The Situation
An industrial equipment manufacturer has relied on trade shows and a decades-old distributor network for essentially all of its lead generation, with a website that functions as a digital brochure rather than a source of actual leads.
What They'd Already Tried
The company had a website built years ago and never meaningfully updated it, treating any digital presence as a formality rather than a real channel — no SEO work, no lead capture, no tracking of any kind.
Where They Got Stuck
Trade show and distributor-driven leads were shrinking as the buying committee for industrial equipment purchases increasingly starts its research online, well before ever attending a trade show or calling a distributor — and the company had no presence to capture that earlier-stage research.
The Approach
- Rebuild the technical foundation of the site first — page speed, mobile usability, basic crawlability — since none of the content work that follows matters if search engines and buyers can't actually use the site
- Build product and application-specific content targeting the technical, specification-heavy searches an engineer or procurement buyer actually runs during early research
- Add a real lead-capture path — spec sheet downloads, a quote request form, a distributor locator — instead of leaving 'contact us' as the only option on a brochure site
- Set up basic analytics and lead tracking so inbound digital leads can be reported alongside trade show and distributor leads instead of existing in a blind spot
- Layer targeted paid search around the highest-intent specification and application searches once the organic foundation and tracking are in place
The Outcome
A digital presence that actually functions as a lead source for the buying-committee research that now happens well before a trade show, meant to supplement — not replace — the existing distributor and trade show pipeline.