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Today, more than any other marketing touch point, a website is the digital soul of an organization. All roads lead to it. As a mission-critical asset, it must be kept current and fresh with an easy-to-use content management system (CMS). Which one should you pick? I hope this post help you answer the question. The CMS Ecosystem Generally speaking, the CMS exists in the following setting with the responsive website powered by the CMS, and various website users experiencing it on their favorite devices. The Desirable CMS Feature Set A robust CMS system must be: User Friendly – The CMS should be easy to use for both non-technical content administrators and web/technology teams. It should have spell-checkers, content preview, and content rollback features. Customizable – It should be flexible and customizable for standard tasks, but it should also have the ability to extend its capabilities with custom language support. Scalable – The CMS should be able to handle large amounts of content and accommodate the … Continue reading
Posted in: manufacturing web development agency, manufacturing website design agency
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Macro forces often drive micro actions. This certainly holds true for manufacturing website design trends for the coming year. Our agency sees three primary forces impacting the manufacturing environment: First, there has been a generational shift from Boomers to Gen-Xers, Millennials, and Gen-Zers. By 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be largely comprised of Millennials and Gen-Zers. Not only are they digitally savvy, they care deeply about climate change, sustainability, and corporate values. Second, in-sourcing and bringing manufacturing back to the US is in full swing. In 2021 and 2022, we saw the passing of three key pieces of legislation: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Domestic manufacturing is hot again. Third, the era of Industry 4.0 powered by smart factories fitted with AI, robotics, 5G, IoT, data analytics, and cloud computing is here. These forces are re-shaping the entire manufacturing sector. … Continue reading
Manufacturing and industrial buyers invest in the inseparable twin SEO and content strategies to secure Google/Bing rankings for three reasons. First, research shows that when suppliers “get found” via organic Google page one results, prospects trust them more. Google page one organic results command over 90% of click share, and generate close to two-thirds of leads. Organic inquiries tend to form long-term relationships with the manufacturers and they tend to melt away at a reduced rate. Second, leads generated from Google organic rankings outperform paid advertising leads by three-folds. Third, the best prospects prefer to “discover” the suppliers of their choice through “accidental finds” on Google page one and word-of-mouth on social media. Fresh content is the lifeblood of Google/Bing rankings algorithms. Content can take many shapes: blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, white papers, case studies, news, interactive pieces, new pages and more. Recall that Google/Bing bots build a knowledge graph of your site content. Bots are doing the same … Continue reading
Websites are the digital soul of manufacturers and industrial companies. Constructed well, they are effective conversion machines for new business development and become their #1 sales tool. In the past 30 years, Elliance has designed and developed more than 150 manufacturing websites. Following are four success stories of our website design and development clients: 1. Underdog Wins: Sophisticated Alloys Located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, an hour from steel-and-aluminum-famed Pittsburgh, Sophisticated Alloys takes pride in solving the toughest customer challenges, fusing the most unlikely elements to create new custom alloys. We rebuilt their website and started a blog which has given them a decade long Google page one positions for “custom alloy manufacturer”, “specialty alloy manufacturer”, “Simonds alloy manufacturer” and “alloy manufacturer”. This has transformed them into a preferred alloy supplier for many enterprise clients. The website development project went through the usual process of starting with discovery and strategy development, leading to information architecture and user experience design, followed by website … Continue reading
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the greatest equalizer amongst manufacturing marketing tactics. Using SEO smarts, underdogs become wonder dogs and runners become sprinters. Following are five success stories of our SEO clients: 1. Underdog Wins: Sophisticated Alloys Located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, an hour from steel-and-aluminum-famed Pittsburgh, Sophisticated Alloys takes pride in solving the toughest customer challenges, fusing the most unlikely elements to create new custom alloys. We rebuilt their website and started a blog which has given them a decade long Google page one positions for “custom alloy manufacturer”, “specialty alloy manufacturer”, “Simonds alloy manufacturer” and “alloy manufacturer”. This has transformed them into a preferred alloy supplier for many enterprise clients. 2. Small Giant Leaps: Aerotech By defying the temptation to be bought by a larger company and insisting on carrying forward the family legacy of innovation, Aerotech became the last independent motion control company standing. We rebuilt a smart, SEO-optimized, catalog-centered website and translated it into other languages opening … Continue reading
