Engineering Marketing 101: Your 6 Steps To Success

Unlock the Secrets of Marketing for the Engineering Sector

From an expert who’s played for both sides

Why do many engineering companies struggle to get results from their marketing? I reveal some of the strategies I’ve used over the years from within the engineering sector itself. I also show you the best tools my agency uses today, that get the best results for engineers.

Let’s be honest, engineering marketing can be a bit of a headache

The kind of deeply frustrating pain that doesn’t go away after you’ve taken some paracetamol.

It can leave you sitting up at night wondering why more people aren’t interested in what you do.

But honestly, it doesn't have to be that way.

Whilst engineering marketing can be more challenging than many other industries, you know that your own company offers a great service that people want. You just need to make yourself visible. Preferably, you need a way that doesn’t leave you scratching your head. Something measurable, logical, steps that make sense in your sector.

Well, you’ll be pleased to know there is a way. All you need are a few basic principles that you can stick with. Doing this will not only mean new enquiries coming into your business, but you may even find yourself enjoying the process.

You heard me right. Marketing will start to seem, almost, dare I say it, fun!

But why should you listen to me?

That is a fair question and one I’m always happy to answer.

I spent many years working in the engineering sector as a Technical Sales and Marketing Manager, before setting up my own marketing agency.

This means I am well placed to pass on the useful insights that I learned whilst in the industry. These are the proven steps I have taken time after time to help grow engineering businesses, that are either struggling to get off the ground, or looking to attain the next level, both of which require a marketing system that will provide them with a flow of consistent enquiries and orders.

Having seen where so many engineering firms are going wrong when it comes to marketing, I can help steer you in the right direction with these 6 steps.

The fact you’re here now, reading this and willing to act probably means you’re in need of a little guidance. So, let’s get on with it – the reason you’re here and the steps that, when followed with conviction, will change your business.

You heard me right. Marketing will start to seem, almost, dare I say it, fun!

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Step 1 – Who is your marketing aimed at?

The first place to start when marketing your engineering business is to understand who your target market is. That sounds obvious, but beware, the people you’re selling to are not always the ones you’re marketing to!

Example

I learnt the above lesson to my cost many years ago, when I was trying to get a piece of tooling included for an upcoming aerospace manufacturing project, for machining a part for the wing sections for the Typhoon fighter jet.

I was doing my best to promote the tooling into the production managers, the guys on the ground building up this process, but I overlooked the buying department in this company!

And guess who had been given the task of sourcing the tooling for that part of the job?!!!

Ok, so marketing to the production managers in this company was the right thing to do, but with hindsight I should have realised a company of this size would have a buying department as well!

I should have been marketing to both.

Those in a position to purchase are often too busy to do the groundwork. They’re the people that ignore emails and won’t pick up the phone or entertain a sales call.

They’ll set others the task of researching new suppliers before they get involved. These people become the gatekeepers to the decision-maker. The ones who have direct influence over those you would typically sell to.

You may also be able to market to people within a company with no purchasing authority at all. But what they do have is direct influence over the purchasers as they’re the guys and girls who get hands on with your products, as they use them day in day out. So, could you be marketing to those as well?

So how many audiences could you be marketing to if you really put your mind to it?

Step 2 – Is your website match fit?

The next very important part of your marketing, and one that most get wrong, is making sure your website will convert the traffic from your marketing.

Most businesses tend to go full steam ahead with investing in their marketing, thinking it’s the tools like social media and Google Ads that will bring in the sales and enquiries. But they’re wrong, and they come away very frustrated with their marketing. What they haven’t realised is those tools drive the traffic, whilst the website itself converts the traffic into enquiries and sales.

90% of marketing tools and strategies will directly or indirectly send or encourage visitors to take a view your website. Before carrying out any marketing, be sure to get your website looking its best. It should build trust, educate, inspire and guide the visitors towards that all-important sale.

Does it show off your products, your factory and your machinery in the best possible light? Is it giving the viewer a very clear idea of what you make and what your skill set is? Does it introduce your team, brand and what you stand for?

If you are doing all of this, then you’re taking a big step forward, but you still need to make sure the ‘call to actions’ on the website are attractive enough to bring in those enquiries and sales.

There’s nothing better in business than walking into the office in the morning, to an inbox of sales enquiries, fresh off the back of your marketing. It’s at that point you realise the hard work with your marketing and website was all worthwhile.

Step 3 – Make a plan

Ok, I hear the collective sighs of engineers throughout the country when I mention the word plan! We’re engineers, we don’t like plans! We want to get hands-on!

I totally understand that as I’ve been there too.

But with so many objectives we can achieve with our marketing, we need to be clear on what we want to achieve, in order to select the right tools for the task.

A few example marketing objectives include:

Brand building and product awareness
Increasing sales from existing customers
Increasing sales from new
Directing people to brochure downloads
Gaining followers to social platforms
Building enquiry forms entries
Building up meeting requests
Gaining sign-ups to emailers

The list could go on forever…

But you begin to see just how different one marketing objective can be to another, and how each would require a different marketing tool and strategy.

