Table of Contents

1. The Ubiquitous Manufacturer’s Problem
2. Comparison of Lead Generation & Sales Strategies
   1. Outside Sales
   2. Tradeshows, Word of Mouth, Advertising
3. Injection Molding Lead Generation Strategy #1: SEO
   1. On-Page SEO or Content Marketing
   2. Off-Page SEO
4. Other Effective Marketing Methods
   1. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising
   2. Email Marketing
5. Important Discussion Regarding Costs

A year ago, an injection molder in South Florida was experiencing challenges in new business acquisition. They had traditionally had success in marketing at trade shows and through sales reps, but that was all changing. They also had a sense of urgency with the knowledge that overseas business would likely be coming home soon. They were heavily invested in the medical space and had a well-developed prototype and short-run production offering. Their ISO 13485 certification and cleanrooms were huge assets from a marketing perspective, but how to get in front of companies that needed their capabilities? Below, we’ll discuss the strategies this company employed to grow their business by 25% in one year and we’ll give you the hard figures from this case study.

We can Help you Grow – Start Here

If You’re Short On Time, the most effective methods of finding new customers for Injection Molders are as follows:

• SEO or Search engine optimization is the #1 most valuable technique that provides long term return on investment
• PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising is the #2 technique but doesn’t offer long-term ROI

Below you’ll see an explanation of these two effective methods of lead generation, in addition to simple steps you can take now to begin to see more leads.  You’ll also see a discussion of other common methods of business development and other techniques that will support your lead gen efforts including email marketing and outside sales.  If you put these techniques into practice, they will add millions in revenue to your business.

The Ubiquitous Manufacturer’s Problem

All around the U.S. there are injection molders and other component manufacturers asking “how do I get more customers?” “How do I diversify my customer base?” There’s nothing more scary than having 90% of your business dependent on demand from one or two customers. If you have the attention span to follow this article through to the end, I’ll guarantee you two things:

1. You’ll see value in the strategies discussed
2. You’ll see some items you can implement immediately to make a dent in the challenge of business development.

First, let’s discuss the business environment for injection molding and why my opinion matters. My name is Nate Wheeler, a manufacturing lead generation superstar. Why am I so good at what I do? Because I give a damn, not only about my customers as people, but I attach my sense of fulfillment to the value I produce for the manufacturers I work with (partially…I have a wife and 2 beautiful children who carry more weight in this aspect). I believe in American exceptionalism and that manufacturers are vital to maintaining our way of life. I’m also a relentless learner, and I benefit from working with manufacturers around the world and the U.S., which gives me unlimited strategies to apply for each client. Enough about me! Right now, RIGHT NOW in 2025, there exists an opportunity for injection molders, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a decade. I talk to manufacturers every day that are already seeing business come back to America. This is going to look like a traditional parabola graph that will likely peak at about 2 years. Perhaps looking something like this:

Your chance to grab market share is right now. The strategies you’re going to put into place for lead generation are going to take time to set up, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you benefit from the largest portion of that parabola.  To explain further, large OEMs that have been producing parts overseas are seeing the writing on the wall. First, they will go out of business if their production costs spike too high, and second, if their production cost is the same locally or overseas, they’d prefer to work with someone locally. They are searching right now. We are seeing huge spike in online searches for manufacturing services right now as these OEMs are sourcing new suppliers and diversifying their supply chain. The chart below shows google trends for the term “injection molding”  since December 2024 to present in March 2025:

Google trends gives us insights into interest levels for various keywords over time, but it is not even close when it comes to actual search volume. Other data sources (tools I have installed on client’s websites) indicate that the search volume for one keyword set like “injection molding” is over 2000 searches per month! “injection molding” is only one keyword set. “Medical injection molding” “low volume injection molding” “plastic injection molding” “rubber injection molding” are all their own keywords (in addition to thousands of other variations). These are terms people are currently searching for.

How are you going to get in front of them? Read on for the techniques that work the best.

