The Best Manufacturing Marketing Stats for 2026

There’s no doubt that manufacturing marketing is becoming more digital. And while this shift brings more opportunities to generate leads, it comes with more ways to misspend your time and budget, too.

One of the most helpful ways to know if you’re chasing the right strategy is to see what’s working for other B2B marketers – and what isn’t. This round-up of statistics has been curated to help manufacturing marketers sense check their activities and explore where they could improve.

Digital Marketing is Driving Growth

Almost every industrial manufacturer (98%) generates sales-qualified leads through digital marketing, according to a 2022 IndustrialSage survey of the industry. If you’re not already using digital for pipeline growth, you’re drastically behind your peers.

The same research breaks down which channels manufacturers invest in:

• 69% use organic search traffic
• 69% leverage social media
• 43% spend budget on PPC

But despite a focus on organic search, that doesn’t tend to be the most valuable channel:

• Emails were the best-performing channel for 18% of manufacturers
• Trade shows came second, with 16% of businesses saying it’s their best-performing tactic
• 14% of businesses said social media or online ads worked best for them

This disconnect could be related to the fact that 39% of manufacturers said they didn’t know what percentage of web visitors converted to a lead.

Of those that do report on website leads, the average conversion of visitor to lead was between 5 and 8%. And the average conversion to customer was 4.6%.

Organic Search is Essential

Most manufacturers (69%) use search engine optimization to generate leads, but that still leaves 31% that don’t.

When 84% of buyers say they use the internet as their starting point when they look for services like manufacturing, if you’re not focused on search then you might be overlooked.

Some other interesting SEO stats include:

• 84% of manufacturing industry professionals use search engines to find equipment, components, and services, Industrial FX reports.
• The same report shares that 74% of industrial professionals compare suppliers online, and 70% of those use search engines to do that.
• But only 52% of manufacturers think they’re effective at SEO.

Social Media is Commonly Used

As the second most popular digital marketing channel for manufacturing marketers, social media holds an important role.

If you’re not already using B2B social media, it’s one to consider:

• 93% of marketers say LinkedIn is their most effective social media channel, the Content Marketing Institute found.
• The same research found that almost all manufacturing marketers (95%) distribute content via organic social platforms.
• When it comes to paid platforms, Facebook was used by 76% of manufacturers, compared with the 62% who spend on LinkedIn ads.

PPC is Overlooked by Many

Just over half (52%) of industrial marketers said PPC was their most effective method of paid promotion, Industrial FX found.

It might be a missed opportunity for the other 48%, because:

• 90% of internet users see Google Ads, HubSpot reports.
• The average click-through rate for the industrial and commercial industry is 5.57%, according to Wordstream’s benchmarks.
• The average conversion rate for manufacturing and distribution PPC campaigns is 1.0%, First Page Sage found.
• The same research found that for manufacturers, SEO converts at 3x the rate of PPC.

Content Marketing Underlines Everything

Content is the cornerstone of modern B2B marketing and is particularly useful when you need to build trust over long sales cycles. In fact, 85% of manufacturers use content marketing to do just that – and to generate leads, WebFX reports.

The Content Marketing Institute’s manufacturing research found that:

• 67% of manufacturers think their content marketing strategy is moderately effective – but 12% say not very effective.
• The main reason behind ineffective content is that it’s not tied to customer journey (cited by 47% of manufacturers), it’s not data driven (46%) and it lacks clear goals (40%).
• Creating content that converts is the biggest challenge, cited by 66% of manufacturers.
• 76% of manufacturers are using generative AI tools.

Website Conversions Need Improving

Your website can become your best-performing sales person, but it needs to be optimized well.

The average conversion rate for the manufacturing sector is 2.1%, according to First Page Sage. That means for every 100 people you send to your website, 98 of them won’t perform any action and will disappear.

Many manufacturers are missing out on leads because they need to improve the conversion of their website:

• The average form conversion rate for the industrial sector is 28%, Ruler Analytics found.
• The same research found the average lead conversion rate for organic search was 4.4% for the industrial sector.
• Surprisingly, referrals had a much lower average conversion rate of just 2.0%.

Email Marketing Performs Well

Email is still a popular tactic for manufacturing marketers, and IndustrialSage’s report found that 61% send at least 3 newsletters a month.

Manufacturing marketers should be sending emails because:

• Open rates above 30% are considered strong, HubSpot reports. And the average open rate for manufacturing emails is 37.36%, according to Mailer Lite.
• The same research found the average click rate for manufacturing emails is 4.22%.
• Email open rates are highest in Australia (47.69%), Europe (45.08%) and the US and Canada (44.49%)

Marketing Budgets are Healthy

Forrester’s 2024 B2B budget benchmarks found that the average firm invests 8% of their revenue in marketing.

If you’re thinking about budgets, these stats should help:

• Marketing budgets are declining, according to Gartner. Back in 2018, the average spend was 11.2% of revenue – but in 2025, that dropped to 7.8%.
• But Gartner also found that budgets for manufacturers have grown. In 2024 the average spend was 6.7% of revenue, but in 2025 that jumped to 9.5%
• Paid media is allocated the largest share (30.6%) of budget.

Trade Shows Remain Valuable

Events are popular: they account for almost 20% of marketing budget spend, according to Gartner’s research.

There’s a reason they’re so popular:

• 33% of new business originates from trade show leads, Trade Show Labs reports.

• It’s $943 cheaper to land a face-to-face meeting at an event, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) discovered. The average cost to meet an exhibition lead was $96, but that jumped to $1,039 when it came to meeting leads outside of events.
• 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority, the CEIR found.

• The majority of manufacturers (57%) generate less than 20 leads per trade show, according to the IndustrialSage report.

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