3 Secrets to Gaining More Prospective Customers AND Skilled Manufacturing Workers — in One Shot

By Cultivate | February 24, 2015

Amidst the resurgence of Milwaukee manufacturing, successful manufacturers are looking for the best ways to bring in both new customers AND qualified employees. Why not streamline the process and craft your content marketing strategy to achieve both objectives?

Here’s how…

Entice Skilled Manufacturing Workers with Great Content

Attracting a new generation of skilled workers? You’ll need great content (like helpful FAQs and interesting pics and videos) on your website and social media channels. The good news is all that great content can work to both entice prospects and customers and attract the skilled employees you need to stay ahead of the competition.

For example, that cool video of your factory floor in action can work double-time for your manufacturing enterprise, as it will impress your customers, while also showing skilled workers how great it would be to work at your company. Those photos of corporate events show your customers you’re active in the community and convince prospective employees to apply so they can be part of the fun.

Take, for instance, the official Toyota Twitter account. With over 40K followers, they share a nice mixture of industry news, humor and networking content that appeals to their customers and potential employees alike. Lincoln Electric, global welding equipment manufacturer, uses Twitter to reach more than 19K followers with a similar approach.

Create Channel-Specific Compelling CTAs

Great content is only part of the battle. You’ve hammered out a great content marketing strategy, filled it with various types of content ready to distribute across your website and social media channels. You’re ready to go, right? Not quite. A great piece of content is nothing without your call-to-action (CTA).

A great CTA entices your website viewers to take the next step and engage with your business in some way. But your CTA is nothing without that lead capture form. For example, a CTA might inspire the viewer to call or email your business, or to download a helpful and robust piece of content. Each CTA should be set up underneath a lead capture form to collect a few bits of prospect information in exchange for that additional content.

Each CTA should be:

Sized relative to the importance of the call to action. You may have pages with several CTAs, but the important ones should be larger.
Placed where they will catch your prospect’s attention. If your website visitor can’t see your CTAs or if they blend in with everything else, you’ll have a harder time getting clicks and capturing that qualified lead information.
Placed with plenty of whitespace around it to avoid confusion with any other webpage elements or CTAs.

Your CTAs should each be channel specific: The CTA you use on your email marketing campaigns should be different than the CTAs on your manufacturing website. Yet another CTA should be used when blogging or posting to social media platforms. Use one style of CTAs to attract customers and use another to attract skilled employees. Mix it up a little to see which CTAs are most effective for each channel.

Don’t Stop at the Lead Capture—instead, Nurture

Just like the CTA is nothing without the lead capture—the lead capture is nothing without lead nurturing. Studies show 35 to 50% of sales go to the vendor who responds first, and you never know how many other manufacturers a potential customer has contacted. According to the Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases compared to leads that are not.

Sure, you need the information from the customer before you can convert, but you must act on that information to convert. Create a system that automatically sends lead capture to your sales team so they can close the deal. Similarly, your CTAs that most appeal to skilled workers should funnel directly to your HR department for follow up.

By implementing a great content strategy, compelling CTAs and a clear lead nurturing process, your content marketing can work double-time for your manufacturing enterprise, attracting both prospective customers AND skilled manufacturing workers. Content marketing is an excellent way for today's modern manufacturers to outshine the competition, so now is a great time to get started.

Want to learn more about how to make a growth cycle marketing strategy work for your enterprise? Get started today with our FREE guide: Making the Leap to Better Waters. The guide includes: