70% of Your Clients Are Judging You on This

PSMJ Resources, Inc.
Posted on: 07/10/17
Written by: PSMJ Resources, Inc.
Topics: Social Media

Laptop Work-11How are prospective clients judging your architecture/engineering firm (A/E)?  Your client satisfaction?  No.  The quality of your projects? Not so much. Your hit rate?  Wrong again!


In fact , it seems that 70% of your clients are judging you on this (of all things):

Your LinkedIn profile.

Don’t believe me?  Well, you’d better start!

According to a Hinge Marketing study, Beyond Referrals: How Today’s Buyers Check You Out, 59.9% of buyers “check out” potential professional services providers through social media—and of that 59.9%, 70% of those buyers use LinkedIn as their primary source of information on service providers, compared to only 25% of “other social media” (including Google+, Facebook, and Youtube) and 5% of Twitter.

Why does LinkedIn have such an overwhelming lead over other forms of social media in terms of instilling buyers with feelings of legitimacy toward a firm?

Hinge states: “Given the platform’s professional focus, this doesn’t come as a surprise—and sends a clear message as to where sellers should focus their social media efforts.  Notably, LinkedIn provides one venue in which buyers may easily turn to for advice.”

Other notable methods buyers use for checking out professional service providers explored in the study were website viewing (80.8%), online searches (63.2%--emphasizing the need for strong SEO practices), and asking friends if they’ve heard of the firm (62.4%).  Significantly, the research showed that buyers used an average of 3.2 methods each time they “checked out” a provider, suggesting that sellers must be accessible in multiple channels.

Your takeaway?

Bare minimum:

  • Hire an outside consultant to create for you a killer, user-friendly website.

  • Hire an outside consultant (an employ an internal marketing analyst) to ensure your website is as SEO-friendly as possible and showing up on Google as high up as possible.

  • Create a company LinkedIn profile that you use as a forum to engage your audience and distribute content—and get your CEO involved!  He/she should be putting out new information frequently, representing your company as a thought leader in its field.

Related Articles:
Is LinkedIn an Effective Tool for Marketing in the A/E Industry? 

The Dos and Don'ts of LinkedIn Etiquette

How to Turn Employees into Firm Advocates on LinkedIn

 

 
SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG:
July 3, 2025

AEC Transaction News

June 30, 2025 – Irvine, CA – Westwood Professional Services, a national multidiscipline engineering firm, announces the acquisition of CSRS, a Louisiana-based provider of public..

Read More
July 3, 2025

PSMJ's Buyers

Looking to Meet a Buyer? PSMJ works with buyers from across the industry and is happy to make an introduction. Below is a list of PSMJ Buyers that are actively looking to meet the..

Read More
July 3, 2025

Are You Ready? Will You Go In, Out, or Somewhere in Between? —A Recap of Our Latest Webinar

Dear Insider,With the holiday weekend ahead, we leave you with the most distilled answers to the questions every owner is facing about their exit strategy. Too many firm owners in..

Read More