Engineering.com conducted an interesting annual survey of marketers in the broad engineering field. Although, their study is not focusing specifically on the civil, environmental and construction (CEE) industry, some of the results are really interesting and probably somewhat applicable to the CEE industry.

So here is what Engineering.com found: The worst performing marketers in 2014:

• Spent significantly more on trade shows than the best performing marketers; almost a quarter of their budget! Instead the typical marketers spent about 15%.
• Spent also more of their budget offline, close to 12%, while the typical marketer spent 8.4%.

These results are not surprising really… These are the “traditional” channels for promotion: Trade shows, printed magazines, and leaflets/catalogs. Are they however the most efficient ones?

At a typical CEE conference, the number of attendees varies from less than 300 to rarely above 3,000. Many times, it is around 1,000. Out of these attendees very few have time for the expo in conferences and even fewer actually go through a booth with a targeted interest. Of course a lead is a lead and the advantage of a personal communication is significant. However, the costs associated with setting up and supporting a booth are tremendous. Is this a good ROI? A similar question could be asked for the offline marketing; it is really difficult to assess the impact of offline promotion. What is the CPC for an advertisement in the 56th page of an 80 page magazine? We have no idea… Judging from the magazines that we have seating on our desks with their plastic cover still on, it must be low…