Digital Marketing for Engineering Companies: Effective Strategies for Maximizing Performance
If you’re head of an engineering company, imagine this scenario:
- You drive hundreds of monthly local visitors to your website.
- You convert daily leads from your website.
- Your email inbox is full of requests for new projects.
- You close deals.
- You are fully booked and turning away potential projects.
- You are 100% certain of how your digital marketing performance is going.
Sounds ideal, right?
The good news is that with the right processes in place to execute a successful digital marketing campaign for your engineering company, it’s possible to achieve this scenario and beyond.
We’re a Marketing Agency Specializing in Engineering Companies
The Houston Marketing Agency knows the industry. We have experience on what works and what doesn’t work for engineering companies.
Contact us today for a free initial consultation — no strings attached.
The Holistic Playbook for a High-Performing Engineering Company Digital Marketing Campaign
As a top-performing marketing agency, we have clear processes and strategies that help our clients get the results they’re looking for. At the Houston Marketing Agency, we focus on three main components of the digital marketing journey:
Set up data analytics to track performance → Drive inbound traffic to your website → Convert that traffic into customers.
It seems pretty easy to get results, right?
But results have to be trackable.
Ask yourself these questions below. If you can answer them, you can stop reading now and go on with your day:
- How many organic visitors does your site drive from Google each month?
- What is your website’s conversion rate?
- What’s your cost per qualified lead from Google Ads?
- What percentage of your existing customers are repeat customers?
Our team will walk you through the process so you can understand how it works. We are more than a digital marketing agency, we’re a “data agency” too. This means we can help you see what works and what doesn’t and move forward building your engineering company a personalized, holistic, and high-performing campaign.
Phase 1: Build Robust Data Analytics
Trackable KPIs
Data is only helpful if you can accurately track it, and the same goes for creating digital marketing for engineering companies. If you don’t have a solid data analytics tracking method, you’re likely making decisions on gut or intuition. Sounds like a problem, right?
As an engineering company, you should be tracking a handful of KPIs. Although they don’t all have to do with digital marketing, they’re still incredibly important for your business:
- Cycle time
- Downtime
- Churn rate
- Number of website visitors per month
- Cost per conversion
- ROI for projects
If your digital marketing campaign isn’t making it easy for prospective clients to find you and learn about your offerings, you’re probably going to lose money. Consider creating a simple blurb about what you offer with project photos on your landing page like the example below.
Data Fidelity
Many digital marketing agencies lack data fidelity — but not The Houston Marketing Agency. We’ve inherited digital marketing campaigns from other freelancers and agencies and with the data, we have uncovered issues like:
- Double counting conversions
- Tracking irrelevant conversions (someone requesting a Google Maps “directions request” to your facility)
- Not tracking every step of the funnel to clearly understand drop-off and conversion rates
At The Houston Marketing Agency, we strive for data-tracking perfection. We want the data we use to be relevant and to help your engineering company’s digital marketing campaign.
Phase 2: Maximize Affordable Inbound Traffic
We know digital marketing is important for engineering companies, but understanding why people are searching for them is important, too. For many, it’s because they need help bringing a large project to life.
Knowing the reason why people are searching for your industry can help you narrow down your digital marketing campaign to focus on what will drive inbound traffic at the lowest cost.
Most everyone turns to Google when conducting an online search.
As shown below, over 9,000 people per month are searching for “engineering companies near me” or some variation of that search, totaling over 100,000 searches a year.
Sometimes users search using city-specific keywords as shown below. Here, over 1,000 people per month search for specific keywords related to engineering companies in Houston.
Why is this important?
If you’re not performing well in both organic and paid traffic, you’re missing out on potential customers for your engineering company.
Organic
There are two places you can organically rank on Google for keywords like “engineering companies near me:”
Google Local Pack
How do you get your business to show up here?
- You need an optimized & highly-reviewed Google Business Profile.
- You need localized content on your website.
Seems simple, right? Although this basic formula is a good starting point, local SEO is complex and there’s a lot that goes into it.
Below the Google Local Pack are the organic results.
How do you get your business to rank in these top organic results?
Start by:
- Creating a website that is content-rich and comprehensive
- Optimizing your on-page SEO (title tags, meta descriptions, etc.)
Paid
Not all paid channels perform the same. Performance will depend on the type of engineering company you are, prospective clients, your location, and more.
Consider spending your engineering company’s digital marketing campaign in the following areas to optimize performance:
Google Ads
Google Ads is a paid option that helps you rank at the top of the Google results page. If a result indicates “sponsored,” it’s a paid Google Ad.
