You Face Complex Buying Cycles and Decision-Making
The significant financial investment involved with manufacturing sales means that prolonged decision-making is standard and various stakeholders will weigh in on the final sign-off.
Navigating these complex dynamics and convincing technical and non-technical stakeholders on all levels requires careful relationship-building over months or even years.
Solution: Educational Content Throughout the Journey
You can tackle this challenge by publishing content that supports every role in the buying group. That means things like:
- Engineering deep dives
- ROI models for finance
- Case studies for leadership
- Safety/compliance guidance for operations
Take a look at your buying journey and buyer personas and make sure you have a way to meet their needs at every stage.
Your Technical Experts Don’t Have Time for Marketing
In many manufacturing businesses, the deepest knowledge sits with engineers, product specialists, and R&D teams, but they’re already stretched. Getting them to contribute to content, approve messaging, or join webinars can be difficult, which slows marketing output and reduces the accuracy of what you publish.
Solution: Create a Repeatable, Low-Lift Knowledge Bank
Instead of relying on long interviews or detailed write-ups, use simple, structured methods to extract expertise quickly. The following tactics will help you get as much knowledge as possible in short periods of time:
- Record short 10–15 minute conversations on specific topics that you can transcribe and turn into content.
- Create briefs for templates that your experts can skim read.
- Create “ask me anything” Slack channels or shared docs that can be added to over time.
- Use AI tools to summarize things like technical manuals, CAD notes, or service reports.
This gives your marketing colleagues the raw material they need to create authoritative content without adding pressure to technical teams.
And the more you operationalize knowledge capture, the more scalable your content becomes, and the fewer bottlenecks you’ll face.
You Don’t Have the Resource to Create Content
Content fuels modern manufacturing marketing, but it previously required significant time, expertise, and internal approval.
Solution: Leverage the Right Tools
Today, tools like ChatGPT and Claude are capable of creating high-quality content – if you can guide the AI tool properly.
To get the best out of your tool, ask it to review your website to understand your writing style (or ask it to write in the style of a famous brand), and tell it what you want your content to say.
Just beware that ChatGPT is notorious for making things up. Before you publish, always check:
- Is everything correct? Check that the facts stated are genuinely facts, and not ones that have been made up to illustrate a point.
- Does the content ‘sound’ like your brand? Check that your key messages have been used, and it feels like the content is coming from you.
- Have any competitor marketing messages sneaked into the content? Check to make sure no competitor slogans or key phrases have been used.
- Are links correct? Check that all links go to real pages and haven’t been falsely created.
Your Messaging Is Too Product-Led and Not Buyer-Led
Manufacturers often default to features, specifications, tolerances, materials, certifications, and processes. But even the most technical of buyers still need help connecting those specs to real business outcomes.
If your messaging stops at what the product is, rather than why it matters, your buyers will struggle to see the value behind your engineering.
Solution: Translate Technical Benefits into Commercial Outcomes
You need to keep the technical details, because that builds trust. But if you can layer this with a clear commercial story, you can transform its impact.
For example, instead of saying ‘higher tolerance levels’, you can say you produce items with fewer defects and lower scrap rates. Instead of ‘faster cycle times’, you can say you offer increased throughput without new CapEx. Instead of ‘modular design’, you can say the products are simpler to maintain and have lower operational downtime.
This kind of translation helps your marketing resonate with operations, procurement, finance, and the C-suite, not just engineers.
You’re Not Reaching the Right Audience
Manufacturers often serve niche markets with highly specialized needs. And there’s no universal playbook for marketing carbon-fiber weaving systems, powder-coating ovens, CNC tooling, or microfluidic devices.
But when you understand who your buyers are, what problems they’re solving, and where they spend their time online, you can target them with precision, even in highly technical categories.
Solution: Refine Your Targeting
Use intent data, industry forums, LinkedIn groups, engineering communities, specialized publications, and ABM tools to reach the right profiles. For maximum impact, create content that aligns with real buyer challenges and job-to-be-done outcomes.
You’re Struggling to Build Trust and Credibility
When businesses make such big investments, trust and credibility are everything. But this takes time to develop, so you need to leverage every tactic available to show buyers that you’re a reliable supplier.
Marketing and sales teams have a steep uphill battle to continuously demonstrate technical expertise and industry knowledge to solidify trust and showcase the ability to deliver tangible results, but it can be done if you make your track record visible and reinforcing it at every touchpoint.
Solution: Use Social Proof to Demonstrate Experience
Lean into social proof and tell people how you’ve helped similar businesses to success. That means showcasing relevant customer success stories, performance data, testimonials, installation photos, uptime improvements, and real ROI demonstrations.
Plus, be sure to highlight certifications, quality standards, safety accreditations, and compliance frameworks, because these carry enormous weight in industrial purchasing.
Your Sales and Marketing Teams Are Misaligned
Manufacturers often have strong sales cultures, but marketing is expected to support sales, rather than drive pipeline.
This leads to misalignment about what a good lead looks like, which content actually converts, and how buyers behave long before they speak to a rep.
Solution: Align Around Shared KPIs and Actual Buyer Behavior
Teams work better together when they share:
- A common definition of an MQL and SQL
- Visibility into intent signals, website activity, and buying-stage movement
- Agreement on which industries, company sizes, or applications matter most
- A clear process for recycling, nurturing, and prioritizing leads
When sales and marketing operate from the same real-world data, the pipeline becomes more predictable and your commercial strategy becomes far more resilient.
This alignment is especially powerful when both teams can see which accounts are researching your products long before they convert.
You Struggle to Convert Leads into Customers
You might be missing out on deals simply because you’re reaching out too late. In fact, 30-50% of deals go to the company that contacts the buyer first, Invespcro.com reports.
When your customers are ready to speak to a sales representative, they’re probably lining up calls with your competitors, too. If you speak to them after they’ve already had a conversation with your competitor, you’re at a disadvantage already.
Solution: Reach Out Earlier in the Buying Journey
If you can see which companies are browsing your website before they even fill out a form, your sales team can make first contact while the buyer is still researching.
This puts you on the front foot, empowers you to shape their requirements, and means you’re more likely to win those deals that go to the company that calls first.
