Industrial Marketing Tricks (Tips) & Treats
Spooky season is finally here, and we know that nothing is scarier than creating your first marketing strategy. Whether you’re just figuring out who your target audience is, learning more about digital marketing tools, or building your first website, Momentum has you covered.
To help you get started with your own strategy, we’ve put together a list of our favorite industrial marketing tricks, as well as examples of how we used these tricks to help our own clients.
Trick #1: Create Content for Your Target Audience
If you’ve already figured out who your target audience is, you’re probably asking yourself “How can I get them to know that my brand exists?”
One of the best ways to reach your target audience is by building a strong online presence. According to Data Reportal, there are over 5.03 billion people worldwide who use the Internet, and that number continues to grow. If you’re not online, you’re definitely reducing the number of leads you could potentially be getting.
So…how do you build a strong online presence? First, build an effective website. Then, ensure there are a number of resources available on your website that will help your target audience.
The type of resources could be anything from infographics to blog posts to specific landing pages. These resources must also be written with your target audience in mind, meaning that the language isn’t too complex or too broad, it answers questions they have, and addresses problems that they may be experiencing.
Google even has guidelines you can follow when creating your resources. If you don’t feel like reading through all of these guidelines, we’ll leave you with a few don’ts for content creation.
Avoid Doing This in Your Content
- Don’t stuff your page with keywords. While you do need to be targeting at least one keyword for each resource, it’s not necessary to include your keyword in every sentence. When creating content, insert it naturally and instead focus on clearly and thoroughly explaining your topic.
- Don’t get caught up on reading scores. If you’ve been researching how to create “SEO” content, you may have run across various types of readability scores, including Flesch. While readability does matter, you don’t need to focus on your readability score, especially if your content is being developed for a more technical or advanced audience.
- Don’t create copy/paste content. Yes, you do need to be paying attention to your competitors and the type of content they’re generating, but that also doesn’t mean that you need to copy them. Think of their content as a source of inspiration. How can you make that content better? Is there another area of that topic that they haven’t covered or haven’t covered well? If so, can you? Be original with the content you’re putting out, otherwise it may be harder for that content to get indexed by Google.
Why Content Matters
We can’t say this enough—content should always be part of your industrial marketing strategy.
Regularly creating content will help you establish authority (trustworthiness) with Google over time, especially if you have a subject matter expert writing this content. And, when you establish authority with Google, you’re more likely to show up in the results pages after users submit queries related to your industry.
Lastly, creating high-quality content designed for your target audience is essential these days. Google rolled out a Helpful Content Update in August 2022, and will continue to refine it to ensure online users have access to reliable, trustworthy, and relevant content.
Our Favorite Content Treat
We would never give you a trick that we wouldn’t use ourselves. If you’re skeptical about investing time and money into content creation, you’ll want to stick around for this story.
The Challenge
Earlier this year, we developed a six-month content strategy for a manufacturer specializing in residual stress measurement devices. They had a limited online presence in the United States, and most of their direct industry competitors had high-authority domains. Additionally, our research found that some of their other SERP (Search Engine Results Page) competitors were universities, which are typically considered more trustworthy by Google.
The Solution
We knew that they needed content that would be able to compete against what was already showing up in the SERPs. That meant highly technical and factually accurate content geared toward an advanced audience (engineers, professors, etc.). It was a challenge for us, as we had never developed this type of content before. We were able to find a writer with an engineering background and first-hand experience with the specific subject. In general, it’s best that your content is created by someone who knows what they’re talking about. They are the ones who will be able to most clearly and effectively explain a topic.
The Result
In the beginning, the campaign understandably struggled (search engine optimization is a long-term practice—never go into it thinking you’ll see results overnight). However, as soon as Google released its Helpful Content Update in August, the campaign took off. For an entire month, there was only positive growth in their overall keyword rankings, which is unusual—most often, there will be a healthy amount of both keyword move-ups and move-downs as Google’s algorithm becomes more familiar with a website.
The client also earned their first Featured Snippet. A Featured Snippet is what you may see at the top of a results page; it’s meant to quickly answer a question that an online user may be asking. Usually, content that is marked as a Featured Snippet is considered to be highly valuable and trustworthy by Google. It can also take months, sometimes even years, to earn just one Featured Snippet.
