August 24, 2026
Corrugated manufacturers are revamping their digital strategies to better communicate product value and drive sales
When businesses today need a product or a solution, they turn to a trusted source for information—the internet.
That’s where and how they find suppliers equipped to meet their needs, and sellers are adapting their sales approaches in response.
“Most prospects now complete a significant amount of research before contacting a salesperson,” says George Perreira, vice president at Whitebird and Moyy in Hamilton, Ontario, and president of AICC Canada. “As a result, sales has shifted from providing information to providing insight. Customers aren’t looking for a product pitch. They’re looking for someone who can help them make the right decision.”
As capacity to make boxes outpaces demand, and with prices rising due to forces beyond the control of buyers and sellers, the traditional landscape of corrugated packaging sales has shifted dramatically.
“If someone’s calling you or emailing you, they already have it narrowed down to their top couple of choices,” says Todd Zielinski, managing director and CEO at Athena SWC. “They found everything they needed and researched what they needed online.”
In this atmosphere, corrugated manufacturers are going on the offensive, revising their websites and social media strategies to share the practical value of their products and position sales to connect with—and ultimately clinch—the customer.
A Sudden Shift
The numbers tell the story.
Today, 82% of B2B buyers in the awareness stage use social media to research brands, and 65% of buyers would rather consume educational content, such as e-books and white papers, before engaging with sales, according to market research platform Worldmetrics.
A whopping 94% of buyers are using generative AI to conduct their research, according to Forrester Research Inc. Buyers are also doing their own validating, making them far likelier to demand proof of claims from sales and marketing instead of accepting promises.
In their searches, buyers are using AI to compare suppliers, research technologies, evaluate ROI, and prepare questions before meetings, says Perreira. “AI helps them gather information quickly, but they still need industry experts to provide context and real-world experience.
Josh Sobel first noticed the shift toward digital-first selling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Buyers started to be more at home in front of computers all the time,” says Sobel, business development manager for Jamestown Container Cos. “It gave them the opportunity to search more—to search for the value they wanted and pinpoint what they were looking for.”
Plus, he adds, the digital age helps buyers find useful data and background on a company’s specialties and capabilities, “so they’re armed when making those initial calls.”
COVID “totally flipped our world upside-down,” agrees Zielinski. “If you’re not being found through your website or through AI-enabled tools, you’re missing a huge channel,” says Zielinski, whose firm provides outsource marketing, new business development, lead generation, and sales support services, primarily in custom contract manufacturing markets across the country. Traditional sales survives this atmosphere, but “the level of where you spend your time has changed.”
However, self-education still can’t equip many buyers to understand the technicalities and variations in corrugated products.
“Customers often research solutions before fully understanding the root cause of their challenge,” says Perreira. “Our role is to ask questions, understand their objectives, and ensure they’re selecting the right solution—not just the solution they initially found online.”
Sobel notes that Jamestown Container posts content on social media—LinkedIn is a primary platform—to showcase factual information and customer testimonials, all with the aim of informing prospects about available solutions. Projecting the power of customization to address thorny issues depends on “getting as many of those capabilities out as possible.”
“You can’t showcase everything you can do, but our website in particular does a good job of showcasing different things that we can do,” Sobel says. “We’ll post different pictures or descriptions of products that we’ve done in the past.”
From there, skilled salespeople are the ones steeped in the value and benefits of products and services.
“We have to be the experts,” Sobel says. “As much research as a prospect does and figures out on their own, we have to finish that information transfer to them so that they can make their final decisions.”
Sobel collaborates on the Jamestown online presence with teams in design, production, and marketing.The team posts about two customer case studies and testimonials per year.
“If we feel like we’ve done a good job with a customer and they’ll portray it well, we’ll work with them to write a testimonial,” he says.
Constant, multidisciplinary communication builds understanding of what each department needs to succeed, Sobel says. “You know that they have a timeline they need to work with, and they need to understand what the messaging is here.”
Sales should always be involved in website design and posts “because we hear customer questions every day,” says Perreira. “The best websites answer those questions before a prospect reaches out, helping build trust and making sales conversations more productive.”
Consistency is key.
“Sales, marketing, and communications need to tell the same story,” Perreira adds. “Marketing explains what a solution does, while sales explains why it matters. Customer success stories and real-world examples are often the most effective content.”
The focus is on “providing value through educational content, case studies, videos, and industry insights,” he says. “When prospects find useful information, they’re much more likely to request additional information or start a conversation.”
