An aerospace OEM account admin needed 15 qualified RFQs every month from a precision machine shop with 40 employees.
Unfortunately, their only method for obtaining these leads was through an outdated digital business card website. They need to implement an outbound system that monitors design engineers and plant managers for weeks prior to receiving inquiries about quotes from OEMs.
This article breaks down exactly how to build that outbound system.
We will explore how to use intent signals, account-based marketing, and AI tools to replace hope with a measurable pipeline.
The Short Version: Less Guesswork, More Analysis
For many companies in manufacturing, marketing has been based on hope and prayer; they buy trade show booths, collect leads by scanning badges, and hope that somehow some of them will end up being future contract opportunities. This has not worked well in the past, and it is not going to work well in the future for B2B manufacturer lead generation.
Today, most industrial buyers are making their decisions online well before they even have a conversation with a sales representative.
To be successful, you must create an engine that is based on real data. ABM (account-based marketing) is achieving an average of 3.8% conversion rates for B2B, which is much better than standard SEO and email blast campaigns. The average conversion rate for manufacturers' websites is around 2.2%. If your conversion rates are lower than that, you are losing money on your website.
Also, consider the cost of acquiring new customers.
The average CPA (cost per acquisition) for industrial services on Google Ads is $79.28. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become widely accepted as a useful tool for most marketers today; over 86% of marketing teams now produce content much faster than before they started using AI tools and algorithms.
If you do not change, your competitors will quickly take your market share by taking advantage of better intent data and responding to leads much faster than your business does. A software sale is an entirely different process than what we are currently used to with inbound marketing.
The Old Way vs. The New Way in B2B Manufacturer Lead Generation
In a traditional inbound marketing plan we cast a very wide net, which ends up catching too much junk.
When your deals ranged from $50,000-$5 million, all that you cared about was having 1,000 random newsletter subscribers. Now you need 50 specific companies to see your technical specifications. It is time to change the focus from volume to account-based targeting.
Switching from Traffic to Account Targeting
Rather than waiting passively to attract web traffic you can create a target account list of 100 high-value companies and build relationships directly with the key decision-makers at each company.
This will greatly reduce noise, allowing you to focus your resources on the projects that will provide you with the highest ROI.
How Groups Make Buying Choices and Show Interest
It is rare that one individual will make a large capital investment in an industrial equipment company. Instead, the buying committee consists of multiple decision-makers with varying opinions regarding equipment functionality and reliability.
Finding the Key Decision Makers
To successfully gain a commitment from a single buyer, you are required to win the entire committee over. This requires a strong understanding of how the different members of the committee think.
The technical/engineering member of the committee requires a detailed understanding of the equipment's specifics, including mechanical tolerances and CAD (computer-aided design) files. The operational/plant manager wants reassurance of equipment uptime and minimised scrap rate. The procurement representative seeks answers regarding the company's pricing structure.
Finally, the chief financial officer (CFO) is only concerned with the total cost of ownership.
If your marketing efforts only target the CEO, it is very likely you will lose the opportunity. You will need to create customised content for all roles within the buying committee. For instance, provide the engineer with your technical white papers, while supplying the plant manager with case studies that demonstrate the reliability of your equipment.
If you want to win large contracts, you must use multiple methods for finding contacts. Your contact form will no longer work.
While you are waiting for someone to fill out your contact form, they are conducting research on you. Apollo, ZoomInfo and Leadfeeder are tools that allow you to see who is looking at your website. These tools send out intent signals, which means they have the ability to spy on you while you are on the web.
If an aerospace manufacturer starts looking for you as a supplier of precision milling, you need to know that now.
This means you need to use highly-targeted LinkedIn ads and cold e-mail campaigns to reach these engineering leads. You are getting them when they are still in the research phase and weeks away from drafting their formal RFQ.
Helpful Tools That Actually Make a Difference
For technical buyers, a glorified website means nothing…
Building a Helpful Resource Collection
Engineers only care about raw data. They need to see your specs sheets, application examples and CAD files (i.e., engineering applications). Engineers must have evidence that you are capable of doing what you say you can do before they waste time talking to salespeople.
Make your website a helpful resource collection, and make it easy for engineers to access your complete offering.
Be upfront with your customers and answer their questions up-front.
Do not hide your pricing, and do not hide your specification sheets. When you make it easy for a designer/engineer to use your material in their blueprints, you are halfway there to winning the contract.
