Buy the quote requests, not the clicks.

It works well when the targeting is narrow, and the benchmarks are favourable: industrial and commercial campaigns average an 8.20% conversion rate at $75.19 per lead and $5.87 per click. The failure mode is breadth, not the channel — broad category terms bring traffic you cannot quote. We would rather run a small, sharp account than a large, busy one.

Judge it against order value rather than an industry average. Industrial services average $79.28 per action on search, against $116.13 for B2B as a whole, while a single manufacturing contract can run from $50,000 to several million. A $200 enquiry that becomes a quoted programme is cheap; a $30 enquiry from a reseller is not.

Three levers, applied every week. Tight keyword sets built on how parts are specified, an aggressive negative keyword list that grows from real search terms, and ad copy plus form fields that qualify rather than flatter. Feeding your CRM's qualified stage back to the platforms then teaches them what a good enquiry looks like, which is the lever most accounts never use.

Often yes, in that order. Search captures buyers already looking; LinkedIn reaches the engineers and purchasing managers who never search. It is dearer — roughly $5 to $6 per click and near $100 per lead for manufacturing — so we prove search first and add LinkedIn with a capped budget and a document offer worth downloading.

Usually there is more than the keyword tools suggest, because industrial demand hides in long, specific phrases rather than head terms. Fifty searches a month for an exact process and alloy can be worth more than fifty thousand for a category word. Where the volume genuinely is not there, we say so and put the budget into LinkedIn, named accounts and remarketing instead of pretending bidding harder will invent buyers.

By measuring the milestones instead of waiting for the order. Qualified enquiry, quote sent, quote value and win, each attributed to the campaign and keyword that started it. Where your CRM supports it we close that loop automatically; where it does not, we build the best available proxy and label it as one rather than quietly presenting it as revenue.

Yes, and it is worth agreeing the rules early. We can route enquiries by territory, exclude regions covered exclusively by a partner, and report what each channel produced so nobody argues about credit later. The campaigns are built to protect the specification, which is normally what the channel wants too.

Sometimes the site is fine, and we will say so. More often the capability pages lack the ranges, certifications and quote path a paid visitor needs, and that is where the money leaks — manufacturing sites convert at about 2.2% on average. Where we do build pages, they are yours and can be folded back into the main site.

They feed each other. Paid tells you within weeks which capabilities, applications and phrases actually convert, and that evidence shapes the organic plan run by our manufacturing SEO team. Over time organic carries more of the volume and paid concentrates on the high-value, high-competition terms.

No. The ad accounts, tracking, creative and landing pages are yours from day one, so the whole programme can move with you. We do ask for a fair window, usually a quarter, because campaigns need learning time and industrial cycles are slow enough that a month proves very little.

Frequently, because it fits the audience. Volume is lower but the clicks are cheaper — about $1.54 per click across industries — and a lot of engineering desktops still run Edge and Bing by default. We import once Google is producing reliably rather than splitting a modest budget on day one.

Ask who manages the account daily, how often search terms are reviewed, and what the monthly report measures. An agency reporting impressions and clicks is measuring its own activity; one reporting cost per qualified opportunity is measuring your business. Confirm the accounts and tracking will be in your name before signing anything.

Overwhelmingly. Technical buyers complete 62% of the buying process online before speaking to a salesperson, so the shortlist is usually set before your team hears about the project. Paid search is the fastest way onto that shortlist while the slower organic work builds.

A named senior paid media strategist who joins the monthly session and learns your processes and materials. You will know who writes the ads and who touches the budget, and you can reach them directly rather than through an anonymous service queue.