Business Newsletters are an easy way to get into marketing your manufacturing business, you can start immediately, at very little or no cost. In this article I spell out exactly what a newsletter will deliver for your contract manufacturing business, helping to maintain and nurture your sales funnel along the way. PLUS you’ll get 14 Content Ideas specifically aimed at Manufacturing and Engineering business newsletters. I even show you how to get started and provide you with links to even more KICK ASS articles that can help you get your newsletter started and flying off the digital-shelf...

So, what can a newsletter actually deliver?

Maintains Awareness

On a very basic level, sending a newsletter to your customers, leads and email list subscribers is a simple way to keep your business “front-of-mind”. It’s the equivalent of a little nudge that says “hey we’re still here” and hopefully leads to recipients of your newsletter thinking of you when they have a problem you could solve.

You may be asking yourself if or why it is important to give your customers the occasional nudge. If you are, just think about how busy your customers are AND how short their memories can be. We’re all human, it’s very easy to forget about individual suppliers when you may be managing many, many suppliers and solution providers.

In a previous article I also talked about why it’s important to keep a conversation going with your customers and how to do it. Check it out here.  Admittedly the conversation is slightly one-way, but it’s a conversation. It may even form a conversation starter the next time they pick up the phone or request a quote via email. Without contact, whether in the form of a newsletter or otherwise, awareness will drop and the conversation will dwindle.

Remember, awareness is at the top of the sales funnel, but needs to be maintained even after closing a sale, to prevent your customers from becoming strangers.

Better understanding of your business

So, just seeing an email in their inbox from you may be enough to achieve awareness. Knowing your contract manufacturing business exists is just the tip of the iceberg. For an existing customer, you want to keep them in a state of knowing, liking and trusting your business. For new customers, you want to progress them from just “knowing you exist” to “wanting to do business with you”. This is the concept of managing your sales funnel, which we wrote an article about recently - check out Sales Funnels For Manufacturers Here.

Newsletters are a perfect platform to teach people about your business, your capabilities, your aspirations, your new acquisitions, new hires, new directions, latest successes and more. Teaching existing customers and new customers alike how you can help them and solve their problems is a difficult prospect if you’re trying to demonstrate only through delivering. Sure, they understand what you’ve done for them, but how do they get to know what you COULD do for them.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many ways you can tell the world about how you can solve their problems, what I’m highlighting here is that newsletters are effective at it and they don’t require loads of cash and resource that you may not be able to afford. After all, they are a form of email marketing, one of THE MOST cost effective ways to market your contract manufacturing business to people who already know you exist. If you’re looking for a boat load of other reasons email marketing is a great fit for your business, check out our series on Email Marketing for Manufacturers right here.

Builds A Trusting Relationship

There’s a softer side to generating understanding of your business. It’s not all about the machines, the processes, the raw manufacturing capabilities that you have, it’s also about your people and your business philosophy. It’s these softer aspects of understanding your business that develop trust and a personal relationship your customers. Many of these aspects are about building a stronger perception of your business. If you read our article Does My Manufacturing Business Need Marketing? you’ll already know that managing that perception is the very essence of marketing your manufacturing business.

Exposing your newsletter readers to stories about your business makes them also feel part of that story, or at the very least they can relate to it. When you’ve reached a place where buyers and engineers are relating to your business, you have developed a real 21st Century Business 2 Business relationship.

Let’s Not forget Website Traffic

In comparison with the above, this deliverable of your business newsletter is in the shade. So what if you get more website traffic? Increased traffic is a signal to Google, and the other big search engines that your website, and you business is worthy of attention. Traffic promotes search engine rankings, search engine rankings promote more traffic. Traffic BREADS traffic.

This doesn’t solve the Online Marketing Problem For UK Manufacturers, but driving traffic to your website from your newsletter does tick a box. Full blown Content Marketing still outperforms this single tactic for it’s potential to boost your search engine rankings, but hey, a newsletter still packs a lot of bang for your buck.

14 Content Ideas for your newsletter

Content That Will Help Your Customers Understand Your Business

Machine Capacity lists

This sounds really boring, but it doesn’t have to be! Make sure to speak in your customer's language, many of them won’t appreciate exact machine details, so make sure your provide some headlines.

New Machinery Acquisitions

Existing customers and new customers alike will find this information interesting. Again, make sure if you provide machinery specifications etc. you actually still spell it out to the less technical buyers of this world. What does this mean? How many additional hours of processing time will this give you? Will this increase your ability to react, reduce your lead times? Spell it out.

New material capabilities

Capabilities don’t just come in the form of processes, but the materials you process also. Maybe you’ve achieved a new certification for welding or working with a material, or perhaps now you stock a material you didn’t previously. Whichever it is, manufacturing capabilities are linked now more than ever to materials, don’t miss the opportunity to show off capability.

New certifications and progress towards them

This is a standard one that could again be accused of being boring. If it’s “same old, same old” I would say just mention it. If you’ve reached a significant milestone in accreditation, SHOUT about it.

