Marketing Blog

Blogging for industrial website or manufacturing company, or really any company is pretty much essential now.

However, we still get some resistance to blogging. I know it takes time. And even if you have someone else handle your content creation, there is an expense and still some time. But it is well worth it. Every time we increase our blogging we get more visitors. We are up over 600% over year to date. The root of all of that increase is our blog.

If you are not blogging now for your industrial website here is why you should.

We know for a fact that blogging for your business helps drive traffic to your site and helps with conversions.Search: The more pages that you have indexed by the search engines the more chances you have of being found on the web, attracting potential customers. Articles with different keywords help with long tail searches. In addition, blogging is “evergreen” content that can continue to drive traffic long after it is written.

Thought Leadership: Blogging also helps establish you as a thought leader. You can prove that you are a valuable resource to prospects and customers.

Partner: Sharing valuable content helps both your current and potential customers. We talk a lot about giving value before and after the sales. We want to provide our readers with content that helps them with their marketing and sales in the hopes that as they grow they will come back to us. Who has more value, a vendor that only gives value after the sale or a partner that gives value on both sides?

Caveats:

• You have to blog regularly: There is nothing sadder than an abandoned blog
• Have something interesting and helpful to say
• If you don’t have time or personnel to commit to a blog or content creation you can always outsource it (I know a guy).

How to Start an Industrial or Manufacturing Business Blog:

Technical:

CMS: Hopefully your website is built on a CMS. It gives you the most flexibility and (link) control over your content.

If it is not you have a couple of options. You can use a blogging platform tied to your website, like WordPress, or you can talk to your IT department (or whoever runs your site) about adding a blogging platform.

Research: Be sure to research the keywords that you want to target. What do you want people to search for and find your content? What do you want to be known for?

Consistency: Be sure that your blogging supports your overall marketing strategy. Don’t blog just to blog. Blog to drive your marketing goals.

Buyer Persona: Know what problems your customers have and write about those. Take a few different solutions to problems that you have and make those your first blog articles.

The Can:  Have a few blogs in the “can” and try to keep ahead of your publishing deadline. You never know when something will come up and you need to take advantage of one your already completed blogs.

We hope that this helps you with your industrial marketing blog. Want to learn more about industrial marketing strategies,? Download our guide here.

You might have seen our recent blog post about the “Three Stages of Website Design.”Maybe you realized you are in the first stage and your competitors are nearing the third, and it is time for an upgrade. Or perhaps you want to be the first in your space to have the better site. What it boils down to is that you are ready to redo your website, but you are concerned about price.

I understand. You should never pursue any marketing tactic unless you have a high ROI. Now ROI doesn’t have to be in monetary form. However, that does help quantify and give you a one-to-one comparison.

If the average sale for your company is in the 3,000 range and you think a website redesign can gain you an extra three sales a year, do it. Do it now. But what if you aren’t entirely sure. If you want to find out how much your leads are worth, get our Lead Calculator here.

The basis for how much should you expect for a website redesign relies on a few different factors.

Location is going to be one. If you hire a marketing company in Charlotte, NC, it should be a bit cheaper than one in Boston, MA. Stands to reason right? A higher cost of living, higher taxes, that all follows.

But answer me this.

Why can I get quotes from 3 different marketing companies all located in the greater Charlotte and Rock Hill area that range from $3,000 to $25,000?

Weird huh? The reason behind this is that companies have different degrees of overhead and different ways of tackling a project. For instance, the national company based in Charlotte is going to have different needs than a small construction firm.

And different companies offer different services.

The key to getting what you want on your budget is to have an idea of what you want and a reasonable budget. There are people you can find that work for peanuts but is that who you want to trust your online presence with?

What is the state of your current website? For instance, in a recent project we helped on, the original designer built the site from scratch in HTML. Which is fine but we want to build our sites on a responsive CMS.

A CMS gives our partners the ability to make changes to their website, upload blog articles, etc. without having to wait for us (or pay us). They have the capability. However, the caveat is that we have to rebuild the website.

