Capture more attention and de-risk your marketing investment
I am often asked for advice and what my top tips for growth and better engagement are, as well as ideas on the best content to develop leads and new opportunities.
Further down the page you’ll find my top tips and thoughts that I hope you can action immediately in your business. If I can help with future content planning, creation and distribution, or if you have a question about anything, please call me. I’m always keen to support wherever I can: 0203 198 9595 or if you prefer email me: matt@zenoot.com
Talking to manufacturers
As you’ll know from looking at the Zenoot site, we speak to a lot of manufacturing, engineering and industrial businesses. Each week, we engage with between 40 and 100 companies for interviews, news requests and knowledge-sharing. From an SME to a large manufacturing powerhouse, we have the connections to know exactly what manufacturers are focused on and evidence-based knowledge of how you should frame your messaging for the best opportunity for success.
What we do
Zenoot takes this deep sector knowledge to help brands capture more attention, increase engagement and develop focused buyer journeys that convert into new customers.
We do this by telling stories of how our partners are making a real difference at factory sites and manufacturing businesses across the country.
We help brands to have better sales and marketing alignment. Fun fact, Gartner research shows that when sales and marketing are well aligned, the win rate increases by a massive 38%.
We generate endless ideas and provide advice and support on developing campaigns that really work and really convert into new business. We can help you to increase demand by highlighting how you help manufacturers and boost the relevancy of why these manufacturers should engage with you now.
Telling stories is imperative to driving success and the appetite for stories has never been stronger. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions summarised the definition of a story, please let this sink in, it’s the perfect definition of a story – take a look at tip number seven as well!
“Stories are powerful. Humans are hard-wired to invest in a narrative, empathize with the characters, and anticipate the story’s outcome. If you can tell your potential customers an honest, relatable story about your value proposition, you’ll be far more memorable than brands that rely solely on features and benefits.”
My top tips for success
1 – Conduct a content audit
Find the gaps and fill them, find out what has worked well and plan to increase this type of content. Engage with your salespeople (and customers!) for ideas and work out which pieces of content sit best in different parts of your buyer journey. Try and test things, and adapt accordingly.
2 – Be ruthless in how you define high quality content
We all recognise the need to produce high quality content, but I would challenge you to be ruthless in how you define it. Content consumption is at an all-time high in the manufacturing sector. People want to digest content to educate themselves but there is a lot of competition. Make sure you always stand out with valuable content and don’t be afraid to address improvements where necessary if something falls short of being the best it possibly can be. Your ROI will jump because you’ll get better and longer attention from your target audience, and better leads!
3 – Always focus on outcomes
Take advantage of current business sentiment by making sure you are relevant to the outcomes manufacturers are focused on – there is a huge opportunity to stand out with some smart, useful and well-written content to capture some real attention from the sector and help manufacturers continue their journey of improvement. This will also help sales teams have more meaningful engagement with prospects.
4 – The optimistic and positive attitude in the sector is there
What can you share that can be of benefit to manufacturers wanting to change? Create content that matches the challenges faced by manufacturers with your core USPs to underline the value of what you offer. Get help where you need it from people like us who produce content or know the industry, that can give you insight, ideas, support and advice. Get a fresh pair of eyes on your plans and get feedback on ways you could improve your future strategy.
5 – Manufacturers are ardent researchers
The latest State of Sales report from LinkedIn says that with so much information at their fingertips, many buyers now educate themselves in advance of talking to a new partner. Evidence from a Gartner report says that only 17% of buying time is actually spent with partners and 83% is spent on their own research and internal discussions. Manufacturers want to collaborate when making purchasing decisions and addressing current challenges, so make sure your content allows for a collaborative approach from a buyer.
6 – Communicate your message frequently
As I say regularly to our partners, no one can predict the right time to connect or reconnect with a potential lead, but evidence shows that regularly communicating stories helps to significantly increase awareness and positive attention from your targets – give them confidence about you and your brand and lay the foundations of that next discussion. Always make sure what you say is interesting and educational.
7 – Tell stories, eliminate friction
Stand out from your rivals by being visible regularly and share stories that people will find valuable, and that nurture the buyer journey. The content you produce must work for you – there are countless competitors vying for that buyer’s attention. Your stories should have an impact on potential buyers from the moment they start reading them. Try to eliminate friction (anything that interrupts your buyer journey or, at worst, halts it). Asking for too much data too soon, content that is too many clicks away or gated content where there isn’t a clear value exchange are all examples.
8 – Focus on productivity and future-proofing
British manufacturers remain optimistic, with business sentiment strong despite current short-term challenges. Productivity improvement and future-proofing have emerged as major focus points. In a recent Make UK report, 74% of manufacturers said they would make a buying or investment decision based on making a productivity improvement. Make sure your messaging taps into this sentiment and your stories focus on the impact you have on productivity and future-proofing.
9 – Automate where you can
You as marketers are more valuable to yourselves and the businesses you work for by working on the strategic focus and coordinating content creation, rather than delivering elements that could be automated – if it can be automated, please consider doing it as soon as possible.
Risk avoidance and increased attention
If one of your current challenges is to create new demand, we can play a part in that by increasing awareness, attention, engagement and conversion of new opportunities. There are various stats on the number of items of content a buyer consumes before taking action with a partner (a Forrester report says it’s 13 pieces on average), this is where we come in to elevate that awareness and nurture the engagement part of the buyer journey.
We help brands de-risk their marketing spend and increase the attention and engagement they see from the content we share. We’ve found that attention can increase by over 200% when another brand shares your content and stories. De-risking is so important currently, each pound of your spend has to work hard for you.
The trend of buyers educating themselves prior to talking to a vendor keeps increasing, this is backed up by statistics from LinkedIn, HubSpot, Gartner and Demandbase, to name a few. An audience that looks for smart, useful and well written content will provide much more from an ROI perspective. I’m a big believer in helping partners develop longer term engagement with prospects and there are many examples that this approach builds far better win rates.
If you want to provide reassurance, build trust with manufacturers, and highlight the relevancy of what you do, instil confidence but also get people excited by what you can do for them, then Zenoot can be a channel to play a key part in better buyer journey development for your targets and prospects.
We also help with content creation and our aim is simple, we help clients develop a focused buyer journey that converts into meaningful engagement with manufacturers of all sizes. We can help create really smart, useful and well written content. We are so embedded with knowledge from manufacturers across the country that we know what they want, what their challenges and outcomes are, and how to present content in the most effective way.
A partner you can trust
Thanks for reading this and I hope you’ve got a handful of thoughts and ideas you can action immediately. There is a huge opportunity for you to increase awareness and educate the sector on the impact you have on manufacturing firms, and importantly, how this is delivering the outcomes that this audience is focused on. Please ask for help, I’m always keen to discuss goals and share some thoughts on what could work well, and I’d love to work with you in future.
I’m on 0203 198 9595 or email me matt@zenoot.com