Questions manufacturers ask us.
Short answers to what manufacturers ask us most about cost, websites, search, and social media.
What it costs and who does the work
- How much does marketing for a manufacturing company cost?
- With us, a complete manufacturing website costs $6,000 once, a starter website costs $2,000, SEO is $675 a month, and social media with Google Business Profile management is $1,900 a month. There are no hosting or maintenance charges on top. Industrial agencies that publish their rates generally start around $40,000 for a website rebuild and $4,000 or more a month for ongoing work, and most of that gap is scope, such as brand strategy and persona research. Every price is on our pricing page.
- How much does a manufacturing website cost?
- Our manufacturing website costs $6,000 once, or $2,000 for a starter site, with the full source code handed over and no hosting or maintenance charges afterwards. Across the wider market, a custom manufacturing website commonly runs $10,000 to $25,000 for 10 to 20 pages, and the industrial specialists that publish their prices tend to start near $40,000. The price moves with the number of pages, how much technical content has to be organized, whether data has to come out of an existing system, and how many divisions need their own sites.
- Should a manufacturer hire a specialist agency or a general one?
- Hire a specialist if your product is technical and your buyers are engineers or purchasing teams, and hire a generalist if you sell something a consumer understands at a glance. A generalist has to be taught what a tolerance is and why a quote form has to accept a drawing file, and you pay for those lessons in months and rewrites. For work that is not industry-specific, such as a plain brochure site, a specialist is not worth a premium. Whoever you talk to, ask them to name the last five manufacturers they worked with and what those companies make.
- What are the alternatives to hiring a manufacturing marketing agency?
- There are five: doing it in house, a freelancer, a general agency, a large industrial specialist, or hiring nobody this quarter. Doing it in house works for the basics, a freelancer suits one defined piece of work, and a general agency suits work that is not industry-specific. A large industrial specialist fits when you need brand strategy, persona research, and a content program, which is why those firms start near $40,000 for a build. Hiring nobody is sensible when no one inside the company has time to sign off technical content, and our comparison page sets all five side by side.
- When is Shopfloor Agency the wrong choice?
- We are the wrong choice in five situations. If your purchasing process requires a named account team and backup staff, a larger agency will meet that better, because with us you work directly with the person who builds your site. We do not run paid advertising or offer brand strategy and persona research, so a paid media agency or a larger firm will serve those needs well. We are a young firm without a third-party review profile yet, and if you sell something a consumer understands at a glance, a generalist will do the job well without a specialist premium.
- Do I own the source code of my website?
- Yes, you own the full source code from the day the site is complete. You can host it anywhere, hire anyone else to work on it, or bring it in house, and there are no hosting or maintenance charges from us afterwards. Ask every agency you talk to for the answer in writing, because many sites sit on a proprietary platform or an agency-managed account that you cannot take with you.
Marketing a manufacturing business
- Why do manufacturers need digital marketing?
- Manufacturers need digital marketing because the first half of an industrial purchase now happens before anyone contacts you. An engineer or purchasing manager searches for the capability, material, tolerance, or certification they need, then shortlists two or three suppliers from what they find. If your capabilities are not written where a search engine can read them, you are left off that list and never hear that the work went elsewhere. For most manufacturers, the fix starts with a website that states capabilities, tolerances, materials, and certifications in plain text.
- What marketing works best for manufacturers?
- Search works best for almost every manufacturer, because industrial buying starts with a specific technical question typed into a search box. The work that returns the most is plain: capability pages that state what you can hold, spec sheets published as web pages, pages for your certifications, and a complete Google Business Profile. Paid advertising stops the day you stop paying, and social media mostly helps with credibility and hiring. The order that works is to fix the website first, then earn the rankings, and then build your presence elsewhere.
- How do manufacturers generate leads online?
- Manufacturers generate leads online by being easy to find for the specific things they make, and then making it easy to send a drawing. That means a page for each capability, process, or part family in the words an engineer would type, a quote form that accepts a file, and proof a buyer can check, such as certifications, equipment lists, and the industries you ship to. Most lost inquiries come from a site that cannot say whether you can hold a tolerance or meet a standard, so the engineer moves on without telling anyone.
- How do I market a manufacturing business with no marketing team?
- Start with four jobs that need someone who knows the work: putting your real capability data on the site as text, stating your certifications with their scope, completing your Google Business Profile, and shortening the quote path so a drawing can be sent in one click. The person who prices your jobs can handle all four, and together they cover most of the available gain. Plan on about two hours a week of internal time, with roughly thirty minutes of that from the owner. Outside help earns its fee on the technical build, the page structure, and the ongoing search work, in that order.
Your website
- What should a manufacturing company website include?
- A manufacturing company website should include a page for each process you run, your materials and tolerance ranges in plain text, your certifications with their scope and issuing body, the industries you serve, the equipment you run, and a way to send a drawing. Spec sheets work best as web pages with the PDF offered alongside, because a page can rank in search and be quoted by an AI assistant. Photographs should show your actual floor. An engineer should be able to decide whether to send you a request for quote without having to contact you first.
- How long does it take to build a manufacturing website?
- A straightforward single-division manufacturing website typically takes four to six weeks once the content is settled, and our three most recent sites went from brief to launch in 6, 10, and 18 days. Larger builds with a parts catalog, several divisions, or data from an existing system run eight to sixteen weeks. The schedule depends mostly on the technical content, because someone who knows the process has to confirm the tolerance ranges, the certification scopes, and the equipment list.
- Should a manufacturer have a separate website for each division?
