Best Online Marketing Strategies For A/E/C Businesses

You work in the architectural, engineering, or construction industry. You may think that your work speaks for itself, but the general public doesn’t always automatically connect your work to you. So, in a world where technology is so heavily used, how do you best market your trade online? We have put together some of our favorite architectural, engineering, and construction marketing tricks of the trade to help your work and your company get noticed.

Create Client Persona Profiles

Taking the time to get to know your audience can help you tailor your website and other online marketing to their needs, and can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Although your website is made for your company, instead of being all about you, it should actually be all about your audience. To develop client profiles, think carefully about some of the following questions, take notes, and remember who you are speaking to:

• What are they most interested in?
• What categories do they fit into (economically, socially, etc.?)
• What are their worries?
• What information might they find most helpful?
• What drives them?
• What problems can you use your content to help them solve immediately?

Answering these questions will help you keep things in the right perspective, respond better to your audience’s’ needs, and develop marketing strategy that will best grab their attention.

Develop Prospects

Evaluate your website to see what type of audience is visiting your page through analytics, and look to see who is not. Develop a list of valuable prospects who you would like to better reach, and use client persona profile data to tailor your website for them. Think not only about the clients you want to continue to work for, but the verticals/industries you want to break into and the new audiences you want to capture.

Showoff the Experts

Without a doubt, your firm is comprised of experts, each with their own specialization. Take some time to profile these experts, their knowledge, and how they can best help those who visit your website. Making a more personal connection by being more than just a business name goes a long way, so put some faces to your hard work.

Evaluate your Firm’s Pre-RFP Position

Research shows that ⅔ of potential deals between businesses are lost even before the RFP process starts. Buyers in today’s A/E/C market are searching potential firms online in order to see what each offers and to form their opinions. These people are not, however, only looking at experience and completed projects.  They are also evaluating what you know by reading your website content, your blog, or the articles that you have shared. Having the perfect content for them to see as well as answering the right questions in order to demonstrate your expertise can secure you more leads and more jobs right from the start.

Evaluate your Marketing Budget

Marketing can be invaluable to your firm, and putting the proper funds into it up-front to ensure that it is done correctly can provide you with substantial benefits. Taking the time to have your website properly analyzed, to take advantage of analytics feedback, and to strategically tailor your content will make a huge difference. Marketing in the A/E/C industry, as with many other industries, is becoming almost completely digital, and having the right online presence can increase your bottom line significantly.

Using these marketing tactics can help your architectural, engineering, or construction business get noticed and stay noticed. The challenging and innovative work you do deserves to be seen and discussed, and using the above techniques can help ensure that it will be.