Site Optimization: Modernizing B2B’s site results in inbound leads increasing 238%

SUMMARY: "Today, if you look at most of our prospects, we didn't contact them. They contacted us, because they found us by hitting keywords on our website," Gary Romig, President, Summit Steel & Manufacturing, said.

By investing in optimizing the site and focusing on SEO, the company transformed its formerly bare-bones site into a tool to leverage business and drive leads. Learn how the metal fabrication company was able to increase its inbound leads by 238% from Q4 of 2014 to Q2 of 2015.

by Kayla Cobb, Reporter

THE CUSTOMER

Summit Steel & Manufacturing is a metal fabrication business based out of Pennsylvania. The company works with several types of metal, including steel and aluminum, and works to provide quality components in a variety of industries. Some of the industries Summit Steel has catered to include aerospace, automotive, consumer products, construction, military and medical equipment.

According to Gary Romig, President, Summit Steel & Manufacturing, the company does not have a large ecommerce presence due to the specialized nature of its products.

"It's highly technical. It's a lot of blueprints. It's a lot of fabrication capabilities of big and small things," he said. "Most products we're making, we're taking somebody's blueprint and making it."

CHALLENGE

Summit Steel faced a challenge that many older manufacturing companies face — an outdated website that was not being used to its full capabilities. This is an especially big challenge for companies that are too specialized or technical to utilize an online shopping experience.

Back when the Internet was still a new place for companies and marketers, Summit Steel contracted someone to create its Web presence. This original site contained a basic amount of information and was Summit Steel's main online Web presence for years.

"Basically, the website was non-existent," Romig said. "We had one [site], but it wasn't, I'll say integrated, and wasn't [a reflection] of today's modern technology and challenges."

"We didn't have a vehicle for [customers] to find us, and we certainly didn't work on the challenge of the SEO and how to drive people to the site. And then on top of it, we didn't … certainly if we couldn't drive them there, we didn't think about how to quantify the leads and track them and handle them internally," he said.

However, the more time Summit Steel spent not updating its website, the more expensive the site makeover became. Finally, the team at Summit Steel bit the bullet and set aside part of its marketing budget to optimize the site.

CAMPAIGN

Romig and the Summit Steel team hired an outside vendor to help the company update its site.

"So, kiddingly, I tell them that, you know, I'm today 57 years old, so I remember the first time in there telling them I didn't think this Internet thing was going to last. It was kind of a fad. And they kind of looked at me like, 'Who the heck is this guy?'" Romig joked.

The site optimization effort took almost five years altogether, with the team really focusing on SEO and search ads since October 2014. From this effort, Summit Steel's online presence transformed from a bare-bones site to a responsive design that now significantly reduces Sales' time and company costs when it comes to leads. As a result of this redesign, Web-based marketing grew the company's inbound leads by 238% from Q4 of 2014 to Q2 of 2015.

"It's been an [eye-opener] for us, as we have developed going forward and what the capabilities of the Internet are, and in our business, which is, I would consider to be [a] very basic business," Romig said.

Step #1. Update and optimize site

Several measures were put in place to optimize Summit Steel's site. The updated site was built on a custom in-house framework that the company's vendor created, which allowed the site to be responsive.

The team shifted the purpose of Summit Steel's site from just a brand website to a tool the company could use to leverage business and drive leads. With this purpose in mind, measures were taken to make the site both visually attractive and easy for a consumer to navigate.

To accomplish this, more images were added to the site, giving interested consumers an immediate visual point into what Summit Steel produces and the quality of work it provides. Several changes were also made to the site's copy to make the information as transparent and easily available as possible.

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Special efforts were taken to fully explain in detail all of the services Summit Steel provided so that the site had a better chance of showing up in SEO rankings.

According to the team, one of the biggest challenges was taking the manufacturing company's very traditional, door-to-door type business and translating those relationships into a digital space.

Romig explained, "the way we typically would go after business in the old days, it would be industrial directories and, okay, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, as an example. What other industries, if I go through the industrial directory and look at SIC codes, can I find other companies to fill out my day when I'm making sales calls on somebody?"

Adapting that one-on-one experience to the site was an especially big challenge, but through the new site, the team started seeing more traffic and promising leads come to the Summit Steel site. However, Romig was still not seeing the quantified leads on his end.

