Category: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • Lead Generation for Manufacturers: Understanding the Alphabet Soup

    Lead Generation for Manufacturers: Understanding the Alphabet Soup

    [This post was originally published in December 2010. I have rewritten and updated it recently. Last Modified Date: 09/26/2022]

    Lead generation for manufacturers is not easy, and it takes time and effort. A lead is a lead, right? Depends – are you in Marketing or in Sales? Industrial lead generation for sales is complicated.

    On top of that, manufacturing marketers have to deal with and understand a bunch of acronyms—AIDA, ToFU, MoFu, BoFU, CTA, MQLs, SQLs, SAL, PPC, CTR, ROMI, etc., to name just a few. Are you familiar with all of them?

    • AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action
    • ToFU: Top of the funnel
    • MoFU: Middle of the funnel
    • BoFU: Bottom of the funnel
    • CTA: Call-to-action
    • MQLs: Marketing Qualified Leads
    • SQLs: Sales Qualified Leads
    • SAL: Sales Accepted Leads
    • PPC: Pay-per-click
    • CTR: Click-through rate
    • ROMI: Return-on-marketing-investment

    Really, the list is endless.

    The success of industrial lead generation depends on SAL

    You know all about the problem of Sales and Marketing operating in separate silos. Sales always blames Marketing for generating “crappy” leads, and Marketing points fingers at Sales for not taking follow-up action.

    SAL to the rescue!

    Huh? What am I talking about – Sales Accepted Leads is the bridge between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Clearly defining MQL, SAL and SQL are critical to the success of lead generation for manufacturers.

    What are MQLs and SQLS?

    A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is someone who has shown some interest and filled out a form with their basic contact information to download your content they believe is valuable. These are top-of-the-funnel (ToFU) leads.

    A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is someone who has shown an interest in your product or service and not just in consuming your content. These prospects are further along in their buying journey. These are middle-of-the-funnel (MoFU) leads who may be ready to have a conversation with your sales team.

    One of the biggest mistakes Marketing makes is they tend to hand off MQLs to Sales to qualify and close. However, marketing’s job doesn’t end with generating MQLs. There is a lot more work to be done.

    What is the best way to generate good MQLs and nurture them into SQLS? The answer – Manufacturing Content Marketing for Industrial Lead Generation. I’m obviously biased, but plenty of independent research studies have shown this to be 100% true.

    How SAL brings together Sales and Marketing

    There is an essential step between MQLs and SQLs. I refer to it as SAL – Sales Accepted Lead; it bridges the gap between the two.

    SAL cannot be subjective or arbitrary. Assigning a numeric score to qualified sales leads based on a predefined set of rules removes the subjectivity out of qualitative ranking like Hot, Warm, and Cold leads. Quantitative lead definitions reduce the friction between Sales and Marketing.

    SAL for lead generation for manufacturers

    SAL is a three-letter word that is the critical step in achieving Sales and Marketing alignment.

    • The two have to work together to come up with a unified definition of a qualified lead
    • Sales agrees to take follow-up action on these leads
    • Sales provides feedback to Marketing to refine these definitions and scores over time
    • Marketing must be willing to adjust scoring rules based on feedback from sales to refine lead scoring for optimal results (closed loop system)

    Without SAL, Sales and Marketing will continue to point fingers at each other when things don’t go right

    Marketing Automation for manufacturers

    Scoring and grading leads manually or using a simple spreadsheet are time-consuming and prone to errors. Manufacturers should use Marketing Automation software to make the process a lot more efficient and accurate. There are many more benefits to using Marketing Automation.

    I came across an excellent guide, “The Manufacturer’s Guide to Data-Driven Marketing Automation.” I suggest you download the free guide. (I’m not affiliated with the publisher).

    The key takeaway is that you may be making a very costly mistake if you treat all your leads the same, put them in a common bucket, and toss them over to sales to qualify and close. Instead, you will need some form of SAL to maximize your ROI for lead generation for manufacturers.

  • How Industrial Companies are Stuck on SEO for Content Marketing Strategy

    I find too many manufacturers and industrial distributors basing their entire content marketing strategy with one goal in mind – getting found in Google. In other words, the entire focus is on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

    “What’s wrong with that?” you ask. After all, your content is useless unless people can find your website when they search.

