Forming a strong brand in the manufacturing sector 

No matter how good your machinery or how efficient your processes might be, getting the attention of your manufacturing customers takes more than satisfying a basic need. They’ve got to want it. Having a strong brand to highlight your products and business makes you memorable well after the interaction between you and your client has happened.  

Engaging with your potential customer-base, designing sleek graphics, including eye-catching imagery, and memorable marketing copy will ensure you make an impact in a crowded industry. As marketing specialists to the manufacturing sector, we at Formation know this.  

To illustrate, let’s take a look at this year’s MACH Exhibition – the annual trade show that takes place in the Birmingham, NEC. 

20 of our team went along, with thousands of other people, to see the newest developments in the metalworking sector. As an ISO 9001 accredited marketing agency that specialises manufacturing and engineering, we’ll take any opportunity to enhance our knowledge and learn about new innovations in the industry. 

As well as keeping ourselves in the loop, we also had our patented Formation Media Marketeering Hats™ on and cast our all-seeing and really quite stylish eye on how the manufacturers present marketed themselves. 

The following 6 are our top pick for exhibition stand marketing success.  

1. Sodick – How you decide to market your brand is a great way to visually represent the values your company embodies. Sodick have this ethos down to a ‘T’, creating a welcoming space with plant life at the centre of their stand, and using warm greens to create a pleasant atmosphere driven by collaboration and openness.  

Unafraid to be bold, Sodick used their stand to dominate the area, using solid clean lines with touches of nature to bring everyone nearby into their orbit.  

1. Bott – Opting for simplicity, and using a distinct green and black colour palette, Bott designed their space to exemplify their products while also employing a bold design to draw the eye.  

Simplicity is the key, overly complex and busy design work often detracts from the reason you want customers to pay attention to you: your products! By utilising a minimalist approach, Bott ensures they remain memorable but not at the expense of their product offering, concentrating entirely on where they want your attention to be placed. 

1. Axe & Status – These guys understand the importance of a logo. Rendered in a striking pink, the choice of imagery, namely a swan and an axe, to invoke the Buckinghamshire origins of the company, make this brand instantly recognisable, with a logo that could easily be seen on the costume of a super-hero.  

Don’t underestimate the power of good iconography. Think of the Nike tick or the Apple apple; making your brand synonymous with a single image is a fantastic way to capture people’s attention and make you more memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that black and pink is an eye-catching colour combination! 

1. Allied Machine & Engineering – A tried and true method to engage your customers is to use interactivity, creating a direct connection between them and you. The folks at Allied Machine decided to use a full-size F1 car compete with simulated time trials to get visitors old and young engaging with their stand.  

Every interaction you have with your customers informs them about your company, from first contact with the customer service team to final sale, it all counts. 

We know how important this is; UX design is one of our cornerstone marketing tools and we love it when we see this type of interactivity used in the real world as well as online. 

Using an industry trade show to proactively engage with the visitors is a great way to make your brand stand out. Introducing the element of competition created an instant appeal among the majority demographic at the event. 

1. Mills CNC – Really leaning into the spirit of the event, Mills CNC went full warp speed into a science-fiction themed area, using the well-known iconography of pop culture science-fiction to talk about their brand in a fun and interesting way.  

Although cribbing heavily from pre-existing material, by carefully invoking a connection with the ideas of futuristic technology and forward-thinking progress to their brand they helped to embed this connection into their customers’ minds in a subtle way.  

They also utilise this branding on their site, describing their stand as a Space Odyssey and using language connected with space-travel and the future – a clever decision for a brand involved in aerospace engineering. 

1. Ceratizit – By encouraging the interaction between themselves and their customers to be more social, Ceratizit allowed people to let their guard down and converse with them as people first, breaking down the traditional customer/company transactional barrier. 

They used a two-pronged attack, the first was to offer some social lubricant into the event, a fully stocked bar to serve libations to those that wanted to imbibe. 

The second and much cuter strategy involved a free teddy bear for anyone who wanted one; both motivate a high level of interaction that circumvents the standard way that companies interact with their customers, leading to potential new custom as well as significant word-of-mouth. 

Forget the conventional; embrace experimental, innovative, and disruptive marketing 

Each of these companies excelled at using one (or a few) aspects of marketing to really shine. With our keen eye for graphic design, UX, PR, Event Management, and SEO, we love to see all of the incredible ways marketing is used to enthral, engage, and entertain. 

These were just some of the amazing marketing methods we saw employed at MACH 2024. The beauty with marketing is that there is no limit to the creativity with which you can engage and delight your target audience. 

Engaging your customers, evolving your business, and developing digital transformation is our bread and butter. In an ever-increasing manufacturing marketplace, it gets harder and harder to be seen.  

We specialise in working with manufacturing and engineering companies to make your brand even stronger. Get in touch today to see how we can strengthen your voice and evolve your marketing to the next level.