Client case studies from within specific industries

Buyers and engineers often associate their problems with their industry, and theirs alone. Talking about how you’ve worked in an industry with a specific case study can open the doors to work your customers didn’t know you were capable of. It doesn’t have to be 1000’s of words, just enough to get the point across - you ARE capable of satisfying the needs of their industry.

Content that will help you build a trusting relationship

Any publications you’ve been involved in - reference them and celebrate

You may already be in the news or someone else’s newsletter, if so, make sure you point it out. This in itself demonstrates a lot of credibility. If someone else has decided to write about you or include you in their publication, you must be credible. That’s the perception your newsletter readers will inevitably have. This is the very essence of social proof.

Client case studies & interviews about problems you’ve solved

It would be incorrect to say this type of content only helps build a trusting relationship, it also demonstrates capability. These stories can help buyers and engineers better understand how your capabilities translate into solving THEIR problems. For that reason they can be a really powerful mechanism for generating leads and RFQs from out of nowhere.

Introduce members of the team with “team member in the spotlight” pieces

This is where the personality of your business can really come across. You don’t have to be clinical about the team member profile either, throw in some information about hobbies and interests. Make sure your team members appear REAL approachable, relatable people.

Introduce new members of the team

Going beyond the benefits of just a team member profile you can also demonstrate the growth and strengthening of your business through new hires. Putting them on the map as a new asset to your business is a great way to gain some additional attention.

Talk about achievements of the team, certs, awards etc.

Think beyond your standard training courses, think about social or charitable achievements also. Building a perception that you’re a forward thinking and progressive business that can be trusted to give back to society is massive. People do business with people, make sure you’re business is gaining recognition for its support of your people.

Relevant, Valuable Industry Updates

You may serve many industries, so make sure you mix it up from newsletter to newsletter or provide an update from each industry. Make sure you link to a credible article or even discussion on the matters. LinkedIn is a great source of discussions, referencing and offering your insight on these can build your businesses place in the community as an influencer, or someone to be heard.

Plans for the future of your business

Tell your newsletter readers about how you see the future of your business, and what you’re doing to deliver your vision. This doesn’t have to be a great load of detail, but in talking about your future, you’re making your readers feel like part of the story. They will trust that you’ll be around for some time yet!

Have a survey that’s fun or just data driven

There are a few specific tools you can use to run surveys, like Survey Monkey. These are great if you want to stimulate some engagement with your newsletter readers, whether it’s on a hot or controversial industry topic, something purely aimed at having fun, or capturing data which you can then process into charts and graphs for future articles. Depending on which road you take you can build the perception of your business as an industry thought leader, or just show off a bit of the company personality.

Those are just some content ideas...

I’m sure there are many more types, categories and variations of the content ideas I’ve outlined above that you could build into your business newsletter. In pulling together your newsletter, remember the purpose behind the content. There are pieces are trying to build an understanding of your capability, whilst others aim to build a relationship and trust with your customers.

How to get started

Email Marketing software - you can get it for FREE

I’ve talked about Email Marketing software in the past, they are available in abundance. For the new user (or even the well versed user!) Mailchimp is a great piece of software which allows a complete non-tech geek or graphic designer to come up with great looking newsletters that are delivered with ease.

I talk more about email marketing software in our Email Marketing For Manufacturers series, click here to take a look at Part 2.

Mailchimp has built in templates for newsletters, a really user friendly interface and an easy to navigate help section which should get you on your way. The best bit, if you don’t send masses of emails (it’s likely you won’t be sending more than 10,000 per month!) it’s got a “forever free” plan, which basically means it costs you nothing to start marketing your contract manufacturing business with a newsletter.

What are you waiting for?

Reading this article has been a start, but now you need to take some action and translate this idea into reality. Learning by doing has long been one of the most effective ways to progress you and your business, but we also appreciate you’ll hit stumbling blocks. To make this article a Kick Ass complete resource, we’ve also included some links to articles you may find helpful along your journey from novice to pro in making your business newsletter deliver true benefit.

So here they are…

Need more convincing that newsletters are a great fit for your business? Check out this article from the Huff Industrial Marketing Blog

How the heck to use mailchimp to create and send a newsletter - with a full video tutorial from Melyssa Griffin’s Blog. Check out this awesome guide right here.

4 Simple Steps to writing your business newsletter from the Writtent Blog - Start Reading Right Now!

10 Really Awesome Tips on creating a company newsletter - Newbie stuff through to Pro tips from the Hubspot Marketing Blog. This also comes with a free eBook download. Read On Right Here!

Checklist for creating your email newsletter from the Hubspot Marketing Blog. Don't forget anything, Read Now...

More Content Ideas for your contract manufacturing business newsletter from the Writtent Blog - As if my 14 ideas weren't enough! Read on...

7 Common mistakes with company newsletters to avoid from the Company Newsletters Blog. Avoid the most common mistakes, check it out!

Good luck, and let us know when you get your newsletter started, we’ll be the first to subscribe!

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