So, while content creation is an investment that is often challenging, it can be a strategy that can help you earn more organic traffic to your website, improve lead generation, and increase domain authority with search engines like Google.
Trick #2: Prioritize UX (User Experience) When Developing a Website
Earlier we mentioned that one of the best ways to increase brand awareness is to build your online presence with a well-designed website. When we say “well-designed,” we’re not just talking about appearance. Yes, it is important that your website fully captures your brand and who you are. Yes, it’s also important that your website looks nice. However, if no one knows how to use your website or where to find information, they won’t stay on it for long. Your website should not only be aesthetically pleasing, but also mobile-responsive (i.e. designed for all types of devices), easy to navigate, and quick to load.
Mobile-Responsiveness
Remember those 5.03 billion people who are using the Internet? According to Statista, mobile devices generate around 59.72% of Internet traffic worldwide. When you’re designing your website, you need to think about how people are interacting with it, because they’re not just going to be visiting it from a desktop or personal computer.
A website with a mobile-responsive design will automatically adjust based on what type of device a searcher is using. Content will shift and images will display in a way that makes it easier for users depending on the device they’re using. Websites that are not mobile-responsive will typically display as a standard desktop website, regardless of the device. While phones will usually zoom out, so the reader can see the entire website, the font is often very small and readers will have to zoom in to various parts of the page in order to find the information they’re looking for.
Easy to Navigate
Navigation is also important to the user experience, regardless of the device they’re using to find your website. The way that you organize your information should be straightforward and logical. For example, if you were launching a new product, you would most likely link the new product page to your parent (main) product page.
You’ll also want to put your navigation bar preferably at the top of your website, as that’s where users are more likely to look for it. Additionally, the page titles in your navigation should also make sense and tell the reader exactly what they will find on the page.
Lastly, set up internal links that help the reader better navigate from one page to another. Going back to the product page example—your main product page should have links to each separate product that you carry. If you had several service pages and one main service page, you would also take the same approach. To help generate leads, you could also add contact forms and hyperlinks that take readers to your contact page or contact form.
Quick Page Speed
A website designed with UX in mind will also be quick to load. You have only seconds to engage your target audience. In fact, a 2020 study published by Deloitte found that when the page speed of a mobile site was improved by just 0.1 seconds, page views and conversion rates also improved.
Slow-loading pages can also impact Google’s ability to crawl (find pages) your website, which means that new content may not get indexed by Google.
Why UX Matters in Web Design
As of August 2021, user experience is a Google ranking factor. Google analyzes page experience through Core Web Vitals, which is a system of metrics specific to Google. These metrics measure page speed, page responsiveness, and the visual stability of the elements within a page.
If a website receives poor scores on all three major pillars of Core Web Vitals, it will affect where that website ranks in the search engine results. So, the poorer the UX is on a website, the less likely a user will be able to find it organically when they perform searches.
Our Favorite Website Redesign Treat
In January 2022, our web development team created Momentum X, our own proprietary WordPress theme. The Momentum X theme was specifically designed to improve navigation, page speed, and mobile responsiveness, and therefore improve Core Web Vital scores.
The Challenge: Testing Our Theme
In February, we tested our theme with one of our clients who manufactures and sells thermal products. Previously, their website had many pages that weren’t listed in the navigation bar, which then made it harder for the average user to find. Their navigation bar was also limited, which made it difficult to find the products on their website.
The Solution: How We Improved UX
Our Momentum X “Mega Navigation” bar made it easier to separate products by category and for users to access each separate product page. Additionally, there is now a search bar that allows users to put in the name of the product they’re looking for to easily access a product page. We also minified code on the backend, which helped increase page download time.
The Results
Once our client migrated to our theme, we saw an improvement in general performance, including page speed. We also noticed that just by improving the UX on the website, there was also an improvement in quotable leads. In January, before the migration, they had 17 quotable leads which increased to 21 in March, a month after the migration. Since the migration, the number of leads has continued to increase along with their conversion rate.
The next time you question the value of a new website, just think about how many sales you could be getting from it.
Trick #3: Increase Sales With Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
Pay-per-click advertising, sometimes referred to as PPC, is a type of search advertising campaign that businesses can use to quickly increase leads and traffic to a website.
