Top Strategies for Effective Marketing: Boosting Sales and Growth
Understanding the Engineering Industry in UK and Overseas
Unique Challenges Engineering Companies Face Marketing Their Businesses
Typically engineering companies are full of, well, engineers, technicians, a project manager and probably a bookkeeper.
Marketing for engineering companies presents the following challenges.
- Limited marketing resources and long and complex sales cycles
- Technical language and jargon. Inpernitrable text that fails to register even a passing look from ‘normal’ folks
- Niche markets with highly specialised and technical needs
- Difficulty in communicating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders (What is a TLA?)
The Importance of Adaptation in the Engineering Industry
The latest technologies or manufacturing techniques are readily adopted but seldom adapted for other uses. like marketing for engineering businesses.
- Staying up-to-date with industry trends and technological advancements. Video and 3D modelling of installations, components or applications makes for engaging content that is easy to understand and share.
- Adapting marketing strategies to meet changing customer needs. Distance and speed are two areas where technology has helped and hindered engineering companies.
- Embracing innovation and creativity in marketing efforts. Often engineers and scientists forget one very important element. They are clever and most people will need a little help to understand complex concepts.
Limited Resources and Complex Sales Cycles
Engineering and manufacturing businesses face similar problems when it comes to marketing their businesses to generate leads.
- Managing limited budgets and resources effectively. Often resources needed for lead generation are limited and need to be outsourced
- Navigating complex sales cycles with multiple stakeholders. Engaging potential customers at all stages in different departments throughout the supply process will drive better engagement and help to differentiate your business.
- Recognising and developing engineering marketing strategies to overcome these challenges. relies on partnering with a marketing business like Ræcan Marketing Solutions with over 25 years of experience in selling and marketing for engineering companies.
Building a Strong Online Presence
Engineering SEO Services for Improved Visibility
- Optimising website content for search engines. Often engineering companies ‘know’ who their customers are and forget to reach out for new opportunities with new ideas.
- Using relevant keywords and technical terms in unique content helps to engage with potential clients and new customers.
- Improving website structure and user experience. It is all very well having valuable content on line but if your website structure is poor, potential customers will find it difficult to navigate to your website.
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Creating High-Quality, Technical Content for Engineering Firms
- Developing content that adds value to clients and potential customers. Increased traffic will come from using real world examples of your products applications.
- Using technical language and terms effectively. Jargon and tradenames may be part of your targeted keyword strategy and will enhance brand visibility but to reach a broader audience keep them limited or create a glossary.
- Creating detailed service pages for each type of engineering work. This is a key element like keyword research, to driving enquiries through your sales funnel.
Building Industry-Specific Directory Listings
- Ensuring accurate and complete directory listings include your targeted keywords in relevant sections.
- Providing a description of services that adds value to clients
- Establishing credibility and trust with potential customers
- Include your social media profiles with listings to encourage engagement with future content.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Engineering
Leveraging Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) for High-Quality Leads
With a limited audience and detailed search terms pay per click advertising can deliver the immediate results that your business needs.
- Selecting highly relevant longtail keywords and phrases to reduce ad spend on irrelevant enquiries
- Creating targeted ads for search engine results pages. Create dedicated landing pages for campaigns that encourage your future customers to stay focussed on the relevant pain point or service you offer
- Driving high-quality leads to the website via your social media profiles and posts.
Using Social Media to Connect with Professionals and Promote Services
Not all of your future business contacts will be on LinkedIn, make sure your business has content on other social media platforms.
- Building relationships with professionals in the industry. As part of your marketing plan select businesses and individuals you want to engage with and allocate the right team member to start engagements.
- Establishing the your engineering company as an authority in your industry or sector.
- Promoting services and expertise using relevant and engaging content. Taking a simple drawing and animating it to show a real world application will help to educate new clients.
Encouraging Online Reviews to Build Credibility and Trust
It can be difficult to generate enough reviews online using conventional platforms for engineering businesses. Instead think about implementing a wider quality metric that can be used to measure the whole supply process from concept to completion.
