Summary
An 18-month long effort that transformed an antiquated 90’s manufacturing company to a modern turnkey contract manufacturer, to be taken seriously and hence, recently acquired by IMG Companies.
Because the brazing and linear accelerator markets are extremnely niche, the goal of this project was three-fold:
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- Transition public image and perception of an antiquated manufacturing company to a relevant industry leader.
- Leverage our proven formula to build a lead generating ecosystem.
- Broaden the customer base, cultivate more loyalty and improve operation’s performance respectively.
Our deep experience in engineering and manufacturing made it quick and easy to grasp the unique nature of the business and intuitive to develop effective strategies with frictionless collaboration along the way; a perfect fit.
Manufacturing Can Be Sexy
Lead The Competition
Altair has the most professional and provocative online presence amongst its competitors now. On top of that, site performance is fast, SEO top-notch and rankings are climbing.
Marketing firms are pumping out great looking websites and logos every day, however, here at DevSixOne, we go far beyond a fancy website and a new logo. We know from first-hand experience that synchronizing business operation’s internal messaging and performance with the sales and marketing’s external messaging and promises that customers learn to expect is mandatory for long term success. Hence, The 5 Principles of Manufacturing was born and serves as a good example of what our first-hand experience can provide for our manufacturing clients.
One can quickly see our aesthetic formula encompasses extreme professionalism and original photography while the messaging speaks to what is most important to the customer, their pain points and their various states of urgency. The intention is to establish trust and credibility upfront while converting visitors to initiate contact via 20 different CTAs (Call to Actions) that speak to their pain points.
We designed the site with four different visual layouts. Intuitive, quick and easy navigation and flow is high priority for a site that serves engineers, project managers, buyers and executives. With the integration of a savvy mega menu structure and a floating site-map from the main menu, visitors can reach their desired destination within one-click; check out the screen shots below.
- Website Design sprinkles all the popular trends so as not to be over the top, but just enough; animations removed for faster page load speed.
- Top-level pages share similar layouts and styles.
- Home, Brazing, Industries, What We Do, About pages, have angular or multipanel backgrounds that showcase the company’s macro capabilities.
- Product pages share full-page layouts to showcase actual products and then flow into their respective detailed information.
- Blog and posts share all-white layouts and a different scrolling header with company information. This site is heavy in information, insights, education and will continue to pump out content to provide more and more value to visitors to assist them along their buying journey.
- The five industry pages share a unique layout and shorter image header with slight blue.
- Company Information and details share panel-based navigation which helps visitors quickly bounce to related information.
- Professional Photography, PhotoShop, image optimization for mobile, page speed, and SEO incurred over 10,000 tasks.
- Every single image has been tuned visually with Photoshop, most blemishes removed, optimized for appropriate size in the context of how they are used, compressed for speed, geo-tagged, renamed with SEO and hyphens and alt texted per SEO best industry practices. Very, very few marketing firms will perform this level of detailed work to deliver the highest quality website.
Hidden Value
We all are guilty of our own biases, company culture preventing change and simply tolerating poor performance that eventually becomes the company standard.
The business assessment is valuable for executive leadership to receive a frank assessment that targets company performance that has fallen short of expectations while being armed with business operations, sales, and marketing insights that facilitate more accountability and growth.
Executive leadership is usually starving for a candid, unbiased assessment with a genuine intent to improve business performance.
Improved teamwork, synergy, general business organization and implementation of best industry practices and professionalism are common byproducts; basically, it lights a fire under everyone’s you know what. Exposing the company to a higher level of professionalism, business savvy and communication sets a new standard of future accountability.
Learn More
Syncing Business Performance with Customer Expectations
The conception of The 5 Principles of Manufacturing is now an internal and external company campaign. It is a succinct example of connecting with customer’s most important supplier criteria and empowering the company to hold itself accountable to build customer loyalty.
