Who else targets manufacturers and engineering companies?

Its sort of a loaded question...it could mean anything.

What kinda of manufacturing and Engineering?
What are your clients needs?

What are "Your Goals?"

There's two different types of org's in this manufacturing space; manufacturer's that operate as a 'job shop' and manufacturers who are actually making their own bonafide products being sold to the end user.

For example, there might be a castings manufacturer making a specific part for a company that builds and sells blue widgets. This castings manufacturer would be referred to as a 'job shop'.

Theoretically, both would need marketing, but the type of marketing activities will be much different. The job shop will be much more relationship based typically whereas the 'blue widget' manufacturer is much more likely to use the traditional marketing techniques that you offer, to reach their end-user clients.

It would be a good idea to distinguish the two types of situations when developing your targets.

Also understand that marketing is a completely foreign concept to many engineers and geeks. It's the I/we invented this cool gizmo, so it should be self-obvious why you would want to pay an outrageous price, and it should also be completely obvious how to use it without any explanation or instructions. That's the inherent mentality of this crowd. So why would they need your marketing services?

All in all, its pretty fertile territory, you'll just need to speak their language, and learn how to communicate with them.

Tom

I did for a while, my thoughts were that they probably don't have online teams and they make a lot of cash.

In reality, although ranking is easy, it's very difficult in some industries to generate traffic and revenue, although with that being said, any traffic you can generate is usually very targeted and turns into revenue.

It's also very difficult to do keyword research, some of these companies are so focused on one form of manufacturing that nobody know about that there is literally no search volume, or it can be really hard to even describe what they do.

The fact is that in some industries people just don't search online for a supplier.

But I only sell SEO and PPC not complete marketing packages.

Chris, I have targeted manufacturers previously but ran in to some of the issues mentioned above. Mainly super specific services that don't get searched for, and also industries that just get all of their business through contacts, referrals and their reputation etc.

I'm think of looking at more general marketing for them such as positioning, sales processes, working customer database etc. Online seems a tough sell, but I'm sure there is a way!

Are you able to share what kind of services your packages include? Are they largely internet based?

I'd really love to work out how to crack marketing for manufacturers, whether that is primarily online or offline.

Cheers man,
Ryan

I am a big fan of niches that aren't sexy like B2B. Less competition, bigger budgets.