This leader in extruded window and door seals wanted to expand its business into new markets such as refrigeration and lighting. It chose digital agency Windmill Strategy to develop a dual inbound and outbound marketing approach that:
- Produced high-quality leads by reducing consumer-oriented traffic
- Turned anonymous site visitors into known prospects (that could be nurtured)
- Engaged prospects in new markets
“Working with Windmill has provided us with a new outlook in the digital market space and how we can achieve better results.”
— Marketing Director
Here’s our 5-step process any manufacturer or B2B company can follow to drive more leads, grow faster and fend off competition. Learn how this industry leader did it.
STEP 1: DISCOVERING HOW MANUFACTURERS SEARCH FOR NEW SUPPLIERS
The supplier’s original lighting and refrigeration web pages initially had limited search engine visibility. The pages had only skeletal content and were written and optimized for terms relating to specific markets (Lighting and Refrigeration), rather than the custom products the supplier made for those markets (e.g. diffuse polycarbonate lenses or extruded cooler bumpers).
To resolve these issues we looked closely at the specific, nuanced ways engineers and purchasing agents search for suppliers of extruded plastic. Google is often limited in its ability to uncover these phrases. Google’s Keyword Planner, for example, often directs digital marketers to either overly broad or extremely competitive keywords. Overly broad keywords can have low conversion rates; and, highly-competitive keywords can be difficult to rank for from an SEO standpoint. Moreover, their high cost-per-click rates can lead to poor ROIs when used in paid search campaigns.
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STEP 2: IMPROVING SITE TRAFFIC AND ADVERTISING ROI THROUGH BETTER KEYWORD SELECTION
Windmill Strategy used a variety of additional keyword tools to compile a targeted list of more than 100 search terms that matched the following criteria:
- Industrial Rather than Consumer Intent: Restricting ad display to queries that included terms such as custom, extruded, profiles, and others helped ensure that ads only showed to industrial clients. Such words are typically not used by consumers searching for one-off, off-the-shelf items. These PPC refinements reduced bounce rates, improved conversion rates, and lowered the cost per acquisition on the client’s Google Ads campaign.
- Measurable Monthly Search Volume: SEO required focusing on search terms used by actual industrial purchasing agents. The key goal was to avoid internal, interoffice jargon (terms which typically have NO monthly search volume) in favor of terms actual prospects use when searching the web.
- Rankability for SEO: Search engines strive to provide search results that are relevant to the search intent of a majority of web users. Ranking on page one of search results for high-volume phrases such as plastic light covers (880 searches/month) is often appealing to the B2B manufacturer. But search engines realize that this search is most commonly conducted by consumers, thus rankings on page one of search results are dominated by sites such as Home Depot, Lowes, Amazon.com, and specialty lighting e-tailers. Therefore, by using keyword phrases that included terms like extruded or manufacturer allowed the client to communicate their B2B intent to the search engines, which ensured much more relevant search results for refrigeration and lighting-industry queries.
STEP 3: TURNING ANONYMOUS WEBSITE VISITORS INTO KNOWN PROSPECTS
Once erroneous PPC clicks were eliminated and organic SEO traffic increased, the focus turned to converting as much of this traffic as possible into leads. Even among motivated buyers, web users begin their searches as information-gathers, and will often anonymously visit several supplier websites before reaching out for a quote. These visitors may later forget to return to a site when they gather quotes, so it’s important to encourage these individuals to submit their contact information upon the first visit. Windmill Strategy identified an existing pdf buyer’s guide owned by the client and created a sign-up form that allowed users to download this high-interest, gated document. Many visitors immediately completed a simple contact form and downloaded the buyer’s guide, which resulted in the company capturing numerous soft leads, which could be added to email drip campaigns and other relevant marketing initiatives.
What’s more, visitors who didn’t download the pdf were later served remarketing ads as they surfed the web, enticing them to return and download the buyer’s guide.
STEP 4: STREAMLINING INBOUND AND ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING VIA CRM SOFTWARE
As an official HubSpot provider, Windmill Strategy worked with the client to implement its customer relationship management (CRM) software, ensuring seamless integration between the web interface and the client’s back-office sales and marketing activities. Windmill helped the client use HubSpot for targeted email marketing, prospect data research, sales reporting, and automating social media posting.
The inbound efforts dovetailed with the client’s own outbound account-based marketing initiatives, which helped them qualify, stratify and nurture all their leads.
The result: A cost-efficient increase in qualified leads, and an automated system for guiding them further along the sales funnel.
STEP 5: PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER WITH WEB AND UX IMPROVEMENTS
Finally, throughout the process, several web and UX enhancements were employed to significantly improve organic search results (55%) and increase the number of qualified leads (49%). Here are a few:
- SEO enhancements to the site were made by building out additional content specific to the targeted markets.
- Site-wide UX and visual improvements were made in tandem, including a consistent and user-friendly layout for market-specific pages.
- Heatmaps and analytics were used to identify issues and opportunities to keep users engaged in the website longer.
- Conversion forms were re-tooled to pre-qualify leads, and reduce junk conversions from unqualified buyers and consumers.
From the Client
“I have enjoyed the level of energy that the Windmill team has put into understanding our business, researching our industry and providing us with a complete digital strategy that will help us elevate our brand. I appreciate their willingness to learn new technologies and apply their knowledge to bring us success.
Working with Windmill has provided us with a new outlook in the digital market space and how we can achieve better results. They listened to our marketing plan, understood it and developed a plan that is aligned with our marketing goals and objectives. I would highly recommend that any manufacturing company meet with Windmill to see how they can help you.”
