5 Ways To Redefine Your Marketing Strategy In 2019

With 2018 winding down, now is the time to look ahead and start planning your industrial marketing plan for the New Year. But you can’t just recycle the same old tools and tactics; you’re going to need to redefine your approach if you want to succeed in 2019.

Here are five ways you can do just that.

Get Serious About Video Marketing

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but video marketing is kind of a big deal. By the end of next year, video will account for 80 percent of all internet traffic, making it by far the most dominant form of digital content. But in addition to being dominant, it’s also really effective. Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year and achieve 54% increase in brand awareness.

If you aren’t yet doing video marketing, or if you’ve merely dipped your toes in the water, it’s time to take the plunge. Fortunately, there are many tools and resources that make it easy to get started with video marketing.

Put Your Buyers First

When setting their industrial marketing strategies, most manufacturing companies put lead generation front and center. That’s certainly understandable;  after all, generating qualified leads is the entire purpose of inbound marketing.

However, instead of focusing on meeting your goals, start focusing on meeting the goals of your buyers. Understanding B2B buyers  — their challenges, habits, and processes — can help you better align all of that great content you are developing to meet their needs and drive new business. It’s also essential in creating accurate buyer personas to fuel your campaigns.

Time To Get Testy

Industrial marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it discipline; you need to constantly improve upon your efforts, lest you start going backwards. That may sound like a pretty big undertaking, but it’s actually made possible by embracing the power of small tests.

Iterative testing, or A/B testing, is the process of creating two (or more) versions of digital marketing assets in order to determine which performs better. You can apply these tests throughout your digital marketing footprint — on your manufacturing website, in your emails, within your PPC ads, etc. Here at Thomas, we regularly utilize testing as part of our Growth-Driven Design program. Check out these examples.

Take Your Brand Seriously

Your company is so much more than a provider of industrial goods or services. Maybe it’s an unparalleled beacon of quality, a hub for innovation, a spark for essential causes, or something else entirely. Whatever your company is, you need to let B2B buyers know it — through brand marketing.

Effective branding can help set you apart from your competitors in a crowded marketplace and make you more relatable and trustworthy to potential customers. Best of all, a strong manufacturing brand makes all the rest of your marketing efforts a lot easier, and a lot more effective.

Move Beyond Basic Analytics

Since the term digital marketing was first coined, marketers have been trying to determine the ROI of their efforts. But you know what? Most have been doing a pretty bad job of it.

That’s because they — and the tools that they use — tend to focus on things that don’t matter, such as views, clicks, impressions, etc. While those metrics do have their place, what really counts is your ability to generate leads.

With that in mind, going into next year, augment your analytics and ROI tools by taking advantage of Opportunity Intelligence. With the help of Thomas WebTrax, you can go beyond basic numbers to give your marketing and sales teams real insight — company names, actions, and activity — into in-market buyers.

The Terms You Need To Know To Redefine Your Marketing

These five tips can help you jumpstart your results in the New Year. However, in order to ensure sustained success, you’re going to need to understand all of the many tools, technologies, and terms inherent in a modern industrial marketing strategy.

Our new resource, The Essential Dictionary Of Industrial Marketing Terms You Should Know, can help you get familiar with 78 key concepts in digital marketing. Download your free copy today.