With a Digital Marketing Success Plan®, utilizing the START Planning Process, and other laser focused channel strategies, we build purpose-driven websites and digital marketing that drive toward meaningful marketing and broader business goals. ROI action, not just talk.
AEC & Built Environment
We know this industry.
We work across architecture, engineering, and construction firms, as well as the broader built environment space. Whether in general architecture, landscape, and planning, no two firms are the same. The same can be said in engineering whether structural, MEP, or civil engineering, and even general contracting. However positioned, we know each sells differently and need their subject matter expertise to help them stand out across digital marketing whether it is architecture firm marketing, engineering firm marketing, or construction marketing. NSPJ Architects, Henderson Engineers, and McCownGordon are among the firms in our portfolio.
The pursuit business
Why AEC marketing is different.
Much digital marketing and investment is focused on driving volume. Whether that is for brand visibility or even for the bottom of the funnel, it can skew toward generic outcomes or marketing conversions that aren’t connected in an ideal or optimal way for your bottom line and goals. AEC firms need quality, not quantity, and need smart investment of digital marketing budgets. And, within fewer deals, those deals each matter, competing on track record and trust with prospects.
You’re often not just talking about winning a single relationship with a single person. You’re navigating the complexity of relationships with stakeholders and partners throughout the industry as well as potentially long and complicated RFI and RFP processes.
This complexity means digital marketing’s job is more than just driving leads or generating brand awareness.
It means that you have to account for all target audiences and work to build visibility showcasing your credibility and credentials early and often in the marketing and sales process as you work to make the short list, develop referral sources, demonstrate the thought leadership of principals, and own your key sectors.
The industry’s own benchmarks point the same way. Deltek’s Clarity A&E study, done in collaboration with ACEC, AIA, and SMPS, ties efficient, profitable growth to a more deliberate pursuit strategy focused on the right opportunities and relationships. Digital marketing should support that discipline by helping the right owners know your firm and your experts before the shortlist forms.
The AI search shift
Your firm is either cited and promoted or it is omitted.
Your prospects and referral sources are increasingly getting answers from AI before visiting websites. For AEC firms, when buying leans on reputation and third party validation, these AI research and visibility opportunities are very relevant as they align well.
The industry sees this too. The SMPS Foundation’s 2027 Emerging Trends research shows that 56% of AEC marketing and BD leaders rated expertise-led visibility as highly impactful, yet only 19% said their firm is highly ready for it.
VOLTAGE is deep in the details on the AI transformation of how people search and find information. That includes doubling down on SEO things that are both important for SEO and LLMs in technical factors, on-page optimization, and in how quality content fuels search.
AI answers also lean heavily on what others say about your firm. Rankings, awards, trade press, association directories, conference talks, and video all shape how AI tools describe you and whether they name you at all. That makes accurate directory listings, award entries, and recorded speaking part of how your firm gets found.
We write and speak about this, including at SMPS events like “Writing for Robots (and Humans): Authority, Sentiment, and Relevance.”
Services
How we help AEC firms.
Not unlike specialization in the AEC and built environment world, VOLTAGE is a specialist in the marketing agency space. We only do two key things: search marketing and websites.
When it comes to AEC firms, we know specialization matters too. Even if you are a generalist firm, we’d be willing to bet that you have a pattern of types of projects and types of partnerships that stand out. You have unique expertise to be made visible online, demonstrated, credentialed, and central in generating new business directly and indirectly.
Search Marketing
Search marketing covers organic and AI visibility plus targeted paid search, all built around your markets and sectors. That includes principal thought leadership, being found by owners and GCs during evaluation, and paid campaigns aimed at the specific services, markets, and pursuits you want more of. We measure what moves pursuits, like shortlist invitations, inquiries from the right owners, and how prospects say they found you.
We leverage a full process for digital marketing planning called START. That’s an ideal starting point for a lot of firms to work toward their own Digital Marketing Success Plan®. It is such a powerful and thorough process (but, that we can still get through in 90 days or less!) that our CEO, Corey Morris, wrote a best-selling book on that title and unpacked the whole process.
While START and Digital Marketing Success Plan® are common and powerful starting points for our client relationships, we work hard on being easy to work with. In some cases we start with a narrow or specific channel strategy to connect to an existing or broader marketing strategy already in place as well.
Websites
How often have you looked at websites in the AEC space and noticed how much the sites share similar color palettes, layouts, and overall look and feel? While unfortunate for those that don’t stand out and blend in, this creates a huge opportunity for firms who want to stand out.
Your website first must demonstrate credibility and serve as a digital extension of your portfolio. That means project pages with real substance (owner type, sector, delivery method, scale, location, and outcomes), sector and location pages built around the work you want more of, your team, and your credentials. Owners, evaluators, and AI tools all pull from those facts when deciding who belongs on the shortlist.
