5 Simple and Effective Strategies Marketing Your Engineering Firm

 

If you’re part of a civil engineering marketing department and reading this, there’s a good chance your website isn’t getting enough traffic or leads, nor is it showing up in a Google search. If this is your situation, your bottom line is hurting and your online marketing strategy may need improvement. >>click to tweet<<

Here’s a five-step plan for increasing site traffic and generating leads that translate into profit.

Effective Strategies for Engineering Marketing Departments

Set Measurable Goals

The very first thing you need to do: Set concrete marketing goals that clearly support your company’s overall goals. “Improve my company’s online marketing strategy” is a good starting point, but it’s not a goal that you can measure your progress by. A concrete marketing goal will have a due date, clear subject matter, and it must be quantifiable.

If your overall goal is to improve your firm’s online marketing strategy, here are some sample goals to consider:

• Increase my firm’s social media subscriptions by X% by a specific date.
• Increase online orders of Service X by Y% by a specific date.
• Increase size of email list by X% by a specific date.

 

 Analyze and Refine Your Current Online Strategy

Now that you have set goals for yourself, scrutinize your current online strategy. Begin this process by examining your webpage and online analytics.

1. Review Website Copy: Check that your copy is brief, informative, and relevant to your company’s goals and target audience.
2. Review SEO Content: Does your website copy contain keywords that are search engine friendly? Are your keywords relevant to your business? Are your keywords around your persona’s needs?
3. Review Positive Data: Where are most of your clicks coming from and why?

A key part of refining your online strategy is figuring out what your clients are like. You can create targeted marketing strategies by creating profiles for prospective clients based on the characteristics of people who have partnered with you before.

Here are some data points to hit when creating these personas:

• Age, location, gender, education, and job title.
• When and where they use your site, and the device they use to access it.
• What they look for on your site.
• What kind of outcome they want while visiting your site.

 

Develop a Keyword Strategy

 

Once you’ve developed your client personas, use them to create a new keyword strategy. There are three crucial elements to keyword development:

1. Brainstorming: Think of key terms that align with what your ideal audience is trying to resolve. Also write out phrases you are often asked about from clients during sales and discovery calls, via your online channels and at trade shows. Test these keywords in a Google search to see if the results line up with the engineering topics you want to be found in and see who else is showing up.
2. Gather Data: Use Google Analytics to see which of your currently used and brainstormed keywords are generating traffic.
3. Decision-Making: Once you’ve figured out which keywords rank well, decide where to place each keyword on your site and what content you can produce that will provide valuable solutions to the people that would be using these keywords in their research.

It is important to note that while you’re brainstorming and deciding where to put each keyword, keep in mind the kind of outcome each persona is looking for when they visit your site. While you’re gathering data, make a note of which pages are organically searched for, by which keywords and how they relate to your generated marketing personas.

The top outcomes will tell you something about what people are looking for when they use those particular keywords, and you can use that to your advantage when creating content and marketing to your personas via your keyword strategy.

 

Integrate Your New Keywords into Your Online Presence

 

Once you’ve created a database of persona-friendly keywords, it’s time to implement them throughout your online presence. Place them on the pages that serve as your face to the world: your blog, landing page, and product/service page. You might also consider utilizing your SEO keywords in the names of downloadable files and image names and captions.

When implementing your new keywords, it is critical that you avoid “keyword stuffing” — don’t fill your page with keywords for the sake of using keywords. That won’t get you a good search ranking on Google. Orient your keyword use around topics and providing a solution for your persona rather than your imagined “search results”. Your pages should answer viewers’ questions on the relevant topic, while still using related keywords frequently — and when it makes sense to do so.

 

Write Informative Blog Articles and Downloadable Content

Maintaining a company blog where you discuss engineering topics sets you up as an expert in the field — and that’s obviously good for your company’s image. You don’t have to rely on happenstance for people to view your blog, though.

• Regularly Share on Social Media: When your blog posts get attention on social media, this helps boost your search engine results.
• Forward Blog Posts to Email Subscribers: If you have an email list, you can generate more attention for your blog by sending out an email newsletter on a weekly or monthly basis.

You can also use your blog to build your email list and increase your leads.

At the end of your blog posts, offer free downloadable content that provides more information on the topic of discussion to allow your readers to take a deeper dive.

As a pre-requisite to the download, have them submit their contact information and forward the content to them via email.

Collecting their contact information will allow you to personalize your message to them and gives you the ability to follow up with them later.