Why Your Manufacturing Business Needs an Inbound Lead Marketing Strategy
In today’s digital landscape your customers are constantly bombarded with ads and content meant to get their attention. It’s estimated that the average person in the United States is exposed to anywhere from 4,000 – 10,000 ads daily. With so many ads, it can be difficult, and costly, to make your ads stand out from the noise and attract the right audience.
That’s why successful manufacturers know that one of the best strategies to increase sales is focusing on inbound marketing. By designing a manufacturing marketing strategy that focuses on this your business can increase the number of quality sales prospects.
Inbound marketing generates the leads critical to the success of a manufacturing business because inbound leads are far more likely to result in conversion than other lead types. These inbound lead customers are typically individuals who are already interested in or educated about the product or service you’re offering. These customers are much further along in the buying cycle and ready to make a decision. If your business can get their trust it’s likely you’ll make the sale.
It’s critical for your manufacturing business to evaluate how you’re currently acquiring clients and determine a strategy to increase your inbound leads. As experts in manufacturing marketing strategy and inbound lead generation, we’ve compiled some of the best tips to help increase the number of inbound leads for your business.
Increasing the Visibility of Your Manufacturing Business and Increasing Inbound Lead Traffic
Before you can begin capturing the valuable information from your inbound leads, you need to make sure that your business can be found by the customers of your target demographic.
Improving SEO and Organic Search Traffic for Your Industrial Business
Have you ever clicked on the second page of Google results? How about the third, fourth, or fifth? If your manufacturing business isn’t on the first few pages of results, it’s likely that your website is receiving little to zero organic search traffic.
The first step in improving your manufacturing inbound lead strategy is ensuring that customers searching for the manufacturing products and services you offer are able to find you. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a critical component of the manufacturing marketing strategy.
Google and other search engines rank pages on a variety of factors that determine the quality and relevancy of the website when displaying search results. Improving your website’s SEO can improve your search engine rankings and have a tremendous impact on your business. The first 6 results on Google receive over 75% of search traffic.
To improve your Search Engine Ranking there are a few ways to improve your manufacturing website’s SEO right now:
- Perform a website speed audit and improve slow page load times
- Optimize website photos to ensure quick load times
- Use keywords related to your business and industry in the titles, meta-tags, headers, descriptions and throughout the site
- Use engaging content to keep users on the page. This reduces your manufacturing websites bounce rate which negatively affects ranking
- Use video content, it’s one of the most engaging ad mediums
- Use alt tags and verify your site is ADA compliant and stays compliant
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly, over 50% of traffic comes from mobile
Using these quick tips, you can be sure to improve your manufacturing website’s SEO in no time!
Paid Ads to Increase Manufacturing Website Traffic and SEO
Improving the SEO of your manufacturing website isn’t the only way to improve traffic. Organic traffic is free but it’s not the only traffic source of value. Paid traffic can be leveraged to improve your business performance even more.
One key source of paid traffic is from Paid Ads that your business can run to increase the traffic to your site. They can be run through a variety of platforms and services, but ultimately the goal is the same. Get customers currently interested in your product or service to your website.
Manufacturing Paid Ad campaigns have a conversion rate that is much higher than other ad types. By implementing a well-managed paid ad campaign across different platforms you can be sure to increase the visibility and traffic of your manufacturing website.
Crafting Engaging Content for Your Manufacturing Website
Creating content that engages your audience and encourages them to spend more time browsing your manufacturing website is a crucial aspect in improving website ranking and visibility, and ultimately inbound manufacturing leads.
The use of optimized photos and video content is a good way to engage your audience, along with creating expert content. Expert content is articles and blog content that educate and inform website visitors about your industry or services and products. As a manufacturer within the industry, your insights can provide value to your audience.
These blogs and articles can be published to other websites and create valuable backlinks to your website. These help increase the visibility of your website and improve the quality of your website content, which will increase the engagement of your website.
If you’re unsure how to create engaging content for your website, there is always the option of hiring professionals to craft your manufacturing website content for you at an affordable rate. Interested in learning more? Learn more about available SEO and Content packages for manufacturers.
Improve your Website to Increase the Number of Inbound Manufacturing Leads
Once you’ve made sure that your business is visible to your customer demographic, it’s time to start generating and capturing that valuable inbound lead information.
Manufacturing Web Design Best Practices Can Increase Inbound Leads
Creating a manufacturing website that emphasizes a ‘user-first’ mindset is critical to increasing the number of inbound leads. Your website is effectively your online manufacturing brochure that displays your products and services to your customers.
To convey this information quickly and effectively it’s critical to organize your website in a way that prioritizes a simple user journey. Organized menu options and reducing the number of clicks to navigate the site are important to designing a user-friendly website. Uniform use of brand colors, customer reviews, and product or service photos help build brand familiarity and trust in your visitors. Making your website feel inviting, relevant and natural is the key to creating a user-friendly experience.
By creating a positive experience your website visitors are more likely to find the information they were searching for and take action, like completing a purchase or contacting your team for more information regarding a specific product or service.
Using Forms to Capture Inbound Manufacturing Leads
The use of forms is a great way to increase the number of inbound manufacturing leads for your business. Although it is important to keep in mind that forms need to be implemented correctly, forms that hinder the user experience can result in negative search engine ranking evaluations and cause higher bounce rates from users leaving your website.
