When building websites and developing a digital presence, in the manufacturing industry, it’s important to determine who your customers are and how to reach them. The core basics on any marketing plan. However, when building a website and digital presence for a manufacturing company that does mostly business-to-business (B2B) sales, there are some key items that are often overlooked and can become costly in the long-run.
Top 5 Website Tips for Manufacturing Companies
- Maximize keyword and SEO investment
- Manufacturing companies benefit from targeting parts of their website and specific regions where they are looking to increase sales.
Example: Your business is adding a new sales district to your company. Six months before the new district starts, your sales rep in that area will add target specific keywords for the area/region and begin running Google Ads to the target market.
SEO is important for any website and helps you stand above your competition.
- Blog regularly – weekly is preferred, but monthly is a great place to start if you are doing nothing
- Here are some subject ideas:
- New equipment you are getting
- New expansions
- Changes in your industry
- Answers to common questions your customers ask
- Take time to explain differentiators your company has
- Employee recognition
- Looking human and engaging as a company
- Here are some subject ideas:
These subjects show an active web presence. It keeps your content current for your customers and helps improve your SEO standing. Fresh, accurate, and helpful content is key to keeping clients happy and bringing in new ones.
- Video speaks volumes
- Adding videos and appropriate text with them are a huge gain for a website. Make sure that your videos are not only on your website, but also on YouTube with all of that lovely text.
- Subject ideas:
- Tours of your facility
- Introductions to staff or key people
- How-to video
- FAQ videos
- Subject ideas:
- Adding videos and appropriate text with them are a huge gain for a website. Make sure that your videos are not only on your website, but also on YouTube with all of that lovely text.
Engaging your audience with video is effective and business don’t want to hear just talk. They want to see results. Video goes a long way in showing your customer you not only talk the talk and can back it up too.
- Publishing a white paper
- White papers demonstrate industry knowledge and show credibility. A white paper is meant to inform a reader on a topic. Typically it will have knowledge, research and solutions. This is where you can really geek out about a topic with lots of text, data and graphs.
- Publish your customer’s success
- Let your customers tell their success with your company. Don’t over think this step. As they sing your praises, you can easily type it up in an email and then ask the customer’s permission to use it. You can even have a testimonial page, it’s also effective to have those mixed into your website pages.
While these are all good suggestions for anyone with a website, it’s especially true for business to business manufacturing companies. A big portion of the difference is how the buyer makes the buying decision. In business, when you’re spending money, there are always questions of:
“Why are you spending that money?”
“What is the return on that investment?”
“What is its value to the company?”
Answering these questions and making those points crystal clear on your website increases sales, bottom line. Businesses, like people, all want the same thing: Products or services that make their lives easier and, in the case of business, help them make profit. If you do that with your website, your company will be manufacturing more and more.