- Give each division its own website when the divisions sell to genuinely different buyers, and keep one site when they do not. We built five sites for Phillips Light Industrial because its quality division sells containment to a plant manager whose line is down, while its staffing division speaks to employers and job seekers. Five sites mean five sets of content to maintain, so if your divisions sell to the same buyer, one site with clear sections will do better than several thin ones.
- How do I show capabilities and certifications on a manufacturing website?
- Show capabilities and certifications in tables of plain text that buyers and search engines can read, and keep them out of images, PDFs, and logo strips. A capability table lists the process, the materials, the size envelope, and the tolerance range you hold in routine production. A certification entry names the standard and its revision, the registrar that issued it, the scope it covers, and which facility holds it. Scope is the part buyers check and the part most sites leave out.
- What is the best platform for a manufacturing company website?
- For most manufacturers, the best platform is a static site generator, which turns your pages into plain HTML files, because a manufacturing site is read far more often than it is edited. A static site is fast, gives attackers almost nothing to target, costs very little to host, and keeps working without a schedule of security patches. WordPress is a reasonable choice if someone without technical training needs to publish every week, but it brings plugin maintenance, security updates, and hosting costs. This site and the five we built for Phillips Light Industrial are static, which is why there is no hosting charge attached to them.
- Why is my manufacturing website not getting leads?
- Most manufacturing websites miss out on leads because they never answer the three questions a buyer arrives with: can you make my part, are you allowed to, and how do I ask you for a price. When we measured sixty-six US manufacturer websites, four cited a materials or process standard and twenty-six published their address in a form search engines can read. Send a request through your own quote form and time the reply, then ask whoever prices the work how many of the last ten inquiries arrived complete enough to quote. Those two numbers usually point to the problem in an afternoon.
- What is a capability statement and should it be on our website?
- A capability statement is a one-page summary of what your plant can do, and yes, it belongs on your website. It covers your processes, materials, sizes, tolerances, certifications with their scope, capacity, locations, and the person to contact for quotes. Publish it twice: as a dated PDF a buyer can attach to a supplier packet, and as an ordinary web page with the same facts as text, which is the version search engines and AI assistants can read.
- Should a manufacturer publish prices on the website?
- Most manufacturers should not publish prices, because industrial work is usually quoted per job and one published price would be wrong for nearly every inquiry. Publish everything that helps a buyer decide whether to ask: your process ranges, part size envelope, typical volumes, minimum order, lead times, and the work you decline. Where you have a genuinely standard product or service, price it openly, as we do on our own pricing page.
Being found on Google and in AI search
- Do manufacturers need SEO?
- Yes, most manufacturers need SEO, the work of being found on Google, because their buyers search before they build a shortlist. An engineer looks for a process, a material, or a tolerance and picks two or three suppliers from the results, and very few manufacturers publish pages that match those searches. The exception is a manufacturer with a few large customers won through relationships and trade shows, although those buyers still look you up before a first meeting. We start SEO work once we have delivered a site worth ranking.
- How do I get my manufacturing company to show up on Google?
- Publish a separate page for each thing you want to be found for, and state the specifics of that process on each page. One page called “Capabilities” listing twelve processes will rank for none of them, while twelve pages naming the process, materials, size envelope, and tolerances will rank for several. After that, a complete Google Business Profile, technical content your competitors have not written, and a fast site move a manufacturer up fastest. Expect the first movement on narrow search terms in about three months.
- How long does SEO take for a manufacturing company?
- SEO usually takes three to six months for specific, less competitive search terms, and nine to eighteen months for broad or commercially contested ones. A page about a particular process in a particular material can rank within weeks, because so little content competes for those searches. A promise of rankings in thirty days usually means the terms are ones nobody searches for. At $675 a month, plan on a twelve-month horizon.
- How do I rank for the parts I manufacture?
- Give each part family, process, or material its own page, and write it the way an engineer would search for it. State the material designation, process, size envelope, tolerance range, finish, industries served, and standards met as text on the page, because a PDF or a page that fills in after it loads will not carry those facts into search results. Include your internal part numbers with a plain description, since distributors and buyers search for them. A small site with real technical depth can outrank a much larger competitor on the searches that lead to a request for quote.
- What is the best SEO strategy for manufacturers?
- The best SEO strategy for manufacturers starts with the pages closest to a sale and works outward. Build the commercial pages first, covering capabilities, processes, materials, industries served, and certifications, because they are what a buyer searches for just before getting in touch and what AI assistants quote. Once those exist, educational articles become worth writing, and their main job is to link into the commercial pages. Add a complete Google Business Profile if you have a plant, and keep the site fast.
- How do I get my manufacturing company cited by AI search tools?
- AI search tools cite manufacturers that publish specific facts, as text, on pages an assistant can read and attribute. A sentence that carries a process, a material, a number, and a qualifier can be quoted whole, and an adjective gives an assistant nothing to quote. Pew found 88% of AI summaries cited three or more sources, so plan on competing with at least three suppliers for every answer. Add an AI assistant option to the “how did you hear about us” question on your quote form so you can count those inquiries.
- Do manufacturers need a blog?
- Manufacturers need permanent pages that answer buying questions, which is a different thing from a dated blog. In our study of sixty-six manufacturer websites, fifty-six linked to a blog, news, or resources section from the home page. A page about a process, a material, or a tolerance keeps bringing in quote requests for years, while a post about your trade show booth stops working once the show ends. If a topic will still be true in three years, give it a permanent page with no date.
Have a question that is not here?
Send it to us with a few lines about what you make. We will reply with a direct answer.
Social media and Google Business Profile