Digital Marketing Essentials for Manufacturers

Digital marketing for fishing and marine manufacturing brands can be a bit of a tough sell.

Why?

Because many people in these industries are old-school, and using digital channels to market their businesses via optimization for constantly changing algorithms, social media platforms, and other such jargon isn’t always something that comes naturally to them.

That’s why it’s important to find a digital marketing agency that understands the fishing, boating, outdoor, and marine manufacturing industries. One that can help you create an effective online presence and reach your target audience.

(That’s where we come in.)

The team at Page One Fishing has tons of experience with digital marketing for fishing, outdoor, and marine brands. And we know exactly what it takes to get results.

Digital marketing for manufacturers in the fishing & outdoor industries can seem fairly challenging—and a lot of the marketing advice out there may not be that relevant to your business.

But as you already know, there are a lot of businesses and individuals who are extremely passionate about these activities.

You just need to connect with them.

To tap into this target audience, it’s important to focus on a few key strategies that will help you reach them where they are spending the majority of their time online.

And to do that, you really need to understand the unique pain points and needs of fishermen, boaters, and marine enthusiasts—as well as buyers and distributors—and what types of content will resonate with them.

Here are a few digital marketing tips that fishing, boating, and marine manufacturing brands can use to start reaching their target audience:

How to Market Online for Fishing & Marine Manufacturers

For starters, here are 4 effective things you can do to market your manufacturing brand online:

1. Create content that establishes authority and expertise in your company’s industry.
2. Do extensive research to determine what to write for SEO, PPC ads, and other digital marketing channels
3. Understand your ideal customer’s intent and buying journey.
4. Optimize your customer’s buying journey with content that helps them solve their problems.

Let’s take a look at each of these in a little more depth:

#1 – Create content that establishes authority and expertise in your company’s industry.

One of the best ways to establish your brand as an expert in the fishing and marine industries is to create high-quality, informative, engaging content.

For manufacturers, this could be blog posts, articles, videos, or even things like eBooks and whitepapers.

Creating this content will help you not only establish yourself as an expert, but also build trust with potential customers. And when customers trust your brand, they’re more likely to do business with you.

But just creating this content is not content marketing.

Now the problem becomes: How do you get this content in front of the right people?

#2 – Do extensive research to determine what to write for SEO, PPC ads, and other digital marketing channels.

If you want your content (and your company) to be seen by the right people, you need to make sure your content is optimized for the right keywords.

This means doing some research to figure out what keywords your target audience is searching for. Which means knowing who your target audience is in the first place.

But manufacturers usually know exactly who their target audience is. You make products for a specific type of customer (or customers) in the fishing/marine space.

So you need to do some research to figure out what keywords they’re searching for. A tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner is one of the easiest ways to do this research, but there’s still a bit of a learning curve—which is why it might be worth hiring a digital marketing agency in the fishing/marine industries to help with this.

#3 – Understand your ideal customer’s intent and buying journey.

To sell to more customers, you need to understand your customers. What are their needs? What are their wants? What motivates them to buy your products?

The better you understand your buyers, the easier it will be to sell to them.

One of the best ways to understand your customers is to create “buyer personas.”

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional character that represents your ideal customer.

When you create a buyer persona, you give yourself a guide to help you understand your customers better.

#4 – Optimize your customer’s buying journey with content that helps them solve their problems.

Once you understand your customers, it’s time to start creating content that will help them along their buying journey.

If you want to make more sales, you need to focus on the customer experience. Every touchpoint along the customer’s journey should be positive and helpful.

This means creating content that’s helpful and relevant to your customers.

It means creating content that helps them solve their problems.

This type of content is called “solution-oriented content.” Solution-oriented content is designed to help your target customers solve their specific problems. It could be a blog post about how to choose the right fishing line for a specific situation, or an infographic about the different types of fish finders and which one is best for certain types of fishing.

Creating solution-oriented content is one of the best ways to help your customers along their buying journey—and ultimately, make more sales.

The Bottom Line

Digital marketing is essential for any fishing, boating, or marine manufacturing brand.

And—while it’s a start—it’s not enough anymore to just create a website and start posting on social media.

The competition now is just too fierce to rely on those tactics alone.

You need research. You need SEO. You need social media marketing. You need high-quality, solution-oriented content.

You need to create expert-level content that establishes your expertise and authority in your space.

You need to focus on the customer experience and create content that helps them along their buying journey.

And you need to do all of these things if you want to stay ahead of the competition and grow your business.

What you need is a comprehensive digital marketing strategy—tailored specifically for your manufacturing business.

These are just a few things manufacturers can do to market their business online, but there are many more.

And remember—the digital world is always changing, so it’s also important to be up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices. The things that worked yesterday might not work today, so it’s important to always be learning and evolving your digital marketing strategy.

Sound like a lot? It can be.

So if you need help with any of this, we suggest talking to a digital marketing agency that specializes exclusively in the fishing, boating, and marine world—one that understands not only these industries and the companies/customers within them, but also the digital landscape.

Fortunately, we just happen to know one.

Page One Fishing is a full-service digital marketing agency that works with manufacturers, fishing guides, marine services, and other brands in the marine and outdoor industries.

We have a team of experts who can help you with all aspects of your digital marketing, from SEO to PPC to content marketing and social media. And we can create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy tailored specifically for your business.

Whether you want to market your product across the country or across the river, Page One Fishing can do it for you.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you grow your manufacturing business, contact us now. We’ll be happy to answer any of your questions and show you some of the work we’ve done for other brands.