Achieve Your Business Objectives With a Content Agency 

In a world where online sales channels have become increasingly important, digital content is a necessary part of your marketing strategy that you cannot ignore. But creating quality content takes time, creative energy and a strong understanding of digital platforms.

Chances are, you don’t have the necessary resources to do this in house. Between basic website maintenance and supporting your sales team, producing thought-leadership content doesn’t seem to fit in your schedule. 

If your manufacturing firm wants to gain more market share or cultivate better brand awareness, an increased content marketing effort may be exactly what you need. The right agency can be an invaluable partnership, ensuring the right customers find your business. However, hiring a content agency isn’t as cut and dried as you might think.

Here are several steps and considerations to discuss before you hire an agency.

Consider This Before Partnering with a Content Agency

The objectives of your business can be achieved through a focused content strategy, but only if you are clear on your goals and how you are measuring success.

Before hiring a content agency, discuss items such as sales goals, creating awareness for your brand, and positioning your organization as a leader in the industry. Content plays a role in all of these.

You also need to ask yourself a few tough questions about your existing content.

For instance, when was the last time you updated your website content? When was the last time you published or shared something new that provided real value to your target market?

Chances are good that you’ll need an agency partner if you are still relying on print materials that haven’t been updated in several years.

As I’ve mentioned, your internal bandwidth will also play a major factor in outsourcing your content. It can take 50+ hours per month to produce and promote high quality content, and most brands don’t have the capacity to do this in-house.

Understand the Content Landscape

There are dozens of different kinds of content that you can use for your manufacturing brand – blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks, infographics or webinars are all viable types of content you might consider incorporating into your strategy.  

The sheer number of content opportunities means you’ll need to evaluate each potential partner carefully to understand what’s in their wheelhouse. Large, full-service agencies can provide a full suite of services, but they understandably come with more overhead and higher rates. Smaller agencies, on the other hand, often have several niche areas. Most of these specialize in one or several types of content production and are generally friendlier to your budget.

What to Look for in a Content Agency

The content agency you hire should do more than just churn out content for you. Think of this as a long-term relationship and an extension of your in-house team. Here are a few items you can use to evaluate potential partners. 

Areas of Expertise

• Does the agency have experience creating content for manufacturers? And are they comfortable writing slightly technical content as your strategy evolves?
• What types of content do they excel at?
• What is the agency’s breadth of expertise? Are they strictly copywriters? Or are they familiar with related concepts such as keyword research and search engine optimization?

Who is Doing the Work?

• What specific services are handled in-house, and what services (if any) are outsourced?
• If any services are outsourced, how is quality controlled?
• Will you have an account manager supporting you?

Measuring and Reporting

• Does the agency have a solid track record of success? And will they actively measure and report on their content marketing efforts in relation to your business goals?
• Does the agency make an effort to understand your business and its goals?
• What tech tools or other reporting tools are used? How often do you receive reports?

Remember that mistakes with outsourcing can be costly. While content creators can quickly familiarize themselves with your brand, you’ll want to make sure it’s a long-term creative fit for both of you. Starting from scratch is a massive drain on company resources and you will lose momentum that you have built, which can be frustrating.

Next Steps for Your Marketing Team

Creating content for your brand, making sure that it is optimized and sharing it across multiple channels takes a considerable amount of effort. If you’re ready to commit to a content strategy to achieve your business goals, hiring an agency is a smart move. Content comes in many different forms, styles and voices, so do your research on each potential partner to ensure that they are the right fit for your brand. 

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your digital marketing. Have more questions about hiring a content agency? Reach out to us directly.

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How to Use Data to Run More Effective Campaigns 

What gets measured gets not only managed, but improved.

Marketing metrics are no different, and as the world becomes more and more digital in its communication, marketing campaigns utilize a set of metrics that are much more trackable and manageable than they ever were. However, you can find yourself getting overwhelmed and even wasting a lot of time if you are unsure of where to focus your attention.