It works like this—you create a list of keywords that you want your advertisement to show up for and then bid on those keywords. If your ad does show up in a search, it will be at the very top of the search engine results. When a user clicks on your advertisement, you then pay Google a small fee.
This fee (referred to as cost-per-click) can vary based on the quality score of your landing page, (which is determined by relevance, quality of content, etc.), the type of keywords you’re bidding on, the amount of money you’re willing to spend on a particular keyword, your ad position, and click-through rate.
It’s an extremely competitive landscape, as many businesses are fighting to reach the top ad position on Google.
Different Types of PPC Campaigns
There are a wide variety of pay-per-click campaigns that a business could take advantage of based on goals. It’s best for those new to PPC to first try search ads, as they are the most common and easiest to learn.
There are also display ads, which showcase a specific product or service. With display ads, users who show an interest in that type of product or service will generally see the advertisement. Costs for this type of campaign are usually lower, but also come with a lower conversion rate.
Remarketing ads are also used to target users who have visited a specific website. These users may have added a product to their cart, but never made a purchase or just spent time viewing the website but never converted.
The type of campaign you need depends on the amount of money you’re willing to spend, who your target audience is, and where you want your ads to appear (YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, etc.).
Using PPC for Trade Show Marketing
As previously mentioned, PPC is a great way to bring traffic to your website in a short amount of time. When compared to SEO, PPC normally brings faster results, but will typically cost more money in the long run. On the opposite end, the results from SEO take longer to see, but you don’t have to pay for the traffic you receive.
PPC campaigns are generally used to market new products and services or generate brand awareness. But, most businesses aren’t aware that PPC can also be used as a marketing channel for trade shows.
Trade shows present businesses with opportunities to scope out the competition, test new products and services, and potentially land new sales. But, some businesses forget (or don’t see the value) in promoting their presence at a trade show.
With PPC campaigns, you can actually upload a list of customers that you want to target (e.g. a list of potential clients who’ve signed up to receive your newsletters). So, if you know who is planning on coming to the trade show, you can upload that list into Google Ads and specifically target your ads to them. During the trade show, you can also use geotargeting within the Google Display Network to promote your presence to people who are near the trade show.
Lastly, because most of the keywords you may be targeting are related to the actual event or exposition as well as your brand, the cost-per-click, or CPC, will most likely be low.
To sum it up—PPC is a low-spend opportunity that could result in more valuable leads at trade shows.
Our Favorite PPC Treat
In May 2022, one of our clients in the investment casting industry signed up to exhibit at a popular convention in Paris, France from June 13 to 19. They wanted to promote their presence to audiences in the United States, Canada, France, and Germany, but only had a few weeks before the first day of the convention.
Our lead PPC strategist wanted to test Google’s Performance Max campaign which first launched in 2021. While this wasn’t the first time we used Performance Max, it would be the first time we used it to market a client’s presence at a trade show.
About Performance Max
Performance Max allows advertisers to target all of Google’s available channels (YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc.) without creating separate campaigns, and is specifically used to generate even more leads and potential sales. Performance Max also offers better reporting to help advertisers understand what exactly is impacting the ad’s performance.
Results
Just within the first three days of launching our client’s Performance Max campaign, they received 52,641 impressions (number of people who have seen the ad) and 1,310 clicks, which generated a clickthrough rate (CTR) of 2.49%. This type of exposure only cost our client $47.
15 days later, when the campaign finally ended, our client had 679,486 impressions, 18,229 clicks, and a CTR of 2.68%. Additionally, from those clicks, 16.33% converted to leads. All of this cost our client $449.
Although we only had a short amount of time to advertise, the results were impressive, inexpensive, and valuable to our client.
Get More Tricks & Treats From Momentum
If you’ve learned anything from this article, it’s that industrial marketing is complex. There are many channels you can use to increase sales, generate more online traffic, and improve brand awareness, but not all of these channels may be best for your business.
To learn more about SEO, web development, and search advertising, turn to our team at Momentum. Founded in 2010, we’re an industrial marketing agency committed to helping manufacturers grow. We’re happy to discuss digital marketing with you and help you discover the right solutions for your business. We even offer free digital assessments where we analyze existing search advertising campaigns, SEO rankings, and website UX.
