Manufacturing and industrial marketing agencies typically mean well, have worked with a multitude of manufacturers,but often fail to deliver results. Why?
If you’re ready to engage with a manufacturing marketing agency, here are five red flags to avoid so you find the right one who can help you generate sustainable, double-digit growth.
1. Style Over Substance
Sharp design is an important element of effective marketing but will never be enough to generate results – content generates results. A design-first marketing approach that is light on content and overall marketing strategy are superficial and won’t attract or convert prospects into customers. This is why so many manufacturers wonder where the leads are after launching their new website.
Beware when agencies try to wow you with flashy design capabilities when they lack well-written content – they won’t be able to deliver meaningful results. Having a well-designed website is important but, if it lacks mid/bottom-funnel content or is populated with fluff, your prospects won’t be educated through their buying journey and will leave long before you have the chance to engage with them.
2. Weak Understanding
Many creative-led agencies fail to deliver results is because they don’t have the desire and process to quickly gain a comprehensive understanding of your business and the needs of your prospects.
If an agency claims to understand what you do and what your prospects need before working together, beware: agencies that don’t conduct a deep dive into the problems you solve and how you solve them with your products and services, they cannot truly understand your business, which is essential for increasing leads and sales.
Furthermore, if an agency lacks the willingness to work as a true partner, it indicates that they care more about landing more clients and projects and less about generating results for you.
3. Project Focus
Agencies that work primarily on a project basis almost always fail to deliver the quality and quantity of work they promised. This is because they’re constantly trying to find new projects and work on other projects as they work on yours. It’s the same reason contractors working on your house take far longer to complete the work than promised: they work just enough to show progress on each of their projects, so they have time to fill up their customer pipeline. If you hire a project-focused agency, expect to encounter long lead times, poor communication, and substandard results because they are stretched thin.
To achieve your sales and marketing goals, it’s important to partner with an agency that works on a retainer or program basis with deliverables clearly defined upfront – they will take the time to understand your business so they can generate results.
4. Lack of Employee Investment
An agency’s leadership is important but savvy manufacturers pay closer attention to the individuals who will actually work on their account in terms – do they have the same experience that the owner or their salespeople claim?
Many marketing agencies work with freelancers or underpay a revolving door or entry level talent to keep their costs down and didn’t work with clients featured in their case studies. If your account is being worked on by a revolving door of team members, you can expect inconsistent quality and poor results.
5. Missing Key Pieces of the Puzzle
To avoid working with an ineffective industrial marketing agency, look for one that offers the followingmanufacturing marketing services:
- A comprehensive and holistic strategy that’s based on a deep understanding of your business, served markets, and covers product management, pricing and channels – not just promotional marketing communications
- An ability to learn what isn’t know through market research – no strategy is complete if it’s not rooted in a deep understanding of the needs of your prospects
- Well-written, educational copywriting that resonates with prospects
- Search engine optimization (SEO) that increases the visibility of your content in search engine results to drive the prospects to your website that are actively searching for your products
- Quality web and graphic design used to bolster strategy and content
If your agency doesn’t offer this mix of services, you’ll need to cover the gaps yourself or find other marketing resources that can, or it will be much harder to achieve your sales and marketing goals.
Putting It All Together
If your agency has a proven record of delivering sustainable results for manufacturers like you, is deeply invested in your success, and understands the importance of having skilled and experienced team members to work with you, then you’ve found a good one and can expect results to flow from the partnership.