In a 2023 Content Marketing Institute study, 73% of the top marketers outlined how content marketing is effective for nurturing leads. Likewise, 64% affirmed its value for generating sales and 60% for establishing an audience of subscribers.

The value of good content becomes even more critical when talking strictly in terms of the B2B landscape. Prior to speaking with a salesperson, B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content. About 30% of buyers consume more than 5. And that bodes well when you consider that when B2B purchasers make a purchase, they do a lot more research and engage more individuals, which increases the time it takes to complete a transaction. 

For a manufacturing business, the due diligence is even more profound owing to the intricacy of their niche and sophisticated technology requirements.

Overall, B2B audiences are extremely knowledgeable. It is far better to gradually create trust through story-led narratives than to make a brash sales push that they will see right through. For that, you need a concrete content strategy. Here’s a rundown of how you can develop a strategy of persuasion and knowledge-sharing to engage better with your manufacturing audience.

1. Determine the Goals and Lay Out a Plan

What’s the overarching goal? Is it to encourage more manufacturers to contact you? Do you wish to advertise your core product line? Do you wish to establish your brand in a new market? 

Determining these objectives can help you better understand your audience and, as a result, streamline your content strategy. 

For example, at Midas Touch, whenever we onboard companies and subsequently create a content strategy for them, we narrow down on the following:

• The geography and demography being catered to
• The specifics of the offerings that a brand wants to build their identity around
• The ideal user persona that they’re targeting
• The ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu opportunities 

Every content marketing project should have a well-defined plan. This plan can then inform what you will create for each new piece of content to guide your creative process. It can further establish a consistent schedule that can nurture familiarity with potential buyers.

2. Granularly Explore the Target Manufacturing Market

As outlined above, we emphasize going granular to understand the audience. But what does this mean? Well, determine their requirements, pain points, and goals. Investigate their issues and ambitions to strategize for material that will appeal to them.

Tailoring your content to their specific needs can help you develop credibility and position your business as an industry thought leader. To that end, you can discuss the industry, technology, trends, and solutions through your content. Perhaps you can outline how Industry 4.0 is transforming the space or how supply chain efficiencies are critical to the overall betterment of manufacturing revenue.

From a holistic viewpoint, you’re essentially educating and entertaining potential buyers with the overarching aim of assisting them. 

But at the end of the day, be critical of yourself and your content, and you’ll avoid alienating individuals with irrelevant information.

3. Communicate a Benefit

Everything you write must benefit your audience, and you must communicate this with a clear title.

Here’s how to come up with topic ideas and titles: 

• Helpful Hints or Instructions: What solutions can your organization provide to businesses in order to improve processes? How can you make their job easier and more efficient?
• Must-Have Action Items: Give your readers the information they can use right away.
• Trends And Practical Advice: What have you learned in your daily work or about your industry that would be useful? Can they pass this on to anyone else in their network?

4. Experiment with Different Forms of Content

Experimenting with different types of content is critical to identify what appeals the most to your target audience. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are, of course, some best practices that can be adhered to for laying the foundation for your expertise-backed narratives and how they benefit the industry on the whole.

For example, mix your blog strategy up a bit by writing listicles, how-to guides, thought leadership articles, and more. Thought leadership articles can then be converted into bite-sized LinkedIn updates to connect directly with executives from core manufacturing companies.

You can even publish in-house Q&A interviews with C-suite executives. The more intriguing your material, the more engaged the audience will be with your content and your business.

Consider this; at Midas Touch, we consciously seek in-house quantifiable insights from our customers that can be used to substantiate the content that we put out for them on their website and social media channels. This serves to bring an enterprise’s differentiated value to the fore while keeping the content focus relevant to the market being targeted.

5. Measure Performance

It is critical to continuously track, measure, and enhance the performance of your content across all formats. This allows you to tweak your strategy as needed to improve its effectiveness. This tweaking (or optimization) entails obtaining insights and determining the required concrete repairs. Implementing these changes will ensure that your content has a good lifespan.

So Where Should You Start?

Rome was not built in a single day. The same adage holds true for content as a tool. It takes time and due diligence to get results. Most importantly, it takes a concrete (and coherent) content strategy to establish a connection with the core industries. 

The good thing in your favor (as a tech enterprise) is that India’s core sectors (especially the manufacturing industry) are becoming increasingly digital. So, there’s no better time to engage with your audience than now.

In fact, we have done some leg work for you and documented a marketing roadmap based on our 12+ years of experience helping manufacturing technology companies. Access it here.