Jaxzen Marketing Strategies is proud to be a founding member of the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association, which is having it's first meeting tomorrow. In honor of it, we thought some lead generation tips for manufacturing companies might be in order. Here's five tips for getting your website into lead-generating shape:

1. Develop an initial set of blog posts around frequent questions your prospects ask

One of the best ways to jump start your lead generation process is to assemble your sales team and ask them what the most common questions are that people ask. Aim for around 20 and try to get some details from sales. Since these are the most common questions, there's a good chance that people are searching for them anyways - and if not, they may be curious once they're on your site. 

2. Map out the learning process for your prospects

What's information that people need to know early on in the process? What are some questions that they'll ask as they get closer to making a decision? More importantly, what are some things you wish your prospects knew? 

Understanding how your prospects are learning about manufacturers, obtaining samples, and evaluating contracts is crucial in getting them to close. Trying to develop content along those lines to help educate them and differentiate your company can give you a big edge. Include something that either sets your firm apart or that will save your salespeople time for a real advantage.

3. Put together a guide that prospects can download

There's lots of different considerations when trying to decide on a manufacturer. Helping potential customers navigate those waters can be good for you in more than one way as well. Combining a guide that your develop with a download form can generate a great list of leads who are beginning to learn about your company, and likely the manufacturing process at large. By capturing their information, you can learn a lot about who's interested in your company, and in what ways you can be helpful to them. 

*Bonus points if you create an introductory version and an advanced version so you can tell how experienced they are in manufacturing.*

4. Keep in regular contact with these prospects through emails

Now that you're building up a list of leads, make sure you keep them in the loop of what your company is doing. New materials, machines, methods and safety precautions are all great content. Even if it seems repetitive or not that interesting to you (after all, you're there every day) it can beneficial to keep your name in front of your customers. 

5. Rinse, lather, repeat

Once you accopmlish this once, you'll oftentimes find yourself thinking of other content offers that could appeal to prospects. Good. This is a great way to pull in people at different stages in the buying process, and more importantly, guide them through it. Maybe once you create that "Introductory Guide to Working with Manufacturers", you can follow up with "10 Things to Check When Evaluating Samples". Not only is it useful for the prospects, but it can help you quickly gauge who's still interested, versus who may have moved on

Bonus Tip 

If you get going at this, you may quickly find out that the information you're generating is good, but that you need a way to keep it organized. Seeing who downloaded your content is great, but wouldn't it also be nice to see what they're looking at on your site inbetween downloads? Integrating all of this information into your CRM would make your salespeople much more efficient. This is where an all-in-one marketing platform like HubSpot comes in. Marketing data is really useful for your sales team, especially knowing who read 30 pages after an email went out as opposed to who didn't open it.

Interested in learning how to use your company blog to increase lead generation? Download our ebook to learn more: