Transcript: AEC Marketing Campaigns Geared Towards Winning

Lindsay: Well, hey there, marketers, have you ever wondered how to use marketing campaign strategies or tactics to help shape your pursuits? Either in the prepositioning phase or even during the chase? Like after the RFPs out? If you didn’t even think this was possible, or maybe you’re looking for some ideas on how to do this today’s episode is for you.

I have two guests on the show today. Katie Cash and Jeni Dzenis with both with Smartegies and we’re gonna talk a little bit about Different types of marketing data, marketing campaigns, and how that data is used either by marketing or business development to help with sales and then some strategies or tactics with examples of how some different types of marketing strategies you can use either during the prepositioning or the capture planning. They’re gonna talk about some examples they’ve done with some clients in the past. And some of ’em are pretty simple and I couldn’t believe, I hadn’t thought of them before. And then they’re gonna share a couple of tips on how to get started with this approach at your firm.

So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Katie and Jeni.

Lindsay: Well, hey there, I have not one but two guests today, joining us from Smartegies, Katie Cash senior VP, her and I go way back, and we’ll probably talk a little bit about that.

And Jeni Dzenis who specializes in business development over at Smartegies. So welcome to the show, ladies. Thank you for joining us today.

Katie: So excited to be here, Lindsay, you know, I love talking with fellow marketers, so really excited to kind of dig into how we can help your listeners.

Lindsay: Yes. Yes. Before we dig into that, why don’t each of you briefly, tell me a little bit about how you got into the AEC industry, your career path up into this point and how you help firms today.

Jeni: Go ahead, Katie.

Katie: I was about to say you go first. okay. So, I feel like my, my story might be very similar to a lot of fellow marketers in AEC in that I just kind of fell into it. It was not something that was anticipating building a career around. But once I got in, I kind of caught the bug and I loved it, but you know, to take it way back, I went to college for marketing. I, I loved marketing and thought I wanted to, to pursue that. And I went to school at, at Georgia state in downtown Atlanta and found myself needing a job while I was working. Pay for my bar tabs and you know, the fun things that I was doing. And I landed an internship with the Georgia state finance and investment commission, which is the largest buyer of design and construction services for the state of Georgia.

And it was very convenient for me, right. I could park right there by the gold dome in downtown Atlanta. I could walk to class, and I could walk back to my internship and back and forth all day long. And it worked really well for my schedule. But what I didn’t know is that it was laying the foundation for my career. Here I am 20 years later. And so, I, I did my internship there. What I feel like is really funny is that my gig there is, I was a proposal reviewer, Lindsay, I don’t know if I shared that with you, but I was one on the team where I got all of the proposals from. You know, architectural teams and then the construction teams, the program managers, even the commissioning agents. And my first job was really to review the RFP and the responses and make sure they were compliant. I was like the one who was the eliminator. Right. If you didn’t have your insurance certificate in there, you know, you lose a point in. And really I was looking at making sure that those that had responded that they were compliant so that I could pass them along to the project managers and those that were on the formal selection committee so that they were spending their time actually evaluating those that, that were, you know, going to be able to be selected.

Lindsay: Hmm.

Katie: And so, I was trained in very black and white when it comes to proposals. And I still use that training today when I’m working with clients on how they stand out, when they’re doing proposals and you know, whether or not you need to answer the same question four times in three different areas, cuz it seems like people don’t know how to write an RFP.

So, I did that for, you know, all four years and then I got my degree in marketing. And, you know, basically I picked up the phone and I started calling everyone listed in the book of lists saying, hey, you know, I’m, I’m this great new marketer I’m looking for, you know, a, a job as a marketing coordinator. And I interviewed with a lot of different firms in Atlanta, you know, I, I was lucky in that. There’s a lot of major brands represented in Atlanta across design and construction. And I ultimately landed at an international design build firm, which was fantastic for me.

That firm in particular, they sold standalone architecture services. They sold standalone construction standalone program management. And then we also sold it as an integrated design build solution when design build was kind of fairly new. And so, I learned all about all the different delivery methods. And my proposal, you know, repertoire was quite diverse and, really enjoyed doing that. And then, you know, I, I, I was there for a number of years and decided I needed to do something a little bit different.

I went and worked at a cost estimating firm as a regional marketing coordinator. I learned a lot of things different, right. Cuz that was the first time I was kind of selling to architects and playing the numbers game, everything before that it was, how do you market, how do you communicate? How do you position to the owner to the ultimate, owner of the project.

