B2B marketers know that marketing a complex product like an automated manufacturing system - whether it’s integrating already-built solutions, building a new solution from scratch, or recommending a solution to meet a machinery need - is a constant challenge. It’s not as easy as a Pinterest post or a tweet with a relevant hashtag. Instead, you’re marketing to a specific set of buyers. These buyers do months of research, make decisions with a team of people, and want to know the exact reasons why your automated system is better than any other on the market - in extreme detail.
First and foremost, your site needs to be easily findable by the people who are searching for a solution like yours. That means building a marketing strategy around the goal of finding B2B buyers who are already out researching and looking for an automated manufacturing system. There are a few critical things you need to do to prep your website to be more findable.
1. You need content meant to educate buyers looking for a name for their problem.
We call this the “awareness stage” of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey consists of three steps; awareness is the first step. In it, the buyer has experienced a pain point and is online looking for a name for his or her problem. For you, perhaps the manufacturer has two machines and currently, employees are manually moving product from one to another to complete the project. It’s time-consuming and inefficient. They’re looking for a team of engineers to build a bridge between the two systems - or so they think. They start researching the problem online. If you offer this service, you are the expert in this arena. You should have content targeting this research stage in the buyer’s journey.
Contrary to popular belief, B2B buyers are researching purchase decisions on smartphones and tablets 42% of the time. That’s a 92% increase from 2014 to 2015, and it will continue to grow. If your site is difficult to use on a mobile device, you will be passed by during the critical researching phase. In addition, Google (the most-used search engine) gives priority to sites that are mobile-friendly; if yours isn’t, you’ll be losing valuable search engine results listings as well.
Video, infographics, images, listicles, blog posts - these are all examples of highly digestible content that you should be including on your B2B manufacturing systems website. These educational pieces are in formats that a potential buyer can easily absorb. And the best part? You’ve captured their attention for more than the typical 3-8 seconds afforded a page on a website. Now all you need to do is convert the visitor to a lead.
The form-fill is the gateway to permissions-based marketing, and it’s the ideal situation for your salesperson to close.
Set your website up for a successful funnel by offering multiple pieces in each stage of the buyer’s journey that will appeal to your ideal customer. Conduct market research, and then answer relevant questions they have during the research process - that is the key to successful conversions.
Trading contact information for a highly valuable download that is pertinent to your buyer’s research is the entire goal behind inbound marketing. Take-aways such as ebooks, white papers, guides, templates, and more - essentially, anything that your buyer will find useful - are valuable to them. Their contact information is valuable to you. It’s a win-win.
Your website’s job is not over once you’ve converted a visitor to a lead. Now is the time to really stand out among your competition. There are multiple ways to continue the conversation with a lead that isn’t ready to purchase just yet, but will in the future:
Need more information like this? Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Check out our Insider’s Guide to B2B Inbound Marketing, which covers how to turn your outbound tactics into inbound marketing lead-generation machines.