Friday, September 28, 2012

Industrial Internet Marketing 2012

Industrial Internet Marketing

Published on by: James H. Hobson

Industrial internet marketing has some fundamental differences when compared to traditional B2B or B2C internet marketing. Although there are similarities in strategies, there are significant adjustments that must be made in choosing tactics and the implementation of services.

A Typical Industrial Internet Marketing Process

Unless your company has been proactive and maintained a formal search engine marketing process, your company is probably just floating on the internet without competitive ranking, and not receiving the benefits online inquiries from new prospects. A traditional industrial internet marketing process is as primitive as “having a website” built with no real understanding of usability, sales or marketing, and then making an occasional text update or linking to a document of interest. This results in a chaotic site architecture that is void of real search engine optimization, difficult to navigate and severely lacking in generating leads.

The typical internet marketing process is reactionary in nature, and driven by people who do not understand the tremendous importance and value of mastering online ranking and serving users an information rich website that engages the curious mind or ready-to-buy prospect.

Industrial Internet Marketing 2012

Many business owners foolishly rely on a relative, friend, other business owners or freelancers to create their internet marketing strategy. And in reality, there is usually no strategy just a list of random ideas and suggestions. The people “working on the website” may know how to go through the motions of creation or implementation but they universally lack an understanding of how the pieces fit together, what is an appropriate quantity and volume of each, how to fine tune each component, and certainly how to measure results and make appropriate adjustments.

Your IT person is not your answer, and neither are the many one-size-fits-all advertising companies like ThomasNet, GlobalSpec, etc. A freelancer is almost certainly incapable of devoting the proper number of hours, having the required software and breadth of expertise that you need to reach a pinnacle of online success.

The best idea for internet marketing success is to hire an website marketing company that has a proven track record of success, a good understanding of the many tactics, methods and trends in internet marketing, and a verifiable infrastructure or personnel, computers, software and support services. One thing that is very important, and when applied will quickly shorten the list of potential service providers, is finding a company with people who have worked in an industrial environment. The experience gained from working in industrial sales and marketing provides unparalleled intelligence that enables a person to create a website and online experience that replicates the real-life buying process. If your internet marketing people can’t understand the industrial buying process they cannot effectively develop a relevant and effective industrial internet marketing plan unless you manage every step of the process.

Hiring an industrial internet marketing company with client-side experience will minimize your level of required participation and bring fresh, high-value ideas and input to the process.

Industrial Internet Marketing Essentials

Your industrial internet marketing needs evaluation must begin with a critical assessment of your website. It’s important for a business owner to disregard emotional ties to the existing website and be open minded to website revisions, or even complete website redesign and rebuild process. If your website was built by an IT person or done by a novice you almost certainly need a new website that is designed specifically for the industrial marketplace.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is absolutely essential if your website is to achieve competitive search engine ranking. Because search engine algorithms are becoming very complex the strategies of mass link building, overuse of keywords and other spammy practices will do more harm than good.

Off-page internet marketing essentials include creating or claiming website properties including Google+ Page, Facebook business page, LinkedIn business page, Twitter account, and as many local search citations as you can possibly acquire. All of these listings, accounts and pages need to be optimized and filled with factual company information that is consistent and void of marketing language.

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