by davidlecours | Mar 19, 2013 | Web & Digital
If you have this nagging sense that your AEC firm website could be more than an online brochure, you’re right. The modern website doesn’t sit idle waiting for the arrival of a visitor to simply confirm what they’ve already heard about your firm. When combined with narrow positioning and content/inbound marketing, a good website becomes a business development tool.
Here’s an example:
A city planner wants to know best way to gather public input for a new park being considered years from now. She searches for “public input methods for city parks” via Google. A blog post titled What Works: Public Input for Public Parks is one of many search results. Google likes to return local results so this blog post written by a local landscape architecture and planning firm (Firm X) ranks highly. The planner knows that her city will eventually need to hire a firm to design the park, so she’s curious about the perspective of Firm X. The Planner clicks the link and is directed to the blog section within the Firm X’s website. The blog post offers several insightful suggestions that make the planner look good when she recommends these ideas to her Planning Commission. At the end of the post, there are links to similar articles. She is too busy to read them now so she bookmarks the links. Knowing that she will forget about these bookmarks, she subscribes to the firm’s newsletter. Now she won’t have to remember to go back to the firm’s blog because useful articles will show up in her email in-box. Her contact info automatically gets entered into Firm X’s CRM. The park project is put on hold and a year goes by. The city now plans to create a walking trail and puts out an RFP for design. Since she regularly receives free valuable advice from Firm X, the city planner sends them a link to the RFP. Firm X wins the job in the presentation interview because the selection committee felt like they knew and trusted Firm X after hearing a Principal speak on Trends in Trail Design at a recent conference.
The best professional service websites attract the unaware, demonstrate your expertise, connect personally, and convert visitors into prospects.
Attract
If your firm is clearly and narrowly positioned to attract a specific audience, then your website can reach and engage the unaware. These visitors may be potential clients or employees. Both are important to the success of your firm.
A benefit of knowing your target audience is knowing what keeps them up at night. Searchable and optimized content on your website that soothes client pain points will increase your odds that unaware prospects find you. Once they find you, they will devour your content because it seems like it was written just for them.
“A main opportunity is to attract the unaware: those who need your expertise but are unaware you exist or not considering you.” ““Mark O’Brien, Author of A Website That Works.
By regularly adding unique, expertise-based content to your site, you will boost SEO. You begin to convey to Google who you are, which helps Google send the right visitors. The visitors like your content because it feels customized for them. Then visitors start linking to your content. Google notices this and increases your search rankings.
Demonstrate Expertise
A good website can allow someone to get to know (as described above) to like to trust your firm. This happens by demonstrating your expertise in writing. This can be blog posts, white papers or monthly newsletters. Make sure the content is indexable (not a PDF), so Google, and visitors, can find it.
A commitment to regularly adding valuable and searchable content to your website demonstrates your expertise and works to pre-position your firm as a leader before the RFP comes out. Content marketing is so critical for professional services because we are “selling the invisible.” Buyers can’t see, touch, or test our services before they buy. Content marketing is a no pressure, non-sales manner for prospects to understand how you think, what you believe, and how you’ve solved previous problems.
Creating engaging content is hard to do. Most will give up after a few months. This is an opportunity to stand out.
I recommend starting with writing a blog. then graduate to:
• quarterly webinars
• white papers
• speaking where your clients gather
• videos & podcasts
Connect
The mantra I hear repeated is: A/E/C marketing is a relationship business. People do business with people they know. Yet, I’m shocked how many firms are unwilling to highlight firm leaders on their website out of fear that this talent will be poached. Guess what? Your competition already knows who your leaders are. If your leaders’ loyalty is so fragile that an email from a competitor will cause them to jump ship, then you’ve got bigger issues.
While there is no substitute for meeting someone in person, you can begin a relationship by making an emotional connection online. No, not online dating. Do this in the People section of your site by showing some personality. We recently designed a site where we asked magazine style questions to the leaders. You could also use a video of someone telling a client story. Avoid the cold bio with only facts. Avoid the stiff headshot where everyone looks the same. Give website visitors a reason to like the people that they may eventually work with.
ARUP lets visitors get to know leaders in their own words using video.
Convert
The sales cycle for professional services is long and involves multiple steps. Nobody is going to visit your site and wonder where your shopping cart is so they can purchase your services with PayPal. However, in exchange for your valuable content, visitors are willing to give you their trust and attention in the form of their name and email address.