Of the dozens of marketing metrics that you can track, there are seven that not only matter tremendously but also fall in line with the inbound marketing approach that we follow. The goal of inbound marketing is to generate more leads through your website which can place you in control of the sales cycle, allowing you to pursue stronger partnerships with potential clients.

Once you have a good handle on these seven metrics, your organization will run more effective campaigns. You’ll find that your internet visibility is stronger, and your expertise is in much higher demand, especially in the world of manufacturing where there is a lot of competition.

The best part about these metrics is that they can be easily tracked using Google Analytics or similar tracking tools. Sure, there are more advanced tools available, but you won’t need to spend a lot of money to obtain insight on these basic data points.

Website Visits/Traffic Sources

Site visits are a basic but very important metric. Every campaign should have a “visits” goal because traffic is often the early indicator of how effective your message is. If clicks to a landing page are lower than expected, then the message, graphics and/or the call to action needs tweaking.

A closely related metric is traffic sources. Within Google Analytics, there are several primary “sources” you need to be aware of:

Direct Traffic: Visits that comes from those who directly typed or copied the URL of your website into their browser, clicked on a bookmark or clicked a link in an email/SMS chat.

Search/Organic Traffic: Visits to your website from an unpaid search result on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Referral Traffic: Traffic that comes from a third-party website rather than a search engine. This could include links from press releases, guest articles, business directories or social media websites.

Paid Website Traffic: These are visits to your website from people who have clicked on a Google paid search ad or display ad. This only applies to businesses running advertising campaigns, and you’ll need proper tracking set-up within Analytics.

All four of these are equally important in that search engines like to see traffic coming from each source. There aren’t any hard and fast rules about the ideal breakdown in traffic, but direct traffic and organic traffic are still highly coveted. Take steps to improve traffic from all sources and you’ll be moving in the right direction.

Time Spent on Site

Do the visitors of your website leave after just checking out a few articles or pages?

Do they spend significant amounts of time surfing your website?

A little more than half of all website visitors spend less than 15 seconds on any given website, and we obviously want these visitors to hang around longer than that.

The first step to increasing time spent on your website is making sure your strategy includes buyer personas that focus on their pain points as well as content that addresses the challenges.

Publishing original content such as blog articles, case studies, podcasts, videos or white papers gives visitors a reason to explore your website. Plus, when you create thought-leadership content, you demonstrate to search engines why your website is relevant.

Bounce Rate

Related to time spent on a website is something called Bounce Rate.

A “Bounce” refers to the act of a visitor getting to the website and then leaving said website without any further interaction.

Ideally this rate should never rise above 60%. You need to make some serious adjustments to your message, homepage design, and some of your CTAs if your bounce rate is this high.

If your campaign message aligns with your landing page and you give visitors the information they want, you’ll begin to see your bounce rate fall. This is an iterative process that takes time. Systematic tweaks over time can yield results. Use your existing data as a baseline and start tracking your progress. 

Pages Ranked

Website success will always be related to search rankings, and the number of pages you rank for represents the number of chances for your potential customers to discover your content as well as your website.

Ideally you want this number to be the majority of pages that you have on your site. You can use a free tool like Google Search Console to track ranked pages. If you are ready to invest in a paid tool, you’ll get a little more insight on your ranking pages as well as those of your competitors.

Blogs, case studies or podcasts with specific key phrases are opportunities for your website to rank. These individual pages will begin to rank over time in searches, generating more visits and leads.

Leads Generated

Determining how many leads a given CTA in your content generates is one of the most useful marketing metrics you can track. Optimizing for leads (and quite often the goal is better qualified leads) is also an iterative process, involving incremental tweaks over time.

If you are running several campaigns and testing multiple CTAs, then you’ll be well on your way to understanding what is most appealing to your target customers.

Conversion Rate

A high conversion rate is ideal. Traffic doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t convert into leads who could possibly benefit from your services.

