Manufacturing

In many cases Irish manufacturing companies fail to pay enough attention to their marketing. They fail to appreciate the value of branding. Two products can be of similar design, quality and durability but the product that has greater recognition or trust associated with it will have a higher profit margin and will be easier to sell.

Some manufacturers leave the responsibility for marketing to their distributors or retailers, but the products that are the easiest to sell are always the ones in demand by your resellers. The manufacturer that provides the marketing branding and associated marketing materials will allow their reseller to better target their customers and sell more of your product with less effort. This will mean that they will tend to choose to sell your product over the competition.

Even if your products are not aimed at the consumer but are aimed at the business buyer, a well presented marketing strategy will better convince potential customers how your products meet their needs.

The most effective marketing strategy for manufacturing companies is divided between creating trust in the company and trust in the product. A strong business identity coupled with a high quality web site and sales materials are the essential first steps.

Your web site should also allow you to present all your product categories and each product should be given ample attention to detail with well taken product photography, clearly established features and benefits, and PDF product spec sheets that can be downloaded. These PDF documents should again be branded so that they can be emailed independently if requested by a potential client. You need to be able to take full control of all aspects of your site and keep it up to date and use it to provide sufficient pre sales and after sales information and support to your resellers and end users.

Some products are difficult to explain and the use of Flash animation can help to make this task easier. Flash allows manufacturers to create product zooms, 3D rotations and mini movies to show how the product works.

For companies with products that can be sold directly to the end user, the option of ecommerce functionality should be considered. The volume of Internet users now buying products online has never been higher and this trend is set to grow exponentially for the foreseeable future. We have been working in the industry since 1996 and have gained a great deal of experience and can translate that knowledge to your industry.

Finally, a budget should be allocated to the ongoing web marketing of the site. New developments in paid advertising can allow site owners to target specific customers within specific geographical regions who are actively searching for your product. The value of this type of marketing is that the advert is only paid for when the user actually visits your site. This is called pay per click marketing and if done well will generate a large increase in enquiries, and for ecommerce sites, direct sales. We are experts in web marketing and can ensure a positive return on investment. Web analytics or tracking will allow you to track what users are doing on your web site; what pages are popular and what’s working and what’s not. This will allow us to further refine your site and thus increase your conversion rates of enquiries/sales.

In summary, a holistic approach which starts at creating a brand, extending this brand into all your marketing materials/products and providing sufficient resources to adequately explain your products both online and off, backed with an ongoing marketing strategy will result in a dramatic improvement to your bottom line.

Please contact us to develop a winning marketing strategy for your manufacturing business.