You may be reluctant to place sign-up forms on most of your pages, because you feel it is too “sales-ey” for a professional service firm. Get over this concern. Visitors won’t go to all the pages on your site so you don’t want to miss a conversion opportunity by only putting a sign-up form on your Contact page. If you are offering valuable content, you are helping visitors by allowing them sign up for your e-newsletter. Then they don’t have to remember to go consistently return to your site.
Conversion should be accomplished through a clear, concise and compelling call-to-action form (see below). The form should include Name and Email (no more) and a link to examples of the type of content they will receive. Keep the form concise to minimize resistance in the sign-up process.
Sign-up form for Randall Lamb
Since the sales cycle is long, it’s critical to get someone into your CRM and put them on a consistent drip of valuable content. When they become ready to buy your services, your firm will remain front of mind.
“No single piece of content, no matter how excellent, will be as successful as a steady, long term flow of quality content.” ““ Chris Butler, Author of The Strategic Web Designer
Conclusion
Websites have evolved from passive brochure-ware to active lead generating tools. Here are some A/E/C industry examples of sites doing this well:
Randall Lamb Engineers
Array Architects
DPR Construction
ARUP
by davidlecours | Feb 14, 2013 | Web & Digital
When we develop websites for AEC firms, the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) usually comes up in the project kickoff meeting. Our client, the Director of Marketing or CMO, needs to respond to the CEO, who has asked, “Can we get to the top of page one of Google search results with this new website?” Probably Not. For most generalist AEC firms, spending a lot of time and dollars on SEO doesn’t make sense.
Your clients don’t search for: “architecture firm,” view the search results, go to a website, select your services in a shopping cart, and then click “buy” at check out. But if your firm has specialized expertise and a content marketing program (it should), then SEO makes sense. This post shares how adding valuable, unique content, and then optimizing your pages, can help you attract searchers that arrive at your site already hungry your firm’s expertise.
“SEO only works for Professional Service firms when combined with a narrow focus and regularly adding expert content that is helpful to your target audience. A modern website requires a commitment to specialization and a commitment to writing.” ““ Mark O’Brien, CEO of Newfangled and author of A Website That Works.
Note: I use Google in this post as the defacto search engine because they currently have an 84% market share. While Bing is gaining momentum, if you adhere with Google SEO practices, you will be well positioned with Bing and others.
What To Do
- Add unique, valuable content informed by your expertise to your website blog
- Optimize each page of your website
- Google indexes this content, and brings interested searchers to your site
- Searchers arrive impressed with your helpful expertise
- They sign-up for your newsletter or RSS feed, and tell their colleagues about your site
- Colleagues start linking to specific pages in your site
- Google indexes more frequently, and increases your rankings
What to Avoid
- Hiring an expensive “SEO Expert” promising to put your firm at the top of page 1.
- Trying to outsmart Google. You will not.
- Trying short term tricks that could get you “blacklisted” from Google.
- Developing a “magic keyword list” assuming it will automatically drive your listing to page 1.
How To Optimize Your Pages
Here are the six items you should pay attention to when optimizing your web pages.
1. URL – Uniform Resource Locoator or Page Link
Appears: Title Bar (see red arrow above)
Length & Format: As short as possible to describe page
Concept: friendly, english (not code), concise, keyword-rich
Example: https://lecoursdesign.com/about/clients/
Best Practices: Have developer give you ability to customize URLs through your CMS
Avoid: Code URLs like this: http://yourname.com/main.cfm?&projDetail=1&thesection=projects&projView=
service&thesubsection=Federal&thepage=02Fort%20Huachuca%20Military%20.html
2. Page Title
Appears: Browser Bar & link text in Google results (see red arrow above)
Length & Format: Up to 70 characters
Concept: Keyword or Phrase, Keyword or Phrase, Keyword or Phrase
Example: Grateful for Great Clients
Best Practices: Accurately describe page content, unique for each page, More important keywords towards front, think like a searcher
Avoid: A single tag across all your pages, long confusing titles
3. Meta Description
Appears: black text in Google results (see red arrow above)
Length & Format: Up to 155 characters
Concept: Compelling ad copy that inspires user to click
Example: Home: LecoursDesign is a brand strategy firm serving the AEC Industry. We help clients tell their story to win new business.