Think of conversion rate as a journey that a buyer takes that leads them to pursuing your product or service. You can segment this journey into three phases and track your conversion rate for each phase: The awareness phase, the consideration phase, and the decision phase.

By tracking your conversion rate through this journey, you’ll understand how far your visitors get into the conversion cycle. You can then alter your strategies and campaigns to improve conversions.

Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI is best expressed in a percentage. For example, a $1000 investment that generated $1200 in revenue would have an ROI of 20% since 1200 is 20% greater than 1000.

Determine your target ROI during planning and strategy conversions. Then work backward to further define the resources required to achieve this goal. Consider all of the resources you have at your disposal when doing this with the understanding that successful marketing campaigns don’t come together over night!

Next Steps for Your Marketing Team

Digital marketing strategies are a marathon, not a sprint.

This is why you should keep a close eye on these metrics and make adjustments as you go along. The same principles of traditional marketing apply to web-based marketing campaigns. You need to build trust and authority with your digital audience, using these metrics as indicators of your progress.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve website conversions. Have more questions about running successful marketing campaigns? Reach out to us directly.

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How to Convert Website Traffic into Leads 

An eye-catching website is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. However, having a good-looking website won’t necessarily convert web traffic into qualified leads. The best websites engage the audience, educate them, and demonstrate that your product or service is a viable solution to their challenges.

The challenge for marketing departments is knowing what site changes to implement because there are many variables that affect conversions. Short of conducting extensive split testing, in-house marketing teams must incrementally test different variables to see what performs best.

Set aside any preconceptions you have about what you think might work and what won’t. It’s amazing how much of our own perceptions influence our decision making. And remember that a website is always in development. You should always be testing and learning to better understand your audience and improve conversions.

Here are some of the most common website edits we implement to help clients increase website conversions.

Define and clearly highlight your value proposition

Don’t bury this information! It should be front and center on your home page and any campaign landing pages. Knowing your target market, their pain points and how you solve them is of utmost importance. Do you understand the journey they take in order to solve these challenges? If you don’t immediately speak to your target markets’ needs, you’ve lost them.

Crafting these messages, both written and visual, is an art and a science. You need to consider how the visitor is arriving at your site – via organic Google search, display ad or PPC ad – and how the verbiage on the page builds on the information they expect to find.

Here are some content/messaging best practices to consider:

• Make the text scannable and use short paragraphs. Visitors will only read about 20% of your content.
• Be concise. Be relevant. Use action verbs.
• Omit unnecessary words and minimize jargon.
• Incorporate plenty of headlines. Be short and direct. Headlines should stand on their own and be understood out of context of the rest of the text.
• Front load important information.
•  It’s OK to leave the visitor wanting more.

Make Your Objective Clear

Just like with your value proposition, don’t bury this! Make it clear and obvious what you want your website visitors to do.

Is the first step in your buyer’s journey educational? Perhaps they should download an eBook or review product specs.

Is your product highly customizable for the unique needs of each client? Perhaps you might want to highlight case studies that demonstrate your ability to partner with customers and solve complex problems.

Remember this is step one of what could be a long and winding buyer’s journey! It’s your job to test and learn what’s going to move the lead through this journey efficiently.

The Three-Click Rule

Whenever we’re working on a website, we constantly ask this question: Are we getting the visitor to the information they want in three clicks or less?

If users can’t find what they are looking for quickly, they are likely to become frustrated and leave your website. This gets tricky for manufacturers with a robust set of products or services, or products that are complex in nature that might require the visitor to explore technical specifications.

Here are some items to keep in mind:

Navigation Bar: Make sure you have clear navigation at the top of the site. Visitors shouldn’t have to think too much about where they need to go; good navigation will lead them throughout the site naturally.

Site Search Tool: For websites that contain a lot of product data, consider an optimized search tool that will return relevant and accurate results.

