An Effective Marketing Strategy Requires a Multidisciplinary Approach

As a folding carton manufacturer, you likely have two distinct needs from your customers: 1) create a solution that uses innovative design, materials, and production efficiency; and 2) create that solution with competitive pricing. Of course, your customers will choose you for your capabilities and value-adds — not just your pricing. But therein lies the challenge: how do you communicate your value to market in a meaningful, measurable way — one that helps your message rise above that of your competitors? This is where your folding carton marketing strategy comes into play.

The truth is there isn’t a “magic wand” or one-size-fits-all approach. A folding carton marketing strategy requires multiple channels through which to impart your message, multiple tools to build and get that message out, and multiple skill sets to make it all happen. This is often the first hurdle — many folding carton marketing departments simply don’t have the time, talent, or tools needed to execute, but we’ll discuss how to solve that shortly. First, let’s break down a best-in-class folding carton marketing program to help you learn what moves the needle in this competitive industry.

Must-Haves for a Strong Folding Carton Marketing Program

  1. A Target Market Profile — A clear direction on who you’re marketing to is essential. Whether it’s a document outlining your most ideal personas or a more robust target market profile document that details industries, titles, revenues, and other valuable information, defining who you’re marketing to and why will give your team a goal while also providing guardrails.
  2. Account-Based Marketing Automation — With a clear direction on who you’re targeting, a complementary marketing strategy is account-based marketing (ABM). Rather than operating broadly, ABM identifies key contacts at ideal companies that fit the target market profile. Their information is collected, and multi-channel marketing tactics are put in place to connect with and engage them. This helps you achieve revenue growth with companies that fit your wheelhouse capabilities.
  3. Established Messaging Standards — It’s critical that you go to market with a consistent message and voice. Typically, this is set as part of persona or brand development. Whether that’s already done or still needs to be developed, ensure that you take the time to develop a consistent messaging framework to guide your marketing communications and deliver a unified message to your target audience.
  4. An Effective Outbound Strategy — Absolutely essential to folding carton marketing is an outbound program. This is more of a focus for sales, but marketing can support sales with tactics and solutions designed to support outbound. The key is to proactively reach out to target prospects in order to generate interest, keep your brand top of mind, and continually nurture that audience toward a decision.
  5. An Optimized Website — Where outbound will help you get your company in front of target prospects in a direct way, inbound will help your folding carton company appear in key places when prospects are actively searching for solutions. An optimized website is essential to success here because it will help you rank for key searches tied to prospect pains, product interests, industries, and even the specific regions where they do business or need support.
  6. A Content Marketing Strategy — An optimized website is the foundation for inbound marketing, but should not be a “set it and forget it” approach. It’s important to pursue more search terms and capture those searchers by creating helpful, informative content that answers questions, provides examples, and gives recommendations. This is done by writing blogs, case studies, new pages, and other content types that are optimized for those key searches.
  7. Intelligent Reporting — You can’t improve what you don’t measure. You’ve likely heard this phrase before, but it’s never been more true than in a marketing program. Learning from the work you’ve done and understanding what went well and what didn’t will help you guide future marketing activity, hone in on the best messages to use, determine which tactics yielded the best results, and more. Ideally, this data will tie into a CRM — allowing you to understand more deeply which efforts resonated with which contacts, giving you further insight into what motivates them and leads to the most conversions.

Transform Your Folding Carton Marketing Program with Athena

At Athena, we provide an outsourced infrastructure model that focuses on demand generation, lead management, inbound/outbound marketing, and sales support process services. We provide a combination of people, processes, and tools to deliver solutions that enable folding carton manufacturers to achieve operational excellence and revenue growth. Learn more about the companies we’ve helped in our case studies.

As your outsourced business development and marketing partner, all of the above are made available to you — enabling you to hit the ground running and maximize revenue growth as quickly as possible. This saves you from having to hire, onboard, and train talent to execute those efforts, which is costly and time-consuming. Instead, you get a full team of experienced professionals that understands your market and how to move the needle in it.

If you’re ready to take your folding carton marketing program to the next level, connect with us today.