If your digital marketing agency is effective with Google Ads, your target audience will click on your link, land on your website, and potentially turn into a customer.
Note: There are different types of Google Ads that we can test using different campaigns to see which performs the best, including:
- Search
- Performance Max
- Display
- And more
YouTube Ads
With video content through a YouTube video, your engineering company can show everything your target audience cares about:
- Processes
- Materials
- Final project results
- And more
Facebook and Instagram Ads
As Meta products, both Facebook and Instagram work similarly, but understanding the types of demographics that utilize each platform is important. Although there is some crossover between the two, it’s assumed that:
- GenX uses both Facebook and Instagram
- Millennials use Instagram
You can utilize both platforms to drive new inbound traffic and remarket yourself to existing inbound traffic.
Remarketing helps your business stay in front of users who have visited your website before but may or may not have converted into a paying client. By remarketing, you can potentially drive a conversion in the future.
New inbound traffic helps you reach audiences who may not have found your engineering company before. You can utilize algorithmic learning to refine your audience and target your digital marketing campaign to bring them in.
LinkedIn Ads
As a platform used for professional social networking, LinkedIn Ads provide a space for engineering companies to reach other businesses that might benefit from their services.
As a platform for professionals, the demographic of LinkedIn includes:
- 47% Millennials
- 29% Gen X
- 15% Gen Z
- 10% Baby Boomers
With 60% of users between the age of 25-34, utilizing LinkedIn Ads as part of your engineering company’s digital marketing campaign could help successfully reach a target audience that could drive your business.
Phase 3: Increase Conversion Rates
Getting people to your website is certainly important, which is the majority of what we’ve discussed thus far.
But there’s more.
A big part of a digital marketing campaign is to get those users to convert. You want them to become customers, make referrals, and come back when they can use your business again.
CRO Best Practices
Conversion rate optimization can happen in many ways:
- Add testimonials to your website.
- Ensure imagery and video content are high-quality.
- Have a mobile-friendly website that’s easy to navigate.
Once you’re a client of the Houston Marketing Agency, we dig deep into many CRO strategies, but for the sake of time, today we’ll speak to only a few.
Split Test Landing Pages
The fastest way to understand if website copy, design, or other on-page elements are increasing conversion rates is to run split tests.
Here’s how it works:
- Make Landing Page A your control page.
- Landing Page B is your test page.
- Change one component on Landing Page A
- For example, your button text could change from “View Our Projects” to “Learn More Today.”
By comparing your control page to your test page, you’ll know which component drives for users. When used consistently, you’ll likely increase conversions.
Clear and Actionable CTAs
Your engineering company’s website should have clear and actionable Calls to Action displayed throughout the page.
For example:
- Schedule a consultation
- View our projects
- Fill out a contact form
- And more
Whatever you want your users to do to eventually turn into a conversion should be clearly displayed in your CTA.
Pricing Information
If you’re a business, you’ve got prices — and consumers will spend time comparing them.
Have clear pricing information that’s easy for users to find displayed on your website. If your engineering company doesn’t offer cookie-cutter pricing, make that clear to users and have an easy and actionable way for them to contact you for more information regarding pricing.
Optimizing the Funnel
Going from an interested Google searcher to a client ready to hire an engineering company isn’t a direct path. You’ll usually get drop-offs along the way as they decide not to continue with the next step of the path to conversion.
By following these recommendations, you’ll have some clarity on where drop-offs happen (both low and extreme) and take advantage of minimizing them:
- Find clarity on where drop-offs are happening.
- Optimize drop-off points through data-driven tests.
- Monitor performance.
- Continue testing.
Increase LTV on Autopilot
You’ve secured a paying client so your work here is done, right?
Wrong.
As an engineering company, there are simple ways to increase the lifetime value of each conversion.
Email Automation for Repeat Services and Referrals
Once you’ve completed an engineering project for a client, you don’t want to say goodbye to them forever. The next time they need an engineering company for a job, you want them to remember you.
Through email automation that’s integrated into your digital marketing campaign, you can continuously reach out to existing customers to share about business successes, other completed projects, special pricing, and more.
On the other hand, even if a prior client doesn’t have an additional need for your engineering company’s services, they’ll be more inclined to refer you to other potential clients if you stay in their inbox with relevant information or referral incentives.
Simplify Digital Marketing for Engineering Companies
At The Houston Digital Marketing Agency, we know engineering companies. We’ve helped local and national brands — even outside of engineering companies — reach their digital marketing goals.
Let us help you increase inbound traffic and conversions with our individualized digital marketing strategies for your engineering company.
Contact us today to learn how to get started.