And so, I, I learned a lot through that cost estimating firm. and then I landed at B R P H, where you and I crossed

Lindsay: know

Katie: for a number of, of years. And that was really fun. You know, working at a, which was the first time I was at a remote location, you know, corporate office down in Florida was working up in Atlanta. And so that was different kind of determining how to work in a decentralized marketing team and yet supporting a firm that was working all across north America. so that was a lot of fun. And then fast forward to today, I’m the senior VP at Smartegies where we help design and construction firms build growth strategies for sustainable responsible growth.

And I spend all day, every day working with clients all across north America, determining you know, what their business goals are and how we can leverage some of their marketing and communication, assets and tactics to help them reach those goals. And I’m married to an engineer, you know, I can’t seem to escape this industry, but I love it. so excited to talk to a fellow professional service marketer like yourself.

Lindsay: Thank you. Well, thanks for being here. and then Jeni, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your path is much different than Katie’s. Why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about how you got into the industry and a little bit about your journey to where you’re at today.

Jeni: Sure of course. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this. I really, you know, I’m really excited to talk to you today, Lindsay, but yeah, you’re right. Katie Cash’s story is way different from mine. Um, but thank goodness for all of you marketing people that, you know, really grew up in the industry because my story on the other hand, I am an architectural designer by training and, um, so I went to the university of Florida back in the late nineties.

Lindsay: Woo. Go Gators.

Jeni: Yeah, Go Gators. I graduated with honors woo woo. You know, with a Bachelor of Design. and I specialized in interiors, so that’s, you know, that’s my education and straight from college. I, you know, I started working in the industry. I haven’t left since then, fortunately, and I haven’t wanted to, but I have worked at oh, my goodness different. I’ve worked at different types of companies. So, I started out as, you know, doing some freelance work for Marriott, right here in Orlando where I am today. And then, after that, I moved out to Los Angeles and. I became an Imagineer with Walt Disney. So, I, I did theme entertainment design for a little over three and a half years.

got some really fabulous experience from, working with just, you know, imaginary, is just an amazing place. And so, I always, you know, use that as sort of, I mean, it’s really sad, but I use it as my benchmark and it’s like, how do you compare to that? But, you know, I got to work on some really incredible projects, like Tokyo Disney Sea, Disney’s California and adventure. And these are like, brands are, these are parks now that are a little bit, you know, they’re older. They’re like, 20 years old, but those were the things I got to experience very early in my career. after that, you know, I kind of went to smaller companies. I worked for like, I did some high-end residential work in Los Angeles for, high profile clients.

And then, in 2004, I actually came back to the Southeast. And so that’s when I landed in Atlanta. that’s basically around that time is when I joined a larger, well, at the time it was more of a mid-size architecture firm, Wakefield, Beasley, and Ironically, that’s how I got, I got connected with Smartegies, so we have, well, it was a little bit later because Judy started Judy Sparks started her company I think it was 2008, but, her second client was my boss at Wakefield, Beasley, Lamar Wakefield. So. Katie’s history finally aligns with mine when I’m at Wakefield Beasley. So, I was a client, uh, I started doing, I mean, I was over there doing architectural projects, but, you know, after I would say, you know, five or six years, I started doing a little more business development, which kind of put me also in front of the marketing side of things.

And so, I was more, more familiarized with it. And, you know what, that’s why I say thank goodness for the marketing department, because it’s not my thing. I learned nothing about marketing when I went to school. And like I said, I went to school for design and that’s, that’s what we learned. and then, you know, fast forward to today, what is it 2022. I’ve been with Smartegies now for a little over two years. Or right around two years and, you know, Katie cash and I tag team a lot, we work really closely, marketing and business development. So, I think that’s how you and I really connected and met. And, it was, you know, a presentation that Katie and I did together not too long ago. It was just a few months ago over at Circ for, the regional conference. So, I hope that helps.

Lindsay: Yeah, that that was great. And, and that also is a great segue, Jeni of why I have both of you guys on today. because we wanna talk about you guys are doing some really great things, for your clients in terms of marketing, working together with business development, seller doers to use marketing strategies, marketing techniques, to help support the pursuit and the prepositioning to make it, I guess, I don’t wanna say easier, but just give your firms and your clients a little bit more of an advantage, I guess would say it’s probably not easy, but it’s, you know, any with today’s competitive market, any advantage that we can provide our business development team, our seller doers teams to win our pursuits. I think if marketing can do that, it really helps the entire firm grow. And I know I’m speaking to the choir. So, when I saw your guys’ presentation at SMPS Southeastern regional conference, I’m like, oh, I need to get these ladies on to share this with my audience and my listeners, because I think this is a real opportunity for firms out there, a different way to approach, maybe marketing,

