Manufacturing Solutions, Inc. designs and manufactures equipment for the industrial fastener industry, with deep roots in the oil & gas sector based in southeast Texas. The company developed a highly effective automated system to bevel pipe ends in preparation for welding, replacing what had long been a manual task and delivering meaningful gains in quality and process time. MSI also designs and manufactures a range of other automated processing systems for the large bolt industry.
MSI grew sales orders by more than 250% after replacing broad, low-ROI marketing tactics with a targeted inbound marketing system built around the questions its real buyers were asking. By cutting ineffective PPC spend, focusing on long-tail search terms, publishing useful content, nurturing leads, and using HubSpot to measure what worked, MSI generated better-qualified opportunities, improved quote efficiency, expanded its global distributor network, and increased the value of the business before it was sold.
MSI is a small manufacturing operation with around ten employees and under $5 million in sales. Their market is global and reaches across several vertical industries.
Before they came to us, MSI was marketing the way most small manufacturers still market today. A couple of trade shows a year. An ad or two in an industry trade magazine. A small network of reps and distributors who sent over the occasional lead. A push for repeat business and referrals from existing customers. And a catalog-style website that mostly sat there.
That approach worked for a long time. Then it stopped working. Leads dried up. Fewer prospects called. Projects that did come in took longer to close. Sales dropped.
Challenges Faced
Wayne Moncla, the founder and President of MSI, was wrestling with the questions every manufacturer eventually faces when the old playbook stops producing results.
How do I grow my manufacturing business? How do I get more qualified leads? How do I market my business affordably? How do I convert more of the leads I do get into actual customers?
"We were not seeing as many good opportunities or orders from the same amount of marketing work. What we were doing was not making a big difference to our revenue. We needed a shot in the arm to grow our business and that is what we got and get from Todd Hockenberry." states Mr. Moncla
The symptoms were stacking up. The same connections and customers were not sending new leads or projects. Existing customers were not buying, or in some cases had gone out of business entirely. Leads were coming in, but the quality was poor. More time was spent preparing quotes, and fewer were turning into orders.
MSI was spending up to $1,000 a month on a PPC campaign managed by an outside marketing firm, but those clicks were not turning into sales. They had paid for a website redesign that looked good, but traffic was not really increasing and lead quality had not improved. Trade shows were producing fewer good leads, attendance was down, and the people who did show up were mostly local. Print ads kept getting more expensive and had become a luxury MSI could no longer afford.
Something had to change.
Solution
One of MSI's partners introduced Wayne to the idea of inbound marketing and using HubSpot software to get found. That partner was working with Todd and his team and using HubSpot to implement inbound marketing. They were seeing real growth in leads, quality opportunities, and a clear connection to sales growth. Wayne was interested.
Todd sat down with MSI, reviewed their current marketing results, costs, and ROI, and showed Wayne there was a better way that would not cost more than what MSI was already spending.
MSI became convinced the investment would generate significant ROI by getting their message in front of the real economic buyers for their very specialized products. It was clear they needed to jump in and implement a full inbound marketing approach to growing the business.
The implementation plan was simple and focused on three ideas. MSI sold niche products, so we needed to focus on a narrow target customer or persona. MSI needed to be in the places those people were looking for information about pipe beveling and the other areas of MSI expertise. And MSI needed to develop more customer results-oriented content than the existing feature-based catalog content.
The first move was to end the PPC campaign and save $1,000 a month. Looking at the data from the monthly reports of traffic, comparing the leads to the quote log, and lining all of that up with who actually bought, we found the PPC campaigns had zero return on investment. Leads never turned into sales. Impressions and clicks were not connected to results. Broad-based and general did not work for a niche manufacturer. A persona-targeted PPC campaign might be useful later, but the existing one was a drain.
Target, Target, Target
Todd and his team then completed a thorough target market analysis to determine the exact keywords that would generate traffic from the right people, the target MSI persona company. For example, "beveling" describes, at a high level, what MSI's main product does. That keyword generated visits from people looking to bevel granite or countertops. Not good targets for MSI.
When the site was optimized for "pipe beveling" and other long-tail keywords, the traffic increased, and the visitors were far more qualified. Todd's team optimized the website both on-page (what you see when you navigate to the site) and behind the page (metadata, H1 tags, and the rest) to reflect that focus on a defined set of long-tail keywords.
Create Interesting Content
MSI then started to create unique content built around the long-tail keywords and the target customer persona.
MSI launched a blog about manufacturing automation, giving prospects a place to read about other manufacturing operations, case studies of MSI clients, and techniques and products used to improve industrial companies' processes. The blog posts are targeted to MSI customer personas, optimized around the long-tail keyword set, and published on a regular cadence.
