Every company “knows” that they should have a website. Most have one because “everyone else does.”

There’s only one problem with this picture. Most companies never get around to asking the key questions:

• What do we want our website to do?
• Whom do we want to attract to our website?
• How can we make it so people can find it?
• How can we turn it into a tool for growing our business?

One company did. In the fall of 2007, Mark Hardy, Vice President of Sales at J&J Manufacturing Company, Inc., and Erica DiStefano, Regional Sales Manager, decided it was time to leverage the company’s website to proactively generate new business.

Based in Beaumont, Texas, J&J Manufacturing has been a renowned maker of packaging and material handling machinery since 1929. They knew that there was universal demand for their products, and they also knew that the web was the perfect channel for reaching those prospective customers who have never heard of J&J or Beaumont, Texas.

But how was J&J to accomplish their online goals? How were they to compete with larger manufacturers who had their own IT departments with full time web developers and search engine optimization specialists? J&J turned for help to IBT’s Marketing Services division. With their unique understanding of online marketing in the industrial manufacturing and distribution sectors, IBT Marketing Services had the expertise to jump-start J&J’s online marketing program.

IBT began by evaluating J&J’s current website. Analysis of the web traffic data revealed the problem areas. Although the website was new and attractive, it simply was not set up to successfully attract qualified new visitors. Case in point: although almost 45% of the traffic to J&J’s website came from search engines (Google™, Yahoo!^®, MSN^® and others), over 98% of the searchers found their way to J&J by either searching by the company name or the brand names of their products (StrongArm^®, Mira-Pak^® and Tex-Seal^®).

In other words, mostly those people who already knew about J&J’s products were finding them. A quick test confirmed the data: when searching for industrial manipulators or vffs packaging machines – J&J’s major product offerings, J&J was not coming up on any of the major search engines.

To remedy the problem, IBT used specialized software to perform extensive keyword research, and then optimized the website’s programming code, graphics, text, and links to be properly indexed by the search engines.

The results? Not much has changed in the way the website looks, but there is a world of difference in the traffic it generates. Several months after the project began, J&J ranked consistently high on the search engines for the key product areas. Now over 20% of people who find the site through a search engine do so without searching for the company or product by name – that’s 10 times more exposure to new prospects than before, and that number continues to grow. J&J is very pleased to see that the number and quality of inquiries they are receiving from the internet have definitely increased.

IBT Marketing Services was also able to increase the overall percentage of traffic from the search engines by more than thirteen percentage points, to 58.6% compared to 45.0% at the start of the program. This means that nearly six in ten people are now finding J&J via the search engines, rather than by typing their URL into the browser. As a result, J&J is now getting more visitors who have never heard of the company before.

Marketing Services Manager Dennis Chepurnov observes that this was not magic, just a business application of website design and development technologies. “J&J needed help, and we were able to apply it pretty quickly. As they continue to develop and evolve their web presence, they will see continued growth in new business and new markets from the internet.”

In the end, a website is a marketing tool that, with proper research and application, can lead to new opportunities for growth.

For more information, contact IBT Marketing Services.