    Focusing your content marketing strategy only on SEO or top of the funnel traffic has many drawbacks. If I had to summarize it in one sentence it would be, search engines are not your target, human visitors are.

    People won’t automagically convert into qualified leads just because they found your industrial website in Google or other major search engines. That’s why your industrial content marketing strategy must be based on the entire sales funnel and not just ToFU (Top of Funnel) activities. Traffic by itself means zilch if you can’t convert it into opportunities.

    Technical SEO vs content SEO

    Right or wrong, SEO has an aura of mystery about it. This in turn turns off many site owners and marketers. While it is true there are certain aspects of SEO that are technical, it is only a small part of optimizing content.

    Thanks to the recent algorithm updates by Google, current best practices in organic SEO go far beyond keyword matching, Meta tags and keyword density. The new Google is smart enough to understand and interpret search intent.

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  • Industrial Blogging Lessons Learned from Working with Technical SMEs

    Industrial Blogging Lessons Learned from Working with Technical SMEs

    My clients often ask me to write posts for their industrial blogs. This requires me to work very closely with engineers and technical SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on a daily basis for creating content. I have learned some important lessons about blogging that are specific to this technical and industrial audience.

    • Editorial calendar: This may sound like content marketing 101 but let me tell you why it is so important for industrial blogs. At a recent discovery meeting, I received little to no response when I asked a group of engineers about their customers’ challenges that we could blog about. I was expected to do the industry research and come back with a list of topics. Ideas for blog posts just flowed after I presented my findings. I kid you not; I now have weekly blogging topics lined up until the second week of November for this manufacturing client.
    • SME Interviews: I have found it a lot easier to write technical blog posts if I start by interviewing SMEs. I have to do my homework and come prepared with a list of intelligent questions to ask. Engineers can spot a novice quickly and they are not particularly patient with people trying to interview them about a topic that the interviewer knows very little about.
    • Be a ruthless editor: Writing copy based on interviews is one thing but the skill that I find most useful is editing. It takes time and understanding of the subject matter to publish blog posts that are compelling stories that educate and engage readers. One caveat I have discovered is that there is a fine balance between being a marketer and a technical content editor. What may sound geeky to a marketer may be just the right content for a technical audience.
    • Become an SEO expert: You’ve got to learn most everything there is to know about keyword research, on-page SEO and internal linking with keyword-rich anchor text. There is no point in publishing a bunch of unoptimized blog posts that your target audience will never find in search engines. SEO and social marketing skills are what separate a content marketing expert from a copywriter.
    • Add a touch of humor: This one is a myth buster. Contrary to popular belief, engineers do have a sense of humor and appreciate wit. Just don’t go overboard and try to be too clever and cutesy. Clever wordsmithing will only take you so far if your content lacks technical accuracy and substance.

    For more on this topic, you may want to read my earlier post, “How to Coax Content Out of Engineers.”

    As a Mechanical Engineer myself, I find it easier to interact with technical SMEs but I still have to go in there prepared to get my job done. I know I couldn’t just wing it after all these years and having written hundreds of industrial blog posts.

    What has been your experience interacting with technical SMEs for writing blog posts and creating content for industrial marketing?

  • Industrial Content Marketing is Not Just for SEO

    Content marketing is a central topic in most of my recent conversations with industrial companies. The primary goal is to generate better quality leads from their websites. That is the good news.

    The not so good news is that they have a mistaken belief that content marketing is for search engine optimization (SEO). They’ve heard/read that Google loves fresh content, therefore all they need to do is publish lots of content and they’ll be on the first page of Google’s search results.

    I agree that SEO is a very important goal of content marketing; after all, your website needs to be found by the right people when they are searching for industrial products and services that you provide. However, your industrial marketing content must do a lot more than just SEO.

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  • You’ve Got Traffic. Now What?

    You’ve done all the hard work of optimizing (SEO) your industrial website and now you have a steady stream of traffic to your site. Congratulations!

    Sorry to rain on your parade but that is only half the equation. The other half is all about converting that traffic into leads and customers.

    I find there is a strong but mistaken belief among industrial companies that somehow their site visitors will interrupt their online activities and pick up the phone to call their sales people. Even though this behavior is contrary to how they themselves interact online, they expect their target audience to behave differently. (See my post, “Do You Believe in Industrial Websites?”).

