Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

In today's mobile-driven world, having a responsive website has become increasingly important, and for the last couple of years, it’s been an absolute must. If your current website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re long overdue for an upgrade.

You can check if your website provides a good experience for smartphone and tablet users through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

Better security with SSL

Since January 2017, Chrome has begun showing warnings on websites that collect credit card and password information but don’t have HTTPS. While this change won’t affect a standard B2B website, it shows a trend by large tech companies like Google and Facebook to make the web a more secure place.

Considering that in 2016 Google also started looking at HTTPS as a ranking factor in the search results, securing your website with an SSL certificate is becoming increasingly important, and you’re better off being ahead of the curve than behind it.

Suggested Reading: HTTPS – a new way to rank?

Make sure your website is up-to-date with your manufacturing business

We like to say that your website is never done. It should always be a work in progress. As your business evolves and grows over the years, your website should evolve with it to accurately represent the story and benefits of your business - for instance up-to-date reference on your equipment and capabilities

It’s easy to neglect your website when you get busy running your day-to-day operations, but it’s also important to consider how it should change when you make adjustments to your strategy or service/product offerings.

Suggested Reading: The Manufacturing Website: Four Ways to Do It

Also Watch our Video: The 7 Essential Features of a Manufacturing website

Write at least 2 articles on your blog per month

Content is one of the best investments you can make in the long-term health and success of your online presence. It essentially functions as the fuel for your marketing engine. Without consistently producing new content, you’ll find that many of your marketing activities get delayed or don’t get off the ground at all.

Blog articles give you more content resources to draw upon for your marketing efforts, but each article also functions as an additional opportunity to bring more organic search traffic to your website.

Watch our Webinar: How content marketing can help grow your business

Also see our article: 10 low cost content creation tools for manufacturers

Build high-quality links from other websites to your website

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been a crucial part of online marketing for years and will be for many more to come. It’s very important to make sure your website is correctly optimized for keywords that are relevant to your business - for instance specific manufacturing capabilities. But on top of that, you need to work on building links from other high-quality websites to your site.

In short, search engines view these inbound links as votes of confidence in the quality of your website. The more quality links you have, the more likely your site is going to rank high for its target keywords. If this sounds confusing, watch our Webinar on the fundamentals of SEO.

Also, read a Case Study: East Coast Repair and Fabrication increases organic search traffic by 150%

Write at least 1 guest blog article on another site per month

This is somewhat related to the item above, as it is often used as a tactic to earn new inbound links. But by writing a blog post for another website in your industry, you get the added benefit of being exposed to an audience you wouldn’t normally reach.

Our SEO webinar goes into this in a bit more detail so you can understand how a little work can go a long way

Watch Pronto's SEO webinar

Download our Ebook: How SEO Works

Make sure your website has a clear conversion path

It might be obvious what you’d like your website visitors to accomplish, but it won’t necessarily be so obvious to them. You need to make sure your website has strong, clear “calls to action” to tell your visitors where they should go, what they should do, and what they should expect when they do it. From requesting technical specs to submitting an RPF make it clear, and make it easy.

Suggested Reading: 8 Tips for Writing Clickable Calls to Action

Also Watch our Video: Who Are Your Customers? Getting Started with Industrial Persona Targeting

Does your website have a clear path from initial visit to conversion?

Having a clear conversion path also means making sure your visitors don’t get lost or distracted along that path. Every page on your site should help guide or convince your visitors to take your desired action.

This doesn’t mean turning all your pages into sales pitches, but your pages should either describe the benefits of your services/products, display your expertise in your industry, or educate your prospects on why they need your services. Consider removing any unnecessary pages.

Suggested Reading: What is a pitch page and what is it good for?

Download our Ebook: Persona Targeting for Industrial Companies

Make sure all the pages on your site work toward achieving your goals

Having a clear conversion path also means making sure your visitors don’t get lost or distracted along that path. Every page on your site should help guide or convince your visitors to take your desired action.

It's important to have a clear idea of your sales funnel, so you can understand how each page on your website is driving your prospect through the sales process. Consider dumping any unnecessary pages that aren't contributing to this.

Suggested Reading: What is a sales funnel and why is it important?

