Engineering as Marketing

I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge , hints and tips I've built up over the years , for today I'm going to talk about engineering as marketing . Engineering as marketing is a thing you might not have heard before , but it's definitely a strategy that you will have seen . What it is .

Essentially , it's a strategy where you create free and useful tools for your target audience . These tools will be complementary and will align really well with the product or service that you are trying to sell . These tools will draw in potential customers .

The reason it's called engineering as marketing is because you're going to mainly be using engineering resource , so essentially development , web developers , programmers to build something that is feature rich , interactive and not just written flat content .

The key thing with any engineering as marketing product that you create is you're going to want to get people's contact details . You're essentially generating leads for yourself . Now an example and the most common example that people share is the website grader by HubSpot . You can just Google HubSpot website grader and you'll find a link to it .

What this does is it just asks you for a website address and an email address and then it will perform some basic checks on your website for things like performance , seo , how it works on mobile security , those kind of things . It will then make some suggestions on things you can fix .

What this is is essentially , it's a way for HubSpot to get your contact details so they can obviously remark it to you . Then B also start making suggestions to you right now for things that you can do . These things are things that their product can help you do if you choose to go down the process with them .

This is a great example of a tool that people will find useful just in its own right . It will also get people to link to it because people will share . It's very shareable because of what it does and how quickly it does it . It starts to generate inbound leads for HubSpot .

Another well-known example is AHREFS backlink checker the free backlink checker that anyone can use without having to have an AHREFS account . Obviously , loads of people are going to link to this because it's a great way of finding out what backlinks you've got to your or any other website without making any payment .

It obviously starts to weave in details of further things that you can do if you actually sign up for an actual AHREFS account . Now AHREFS , and usually in this one don't ask for an email address , which is more common with many of these tools , but it still works great for them . Give some loads of publicity and loads of backlinks .

If you look at why it's important to consider engineering as marketing is because you get a few benefits . You will obviously get your SEO boost by attracting backlinks . Because a good tool , people will actually be the great link magnets people will link to it .

You'll generate leads , particularly if you're going to ask people for email addresses so you can follow up with them later . It helps differentiate you from other sites doing the same thing as you .

If you've got a great tool that's really useful for people , it really makes you stand out compared to other competitors you might have who are just doing traditional standard marketing and not trying to do anything like this . And yeah , if you're just starting out , it helps build traction . It helps people get eyeballs on your site .

We did it with keywords people use , with the product being free to use for the first few instances , and that in itself works in , essentially like in this engineering's marketing concept , because we built this great tool and allow people to use it for free .

Obviously , if you want to keep you know , use it past a certain amount , then there are subscription options to choose from , but in the first instance , anyone can use it for free , and that generates loads of backlinks and traction for us . And if you're considering this as a tactic you want to try for yourself , then you need to consider a few things .

Whatever you create has got to really be complementary to what your actual product is . There's no point doing a sort of a cake baking calculator if what you're trying to sell is carparts , you know .

You've got to have something that is at least in the periphery of what you're actually trying to sell so that you attract the right kind of people who are potential future customers . It should do just one thing . Really . You should do it well .

So , rather than being a massive tool with lots of different functionality and ways of using it , it really should be dead simple to use , like the example from HubSpot , where all the leaders are URL and an email address and they can create a report from you just from that .

So it's dead simple to use , dead quick to use , gives you , you know , output really quickly . Yeah , and it's obviously got to add value to the users of the tool . So it's got to be something that actually provides some kind of valuable information or useful outcome for them . And , yeah , it has to be free to use .

Obviously , it's fine to ask for an email address , and that's quite normal . You know there's a quid pro quo there . You know , if you want to use this , we obviously want to be able to get back in touch with you . That is quite normal .

So those are the kind of the things you've got to consider when trying to come up with what your engineering marketing tool is going to be . So at what point do you target people with engineering marketing tools ?

Well , in the next podcast episode I'm going to be talking about search intents , and this is one this kind of fits in quite neatly with that , because basically , people who are you're going to attract here are going to be people who don't know about your brand necessarily .

Really , you're trying to get brand awareness with these tools , so you're going to be sort of hitting people who are only just aware they've got a problem they need to solve and they're trying to find solutions to it , or people who don't know they've got this problem yet but are just sort of , you know , researching around the top of a subject area to try and

get an understanding of what their options are and what the problems are and how they can solve them . So we call this top of funnel , heading towards the middle of the funnel area . So this is the area where you're going to try and target people .

So you've got to imagine that these people aren't aware of you as a brand yet , so you're not going to be able to rely on any kind of brand information to publicize this . You're not going to be in a situation where these people are looking to buy right now .

You're pulling people in on a much further up the funnel , which means you've got a bigger audience to aim for , and a wider audience to aim for because you will pick up plenty of people that won't go on to become customers , but the idea is you'll pick up enough of those that come through will eventually turn into potential customers for you .

Now , even when you've built your tool and you've got this going up and live , you're still going to have to , at least initially , do some promotional push for it . So that is doing outreach to people to get those first few people to see it and to notice it .

So you might want to use places like Twitter or LinkedIn and use your personal network for any people you know and just push it a little bit . The great thing is , once you get your first few links , your first few people using it , the ball , it will become like a stone that rolls down here .

It will gather traction on its own in time , but you're going to always have to give that initial push to do bear that in mind . And yet it's not easy to create these tools , because you've got to have an idea in the first place and then B you've got to execute on it .

But that very fact that it's not easy is what makes them work so well , because , as I've said before in previous podcast , people will link to content and tools that they can't replicate themselves .

So this is why , if you take the time and effort to engineer one of these tools , then , done right , it will build a life of its own and it will generate those links and it will generate those traction , because you've put something unique out there that is very hard to replicate and that will set you up as your brand , up as an expert in what you do , will

get you those links , will get you those customers coming at the top of the funnel and will set you on a path that is unique compared to all the other sites that are just doing written content , written content , written content to try and attract people . This is something that really , really sets you apart and , yeah , it's definitely a strategy .

It's a strategy we've used and it's one that will continue to use in the future , and it's probably really my favorite strategy of all the different available strategies for getting links , getting customer rivals , getting leads and moving your flywheel forward .

So that's my takeaway for you today Start thinking about what tools you could start to be building for your audience that will get your business moved to the next level . Thanks for being a listener . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is not that hard .

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If you want to get in touch , have any questions , I'd love to hear from you . I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter , where you can email me at podcast at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO . It's not that hard .