    The reality is that the vast majority of site visitors will do nothing and leave. What they have is a website that is leaking potential leads like a sieve. Whenever I make that statement, there is silence on the other end of the phone or in a face-to-face meeting; I get a look that says, “What the heck are you talking about?”

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  • Internal Links – the Secret Sauce for DiY SEO

    It is no secret that link building is critical to SEO success. However, some people often ignore internal links because they are just not aware of their SEO benefits. To most do-it-yourselfers (DiY), link building for SEO means external or inbound or backlinks. These are links that originate from another site and point to a page on your domain.

    Don’t underestimate the SEO power of internal linking. They are not only great for increasing the number of pages indexed by Google but also help you target a larger number of keywords, especially long tail keywords. The number of site pages indexed by Google has a direct impact on your online lead generation. For every 50 to 100 pages indexed by Google, expect double-digit growth in the number of leads. (Read my earlier post, B2B Lead Generation Using a Business Blog).

    The best news is that building internal links is completely in your control.

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  • 2012 Content Marketing Trends for Manufacturers and Industrial Companies

    I just finished reading an excellent research report from the good folks at Content Marketing Institute (CMI). This report is chock full of statistics and graphs about B2B content marketing. In this post, I want to focus on some of their findings that I feel apply to content marketing for manufacturers and industrial companies.

    Even though the content marketing adoption rate for these companies is at an impressive 83%, I am surprised that it is even that high; the Manufacturing/ Processing industry (as defined in the report) is dead last among the six industries studied.

    What is encouraging though is the fact that 68% of companies with 10 – 99 employees maintain a blog as compared to only 55% for larger companies that employ this content marketing tactic. Many of the manufacturers and industrial companies fall in the smaller size category.

    That’s not the only good news for blogs. Even though other marketing tactics like in-person events and webinars are still seen as the most effective tactics, this year blogs registered a 45% increase in “perceived effectiveness” as compared to the study done in 2010. (See chart below).

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  • 10 New Google Algorithm Changes Announced

    Google changing its search algorithms is not news to most SEO experts. It’s a fact of SEO life. What is new with the latest algorithm changes is that Google is being more transparent and talking about them openly.

    What caught my attention and IMO applies to industrial marketing, are these four changes:

    1. Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: Google’s explanation: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
      What this means to industrial marketers: On-page SEO will now require more than just an optimized Title tag and text-based drop-down menus. There are plenty of rumors floating around that Google sometimes (more frequently lately it seems) ignores HTML title tags and creates its own titles in their coveted blue links. This latest change means you need to pay more attention to the content on site pages and make sure it is optimized for search terms. (more…)

  • Google’s Latest Algorithm Update Raises the Bar for Content Quality

    Last month, Google announced a change to its search algorithm, called the “Panda” update. This is a major change and there is plenty of buzz on the Internet about the dramatic drop in ranking of some well-known sites.

    This change is primarily designed to cleanse Google’s search results of low-quality content. Most SEO experts expect article directories or “content farms” to be heavily penalized by Google’s algorithm change.

    How does Google’s algorithm change affect industrial and B2B marketers?

    Well, for starters, posting the same article in several article directories for the sake of gaining inbound links is out. This is a strategy used by many SEO specialists in an attempt to boost the number of external links pointing back to your site.

    That does not mean article marketing is bad or should be banished permanently. According to statistics compiled by Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineLand, eHow actually gained in ranking. Some of the biggest losers were associatedcontent.com, suite101.com, ezinearticles.com and articlesbase.com.

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  • 3 DiY SEO Mistakes to Avoid When Optimizing Industrial Websites

    I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend (here in the U.S.) with your family. Now, back to work.

    Attempting do-it-yourself (DiY) search engine optimization (SEO) is common among industrial companies since they tend to have dedicated IT departments. Can DiY SEO be just as effective as hiring an outside expert? Should IT be handling this task? Those are two very debatable questions but that is a topic for another post.

    Here I want to focus on the three most common SEO mistakes that I see when industrial clients contact me for Website optimization. May be I just answered my own questions, if you catch my drift. 😉

    Mistake #1: Lack of strategy and incomplete keyword research

    Most people know about the free Google’s Keyword Tool and use it to do their keyword research. So far so good.

    Where DiYers tend to go wrong in using this invaluable tool are:

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