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What makes industrial SEO marketing different?
Industrial SEO marketing, also known as B2B SEO marketing, faces challenges in two primary areas that make it different from other forms of SEO marketing. These areas are:
- Longer sales cycle times
- Website technical content
Longer sales cycles
Website goals for industrial and precision manufacturers differ from that of retailers and other companies.
Many industrial and precision manufacturers offer only custom-built solutions for their clients, not mass-produced items. The process of specifying exact materials and requirements can lead to many rounds of communication before the manufacturer can even provide a quote to the potential client. For these B2B manufacturers, the typical retailer’s “Buy Now” button is not an option.
Instead, the goal of the industrial and precision manufacturer’s website is to provide product information that attracts visitors and generates qualified sales leads; these leads will ultimately result in increased sales and an improved bottom line.
Qualified sales lead generation
The importance of qualified sales lead generation cannot be overstated. While some search-engine optimization methods may result in an increase in website traffic or higher search-engine rankings, they are of little value if these tactics do not lead to more sales.
A “qualified” sales lead means that the sales lead is qualified to purchase the product they are inquiring about. For example, a sales lead from China would be unqualified if your company cannot sell products to companies in China.
“Qualified” also means that the sales lead is genuinely seeking to make a purchase, and not just “kicking tires” or gathering price data with no intention of purchase.
Measuring return on investment (ROI)
A related challenge in industrial SEO marketing is in measuring marketing results. An industrial or precision manufacturer may have a sales cycle time of weeks, months or more. The time lag between initial marketing efforts and closing a sale makes it more difficult to track which marketing initiatives are working and which are not.
At Marketing Zone, we recommend using a CRM, or customer-relationship management software, to manage and track sales leads generated from a B2B website. This enables the industrial or precision manufacturer to easily identify the source for individual leads (e.g., website, referral, etc.), the quality, and the qualification status.
By measuring the number and quality of new sales leads generated from your website, you can make adjustments to website content in response to these marketing results.
And by tracking those new sales leads all the way through the sales cycle to a closed sale, you can calculate the return on your online marketing investment.
At Marketing Zone, we build continuous process improvement into our standard operating procedures, so we and our clients learn what works and what doesn’t. Our frequent, regular review of marketing results and website data analytics measures progress toward strategic goals.
Website optimization for longer sales cycles
The longer sales cycle presents other challenges and opportunities for industrial SEO marketers. Website users may seek information from the website at any stage in the buying process, from research to specifications to decision-making. It is in the interest of the industrial and precision manufacturer to provide website content for each stage of the buying process.
Because sales leads may return to the manufacturer’s website many times before the sales cycle is completed, it is helpful for industrial sales teams to track the returning website user’s visits. Modern tracking software makes this possible. Sales teams can receive an email alert whenever one of their sales leads returns to the website. This gives the sales representative more insight into which sales leads show stronger interest and allows the sales representative to better prioritize sales efforts.
Phone call tracking
An additional tool available for industrial SEO marketing is phone call tracking. A properly built, high-functioning website should build confidence and rapport in the visitor to the point that the client would prefer to talk. Because of the complex, customized nature of their projects, the specification process for many clients of industrial and precision manufacturers may require many rounds of phone communication.
Phone call tracking tools can help with this. By inserting dynamically generated phone numbers into your website, you can track which phone calls are generated from your website and which marketing campaigns your callers are responding to. At Marketing Zone, we deploy custom industrial-built call-tracking solutions for clients. Integrating phone call tracking with a CRM can provide your sales representatives with an awesome array of data on each sales lead, available at their fingertips every time they pick up the phone.
Website technical content
What makes industrial SEO marketing so hard?
The specialized, technical language used to describe the products of industrial and precision manufacturers can often be seen as hard to understand by content writers whose background is not technical by nature.
Writing for a technically-minded audience is hard. The website audience for industrial and precision manufacturers is often a niche-specific group of engineers, buyers, influencers, and people in procurement and operations. The specialized, technical vocabulary used by this group presents the greatest challenge for preparing website content.
Based on our experience, the typical digital marketing agency has great difficulty in writing technical engineering content for websites. In fact, Marketing Zone grew out of our sister company Best Technology‘s difficulty in finding a marketing agency that could write industrial SEO website content successfully.
By employing content writers with strong technical and industrial backgrounds, Marketing Zone achieves a competitive edge over other B2B marketing agencies. The technical and engineering background of Marketing Zone’s content writers is what sets us apart from other industrial SEO companies.
One of the key principles of SEO strategy is to provide detailed information at no charge to build trust. Marketing Zone seeks to position our clients as subject-matter experts in their fields, so their potential customers come to them when it’s time to make a purchase. Accurate, up-to-date and detailed technical information on the website is critical to positioning an industrial or precision manufacturer as a subject-matter expert.
Download your brain
In working collaboratively with our customers, we know that the majority are too busy to write their own content but do want to be involved in what appears on their website. We work hand in hand to make sure the website is an accurate reflection of our client and portrays the client expertise in ways the client exudes but perhaps hasn’t previously expressed via the web.
If you’ve ever wished you could just download your business knowledge to someone else and have them turn it into useful marketing material, it may be time to consider the subject-matter expert in industrial marketing, Marketing Zone, the leading industrial SEO marketing agency.
At Marketing Zone, we specialize in business and technical writing for an engineering audience. Our painless process converts your business knowledge into web-based articles, case studies, white papers, and videos that educate your potential clients and help them find you when they need you.
