Leading with Content

Can a manufacturing supervisor on the plant floor make or break your sale with a vote on the "I want to try this" or the "That won't work" side of the discussion?

Then you might want to consider including an outreach to this important audience in your content marketing strategy. And since ACT Inc recently completed a study analyzing the on-the-job duties of manufacturing supervisors, you now know what they're most likely to be interested in.

Key Duties and Content Questions

Manufacturing supervisors spend significant time monitoring existing efforts for safety, quality, and work processes.

- Can you discuss safety standards in your industry? Perhaps you can pull together best practices or ways to automate and improve the monitoring processes.

Manufacturing supervisors spend time being the expert.

- Can you deepen their knowledge up and down the value chain of their industry? Where does this piece come from and why is this aspect of the environment changing? This is an area where you'll be looking at knowledge they might not need every day.

Manufacturing supervisors spend time managing production.

- Can you help increase their ability to troubleshoot? One option might be a newsletter on problem solving techniques with a feature story each issue that describes an odd problem one of your other readers solved. 

Manufacturing supervisors spend time in managing interpersonal relationships.

- Can you create articles directed towards applying management techniques specifically to the manufacturing environment? Simply stating your target audience and pulling your examples from their experiences can increase your credibility even if the material itself is not new to a management expert.

Advantages of Knowing Your Audience

What will work best for your company will depend on exactly what you are selling. Different offerings will relate best to different aspects of these key duties. Ultimately, if you can connect your expertise to information designed to make the lives of your target audience easier and make them more productive and more likely to get recognition from their own managers, then you will have a valuable attractor.

And, as is the premise of content marketing, if they're coming to you for this information, you'll be first on their list for someone to come to for the actual purchase of whatever it is you are selling.  The manufacturing supervisor who trusts your information is more likely to be in your corner when the company is considering your product or service.