Blog posts and product pages for a manufacturer have to explain specs, ratings and design choices correctly. The engineers who know those details are often tied up with design and production work. Fitting marketing questions into their schedules for every new page is challenging.
At Technical Copy we limit your engineers’ part of each page to answering questions and checking the final draft. Your buyers see the same specs and ratings your engineers approved. Read on to learn more about running content marketing for manufacturers from engineer input to quote requests.
How Content Marketing for Manufacturers Works
Content marketing for manufacturers means publishing web pages that answer buyer questions with facts about your own products and processes. That content includes blog posts, product pages, case studies and FAQ answers. The facts in it come from two sources: your product documents and your engineers.
You build each page with the same five steps: gather technical input, draft, review, publish and update. Marketing runs the schedule and handles the writing, so engineers only spend time on the technical steps. They supply the facts at the start and check the finished copy for accuracy and correct terminology.
Get Technical Input Without Tying Up Engineers
Pull facts from your company’s existing documents first and save engineer time for the gaps. Each fact you find there is one fewer question for the interview. Plan to ask your engineers about design choices, since the reasons behind them are seldom written down.
Check these documents before you schedule an interview:
- Spec sheets and catalogs: Part numbers, dimensions, materials and ratings are listed for each model.
- Test reports: The method, conditions and results behind each published rating are recorded in these reports.
- Installation instructions: Assembly steps, required hardware and mounting clearances appear in the order an installer follows them.
- Past RFQ and quote replies: Your sales and engineering staff already answered customer questions about fit, tolerances and materials in these replies.
- Quality certifications: Use these to confirm which standards, such as ISO 9001, your plant and products meet.
Send engineers the remaining questions in writing or cover them in a 20-minute call. You might see fiberglass side rails listed on a ladder spec sheet with no reason given for choosing them over aluminum. Ask your engineer about that one design choice instead of walking through the whole product.
Reuse Each Engineer Interview Across Several Pages
Engineers usually give more facts in one interview than a single page needs. List every page you plan to publish about the product and write questions that cover each one. Writing questions for the blog post alone leaves the product page and FAQ without the details they need.
Use your engineer’s explanation of the ladder’s fiberglass side rails as one section of a blog post on rail materials. One sentence from that explanation fits in the product page’s description of the rails. Add a short version to the product’s FAQ, and your engineer has answered once for all three pages.
Limit Engineer Review to Facts and Terminology
Google tells site owners to check whether an expert wrote or reviewed each page. It also asks them to look for factual errors a reader could easily verify. Your engineers cover both points by checking only the specs, ratings, performance claims and technical terms in each draft.
A first draft might describe the fiberglass ladder as having a 300-pound weight limit. Your engineer would change “weight limit” to the ANSI term “duty rating.” Marketing makes that edit in the draft along with any changes to headings, sentence structure or length.
Keep Older Pages Accurate as Your Products Change
Any page with a product spec on it goes out of date when engineering revises that spec. Track each spec, rating or standard in one spreadsheet next to every page where it appears. Get on the distribution list for your company’s engineering change notices so you hear about each revision.
Your engineers might raise the fiberglass ladder’s duty rating from 300 to 375 pounds. Find every page with the 300-pound rating in your spreadsheet and change each one to 375 pounds. Add a “Last updated” line to each edited article and put the same date in its structured data.
Tie Quote Requests Back to Specific Pages
Check the Pages tab in Search Console’s Performance report to see clicks for each page. Search Console only counts clicks from Google Search results, so visits from links your sales reps email won’t appear in it. Google Analytics records visits from emailed links, search results and every other source.
Mark the event your quote form sends to Google Analytics as a key event. Find a Key events count for each page in the Landing page report under Engagement. A buyer who reads a blog post after landing on your home page adds one to the home page’s count and none to the post’s.
Build a Content Marketing Program for Manufacturers
Start content marketing for manufacturers with your company’s documents and short engineer interviews. Keep every published page accurate and track quote requests by landing page.
At Technical Copy, we write blog posts, articles and product pages from the documents your company already has. Your engineers answer our questions in writing or in a 20-minute call.
Click below for a quote and to learn more about our blog, article and product page writing services.