- Monitoring your quality metrics and responding to concerns will help to build your brand and improve the quality of your products and services.
- Encouraging satisfied customers to leave comments that can be used as reviews on social media or on your website will help to deliver relevant comments for future customers.
- Using a recognised quality metric will build credibility and trust with potential customers. You many wish to outsource managing this system to allow your customers to give detailed (sometimes critical and difficult) feedback
Crafting a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
Key Elements of a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign for Engineering Firms
- Developing a clear well defined marketing strategy, that you can share through out the business.
- Set measurable goals and objectives in all areas. It make take time to build a following on a particular social media channel but in the long run that will provide benefits.
- Use data-driven decision making to drive future activity and content direction
Measuring Success and Driving Results with Data-Driven Decision Making
- Tracking website analytics and metrics is a basic metric that is often overlooked and is simple to set up.
- Analyzing data from campaigns to inform marketing decisions including print, e-mail, exhibitions and webinars.
- Adjusting marketing strategies to optimise results eg. exhibitions can be expensive but maintain brand awareness in your industry. Inviting potential customers to webinars that show new products and services are lower cost and can be repeated or reused. You can also share digital content in other languages more easily.
Effective Communication and Collaboration
Highlighting Tangible Benefits and Educating Future Customers
- Communicating the value of engineering services and wider business services, like next day delivery or e-commerce with your future and existing customers helps to reduce the focus on cost.
- Educating customers on technical concepts and benefits, creating checklists or highlight quality standards in your content helps to protect your business. If you have taken the time to secure ISO 9001 make sure you highlight the benefits to your customers.
- Highlighting tangible benefits and results that are often taken for granted. Over night delivery, just in time supply or online documentation could all help reduce costs for your customers highlight them when you can.
Engaging in Cross-Functional Collaborations for Better Marketing Results
- Collaborating with colleagues from sales, purchasing and product management and logistics. To highlight the benefits of purchasing from your company as a whole.
- Aligning marketing strategies with broader company goals, engineering marketing strategies are a team effort. Installation images are an often forgotten resource but enable your engineers to take useful images and take the pain out of getting authorisation to use images.
- Ensuring consistent messaging and branding, While installation images are great, brand guidelines ensure a clear and consistent message to your potential clients.
Fostering a Culture of Creativity and Innovation
- Encouraging brainstorming and idea exchange. Be careful about what you assume!
- Emphasizing the importance of thinking outside the box, eg. take advantage of creative ideas to stand out from your competitors.
- Recognizing and rewarding innovative thinking internally show marketing activities that colleagues have contributed towards.
Engineering Marketing Services for Growth
Attracting More Leads and Driving Sales by outsourcing Targeted Marketing campaigns
- Developing targeted marketing strategies combining multiple channels, both on and off line
Increasing Website Traffic and Brand Awareness through Digital Marketing
- Improving website visibility and search engine rankings
- Building brand awareness and credibility
Unlocking Digital Marketing Potential for Engineering Companies
- Developing a comprehensive social media marketing strategy across channels
- Leveraging new social and digital marketing channels and tactics, particularly using video.
Innovation in Engineering Marketing
Embracing Data-Driven Decision Making and Creativity
- Using data to inform marketing decisions
- Encouraging creative thinking and innovation
- Staying ahead of the competition
Staying Ahead of the Competition in the Engineering Industry
- Monitoring industry trends and developments
- Adapting marketing strategies to stay ahead
- Continuously improving and innovating
Conclusion
Final Thoughts on Effective Marketing for Engineering Companies
- Developing a clear marketing strategy, if you don’t have the resources internally outsource to an experienced marketing consultant
- Leveraging digital marketing channels to reach customers more effectively and show more detailed benefits within manufacturing process. Help to reduce costs while increasing engagement.
- Increasing website traffic and brand awareness by taking advantage of longtail keywords and specialist terms to appear in relevant organic searchs.