Digital media agencies always have a tough time dealing with clients. They’re all different with changing requirements that are hard to meet. Nevertheless, media agencies must rise to the challenge, especially with manufacturers that often form the forgotten part of the mid-market.
Here are some suggestions for how digital media agencies can better support manufacturing clients.
Understand their Needs Better
When it comes to digital marketing for manufacturers, it is important to understand they have requirements that aren’t the same as a retailer or a small business operating only in a local market.
Mid-market manufacturers provide products to other companies rather than end consumers. As such, they’re entirely B2B focused and help to keep other businesses humming along. This is fundamentally different.
Website Design Must Appeal Across Individual or Multiple Industries
The website design for mid-market manufacturers needs to appeal to potential buyers in the business world, not end consumers with difficult goals and buying tendencies.
Subsequently, design agencies must tailor site design proposals to appeal to these business markets.
Where companies work solely in one industry, this industry must be researched and clearly understood from the perspective of the client. Indeed, it’s worth discussing this with the prospective client to tailor the design proposal with that in mind.
Similarly, when the business is more broadly focused on doing business across multiple industries and sectors, then the design proposal must reflect that. For instance, it might be suggested to develop multiple landing pages – one for each industry – instead of only segmenting by product.
Support Value-Added Service Development as It Happens
Many mid-market businesses are seeing the need for services to be developed as a value-add-on to their customers.
While it used to be that case that their marketing materials were targeted only towards product promotion, that’s no longer sufficient. Media agencies must be prepared to move quickly to support the new initiatives of mid-market companies eager to move into services or expanding their list of available services today.
Whilst there’s a wide array of product iteration and redevelopment in the product range to satisfy the specific needs of certain business segments, this naturally sees an overflow into services too. Thus, media agencies must be prepared to create solutions that support adaptable services through a website designed to adjust to reflect the varied needs of their client’s business customers across different industries and sectors. Otherwise, they will fail to match their needs precisely and risk losing the client to a more dynamic agency.
Embrace Technological Developments and Adapt Them Accordingly
Technological innovation is required across the full range of new services offered by mid-market businesses. As customers individualize their requirements, digital delivery across web platforms must adapt, innovate, and customize to not fall behind.
While it’s difficult for smaller manufacturing companies to keep up with technological developments, it’s the job of the media agency to assist them. Web technologies are changing all the time, so media agencies mustn’t only see their role as providing a basic website and then moving on.
In the mid-market, solutions are continually going to get both more complex and significantly individualized for companies. Therefore, media agencies must be prepared to expand in the areas where they see demand for comprehensive digital solutions to grow alongside the mid-market businesses they serve.
