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Digital marketing can become a burden for engineering firms.
Too busy fulfilling current orders, or trying to keep current customers happy, means that any kind of marketing is left at the bottom of your ‘in tray’ for a rainy day.
The fact is this – we know that digital marketing works for engineering firms and it can help you achieve new business. Just take a look at our case studies to see why.
Combined with the general assumption that the engineering industry is slow at taking up new marketing methods, means your business can genuinely make a sizeable impact just by taking digital marketing seriously.
So the question I throw down to you MDs, FDs and Sales and Marketing managers is this – do you want to invest time in digital marketing?
5 step strategy
Every new strategy should come with a review of your current assets. Here’s a simple 5-step strategy you can do to assess where you are, and how you can improve your digital presence. For a more detailed analysis of your digital marketing efforts, get in touch with us.
1 - Website
Your website is the epicentre of you digital marketing operations. Your website as a basic rule should have been created within the past 2-3 years and should be regularly updated with new content.
Make sure your website also:
- Includes information on what you do and what you sell
- Includes contact information and easy ways to communicate with you
- Ranks for all your relevant search terms on Google
2 – Email campaigns
Your email campaigns are a great way to keep in contact with your customers and drive them to new and existing content on your website – such as a new product for example. These emails should be nicely designed, have links to your website and be a regular feature of your communication.
As for your contact database, this should be:
- Free of any ‘unwilling’ subscribers - no purchased lists, only opt-in subscribers!
- Be segmented into product/service categories
- Be cleaned every year to keep it fresh
3 – Social media
Social media is deemed unnecessary to some firms, but it can be a genuine source of new business. At first, it’s important to identify which social media platforms you’re on and what success you’ve had so far.
As basic steps to begin with, ensure:
- Your social media accounts carry the same logo, contact details and tone
- You’ve got a presence on the social media platforms your customers are on
- You regularly update your accounts with messages.
4 – Content
Blogs and downloadable guides are great ways to engage with potential new customers that land on your website. Whilst blogs can help you get found on Google and offer impartial advice to your reader, downloadable guides are a great way to tell people what you have to offer.
To assess how successful these have been:
- Check how many people read your blog
- Look into how many people have downloaded your guide
- Check how many people have contacted your firm after reading your content
5 – Capturing leads
All your digital marketing efforts, from your website to your tweets should all serve one purpose – get your engineering firm new business.
You may be successfully getting new people to your website but how do you know they’re actually a potential customer? In this instance, you should see whether your website is:
- Capturing contact information of people who downloaded your guides
- Following their interest up with an email or phone call
- Keeping their information for future marketing use
Assessing your digital assets
Until you go through this process, it’s hard to quantify just how much work you need to do as part of your new marketing strategy.
But using a limited budget and resources, you can really improve your presence online and begin to benefit from being savvy in a digitally-challenged industry.
Need help to really review the state of your website in detail? Get in touch with us and see how we can help you…
Photo Credit: Wikipedia