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the greatest equalizer amongst higher education marketing tactics. Using smarts, underdogs become wonder dogs and Davids defeat Goliaths. All our college and university clients have ambitions for increasing and growing their undergraduate, graduate, adult, online and international students. Following are seven success stories of our SEO clients: 1. Underdog Wins: William Woods University Located in mid-Missouri, two hours from Saint Louis and three from Kansas City, William Woods boasts a combination of me-too and distinctive programs. Just by dominating Google page one in all four corners of Missouri for its commodity programs, we doubled their online enrollment and grew their graduate enrollment by 25 percent over a 3-year period. For its distinctive equestrian science and ASL programs, we secured national Google page one rankings which began attracting students from across the US. They never looked back. 2. Small Giant Leaps: St. Edward’s University Located in eclectic Austin, Texas, surrounded by big publics, this little gem … Continue reading
It’s crucial that manufacturing and industrial company marketers use best practices to not only map the right set of keywords across the prospective buyer or customer journey, but also to optimize their website and social media to secure Google page one rankings for those keywords. To make a purchase, buyers (engineers, specifiers and influencers) move through a rational set of mental states. They first become aware that they have a problem and they need to solve it. They educate themselves by exploring potential solutions to solve their problem, reviewing frequently asked questions. Next they move to the consideration stage where they look for suppliers who could help them solve their problem; they study industry reports, case studies and supplier reviews. Next they reach the decision or preference stage where they look for top quality suppliers with proven successes and case studies; they seek proposals, evaluate them and seek clarifications. Finally, they make their purchase decision, finalizing contractual terms and issuing … Continue reading
Posted in: manufacturing SEO agency
Making a business case for investing in a comprehensive marketing campaign to skeptical, ROI-minded, quant-driven, C-level marketers in manufacturing and industrial companies goes far beyond making an intuitive case. For quantitatively inclined senior team members, here are five key ROI metrics that we have used to justify their investment in manufacturing marketing: 1. Increased Brand Awareness: We track and create a trend line of number of times the brand name surfaces and is clicked on search engine results pages using Google search console data. Our SEO/Inbound clients should expect this to grow upwards year-over-year. The non-branded to branded organic traffic ratio should rise over time. For most of our clients this ratio begins around 20/80 or 30/70 and rises all the way up to 60/40 or 70/30. Occasionally, it rises up to 80/20 and 90/10. We’ll monitor organic search volume over time by measuring the organic traffic as a percentage of overall website traffic trended over time. We expect this … Continue reading
Posted in: Manufacturing Marketing ROI, Marketing ROI
With strained budgets, weakened endowments and the anticipated demographic cliff the college bound undergraduates are beginning to shrink. Colleges are developing strategies for winning an outsized share of a shrinking undergraduate market. Our higher education marketing and enrollment clients have started asking us to prepare a playbook for successfully recruiting and growing undergraduate student enrollment. In increasing enrollment for undergraduate programs for the past 25 years for numerous colleges and universities, we have learned two things: First, students can’t buy your programs or buy-into your university unless they can find you; Second, you can’t bore students into enrolling in your university. To succeed, universities must invest in first impressions, and deploy a unique balance of the marketing air-game, boots-on-the-ground game and follow-up contact strategies. ASSESS THE SITUATION Appraise the college’s situation by immersing yourself in the college data and touch points: Asses your brand. Are you a local brand, regional brand, state brand, super-regional brand or a national brand. Your … Continue reading
In the past 30 years, Elliance has deployed SEO strategies for more than 100 colleges, universities and higher education institutions in service of growing their enrollment, endowment and reputation. Why have we insisted on recommending SEO to our higher education marketing clients? For two reasons. First, because Google/Bing page 1 is destiny. Trusted page one organic rankings and high visibility for your social media content equate to owning the world’s hottest real estate. 90% of users never go beyond page 1 of search results. Organic rankings (i.e. the top 10 natural search results) are clicked 9-folds more, trusted more, and convert three-folds better than paid ads. Second, being found on page 1 is the best means for finding, getting, keeping and growing right-fit students, faculty, and staff as well as nurturing relationships with alumni, foundations corporate partners and media. We recommend our clients begin the SEO journey by crafting an intentional plan powered by a Keyword Lexicon that contains clusters … Continue reading