Canadian Industrial and Agricultural businesses need to be more competitive now than ever before. Customers are increasingly sourcing materials and products overseas because of perceived cost savings while at the same time, Canadian-made products are gaining international appeal as companies look for better quality and Agricultural standards and tolerances. Successful Industrial and Agricultural companies know to leverage marketing efforts to help build brand awareness and increase sales.
If you are a company in the Agriculture or industrial sectors and are looking to grow your sales here are a few tips:
1. Invest in a good website
Although a website alone won’t drive sales, it does provide a way for you to build credibility with prospects and ideally collect their information along the way. All advertising and marketing you do will at some point will point to your website so making sure that it is modern, up to date and attractive is an important starting point.
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2. Create sales and marketing collateral that is on brand
Often times sales and marketing material is rather piecemeal. Different staff members create documents, brochures and sales decks on the fly for particular prospects and presentations. By creating templates that all have the same look and feel will add a level of professionalism and help your prospective customers more easily recognize your brand. It also creates efficiencies since your team won’t be recreating the wheel each time they have a presentation to make.
3. Attend industry trade shows
Costs to have a booth at these events can easily edge up to six figures once you factor in costs like staffing, travel and marketing materials. It’s not always feasible to have big flashy booths so instead, consider attending trade shows as a delegate, choosing premium networking opportunities to attend and selecting businesses in advance you want to connect with. If you do do have a decent budget to have a visible presence at trade shows, really think through what that attendance will look like and your goals for the event.
4. Use a Client Relationship Manager (CRM)
A CRM helps you efficiently track your prospects, leads and sales. Depending on which CRM you use, you can track calls, emails and engagement and you can also filter similar prospects to send tailored promotional content to. In industry, there are so many connections that are interrelated that you can no longer use a simple excel spreadsheet or paper cardfile.
5. Consider using social media
Most Agricultural and industrial companies won’t see much benefit from using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. However, LinkedIn is an excellent resource to share to your industry partners the work that you are doing as well as help your sales people better connect with potential customers.
6. Develop an inbound marketing strategy
An inbound marketing strategy uses relevant content published on your website on a daily or weekly basis to provide useful information in exchange for capturing an email and contact details for future follow up. If you provide valuable and useful information, prospects will have no problem sharing their information with you.
With so many marketing options in agriculture and industry, it’s difficult to know where to start. The important part is that your firm needs to decide to start somewhere because the competitive landscape is necessitating it for ongoing success.
Learn more about what you can do to start growing your businesses with a free consultation.