Website Forms: Placement of lead capture forms is critical. You don’t want to turn customers off by immediately shoving a contact form in their face.

Buttons and Links: Use well labeled buttons, links and calls to action that tell users where they are and where they will be headed.

Build Trust With Reviews, Testimonials, or Case Studies

Testimonials play a valuable role in building trust and increasing sales. According to research from BrightLocal, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Case studies also play a role in shaping buyer perception by illustrating a company’s success. By explaining how a customer used a product to solve a problem, you can demonstrate what your brand delivers and represents. Your leads are more likely to convert if you can show that others have benefited from what you’re offering.

Full-Length Case Studies: For longer case studies, we like to use the S.O.A.R. format. This stands for Situation, Opportunity, Action Taken and Results Generated.

Mini Case Studies: Some projects don’t require a detailed case study, but we find that there is still a story worth telling. Use mini-case studies to highlight customer wins as well.

Add a Live Chat or a Chatbot

Big companies like Amazon or Zappos have trained us to expect instant gratification, if not demand it. A recent study by Salesforce Research has shown that all buyers have the same expectations regardless of the purchase type. The study also indicated that 80% of business buyers expect real-time communications.

Don’t let this create unnecessary stress for your marketing and sales department. Chatbots can bridge the gap between getting questions answered immediately and speaking with a live human. Even a simple chatbot can capture contact information and reassure the website visitor that help is on the way.

Before you shoot down this idea, reasoning that chatbots are impersonal and don’t align with your brand, consider how this could accelerate your sales and marketing. Depending on how you build your chatbot, you have the potential to streamline lead qualification, lead nurturing and meeting scheduling. Aren’t these the same reasons we leverage other tools like email marketing?

Be available to your customers where and when they are looking for your services. Test a chatbot or a live chat feature and measure how it affects conversions.

Hopefully the tips above will help increase website conversions. Have more questions about your website content, design or user experience? Reach out to us directly.

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Generate More Traffic, Leads and Sales 

Even if you’re seeing a decent amount of traffic to your site, the more quality traffic you generate will help increase the number of leads and conversions for your sales team. This is a numbers game that’s built on maintaining strong internet visibility. Here are five tried and true ways we’ve generated more website traffic for our manufacturing clients.

Always Be Optimizing Your Website

Website optimization isn’t one and done. It’s an ongoing task. While the frequency of these updates will be determined by the competitiveness of your specific niche/keywords, it’s necessary to make this a reoccurring priority. Updating on-page elements like title tags and meta descriptions are important.

The single biggest step you can take is to publish new content in the form of articles, case studies or podcast transcripts. Search engines continue to reward new content, so keep this in mind if your goal is to attract more organic traffic.

Pay-Per-Click Ads with Google and Bing

The caveat to this is that will take some testing to nail down the exact targeting in order to get results.

Retargeting Campaigns

Estimates say that 75% to 85% of people who visit your site will never return. You’ve dedicated time and resources to get visitors on your site, but without staying top of mind, they are off exploring other websites – perhaps even your competitors’ websites.

We’ve all experienced retargeting campaigns. You might be casually shopping for a new bike helmet, and suddenly those helmets start popping up wherever you go online. You can do the same thing with your own products and services. Most companies target recent website visitors for a period of 15 to 30 days. For manufacturers that have longer sales cycles, you might consider “following” them around for longer.

There are several tools that make retargeting campaigns super easy to implement. Our two favorites are Google Ads and AdRoll.

Submit Guest Articles to Industry Publications

Targeted Emails to Current and Perspective Clients

Email is one of our favorite ways to generate a noticeable uptick in traffic to your website. If it’s a warm audience composed of past and current customers, you can ensure top of mind awareness through emails. A cold email list of prospects that you have acquired from, say, a trade show can be nurtured over time to build awareness for your brand.

Increasing the traffic to your website is the first step to generating results if you want a larger customer base. Contact us if you have questions about these strategies.

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What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.