It’s a question most marketers ask themselves these days. How do I make content that’s more engaging than my competitors’?
We’re bombarded with information and content from social media, email, ads, blogs — the list goes on — and it can feel overwhelming at times. So how do you prevent your content from becoming just another easily ignored distraction that people could do without? You need to innovate. You need to be different.
This means your content MUST be relevant, useful and informative, but there’s more to it than that. How can you grab people’s attention? What makes your content different? What form should it take? What style should you use?
To answer these questions, let’s look at some specific examples of content marketing that are well-suited to the manufacturing industry.
1. ‘How to’ Articles
Look at the title of the article you’re reading right now. It’s a ‘how to’ article, and hopefully you’ll find it instructive.
‘How to’ articles have been the bread and butter of marketers everywhere since content marketing became relevant. If they are worded well and connect with your target customers’ pain points, people will engage and read them start to finish. In fact, often they’ll do more than that. People will be grateful for the valuable information they’ve received and may even feel like they owe you something and will feel obliged to engage or interact with you further.
So it’s important to connect with the readers using a style that will resonate with them. If your target audience is busy CEOs, a long-winded, conversational article probably isn’t best. But, if you’re targeting millennial entrepreneurs, an entertaining, informal style may work best.
The important thing is to pick out the right pain points that hit home with prospects. If you do that successfully, these articles can result in lots of traffic and feature highly in search engines. The best way to achieve this is to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and ask yourself how they can improve their business.
For instance, if you manufacture industrial lifting equipment, you can write a series of articles on topics such as:
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- How to tandem lift safely
- How to make industrial lifting equipment last longer
- How to make sure you don’t exceed safe loading limits
- How to increase productivity using specialized lifting equipment
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The good news is that the manufacturing industry has been slow to embrace content marketing, so the web hasn’t been saturated with content. If you’re in a highly specialized niche, with the right SEO there’s a good chance you’ll be able to make your content work well and even help you dominate your industry.
2. White Papers
A white paper is a document that gives detailed information about a topic within an industry. Companies produce them to entice people to try their product or service, but they aren’t usually openly sales-driven.
Manufacturers use them to give wholesalers an in-depth overview of their products. They’re often more technical or detailed than a brochure and contain scientific evidence and citations to back up their claims, and they can easily be uploaded to a website as a downloadable PDF, giving them a large marketing reach and making them useful for lead generation.
To make white papers stand out, each should be focused on a particular problem or set of problems you are solving with your product, and giving it a title that is snappy and that clearly highlights the benefits for the reader is ideal.
For instance, a white paper entitled ‘Why choose our transient voltage surge suppressors?’ may not work as well as ‘How to eliminate surge damage to electronic equipment.’
If you manufacture goods for a highly specialized scientific industry, then white papers are perfect. For example, a company that manufactures cleaning products for crude oil tanks could produce a white paper that reveals their product to be highly effective at extending a tank’s useful life.
3. Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are a great way to communicate what your product does and the problems it solves. They are typically less than five minutes long and animated rather than live action, and are voiced by professional voice actors to add a touch of professionalism.
The benefits of animated explainer videos include:
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- Simplified explanations to complex ideas or processes
- Clear illustrations of the components or workings of a product
- A certain entertainment value and “share-worthiness”
- Cost effectiveness
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You can place them prominently on the homepage of your website or product landing pages so prospects can get a quick, informative overview of your products, which is an easy way to increase customer satisfaction.
Customer-focused Marketing
All in all, the best way to make your content stand out is to have a laser-like focus on what your ideal prospect wants or needs.
If you’re marketing to big wholesalers, they probably don’t have time to read too many articles, so short, snappy, attention-grabbing content is the order of the day.
If you’re marketing to industry purchasing managers, then your content needs to go into more depth, highlighting the value of your products.
If you’re marketing directly to consumers, then your content needs to build trust.
The approach may be different depending on the audience, but one thing is constant: Everyone likes to receive value from content.
In addition to 24×5 support for their websites, Pronto clients also have access to a long list of end-to-end content marketing services from our team. To get more information, schedule a call with one of our marketing experts today!
