Footwear Manufacturer
B2B Lead Generation for Niche Industries: How We're Getting Leads From Top-Tier Markets for a Footwear Manufacturer in China
The Client
Footwear Manufacturer
Challenge
The client works with European footwear brands from concept through full-scale production, but had no website and no way to be found or vetted online. Every client relationship had come from someone physically visiting China's footwear manufacturing hubs.
This is also a highly relationship-driven B2B industry, and every prospective client is different, some reach out with just an idea of a shoe, others are established brands looking for a reliable supplier, so the website needed to cater to different customer profiles.
Without any online presence, the client had no steady stream of inbound leads. They wanted to reach and win new clients online.
Solution
A Website Built Around One Objective
We built the client a website around one true objective: get people to inquire. The site laid out who they are, what stage of brand they work with, their experience, and case studies, but every page form the homepage, to case studies, to blog posts funneled toward one short contact form.
The form itself was built to qualify leads without slowing them down. A short set of questions told the client which stage a prospect was at, so the sales conversation could start in the right place, and could also flag someone who wasn't ready or wasn't a fit, so the team could focus their time where it mattered.
Standing Out in an Outdated Industry
This is an old industry where deals are built on trust, and the few competitors who did have a website online were running slow, outdated, non-mobile-optimized pages, closer to a copy-pasted Word document than a real site. Just by having a fast, clean, mobile-first website built on Framer, the client was already ahead of most of the industry before a single ad ran. We built it on a strong foundation of SEO and AEO from the start, so the site could be found on Google and referenced by AI platforms like ChatGPT.
Reaching the Right People on LinkedIn
Because this industry runs on expertise and trust, LinkedIn was the chosen channel. We ran LinkedIn ads targeting the client's ideal customer profile specifically in top-tier countries, the US and major European markets, and built a fully optimized LinkedIn company page linking back to the website, structured to show up in both Google and AI search results.
Turning a Founder's Inbox Into Content
The client already had a personal LinkedIn profile, but it was rarely used and had no strategy behind it. We took over managing it entirely, hands-off for her. She'd forward us email threads whenever something came up, a problem solved for a client, something new implemented, feedback received, and we'd turn that raw, real context into posts. We never revealed which client or brand a post was about, but the specificity of the problems and solutions was what made the difference. It read as coming from someone who actually does the work instead a generic thought-leadership account, and that's what built the trust needed to get people reaching out directly to her.
Keeping It Working
We keep optimizing the site, watching the analytics for what's converting, what's driving traffic, and testing new approaches against what isn't working. On top of that, we publish one blog post or case study every month, also sourced from context the founder forwards, which keeps building organic and AEO traffic on top of the paid leads coming in from LinkedIn.
Outcome
The client now has a full online presence and a steady flow of both organic and paid leads, completely hands-off, while running the business exactly as they always have.
Leads now come in from top-tier countries through LinkedIn, high-profile prospects given how niche the industry and its ideal customer are. Cost per lead is higher than on other platforms, but that's expected and justified here, since each client relationship is worth a 5-6 figure deal.
Day to day, nothing changed for the client, except they now have an inbound pipeline and the ability to reach potential clients globally instead of only the ones who happen to visit in person.