Addressing What Matters Most to Altair’s Customers
Principle 4 – Relevant Experience Matters, and it matters in marketing too. Our experience starting up our own 3D Printing company and as a COO of a machine shop selling to engineers and buyers was the foundation. Then we conducted thorough industry research and surveys with Altair’s customers to confirm it.
A Powerful Online Presence
Fantastic Results
Organic google rankings and traffic that make a real difference.
15
Are #1
36
In the Top 3
47
In the Top 5
83
In the Top 10
As of May 05, we have surpassed the industry leader and sit on top of the podium for the entire brazing industry. To the right, one can see a snapshot of (Brazing and LINAC) competitive keywords that drive targeted, pre-qualified leads searching for the client’s products and services to the website and the pages we want them to go too.
For example, we are ahead of industry giants like Varian when someone searches for “Linear Accelerator Manufacturer” or “LINAC Manufacturing Company” that just hit #1. Don’t take our word for it, click on the images to the right that verify these fantastic results.
We optimized for about 6 months, every day and following our own methodology in building a lead generating ecosystem that is proven to be repeatable across all projects.
Our Process for Achieving Results
We escorted the client through four of six phases of development as shown in our scope of work slides. We first perform a thorough Sales, Marketing and Business Assessment that is fueled by discovery, research and analysis of the business and its performance. Why go through this arduous and time-consuming step?
We are able to intimately connect with all facets of the company and learn what truly is the heart and soul of the company. Just as important and mentioned above, synchronizing business operation’s internal messaging and performance with the sales and marketing’s external messaging and promises is critical to overall success, business growth, delivering customer satisfaction and building customer loyalty.
Gain A Competitive Advantage Today
Business Assessment, Strategy & Planning
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- Analysis of the entire business, history and performance.
- Interview executive Leadership, VPs, and employees.
- Scrutinize financials, sales and operation’s performance.
- Research online performance, SEO, keywords, website, messaging and social media.
- Generate a maximum 35-page report that will serve as a guide/manual for all.
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We set-up the client with a company-wide shared database via Evernote with 3 primary sectors (Operations, Sales & Marketing, Content Creation). With additional training, we were able to brainstorm, collaborate and organize business strategies, plans and activities in realtime to improve company performance throughout.
Providing a collaborative tool that huddles teams around a hub of information is empowering one our hallmark leadership implementations that never under-delivers in value. It has been used for reveiwing copy, website pages, brainstorming corporate logo concepts, survey results and planning activities.
The Altair Research Group
Our idea to create The Altair Research Group was a result of conducting a thorough business assessment upfront. Most of the value-add Altair provides to their LINAC customer base is through their un-matched engineering capabilities, scientists and experience in their field. Customer’s confidence in capabilites was critical to winning new orders and saying you have the best team is much different than having a full blown research group to support the company. All the pieces were there, they just never put it together in such a way. Since it’s inception, Altair’s Co-CEO continues to praise it’s effectiveness in establishing trust and confidence when engaging with customers. It provides prestige, trust, credibility inside and out, thus futher improving the internal effectiveness of the group’s contributors and happy factor.
Corporate Identity
Evolving the corporate identity of a company that’s been in business for 27 years is not just a grand endeavor, it is a sensitive and challenging project for all. There are deep attachments, a full spectrum of opinions and desires to accommodate along the journey.
Board members, investors, executives, employees each have their own opinion, agenda, what they think is important and some may not respect or appreciate the impact of corporate identity. When corporate identity is executed successfully, it shows customers that the company should be taken seriously and that you know how to run a first-class organization.
Hence, it was simply about defining the company as a turnkey contract manufacturing company providing turnkey services that leverge brazing technology. Brazing services and selling LINAC products are the secondary and tertiary offerings.
Our first venture into evolving the corporate branding was exciting, yet fell short of the mark on the first attempt. However, with commitment, persistence and an affinity for simplicity, we nailed it. A great tool we used to normalize the stark contrast of opinions and styles from company decision-makers and our own preferences was to use public surveys for establishing public opinion on concepts and direction.
In this manner, all of us were put in check and it helped us recognize what really worked versus personal preferences and agendas.
