Measurable from click to order
Lead tracking into the CRM: which source brings inquiries, which inquiries become orders, and what a won order cost in marketing. Long sales cycles accounted for.
Performance Marketing for Industry & Manufacturing
Inquiries your sales team takes seriously.
Dometrics helps industrial and manufacturing companies turn anonymous online research into qualified inquiries: measurable from the first click to the order, tuned to long sales cycles.
The starting point
Where lead generation in industry usually breaks down.
The products need explaining, the decisions take months. Which is exactly why marketing built on consumer logic doesn't work here.
01
Buyers research anonymously
Most of the B2B buying process happens before anyone contacts sales. Whoever isn't visible during this research phase ends up on no shortlist and never learns there was one.
02
The pipeline hangs on the trade-show calendar
Lead generation revolves around two or three trade shows a year. In between, little happens, and a cancelled event tears a hole in the next quarter's pipeline.
03
Inquiries without substance
The contact form delivers job applications, supplier pitches and wasted spend. Sales loses time on contacts that never become an order, and loses faith in marketing.
04
Marketing ends at the click
Nobody can prove which campaign led to which order. Budget gets allocated on gut feeling instead of proven contribution to incoming orders.
The shortlist forms before sales even notices
Buyers and project managers research like everyone else: through Google, industry portals and increasingly through AI assistants. By the time a provider is contacted, the pre-selection is long settled. Whoever isn’t visible during this phase doesn’t even compete, they simply don’t exist for the decision-maker.
Dometrics helps industrial companies own this invisible phase: with content that ranks for technical and process terms, and campaigns that recognize procurement intent instead of buying reach. The result is inquiries backed by a genuine need.
From lead audit to a measurable pipeline
The starting point is an analysis of existing inquiries: where do they come from, which become orders, what does a won order cost in marketing? From that emerges a setup with a clear sequence: tracking and CRM connection first, then visibility and campaigns on the terms with buying intent.
The system behind it is the Growth Engine: five modules that interlock. How campaigns for B2B decision-makers are built in detail is shown on the Paid Advertising service page.
The solution
The Growth Engine for Industry & Manufacturing
Five modules, one goal: a pipeline that delivers qualified inquiries independent of the trade-show calendar and stays measurable all the way to the order.
Campaigns for technical decision-makers
Google Ads on search terms with procurement intent, LinkedIn and Meta for the relevant roles in the buying center. No reach for reach's sake.
Visible during the research phase
Technical content that ranks for product and process terms and gets named as a provider in AI answers. That's how the shortlist position is built before sales is involved.
Inquiries with context instead of a bare email
Landing pages per product group and an inquiry process that qualifies rather than deters: use case, quantity, time frame. Sales starts the first conversation with substance.
Develop existing customers systematically
Service, spare parts, follow-up projects: automated email sequences keep the company present with existing customers, without sales having to write every follow-up email itself.
What this delivers
- Predictable inquiries independent of the trade-show calendar
- Pre-qualified leads with use case and time frame
- Proof of which campaign contributes to which order
- Visibility for product and process terms, including in AI answers
- Marketing and sales working from the same numbers
- Existing-customer revenue through automated sequences
Case studies from this industry
Frequently asked questions
Does Performance Marketing work with sales cycles of six months and more?
Yes, when the measurement is built for it. Dometrics connects campaign data with the CRM, so even an order that closes after eight months is attributed to the source that triggered it. Steering happens through early indicators such as qualified inquiries and their order rate.
Our niche is small. Is there even enough search volume?
In narrow niches, what counts is not volume but hit rate: whoever searches for a specific process or component almost always has a concrete need. A few dozen searches a month are enough when an order is five or six figures. Whether it pays off is clarified upfront by the Growth Report.
What does it take from the company itself?
Technical knowledge from in-house: a contact for product questions and access to the CRM for order attribution. Dometrics handles the rest, from campaigns to content to tracking.
How are inquiries qualified instead of just counted?
