Over the years, our team has been privileged to work with several reputable engineering firms. While each firm was as unique and different as individual people, they all seemed to share a general approach to marketing: "I'm not looking for creative, I need effective."
We completely understand. It’s all about return on investment (ROI) and time is money. Regardless of the size and sector of your firm, whether you’re new or established, here are the crucial first steps to take in mapping out a marketing strategy for your engineering firm.
Evaluate Your Marketing Practices
To create an effecting marketing plan, you first need to determine exactly where you are. A brand and creative audit is a snapshot of your current program. Your current marketing efforts are identified and from there you can determine what’s working, what’s not, and where there are gaps. The insights such audits provide are invaluable in helping you greatly improve your promotion efforts and determining where your money is doing the most good.
Develop an Actionable Plan
An effective approach to brand positioning - where audiences understand and recognize what the brand stands for, where it fits, and why it's the best choice - is to clearly define where the firm intends to focus its client acquisition efforts. What are the core markets you serve? What value-creating services do you provide? What expertise do you offer that fulfills the needs of each market?
Once you have the foundation for your brand’s positioning, it can guide all your marketing efforts. It will separate you from your competition and give your audience a reason to choose you.
Update Your Collateral
With more people than ever using smartphones and tablets to access the information they are seeking online, having a website that’s like a digital brochure is no longer good enough. Your website should not only educate and provide content of real value to your prospective clients, it should be mobile-friendly to display well across all devices, use clear calls to action, and collect user information for establishing email lists. It should also be fully optimized for search engines (SEO) so that your site is among the top results of the search and stands out from your competition.
Nurture Prospects Through the Buying Process
A content-driven approach to marketing will help engage your prospects early in the buying process or better yet, before they find you. In creating and publishing content that has real value to your audience, you establish your firm’s expertise and authority in your area. Everyone loves good, useful content, which can include everything from blog posts, marketing guides, videos, and more. Quality content gets real results because it not only makes people more likely to seek out further information about your firm, and share your content with friends and family who might need your services, but it also plays a vital role in your SEO efforts.
"Upwards of 56% of most buyers' decision-making have already been made before your business development team ever speaks to them."
That’s why it’s critical that your firm be in the best position possible when prospects discover you. With the right marketing strategy, you give prospective clients a reason to choose your firm.
