Cobalt Sales Group is based in Mound, Minnesota, west of Minneapolis. We work only with industrial and OEM manufacturers, in Minnesota and across the country.
We help them get found by buyers on Google and in AI assistants, and look credible once they’re found.
Cobalt was founded by Bob Engelhart, who ran PB Exchange, a telecom remanufacturing company in the Twin Cities, for 23 years before starting it.
If you make something in Minnesota and buyers can’t find you online, Cobalt is the agency that fixes that. We’re not a general marketing firm with a manufacturing page. Manufacturing is all we do. Our founder ran a manufacturing company in the Twin Cities for 23 years before starting Cobalt in 2016, and the work is built around how industrial buyers actually research suppliers now: they ask Google and AI assistants spec-level questions, get a shortlist, and compare the websites on it before they ever call.
Most engagements are $3,500 a month, month to month, with 30 days’ notice. Website update and rebuild projects are quoted as fixed-price projects. Pricing is on our Investment page.
Minnesota employs about 325,000 people in manufacturing (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Precision machining, metal stamping and fabrication, plastics and composites, medical device components, food and agricultural equipment, electronics, controls and sensors: the state has deep benches in all of them, from the Twin Cities metro out to Rochester, St. Cloud, Duluth, Mankato and the smaller towns in between.
Most of those companies sell well beyond Minnesota, and most of them have the same problem. The best manufacturer in a category is rarely the one buyers find first. That gap is what Cobalt works on.
Two ways to work with us, the same as for any client.
A fixed-price update or rebuild of your existing site so that it answers the questions buyers and AI assistants ask, states plainly what you make and who you make it for, and gives a referred buyer a reason to trust you in the first thirty seconds. For many Minnesota manufacturers, this is the whole job: you’re already getting referrals, and the site just has to hold up when the referral checks you out.
The ongoing program for manufacturers who want to be found by buyers who don’t know them yet. Each month we publish content written from your own experts’ knowledge, structured around the questions your buyers ask, with technical SEO on the site and tracking of where you show up in Google and in AI answers. One or two LinkedIn posts a week carry the content to your network.
Technical SEO is foundational to both and is always included.
Bob Engelhart founded PB Exchange, a telecom remanufacturing company, in 1992 and ran it for 23 years. He watched industrial buyers move their research online while most manufacturers, his own company included, kept relying on reps, trade shows and word of mouth. He started Cobalt in 2016 to close that gap for companies like the one he ran.
That background shows up in the work. We interview your engineers and sales people rather than guessing. Every article is reviewed for technical accuracy by an engineer before it’s published. And we don’t ask you to learn marketing; we ask you for an hour a month of your experts’ time.
Figures below are from our own tracking as of September 1, 2026, measured the same way for the client and its competitors.
Cited in 35.4% of Google’s AI answers to the spray-drying questions we track, against 9.5% for GEA and 5.4% for SPX Flow.
Went from a handful of page-one Google rankings to 100 on page one and 245 across the first three pages.
Reports going from 20 new customers in 2024 to 120 in 2025 after a website rebuild, an online store with a configurator, technical SEO cleanup and consistent publishing.
Figures as of September 1, 2026. Customer counts are the client’s own figures.
Source: Cobalt Sales Group tracking data.
There is more in our client results.
Most of our clients are outside Minnesota, in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, Ontario and elsewhere, and the work is the same wherever you are. Monthly calls are on Zoom; content interviews are on Zoom; reporting is quarterly. If you’re in the Twin Cities and want to meet in person, we’re in Mound, on the west side of Lake Minnetonka, and we’re happy to drive.
What being in Minnesota does change: we know the state’s manufacturing economy, its trade associations and its trade press, and we’re in the same time zone when you need us.
Right for you if you’re an industrial or OEM manufacturer, roughly $5 million to $50 million in revenue, with no marketing department or a small one, and you want buyers who’ve never heard of you to find you, or you want the site to hold up when a referral looks you up.
Not right for you if you need a full-service agency running paid media, PR, video production and sales enablement at once, or if you sell to consumers. There are good Minnesota agencies for that, and we’ll tell you so on the first call.
The Authority Growth Program™ is $3,500 a month for most manufacturers, billed at the start of each month, month to month, with 30 days’ notice. Website updates and rebuilds are quoted as fixed-price projects. There is no setup fee and no long-term contract. Details are on the Investment page.
No. We’re based in Minnesota, and most of our clients are elsewhere in the United States and Canada. The work is done the same way for all of them.
Industrial and OEM manufacturers: spray drying systems, liquid level sensors, managed power distribution equipment, steel bushings, metal stampings, aluminum castings, engineered plastics, filtration. Mostly companies between $5 million and $50 million in revenue.
A general agency learns your industry on your dime. We already know how an engineer researches a supplier, what a buyer at an OEM needs to see before issuing an RFQ, and which questions your competitors are failing to answer online. We also don’t take on work outside manufacturing, so your account isn’t competing for attention with a restaurant and a law firm.
Most engagements are $3,500 a month, month to month. Website projects are fixed-price. Our Investment page has the full breakdown.
New content starts getting indexed within weeks. Measurable movement in rankings and AI citations usually shows up within three to six months, and compounds from there. We recommend planning on at least a year.
Yes. A Buyer-Ready Website project stands on its own. Some clients stop there; some move into the ongoing program once the site is in shape.
The Buyer Visibility Audit™ runs the searches your buyers run and tells you whether they find you, and what they find when they do. It is free when you request it through our website, there is no sales pitch, and you get it in one to two business days.