Katie: Yeah. I mean, philosophically, you know, the whole team at Smartegies we kind of believe that every business, large and small, you know, whether you’re multidiscipline or you just offer a singular, specialized service that you should have a business strategy, right? You should have a business strategy of what you’re trying to accomplish, you know, what you’re trying to grow, and then that you should have your sales team, whether it’s a dedicated business developer or you’ve got seller doers or a mixture of those that their effort should support the business strategy. So, for example, if you know, you’re really trying to grow your market, share in a particular market type. You know whether it’s, you know, industrial distribution or whatnot, the sales efforts really should be supporting that. And then we believe that marketing should support sales and you can’t really do that if you don’t have a partnership and you don’t have coordination across departments. And what we often see when we’re working with clients, Lindsay, is those that are responsible for sales kind of operate in one silo. And those are responsible for marketing operate in another. And very rarely is their collaboration between the two, you know, there might be a quarterly sales meeting and there might be, you know, an annual marketing report that talks about, what we call sales initiated ask, which are proposals, which again, support the sales effort. but we really do believe that they all kind of match together and you’re right, today’s landscape is a lot different. used to, you had to have an office in the area where, you know, the geographic area where you wanted to service your clients. And that’s not the case now. Most sophisticated buyers know that they can buy design and construction services remotely, and that expertise travels.

And so, you have, you know, local competition with national experts coming in on all kinds of projects. You’ve also got, major corporations buying things by regions. You know, maybe they’re doing a master service agreement for particular regions. And there’s a lot of things that the marketing team can do to help make sales lives easier. And, you know, Jeni and I often joke about this, but it’s little things, right? So, there’s things that companies are gonna be doing from a brand perspective. We call those, you know, you’re always on tactics, it’s your website, it’s your blog. It’s organic social media. Maybe you have a newsletter going out.

Those are all great things that help keep a brand front in mind of, whoever your target audience might be and your prospective project partners. Well, the data from each of those is really, really valuable to your sales team. And so, when we’re doing things, you know, at Smartegies for the agency, Jeni does the sales for us. And the first thing she asks us, hey, who opened that email? Or, hey, who’s engaging with that post. She wants to know the who behind it, because that helps her formulate her. Her short list of who she’s gonna follow up on and sorry, Jeni, I’m speaking for yourself,

Jeni: no, no. I was, I. I was actually gonna interject just a little bit because you know, the part, the funny part Lindsay to me is, you know, Katie, Katie sometimes, gets really excited about like the quantity, like how, like, you know, how many, how many impressions did we get? How many clicks did we get? And, you know, a lot of that goes over my head because I, you know, and I’m just like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about sometimes. Katie just tells me who clicked on it. Like, who are the, can you gimme their email addresses? I wanna know who they are so that I can, directly go back and follow up with ’em. So those are the types of things. Yeah. That’s what Katie was saying when she’s just like, I’m always asking who, so, um, I think, the way that sometimes the way that we measure how successful something is, is a little bit different, coming from the business development side and coming from the marketing side.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s interesting. And I like that distinction, I just took some notes, you know, marketing, we’re kind of all about numbers, how much reach or exposure something gets. And business development’s all about who and I think Katie, that goes back to you, your first thought about business plan. So, if you’re targeting industrial distribution centers, they’re not opening the content that’s giving you, or they’re not the content’s not reaching them. That’s giving, marketing some clues, but if they are, and you can deliver that to Jeni and say, okay, here’s the people that liked it or commented or downloaded something then, that gives, I don’t wanna say warm leads. It gives her more, information and to help maybe I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, Jeni, to prioritize your follow up

Jeni: No, but you’re right. You’re absolutely right. It’s a little bit of Intel that we wouldn’t have had, if we didn’t check on those metrics. So, it absolutely does help. and you’re right. It may not necessarily be warm, but you know, you’d be surprised sometimes we’ll get a name. Like, I’ll see that, Hey X person over in Miami clicked 17 times. Well, oh my goodness. Why did they click so many times? I wanna know. So, I may reach out to that person and, actually, you know, if I get through and speak with that person, I might even mention like, hey, I noticed that I noticed that this piece was really interesting to you. what about it, made you click or, can we talk about it?

So, I think it’s really helpful, knowing those numbers and, you know, sometimes, sometimes the numbers are high but they’re not really the people that we were targeting. So, it’s also good to see that so that we can tweak anything on the campaign side.

