Lead Generation for Manufacturing: 8 Expert-Level Tips to Help Your Business Excel

Increase qualified manufacturing leads with a lead generation strategy built for long sales cycles.

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8 ways to generate manufacturing leads

How can you use digital marketing for manufacturer lead generation? Keep reading to learn more about these eight tips for generating qualified manufacturing leads:

Get more info about each of those tips below!

1. Optimize for local SEO

If you’re like many manufacturers, most (or all) of the clients you serve are from your local area. There’s a good chance you don’t even serve people outside of that region. So, how do you ensure that you’re targeting only local prospects with your lead generation efforts? The answer is to use local SEO.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a strategy where you optimize your web content to appear in relevant search results. Local SEO does this in a way that specifically targets local prospects, helping you get your business in front of those prospects in local searches.

Some tactics you can use to rank in local search results include:

• Targeting location-based keywords
• Optimizing your Google Business Profile
• Making your website mobile-friendly
• Optimizing your page load speeds
• And more!

The goal is for your business to be one of the first things people in your area see when they search for terms like “manufacturing companies near me.” When you get your site in front of more local prospects, more of them will end up visiting your site and becoming leads, which is why SEO is one of the strongest manufacturing marketing and lead generation tactics. 

2. Run strategic PPC campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns are a budget-friendly way for you to stay on top of your game as a leading manufacturer. Whether you want to reach potential clients or new employees, you can use the advanced targeting options available in most platforms to get your ads in front of the perfect audience.

The reason PPC for manufacturing companies delivers such strong results is its cost-efficiency. Many manufacturers have relatively small teams and low advertising budgets, but as the phrase “pay-per-click” indicates, you only pay for PPC ads when they earn clicks. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to set your own price range. So, with proper management, you’ll have complete control over your budget.

If you’re not familiar with using PPC ads for manufacturing lead generation, we recommend starting with Google Ads. Google has truly simplified PPC, and they can assist with suggested keyword generation. That being said, it’s still a good idea to work with an experienced campaign manager who can help you create ads and manage your bids.

3. Design your site with conversion in mind

Good web design is the simplest, most reliable way to get leads online, yet a lot of manufacturers don’t take full advantage of it. They never encourage visitors to take actions that will immediately move them into the sales funnel, and instead sit back and wait for people to pick up the phone and call.

This is a big mistake. If you don’t encourage visitors to take action, they won’t — it’s as simple as that. But if you do, you can turn your site into a valuable source of new leads.

For instance, you could have a contact form on your homepage where potential clients can immediately ask questions or submit RFQs.

You can then call or email them to follow up. And if they’re not quite ready to contact you, you can also include an email subscription form so they can sign up to receive weekly or monthly communications.

4. Share your expertise with website content

Some industries are really easy to understand. McDonald’s doesn’t have to explain to its customers what a burger is — they already know. But that’s not the case with manufacturing. For better or worse, you operate in a very technical and complex industry, and a lot of your potential clients might get confused by all the jargon.

That means one of the main ways you can offer those prospects value is by providing educational content on your website to inform them about different manufacturing topics. That content could take the form of anything from blog posts to videos to infographics, but the idea is to attract people who are looking up questions about manufacturing.

The people looking up those questions are likely to be in need of a manufacturer at some point. So, if your business is the one to answer their questions, there’s a good chance they’ll remember you down the line when they’re ready to submit an RFQ, and choose you over your competitors.

5. Nurture your leads with email marketing

In the manufacturing industry, the sales process often takes months, with multiple touchpoints along the way. Those long lead cycles mean you need to use lead nurturing, a process where you use marketing to move existing leads closer to converting. And one of the best strategies for doing that is email marketing.

To launch an email marketing campaign, start by creating signup forms on your website. These forms should make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your emails, and it should entice them using lead magnets — that is, free assets you offer to send them when they subscribe. Potential lead magnets include:

• Webinars
• Newsletters
• Discounts
• And more!

Once people sign up for your emails, be sure to send them whatever materials you promised them. You can also send follow-up emails nudging them toward a sale, but don’t overdo it. Ultimately, the idea is to provide ongoing value to your prospects even after they become leads.

6. Consider using account-based marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that involves targeting specific businesses with your marketing. For manufacturing companies, which are so often business-to-business (B2B) companies, this is a great way to drive leads.

Take a look at your past and current clients to identify the traits they have in common (like size, industry, and so on). Then look for other businesses in your area that match those traits. Odds are, they’ll make good clients — so you can build marketing campaigns customized to those specific businesses.

The advantage of ABM is that it’s so highly personalized, which makes it very effective. You can speak precisely to those businesses’ pain points, offering them help with their unique manufacturing needs. That makes them far more likely to become leads than if you’d reached them with a more generic marketing campaign.

If you want to implement ABM but aren’t sure where to start, partnering with an ABM agency can help you identify the right accounts, build the targeting framework, and manage campaigns across channels.

7. Encourage your clients to leave reviews

Has your manufacturing company been reviewed yet on any relevant websites? If not, you may want to reach out to some of your loyal, satisfied clients and see if they’d be willing to give a review. Your prospects will probably trust the words of your clients more than your own, so genuine reviews can be a huge help in building your online reputation.

Not sure which sites you should focus on for online reviews? The best approach is to see where your competitors are being reviewed. If they’re earning a lot of reviews on a particular site, you probably want to do the same. Be sure to check out any local manufacturing directories, too.

When you have a lot of positive online reviews, prospects are more likely to trust your business, making them more likely to become leads. That can really boost your manufacturing lead generation strategy.

8. Harness the power of omnichannel marketing

There are a lot of places to market your business online, and if you’re only using one of those places, you’re not reaching your full potential. Marketing on multiple channels is crucial to reaching your full audience, because not every prospect is going to use every channel. And even those that do will frequently hop between different channels.

To reliably and consistently reach your prospects with your lead generation efforts, you’ll need to use omnichannel marketing. That’s a strategy where you run your campaigns across multiple channels at once.

So, let’s say you’re promoting a new type of product you’ve started manufacturing. You could create a page dedicated to it on your website, post about it on your social media channels, and run paid ads about it. All three of these promotions make up one campaign, with identical messaging even across different channels.

An omnichannel approach means that even when prospects jump between different channels, they’ll keep seeing your campaign. That ongoing exposure to your marketing keeps you fresh in their minds and speeds up the process of turning them into leads.

Get manufacturing lead generation services that deliver

The information on this page might seem like a lot, and if marketing isn’t your area of expertise, it can be a little overwhelming. Thankfully, you don’t have to go at it alone. By partnering with a professional marketing agency like WebFX, you can get a masterful lead generation strategy tailored to your business without having to handle any of the work yourself.

At WebFX, all our services include a custom strategy, dedicated account manager, and regular reporting. Manufacturing companies commonly choose us for a few reasons, including:

• Our 30+ years of experience
• Our advanced marketing technology
• Our custom strategies
• Our proven results

We also maintain an impressive client retention rate of 91%, demonstrating our commitment to our clients and their businesses. When you partner with WebFX, you’ll be working with an agency that’s passionate about your manufacturing company’s success.

For more information on our lead generation services, call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us today!