I am so excited to bring you this brand-new ModMarketing Series! This series will walk AEC marketers through how to modernize their marketing techniques using digital, online, thought leadership, and content marketing strategies. These strategies will help you to raise your firm’s brand awareness, capture new leads, and eventually drive the growth of your firm.

ModMarketing is going to cover the nuts and bolts of how to do this. But before we get into that, let’s define what it means when I say Modernize Your Marketing – or ModMarketing – and why engineering, architecture, and construction (AEC) firms must modernize their marketing to stay relevant.

As you may have figured out, the AEC industry has often been slow compared to other industries when adopting new marketing trends. But in 2020 with the global pandemic, AEC firms were propelled to rapidly make changes to their marketing programs, including shifting resources to digital marketing.

In fact, according to a 2021 study of AEC firms conducted by Hinge Marketing, high-growth firms are generating 50% of their leads from digital sources. These digital sources include websites, email, social media, and digital advertising. Also, high-growth firms are increasing their marketing budgets and dedicating almost 27% of their revenues to marketing efforts.

And according to the 43^rd annual Deltek Clarity study, well over half (59%) of the firms surveyed continued to struggle with finding the time to nurture client relationships, with 23% of firms identifying this as their top challenge.

In that same study, social media posts were the top marketing technique at 84% with client-specific marketing following close behind at 67% listed as their top marketing technique.

Looking to the future, firms who responded to the Clarity report are banking on certain marketing techniques over others to position themselves over the next five years. Those top 4 techniques were client-specific marketing, social media, thought leadership, and content marketing.

What do these two reports tell me? Well, they tell me that the high-performing AEC firms are already allocated budgets and seeing results from what I am calling ModMarketing techniques and other AEC firms are planning to at least for the next five years.

This research along with my dozens of conversations with AEC marketers across the country and the kinds of sessions I am seeing at marketing conferences compelled me to create this series for you. These ModMarketing skills are going to be crucial for you to develop to stay relevant as an AEC marketer.

So, what are we going to cover in ModMarketing? I am so glad you asked. In this series, you will learn how to develop a ModMarketing program that is right for your firm. Some topics I plan to cover include:

How to define your personas

Setting ModMarketing goals

Outlining a content strategy

Different content strategies and examples

Repurposing content into multiple formats

Search engine optimization

Promoting content

Optimizing marketing performance

Analyzing marketing results

Make sure you are subscribed to the Marketers Take Flight podcast, so you don’t miss any episode in this series!

And in today’s episode, I am going to go into a little more in detail about what the heck I mean by ModMarketing. Most of ModMarketing involves digital marketing techniques. What is digital marketing, you ask?

Digital marketing is defined as any marketing that uses electronic devices to convey promotional messages and measure their impact. Typically, these marketing practices include marketing campaigns that appear on computers, phones, tablets, or other electronic devices. It takes many forms including videos, emails, and social media posts. It also includes organic content and paid content such as display ads. Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail.

The term Digital Marketing was first coined in the 1990s when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software became a significant factor in marketing technology. Then in 1994, the first clickable banner ad went live for the “You Will” campaign by AT&T. Over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.

In the 2000s, with increased internet usage and the birth of the iPhone, customers began to search for products and make decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson. This encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.

Digital marketing took another step forward in 2007 when marketing automation was developed. Marketing automation is the process by which software is used to automate conventional marketing processes. With this new technology, marketers could launch multichannel marketing campaigns based on the customer’s specific activities.

After that, social media including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter made consumers even more dependent on digital applications in their daily lives. Now customers and potential customers expect a seamless user experience across different channels when searching for a firm’s information.

Digital Marketing Campaign Types

Digital marketing can consist of both online and non-internet channels and strategies. Common online digital marketing channels and strategies consist of:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Content marketing

Inbound marketing

Influencer marketing

Social media marketing

Email marketing

Display advertising

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Off-line or non-internet digital channels and strategies consist of:

Television

Text message campaigns (SMS and MMS)

Virtual displays or electronic billboards such as at conferences or events

Custom apps

Cold calling

Again, the ModMarketing Series will go more in-depth on several of these digital marketing strategies. Hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss out.

But, what modernizes your marketing? Why invest time learning about and implementing digital marketing techniques?

