Because I’m a part of several sales and marketing teams, I learn a great deal about what works and what doesn’t for smaller industrial manufacturers.
If you’re wanting to achieve business growth, you need to do three important things: create a long-term strategy and goals; share your strategy and goals with your entire time and get their buy-in; and then consistently work to meet your goals.
In fact, without these three factors, you won’t succeed, no matter how much marketing you do.
Having a strategy and goals that everyone understands and is focused on makes our job much easier. We’re not guessing at things and can set KPIs and the tactics needed to achieve the goals while meeting the client’s budget and timeline.
Let’s get rolling!
When we first begin working with a client, the expectation is leads or inquiries will begin coming in super fast. Usually, we’ve completely rebuilt the website and maybe redesigned the logo. We’ve set marketing KPIs — and everyone is super excited.
Results don’t happen overnight
I love the initial excitement — but unfortunately, it takes time for stuff to happen. After several weeks or months, the energy begins to deflate.
That’s when consistency comes into play. If you’ve set your marketing goals, and you have a plan, you have to stick with them.
Our role is to keep you on track and help you drown out the noise. Instead of focusing on the sugar high of “impressions” and marketing hype, we focus on conversions — aka inquiries: contact form submissions, email, phone calls, and e-comm sales.
We listen to you and ask lots of questions. We adjust here, and make a change there based on your feedback and analytics data.
If something absolutely isn’t working, we’ll try something else — but we’ll ensure it’s still aligned with your goals and brand. We’ll push back if needed.
We also fix anything we notice that’s broken; for example, one client had issues with Shopify and how the products were appearing on mobile.
What we don’t do is give up.
The following chart shows the results of consistent marketing in terms of website conversions (or top of funnel). The client saw a 72% increase in inquiries from when we started tracking in 2021 to end of year 2024. In fact, 2024 was their best year ever.
How did we do it?
✔️ Countless minor and not so minor tweaks to the website to improve the user experience and remove distraction.
✔️ Weekly discussions about the company’s customers and what they needed.
✔️ Highest-quality content written (when needed) to answer people’s questions versus gaming Google.
✔️ Ensuring everything was on brand, from LinkedIn messaging and images to business cards and letterhead.
Plus, lots of other things too numerous to list.
Most important, we tracked everything, every week, so we always knew where we stood — and could respond to changes quickly.
For me, this result is wonderful. But another key indicator is just as important: time to conversion.
Over 70% of people who convert do so on the first visit. Over 80% convert within two to three visits. What does this mean? It means they come to the website and say, “Oh, this company can help me.” And so, they reach out. It’s really that simple.
Marketing is a partnership
Our best client engagements are when clients and their sales and marketing teams see us as their partner — versus a “vendor.” Relationships are based on trust and mutual respect; we cheer all the wins, large and small.
When our clients succeed, we succeed — and that’s the best result I can think of.
Rocky Update
Rocky continues to mature into a marvelous dog. In this photo, he’s on a sit-stay — without me holding the end of the leash.
What you don’t see is he’s distracted! He’s watching two dogs, about 50 yards away, get into a vehicle with their human.
His discipline involved a lot of training and “repetition, repetition, repetition” on my part. And lots of cooked chicken for treats!
The neighbor who plays frisbee with Rocky said, “Rocky is a fantastic dog. You should be really proud of what you’ve achieved. I watched you every day — walking him in the rain, the snow, the freezing cold. I saw you all over town with him. I watched how you’d make him retrace his steps until he stopped pulling you and made him sit so as to not jump when greeting people. Not many would put in the time and effort. You did.”
I felt so good hearing this feedback — because of course, all I see is the work I still need to do. It’s good to reminded on how far we’ve come. I need a progress chart!