The upside is that is it on a CMS and gets updated and becomes responsive (it looks good no matter how you view it). What is the downside? It is a bit more expensive for the initial outlay.

You already have all the images and the text, but you need them on a new platform that is responsive and modern. You have the site layout and the landing pages also.

For a project like this, you might expect to pay $2,000-$6,000.

If you are already on the CMS that your web developer uses, that is going to lower cost.
Let’s say you are already on WordPress (the world’s most popular CMS ((and what we use)) and you want to upgrade your website to be responsive.

That is roughly going to be in the $1,000-$2,000 range. Most likely there are changes that have to go along with the responsiveness needs.

Adding E-com: E-com is more expensive than a purely more information site, it requires more work on the back end. Every item that you want to sell needs its page.

You also have to add additional components that cost money on a recurring basis.

If you want to add a small 10 item store, and you have it on something like WordPress, look at around $1,000 to $3,000.

We know that there are a ton of different ways that you might want to upgrade your marketing. Every customer and every website is unique. That is why there’s so much room for different quotes on the same process.

If you want a way to be able to take all of these various quotes and appraise them you are in luck. We have a free Creative and Marketing Appraisal Spreadsheet that will allow you to grade each company’s proposal and determine the best fit.

The key to any marketing activity whether it is web design or video marketing is not how much it cost, but how much you expect in return.

I will make an investment that nets me a 200% return every day of the week. And you should too. Measure your lead value and measure your potential partners and pull the trigger. Good luck and if we can help let us know.

Insurance and financial services content creation have lagged behind many other industries for a few reasons. First of all, they are highly regulated fields. There are a couple of pitfalls that you have to avoid.

Secondly, most insurance and financial services companies think of their product as boring. They often question, “Why would anyone want to know about my product or service? Marketing for insurance is a snooze.”

I have written about why people should choose different pallets and industrial air capture. Nothing is boring to people who need it. And guess what? People need insurance. They need financial services. So shouldn’t you talk about it?

News flash: You should.

Most of the regulations for insurance and financial services as a whole deal with

A. Telling the truth
B.  Not pushing one solution over another

Yes, I know that is a broad simplification. But come on, I am in marketing not law. But I bet if you check with whatever regulations govern your particular area of financial services you will see that I am right.

And that is wonderful because the basis behind content marketing and inbound marketing is:

• Telling the truth.
• Educating your market.
• Letting your customer decide what solution they should use

Content marketing, insurance, and financial services are a match made in heaven!

How do you start with content marketing for your insurance company? 

My first advice is probably getting old to most of your regular subscribers. Start with your goal.

What do you want your content marketing to do? Sure leads and prospects are excellent, but make sure that you make your goals SMART. The more content tied your goals, the easier they are to accomplish.

Create a calendar for your content: (link) You should know when and what you are going to do for content. Make sure your website can support blogging (if you are on WordPress you are golden) if not, you may have to switch platforms. Talk to your web designer.

Most of your first content pieces are going to be blogs.

Premium content: To get more leads you are going to need to create a piece of premium content. This could be an e-book or a white paper that is helpful to your audience. Remember to write with your audience in mind. You want to keep your marketing pieces informative and not sales-y.

Want some help with a marketing appraisal? Contact us and sign up.

There are a lot of tough decisions that business owners and CEO’s have to make and one of them is marketing. What if you need a new website or marketing video? Sure you can go and look at proposals and portfolios, but it is tough to compare apples to apples.

Some business owners, whether they are in financial services, manufacturing or material handling, are comfortable going with their guts. On the flip side, there are some that want to make sure that have all the information and could use a tool to help them decide.

Hey, I understand. It is a difficult decision. There are differences in price, philosophy, experience, capability, and team.

So we decided to break those out and talk about each and how they might relate to your business. Here is a way to choose a marketing agency.
Price: This is the easiest one. You don’t get one quote in US dollars, one in bitcoin and one in stock and have to decide. For the most part, all quotes prices are easy to compare.

