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Manufacturing Company Benchmarked Their AI Readiness

July-Blog-2-1

Industry

Manufacturing

The Challenge

PFor more than four decades, Profile Precision Extrusions (PPE) has built custom miniature aluminum extrusions for the aerospace, medical device, defense, and recreation industries. PPE had an active marketing program and a sales team capable of identifying qualified opportunities. What it lacked was a consistent, closed loop system for connecting marketing sources and campaigns to sales outcomes.

Earlier work had solved campaign level attribution. Revenue level attribution was a different problem. Lead qualification still depended on a combination of manual review, spreadsheets, and inconsistent lifecycle management in HubSpot. The sales team knew which inquiries were valuable, but that knowledge was not being captured in a structure marketing and leadership could analyze. At the same time, AI powered search tools were starting to shape how engineers and procurement teams researched and evaluated suppliers, and PPE had limited visibility in the responses those platforms generated.

This left PPE seeking alternatives to achieve three main goals:

  1. Connect marketing sources and campaigns to qualified opportunities, customers, and revenue

  2. Establish a measurable baseline for AI readiness across data, process, systems, and attribution

  3. Improve visibility in AI powered search, where buyers were already researching suppliers

The Solution

Rather than treating attribution, CRM processes, paid media, and AI visibility as separate issues, StringCan evaluated them as parts of one connected marketing system. Over six months, StringCan conducted a Marketing AI Readiness Audit covering PPE's marketing operations, technology stack, lead management processes, reporting, attribution, and AI search visibility. The engagement combined stakeholder interviews, platform and data analysis, AI visibility benchmarking, and strategic planning.

The audit was organized into five phases:

  • Discovery and alignment. Interviewed key stakeholders and documented PPE's marketing ecosystem, sales qualification process, business goals, and reporting needs.

  • Current state assessment. Reviewed HubSpot lifecycle data, lead routing, paid media performance, sales response times, data quality, and reporting reliability.

  • AI readiness assessment. Benchmarked PPE across data quality and integrity, process and execution, system connectivity, and measurement and attribution.

  • AI visibility analysis. Tested how PPE appeared across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, then identified content, structure, and entity clarity opportunities.

  • Strategic roadmap. Delivered recommendations as a prioritized 30, 60, and 90 day implementation plan based on expected business impact, effort, and dependencies. 

 

Key benefits realized from the audit included:

  • A documented path to closed loop attribution, showing exactly where data became incomplete as leads moved from Google Ads and other channels into HubSpot, qualification, opportunities, and revenue

  • PPE's first AI readiness benchmark, giving the company a repeatable way to measure progress instead of a one time grade

  • Priorities ranked by business impact, implementation effort, and dependencies, rather than a long list of disconnected recommendations

  • Quantified operational gaps across lead quality, assignment, sales response, and attribution, separating real performance issues from reporting limitations

  • A baseline for how leading AI platforms interpret PPE, covering capability clarity, industry specific content, structured data, technical proof points, and entity consistency

  • A shared, evidence-based view of the marketing system that leadership, marketing, and sales could all work from


The Outcome

While StringCan is proud of the collaborative process that gave our long time partner a clear view of its own marketing system, we are even more pleased with the following:

55/100 Overall AI readiness score, PPE's first measurable benchmark

75/100 Process and execution, PPE's strongest category

2.4 hours median lead assignment time 

12.2 hours median time to first sales activity

 

Future AI readiness tactics include:

  • Building closed loop attribution from lead source through customer revenue

  • Standardizing HubSpot lifecycle stages and qualification criteria

  • Structuring and tracking lead disqualification reasons

  • Reducing spam and poor quality inquiries through automated filtering

  • Strengthening schema and on page content signals

  • Developing content designed for both traditional search and AI-powered discovery

Quotes

“The team at StringCan pulled the right levers to improve lead quality and volume. Adding HubSpot to the mix provided the team with the additional insights required to make more informed campaign decisions."

Tom Gilluly, Director of Sales, Profile Precision Extrusions