Is Your Manufacturing Marketing Strategy Obsolete? Why Traditional SEO Isn’t Working and What to Do Instead

During a recent Moore on Manufacturing podcast, Ed Marsh, a seasoned business management consultant and founder of Ed Marsh Consulting, shared critical insights on why traditional digital marketing approaches are failing manufacturers. Joined by hosts Mike Sibley and Kevin Golden, the discussion revealed how drastically buyer behavior has changed over the past 18 months and why companies must rethink their manufacturing marketing strategy to remain competitive in today’s market.

The Hidden Crisis in Manufacturing Marketing

Marsh described the current situation facing manufacturers with a sobering analogy: “It’s kind of like heart disease—it’s sneaking up on a lot of us based on lifestyle habits but we don’t realize it. We continue along blithely and happily until suddenly there’s some sort of a crisis.”

He explained how the marketing environment has shifted: “From 2010 until 2023 typical digital marketing SEO content marketing inbound marketing, whatever you want to call it, worked pretty well. I mean yeah, there was a lot of nuance to it, there was a lot of technique, you had to do it right, but if you did it right, it was pretty straightforward.”

However, Marsh shared concerning data: “What’s changed very suddenly is that now only 28% of all Google Searchers actually click on an organic search result… 60% of Google searches go nowhere. They get the answer right at the top or they do another search. And of the 40% that go somewhere, it’s about 30% actually just go to another Google property like YouTube. That’s from research that Spark Toro did.”

This means manufacturers are fighting for an increasingly smaller piece of the pie, even as creating and maintaining content becomes more resource-intensive.

The Short List Problem

Beyond search behavior changes, manufacturers face another critical challenge. Marsh shared that 80% of vendors only put companies on their short list that they were familiar with before they decided they had a problem or project. More significantly, 70% of the time, the top vendor on that short list wins the order. He noted this is research from Pavilion, with Trust Radius showing very similar findings.

Marsh explained the implications: “Most industrial manufacturing companies have this mindset of we’ll do some SEO, we’ll create some content, we’ll get some website traffic, that website traffic will turn to leads, those leads will turn into opportunities and sales, but it’s not really happening anymore.”

This reality fundamentally changes how manufacturers must approach their manufacturing marketing strategy. The traditional funnel of traffic-to-leads-to-sales has broken down, requiring a complete rethinking of marketing investments and priorities.

Understanding the 97% Problem

One of Marsh’s most compelling points centered on buyer availability. “If only 3% of buyers are typically in the market for any given product or service at any given time, that means that 97% of the time they’re not thinking about it,” he noted.

This creates a paradox: manufacturers need to be on buyers’ short lists, but buyers form those lists long before they’re actively shopping. The solution requires engaging prospects during the 97% of time when they’re not thinking about your products or services.

“You got to think about their business, not your business and not what you’re selling,” Marsh emphasized. “You have to think about their business and the problems that they’re having during the 97% of the time in their business life where they’re not worried about what you do.”

The Cool Content Framework

To address this challenge, Marsh introduced what he calls the “Cool Content” (KUUL) framework, which focuses on addressing prospects’ known unknowns and unknown unknowns. This means creating content about topics that matter to your prospects even when they’re not thinking about purchasing your products. Issues like talent retention, regulatory compliance, supply chain challenges, and inventory management.

The key is building what Marsh calls a “faculty” of experts. “We need to put together a body of information using outside experts that complement our knowledge and create valuable resources so that our prospects will know about us when they get ready to put together that short list,” he explained.

This approach requires partnerships with adjacent, non-competitive companies and subject matter experts who can speak to the broader business challenges your prospects face daily.

Shift From Attribution to Trust

For process-oriented manufacturing executives and their accounting teams, this shift presents a philosophical challenge. The industry had moved tantalizingly close to being able to attribute every revenue dollar to a specific marketing expenditure. Now, that precision is slipping away.

“We’re probably going back to ‘I know half of my marketing dollars are wasted, I don’t know which half,’ but I believe that over time in aggregate we’re doing the right thing,” Marsh acknowledged. The new manufacturing marketing strategy requires replacing “brand awareness” with “trust” as the primary objective.