Case studies build credibility by giving potential buyers a look at how the provider solved the similar problems of similar companies, says Zielinski. “You want it to relate to them. You want to connect with them. That’s what’s important—the connection with them. It’s not just listing your capabilities. They’ve already heard that and seen that.”
Data Story
Jamestown tracks its website engagement metrics, finding areas of focus in pages and items that attract a lot of clicks—or areas requiring adjustment because they’re not getting clicks.
Sobel also follows prospects on social media, relying especially on LinkedIn to track their interests based on their likes and comments.
In this new era, sales “has become a relationship-driven business,” he says. Sales teams win leadership’s approval to spend time on online presentation and outreach by “showing the value of relationships and how they help the company rather than just being out knocking on 25 doors.”
“It’s natural that it’s going to benefit the company to take that extra time and cultivate that relationship, and a good salesperson is going to realize that, as well,” Sobel says. “Spending four or five hours on a prospect that’s going to buy from you is much more valuable than spending that same amount of time on five prospects that aren’t going to buy anything.”
Most salespeople excel at “farming”—they are adept at talking about the benefits of packaging with customers—but few are equally strong “hunters,” on the prowl for prospects, says Zielinski.
In this environment, today’s effective sales model positions salespeople to consume leads “versus having to go create them,” he says. Successful sellers sell on value and “how you’re differentiated from your competition.”
“Beyond what you just do, it’s the
how you do it, it’s the way you deliver
it, it’s how you’re solving a problem,”
he says. “You’re reducing their operating overhead, improving quality, delivering on time so they can go to market and they can produce for their customer faster and get more dollars in the door.”
The differentiation approach bridges the gap between experienced salespeople who are retiring and young people who have the drive but lack the skills and know-how, says Zielinski.
“How do I leverage my website? How do I leverage AI?” he says. “How do I develop a lead generation system that’s more repetitive, scalable, and repeatable without having the salespeople
do that?”
Well-crafted website content brings in new leads and sales while reducing the need to hire more sales staff, Zielinski says. In these cases, leadership recognizes the need for change and might reallocate the sales-rep hiring budget to restructuring the inbound system and growing sales. It’s a matter of leveraging the website, AI tools, messaging creation, and prospect list creation.
The solution differs for each company, but “the bottom line is you’ve got to have a feeder system,” Zielinski says. “You’ve got to have some systematic process that continually develops new accounts and new opportunities.”
Still Evolving
Just when the non-IT world learned to understand SEO, along came the AI-driven AEO and GEO. Currently, Zielinski’s company, Athena, is integrating the tools into its systems—answer engine optimization (AEO), which structures content to appear in AI-powered searches, and generative engine optimization (GEO), which positions content for inclusion in summaries created by generative AI, such as ChatGPT.
Search engine optimization remains the foundation for AI-enabled searches because people using search engines and AI prompts encounter the AI summary first and the links to potential solutions below, says Zielinski.
“The same way search engines crawl and work for keyword searches on organic SEO is the same way they do it for AI-generated searches,” he says. “So you cannot do good AEO or GEO if you don’t have good SEO in place.”
FAQ website pages are valuable tools for being found because they align with AEO’s question-and-answer format, Zielenski notes.
Even outdated websites don’t require expensive redesigns, he adds. Start with a few pages and enable them for SEO, AEO, and GEO over three months. Then add pages as needed, and be patient.
“Anything we do today, the impact won’t be seen from a lead flow or traffic standpoint for 60 to 90 days out,” he says. “It is a marathon. It’s a long-term commitment. It’s not a flick of the switch.”
Expanding the Sales Outlook
When a prospect finds your company online, their need is immediate, which compresses the traditional sales cycle of outreach and relationship-building, Zielinski says.
“You want them finding you, because if they don’t find you, they’re going to find a competitor, and they’re going to buy from them,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to funnel that channel in, whether it’s through traditional search, whether it’s through the AI summary and the search, whether it’s through AI tools with prompts. You’ve got to be open for business for all.”
As always, success in sales comes down to trust—and now, building that trust extends to the digital places where a corrugated manufacturer has a presence.
“Companies need to recognize that long-term relationships create long-term value,” says Perreira. “Sales teams should be encouraged to share knowledge, contribute content, and engage with customers beyond the transaction. Trust is often the strongest competitive advantage a company can have.”
M. Diane McCormick is a Pennsylvania-based freelance journalist and a frequent BoxScore contributor.
