“Industrial buyers need enough website information (evidence) to determine whether you can do the work and whether they can trust you.”
As we continue to celebrate Manufacturing Month, we’re focusing on content that serves the manufacturers who keep our work and personal lives running. This is Part II in our blog series of digital marketing strategies and tactics for industrial operations.
As U.S. manufacturers work to compete in a crowded digital marketplace, many are asking the question, “How do we build a website to attract the right customers and convert them into leads?”
Marketing for manufacturing and industrial operations is different. It’s not your standard B2B strategy. Whether you’re a Tier 3 manufacturer or an OEM, your marketing needs to establish technical fit and determine whether a potential customer can work within your company, processes, or facilities. Industrial buyers need enough website information (evidence) to determine whether you can do the work and whether they can trust you.
The first piece of your marketing arsenal will always be your website. Your website has to answer the question: “Can this company handle the demands of what we need?”
It takes more than a flashy home page with a statement declaring you as an “industry leader.” You need a website that gives your potential buyer all the information they need to convert. Here are six baseline strategies for creating an industrial website that converts.
Your industrial website should help a potential customer answer a basic question: Can this company handle what we need? This takes more than a good-looking homepage and a claim of being the “industry leader.” It requires professional, well-structured content that speaks your target audience’s language.
An engineer may want specs, materials, and compatibility information. A purchasing manager will care more about lead times, production capacity, and supplier credentials. An operations manager may want to know installation requirements and anticipated ROI.
That’s why you need a professional technical writer who understands your business and can create content that’s useful and discoverable in AEO/SEO. (Note that SEO relates to your Google search ranking and AEO is about being included in AI search results.)
Create clear website pages for your services, products, capabilities, and industries served. For a services page or a products page, it’s more effective to create individual pages for each service or product. However, that can get pretty expensive.
Use keyword research to connect your new website pages to high-volume, relevant searches. You can use tools like AnswerThePublic to target the questions your potential customer is asking online.
For example, instead of pages focusing on “metal fabrication solutions,” create individual pages for sheet metal bending and stainless steel fabrication, and in the content answer questions such as: “How long does it take to complete a custom metal fabrication project?” and “What’s the best metal for your application?”
Your sales team is a tremendous resource for creating useful content. They probably answer the same questions repeatedly. That’s a good place to start your content marketing plan.
What affects pricing? Which material is best for a particular application? What needs to happen before installation? When does repair make more sense than replacement?
Turn questions like these into articles, selection guides, comparison pages, and FAQs. Your content topics/titles might include:
Build credibility by truthfully addressing trade-offs and limitations. Buyers need to understand where your solution fits and what conditions might require a different approach.
Have someone with technical knowledge review the content. AI can help organize a draft, but your employees should supply the experience, accuracy, and examples that make your website content valuable.
Almost every industrial or manufacturing website says the same thing: “We offer quality products and great customer service.” What else would you expect? A case study gives them something more tangible: proof.
Industrial case studies should follow a simple formula:
Use verified numbers if possible and explain how the results were measured. Specific results are more convincing than broad claims about efficiency gains. The goal is for prospects to see how you solved a problem that applies to their business. Need an example? Here’s an industrial case study from our Marketing website.
Your prospects may never visit your industrial facility before contacting you. Give them a useful look inside.
Show your equipment in operation, completed installations, production processes, inspection procedures, and the people doing the work. A photo gallery is a good start, but give each image context. What is being manufactured? What application does it serve? What does the photo demonstrate about your capabilities?
Here’s what I mean by context: A close-up of a finished component means very little to someone who doesn’t know its purpose. A short explanation of the material, application, and production challenge makes that same photo useful.
Use original photography whenever possible. Your actual facility and employees tell a stronger story than a stock photo of someone wearing a hard hat.
Video is the easiest way to do a product demonstration or showcase your industrial facilities. And video needs a designated place on your website. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a Francis Ford Coppola to create useful information. If your product or service solves a problem, viewers will care less about your video production quality.
The Sony ZV-1F and the Canon PowerShot V10 are two great options under $600 that deliver better-quality videos than an iPhone. You don’t need a movie production budget to produce clear video footage, understandable audio, and something worth learning. One good video demonstration can do the trick.
Your industrial videos should center around equipment demonstrations, installation walkthroughs, maintenance explanations, and technical comparisons. Keep them under 1 minute if possible.
Create a YouTube channel for your videos, but don’t forget about TikTok. TikTok may not seem like your audience, but those videos can easily be shared on LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts.
Use descriptive video titles and descriptions that match the topic. Experienced YouTubers say relevance depends on how closely the title, description, and video match a search. Add accurate captions, useful chapters, and a link to the relevant product or inquiry page.
Any experienced graphic designer or website developer will tell you that your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are some of the most important parts of your industrial website design. These can range from “Talk with a Specialist” to “Request a Quote” to “Contact Us.” Keep phone numbers highly visible and clickable.
Make forms as easy to fill out as possible. Collect name, email, business, and phone number. But if you have a highly technical product, that can be extremely difficult. In this case, include drop-downs with product numbers or specifications already loaded. Also, if the information is sensitive, provide a secure upload option.
Provide information that explains what happens next, after they fill out your form. This could be a simple, immediate response connected to the form stating: “Someone on the sales team will be contacting you in the next 24 hours.”
Use the contact’s email to send them a message to their inbox acknowledging the submission. You may want to include a link back to the website, but this can sometimes cause the responses to get caught in the spam filter.
Your industrial operation may have excellent equipment, experienced people, and decades of expertise. However, buyers still need to find you and understand why those capabilities matter.
Build your industrial website around the questions they ask, the problems they face, and the evidence they need to make a decision. Your website, content, video, email, and advertising should work together to help them move forward.
At Power Marketing, we help industrial and manufacturing companies turn their expertise into marketing that supports lead generation and sales. If your current marketing and industrial website does not reflect what your company can do, let’s talk.
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