Advertorial Outsourcing Services and Industrial Web Content for Manufacturers

January 2006

It is widely known that people give a lot more credibility to good editorial content than to paid advertisements. After all, anyone can claim that their own product is the best. Editorial content suggests that someone else has endorsed a product or service. Manufacturers can rarely afford to spend valuable time or precious resources designing advertorial article content, whether for an outside publication or the company website.

Manufacturers are not properly equipped with the tools or the experienced staff to compose, write, edit and submit advertorial to publishers, editors, and websites. According to Aaron Kahlow, the CEO of BusinessOnLine, a company that has built more than 400 manufacturers' websites, "Most manufacturers neglect their websites for a variety of reasons including a lack of understanding about the impact their website can have on sales and company growth.  Most manufacturers are simply not convinced that their website can be a productive channel for generating sales or that customers will actually turn to the website."

Kahlow admits, "There is no 'silver bullet' for driving site traffic that works for every manufacturer.  However, on a large scale, search engines are a very important tool for driving traffic to a manufacturers' website."  Search engines also pick up the media coverage of major publications ranging from IndustryWeek to InMFG to Automation.com, to more than a thousand industrial trade publications.

Placement of advertorials usually requires a top notch freelance journalist who has close relationships with the editors of the trade publications.

Search Google for "manufacturing journalists" and a short list of leading journalists will guide the authorship of advertorials and Web content.