How a $40M Engineering Firm Should Plan Its 2027 Marketing

Every fall, leadership teams at engineering firms sit down to plan next year’s marketing. Many of them start in the same place: last year’s budget, a modest increase, and a list of tactics that felt like they worked.

A $40 million engineering firm can start somewhere much better. By that size, the firm has years of marketing behind it, whether that work came from an in-house team, a hybrid arrangement, or a fractional partner. That history is an asset, but only if the planning process puts it to use.

The firms that grow deliberately, from $40 million to $80 million and beyond, plan from evidence rather than assumptions. They tie marketing to the growth goals of the business, make hard choices about where to focus, and plan with a clear view of a competitive landscape that is changing faster than it has in decades. The process has four parts.

1. Start with evidence, not opinions

The first step in planning 2027 is an honest look at 2026. At Marketri, we call it a stop, start, and continue analysis. The firm decides what to stop doing because it did not perform, what to start doing because the data points to an opportunity, and what to continue and improve because it is working.

The analysis is only as good as the data behind it. To do it well, a firm needs three things:

• Reliable campaign and channel data. Results for every campaign and marketing channel the firm used over the past year, so decisions rest on what happened rather than on impressions of what happened.
• A clear read on website health. Trustworthy measurements of how the website is performing, since it is the firm’s hardest-working marketing asset.
• Visibility data for both kinds of search. How the firm shows up in regular Google search results, and how it shows up when buyers ask AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude for recommendations. AI search is now part of how engineering services get found, and many firms are not measuring it at all yet.

Some of these measurements require specialized tools, and they are worth the investment. With good data in hand, the stop, start, continue analysis moves past guesses about what probably worked and gives the entire 2027 plan a factual foundation.

Last year’s results are the most useful planning input a firm has, as long as someone actually measures them.

2. Sit down with the executive team before you write a single tactic

The second step is a working session with senior leadership to answer one question: what are the growth goals for the company? Modest growth and aggressive growth call for very different marketing plans, very different budgets, and a very different pace of building.

That conversation should also include an honest assessment of marketing maturity. Leadership should look at how long the firm has been doing real marketing and whether the basics are in place: the right people, the right processes, a website that performs, and a brand that holds up.

Brand deserves particular attention in engineering. Firms in this industry routinely last 50, 60, even 100 years, and the brand often has not kept pace. In a crowded mid-market field, a dated brand makes it harder to stand out. In the AI era, the impression a brand makes matters even more, because AI tools are now forming an impression of your firm and repeating it to potential buyers.

Before committing budget to campaigns, leadership should decide whether the brand, the messaging, or the website needs investment this year. Growth goals, marketing maturity, and the state of those foundational pieces are what should set the 2027 budget. Firms that skip this step end up with a budget number picked from thin air and a plan that cannot support the growth the business expects.

The budget should come out of the growth conversation, not before it.

3. Look at the competitive landscape before you choose a direction

Before deciding where to focus, the firm needs a clear view of the field it is competing in, and that field is changing quickly for engineering firms.

Much like the accounting profession, engineering is consolidating. Firms are merging and acquiring their way toward offering more disciplines under one roof, because clients see real benefits in working with one integrated firm. At the same time, AI is changing how engineering work gets done and how buyers evaluate and choose engineering firms.

Both shifts belong in the planning conversation. A firm cannot plan just for itself. It has to plan in the context of every other option its potential buyers have, and those options are changing shape every quarter. A plan that accounts for where competitors are heading will hold up through the year. A plan written in a vacuum will not.

Your buyers are comparing you to a competitive set that looks different than it did a year ago, so your plan should too.

4. Decide where to play and where you can win

With the evidence gathered, the goals set, and a clear view of the competitive field, the real strategy work begins. This is the plan for which services the firm will push, to which buyers, in which markets. For engineering firms, this step carries more weight than in almost any other industry, because of how the industry is structured.

Some firms are boutiques, focused on one or two disciplines, such as structural engineering or forensic work and accident reconstruction, and serving one or two markets. Many engineering firms, though, offer a wide range of services, sell to different types of buyers, and work across several industries. For a $40 million firm that wants to reach $80 million, and then $120 million, the most important strategic decision is where to play and where the firm can win. That decision has three parts.

Cross-selling, taken seriously. Clients of firms with several disciplines usually know the firm only for the one service they buy. It is on the firm to show them, genuinely and in service of their goals, all the ways it can help under one firm and one brand. A committed cross-selling effort is one of the most overlooked pieces of engineering marketing plans, and one of the fastest ways to win more work from clients the firm already has.

Services with room to grow. Identify the services where the firm has the talent and expertise to expand, then look outward at which industries and which types of buyers are the right fit for those services.

Industries with momentum. Look at the industries where the firm is already well known, and the ones where it is barely known but the growth opportunity is real. Then decide deliberately which ones get attention this year.

This discipline matters because marketing resources in mid-market firms are very lean once salaries are paid. How the team spends its time and how the outside budget is used determine whether the firm makes real headway in its chosen markets or spreads its effort too thin. Done well, each year builds on the last: a stronger presence in target markets, wider name recognition, and a marketing function that grows with the firm instead of starting over every January.

A lean marketing team cannot be everywhere, so the plan has to say clearly where it will be.

What a strong 2027 plan looks like

Put together, the process is simple to describe and demanding to do well. A $40 million engineering firm planning its 2027 marketing should:

1. Run a stop, start, continue analysis grounded in reliable campaign, website, and search data, including how the firm shows up in AI search.
2. Align with the executive team on growth goals, assess marketing maturity, decide whether the brand, messaging, and website need investment, and set the budget from those answers.
3. Study a competitive landscape that is consolidating and being reshaped by AI.
4. Choose where to play and where to win: commit to cross-selling, grow the services with real expansion potential, and focus on the industries with the strongest opportunity.

Last year’s budget plus a modest increase is an easy way to plan, and it reliably produces a plan that looks a lot like last year’s. A firm that wants to double in size needs a plan built on what the data shows, what leadership expects, and where the market is heading. Firms that plan this way turn lean marketing resources into steady, deliberate growth. Firms that skip it spend another year guessing.

If you want an experienced partner to lead that planning work, it is exactly what Marketri’s fractional marketing teams do for engineering firms. Let’s talk about your 2027.