Comparison of Lead Generation & Sales Strategies for Injection Molders & Component Manufacturers

Outside Sales:

The average salary for an outside sales rep is between $52,000 and $90,000 according to multiple sources^[1] but let’s just says it’s 70K to pick a middle ground. There’s probably also a commission structure to consider because a 70K sales rep is going to need motivated to get better. A rockstar sales rep can make 100 calls per day. Assuming they are also engaging in customer visits, discussing products with existing customers and posting on social media, let’s say optimistically our sales rep makes 30 calls per day. Assume a 1% rate of interest, and a 10% close rate on those clients. Let’s also assume an average deal value of 100K. If this sales rep delivers on those metrics, he or she is a great investment. They will generate $780,000 per year which is a 10:1 return on investment. There are some challenges to consider here:

1. This salesperson will require training and management. If you have this structure in place, then you’re all set. If not, this is a very tough thing to do.
2. There will likely not be ROI in the first year, and maybe not the second year. Why? Because the majority of interested parties don’t have a job sitting there to hand off. It’s going to be a while before interest turns into need. If you can absorb this cost for a year or two, then an outside sales person is a great investment in your future.
3. Your sales person may leave after he gets good at his job. The leads he’s generated will still need nurtured otherwise your investment dies.

Read here for a more detailed comparison of outside sales versus SEO

The Old Way: Tradeshows, Word of Mouth, Advertising in Traditional Media

Over the past 20 years these strategies have been the go-to for injection molders. The first two techniques require a culture that values robust communication skills. We will let the stats speak for themselves in that 71% of B2B buyers^[2] go straight to the search engine to research new suppliers according to 2020 research. It’s likely over 85% now. The last (traditional media) has the same constraints as the first, but it also assumes interested parties have the time to read a magazine or watch TV programming with commercials, trust the source enough to trust the advertiser, and it assumes that the reader or viewer has a need with enough immediacy to reach out to the advertiser (without researching additional injection molders online).

I trust you can see the holes in the above techniques, although I don’t want to be too critical of outside sales. There are some awesome sales professionals out there who can dramatically grow businesses. This strategy, however, is not always approachable for every manufacturer.

Now we’re going to get into some techniques that will work for every injection molder or component manufacturer.

Injection Molding Lead Generation Strategy #1: SEO

What is SEO for Injection Molders? SEO (search engine optimization) is simply the process of getting to the top of search results when someone searches for a term like “Plastic Injection Molding Manufacturer”.

The two companies listed “organically” at the top of search results seen here will receive thousands of “impressions” or views every month when someone searches for the term specified. Some of those impressions will turn into clicks, and some of those clicks will turn into customers. It’s on autopilot. No further investment than what it took to get them there in the first place.

That’s what SEO or “search engine optimization” does for you. It does the sales for you if your website is compelling. So how do you get this sort of placement?

There’s two parts to SEO. On-page and Off-page. I’ll provide a brief overview of both because I want to fulfill my promise that you’ll be able to quickly implement some of what is discussed yourself and begin to get more traffic.

On-Page SEO or Content Marketing for Injection Molders

On-page SEO refers to the written content and keywords used on the individual pages of your website. Here is a checklist for you to review:

1. Check your “SEO Titles” and headings. These are the first place Google is going to look to identify what a page of content is about and to potentially rank it at the top of search results. You’ll find your SEO title field when you log into the back end of your website. You NEED to include the keywords your customers will search for in these areas. Each page should have a different keyword set that you want to rank for. You can also see your SEO title here when you visit a page on your website:
   
2. Ensure you have “well-developed” pages of content on your site. You should count at least 500 words on a page and it should include the keywords you specified in your SEO title at least a couple times. If you only have a few sentences of written content, there’s a very low chance Google will rank it.
3. Brainstorm 5 or 6 topics that your customers might search for. Here are a few examples: “Plastic mold tooling design”, “Plastic part design”, “thermoplastic injection molding”. These will be different for every company but the point is to identify these keyword sets, then write a new page around each one of them. If you do this with 5 keywords, and you currently only have 5 service pages on your website currently, you will likely DOUBLE your visitors and your leads. Click here if you’d like to see more website best practices for manufacturers

Off-Page SEO

Let’s say there are 500 websites in the U.S. that have a page optimized for the keyword “injection molding manufacturer”. How does Google decide which one ranks #1 and which ranks #500? The difference maker is off-page SEO. The most important part of off-page SEO is something called “backlinks”. If you went to a tradeshow as an exhibitor and were listed on that tradeshow’s website with a link to your website, then you just got a backlink.

Essentially Google is looking for votes of credibility for your site, and those backlinks are votes from other credible websites. There is a whole process behind finding high credibility links and implementing them, but for now, go out and find relevant websites, directories, and associations that will link to your site!

