Industrial blogs are not often talked about by manufacturers when it comes to lead generation. They tend to brush it off as too time consuming and/or not very effective. They are not completely wrong about their complaints, but don’t be too quick to discard industrial blogging.
Let’s face it, your audience of engineers and industrial buyers is not actively looking for your products every day, especially if you are a manufacturer of custom-engineered systems. They have very little reason to visit your static website regularly. Whereas industrial blogs can drive a higher volume of traffic and more frequently if you publish relevant content consistently.
You are going to need an industrial blog if you are doing manufacturing content marketing. There is no getting around that. Why do I say that?
All the reasons that I have cited here, together play an important role in industrial lead generation.
Industrial blogs are invaluable if you target engineers of any kind, especially if your goal is to educate younger and less experienced engineers.
That’s not just me making that claim. Here are some findings from the study “What’s on the Mind of the Engineer?” – A Global Research Study produced by Beacon Technology Partners, LLC and UBM Tech Electronics Network.
NOTE: Over the years, I have published a few posts here where I’ve talked about the power of one engineer to another.
At the very beginning of the post, I acknowledged the fact that complaints about industrial blogs weren’t completely unjustified.
However, I see the problem a little differently. I say that based on my actual conversations with manufacturers and other industrial companies. There is a definite disconnect between expectations and the reality.
The reality is that industrial blogs are not specifically designed for direct response. They are more of a “set the table” kind of a strategy. Which means you have to be patient and be consistent with publishing fresh blog posts.
I have seen too many cases where a website redesign involved setting up a blog with a few posts and is neglected after that. That simply won’t cut it. No wonder I hear many manufacturers complaining about blogging not producing the results.
That doesn’t mean blogs can’t generate leads. I have seen several instances where a comment left on a blog post, started a meaningful conversation which led to a substantial order or project.
It is a known fact that creating relevant technical content for industrial blogs is time consuming and most manufacturers and engineering companies do not have the necessary bandwidth and/or the in-house resources.
That’s why 87% of manufacturing content marketers outsource technical content creation.
I’m not suggesting that industrial blogs are a good fit for every industrial company. For example, an industrial distributor of standard products and/or consumables, may find it very difficult to create original content themselves since they depend primarily on their principal manufacturer(s) to provide them product information. For others, industrial blogs are important for their success with content marketing and lead generation.
Practice social distancing and stay safe.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.
Stu Ringwald says:
Rings true for what we are exactly trying to do to promote traffic to our website, strengthens what we are doing correct with new in sites on what we missed, thank you,
Achinta Mitra says:
Stu,
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I’m happy to hear that this post validates what you’ve been doing. I visited your website (ionthis.com) and found out that you are in Houston too. Glad to hear from a fellow Houstonian. Liked your tagline, “FULL SERVICE ‘Cradle to Grave’ Contract Manufacturer.”
Abhiya says:
Good Read. Thanks for the insight