Any person in charge of marketing for an industrial or manufacturing company knows how difficult it can be to get in front of buyers.
That’s because the number of potential targets in your audience is far smaller and more limited than it would be for, say, a mass consumer B2C company. What’s more is that targeting some of these buyers for what may be a niche product can be difficult.
It’s generally better to get in front of buyers, then, when they’re looking for the services or products you offer. After all, B2B buyers – whether they are power plant managers or end-user product developers like auto manufacturers – search online for information just like consumers. They turn to the Internet just like other people do to find what they need.
One of the best ways to aggressively pursue these buyers when they’re searching is through Google AdWords. But can AdWords actually work with an industrial or manufacturing company?
Making AdWords Work for Industry
Google AdWords is a platform that delivers text ads to searchers on organic search results. They appear at the top of the page, and you, as an advertiser, only pay whenever someone clicks on them.
Of course, one question you have may be: “Do people really buy what we make online?” You’re not an ecommerce store, and you’re not a mass consumer service provider, like an accountant or a lawyer.
The answer is yes. One of our clients, for example, sells (among other things) custom boilers for power plants. We have used AdWords for them to sell these systems to buyers looking to either retrofit a boiler or create a new one. If you can sell boiler upgrades and installations through AdWords, you can sell practically anything.
Making AdWords work for your company involves:
- Understanding how your target audience uses the Internet and what they search for
- Developing a strategic plan consisting of campaigns, ad groups, and ads
- Creating engaging ads based on the needs of your audience
- Building custom landing pages for each ad group (and ad)
- Measuring, tracking, and analyzing results
- Testing and optimizing the campaign based on results
What’s really important for industrial and manufacturing companies is understanding how your audience uses the Internet and analyzing and tracking results. Sometimes your customers are using broad searches to find general information. In that case, your AdWords strategy may be different from, say, one for clients searching for very specific products and parts.
If you get the right strategy, you can use analytics to not only track results, but test ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages to refine your campaign and increase results.
The average conversion rate (the number of people who take action out of all of those who click on your ad) is 2.58 percent for industrial services, for example. A strong campaign can beat that average through tweaking, refining, and optimizing the strategy based on analytics. One specific ad group (one promoting a very particular type of manufactured equipment) from one of our manufacturing client’s campaigns had a conversion rate of 4.26 percent – all through repeated testing and optimization.
Where Does Google AdWords Fit into Your Strategy?
Google AdWords can be very powerful, but how does it fit into your company’s overall marketing strategy?
We always recommend a diversified approach to digital marketing. There isn’t one silver bullet for every company, even within the same industry. It’s always better to approach a target audience from a variety of angles, and AdWords is just one angle.
For most of our industrial and manufacturing clients, AdWords forms a short to medium-term way to get leads and sell product while the organic campaigns (mainly through search engine optimization) are being developed and grown. But, for some, AdWords has become the main, long-term way to generate leads and new sales. The particular approach depends on your specific company and its needs, competitive environment, target customers, and products/services.
In essence, though, AdWords is one of the best ways to get in front of these elusive buyers when they are actively searching. Industrial buyers can be hard to target. If you can find them when they’re looking for you, it makes things a lot easier – and that’s where AdWords comes in.
So, if you’ve had a problem reaching niche buyers before, AdWords can help. Or, if you want to be where your customers are because you know they are actively using the Internet to find businesses like yours, AdWords can be a powerful strategy.
Above all, though, understand that in some ways, running a Google AdWords campaign for a specialized company like an industrial or manufacturing business can be significantly harder than a mass-market, B2C campaign. It’s best to consult with partners who specialize in doing this kind of work for this sector, because it’ll save you a lot of time and money in the long run by working with someone who has a track record of success.
Google AdWords can be a key tool in selling more products and services. Consider incorporating AdWords into your overall marketing strategy – and finding a partner who can help you go the distance.