More Suggested Reading: 5 Things to Include in Your Manufacturing Website That Other Sites Don’t Have

Use an eBook or detailed documentation to collect more leads

Often, website visitors aren’t quite ready for a consultation or a talk with your sales team. In these cases, offering an educational eBook, or detailed documentation on your equipment and services, provided an important next step for those who are still researching their options. And this can be a great way to collect their contact information and start nurturing them until they are ready to speak with you.

Learn more about how to create and use eBooks to engage your prospects

More Suggested Reading: Is Digital Marketing Important for Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses? Can You Get Value from It?

Use a tool to capture email subscribers

Another great option for those who aren’t ready to connect with you directly is subscribing to your email newsletters. Tools like Sumo and OptinMonster can do this through unobtrusive pop-ups that encourage your visitors to subscribe.

Suggested Reading: 108 tips, tools and resources for getting more website traffic

Also Read our Step by Step Guide to Effective Manufacturing Marketing Automation

Build relevant email campaigns for targeted audiences

Email is still one of the best ways to reach your prospects and customers to provide them with information about your business.

On a basic level, this means making sure you’re sending out an email newsletter each month. Beyond that, you might also want to send out emails to specific segments of your audience. Maybe you send an email to prospects that have gone cold, encouraging them to reconnect with your sales team. Or perhaps an email to clients letting them know of new capabilities or manufacturing equipment you've acquired.

Reaching out to your audience on a more specific, personal level leads to a greater chance of starting a conversation with those people, and from there, you can steer that conversation toward a sales discussion.

Suggested Reading: 14 Tips for Effective Email Marketing

Also Watch our Video: You (Probably) already have everything you need to launch a B2B marketing campaign

Use AdWords to generate more qualified traffic and leads

If you’re looking for a quick bump in traffic and leads, AdWords is the fastest way to accomplish this. With Google’s paid search advertising platform, you can put your business at the top of the search results right when your prospective clients are looking for help.

Building a successful AdWords campaign can’t be done overnight. It’s a continual process that involves analyzing data and making adjustments to your strategy. But when done correctly, it can be a dependable, consistent source of new leads. If that sounds like a lot of work, we can create and manage your campaign with our AdWords Management service.

Suggested Reading: The Business Owner’s Guide to Google AdWords

More suggested Reading: How to Create an Effective Manufacturing Paid Search Campaign

Invest in retargeting

If you’re putting time, money or resources into any sort of marketing, you should also consider launching a retargeted ad campaign. Retargeting allows you to display banner ads to people who have previously visited your website as they browse other sites across the web. If you’ve ever viewed a product on Amazon and then see ads for that product on another website, you’ve been retargeted.

Most website visitors don’t convert into leads on their first visit to your site. But with retargeting, you get a second chance at that conversion by remaining “top-of-mind” as they browse the internet.

Suggested Reading: Retargeting helps you reclaim lost leads

Also Read: How to Make Money with Online Lead Generation

Review your traffic, keyword ranking and form submissions

Having detailed data on how your website is performing is incredibly important for improving your marketing strategy. It allows you to see which marketing channels and promotional tactics have had the biggest impact on bringing new leads and business.

If you can supplement this information with sales data from your CRM platform, you can get detailed ROI calculations that will help you make better, informed decisions about your sales and marketing.

Pro tip: BUILD. MEASURE. LEARN. REPEAT.

Also Watch our Video: How to measure ROI from industrial marketing efforts

Invest in call tracking to know which online campaigns make your phone ring

Let’s say you’re running an AdWords campaign. Someone clicks one of your ads and reaches your site, but instead of submitting a contact form, they pick up their phone and call you.

Usually you’ll have no way to determine if that incoming call is because of AdWords or some other marketing campaign. But with call tracking in place, you can connect your offline phone lines with online traffic sources, giving you even more information about how your campaigns are performing.

Suggested Reading: How to get detailed information on every caller that your website converted

Additional Reading: How ignoring these 5 vanity metrics can help you focus on what matters for your business

Plan your execution strategy

In the end, a great marketing strategy involves putting hard work into several channels and promotional efforts. Come up with a realistic plan for how you’ll actually follow through on your strategy and all the marketing tactics you want to invest in. This could involve building in-house marketing team, using your existing resources or outsourcing to agency like Pronto.

Learn more about Pronto's marketing execution services for your manufacturing business

Also See: Making Your Own Website? Is Hiring Internal Employee or External Services Suitable for you?