Four Key Factors in Industrial Marketing Website Development
I’ve been in marketing long enough to remember when websites first came on the scene. It was only a short time before it became an essential marketing component. In those days, each website was coded in HTML. Today, websites are plug-and-play with easy-to-follow templates. While anybody can build a website using one of these platforms, some factors need to be considered to build an effective site. In this blog, I’ll discuss the four main areas to consider in industrial marketing website development.
Site Design
Professional websites reflect your company’s brand. Proper design in your industrial marketing website development is more complex than picking a theme you like. The theme should allow for a design consistent with your other marketing material. Be sure your logo, corporate colors, font, photos, and graphics are uniform to enhance your brand to potential customers.
Structure in Industrial Marketing Website Development
Your site structure includes the number of pages and how a visitor will navigate to those pages. I won’t get into all the theories in website structure as they are many and varied. When we build client sites, we start with a site map. This approach helps to plot the pages and how a visitor will find information quickly. Whether you prefer drop-downs or long scrolling pages, the essential factor is that it is simple for the visitor to find the info that interests them and to contact you. If your structure is confusing, the visitor will move to another website.
Website Content
Content is the information your site contains. Structure and content go hand-in-hand as your pages determine the content. This info will be mainly in text, but infographics can also be part of it. Generally, there are basic pages that are part of industrial marketing website development: Home, About Us, Services or Products, and Contact Us. Depending on our manufacturing client’s business, we also consider including pages such as Testimonials, Case Studies, News, Resources, Dealer Portals, and E-commerce. Because keeping a website active is critical to search engine optimization (SEO), we also suggest adding a Blog section. Content should adhere to Google Guidelines to help with organic SEO. Google is rigid in how it wants the page’s content set up, and not following these rules will only hurt your site’s ranking.
Industrial Marketing Website Development and SEO
SEO needs to be a factor in the development of any website. Keywords must be selected for each page to be weaved into its content and meta sections. As mentioned, posting a blog periodically shows search spiders that your site is not stagnant. This strategy is part of organic SEO, which is done as part of the site build. Other SEO strategies include off-page and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. Off-page SEO tactics include backlinking, social media, and reviews. A PPC campaign is a series of online ads that you are bidding against competitors for top placement. Both tactics involve additional costs. Off-page usually is conducted by firms specializing in its strategies. With PPC or Google Ads, you pay every time your ad is clicked. For most industrial clients, organic SEO is enough to bring qualified visitors to their sites. However, you need to determine if these other SEO campaigns are necessary for growth.
Pappy
About the Author
Paul Kowalski (or Pappy as he is called around the office) spent over two decades working at other agencies before opening Conach Marketing Group in 2008. The early part of his career was working with Fortune 500 clients at different agencies. However, working with smaller clients was his preference. This choice was because of the impact on a client’s business growth and forming closer, personal relationships.
About Conach
When he was creating Conach, his goal was to bring those Fortune 500 strategies along with years of INDUSTRIAL marketing experience to small business marketing clients. As a result of focusing on business to business marketing, Conach specializes in construction marketing, financial marketing, and industrial marketing. Even though we are in Mid-Michigan, Conach provides marketing services to clients across the country.
For more information, visit conachmarketing.com or contact us or call 989.401.3202.