A fast-paced digital marketplace and a changing workforce that’s uprooting how chemical buyers source materials is what distributors should be thinking about when building their 2018 digital marketing plans.
In the past, companies relied heavily on their principal manufacturers to provide them with marketing content and collateral. Unfortunately, today that is not enough—especially when competitors are leveraging advanced technologies to acquire B2b buyers via online channels. So, what can a chemical distributor do if they want to gain a competitive edge?
Here are 3 ways distributors can jumpstart their 2018 digital marketing efforts.
As I am sure you are aware, the chemical industry is undergoing a huge disruption in its business model due to the digitization of the marketplace. This is due to a number of factors, most predominately Millennials entering the workforce in massive numbers, making up an estimated 50 percent of the workforce by 2020.
Because Millennials are accustomed to digital methods from childhood to maturity, non-digital methods don’t hold the same impact and the same tried-and-true ways are seen as inefficient and antiquated. In short, if you don’t have a modern website that allows today’s buyers a fast, efficient way to request a quote, and/or find the information they are looking for, you are losing business.
The traditional model of a chemical industry website, which typically functioned as an online brochure for sales reps, has been supplanted by an entirely different model. Today’s buyers demand a more comprehensive website that facilitates online B2b commerce or at a minimum the ability to submit an inquiry easily.
Charkit Chemical Company is a solid example of an eCommerce website that has fully embraced a comprehensive online B2B model, which includes:
Among all social channels, LinkedIn is considered the industry standard for professionals, with more than 500 million members worldwide. Businesses that create a business profile and actively participate in conversations on LinkedIn and on LinkedIn Groups can not only attract high-quality personnel, but can attract new buyers. A high % of every organization’s B2B leads should be originating on the LinkedIn platform. It’s no wonder that 94 percent of b2b marketers choose it as their primary channel for distributing content. In conjunction with a full-fledged eCommerce website, a content marketing plan and/or a strategic SEO plan, chemical distributors can confidently look to LinkedIn for an excellent ROI versus traditional methods.
Getting found is more than half the battle. Even if you have a fully-automated eCommerce website ready to handle B2B inquiries, your business still has to be found through search engines like Google, Bing, and others. To get found, search engines require that businesses optimize their web pages and content. This practice is SEO, or search-engine optimization. SEO is a changing process, where websites leverage advanced practices—like inbound link frequency, backlinks, metatag optimization and page title optimization. An added multiplier is when a product catalog can be dynamic and application driven. A dynamic web application, like ChemSource, will optimize a chemical distributor’s product catalog throughout the website, applying advanced SEO techniques directly into the website’s entire architecture. The team at ChemSource has been perfecting advanced SEO techniques for chemical distributors since 2006. Below is an example of a Google search, benzyl alcohol supplier, which highlights our work in the #1 and #2 organic spots:
Why SEO is so important for chemical distributors is easy to see when you look at the stats. Seventy Five (75) percent of search-engine users don’t look beyond the first page of search results. And of those three-quarters of users, a third of users only clicked on the top few results. If you had to score or grade your existing website on a scale of 1-10, ask yourself this question: if our website is not ranking well on search engines for all terms related to our products, how good really is our website? A 5 maybe?
By embracing these 3 components of digital marketing, chemical companies can enhance their brand recognition and ensure they don’t lose business to more tech saavy competitors.
At ChemSource, we offer a free digital assessment report that will tell you how well your company stacks up “digitally” and will include suggestions on what you can do to improve your efforts.
David Franco is a highly experienced digital strategist and the founder of ChemSource. David established Hexnet Digital Marketing, an interactive agency in 1998 and has had a passion for helping businesses grow through tailored strategic approaches ever since. When not improving ROI and business life for his clients, David enjoys his time living near the New Jersey shore with his wife Jamie and daughters Alexandra and Valentina.
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The Millennials are taking over and they demand technology. The old-school world of handshake sales is fading away in part because of the industry’s changing workforce. Companies that don't focus their marketing to digital sales channels are at serious risk of being outmaneuvered by more agile competitors.
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