Tom Haylock: How SEO Is Finally Driving Growth in Heavy Industry Software

Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi!
Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder and CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs.

In this episode we welcome Tom Haylock, Chief Commercial Officer and former CEO of Sharecat, a chartered mechanical engineer turned growth leader in industrial digitalization. Tom breaks down why inbound SEO is still massively underused in heavy industry, how to align content with long, cautious buying cycles, and why “document problems” are often really data problems in disguise (and vice versa).

 

Key Talking Points

✅ Engineer-to-Growth Journey. Tom started in major energy projects offshore West Africa (BP and others), moved into business development, then jumped into industrial digitalization about five years ago with Sharecat.
✅ Selling Is Still Selling. The mechanics of growth and differentiation are universal. What changes is culture, modernization, and how fast an industry adopts proven playbooks.
✅ Why Heavy Industry Moves Slowly. Customers invest on 20–40 year horizons. Some facilities operate for 100+ years. That caution shapes buying behavior, tooling, and internal change management.
✅ Inbound Is the Sleeping Giant. Industrial firms rely heavily on outbound relationship selling. Inbound is often ignored, creating a wide-open lane for SEO-driven demand capture.
✅ Outbound vs Inbound. Outbound is still essential for blue-chip, long-burn deals. Inbound is the scalable pipeline engine because it captures buyers when timing is right and intent is high.
✅ The Timing Problem. Many enterprise conversations end with “this is relevant, but not right now.” Outbound deals can take 1–2 years to close. Inbound leads arrive closer to readiness.
✅ Project Horizons Are Massive. From idea to producing output can be 6–7 years for major industrial builds. Final investment decision often precedes a ~4 year execution window.
✅ Who Searches in Industrial? Engineers (curiosity + improvement mindset), digital transformation teams, and modernization leaders. Decision-makers often still rely on Google, not AI chat tools.
✅ AI Adoption Is Cautious. Industrial customers have strict security and licensing constraints. Many will adopt Microsoft Copilot before public LLMs due to safety and compliance realities.
✅ From Documents to Data. Industrial orgs think in documents because that’s how information has historically been delivered, but the operational need is often structured, connected, validated data.
✅ Content Strategy: Early but Working. Sharecat focused first on core, high-intent terms and foundational optimization, then moved into ramping volume with webinars, how-tos, testing, and conversion improvements.
✅ Industry Initiatives as Demand + Authority Drivers. Tom highlights standards and working groups (and regulatory shifts like the EU digital product passport) as opportunities to educate the market and build authority in advance of change.
✅ The Mid-Market Opportunity. Enterprise logos are big wins, but scale comes from the thousands of under-served smaller industrial suppliers still stuck in Excel, SharePoint, and manual processes.

 

Quotes from Tom Haylock

📢 “Selling stuff is selling stuff in principle.”
📢 “Inbound is largely ignored across industrial sectors.”
📢 “Timing is the hardest thing. Inbound means they’re ready.”
📢 “Humans love documents. You’ll never kill documents.”
📢 “Our customers are cautious. Safety and control matter.”
📢 “It’s different flavors of the same issue. Understanding the problem is part of the fun.”

 

Actionable Insights

🧲 Use Inbound to Beat the Timing Game

• Outbound is relationship-heavy and slow. Inbound captures buyers when urgency and budget are already aligned.
• Build content for “ready-to-buy” searches, then qualify hard on positioning, differentiation, and cost.

🧠 Translate “Document” Pain into “Data” Clarity

• Meet buyers where they are (document language), then educate them into the real root cause and a clearer solution framework.
• Create content that explains relationships: metadata, tagging, validation, handover requirements, and downstream impact.

📈 Scale Beyond Enterprise Logos

• A few big wins can transform revenue, but consistent growth comes from the long tail of under-served industrial suppliers and contractors.
• Target operational pain, not just platform comparisons.

🧪 Treat SEO Like Engineering

• Form a hypothesis, test with data, iterate.
• Add heat mapping, A/B testing, conversion UX, and progressive content refresh cycles once the foundation is stable.

🤝 Build Authority Through Standards and “What’s Coming Next”

• Tie SEO content to real industry initiatives and regulatory shifts.
• Publish “look what’s coming” explainers that position your brand as future-ready, not just a vendor.

🔐 Plan for AI Discoverability the Safe Way

• Assume workplace adoption runs through Copilot and governed environments first.
• Create content that works in both Google and AI answer formats: clear structure, direct answers, explainers, and strong entity clarity.

 

About Tom Haylock

Tom Haylock is the Chief Commercial Officer and former CEO of Sharecat, bringing a chartered mechanical engineering background into commercial growth and industrial digitalization. He focuses on modern revenue ops, inbound strategy, and helping industrial organizations manage complex information structures more effectively.
🌍 Sharecat (software): sharecat.com
🔎 Connect: Find Tom on LinkedIn

 

🚀 Build Your Brand with Real Links

At Linkifi, we help ambitious brands scale organic visibility through digital PR, brand storytelling, and SEO strategy. Book your FREE strategy session today:
🔗 https://book.linkifi.io/widget/bookings/pr-discovery-call

 

👋 Connect with your hosts:
👉 Chris Panteli on LinkedIn
👉 Nick Biggs on LinkedIn

 

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