Step #2. Implement call tracking and call recording software

To figure out why Summit Steel's sales team was not seeing a rise in leads comparable to the optimized site's traffic, the team invested in call tracking software. This was implemented in winter 2014.

Summit Steel started by only tracking calls and collecting caller ID information, which allowed the team to see if a potential calling prospect clicked on a search ad. They could then use this information to determine who the caller was and what business they were working for.

However, the company still wasn't seeing as many leads as it hoped. About a month after the call tracking measures were put in place, Summit Steel launched a call recording effort.

Call recording allowed the team to determine:

How callers were using the website

What they were calling about

What pain points they had

The solutions callers were looking for

The Summit Steel team recorded and listened to all consumer calls that came through the company, and from this information, they gained valuable insights about potential ways to improve the site.

Step #3. Utilize call tracking data to better the site

From listening to these call records, Summit Steel was able to change its site to be more customer focused. This was primarily achieved by changing the site's wording.

The team noticed that, time and time again, customers would use certain words and phrases that weren't on the site to describe the products and services they wanted to learn more about.

To remedy this, they adjusted Summit Steel's vocabulary to match its customers', and this change ultimately contributed to increasing SEO rankings. The logic behind this effort was that, if a customer is using certain words over the phone, it's likely that they are typing those same words into search engines.

Alleviate customer anxiety

Monitoring the recorded calls also showed the team that several customers calling in were considering Summit Steel, but were not quite sure enough to commit yet. In an attempt to alleviate this uncertainty, the team developed case studies from Summit Steel's past clients.

These case studies showed potential leads projects the company had worked on in the past while building customer credibility.

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The case studies were based off of clients that Summit Steel had worked with in the past and highlighted what these clients enjoyed most about working with the brand. The goal was to give potential leads an idea of what working with Summit Steel was actually like.

Step #4. Optimize descriptions for SEO

By combining Summit Steel's expertise in its industry, its vendor's knowledge of the Web space and the customer-specific insights the Summit Steel team gained through call tracking and recording, the team was able to optimize the new site for SEO.

According to Romig, the team has spent the past four or five years working on the site, "the emphasis in the last few years on heavy concentration on the SEO."

The team went through service by service and made sure that every understandable question about each service was answered.

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For example, if a site visitor wanted to know what size steel pieces Summit Steel could work with based on each service the company offered, the team tried to make sure that information was available, along with what kind of work Summit Steel did with certain industries and what kind of materials the company works with.

Customizing the site with customer feedback in mind also had the added bonus of showing the team what the strongest services on the site were. The team was then able to use that information to drive leads.

RESULTS

These site optimization efforts, combined with making changes with SEO in mind, produced an impressive result for Summit Steel. Since the site change, the company's sales team has spent less time and money on qualifying leads, allowing them to focus on leads that are already prepared for the sale. In fact, from Q4 of 2014 to Q2 of 2015, Web-based marketing grew Summit Steel's inbound leads by 238%.

According to Romig, the new site has drastically changed the lead qualifying process for the company.

"Today, if you look at most of our prospects, we didn't contact them. They contacted us, because they found us by hitting keywords on our website," he said. "And some of the biggest projects we have in the pipeline today, almost all the projects are based upon them finding us on our website, because we're clearly explaining … maybe not clearly, but we're giving them enough information that they're identifying us as a potential source."

Now when leads call Summit Steel, the company has the time and technical expertise to quickly identify whether or not that lead is a good fit.

"So we don't spend as much money ... wasting time traveling around finding customers like we did 20 years ago. They're coming to see us. And truthfully, I believe it's accelerating in nature right now. They're coming at us with more and more interesting projects that we never would have found in our travels across the countryside," he said.

Romig speculated that optimizing Summit Steel's site accounted for about 2% of the company's budget. He clarified that the company didn't select a percentage for the site's budget; it selected a specific number, and that number roughly equates to 2%.

When asked what advice he would give to fellow companies thinking of a site redesign, Romig emphasized the importance of adapting to change.

"I always say, if you're not willing to change, it will be forced upon you in some form, in some fashion. If you're not going to change, you will change. I mean, you could be out of business, or someone's going to come to you and say, 'If you don't change, you will be out of business,'" he said.

"So you might as well embrace it and get on with it, and try to learn as much as you can. And as the owner of our company, that's what I'm trying to do every day," he concluded.