Industrial marketing glossary

Answer and generative engine optimization: making your own pages the source AI assistants quote when a buyer asks who can make a part.

One page for one process, material, part family or market, with the numbers a buyer screens on and a way to send a drawing.

The one-to-two-page summary a prime or OEM uses to screen suppliers: what you make, your certifications and, for government work, your CAGE, UEI and NAICS codes.

Customer relationship management software: one record per customer company, with every inquiry, quote, follow-up and reorder on it.

Demand that rises and falls with the market one rung up. A Tier 2 supplier sells more when the equipment makers it supplies sell more.

A paid place in a supplier directory. It is rented: when you stop paying, it goes away. Judge it by the RFQs you can trace to it.

The size, weight and tolerance limits of what a plant can make or handle. Buyers check fit against it before they send a drawing.

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations: US rules on defense articles and their technical data. Shops that make defense articles register with the State Department.

OEMs build the finished machine, system or platform under their own name. A prime is the lead contractor on a defense or government program.

Registrations such as ISO 9001, AS9100, ISO 13485 and IATF 16949. Buyers check the scope and the expiry date, so a logo alone says little.

The share of quotes that become orders. Tracked by type of work, it shows whether marketing brings work that fits your plant.

Request for quote: a buyer asks for price and lead time, usually with a drawing. Counted by type of work, RFQs are the clearest sign marketing is working.

The two readers of every industrial page. The engineer specifies the part and purchasing orders it, and each one checks different facts.

What a buyer's quality team checks before you can quote, and before you join its approved supplier list.

The engineer at an OEM or prime who screens suppliers on certifications, identifiers, processes and capacity, often before anyone calls.

Companies that sell to every rung of the supply chain: distributors, testing labs, engineering firms, integrators and industrial services.

The structure under the words: fast pages, clean addresses and markup that tells search engines and AI assistants what each page is about.

Rungs of the supply chain. Tier 1 supplies systems to the OEM, Tier 2 makes the components inside them, Tier 3 supplies parts and processes. Tiers 4 and 5 supply materials.

A website paid for month to month, with development, hosting and upkeep included. A new machine or certification becomes one request in the work queue.

Short stories, drawn like engineering drawings, about how industrial companies win and lose work on their websites. Each one ends with three checks you can run on your own site.

What IKE, our Industrial Knowledge Engine, learns about one company: your plant, then your competitors, then your markets.

The manufacturing knowledge behind every Blueprint, page, post and ad we make, with each client's own cited record kept separate. Everything we do teaches it more. What IKE learns is manufacturing. Your record stays yours.

Our work for the groups that hold manufacturers together: we run the websites of six New England manufacturing associations, and help nonprofits with their websites at no fee.

Always-on software that names the companies reading your website and what they read. We hand you the right people to call at each one. We own it, and it runs in every program.

The on-site visit in a Blueprint: time on your floor with the people who run it, to capture what your website never says.