Rapid economic and technological changes are starting to threaten the old ways of doing things. Before the cracks start to appear in your business model, why not invest in a simple, effective campaign to up your company's game?
Using these six (6) easy engineering marketing strategies, you'll enhance your company's visibility, credibility, authority and persuasiveness in your local marketplace. Even better, you'll soon learn that inbound marketing for engineers really does work.
Blogging has been around for a long time. Chances are good that you've experimented with the medium at some point for your personal or professional betterment. If you haven't yet harnessed the power of blogging in direct service of your company's inbound marketing, however, there's never been a better time to start.
Blogging is a great way to build awareness of your company's products, services, people, expertise and key differentiators. Blogging helps you announce to the world that you're open for business and positioned to deliver value to your prospects and customers alike.
Get into a regular blogging rhythm by committing to publish at least one post per week. Write about what interests your industry, your employees and clients the most. Even if it appears only to build awareness with no selling intent, your blog does a valuable service for your company by piquing readers' interest and increasing the likelihood that they'll enter your sales funnel.
Plus, well-optimized blogs are great for SEO, and that's great news for your efforts to attract visitors to your website.
Engineering is a great fit for social media marketing. Since most engineering firms fall into to a B2B marketing model, it's natural to start with business-oriented social platforms such as LinkedIn. Make sure your LinkedIn company page and employee profiles are optimized around your brand and keywords.
Post a mixture of original content, such as blog articles about issues facing your industry and customers, and "shared" content created and posted by other thought-leaders in your field. Connect with those thought-leaders and influencers, and do your best to forge mutually beneficial relationships with them.
Don't wait until you've mastered LinkedIn to move on to other social platforms. Twitter is another great platform for promoting content you've created, content others have created, services you offer, industry news and a host of other streams. Like LinkedIn, Twitter is well suited for brokering connections between influential leaders.
Be sure to take advantage of emerging Twitter tools, such as Periscope's video architecture, to reach prospects in new ways.
If you don't keep your company in the minds of prospective and existing customers, it's liable to fall off the radar. Regular email newsletters are critical top-of-mind tools. Use them to aggregate company news, industry news, special offers, personalized promotions and other forms of irresistible content.
If you're pressed for time, use a marketing suite to keep everything straight and automate key processes.
In a data-driven world, optimized landing pages help you measure and manage your inbound architecture. Use optimized landing pages to gather analytic data about where, how, when and why your prospects are coming to your website. Each distinct marketing campaign should have its own associated landing page to ensure that no major chunks of user data fall through the cracks.
"Too many prospects" sounds like a good problem to have, but a prospect overload can quickly overwhelm an unprepared firm. Segment your buyer pool into discrete, well-defined buyer personas, and then further qualify prospects to determine the likelihood that they'll move into your sales funnel.
Finally, segment your sales funnel to ensure that you're delivering the right content to the right prospects at exactly the right time. It's all about segmentation.
When did you last redesign your website? If your website has been static since 2014 or earlier, it's time for an upgrade. A lot has changed in the past few years, particularly with regards to Google's treatment of mobile-unfriendly Web environments. We're happy to guide you through the redesign process and give you exactly what your company needs for a busy year of multi-channel marketing.
These six engineering marketing strategies prove that inbound marketing for engineers doesn't have to be boring. In fact, attracting, converting, closing and delighting customers can be a fun, exciting and rewarding process.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that it can also be quite lucrative for your company.
Although the strategies outlined above represent a great start on the road to a comprehensive engineering inbound marketing strategy, there are plenty of other things to keep in mind as well. If you're truly committed to positioning your engineering firm as an expert in its field and attracting more than your fair share of committed converts into the fold, you need to strap in for the long haul.
You're likely to have some questions along the way, and we're happy to answer them and share with you everything we know about inbound marketing. Don't hesitate to reach out to us at any time for more tips, tricks and guidance. In the meantime, download the free eBook "Growing Your Engineering Firm Through Inbound Marketing.”