How A/E/C Firms Can Win More Business Using Thought Leadership
In today’s fast-paced A/E/C industry, content has become a powerful tool for firms to demonstrate expertise, build relationships, and win business. But here’s the challenge—simply producing more content isn’t enough anymore. With decision-makers spending significant time researching companies long before engaging with them, your content needs to do more than just exist. It needs to stand out and guide your audience through their entire decision-making journey.
Here are some tips to help you transform your content into a strategic asset that directly contributes to winning more business:
1. Use Content To Build Trust and Establish Authority
Your content should showcase your firm’s thought leadership and expertise, providing solutions to the specific challenges your prospects face. Educational and insightful content builds trust with your audience, positioning your firm as a go-to resource long before a formal project selection process begins.
Tip: Focus on creating content that addresses the pain points and questions your prospects are already asking. This could be through blog posts, white papers, or webinars that provide valuable insights on industry trends, project challenges, or regulatory changes.
2. Align Your Content with the Buyer’s Journey
The A/E/C buying process is increasingly self-directed and digital, meaning prospects engage with content at different stages of their journey. To be effective, your content needs to guide them from the awareness stage (where they first learn about your firm) through to the decision stage (where they choose to work with you).
Tip: Develop different types of content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. For example, thought leadership articles can raise awareness of your expertise, while detailed case studies or solution-based content can help decision-makers see your firm’s direct value as they get closer to making a decision.
3. Activate Your Content To Reach the Right Audience
It’s not enough to create great content—you need to make sure it’s reaching the right people. Activating your content means promoting it through the right channels, at the right time, and measuring the results to see what’s working.
Tip: Use a multi-channel approach to distribute your content. Publish it on your website, share it through email campaigns, promote it on LinkedIn, and use targeted advertising to expand your reach. Then, track engagement metrics to understand which piece of content is resonating most with your audience.
These tips will give your firm a strong foundation to develop content that helps win business. If you’re ready to take your content strategy to the next level, don’t miss our upcoming three-part webinar series: Master This: Achieving Return on Content: A New A/E/C Blueprint.
In this series, Ida Cheinman of Substance 151 will share a step-by-step roadmap to creating, aligning, and activating content that resonates with today’s A/E/C decision-makers. Here’s what each session will cover:
- Session 1: Using Content To Win Business
Learn how thought leadership and educational content can directly contribute to winning more projects. - Session 2: Aligning Content to Today’s A/E/C Buyer Journey
Discover how to map content to every stage of the buyer’s journey, ensuring you reach, engage, and convert the right decision-makers. - Session 3: Activating Content for Results
Dive into the practicalities of executing, distributing, and measuring your content to ensure it achieves your firm’s business goals.
Register for the on-demand series today and start transforming your firm’s content into a business-winning machine!
Take a glance into the course by watching Ida Cheinman as a guest on the SMPS LinkedIn Live Show, A/E/C Unplugged. Host, Danielle Gray interviews Ida about transforming content into business.
