Accelerating brand awareness across international markets.

The story.

Our initial partnership with Precision Micro began over two decades ago. In that time, we have been involved in building the brand and implementing internal and external communications strategies – including a brand transformation that emphasised the value of the people in the business.

Traditionally in the manufacturing of components through precision engineering, many companies have used tried-and-trusted methods of laser cutting and metal stamping. However, these methods come with downsides – such as burring and stresses on the metal – which compromise the quality of the final component. In any complex machinery, even the smallest of defects can have the biggest of impacts.

This is where the chemical etching process comes in, a subtractive sheet metal machining process which uses chemical etchants to create complex and highly accurate precision components from almost any metal. A burr-free, stress-free solution that protects the integrity of the component, leading to a better-finished product without further post-processing required to fix issues. With over 60 years of experience with this process, Precision Micro are the market leader in the UK and Europe for chemical etching.

Educating manufacturers, design engineers and key decision-makers that there is a better method for machining components has been a key challenge for Precision Micro. As the business has grown, the process has attracted interest overseas from Europe and the US. Wyatt International explored the market and helped the business refocus its global B2B marketing strategy.

The thinking.

Our Accelerator team – the brand strategy consultancy arm of Wyatt International – worked closely with the business to better understand the mindset of its customers and identify why design engineers had not yet fully embraced chemical etching. Our ambition was to position Precision Micro as a leader in the industry by creating educational and thought leadership content for design engineers across core markets in the UK, Germany, France and US. Our content focused on the benefits of chemical etching and how it solves the issues associated with more traditional machining techniques.

The execution.

As part of an integrated B2B content marketing plan that encompassed creative marketing, PR and SEO, we engaged our multichannel cluster teams to activate the campaign.

The website is an important tool for Precision Micro to attract leads in the UK and overseas, making it a key component of our marketing strategy. Through extensive competitor and keyword research, our consultancy helped push educational and thought leadership content on the website – from optimising key service and industry pages to creating evergreen educational blog content that could rank all year round to drive regular, valuable traffic. Our consultancy also included Technical SEO, ensuring errors that can affect rankings and visibility were regularly checked, alongside implementing schema and other enhancements to send valuable signals to search engines.

In 2023, the UK, German and French websites were migrated together under one website, a process Wyatt International consulted on, featuring a new design, user experience, shared SEO and content benefits and space to add other regions and languages in future.

To support further lead generation from the website, we also created several downloadable guides that further educate web visitors on the chemical etching process while capturing leads to nurture. This included a chemical etching whitepaper, a corporate brochure and a series of application notes that further explore the benefits of the process for individual components and industries. Using our international expertise, these documents were created in three languages – English, French and German. The documents were also created to be used for print for the various industry shows that Precision Micro attend.

To further that education to the right audiences, our PR team has worked closely with Precision Micro to create thought leadership content on the chemical etching process in a variety of respected industry publications. At the same time, we’ve also worked to push Precision Micro’s extensive efforts on sustainable machining, an important step in the growth of the machining process. The coverage and backlinks from this work have increased visibility on the businesses and helped the SEO work flourish further as this work signals to search engines Precision Micro’s position as a thought leader in the industry.

Earlier in the project, we also created a 360° tour of its newly refurbished factory facilities, demonstrating to the global market that Precision Micro’s new dawn had begun. This quickly became a necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic as face-to-face meetings were not possible and factory tours were an important selling point of the business. Even after the pandemic, it became an important selling tool for talking with businesses overseas who couldn’t travel to the UK to see the factory. So much so, that the factory tour was updated to include the recent addition of a new etch room.

Results.

In the past couple of years, we have seen well over 1000 content downloads, many of which converted to genuine sales enquiries and new business opportunities with a potential annual value exceeding £2 million. All this has meant that 90% of the biggest leads currently come through the website.

In 2023, website traffic to the UK website increased by 13%, while there was a 45% uplift in traffic to the German language site. During this period, the French website also saw a successful launch.

While Precision Micro regularly rank 1^st in the UK for key process synonyms, they now also rank 1^st in the US for the same search terms, above companies in the area that also offer the same service. Because of this, the value and volume of their organic traffic are higher than any of their competitors in the UK.

The combined efforts of PR and SEO have also ensured Precision Micro’s domain authority is higher than all its competitors.

If your B2B brand needs a fresh start, or if you’re looking to partner with an agency that combines brand strategy consulting and brand activation – let’s talk.