MSI created a series of videos showing the products in action. Todd's team incorporated those videos into the website, launched a YouTube channel for MSI, and optimized the videos using the target long-tail keyword set. The videos let MSI demonstrate their products quickly and inexpensively to prospects and leads anywhere in the world.
MSI launched social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They use social media as a content outlet and as a way to locate skilled people to hire. Using HubSpot's social tools and Google Alerts, MSI now joins conversations on other blogs and forums where their particular expertise is useful.
Beyond the inbound links generated by those comments, Todd's team ran a campaign to earn inbound links from relevant and authoritative sites in the industrial space. High-quality inbound links improved the authority of the MSI site and moved them steadily up the rankings for target keywords.
Using HubSpot's integrated email management tools, MSI and Todd's team set up a lead nurturing campaign to automatically send follow-up emails over a 30-day window to leads who converted on the website. We imported every email contact from previous marketing campaigns into HubSpot and started a regular email program to the entire customer and prospect list.
Integrate Marketing – Find What Works
MSI did not stop attending trade shows. We integrated inbound marketing with their outbound activity to significantly increase the return on every trade show investment.
At one trade show with weak overall attendance, MSI was still able to drive traffic to their booth and generate high-level interest and high-quality opportunities. They publicized the show on the website, wrote about it on the blog, sent emails to current contacts, promoted the equipment videos, sent emails to the show attendee list, and dropped postcards to targeted attendees who fit the ideal customer persona. That kind of orchestrated effort is what turns a soft show into a profitable one.
Todd uses the analysis tools within HubSpot to set goals and targets, adjust inbound marketing efforts as the data comes in, and deliver partner accountability for the only result that matters to MSI: increased revenue.
As part of that growth, MSI expanded by developing a global representative and distribution network. One of the reasons they made that decision was that interested distributors from around the world found the site, liked the products and solutions MSI offered, and wanted to partner with MSI to offer those solutions to their own customers. MSI located and signed distributors in South America, Europe, and Asia. "The content we publish on the site has definitely given us credibility with these potential partners," states Mr. Moncla.
Results
The results MSI saw after launching inbound marketing with HubSpot and our team speak for themselves. Comparing the ten months before the program started with the ten months after, the numbers were as follows:
Sales orders increased over 250%. Organic search delivered four times the unique searches a month finding MSI. Overall site traffic grew to over five times the unique monthly visitors.
Visits to www.msi-tx.com over time
The strategy worked, and it kept working. Sales more than doubled while the number of quotes required to close a sale went down.
"Targeting the right people is making the quoting process more efficient with less quotes needed to get a sale and more effective in that more quotes become sales. For a small manufacturer like us this time savings is invaluable," states Mr. Moncla.
MSI also used social media to reach out to the manufacturing community and find good machinist candidates. Most manufacturers know how hard it is to find well-qualified employees with the right skill set and experience, and inbound gave MSI another channel to do it.
"Inbound Marketing implemented by Todd and his team using HubSpot has been a big winner for us. Our revenue is growing, we have seen our investments produce a good return in a reasonable time period, and we are building a marketing system that will yield results for years to come," says Mr. Moncla.
MSI was eventually sold, and the impact of inbound marketing on the value of the business was significant. The company sold for roughly three times what it would have been worth prior to the implementation of inbound marketing. Consistent leads, growing revenue, and an engaged contact list created lasting business value.
"Having a reliable, repeatable marketing system made our company more valuable when the time came to sell. Having an active database and communicating regularly with them helped us grow our revenue and our sale price and for that we thank Todd and his team," states Mr. Moncla
The Takeaway for Manufacturers Today
The lesson from MSI is the same one I share with every manufacturing owner I work with. Targeted content built around the questions your real buyers are asking is what wins. Cutting spend that does not produce ROI frees the budget to invest in what does. And a marketing system that produces consistent leads is not just a growth lever, it is one of the most valuable assets you can build in your business, all the way through to a transaction.
The specific tactics evolve. AI search, LinkedIn newsletters, video, podcasts, and the rest keep changing the surface of how buyers find you. The principles do not. Know your buyer. Show up where they are looking. Answer their questions better than anyone else. Measure what works and double down. Build the system, not the event.
About Todd Hockenberry
Todd helps B2B companies increase revenue by developing and implementing integrated inbound marketing strategies that generate leads and convert them to sales. Along with strategic relationship management, sales channel optimization, and target market analysis, Todd partners with small and medium-sized B2B and manufacturing companies to chart a path to significant growth.
Topics: Case Studies, Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing
