Making the most out of internal resources and new communications tools.

When visitors walk into FPD Company’s titanium forge and machine shop 14 miles south of Pittsburgh, whatever existed prior to their arrival, priorities shift. Guests become the number one concern—everyone from the owner to skilled shop-floor employees welcomes and engages them with open arms.

“Our forge and machine operators take pride in sharing their expertise, revealing the intricate process of producing titanium components,” says Jeff Speicher, senior vice president of sales and general manager for the contract manufacturer. “They seize this opportunity to showcase the true value of their work.”

The company not only capitalizes on visits from current and potential customers, it strives to bring the same enthusiasm and expertise to external events by harnessing the power of specialty trade shows. Daniel Gordon, FPD’s sales and marketing manager, identifies and participates in shows that foster crucial business-to-business meetings.

“Throughout the year, we focus on attending aerospace events hosting aircraft OEMs and key players in the supply chain. We meticulously select specialty trade shows that facilitate pre-arranged meetings,” Gordon enthuses. “Registrants gain access to vital attendee information, including names, companies, positions and responsibilities.”

Gone are the days of attending generic trade shows with uncertain outcomes. Now both suppliers and buyers can schedule 20-minute meetings weeks before the event, FPD notes. These forums strategically connect stakeholders in the aerospace market, giving attendees the best opportunity to find themselves in front of their desired audience, optimizing everyone’s time.

“With FPD offering such a unique blend of titanium forging, precision machining, and assembly, we find significant value in these facilitated, industry-specific events,” Gordon says.

Freebies and Modern Marketing

Facility visits are a freebie when it comes to marketing efforts—as long as employees’ time isn’t figured into the calculation.

Another freebie is having a thoughtfully crafted company description ready to pull out at a moment’s notice, says Sarah Nenninger, director of engagement for Mostly Serious, Springfield, Mo., a full-service digital marketing agency.

“I think, first and foremost, they need to know how to talk about themselves in one sentence: ‘Here’s who we are and what we do,’” says Nenninger. “A lot of times what they do is so complex, it’s hard to distill down into an elevator pitch. And so being able to distill down, quickly and succinctly, what they do is really a core thing to be able to get their name out there.”

Just as some manufacturers establish a data repository that serves as a single source of truth (SSOT) for personnel to draw from, a company’s website is its marketing SSOT.

“When we look at a company, one of the most important things we start to focus on is its website. That’s the heart of many modern marketing operations,” says Winn Hardin, managing director of Tech B2B Marketing, Jacksonville, Fla., a full-service content development, digital marketing and business consultancy agency for technology companies. “It’s where we educate prospects, and then we hopefully convert them from interest to potential lead.”

The website is like the wheel hub of all marketing efforts, with activities such as social media, email and media relations serving as spokes.

“All of those efforts strive to inform and convert and cross sell,” Hardin says. “And then just behind that we weave in CRM (customer relationship management) software and marketing automation systems.”

Hardin’s team is helping to revamp a website for PBC Linear, a linear motion solutions provider and contract manufacturer in Roscoe, Illinois. Visitors to the e-commerce part of its site, usually engineers, can order stock parts and components.

“In order to make the search for products very convenient, especially for young engineers, they’ve got to be able to, within a couple of clicks, get the information that they’re looking for and then have all of the ancillary information framed around it very quickly,” says David Dieter, PBC Linear’s president. “That’s going to lead to wins for us. I mean, if you look at Amazon and others, that’s where we’re evolving to right now. I think that’s going to give us the advantage against our larger competition even.”

Nenninger also thinks a well-built website with solid information is mandatory. “As you know, these days websites are typically the front door to a company for a lot of folks. They’re more likely to visit you first online than they are in person. Making sure that you can be easily found and make a good first impression, I think is a really great baseline,” Nenninger says.

Further, a website should be set up with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, making a company more likely to be found in an online search. This includes a mobile-friendly experience and appropriate site speed, Nenninger adds.

To drill down even further, the site should have meta descriptions (an HTML element that briefly summarizes a web page) and alt tags (which are read aloud to users by screen reader software, and are indexed by search engines. They also display on a page if an image fails to load).

Getting Social Online

One of the spokes in the hub that Hardin and other marketers mentions is social media. While the number of social media platforms is ever-expanding and changing, focusing on YouTube and LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and Instagram (which are both owned by Meta Platforms Inc., and a posting on one can be automatically posted on the other), should suffice for most B2B organizations, Nenninger says.

Here’s her advice:

• Video is a powerful medium growing in popularity, especially among younger audiences. It’s often a heavier lift to produce, but if done well can be an impactful driver of engagement.
• LinkedIn is an effective platform for thought leadership content. For even greater impact on LinkedIn, have your CEO or other company leaders comment on industry developments.
• A presence on Facebook and Instagram establishes legitimacy as a business. These are also good for showing company culture to prospective employees.
• X (formerly Twitter) rounds out the most popular social media sites, but it’s reputation is volatile, so proceed with caution before joining in. Not only that, but the “conversation” on X moves so fast that a single social post can get buried quickly.

Maximizing Trade Shows

PBC Linear also goes to the big shows each year for customer relationship building and lead generation. To this end, Hardin saw a way for the company to be more effective.

