Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers Blog

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the best free digital marketing reporting tools any business can have, hands down.

What is Google Analytics used for? Tracking nearly every action on your website, including the B2B lead generation metrics most important to CEOs and sales/marketing heads:

• How much traffic do we get?
• How are they finding our website?
• What actions are they taking once they arrive?

Google Analytics will tell you all of that and more.

Despite the importance of Google Analytics, many business owners and website managers don't even know whether their site uses it.

You’ve worked with the folks at Customer Y and Customer X for 25 years each, and they still provide a nice chunk of revenue.

Your business has been in the B2B/industrial game for 50-100 years, and the brand is already “well known” (somewhere, at least).

Trade shows and sales visits to the prospect’s facility are what your sales team knows and is good at. (Though that pesky pandemic sure made it hard.)

So, why invest in digital marketing?

In digital inbound/content marketing, we say, “Work SMARTer, not harder.”

“Does inbound marketing work?”

North America's largest metal fabricating and finishing event is back in-person! 

While the incoming new technology and networking is exciting, the biggest goal for manufacturers in 2022 will be recalibrating their marketing and sales practices post-COVID*.

Sometimes a website needs a new home. Perhaps the company’s web development or SEO expert is recommending a change to improve user experience or technical performance. Or maybe an exec-level decision maker wants to increase or decrease investment in digital marketing.

Either way, the ripple effect this has on the success of a website can be massive -- for good or bad.

Blogging. Writing social media posts. Promoting your company’s products on its homepage.

(Editor’s note: This is Part 1 in a two-part series about how a relationship with an inbound marketing consulting firm can fail. Don’t worry -- in Part 2 of this series we’ll lay out all the reasons your agency could be at fault.)

Dear Inbound Marketing Clients ...

There's a common misconception that hiring an agency to do your marketing is much more expensive than handling it internally.

The trick about marketing is that it's not one single job that you're paying someone to do. There are many tasks and responsibilities that require a variety of skill sets. The salary of an individual who can do all of those things effectively is much higher than a monthly agency retainer fee. Hands down.

"Marketing" is one word that encompasses a lot of components and gears and creative production. You may decide to outsource some of those pieces, while taking care of others in-house. So, the real question you want to ask yourself is: What parts of my inbound marketing strategy do I need to outsource, and which can I do internally?

For some of our clients, they can't do anything internally. Whether it's a matter of time, resources, or ability, they're simply unable to take care of their marketing strategies on their own.

Other clients have some experience with different aspects of marketing, plus a little extra time to churn those bits out. They take care of those pieces, and we handle the unfamiliar territory.

So, what are the different pieces that need work? How do you know if you can handle them yourself, or if you should hire an expert? Let's take a look.

As an executive, you work hard to put the pieces in place to achieve your goals. 

Sales and profitability are always items on your list of goals. That means successful inbound marketing should be one of the pieces on your radar. Let's take a look at the skill sets needed for inbound marketing success.