Summary. Marketing strategies for engineering companies need to go beyond traditional B2B approaches, focusing on thought leadership and content that speaks the audience’s language. Tailored digital marketing is vital for engineering firms to stand out in a technical field and generate leads effectively.
On the surface, marketing and engineering may not seem like they go hand in hand. However, this could not be further from the truth. After all, you have a business to manage, and selling engineering services is your raison d’être.
Lead generation is the biggest pain point for most organisations, with 40 percent unable to achieve a comfortable ROI.
However, engineering businesses, like manufacturing companies, face additional hurdles that other industries do not.
Because engineering is such a technical profession, communicating your message in a way that connects with your audience necessitates a level of expertise that many marketing agencies simply don’t have the experience in.
In order to execute an efficient content marketing and lead generation plan, you must first identify your target clients’ pain points and buyer journey, while connecting with them in a (technical) language they understand.
Furthermore, standard B2B inbound marketing initiatives aimed at capturing and generating leads must cope with the reality that engineering clients often come in through recommendations and have a long lead time.
Traditional B2B Marketing Programs
That being said, a solid marketing strategy for your engineering company has to include the new ‘traditional’ areas of focus, such as:
- Optimised website design
- Content Marketing
- SEO
- PPC
- Remarketing
- Social media
- Lead nurturing
That being said, gaining and converting leads into clients requires the use of additional marketing strategies. After all, what you’re offering can’t be broken down into simple, clear services that can be summarised in a few carefully chosen words.
This explains why 75% of industrial businesses are either indifferent or extremely unsatisfied with their marketing efforts, and why just 38% of engineering businesses plan to increase their marketing spend.
That is why we must go above and beyond traditional B2B digital marketing with strategies targeted to your sector.
The Best Marketing Strategies For Engineering Companies
Unfortunately, many technical marketing strategies fail miserably. A lack of fundamental understanding of industry-specific paint points, along with the cookie-cutter marketing strategy used by most inbound companies, can result in a waste of time, money, and resources.
However, just because so many technical marketing initiatives result in awful ROI and low conversion rates does not indicate that inbound digital marketing will not work for you. On the contrary, it may be really effective; all you need is the correct marketing approach.
What *Is* The Correct Marketing Approach?
What it isn’t, is a cookie-cutting approach (like we mentioned before). Before creating a single piece of content or marketing setup, your approach must be well researched, well planned in order to be well executed.
You’ll need to know:
- Who your target audience is
- Which keywords to use (which keywords your audience will use)
- What your ideal audience’s pain points are
- How you can solve their problems
- What types of content they will engage best with
- Where your margin is
Let’s take a look at a couple of the key components that any marketing strategy will require to provide leads while maximising your ROI.
1. Become A Thought Leader Within Your Niche
Let’s face it: many of your prospective engineering clients won’t be able to tell the difference between one business and another. As long as you can demonstrate your capability, they are unlikely to be aware of the things that distinguish you from your competition.
Part of your responsibility as they progress through the sales funnel will be to assist them in developing brand awareness, ensuring that it matches with their pain points and demonstrates how their problems can be solved.
Benefits Of Thought Leadership
Begin by realising that your company is your brand. Positioning your brand as an expert and your team as thought leaders can help you achieve the following objectives:
- It builds trust – your audience will see that you know what you’re talking about. You become an expert in your field
- Shows you are relatable and approachable
- Makes you stand out from your competition
To achieve this, make sure that you:
Position your leadership team as thought leaders – not only will you put a face on your company, which is proven to help connections between businesses and their audiences, but their experiences, training, and education will inspire confidence.
2. Speak Your Audience’s Language
When you’re dealing with a well-informed audience, your content strategy has to be equally strategic to be successful. But where many marketers go wrong is failing to produce content that the target demographic will find relatable.
For example, a study found that engineers, themselves, develop a 75% higher trust value when other engineers author their content. LinkedIn is the perfect platform for this, which is why we recommend publishing thought leadership content from a personal page, not a business page.
Before you can capture the attention of your qualified leads and convince them to take action, you’ll need to build that trust and authority. The easiest way to do that is to make sure you’re creating highly-technical marketing materials and content that ‘speak their language’.
Simply put, you’ll need to generate industry level content that connects with your target audience. Doing so not only engages the reader into your content, it subsequently tells them that you understand their problems and more importantly, how to solve them.
It’s a basic content marketing tactic, yet one that so many B2B content marketers fail to take advantage of.
Important Tips When Marketing For Engineering Companies
When developing a marketing strategy to secure clients for your engineering company, keep in mind that while standard B2B inbound approaches such as SEO, content strategy, and branding are important, they are sometimes not enough.
Your sales and marketing efforts must go beyond these methods. Position yourself as an authority, and make sure your material is written in your audience’s language.
By putting these ideas into action, you’ll be well on your way to boosting your customer base and your bottom line.
When you’re ready to start generating leads for your engineering company, AIM Internet is a digital marketing agency specialising in manufacturing and engineering marketing services that can help you increase your revenue faster than your competitors. Contact Sarah today at sarah@aiminternet.co.uk or call her on 07816071112.
If you hurry we can save you money…
Manufacturing companies may save up to 33% on one or two £4-5k marketing campaigns. Furthermore, manufacturing business and other B2Bs might qualify for 40-50 percent match financing for budgets ranging from £5k to $60k. This has the ability to HALF or DOUBLE your marketing budget*. This might be increased to up to 75% with R&D tax credits.
Why? Because EU Match Funding is still available for firms in the above industries for a short time. It exists to assist them in growing. As official partners of the plan, we are actively seeking firms that would like to participate.
*Ends September 2022