“We were like, ‘Okay, you have some great products, and you’ve identified some key vertical markets that are growth markets that aren’t going well for you,’” Hardin says. “‘So let’s develop content that not just focuses on one product line or service, but looks from a vertical industry: What does lab automation need? What does transportation need? What does warehousing need?’”

Understanding those needs form the basis for information about multiple product lines from PBC. With Hardin’s idea, company reps at trade shows are able to not only pitch single products and services, but promote entire applications.

Hardin’s team has also taught PBC’s marketing staff that in order to respond to trade show visitors while the contact is fresh, they can write emails beforehand acknowledging the visit and offering more information. They do that while still at the event by uploading a visitors’ name and contact information into their marketing automation software. The application merges the contact with the pre-written email and sends it out.

“There’s an old saw that if you have a lead from a trade show, and you don’t follow up within 72 hours, say goodbye to the lead,” Hardin says.

The trade show coaching Tech B2B offers to Dieter’s three-person marketing staff illustrates a benefit of hiring an outside agency even if your business has an internal team.

“We lacked the strategic vision, the industry connections, as well as (knowledge of) the industry trends,” says Dieter. “I’m asking Winn and his team to help us to look forward and become self-sufficient, and build a marketing team for the long haul to actually help us to double the size of our company.”

Nenninger’s final thought on trade show appearances is to have a professionally crafted booth stocked with samples that visitors can examine. If a company doesn’t have a booth, its attendees should be active participants by proactively extending themselves to potential customers. Either way, don’t forget your business cards.

Collaboration Gets Attention

Hardin urges clients to do interviews with industry media at trade shows if the opportunity arises.

“Companies will go and spend $20-, $50-, $100,000 going to a trade show, and they’ll get 500-700 leads into their pipeline,” he says. “But a lot of them won’t reach out to the media who are attending. You spend 100 grand to meet with 700 people, that’s great. But why not put that same message in front of 500,000 people by speaking to 10 key media partners that are there?”

Even if media interview opportunities don’t arise at trade shows, there are other ways to leverage placements in publications.

Options include ads as well as no-cost media placements achieved via press releases, Nenninger says. But beware of bait-and-switch, pay-to-play media opportunities that have a cost attached to them, which isn’t always mentioned upfront, she warns.

FPD also has had “fruitful partnerships with machine vendors,” including working together on media placements. “We co-designed the machinery to meet our specific needs, operate it daily and understand its capabilities,” Speicher notes. “This allows us to effectively communicate the value our vendors bring to the table.”

One noteworthy example was collaboration with Erie Press Systems about how a new 3,000-ton press expanded FPD’s capabilities. The collaboration yielded about 20 articles, including one in the August 2022 issue of Manufacturing Engineering. “It’s a win-win situation, where we combine our success story alongside our vendors’ achievements,” Gordon says.

FPD now is teaming with Grob-Werke GmbH & Co. to develop an article concerning the recent installation of a new highly automated five-axis CNC machining pallet system. “This article will be featured on their social media and ours, as well as in multiple publications,” Gordon says. “It’s a symbiotic arrangement, showcasing the equipment manufacturer’s capabilities, while highlighting our own and how collaborative advancements bring tremendous value to the end-use customer.”

It’s also a great example of effective marketing and how leading manufacturers are getting increasingly creative to promote their capabilities through earned media, as well as paid activities, online platforms, in-person engagements and cross-promotion initiatives.

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Marketing: The New Frontier for Automation

After implementing automation with CAD/CAM, CNC machine tools and cobots to load and unload parts, where can a manufacturer look next to automate a process?

How about marketing?

Software for automating some of the more mundane marketing tasks is available from companies such as Adobe and Salesforce Inc. “When factory operators think about automation on the factory floor, the first thing that comes to mind is usually robotics or other tools that help automate much of the physical assembly line process,” says Achyut Jajoo, senior vice president and general manager of manufacturing and automotive for San Francisco-based Salesforce. “When we talk about marketing automation, the idea is similar—you are automating away routine tasks so workers are freed to focus on higher-value work.”

Among those tasks are:

• Communicating with customers via automated messages across email, web and social media.
• Helping with lead generation.
• Measuring the overall ROI of campaigns.
• Leveraging powerful generative artificial intelligence (AI) to auto-create effective, personalized follow up emails to new prospects based on contextual customer data stored in Salesforce.
• Using AI-powered lead scoring to identify the highest-value prospects in order to prioritize them. Users can log notes and events into Salesforce, so every point of contact with the prospect is recorded.

While marketing automation software is at work, marketing staff can focus on higher-level tasks, such as developing strategies and cultivating relationships.

“Essentially, marketing automation helps you get the right content to the right buyer at the right time, while letting you capture data to help understand what content is resonating the most with your customers,” Jajoo says.

For example, the lifecycle marketing component of Salesforce helps with personalized pitching—even after the sale is made—for aftermarket parts, services and end-of-life replacement. For IoT equipment, Salesforce can perform real-time monitoring, which helps to offer services at the moment it’s needed, Jajoo says.

The software can also pitch in when the boss—or the boss’ boss—asks for updates or end-of-year reporting.“ Salesforce has reporting built right into the platform, making it easy to communicate your work and progress,” says Jajoo. “With Manufacturing Cloud, you have fully embedded analytics that help you understand what factors are driving revenue, track and report on product pricing and volume performance metrics to identify new opportunities and inform pricing strategies, and track partner performance across your value chain.