The premium lubricants offered by Mabanol GmbH & Co. KG are primarily aimed at a very specific target group of national and international distributors of lubricants and mineral oil products. To target this customer group online, Mabanol chose Visable. We spoke with Theodoros Lazidis, who is an authorised signatory at Mabanol.
Your company is known for premium lubricants. What does that mean, exactly?
We focus on high-quality lubricants that meet the most modern requirements and thus increase the service life of machines at the same time. These products from our primary product line are also approved by the most prestigious vehicle manufacturers and are all made in Germany.
In addition, we offer a second product line under the name Mabanol Terra Globe, which is priced somewhat lower and is produced in Europe.
What kind of lubricants does your range include?
Our product range includes automotive and industrial lubricants in particular. These include high-quality engine oils, transmission oils and universal oils for cars and trucks, as well as various lubricants for agriculture and construction machinery. For industry, we offer special hydraulic oils, greases and other lubricants for technical applications across all sectors.
What types of customers does your range target?
Our group of customers is very specific. It includes national and international sales companies for lubricants and petroleum products. On the other hand, we supply direct users from various industries.
Why did you choose Visable for your marketing?
We were looking for a way to reach our very specific target group not only via labour-intensive direct sales, but also via the internet. This had not been particularly easy for us thus far. We had already had a free company entry on “Wer liefert was” for quite some time. After learning about other marketing opportunities with wlw, we decided to upgrade our free company listing to a professional company profile in 2016. We hoped this would give us more visibility within our desired customer group.
To what extent were these expectations met?
No sooner had we converted our free listing into a professional “Wer liefert was” company profile than we were found by almost ten times as many B2B purchasers. And the clicks on our website have also multiplied. We were very pleased with this, of course, because we had finally found a way to easily reach our very specific target group online as well.
How have the numbers developed in the meantime?
After the enormous jump in the first month, the number of visitors to our company profile has gradually continued to rise and has now settled at a consistently high level.
Do you use other services from Visable in addition to the performance package?
Yes. Shortly after activating our service package, we also booked the online marketing service Google Ads as well as a europages service package.
What was your experience with Google Ads?
Google & Bing Ads numbers have also been doing well from the start and growing steadily. In the first year, the increase was somewhat slower but still steady. The continuous optimizstions from Visable’s search engine experts ultimately gave us a huge leg up in Google & Bing Ads as well. Within two years, we were able to improve our click-through rate from 2% to 8%.
What role does europage splay in your marketing strategy?
As an internationally active company, a presence on the European market is an absolute must for us. That is why we have also opted for a europages service package. We had also previously tried to build this pan-European visibility with search engine marketing. In doing so, we found that this is far more difficult for us as a young company than for our competitors who have already been established on the market for a long time.
To what extent was europages able to fulfil this role?
We were very satisfied right from the beginning. Of course, we are aware that not every inquiry will immediately turn into a new customer, but in our daily business we can clearly see that the number of international inquiries has increased immensely. Since we started using europages, the number of contacts with interested parties from abroad has at least doubled, if not tripled.
How do you process these international requests? Do you have any tips for other companies?
It is important for us to maintain a long-term partnership with our customers. That’s why we try to find out the motivation behind each new request from the very beginning. Is the customer just looking for a low-priced product or would they like to establish our brand permanently in their portfolio? In order to find out, we send each new contact both an overview of our company and our goals and a short questionnaire. This includes, for example, questions about lubricant experience, the number of sub-dealers, the type of distribution channels and similar information. This helps us evaluate whether the customer is attractive to us or not.
