Core Strengths and Soulmate Customers for Manufacturers
Core strengths and soulmate customers give manufacturers a clear place to start with marketing. First, understand what you do best. Then, identify the customers who value those strengths most.
That sounds simple. Yet many manufacturers struggle with both questions. They know their equipment, capabilities, and products. However, they may struggle to explain why those capabilities matter to customers.
Allison DeFord, Founder of FELT Marketing for Manufacturers, joined the Stop Being the Best Kept Secret livestream to explore this challenge. She shared how the Digital Game Plan can help manufacturers gain clarity, focus their marketing, and connect with ideal customers.
Why Manufacturers Struggle to Identify Their Core Strengths
Manufacturers often struggle to identify their core strengths because they are too close to their own businesses. What feels ordinary inside the company may offer tremendous value to a customer.
A team may focus on machines, tolerances, certifications, experience, or services. However, customers care about what those capabilities do for them.
That is where the Digital Game Plan starts. It helps a company identify its strengths and then ask an important question: So what?
Why does this strength matter to the customer?
DeFord sees tremendous value in this exercise for manufacturers.
“A lot of times I think you’re too close to it,” DeFord explains. The Digital Game Plan helps manufacturers “recognize some of the things that you are really good at in the eyes of your audience.”
That last part matters.
For example, fast turnaround is a capability. Yet reducing downtime or helping a customer hit a production deadline is the value.
Therefore, manufacturers should view core strengths through the customer’s eyes. Don’t stop at what you do. Explain why it matters.
Core Strengths and Soulmate Customers Work Together
Core strengths and soulmate customers work together by connecting what a manufacturer does best with the buyers who value it most. This focus can make marketing much more effective.
The Digital Game Plan calls an ideal buyer a Soulmate Customer. Instead of trying to market to everyone, manufacturers narrow their focus.
DeFord shared a simple example. A company might say architects are its ideal customers. Yet not every architect is a good fit.
Do they work in commercial or residential markets? Do they focus on green buildings? Where are they located?
After answering those questions, a huge audience could become a focused group of perhaps 500 ideal prospects.
This focus changes the marketing conversation.
“What the Digital Game Plan does in helping you find your ideal soulmate is it cuts through all the clutter,” DeFord says.
Next, manufacturers can explore what those buyers care about. They can learn their problems, goals, priorities, and daily challenges.
Most importantly, they can identify customers who value not only what the company does, but how it does it.
That creates a stronger manufacturing marketing strategy.
How Soulmate Marketing Builds Stronger Connections
Soulmate marketing helps manufacturers create more relevant content and stronger customer relationships. Instead of shouting at a broad audience, the company communicates with people it understands.
DeFord demonstrated this idea through her work with the North American Forest Foundation.
The organization wanted to raise money for educational kits. At first, its back-to-school campaigns looked like traditional elementary school promotions.
Then DeFord reconsidered the actual audience.
“Who are we trying to connect with? Who is our soulmate?” she recalls asking.
The donors included Gen Xers and Millennials. So, DeFord built the campaign around their childhood memories. The campaign tapped into old school photos, back-to-school shopping, new shoes, folders, and the excitement of a fresh school year.
The strategy created an emotional connection because it reflected experiences the audience understood.
That same lesson applies to manufacturers.
Once companies understand their ideal customer persona, they can build useful content around real customer questions and challenges. Moreover, each piece of content can support the next instead of becoming a random marketing activity.
DeFord calls this a “holistic system.”
The goal isn’t another one-off campaign. Instead, create a system built around the right customer.
Start With Focus, Then Build the Marketing Strategy
Core strengths and soulmate customers give manufacturers the foundation for a focused marketing strategy. Know what you do exceptionally well, understand why it matters, and identify who values it most.
From there, content becomes easier to create. Messaging becomes more relevant. Sales conversations can also become more focused.
Technology and AI can certainly help along the way. However, DeFord offers an important reminder.
“The best relationships are built on truth and trust and authenticity.”
That may be the biggest lesson of all.
The Digital Game Plan helps manufacturers narrow the field rather than market to everyone. Find the intersection between your strongest capabilities and the customers who need them most.
Then stop marketing at those customers.
Start helping them become successful.
Get your FREE Digital Game Plan and put your strengths to work.
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