What Really Sells Industrial Services?
When it comes to selling industrial services and mastering B2B manufacturer lead generation, there is no better marketing tool than proof.
Kao Collins generated over 1 million Google impressions and claimed several positions for specific queries with high buyer intent for industrial inkjet inks. Methods Machine Tools saw their monthly organic lead generation increase by 67% by aggressively optimising for high-intent technical keywords.
In 3 months and with 100 keywords on page 1 of Google, Mighty Small Homes is maintaining a reliable amount of monthly qualified leads.
List your clients. You should also note the actual dollar value that you produced for them.
The Real Numbers and Goals You Need
CEOs and plant owners don't have any interest in the volume of impressions; they want to have a measure of how much they have to spend for an opportunity that will end up being a sale.
How to Work Backward from a Win
To effectively carry out a campaigns' plan and strategy, it's important to have an understanding of what the financial results of the campaign will look like from the top down.
If you can verify that your average deal size is $150,000 and your qualified quote on close ratio is 25%, if you want to acquire 4 new contracts in one quarter you'll need 16 qualified SQLs (sales qualified leads).
To get 16 SQLs, you will probably need to have 50 engaged accounts.
To create 50 engaged accounts, you can identify 150 targeted companies, and map out 450 stakeholders or decision makers. Once you have this math clear, you can work back through this calculation to determine what your maximum allowable expenditures will be for intent data, your CRM tools, and Google Ads.
The Startize Systems Example
The magnitude of the results achieved can be directly attributed to executing the campaign math correctly for effective B2B manufacturer lead generation.
For example: A construction equipment manufacturer used Startize to conduct targeted digital campaigns, and from that effort produced 329 qualified leads in less than 3 months. The cost per lead was $30.90.
Their conversion rate was between 3% and 4%, well above the industry average of 0.71%.
As a result, they generated over $285,000 in revenue in just 90 days, achieving a staggering 28:1 return on their ad spend. This success comes as a result of focusing on their target customer.
The Rise of AI and Hidden Sales Referrals
The way that consumers search is changing rapidly.
50% of all consumers use at least one AI-based search tool today. Additionally, 50% of all Google search results contain AI-generated summaries. If your specification documents are stuck in a complex PDF format, an AI-driven tool will not see them, and therefore, your product will not be listed as an option.
Letting AI Do the Boring Tasks
The sales professionals on your team likely spend many hours conducting manual research.
With AI technology now available, this system of manually performing tasks is obsolete. AI allows users to automate 80% of their repetitive work processes, including but not limited to: creating an organized list of leads; determining a lead’s score; drafting an introductory email.
Sales personnel are free to develop the technical, consultative conversations with customers in order to close the deal, meaning they will make more personalized outreach calls than they would without AI.
Personalization of outreach results in a 25% increase in reply rates, as well as significantly less time to get a deal through the sales process compared to traditional sales methods.
Tracking Hidden Referrals
Much of your organization's revenue originates from sources you cannot measure.
This is called the dark funnel. The dark funnel comes from sources like direct communication between two people on Slack, peer-to-peer direct messages, and in-person conversations that are happening at industry events. There is no method to track the exact time or date a person heard about your solution during an off-the-record meal.
However, you can still have an influence on this.
To influence this behavior, develop useful, informative content that engineers will choose to share internally. Dominate niche online communities. You can measure this influence by simply adding a "How did you hear about us?" box to any high-value lead generation form on your website.
If done correctly, the responses to this question will give insights into where your potential customers are located for better B2B manufacturer lead generation.
The Final Thoughts: Do Not Wait for Trade Show Badges
Regardless of your personal opinion; the industrial market is now 100% digital.
If you continue to rely only on referrals and yearly trade shows to generate revenue, you are leading your organization to a slow decline into irrelevance. Buyers are actively searching for solutions, reading through specification sheets, and comparing vendors to determine which combination of features are the best fit.
Your competitors are already utilizing intent signals to identify potential buyers. Therefore, you should be utilizing intent signals to identify your buyers as well.
It is important to identify all members of the buying committee, develop verified technical proof, and utilize AI to automate the processes associated with calculating ROI on the sales funnel and performing data collection. You should stop guessing; create a viable system, gather the required data, and begin closing larger deals quickly.