Make sure that the forms across your website feel natural, and are in positions where they help your customer, not hinder. Inserting contact forms after product or service information is a great way to encourage customers to reach out with questions.
Another great location is to insert a contact form at the footer of your website that is present on every page. This way customers always are never more than a click away from entering information to contact you.
A Call to Action (CTA) button that directs users to a form is another great way to introduce website forms. These buttons attract the attention of the customer and can compel them to take the desired action.
If your manufacturing company offers a product or service catalog available for download or email this is another great opportunity to capture visitor information. In order to receive the information, a visitor can be required to enter their email information. This can be leveraged by your sales team by following up a few days later to see if they had any questions regarding your products or services. Or, you can set up a manufacturing marketing email campaign through Mail Chimp to target your new prospects.
Use Lead Capture Software to Understand your Visitors and Increase Inbound Leads
There is also a variety of software that can assist your business in capturing leads.
Leadfeeder
This service allows your manufacturing business to capture the emails and information of the people that visit your website. Learn more and start capturing your inbound manufacturing leads for FREE.
Crazyegg
Understanding your customer and their journey is critical to increasing inbound manufacturing leads and improving sales. Crazyegg uses heat mapping to show the actions that customers are taking on your website and where they are spending time. Learn more about heatmapping services for your manufacturing website.
Utilize the Expert Knowledge of a Top Web Design Agency for Manufacturers
We may have made it sound easy to improve manufacturing inbound leads, but when it comes to the successful implementation of these strategies it can be a challenge to get it all right.
If your manufacturing business lacks the confidence to coordinate the implementation of each of these strategies correctly then you should contact an agency that specializes in manufacturing marketing. A turn-key solution can be delivered to your business much faster than implementation on your own, and your business see results sooner. Their experience and expertise can guarantee that your business implements the tools and tricks needed to improve the number of inbound leads and increase sales.
Choosing the Correct Strategies for Your Manufacturing Marketing Strategy
There are a lot of options when it comes to improving the number of inbound leads for your manufacturing business. Many of them are simple implementations that can have a big impact on your business.
Consider the Available Options to Improve Your Manufacturing Inbound Lead Strategy
Improving your business’s SEO ranking is a sure way to help improve the amount of Organic Search traffic to your website. Appearing on the first page of the search results should be your business’s top priority. For each lower result, it’s costing your business a significant amount of Organic Search Traffic. Using the tips and tricks we recommended can turn your SEO performance around and help give your website the traffic boost it needs. Learn more about available options to improve your manufacturing website’s SEO. There are also plenty of free resources like videos and blogs that can help you improve your SEO.
The use of Pay-Per-Click Ad campaigns along with SEO improvement can help create a bigger boost in the flow of traffic to your website. Setting up an Ad campaign with a daily budget will allow your business to get in front of more customers and drive more traffic without spending more than you’re comfortable with. Most PPC Ad software also offers comprehensive analytics and data to help you better understand how your ads are performing and how your audience is interacting with them. Consistent management and adjustments to optimize your campaign performance is the key to success.
You also need to make sure your manufacturing website is asking for customer information at the right time. A pop-up asking for an email that appears the moment a customer navigates to your site is only going to annoy your customer and likely cause them to navigate away which hurts your search engine ranking. Instead, place your forms in locations where visitors will be willing to complete them. After product or service information is a great spot, or a consistent form in the footer so customers will always know where they can go when they need assistance or a question answered.
Consider implementing a pop-up form before a customer can download a product or service catalog or request additional product information. These customers have already built trust navigating your website and are seriously interested in your products and likely willing to share their information at this point. In order to get information from your customer, your manufacturing website first has to gain their trust and interest. Your business should consider using free lead capture software in addition to the use of forms.
The best strategy to improve manufacturing inbound leads would be to utilize the applicable features from each of the tips mentioned. If your manufacturing business is unfamiliar with the tools and options listed, that doesn’t mean improving your inbound leads is hopeless. It just means that it’s time to contact the manufacturing marketing experts.
Contact the Manufacturing Marketing Experts
If you’re serious about improving your manufacturing company’s marketing strategy and online presence to get more leads you can always choose to work with the best in manufacturing marketing. Idea Marketing Group is a top manufacturing marketing agency from Chicago with years of experience helping notable manufacturing clients. Our team of expert web designers and digital marketing specialists know the tools and techniques to improve your inbound lead generation. You can view our manufacturing web design portfolio to review various case studies of recent client projects.
Our team works closely with our clients to understand their business and design a strategy that will optimize their results. By choosing an expert team you can quickly and correctly implement marketing strategies that will have a major impact on your business efforts. Many past clients have seen direct results from our marketing packages in as little as a few weeks. Choosing a marketing agency partner like Idea is the best choice to make a serious improvement in your inbound manufacturing lead generation strategy.
Idea Marketing Group is a marketing agency known for web design and development. Since 2009, they have built hundreds of websites and managed marketing campaigns reaching millions of people for top brands and businesses throughout the nation. Services include branding, strategy, UI/UX design, content marketing, search engine optimization, website support, and digital advertising. Everything a website needs to dominate in search rankings. They are consistently rated as a top web design agency by Clutch.co.