AEC firms that restrict their marketing leader’s role greatly impact their success and that of the company.
I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day where the author (rightly) pointed out how marketing people are typically relegated to working on only the promotion aspect of the “four Ps” that make up the firm’s “marketing mix.” This is certainly true for firms in our industry.
As a refresher for those of you who forgot your “Marketing 101” course in college, the four Ps are price, product, physical distribution or “place,” and promotion. How a business manipulates those variables determines your “marketing recipe” and ultimate success. And yet, we tend to restrict our marketing leader’s role to promotion, and not get their involvement in any of these other areas that greatly impact their success and/or that of the company.
Why, you may ask? I think there are several reasons, including:
- There is a lack of respect for marketing people in general from technical or design professionals. I have been fighting this battle for years. For whatever reason, many technical and design professionals don’t understand or believe there is a body of knowledge on marketing just like there is for their discipline.
- The marketing people firms have in place may not have a broad enough business background to contribute in these other areas. Many of these folks came up through communications or graphic design backgrounds and they don’t have wide-ranging business knowledge, and are therefore not sought out for input on anything beyond promotion.
- There’s fear that getting marketing’s involvement could rock the boat and make things more difficult. Maybe marketing will want to lower prices to make a project less profitable? Or maybe they will want to raise prices which will make it harder to sell? Maybe marketing will want to get in front of “your” client and you are afraid of what the client will think? These are all possibilities but you won’t know if their input is valuable unless you listen and try out their suggestions.
What are some specific things you can do to get more out of your marketing people?
- Get them to do research on your clients and potential clients. Having real research data gives you unique insight into the clients and markets you serve that could impact your service offerings, proposals, and pricing.
- Involve them in every aspect of strategic planning. A lot of big decisions are made at this level. Where will offices be located? What services will the firm provide? What people are needed? What firms to acquire? What client types are going to be pursued? All of this stuff needs marketing’s input.
- Get their input on fee proposals and contracts. You may be surprised what fresh eyes can see that you don’t. There may be better ways to win the job or maximize revenue that a marketing person will see than what a technical or design professional sees. Try them out.
- Get them involved in project meetings with clients. The marketing people may pick up on things the client is saying that your PMs and other professionals don’t. I can tell you that early in my career I got to sit in on a lot of client meetings and it was not only educational for me as a marketing person, but I got to make suggestions on actual development projects that got used. It was very educational and motivational for me.
- Elevate their role to the equivalent of your top finance and operations professionals. You can’t say “marketing is important” and that you value marketing people, and then make their roles second class to the line and finance roles. Elevate ‘em!
So yes – marketing can be a contributor to all areas of the business – IF you let them!
Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