As you probably realize we live in a digital age, and millions of people spend most of their time on digital platforms including their computers and phones. Marketing is all about connecting with targeted contacts in the right place, at the right time, and if the contacts are plentiful online, then that’s where the best marketing strategies should be implemented.

One goal of ModMarketing is to raise brand awareness. Recent trends show that businesses and digital marketers are prioritizing brand awareness, focusing more on their digital marketing efforts on cultivating brand recognition and recall than in previous years. This is evidenced by a 2019 Content Marketing Institute study, which found that 81% of digital marketers have worked on enhancing brand recognition over the past year. Another Content Marketing Institute survey revealed that 89% of B2B marketers now believe improving brand awareness to be more important than efforts directed at increasing sales.

Another goal for ModMarketing is lead nurturing. Many of our AEC firms work with the same clients for many different projects. Because of this high rate of repeat work, our marketing goals aren’t to raise awareness of new leads, but rather, to keep our firm top of mind with existing clients. Also, the sales cycle in the AEC industry can be long, stretching out several months, if not years. So your firm might have identified leads but need to stay in front of those leads between projects.

Most likely, the goals for your ModMarketing program will consist of a combination of both of these for different markets and clients.

What are some other benefits of modernizing your marketing?

I am so happy you asked!

Remember that Hinge Research stat I mentioned earlier? As a refresher, according to Hinge, high-growth AEC firms are dedicating almost 27% of their revenue to marketing, and are generating 50% of new leads from digital sources.

Other benefits of joining the ModMarketing Squad are:

Cost-effectiveness – Compared to traditional marketing strategies such as print advertising, conference sponsorship, or attendance, digital marketing is relatively low cost. Some of the digital marketing strategies only cost the time to produce the materials and the technical knowledge. Others involved purchasing relatively low-cost software and online advertising such as display ads or PPC.

High return on investment – Because of its relatively low cost and generation of new leads that could result in thousands of new firm revenue, the return on investment is very high for digital marketing. And with the proper marketing technology in place to track and attribute the marketing campaigns appropriately, it’s relatively easy to track.

Easier to measure – Compared to traditional marketing strategies like a print ad or conference sponsorship, with a digital campaign you can know almost immediately how it’s performing. For example, an email marketing campaign’s performance can be known within hours or the next day. The opens and clicks are a good indicator of its performance and marketers can use that knowledge to adjust accordingly.

Easy to adjust – Because the performance of the digital marketing effort is known quickly, you will have that knowledge and can adjust other campaigns with that knowledge.

Easy to share – Digital marketing channels like social media posts and email campaigns can be shared with a click of a button. This helps your firm create a multiplier effect to amplify the content.

Precise targeting – Traditional marketing is one to many and everyone. For example, an engineering firm places a print ad in an industry publication. The engineering firm hopes that a few people who like what they see in that ad would take positive action. Marketing over digital platforms allows for targeted campaigning. The engineering firm can now place a display ad where that ad is presented to potential contacts based on their preferences or initial action.

Further reach – Digital marketing gives small firms, which make up most of the AEC industry, the opportunity to expand their reach. Using the benefits above of low cost, precise targeting, etc. every firm that deploys a digital marketing program can play in the same field as the mega firms. A small architecture firm in Iowa can be the worldwide leader in theater acoustical engineering through digital marketing campaigns and reach theaters in Moscow or Brisbane, for example.

The AEC industry has often been slow compared to other industries when adopting new marketing trends. But in 2020 with the global pandemic, AEC firms were propelled to rapidly make changes to their marketing programs, including shifting resources to digital marketing.

Knowing this, I’ve been compelled to create this ModMarketing Series. Throughout these podcast episodes, I show you how to modernize your marketing program that is right for your firm. And, maybe will have a little fun along the way too.

If you have specific questions about modernizing your marketing program, please don’t hesitate to contact me via LinkedIn or Instagram. You can find me on both platforms at lindsaydiven. If you ask me a question, you never know, it might be turned into a ModMarketing episode!

You can find all of the show notes and the links to the studies I mentioned over on the show notes page – marketerstakeflight.com/ 68.

And, make sure you’re subscribed to the show so you don’t miss the next ModMarketing Episode!

Until next time, bye for now!