However, it must also be built to convert visitors to inquiries, and match up your content with what buyers are looking for in their evaluation of firms for those that you don’t already know, plus serving referrers and other stakeholders.
Your website works for recruiting too. The architects, engineers, and superintendents you want to hire research your firm the same way owners do, including through AI. Careers pages that answer real candidate questions, job postings that show up in Google’s job search, and accurate employer profiles help you win talent along with projects.
Beyond that, you have to be mindful of modern website design and development requirements like accessibility, consent management tied to user privacy, and more, connected to user experience as well as optimizing for search engines and LLMs.
We’re not an ‘all or nothing’ firm and we don’t demand that our clients buy things they don’t need and don’t have to blow up an existing plan or website if we can see incremental wins working with your existing investments. (Of course, it is fun to take things down to the studs at times too if warranted).
Results
Real numbers, from a real AEC partnership.
43%
increase in organic sessions, year over year
333%
increase in leads generated
95%
increase in conversion rate
Herzig Engineering needed its website to turn more visitors into leads. We rebuilt content around how their clients actually search, strengthened the credibility content buyers look for, and replaced a single contact-page funnel with lead forms on every service page, turning that visibility into a steady, measurable pipeline.
Why firms trust us
No junior people. You work with experts.
Our team is made up of senior people who’ve spent their careers in search marketing and websites, plus digital marketing, software, and more, many with deep experience in the industries we serve. The work they lead keeps earning local and national industry awards.
That starts with our CEO, Corey Morris. He has published more than 150 articles and expert contributions across Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and Forbes over nearly a decade, and he still writes regularly for the first two. He also wrote a best-selling book on digital marketing planning and is a sought-after speaker and podcast guest, with more than 75 conference, podcast, and media appearances. He served as an officer on the board of the global search marketing trade association, founded a Kansas City search marketing conference, and has judged local and international industry awards.
Other agencies bring us in on their clients’ search and web work too, which says a lot about how deep our specialization goes. See how we partner.
What happens next
No sales process. Just a real conversation.
You won’t be put into a sales process, talked at, or pitched with slide decks when you talk with us. You’re not getting handed off to a sales team and will be talking directly with our senior level staff and leadership. Our focus is on understanding your goals, culture, and making sure that we fit what you’re looking for. We are as good at working ourselves out of a deal as we are demonstrating that we are the right partner. We want mutual wins that start with a solid strategy that leads to ROI.
When you fill out our form to reach out to us, we’ll prepare for our initial conversation. We do our homework to prepare as we’ll ask a lot of questions, give you the opportunity to do the same, to get a sense for how we think, and to also fairly evaluate the fit of us for your team. No pressure, no obligations.
01
You fill out the form
02
We do our homework before we talk
03
A real conversation, with no slides and no pitch
04
We both decide if it’s a fit
FAQ
Questions AEC firms ask us.
No, we work with a wide range of AEC firms and companies in the built environment space (as well as a few other B2B, professional services industries). We’re not focused on the size of the firm as we care about aspects of best fit for us to be able to partner and make the desired goal outcome impact that we mutually share. Whether it be tied to revenue attributed to digital marketing/website investment, increased visibility, generating leads, or other impactful opportunities.
VOLTAGE partners with AEC firms and built environment companies for search marketing and websites. If either or both of these are already in an ideal place driving leads and engaging prospects, then we’re happy to take an outside look and confirm if you’re in a good place and don’t need us (or an agency in general). For firms that want more leads, better leads, or to level up their search marketing and/or website, we come alongside ranging from a full strategy and plan to narrowly focusing on trouble areas.
A Digital Marketing Success Plan® is the culmination of the START Planning Process. For an AEC firm, it hones in on what the ultimate goal of your marketing is, how it impacts the ultimate business bottom line, determines the tactical mix to reach that goal, and maximizes opportunities through sector prioritization, pursuit cycle timing, referral source visibility, and throughout showing the unique value of your firm.
It depends! We find that some firms do need a new website, some don’t, and a lot in between as well. We take an ROI focused approach thinking about your marketing and IT dollars as if they were ours as we work to help you balance both short term and long term considerations in investment you put into the site. In some cases, it is more cost effective to rebuild or replatform while in other cases, we can make incremental improvements along the way to avoid the capital expense while still driving visibility, traffic, and leads.
This is a question that the search marketing industry has trained us to not answer directly or at all. In all honesty, it is one of the hardest questions to answer, but we don’t like to shy away from it or hedge our answer, pushing all the risk to our clients. We are comfortable with accountability. That’s at the heart of why we have developed START and “DMSP” and even why we’re so inquisitive starting with our first conversation with a firm. In some cases we see results days into launch. In more competitive landscapes, it can be months. Regardless, we communicate on the “what” and “why” and show our work.