Step 4 – Understand what is working for others (like our clients)

We work closely with the engineering and manufacturing sectors, so we get to see first-hand what’s working now and what’s not.

No two businesses are the same. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work well for another. The trick is to test and adapt the tools and strategies that are working right now and measure their success on your target market. But do not blindly follow what other companies are doing. Just because it works for them does not mean it will work for you.

Marketing tools to consider in the engineering sector:

LinkedIn posts – to build brand awareness.
LinkedIn paid ads – to get your ads in front of a very targeted audience.
Emailers – to keep your brand in their minds
Google Ads – perfect for when someone has a need for your services
SEO – to get your website higher on the search engines
Case studies – use these to direct traffic to
Blogs – use these to answer typical questions you get asked
*Exhibitions

Note*: Exhibitions can be real revenue generators when managed and planned correctly but get it wrong and skip on the marketing and follow ups, they can become a total money drain.

If you’re considering an exhibition it’s well worth taking a look at our guide:

Step 5 – Don’t go straight for the kill!

So many people still make this mistake, even though they know they hate it themselves.

If you’re selling pens or shoes, then there’s every reason to go straight in for the sale. That is why people walk up to you as soon as you touch an item in the store. For larger investments though, people usually want to take things more steady and carry out their research first.

We need to consider this in our marketing and help them, rather than selling to them.

Let’s go back to the funnel from earlier. Your marketing is now feeding in new prospects at the top. These might be website enquiries, social media leads or contacts from a show.

From here, you filter out the ones you don’t want, perhaps not for the bin, but cold for now. That leaves you the hot leads to nurture, those that are in the market and perhaps close to purchase or seriously looking to purchase in the near future.

Here are a few strategies that can be used to nurture them through the sales funnel:

Build brand awareness by posting some interesting information and guides on your LinkedIn page. You’ll be known as the leading choice in the industry which adds value to your business.
Post videos of your machines or cutting tools in action on LinkedIn. Make these about educating the user on the process, not your business. What problems does it solve for them?
Add some forms to those posts where people can sign up.
Make sure you are sending them a set of well-crafted introduction emailers that introduce your brand, team and how you’ll improve their life.
Use downloads that offer value, like guides and spec sheets, asking for an email and name in return for this handy information.
Send carefully crafted emailers out with information useful to the recipient. The key here is to design or invest in professionally designed emailers, and make sure the content is useful to the recipient, not a sales ploy. Testing these vigorously, segmenting based on interaction and using your data correctly are all vital here.
For the openers of those emails, send a follow-up with access to a secret page on your website that contains some deeper information about your products or services, or maybe a free sample if that’s applicable (people LOVE free). Case studies with imagery and video are another great tool here. They offer social proof that tells them you can be trusted.
On these deeper pages add forms to contact you or to request a meeting or download a brochure. They start thinking about contacting you and you get an idea of how far down the funnel they are.

This is just one of many typical marketing funnels, but you can see from these simple ideas how quickly you can build up product and brand awareness whilst guiding the prospects through your sales funnel. What’s more, a lot of this can be automated, so once set up, it continues to work for you.

Step 6 – Be inventive, be patient and don’t let others influence you.

It’s very easy to be tempted away from the marketing you’re doing, when you hear of success stories elsewhere. And it can all be a bit overwhelming too.

So, my advice is to be prepared to listen to the ideas of others, but do not let them pull you away from what you are focusing on right now.

Engineering sales take time to get from the top to the bottom of the funnel. Your industry is quite unlike most others, and quick sales almost unheard of.

If you’re setting up a new Google Ads campaign for example, give it time to mature before switching the budget to something new.

Once you begin your marketing, you get data feeding in, and this data if used correctly is far more valuable than a few quick sales. Use it to optimise your website and your marketing tools and to enable you to focus on the most productive parts of your marketing whilst filtering out the least productive. Over time, you will build up a very strong marketing system that will reliably feed you the enquiries and sales your business needs.

Too many companies switch off their marketing tools prematurely. If only they had worked with the data and continued for a few more months, they could have really been on to something special.

And remember!

As an ex Technical Sales and Marketing Manager, I can tell you with absolute confidence that marketing in the engineering sector does work, you just need to work out what’s right for your business and your target market. Once you find this, the world becomes a very different place.

Would you like lots of warm leads?

Wouldn’t it be great to find an inbox full of enquiries that you’re able to share with your sales guys, where information has already been exchanged, they’ve seen your brand online and a level of trust already exists.

Instead of turning up to cold leads, the soon-to-be customer will be ready and waiting to join your customer list. They know what they want, it’s now just a case of guiding them over the finish line and making sure they’re purchasing the right service or product for their requirements.

It does and can happen for you. Engineering marketing really is that powerful, and I know this to be true as I’ve been there!

If you require further information or for us to run your marketing for you, then just drop us a line.

Good luck with your marketing 🙂

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