestible formats.
• Webinars: Educate, inform, or persuade potential customers about a particular topic.
• Research-based content: Conduct research on important issues for customers and share the results.
• Reports and guides: Create long-form content that provides in-depth information on a specific topic relevant to your audience.
• Magazines: While most content has gone digital, print provides an extraordinary opportunity to cut through.
• Video: Ideas include video demos, expert interviews, educational and explainer episodes, case studies, event promotion and sales videos.

Distribute and promote content effectively

Creating content is just half the battle. Ensuring it reaches the right audience is equally critical.

• Social media: Share and promote content on platforms where your potential clients are active.
• Email marketing: Regular newsletters can keep your audience updated with the latest content.
• SEO: Optimise content for search engines to ensure it ranks well and attracts organic traffic.
• Paid advertising: Boost reach and visibility for key pieces of content through targeted ads. 

3. Social media marketing for B2B manufacturing companies

By strategically positioning your company on the right social media platforms, you can connect with OEMs, showcase your expertise, and drive meaningful business engagements.

Social media isn’t just for visibility - it’s where buying journeys begin, reputations are formed, and expertise is proven. Decision-makers now research partners long before a sales conversation, and what they see (or don’t see) on social channels influences trust. 

For B2B manufacturers used to staying behind the scenes, social platforms provide a stage to demonstrate authority, humanise the brand, and join the conversations shaping their industry. 

And with AI shaping what content gets surfaced and amplified, showing up with the right message in the right place has never been more critical.

Choose social media platforms with purpose

Where are OEMs spending their time? As a contract manufacturer, LinkedIn is likely to be the most important social media platform for you. 

However, don’t overlook emerging or niche platforms where technical buyers are actively seeking insight:

• Reddit - Subreddits like r/AskEngineers or r/manufacturing are growing hubs for technical questions and peer-led vendor discussions.
• YouTube - Ideal for showcasing processes, product walkthroughs, or behind-the-scenes capabilities.
• TikTok & Instagram - While traditionally not B2B, short-form videos can build brand awareness and highlight your innovation culture - especially for attracting talent.

Each platform serves a different purpose - choose based on where your buyers are, not just your competitors.

Create social media content that delivers value

On social media, attention is earned - not given. Focus on producing content that genuinely resonates, including:

• Industry commentary or trends from your leadership team
• Infographics that simplify complex manufacturing processes
• Short videos showing machinery in action or explaining certifications
• Behind-the-scenes posts that build transparency and trust

Social platforms are increasingly governed by AI-powered algorithms, which favour relevance, authority, and engagement. That means content needs to be distinctive, expert-led, and audience-aware.

Encourage internal experts - engineers, project leads, commercial directors - to contribute. Employee advocacy can dramatically increase reach and authenticity.

Leverage paid advertising channels for targeted reach

Organic reach is valuable, but paid advertising can supercharge your efforts. LinkedIn and Facebook offer targeted advertising options, allowing you to reach specific demographics, job roles, or even particular companies. By investing in paid campaigns, you can ensure your content reaches those who matter most, driving more qualified leads.

Analyse and optimise social media campaigns

Don’t forget to regularly review the performance metrics of your posts and campaigns. Social media platforms provide insights into engagement rates, click-throughs, and even conversion metrics. By analysing this data, you can refine your strategies, optimise content for better performance, and ensure a higher return on investment.

4. Account-Based Marketing for B2B manufacturing companies

With long sales cycles, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach often falls short. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused strategy that treats individual accounts as unique markets.

ABM is a targeted sales approach that concentrates resources on a set of ideal customers. Using highly personalised campaigns, it attracts, engages, and converts pre-identified key accounts to secure transformative revenue growth.

Contract manufacturers must often persuade complex networks of engineers and other specialists to engage with them, typically months or even years before they are actually ready to buy. A personalised approach may be required to get your message through.

Identify high-value target accounts

The success of ABM hinges on finding the right accounts to target. Start by analysing your current customer base to identify characteristics of your most profitable and long-term clients. Consider factors like company size and past purchase behaviour. Collaborate with sales teams to create a list of potential high-value targets that align with these criteria.

Create personalised marketing strategies for key accounts

Once your list is in place, build tailored campaigns that speak directly to the priorities of each account - or even specific stakeholders within them.

This may include:

• Custom landing pages or microsites
• Personalised email outreach
• Targeted LinkedIn ads or InMail sequences
• Direct mail for standout engagement

Repurposing relevant content from your existing content strategy (e.g. sector-specific guides, case studies, or webinars).

AI can play a vital role here, helping you scale personalisation by analysing intent signals, website behaviours, and real-time engagement to trigger timely, relevant messaging that resonates.

ABM demands tight coordination between marketing and sales. Define shared goals, agree on what success looks like, and maintain ongoing collaboration throughout the journey.

Measure and evaluate ABM effectiveness

ABM is resource-intensive, so you need to track performance closely. Go beyond top-of funnel metrics and focus on account-level insights:

• Engagement across key stakeholders
• Movement through the buying journey
• Influence on deal velocity and pipeline growth
• ROI by campaign or channel

Use this data to refine your messaging, allocate budget more effectively, and prioritise the accounts most likely to convert.