Although there are other ancillary questions, like retainers or hosting (if it is a web design project).

Philosophy: Most of the time creative agencies have a different outlook from corporate standard businesses. There might be a dog. There will be someone with non-traditional colors in their hair. These are often superficial, so don’t get thrown off when selecting an agency.

The root philosophy should have some tie to your business. Some creative agencies are more relaxed; some are more button up. Decide what type of company you are more comfortable working with from a philosophical standpoint.

Experience: This can be summed up as; Do you like what is in their portfolio and do you think it will translate to what you want? A portfolio is not only going to showcase a marketing agency’s work, but also how they approach a problem. Are they more focused on technical or creative, or a mixture of the two?

• Have they worked with companies similar to yours? If you are an insurance agency, do you want to know that your chosen marketing firm has financial services background?
• From their presentation, do you think they can help you differentiate your company from your competitors?
• Does their previous work speak to you?
• Do you think they can create something that speaks to your clients?
• Can we learn something from them? Are they willing to teach and train, or do they just take orders?

Team: Team is very subjective. I have seen huge companies go with tiny marketing agencies and tiny companies work with large marketing companies. It is a toss up. What makes you more comfortable?

Do you want to be able to talk to an owner when you call and have them invested in your success?
Or do you want to know that there is a huge team that is available if you need them?

It comes down to your expectations and how you want to interact with the team.

If you would like some help deciding which marketing agency or creative shop you should go with, download our Marketing and Creative Agency Assessment Tool. It can help you quantify your needs and help you make a sound decision.

Need help with Commercial video in Charlotte, Rock Hill or Gastonia? Or really anywhere

We can help.

We talk to people a lot about what they want their websites to do and what results they want from their site. Then we look at their current industrial website, and I see why they don’t get the results that they want.

Most people in industrial, material handling, manufacturing and construction don’t know that there are a few different stages in website development.

I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the three separate stages of website design and what makes each one unique. The goal, of course, is to be in the third stage.

Simple Industrial Website:

Your industrial company has its first website. Nice work, while this is only this first step, it is a very meaningful one. Your website functions as the hub of almost all of your marketing activity.

Content: Your site is relatively simple, not too complicated. You have the standard pages, About Us, Services Page, etc. You talk about your services, but maybe you are talking about your services a bit too much

It is probably very focused on words and less focused on images. You have little to no video on your site.

Conversion: Your contact page is probably the only place that you have for conversion.

SEO: Your SEO is based primarily on on-page SEO if at all. You might be using some outdated techniques. Your limited amount of pages and lack of social outreach hurt your SEO.

Content Marketing Stage:

Your website is now more modern, it has more images, and you have more pages than your original site. It has a nice clean, welcoming look.

Content: You are beginning to focus more on your customers in your copy. You know that writing from their perspective is much more efficient.

Maybe you have some video, but they are hosted on YouTube instead of self-hosted, which can bring in more visitors and links.

Conversion: Maybe you have a few downloads that act as honey for your websites. Perhaps you have a way for people to sign up for a newsletter.

SEO: You have begun blogging for your website. You understand the concept of social media as a signal, and you have a few inbound links.

Inbound Marketing Stage:

You have fully embraced inbound marketing. Your website is the hub of your marketing both online and offline. You have marketing automation that makes your job easier and makes you more productive.

Content: Your content is entirely geared towards your customers and prospects. Your video is self-hosted (or is for the purpose of the search engines). You have a variety of pages that talk to different segments of your audience depending on who they are, their needs and their personas.

Conversion: You have a library of content for various stages of your prospects needs. You have nurturing campaigns that send conversion to other content they might be interested in so you can fully nurture your prospects and send better leads to sales.

You regularly update your blog (once a week or more), and you have great Call to Actions. You have a variety of conversion pages and a growing email newsletter list.

SEO: You have an active link building campaign. Your content and social media are designed to work as social signals to the search engines. You are regularly updating your site so that Google gives you points.

Want to learn more about industrial website design and what you can do to make yours more effective? Download our Guide to Better Websites here.