Engineering Inc. - May/June 2008 - 23

T When looking to build an effective marketing plan, the best sources often are customers themselves. “We learn as much as we can about specific markets and prospective clients, making sure that there’s a need in an area where we can provide the best service,” says Tholo. “Then we visit those clients and ask open-ended questions about the issues and challenges they’re dealing with.” The key, says Tholo, is to be genuine and sincerely interested in what the client has to say. “You want to create an atmosphere where they truly want to talk to you,” he explains. Such conversations are best orchestrated by the firm’s senior managers and not business and development staff. “You’re there to listen, not sell,” says Tholo. The modern marketer’s toolbox contains a virtually unlimited range of “traditional” and “new media” options for positioning a firm’s expertise and capturing clients’ interests. Tools range from brochures, trade articles, and media relations, to conference papers and presentations, web seminars and sponsorships. Johnson advises looking to competitors and as far as other industries for clues that might help firms cultivate a distinctive image. “You can learn a lot from, say, the packaged goods industry, or firms that market to entirely different customers or in other parts of the globe,” he says. Some engineering firms also are making use of company websites as a marketing tool, though Johnson says many don’t know how to properly gauge its effectiveness. “Some sites have cluttered designs where the messages get lost, while others are difficult to navigate and contain outdated information,” he says. “Websites need constant attention to their look and content in order to attract visitors and get your messages across.” Despite the advent of technology, experts say, there still is no substitute for the personal touch. “You can’t replace the value of face-toface relationships,” Cerro says. “Anything you can do to educate and interact with people is going to be effective marketing.” Many firms, for example, take active roles in their clients’ professional organizations, keeping them abreast of important issues and trends. Good networking also helps with those dreaded “cold calls.” “When you’ve learned something about a prospective client, either directly or through a third party, it’s much easier to ‘warm up’ that call because you already have a connection,” says Corlew. Operational Issues he best marketing is when clients are talking about you. That’s how you make a lasting impression. aLeTHea o’DeLL DeGenkoLB enGIneerS Increasingly, successful marketing of engineering services is a company-wide effort, not the domain of designated business development specialists or client liaisons. Firms are finding ways to integrate marketing with all major business functions, largely because it touches so many different areas—new projects, recruitment, community and stakeholder relations, and professional development, to name a few. “The days of having marketing separate from operations are over,” says Corlew. Firms can no longer afford for marketing to be an afterthought. “I encourage firms to budget time for marketing activities the same way they budget time for projects,” Lester says. “They need to identify specific tasks, monitor time and resources used in performing them, and if a conflict arises, they immediately need to reschedule those tasks.” When business slows, engineering firms should resist the temptation to pare down their marketing efforts and resources in the name of controlling overhead. “Economic downturns actually provide an ideal opportunity to stand apart from competitors that may be stepping back,” O’Dell says. Marketing cutbacks also risk inconsistency, causing clients to question whether the firm has the stability necessary to be a partner now, or in the future. “Laying off marketing coordinators will have a negligible impact on the bottom line,” says Lester. “What is important is the return firms are getting on that investment, not just the cost of it.” That leads to perhaps the biggest challenge of marketing—establishing a direct correlation to business results. Unfortunately, there are no ready-made measurements available. That’s due, in large part, to the individual nature of engineering firms and the inability to control external influences tied to a given project’s success. “It shouldn’t just be proposal wins or the number of client call-backs,” Cerro says. “Each firm needs to define what success looks like, and devise its own metrics to measure it.” Just as marketing spans an engineering firm’s entire operational spectrum, so too should responsibility for its success. “The business development professional can’t do it without a technical person’s knowledge,” Tholo says. “Everybody plays a role, and the performance indices should be designed to encourage people to work together.” That includes not simply telling clients and customers what you can do, but actually doing it—probably the best marketing tactic of them all. “If you’re the best at serving customers before, during and after the sale, success will take care of itself,” Lester says. O’Dell agrees. “The best marketing is when clients are talking about you,” she says. “That’s how you make a lasting impression.” n Jim Parsons is a freelance business writer living in Bristol, Va. MAY / JUNE 2008 ENGINEERING INC. 23

Engineering Inc. - May/June 2008

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