ABM is not a quick win - but for contract manufacturers targeting strategic OEMs or Tier 1 suppliers, it’s a powerful way to build credibility, deepen relationships, and win bigger deals. By aligning marketing and sales around shared priorities and leveraging data-driven personalisation, ABM becomes more than a tactic - it’s a long-term growth strategy.

5. Take a Revenue Operations approach to growth

Revenue Operations (also known as RevOps) ensures alignment and accountability across the three departments responsible for driving revenue - sales, marketing, and customer service.

Create a unified revenue engine

Moving from traditional sales operations to a RevOps model:

A successful RevOps model is focused around three pillars:

• Process: RevOps creates uniform processes to foster accountability and trust. As your teams combine to convert prospects into customers, you will see shorter sales cycles, improved retention, and a higher volume of upsells.
• People: You need people to bring together and manage your process and platforms - this may be a specific RevOps team, or accountabilities may be distributed amongst existing team members.
• Platform: Access to accurate information is key to success. By connecting and aligning your technology, you create a clear and precise story around your revenue pipeline, so your teams have clear directions for how they can impact the pipeline.

The alignment of processes, people and platforms in the RevOps model leads to maximised revenue. It ensures that all teams are working together to optimise the customer journey and drive growth. And as the business grows, the RevOps model ensures that operations are streamlined and aligned across all teams, enabling the business to scale efficiently.

6. Embrace AI as your marketing co-pilot

Throughout this guide, we've seen how AI is reshaping the buyer's journey, creating new challenges for visibility and engagement. 

But AI is not just a disruptive force to be defended against. It's the single most powerful tool B2B manufacturers can leverage to execute the strategies we've discussed with more precision and speed.

Used strategically, AI becomes a co-pilot for your marketing team.

Loop marketing: The human+AI operating model

This integrated approach comes to life in Loop marketing, coined by HubSpot in September 2025.

Loop marketing is a continuous, data-driven cycle built for today’s non-linear buyer journeys. It combines AI efficiency with human authenticity to drive growth. 

Here’s how it works:

• First, Express your brand identity as only you can. Define your taste, tone, and point of view before you bring in AI.

• Then, Tailor your messaging to your customers’ needs. Use AI to make personal, contextual, relevant interactions at scale.

• Next, Amplify to meet buyers where they are. Diversify your content across channels for both humans and AI.
• Finally, Evolve your content and strategy. Iterate quickly and more effectively with AI.

AI makes the Loop marketing cycle smarter, faster, and more scalable - so your growth strategy gets stronger with every iteration.

Where to start with AI?

You don’t need to adopt every AI tool overnight. In fact, the most effective AI strategies start by identifying clear use cases aligned with your existing challenges:

• Are you struggling to produce enough content? Start with AI-assisted content generation.
• Are you guessing at campaign timing? Use predictive engagement models.
• Are you unsure which leads are ready to buy? Add AI-driven intent scoring to your CRM.

Over time, you’ll shift from reactive marketing to a proactive, intelligent system that’s always learning, always improving.

That’s how AI helps you not just keep up, but lead in your market.

• 1. Build a customer-driven strategy rooted in research and a clearly defined value proposition.
• 2. Develop a credible brand to move you from invisible supplier to trusted partner.
• 3. Create a high-performing website with a strong value proposition and opportunities to convert.
• 4. Create a content ecosystem - pillar pages, blogs, guides, videos - with a clear point of view and optimised for AI-first discovery.
• 5. Show up on social media and create engaging, shareable content prioritising expert voices.
• 6. Adopt account-based marketing (ABM) to engage the right buyers with precision.
• 7. Use RevOps to align commercial teams and drive predictable growth.
• 8. Embrace AI as a marketing co-pilot to amplify your efforts.

Key takeaways & next steps for B2B manufacturing marketers

The contract manufacturing landscape is changing fast. OEM buyers are more informed, more selective, and more self-directed than ever before - and the competition for their attention is only intensifying.

Here’s what we’ve covered:

• Brand is a revenue asset - Strong positioning and a clear brand narrative can be the deciding factor in winning OEM trust.
• Buyer journeys are non-linear - Plan for multiple stakeholders and elongated cycles.
• Marketing drives pipeline health - Treat brand, website, and content as pipeline infrastructure, not collateral.
• Authority beats volume - Insight-led content with a point of view will outperform generic output in the age of AI.
• RevOps creates predictability - With shared data, shared definitions, shared KPIs, forecasting and retention improve together.
• AI is the unifying force - Use it to analyse, personalise, and predict; keep humans for judgement and originality.

Putting it into action

Now you know the strategies for growth, the next step is deciding how to implement them. You have three main options:

• 1. In-house – Empower your existing marketing team (or build one) to own the strategy. This offers maximum control but requires the right skills, tools, and time to execute effectively.
• 2. Hire – Recruit a dedicated marketing leader (if you don’t already have one) to design and deliver your growth plan, building a team around them as needed.
• 3. Partner – Work with a specialist B2B manufacturing marketing agency to bring proven strategy, execution, and sector expertise without the overhead of a full team.

The bottom line:

The manufacturers that will win the next decade are those willing to invest in brand, data, and digital capability - not just on the shop floor, but in every customer-facing interaction.

Ready to put these strategies into action? 

Book a discovery call with our team to explore how we can help you stand out, generate more right-fit opportunities, and build a marketing engine that drives sustainable growth.