SearchBeyondGoogle
B2B & Industrial Marketing

Built for the buyer who searches once,
and buys for ten years.

Industrial buying doesn't look like consumer search. An engineer googles "custom CNC machining tolerances stainless 316" — maybe 40 searches a month — shortlists three suppliers, and that shortlist survives a 6–18 month committee process worth six or seven figures. Miss the search, miss the decade. Most manufacturers' websites are brochures that were never built to win it.

We build demand systems for manufacturers, distributors, logistics firms, and industrial services: SEO that captures low-volume, high-intent spec searches, Google Ads on the keywords where one RFQ pays for a year of clicks, and technical content that procurement teams — and now their AI research tools — actually cite. Fewer leads than consumer marketing. Far bigger ones.

The Problem

Why b2b & industrial marketing is harder than it used to be.

Your best keywords get 50 searches a month

Consumer SEO logic fails here. "Powder coating services Ontario" or "Class A freight brokerage cross-border" might draw 30–200 monthly searches — but each searcher is a buyer with a budget and a deadline. Generic agencies chase volume and produce traffic that never converts. Industrial SEO means mapping every product, capability, material, and certification to its exact search phrasing, then winning those terms one by one.

Six to ten people decide, and you only ever meet two

Gartner pegs the typical B2B buying group at 6–10 stakeholders, and most of their research happens before anyone contacts sales. The engineer needs spec sheets and tolerances; procurement needs certifications and financial stability; operations needs lead times. If your site only speaks to one of them, the committee fills the gaps with a competitor's content — and you lose deals you never knew you were in.

The RFQ funnel leaks at every step

Industrial sites bury capabilities in PDFs, hide RFQ forms three clicks deep, and ask for twelve fields before revealing anything useful. Buyers comparing five suppliers take the path of least resistance. Tight RFQ funnels — capability pages with specs in HTML, CAD downloads, transparent lead-time guidance, two-field quote starts — routinely double conversion from the same traffic before a dollar of new spend.

AI is doing procurement's first pass now

Engineers and buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT and Perplexity to "list suppliers of X near Toronto with ISO 9001" — and the answers come from structured site content, directory presence on platforms like ThomasNet, and citation-worthy technical pages. Suppliers invisible to AI tools are getting silently excluded from longlists that used to be built by hand. This shift is early, which is exactly why it's winnable.

The System

Six channels, tuned for b2b & industrial.

Every SBG engagement runs as one integrated system — here's how each channel earns its place for b2b & industrial businesses.

SEO

Capability & Spec-Level SEO

Dedicated pages for every capability, material, process, and certification — "ISO 13485 contract manufacturing," "LTL refrigerated freight Ontario" — built from real spec-search language. Low volume, high intent, compounding for years.

Google Ads

RFQ-Driven Google Ads

Tight campaigns on commercial-intent keywords with negatives that strip out students, job seekers, and DIY traffic. When average contract value is $50,000+, even $15 clicks are cheap — what matters is cost per qualified RFQ, which we track to the CRM.

AEO

Answer Engine Optimization

Featured snippets for the technical questions buyers research: tolerance standards, material comparisons, compliance requirements, Incoterms. Owning those answers makes you the reference source before the RFQ goes out.

AIEO

AI Procurement Visibility

Structured data, directory consistency, and technical content engineered to be cited when AI tools build supplier longlists. We make your capabilities machine-readable so ChatGPT and Perplexity can recommend you with specifics.

Social Media

LinkedIn & ABM Support

LinkedIn is where the buying committee lives. We run thought-leadership distribution and account-targeted campaigns that keep your firm visible across the 6–18 month cycle, so the champion who found you can sell you internally.

Local SEO / GEO

Local & Regional Presence

For "near me" industrial searches — machine shops, fabricators, warehousing — GBP optimization and regional pages that capture buyers who need a supplier within driving distance of their plant.

How We Work

The b2b & industrial growth playbook.

01

Demand & Keyword Mapping

We inventory every capability, material, certification, and service region, map each to its real search phrasing, and audit which competitors and directories currently win those terms — including in AI answers.

02

Foundation Sprint

RFQ funnel fixes, capability content pulled out of PDFs into indexable pages, technical SEO cleanup, and CRM-connected tracking so every quote request has a source. The first 60 days make the site sales-ready.