Companies that have implemented an SEO campaign can oftentimes rank #1 in search results for hundreds of keywords. This results in massive amounts of traffic to their site and massive numbers of leads. The injection molder mentioned in the beginning of this article generated $1.5 million in new tooling projects in the first year which will translate to several million in component manufacturing revenue next year. One of the largest benefits to SEO though is that the organic placement they’ve received doesn’t just go away. Even if they don’t continue to invest in SEO, they will continue to get more leads because the ranking they achieved is relatively consistent – this consistency is a stark contrast from the timeframe relationship between investment and result seen in virtually every other type of marketing. To summarize,

The benefits of SEO are:

1. Long-term lead generation results from short-term investment
2. Leads that originated from high intent keywords like “Injection molding services” can close quickly because the searcher needs the service now
3. SEO is generating leads while you focus on other things. It’s like “lights out manufacturing”.
4. You don’t pay for clicks or pay a subscription fee after a keyword ranks. It’s just there.
5. The actions that get you ranked better, also make your company look more credible and knowledgeable to your customers.
6. SEO costs less than hiring an employee

Costs for SEO: 30 – 60K/year

Other Effective Methods of Marketing for Injection Molders

While SEO is ranked #1 in terms of effectiveness and ROI we do see results from a few other methods of marketing. Below, you’ll see a summary of a couple of these techniques:

PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertising

In many ways PPC imitates the results you’d see with SEO. The difference is that instead of “organically” ranking when someone searches for a term like “Injection molding manufacturer” you pay for this placement, or more specifically you pay when someone clicks on your listing.

The pros of this technique are as follows:

• Leads close quickly
• ROI is still high (200% average versus 800% for SEO)^[3]
• Lights out lead manufacturing

The cons are:

• Running the campaigns effectively is complex and requires an expert
• Likely costs as much as an employee for the same result
• When your budget runs out, you don’t get any more leads
• PPC doesn’t improve the quality of the content you provide or improve credibility

Costs in PPC: $10 – 100k/year

Email Marketing

Email marketing to your existing customer base or previous contacts is a no-brainer and doesn’t cost anything but some of your time. It’s imperative that you reach out to a comprehensive list of previous customers every month or two to update them on new offerings and just to remind them you still exist.  You can take this a step further through cold email. In this process we purchase a list of contacts that represent your ideal customer (usually tens of thousands of emails). We then thoughtfully compose enticing emails and use specialized systems to ensure they are delivered to inboxes and not junk folders, and to ensure that we don’t compromise your own domain.

Pros of Email Marketing For Component Manufacturers

• This technique can get you in front of more potential customers than any other
• Once the system is set up it can generate leads automatically
• It gets you in front of people who wouldn’t know about you any other way
• Significantly less work than cold calling
• Allows you to test messaging easily to understand what resonates with your market

Cons

• Very low response rate
• Relatively high infrastructure cost
• High complexity setup
• Doesn’t offer long term ROI from initial investment

Costs for Email Marketing – $36 – 48K/year

Important Discussion Regarding Costs

The interesting thing about the costs I’ve listed above is that if a contract manufacturer implemented the high end of each type simultaneously ($208K/year total), I 1000% know that they would generate more than $2Million in revenue as a result. I’m so confident that for the right type of company that has some depth to their offering, we can implement this type of paid campaign for a limited time while we are getting things set up, and then work on a commission only basis after the initial push. Keep in mind that if the high end is unattainable for you, we can mix and match budgets and services and will get you results.

Now is the time for domestic injection molding manufacturers and other contract component manufacturers to grab market share. It’s time to stop ignoring the trend of procurement personnel leveraging search engines and AI models to identify suppliers. The companies who are paying attention to these trends are growing, and the ones that aren’t are stagnant or declining.

We have a full team of U.S. based marketers that are the highest level experts in their trade, and since we are almost exclusively manufacturing focused, we understand and speak your language. I hope you found value in this discussion about injection molder marketing, and that you’ll continue the conversation by sending us a message. You’ll speak directly to Nate (me) and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy the conversation!

Let’s Brainstorm Together!

Sources:

1. Outside Sales Representative Salary
2. B2B SEO Competitive Analysis
3. SEO vs. PPC Statistics