Fourth of July weekend is finally upon us.  And for this holiday, we'd like to turn our attention to manufacturing companies: the backbone of the American economy for the past oh, 200 years or so.  Your bottom line is driving sales growth, and you likely don't think that content and social media strategies are worth your time.  Here are some examples provided by the Content Marketing Institute's research of how your competitors, and possibly you, use social media marketing - and it's corresponding effectiveness.

I know what you're thinking:

What can content social marketing do for me? I'm interested in sales, and social media isn't where my customers are looking for products.

Or maybe it's something more along the lines of this:

My customers are different.  They're not consumers; they're businesses.  

Times are changing, my friends.  The media landscape for B2B companies is now subject to the behaviors of online activity.  According to a Think with Google article, 90% of B2B buyers begin their business purchasing journeys through online search.  And that's not just any online search--it is in search of a solution to their problem, rather than a mere product search.  Further still, before a buyer even engages on your site, research shows they are 57% complete with their purchasing journey.  This means that by the time a buyer contacts your company, they have been educated on the solution for their problem.

Social media and content marketing for manufacturers can enable your company to be the one providing those educational materials whether it's whitepapers, blog posts, videos, or product training guides, and in the meantime increasing your rank on search engines (thus lowering your competitors' rankings) as well as building your credibility and thought leadership.

So, how does this help increase your sales?

By attracting potential buyers to your site, through such inbound marketing strategies as content offers and social media activity, you are increasing your chances of conversions.  Content and social media strategies are lead generation.  You are piquing their interest through various social platforms with the goal of bringing them to your site and continuing down the funnel.  Thus, paired with the right strategy, social and content marketing for manufacturers are crucial to driving sales growth.  

Let's return to the charts above.  Youtube has been rated as the most effective social media platform this past year, and the use of video content will only continue to increase.  Not to mention, video is easily shared across all major social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  If you're still not convinced that video, or overall social media marketing will benefit your manufacturing company, take a look at these statistics compiled by Insivia:

• 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week
• 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process
• 65% of executives visit a marketer’s website, and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video according to Forbes
• 96% of B2B organizations use video in some capacity in their marketing campaigns, of which 73% report positive results to their ROI, according to a survey conducted by ReelSEO

As a manufacturing company looking to finally jump into the inbound marketing game, you should rest assured that social and content marketing enable your analytics team to track so much more data about your buyers and their purchasing journey than was previously available.  From tracking views, engagement, retention, subscribers/followers, CTR, and more, to then further conducting attribution modeling, database marketing, and ultimately more personalized CRM--applying a strategic inbound marketing strategy, including social media and content offers, to your manufacturing company will ultimately generate profit and cut expenses on less measurable forms of marketing.