03

Authority Build-Out

Spec-level pages, technical guides, and targeted campaigns launch in deal-size order — highest contract value capabilities first. LinkedIn distribution keeps the committee warm.

04

Scale What Closes

Reporting tied to qualified RFQs and pipeline value in your CRM, not traffic. Given long cycles, we track leading indicators monthly and revenue attribution quarterly.

Why SBG

An agency that knows
your market.

12+
Years in performance marketing
$1M+
Ad budgets managed across 4 countries
50+
Clients across Canada, US, UK & India
24h
Response time on every account

B2B industrial is the category where generalist agencies fail fastest. They chase search volume that doesn't exist, write content engineers find embarrassing, and report on traffic while your sales team asks where the RFQs are. We've spent 12+ years in performance marketing across four countries, and our industrial work starts from the opposite premise: ten perfect visitors beat ten thousand wrong ones.

Our integrated system fits the long cycle. Spec-level SEO captures the engineer's first search. AEO content makes you the cited reference during evaluation. LinkedIn keeps you visible while the committee deliberates. AI visibility work ensures the procurement tools now doing first-pass research can find and recommend you. Each channel covers a stage competitors leave exposed.

And we report in your language: qualified RFQs, pipeline value, cost per opportunity — wired into your CRM so attribution survives an 18-month sales cycle. If a channel can't be traced to pipeline, we cut it. That discipline matters most in industries where one closed deal can equal a full year of marketing spend.

Talk to us about your b2b & industrial business
FAQ

B2B & Industrial marketing questions, answered.

How much should a manufacturer spend on digital marketing?
Industrial firms typically invest 2–5% of revenue in marketing, with digital taking a growing share — for a $5M–$20M manufacturer, $3,000–$8,000/month is a working range. The better anchor is deal economics: if your average contract is $50,000–$500,000 and a qualified RFQ costs $150–$600 to generate, one closed deal per quarter funds the entire program. Weight budget toward SEO and technical content, which compound, with paid search covering immediate-need buyers.
Does SEO work for low-volume industrial keywords?
It works precisely because volume is low. A term like "custom aluminum extrusion Ontario" may get 50 searches a month, but nearly every searcher is a specifier or buyer with a live project — and competition is weak because volume-chasing agencies ignore these terms. Ranking for 100–300 spec-level keywords typically produces a steady flow of qualified RFQs at near-zero marginal cost. The work is exhaustive capability mapping, not content volume.
Is Google Ads worth it when our sales cycle is 12 months?
Yes — paid search captures the buyer whose need is immediate, and immediacy exists even in long-cycle industries: a failed supplier, a recalled part, a capacity crunch. Industrial CPCs run $5–$25, and a campaign producing 5–10 qualified RFQs monthly at $150–$500 each is cheap pipeline insurance. The discipline is aggressive negative keywords (jobs, courses, DIY) and judging campaigns on CRM-qualified RFQs over a quarter, never on weekly click counts.
What role does LinkedIn play in industrial marketing?
LinkedIn is committee coverage, not lead generation. Cold industrial leads from LinkedIn ads are expensive — often $100–$400 each — but its real value is staying visible to the 6–10 stakeholders evaluating you during a 6–18 month cycle. Retargeting site visitors, distributing technical content to job titles like plant manager and procurement director, and building your engineers' credibility all shorten cycles and protect deals. We treat it as the air cover above a search-driven pipeline.
How do suppliers show up in AI tools like ChatGPT?
AI tools build supplier recommendations from structured website content, consistent directory data on platforms like ThomasNet, certifications stated in machine-readable form, and technical content third parties cite. To appear, publish capabilities in indexable HTML (not PDFs), implement Organization and Product schema with certifications and service regions, and maintain identical company data across directories. Few industrial firms have done any of this, so early movers get named in AI longlists their larger competitors miss.
How long before B2B SEO generates RFQs?
Spec-level pages typically start ranking in 3–6 months because competition on long-tail industrial terms is thin — faster than most B2C categories. Expect first attributable RFQs around months four to six, with the compounding effect visible by month nine as 100+ capability terms accumulate rankings. Paid search produces RFQs within the first month. Given 6–18 month sales cycles, judge the program on qualified pipeline at six months and closed revenue at twelve to eighteen.
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