Through the inquiry process itself: landing pages per product group and forms that ask for use case, quantity and time frame. That filters out noise and gives sales substance for the first conversation. What gets measured afterwards is not the number of forms, but the share of inquiries that turn into quotes and orders.
Google Ads or LinkedIn: which fits industrial companies better?
Both have a clear role. Google Ads captures existing procurement intent: whoever searches for a process, a component or contract manufacturing usually has a concrete project. LinkedIn reaches the relevant roles in the buying center by function, industry and company size, before anyone searches at all. In practice, Dometrics starts with the measurable demand on Google and adds LinkedIn once the tracking foundation is in place.
Does AI search already play a role in B2B vendor selection?
Yes, measurably. In a Forrester survey of 18,000 business buyers, 94 percent reported using AI tools during their most recent purchase, and in the 6sense Buyer Experience Report, AI chatbots are the most frequently named source for the vendor shortlist. Companies that are present there with citable technical content get named before a competitor is contacted. Especially in niches, this lead is still within reach.
Does this also work for export and multilingual markets?
Yes. Campaigns, landing pages and search terms are set up separately per country and language, because terminology and search behavior differ between markets. Measurement also runs per market: which channel brings inquiries in which country at what cost. Budget then flows to where incoming orders grow at the lowest cost.
What does B2B marketing at Dometrics cost?
The entry point is the Growth Report at a one-time 490 euros: an analysis of inquiry paths, channel mix and measurement gaps with a clear yes-or-no recommendation. If no lever is found, the fee is refunded; if the recommendation is positive, the amount is credited towards the next phase. After that comes the setup build at a fixed price of 3,900 euros over 90 days; ongoing management starts at 2,400 euros per month with quarterly commitment.
Online marketing for industry and B2B. The knowledge behind it.
From anonymous buyer research and industrial SEO to AI search: the most important levers for predictable B2B inquiries in the DACH region, in one compact read.
B2B marketing 2026: procurement has moved online
Industrial buying today happens largely digitally and anonymously. According to Gartner, B2B buyers spend only around 17 percent of their total buying time in conversations with potential suppliers; spread across three or four vendors in the final selection, a single one is left with a few percent. The rest goes into internal alignment and independent research: websites, industry portals, comparisons, increasingly AI assistants. Whoever only becomes visible at first contact has missed the largest part of the decision.
How early the course is set is shown by the 6sense Buyer Experience Report: around 70 percent of the buying process is complete before a buying team contacts a vendor for the first time, and large parts of the shortlist are fixed on day one of the research. In roughly three quarters of cases, the vendor that was the favorite before first contact wins the deal. For industrial companies this means: the decisive competitive phase takes place online, long before sales hears about it.
Younger decision-makers, larger buying centers
The people behind these processes have changed as well. According to Forrester, millennials and Gen Z now make up around 71 percent of B2B buyers, and even in seven-figure purchases they form the majority. This generation researches digitally, expects solid technical information without a registration barrier, and forms a judgment before allowing a sales conversation.
At the same time, a single person rarely decides alone: according to Forrester, more than a dozen internal stakeholders are involved in larger B2B purchases on average, from the project manager and procurement to the executive level. Marketing therefore has to reach several roles at once: the engineer comparing processes as much as the commercial lead weighing budget and risk.
Lead quality over lead quantity
The most common misdirection in industrial marketing is optimizing for form submissions. A contact form counts job applications and supplier pitches the same way as the project with a six-figure order value. Whoever optimizes campaigns for this raw number produces volume and loses the trust of sales. The relevant metric is a different one: qualified inquiries with use case, quantity and time frame, and their rate of conversion to orders.
What this looks like in practice is shown by the work for NT Service GmbH: for special services such as PFAS decontamination, video and search campaigns were built as a qualification filter. The result: 25 percent higher lead quality, more than 8.4 million targeted impressions and a search interaction rate above 17 percent, at a cost per lead in the low three-digit range.
