While digital marketing has become the mainstay of any business in today’s world, there are some industries that are lagging behind for various reasons. Some may be because none of their competition have broken into digital marketing and so feel they don’t need to, such as high-end consultancy or personal assistant companies or skilled trades such as accountants and dentists. Others may be because they don’t require digital marketing, such as a family owned butcher’s that have a reputation in their area or architect firms that have deals with local builders. Then there are other industries such as engineering firms that just haven’t moved with the times.
If you own an engineering firm then you’re in for a shock – if you aren’t making moves on digital marketing in 2020, your competition will absolutely out-perform you! The building trade was once very much a closed shop, but as more and more people strike out on their own and build their own businesses, the trades are expanding, and the same old loyalties of a building company and their engineering firm no longer hold true. You need to be found by all of these entrepreneurs building their own businesses and unfortunately, print, radio and TV adverts just don’t cut through the same as digital and online marketing now does.
With the old style you’d run for a couple of issues or a couple of months and hope you hit the right customer at the right time, but now the internet allows you to target your preferred customer or market and appear to them at a time that they need your services. This is all to say that you want your engineering firm to be found by these new building firms and if they don’t find you, they’ll find your competition instead!
- So what can you do to ensure your engineering firm leapfrogs the competition?
- Get a website up, optimized for keywords and building value
- Create local listings in Google, Apple maps and Bing to get your offices found. Also make sure to push (hopefully great) reviews on these and any other profiles you have
- Create social media accounts on (especially!) Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and leverage any other platforms that would make sense for your target market such as Medium, LinkedIn or TikTok. Don’t just build accounts and neglect them however; keep them updated with value-providing or entertaining, consistent, regular content!
- Build out PPC advertising, constantly test, improve and reiterate. Figure out your Cost Per Acquisition for customers and get it down to a level you can sustain, then scale it up
- Send out a weekly or fortnightly newsletter to leads or contacts you have that haven’t yet quite taken the plunge to becoming your customer and provide them with value!
Digital marketing isn’t going away anytime soon and your company needs to be at the forefront of changes. If you feel you don’t have enough time to learn all of this, then consider outsourcing to an online marketing and lead generation company or hiring a digital marketing manager to take care of it for you!
John is Managing Director of Cotter Marketing, Ireland’s leading manufacturing product distributor. They specialize in the supply of Gaskets and Vacuum Pumps to some of the biggest pharmaceutical and manufacturing brands in the world.