Best Practices: Accurately summarize page content
Avoid: only keywords, generic descriptions, quotes
4. H1 Tags
Appears: Headline title on each page (see red arrow above)
Length & Format: No more than 1 line, could be 1 word
Concept: Compelling headline that ideally contains primary keyword for that page
Example: Contact
Best Practices: Every page needs a unique H1 tag
Avoid: making H1 tags exact copies of page titles
5. Keywords
Appears: n/a
Length & Format: 5-6 words or phrases comma separated -or- 1 primary keyword (there are differing beliefs on this)
Concept: primary keyword, secondary keyword, etc. if using multiple keywords
LecoursDesign Example: Brand Strategy, Branding, Logo, Web Design, AEC Marketing
Best Practices: Think like a searcher. What words would they use to find you. Unsure about which words to use? Use http://www.google.com/trends/. For example, I was unsure about which keyword is searched for more frequently: brand or branding. Below are the results:
6. Body Copy
Write compelling content that is helpful to your audience. Speak directly to your reader by identifying their pain points and offering solutions. This post is an example. I heard from several clients that they were confused about SEO so I wrote this post to help them. Use keywords in your body copy but only when they make sense. In other words, don’t keyword stuff at the expense of good writing. You want incoming links and nobody will link to your copy if it isn’t readable. In short, if your content isn’t good enough to attract natural links, it doesn’t matter how “optimized” that content is. Finally, make sure content is indexable, not PDFs, movies, image files, etc. A quick way to test is to place your cursor over the text and try to select it. If successful, then it’s indexable.
The Opportunity
The main opportunity with search is attracting potential clients that value your expertise, are unaware of you or your current services, or are considering hiring someone else. It’s unlikely that you’ll convert them on the spot to become a client. But, a relationship with this potential client must start somewhere. Content Marketing + SEO can be the first step in moving this searcher from prospect to client by getting to know you, to like you, to trust you, and eventually hire you.
by davidlecours | Aug 25, 2009 | Web & Digital
One way to measure the success of your website we is to monitor visitor’s length of stay. The longer a visitor “sticks” on your site, the greater the chance they are making an emotional connection with your brand. Using principles from the outstanding book, Made to Stick – Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Dan and Chip Heath, here are three key qualities of a sticky website.
1. Simplicity
Before redesigning your website, review your strategic and marketing plans, analyzing your current site, and prioritizing what you want site visitors to do on your new site. This gives you a creative brief, or target, to compare design solutions against. Next, create a Site Map which is a clear outline of proposed content. Again, measure against brief. Now a clear navigation system can be designed which allows the visitor to easily find what they need. In a site we recently designed for KTU+A, we determined that viewing projects by market sector was a priority. So we designed the main navigation system to always show all market sectors. With the custom Content Mangagement Sytem we created for KTU+A, they are able to maintain their own site full of current content. Our goal for this site was to keep the graphic design simple so it serves as a frame, supporting their projects as the art.
2. Unexpected Personalization
To capture and hold a visitor’s attention, your site needs to surprise and delight while delivering meaningful content. With the KTU+A site, a goal was to weave their positioning of “balancing human activites with elements of nature” into the site in an enexpected way. So the visitor gets an option to choose their own background image and sound (elements of nature). This infuses the inorganic activity of using a computer with unexpected elements of nature. We created the Project List to allow visitors to sort projects in a way most meaningful to them. Visitors can sort by title, location, market sector or service with the ability to get more information on all projects and detailed information and imagery on featured projects.
3. Stories
Your brand is a story made true through personal experience. It’s critical that your site tell the story of your firm, your projects and your people in a compelling way. Invest in professional project photography and show it off at least 600 pixels wide. Here’s a great example of how impactful photography tells stories. Video is another great tool. Don’t expect your video to go “viral” on YouTube, but do expect to connect with visitors on an emotional level. Here’s a great example from NBBJ. When introducing Principals, use great photography or video, and wording that humanizes the person beyond impersonal resume bullet points. People hire people they know, so let site visitors get to know your key staff.
Your website is the new “front door” to your firm. It’s the first place prospective clients go to learn about you, or confirm what they’ve heard. Use these 3 tips to make a positive first impression “stick” in your client’s mind.
What other web site features, would you recommend to make a site sticky?
Does your website provide compelling content to make visitors stick around?