SEO for products that need explaining
Industrial SEO follows a different logic than consumer SEO. The valuable search queries are specific and rare: a process term, a material combination, a standard plus component. Such long-tail queries often see only a few dozen searches a month, but behind almost every one stands a concrete need. With five- or six-figure order values, a top position pays off even at minimal volume.
The basis for this is technical content that genuinely answers the questions of engineers and buyers: application limits, tolerances, certifications, comparisons of processes. Exactly this content builds the shortlist position that, according to the 6sense data, forms before first contact. How Dometrics approaches this is shown on the SEO service page; the fundamentals are explained in the guide Search Engine Optimization.
GEO & AI search: when vendor research starts in a chat
Vendor research is measurably shifting into AI systems. In the Forrester survey of 18,000 business buyers, 94 percent reported using AI tools during their most recent purchase; in the 6sense Buyer Experience Report, AI chatbots are now the most frequently named source for the vendor shortlist, ahead of the vendors' own websites. Whoever is not named as a provider in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews is missing from a growing share of research.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) makes sure a company appears there: citable technical content, consistent company data across all directories, and structured markup from which AI systems can reliably extract facts. Especially in industrial niches this lead is attainable, because few providers publish citable content so far. GEO & AI Search is a dedicated module at Dometrics, not an appendix to SEO.
Google Ads in B2B: small volumes, high order values
Google Ads works differently in industry than in e-commerce: little search volume, but high click prices and very high order values. What matters is separating procurement intent from information seeking: whoever searches for a process plus supplier, contract manufacturing or a spare part has a project; whoever searches for a definition does not. Campaigns that fail to reflect this separation burn budget on clicks without need behind them.
Steering therefore happens not on clicks or bare conversion counts, but on the value of the inquiries they generate. What a click may cost in contested B2B segments is calculated in the guide Google Ads costs; how such campaigns are built is described on the Paid Advertising service page.
LinkedIn & retargeting: reaching the buying center
Google captures existing demand, LinkedIn reaches decision-makers before they search. Targeting by function, industry and company size addresses exactly the roles that co-decide in the buying center, from the technical director to procurement. This suits technical content, application reports and building awareness in narrowly defined target markets, where broad reach would only be wasted spend.
Retargeting closes the gap across the long decision path: whoever visited a product page or downloaded a data sheet stays present with follow-up content for weeks instead of disappearing. With buying cycles that, according to 6sense, stretch over around ten months on average, this continuity is not a comfort, it is a requirement.
Trade shows and digital: follow-up instead of a stack of business cards
Trade shows remain relevant in industrial business, but as the sole lead channel they are too expensive and too sporadic. The problem is rarely the booth, it is what comes after: contacts end up as a stack of business cards in sales, follow-up drowns in day-to-day work, and until the next show, little new enters the pipeline.
Digital complements the trade show at both ends: campaigns before the date fill the calendar with scheduled conversations, automated sequences afterwards keep the contact warm until the project is ready to decide. That turns two or three shows a year into a continuous pipeline instead of two demand spikes with holes in between.
Tracking into the CRM: lead value instead of form counting
With sales cycles of six to twelve months, standard measurement breaks off: the ad account counts forms, the CRM knows the orders, and nobody connects the two. The result is budget allocation by gut feeling. The solution is connecting the CRM to the campaign data: every inquiry carries its source, and if it becomes an order months later, that value flows back to the triggering campaign as an offline conversion.
That way the systems optimize for what counts in the company: won orders instead of submitted forms. Where the existing measurement has gaps is shown by the guide Tracking Audit; the technical setup is described on the Tracking & Data Analytics service page.
Who this is for: from suppliers to plant engineering
The system works for machine and plant builders, suppliers, contract manufacturers and industrial service providers, wherever products that need explaining are sold to professional buyers. Multilingual export markets can be covered as well: campaigns and content are set up separately per country and language, and measured separately.
The entry point is deliberately small: the Growth Report analyzes a company's inquiry paths, channel mix and measurement gaps and calculates where how much inquiry potential lies, with a clear yes-or-no recommendation. From Vienna, Dometrics supports industrial companies across the entire DACH region. Get in touch.