5 Tips for Industrial Digital Marketing Success

If you’re an industrial business looking for ways to expand your customer base, you probably have some idea of how complex the digital space has become for sales and marketing. Only a few years ago, human interaction was needed at every point of a technical sale, from first contact to after sales customer service. Today, even your top-tier customers turn to the Internet for just about every purchase, in a variety of ways. From initial vendor sourcing all the way through to help with warranty fulfilment, the Internet has revolutionized the way industrials do business. Read on for 5 must read tips for industrial digital marketing success.

1. Focus on a Killer Website

Anyone in sales and marketing today knows that having a professional website is more important than having a professional business card. Most people will look for it and use it to learn far more than your position and phone number. Your website is where potential customers come to see how you can meet their needs through the products or services you have to offer. For existing customers, your website should be their 24/7 source of information. It should answer their questions and provide meaningful ways to interact with your company. To ensure your website meets the needs of prospects and existing customers, focus on making it informative, effective, and engaging:

• Be accessible on all devices.

This may require a site update so that it is mobile responsive, but is essential to online marketing success! At least 40% of your potential customers are doing searches and viewing emails on mobile devices much of the time. If your site doesn’t scale properly and is hard to navigate, you may lose these opportunities for potential business.

• Lead with your best information.

Don’t allow your website to become a cumbersome, deep well of information. Everything that’s most important should be accessible from your Home Page. Think outside of standard navigation bars and incorporate pop-ups, call-out boxes, contact and offer forms, video, grid information pictures and links. There are so many options, there’s no reason not to call attention to all your most important content.

• Provide an engaging visitor experience.

This could provide content for an entire article, but here are a few ways to accomplish a better user experience on your site:

• Communicate the personality and values of your employees. Using stories, photos and videos are a great way to connect on a human level.
• Add a Live Chat feature, which will instantly tell a visitor your website is dynamic and there are real people available to answer their questions.
• Position yourself as a Thought Leader by making your site a go-to source of industry related information, as well as technical knowledge. Provide a value-added experience by adding blogs, videos, and other forms of content that provides a value-added experience to users.
• Customer testimonials and case studies are proven tools to keep a visitor on your site and build credibility. Use videos, photos and interactive materials to communicate the application and results of your products or services.
• Show your brand consistently and unobtrusively.

Make sure your visual branding and brand messaging are on every page of the site. Someone who’s doing research may not spend a lot of time there the first time they visit. Your brand presence should be strong enough so that once they leave, there is something they take away and remember.

• Have a clear call to action on each page.

There should be multiple ways for a visitor to get in contact with the right person in your company, and some should be instantaneous. Additionally, it’s a good idea to hold some of your best content aside for a call to action. People are usually willing to submit a simple form to obtain information they think will be valuable. This type of content is often called “asset content” and some examples are White Papers, video courses, eBooks, and infographics.

2. Be Proactive About SEO

SEO is not something you do once and then forget about. Search engines are constantly evolving to better serve results to users. If you want to grab one of those coveted spots on page one results, you’ll have to continue to evolve as well. There are many tips and tools to accomplish this, but a few of our favorites include:

• Use an analytics tool to see how you are most successfully found. Build on it. Change what isn’t bringing you relevant visitors.
• Use an analytics tool to see how your competitors are found. Get the keywords that work for them and research which would work best for your company.
• Choose keywords that have the highest search rates combined with the lowest competition and pepper these keywords throughout your site, both on pages and downloadable content.

Which brings us to:

3. Create Better Content

Businesses and industries don’t stand still … but has your content? Did you launch a website, then forget about it? Search engines can recognize stagnant, one-dimensional sites that haven’t acquired any new content in years. With the right keywords and quality copy, you can see a marked increase in your rank positions, the rate of visitors to the site, and their conversion. Use your keywords in an inconspicuous manner by integrating them into headings, sub-headings, alt tags, photo descriptions, etc.

Some of our favorite types of content:

• Case studies
• Testimonials
• Technical articles
• White papers
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Employee spotlight
• And finally, … did you know that YouTube is second only to Google as a search engine? Have a video done for your business that contains one or several FAQs, new product features, a “how to”, or anything else that a client may search for.

4. Be Social

Even an industrial, B2B needs to have a social media presence, which is at the top of the list of markers Google uses to rank companies by “authority” in search results. Other benefits can include:

• Being found via the platform’s own search engine
• Posting customer reviews or project updates
• Promoting your company’s events and charitable activities
• Allowing customers to send you direct messages, which functions as a means of customer service. Just be sure to have someone designated to answer these as soon as they come in, or your visitor may contact a competitor in the interlude.

5. Commit to It

Commit to your digital marketing success. Whether that means you, or someone else in your company spends time on it each day, or you outsource management to a digital marketing firm like Marketects, there must be an investment to reap the benefits. Posting daily social media updates, replying to comments, developing new website content, proactively working to improve SEO, and keeping an eye on analytics all take time.  Accept going in that this is an ongoing process and there will be ebb and flow to your results. Holidays, vacation seasons, major industry upsets, and other factors can make one or two months’ analytics look less than stellar. Keep an eye on the bigger picture and don’t even consider giving up.

Competing in the digital marketing field can be overwhelming, but there are many ways to level the playing field – whether you are a Fortune 500 or startup. Focus on the essentials for your industry and customers to get the best results for the growth your business.