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Your engineers may solve difficult application problems every day. If those answers never leave your building, prospective buyers researching online have little evidence of that expertise.
In WSI’s webinar, How Businesses Build Content That Buyers Trust and AI Recommends, Lisa Kilrea of WSI eResults and Ben Wiese of WSI B2B Marketing discussed how manufacturers can make their knowledge easier to find across their websites, LinkedIn, video, podcasts, and industry communities.
The session centered on a practical question: What should a manufacturer publish to help buyers evaluate its capabilities and help AI search tools connect the company with relevant questions?
SEO remains the foundation
Buyers can use AI tools to research applications, compare suppliers, and narrow their options before visiting a manufacturer’s website. That gives companies another place where their products, capabilities, and expertise need to be represented accurately.
Lisa emphasized that technical SEO still matters. Websites need to be accessible to search engines, and the content should clearly explain what the company makes and what it can do.
Manufacturers should also consider what buyers find elsewhere. Technical articles, customer stories, expert discussions, and third-party references give prospective customers more information to work with as they evaluate suppliers.
Start with questions your buyers already ask
Ben shared an example from a metrology client whose website inquiries repeatedly raised the same questions. After reviewing two years of form submissions, the team developed a 15-question FAQ.
The FAQ also gave salespeople a resource to send before calls, so they could spend more of the conversation discussing each customer’s specific application.
Sales inquiries, engineering conversations, and customer service requests are useful sources for content ideas because they show what buyers need to understand before moving forward.
The presenters suggested reviewing content for four qualities: helpful, expert, credible, and consistent. A good place to start is asking whether the piece answers a real customer question, shows technical knowledge, and provides evidence for its claims.
Explain what your capabilities mean for the customer
An equipment announcement may tell buyers what a company purchased without explaining why it matters to them.
Ben described a boat builder that installed a large press brake. The value became much clearer when the sales manager explained that the company could now bend a boat hull in about 20 minutes instead of spending three to four hours using multiple machines.
That detail gave the company something specific and useful to communicate.
Manufacturers can take the same approach with their content. Explain the application, the constraints, and the result. Add verified specifications, customer results, or certifications when they help a buyer determine whether the company is a good fit for the work.
Share expertise where buyers research
The webinar covered four channels manufacturers can use alongside their websites.
LinkedIn gives engineers, leaders, and other subject matter experts a place to answer questions and share lessons from projects. Video works well for demonstrating processes or explaining technical issues that are difficult to describe in writing.
Podcasts allow for longer discussions about industry challenges and a company’s approach to solving them. Industry forums offer another place to answer questions and share practical knowledge, as long as participants follow the community’s rules.
The presenters recommended choosing channels based on what buyers need and which experts are available to contribute. A single conversation with an engineer, for example, could become a technical article, a short video, and several LinkedIn posts.
Measure visibility alongside traffic and conversions
Two client examples showed why website traffic alone does not tell the full story.
For one technical B2B manufacturer, WSI analyzed 200 buyer questions and nearly 800 AI-generated answers. A group of recent resources representing 11% of the website accounted for 32% of its AI citations. The analysis also identified questions where the company did not appear, giving the team specific content gaps to address.
For a medical device manufacturer, Lisa reported early results about 90 days after the launch of a broader content and visibility program:
- Relevant search rankings increased 38%.
- Referral traffic from AI and LLM platforms increased 144%.
- Traffic to new and updated specialty content increased 385%.
- The team tracked 40 known conversions in August.
Organic traffic increased 4% during the same period. These results were specific to those clients, but they show why manufacturers may want to track priority content, AI referrals, and conversions alongside total website traffic.
Identify your next content opportunity
Start with the questions buyers ask when evaluating your products or choosing a supplier. Check whether your existing content answers those questions with enough technical detail and evidence.
Then run the same questions through AI search tools. See which companies and sources appear, how your business is described, and where information is missing.
WSI offers discovery conversations for manufacturers that want to review their current AI search presence and identify areas where additional or improved content may help.
