5 ways manufacturers can engage an audience through video

video marketing for manufacturers

I talk to a lot of manufacturers who know video is important.

But they rarely know where to start.

So today, we’re gettin’ tactical.

Below are five totally different ways to bring video into your organization – from marketing to sales to managing employees.

And included are tangible examples of manufacturing folks who are crushing it on these fronts.

So take a look.

Study these applications.

Look at how they’re doing it. And think about why they’re doing it.

Then figure out what your own version could be. If you need help, let me know and I’ll try to point you in the right direction!

1. Show your product in action (instead of talking about it)

Most people talk about how awesome their stuff is.

Here are two examples of real life manufacturing guys who are showing it.

First up is Tony Gunn.

Sales and Marketing Exec at 5th Axis Workholding, Tony’s a rare example of a manufacturing sales guy who’s managing to show his company’s products in action (and in an engaging way).

“I don’t have all the tools or talent to do video content” isn’t an excuse anymore. Your have a high-def video camera in your pocket. Take it out and start shooting. Like Tony does.

Here’s an example of Tony’s stuff on LinkedIn (where his following is over 10,000 people and growing).

Need some additional inspiration?

Check out what Jake Hall is doing.

Self branded as “The Manufacturing Millennial”, Jake has turned himself into a video curator of machines at work.

In less than a year, Jake has gone from almost no visibility to daily videos that are garnering 30-40,000+ views each (which is just completely nuts by the way).

Here’s an example.

Have a compelling video of your machinery?

Send it Jake’s way. He’s like a human content distribution channel!

Go follow Jake and be inspired.

2. Train your audience

Titan Gilroy.

This is a name many of you probably know already.

Titan runs an appropriately named training organization called TITANS of CNC, Inc where he publishes an insane amount of learning content about CNC machining.

And for free.

When you give your insights away, you earn attention, you build trust, you establish thought leadership.

And then you get hired.

Go take a look at Titan’s academy.

3. Send a daily video message to your team

Here’s an absolutely brilliant idea.

I recently interviewed Kevin Snook, author of “Make it Right: 5 Steps to Align Your Manufacturing Business from the Frontline to the Bottom Line” on our podcast.

As Kevin said in the clip below, back in 1920, the only way Henry Ford could talk to his Operations was to shout at them through a megaphone.

But today, everyone throughout your organization, from the C-Suite to the frontline has a smart phone in his or her pocket.

So use it.

What if the CEO of a manufacturing company sent a 30 or 45-second video to the whole company every morning that sounded something like this?…

“Hey, just want to let you all know that back down in Brazil at the moment, on line number four in the plant in Sao Paulo, we’ve got [fill in the blank] going on. I just want to give a shout out to them all because this is important for the company. Brazil’s a growth country for us. And guys, keep it up, you’re leading the way for us.”

In less than a minute, he or she would have given a shout out to the whole company, communicating awareness for what’s going on, letting everyone know he/she cares, and acknowledging that what people are doing matters.

Imagine the impact across the organization to hear from your leader in this way, every day. Or heck, even a few times a week.

Here’s what Kevin had to say about the topic.

4. Engage your prospects in a live webinar

You’ll be hearing lots more from our crew at Gorilla about how to run a successful webinar series in the coming months.

We’re hard at work launching one for ourselves (and a few of our clients simultaneously).

So why a live webinar?

It gives you something of value to promote to your existing list, organically on the social channels and through paid ads
This content can be used to nurture your existing contacts and generate new leads alike
It positions you as an expert
The opportunity to share 20-30 minutes of insights with your ideal audience (and live) on a regular basis is otherwise tough to come by
A live Q&A session at the end lets you engage one on one with the right people from the right companies, answering their questions and building human-to-human connections
The questions that are asked in that Q&A session will generate ideas for future content that will also resonate with these individuals
You can record the webinar and post it on YouTube (like we did below) and stream it into your website (again, like we did below!). Now it lives on beyond the live event.
You can break that long-form video down into micro videos and audio clips to use in social media channels using a tool like VEED.io.
You can transcribe it using a service like Rev.com and publish the text as a blog post. Or better yet, throw the transcription to a professional copywriter and write a blog series from it.

Need more reasons? Or is that good enough? 😉

For context, here’s what we’re doing on the webinar front for Gorilla…

We’re branding our series and giving it a name:

Every two weeks, our two Senior Strategists, Julian Schaaf and Matt Sciannella, are teaching a different industrial marketing subject, and we’re encouraging our audience to sign up to attend this episodic series every other Monday at 2:00 PM CST.

Here’s a recording of the first session:

To gather some real examples from manufacturing organizations who have embraced this medium (and are actually doing it well), I solicited my LinkedIn network.

Here are a few that stood out:

Hopefully some of these will inspire ideas for you!

5. Be a guest on series your audience already watches

There are a lot of really great niche manufacturing shows out there at this point.

Some are pure audio (nothing wrong with that by the way!), but since this article is about video, below are some shows that have video components too.

As you look through these, think about who from your organization would make for a solid guest.

Then reach out and offer an idea for how your subject matter expert could share his or her expertise with their shared audience.

Remember, though, you’re there to teach and create value (not to promote or sell).

Three examples:

Manufacturing Happy Hour

Chris Luecke is a former Rockwell Automation guy who just started his own venture helping manufacturers create better content. His longstanding show – Manufacturing Happy Hour – pairs beer and manufacturing.

Doesn’t get much better than that, right? 🍻

Industrial Sage

Danny Gonzales and David Caron are killing it with video content for manufacturers at Industrial Sage.

Check out all the interviews with manufacturing leaders they’ve published.

The Manufacturing Executive

As of the time I’m writing this (mid October of 2020), we’ve published the first 18 episodes from our new every-other-week show – The Manufacturing Executive.

Though an audio podcast at heart, we record all the episodes as videos and publish them here on YouTube too.

And note that we didn’t create the show to talk about ourselves. Instead, we’re shining the spotlight on manufacturing leaders who have something to say.

So there you have it

Hopefully something in here made your ears perk up.

Need help talking through where to go from here? Drop us a note and we’ll help guide you if we can!