However, this doesn’t mean abandoning measurement entirely. As the podcast hosts pointed out, growth over time remains the ultimate metric. Sibley noted, “If you’re not seeing growth over time, then you’re not getting any return, then you’re probably not getting a lot.”

Video, LinkedIn, and Executive Visibility

Marsh noted the importance of video and LinkedIn presence, citing research from Point Road Group: “There’s great research from Point Road group that shows that 88% of the time prospects are more willing to trust marketing messages from companies where senior executives are active and positive and outcome focused on LinkedIn.”

He identified this as a significant challenge for many manufacturers: “People don’t like being on video. ‘Oh no, that’s not for me. I’m busy. I don’t have time for LinkedIn.'” Yet the research shows that executive visibility on these platforms directly impacts prospect trust.

Golden emphasized the importance of executives rethinking their approach: “You can’t rest anymore. You have to constantly, when you’re doing your strategic plan… not necessarily thinking about hey how are we building our trust in our brand, how are we doing that, how are we showing ourselves.”

The Value Creation Connection

The discussion also touched on how an effective manufacturing marketing strategy contributes to company valuation. Sticky customers who trust your company create predictable future earnings, a critical factor in any business transition or acquisition.

Sibley explained the connection to value: “When you get down to it… one of the most valuable things you can show a potential buyer is a sticky customer with recurring revenue year over year and your ability to then grow.”

Marsh added that demonstrating sales team execution capabilities can significantly reduce buyer uncertainty during transactions: “If your sales team has that ability, has been demonstrating that ability, and you can document empirically that most of them can execute on that, then that takes a lot of the uncertainty away for that buyer as well.”

The Fundamental Mindset Shift

Throughout the conversation, the speakers emphasized a core principle that manufacturers must embrace. As stated during the discussion, “Nobody cares about your product. Nobody cares about what you make. Nobody cares about what you do. They care about the outcome of their business.”

This requires manufacturers to stop thinking about their products and start thinking about customer problems. Golden illustrated this point: “Think about how many businesses, manufacturers, any businesses over the last 40 years that were around forever and then all of a sudden don’t exist anymore… The companies that continue to exist continue to find ways to evolve and solve problems.”

Marsh reinforced this with a practical example: “We have to have a marketing engine that reaches those people with authoritative, helpful, and valuable information, and we also have to have salespeople who can go in and in a consultative way actually help a buyer realize they have a problem that they’ve never fully realized.”

Take Action in Your Business

For manufacturing leaders wondering where to start, Marsh offered practical advice: “Here’s an opportunity. You don’t want to blow up the whole plan you put together for a year, but maybe at least step back… and stress test some of those assumptions that you’ve got in your plan for 2025 and begin to think about areas where you need to adapt to the way the market is changing.”

The challenge for many manufacturers lies in stepping outside their comfort zones. Marsh acknowledged this difficulty: “Most industrial manufacturers… look at their world as pretty closely contained within the space that they know very well, and they’re incredibly knowledgeable about that… The converse of that is they say ‘but we don’t know about this other stuff and so we don’t feel comfortable talking about it or writing about it or having videos about it.'”

However, if that’s what buyers need during the 97% of time they’re not shopping, manufacturers must find ways to bridge that gap through partnerships and expert collaborations.

Move Forward With Confidence

The reality is that your manufacturing marketing strategy can no longer rely solely on traditional SEO and content marketing to generate leads. The data shows that buyer behavior has fundamentally shifted, and companies that fail to adapt risk becoming obsolete.

Success in this new environment requires building trust during the long periods when buyers aren’t actively shopping. It means creating genuinely valuable content about the broader business challenges your prospects face. It demands executive visibility on platforms like LinkedIn and a willingness to embrace video content. Most importantly, it requires a shift from product-centric thinking to problem-solving focus.

As Sibley concluded the discussion: “Challenge yourselves, challenge yourself to think different… and use somebody like Ed to challenge those concepts in an area that may not be comfortable for you.”

The manufacturers who thrive in the coming years won’t be those with the best widgets. They’ll be the ones who’ve built the strongest trust with their customers long before those customers even knew they had a problem to solve.