Katie: I think that’s true, Jeni, you know, a lot of times, Lindsay, you probably see this working with clients too. They have a growth plan of, you know, they wanna, they wanna win market share in a particular area, or maybe they’re chasing a, a certain client. Right. And nobody wants to make that initial cold call.

No. I mean, nobody, even the best business developers out there, nobody’s itching to make cold calls and you know, no marketer out there that’s preparing proposals really wants to put together a pure boiler plate response, cuz it’s a cold RFP and we don’t have any Intel. And so, you know, there’s things that we can do as marketing partners, supporting our business development partners and helping to get the brand message out in front, whether that’s through, like we’ve mentioned, you know, some, email communication, maybe you, join an organization and you’re able to get a membership directory. Maybe you purchase a list. Maybe you use some tools like LinkedIn sales navigator, and you can build some list that way and you start a drip campaign, or maybe you’re just, sending out some digital advertising campaigns that are targeting your potential buyer group. And it’s, it’s just giving them major brand awareness.

So at least they’ve heard of your company before they have to make the cold call or before the RFP comes out and they’re gonna see your brand come across their table. when they’re looking at your proposal, there’s just some, some things that you can do on the front end to make that a little bit warmer and not so cold.

Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, and these are marketing strategies that I don’t know that a lot of firms are using. I know from my personal experience doing CRM consulting. There are so many firms, which have these beautiful databases that have all this contact information that are not doing regular email marketing. Just like you said, for brand awareness, just keeping the firm top of mind in front of, in front of the clients. and then even fewer, I think are doing paid digital ads, on, you know, industry websites or on websites that they think that potential client might be visiting, based on their persona research. So I think those are two different types of marketing techniques that or tactics with the growth plan in place and the sales aligned, you could probably put together some marketing campaigns around those, very targeted and they’re probably not super expensive certainly compared to just putting together a cold RFP, we all know how, how many hours those take and how expensive those get.

Katie: for sure. For sure. And I mean, you, there might be some other traditional marketing spending, you know, you might be buying routine ads in a publication or, you might go every year to a conference and send multiple people. Where Could you reach that audience quicker and more affordably through a digital channel cuz you’re right, Lindsay, the, the beauty of digital is that you have all these data points at your fingertips to kind of minimize your waste and get in front of exactly who you want. It’s quick speed to market. and it’s highly, highly affordable. But you do miss out on some of that, that, you know, personal connection relationship building, because you’re, you’re relying on them building your relationship online.

Lindsay: yeah. And I think it’s, you know, each one of these marketing strategies or tactics. Have their own purpose, like what you were saying that the brand messaging brand awareness is probably more of, could be some of this display ads, digital ads, some email marketing, whereas you get more relationship building with more of the conferences and the in person and the one-on-one meeting. So, I think they all have their place, but I like what you said about the immediacy and I’m thinking back to, you know, we know there’s this mega project coming it’s coming out, you know, at the end of this year or next year and we wanna start prepositioning to the decision makers. You can quickly produce some email, some digital ads to start getting the message that you wanna convey in front of those, those folks,

Katie: Well, and I mean, it’s even quicker than that. You’re talking. You just said, you know, something that’s a year out. I mean, in reality that when you have a good partnership and a good foundation of trust between your marketing and your sales team, what that really looks like is they come to you after they’ve had a meeting, or maybe they just got back from a conference and they heard that XYZ project is gonna be advertised next week. I mean, marketing can easily deploy some of these digital tactics. And a lot of times what we tell our clients to do first is when you understand who your audience is, then you usually understand what kind of message is gonna resonate. And you probably already have that in your catalog. You probably have a blog post that’s relevant. You probably have a case study that’s certainly relevant, cuz you know, you’re not gonna chase projects that you have, no experience building or designing. So, you certainly have a case study you could share. and so, it’s really just having that foundation of trust and that ongoing conversation.

And I know. Jeni and I, when we’re working with clients, she talks about, you know, from a sales enablement standpoint, what are you doing? How are you getting out there? And then I talk about it from a marketing enablement, standpoint. And we are, you know, we’re really trying to consult together with our clients, but when you bring those together, you can make a bigger difference and certainly at scale and at speed.

Lindsay: That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s great. That it’s even that fast. So that’s, great to hear from my standpoint, you know, so we talked about some strategies and some tactics that different types of marketing data and how it can be used by marketing or sales and some different tactics and how quickly they can be deployed. Can you guys give me an example or two of when you used some of your marketing information or used a marketing tactic to help out with a pursuit?

Katie: I’m happy to, to share. I can’t, you know, we work in one town, Lindsay, you know this in one in one industry, so I’m not gonna disclose the brands. but I can talk. In general terms and we, we are doing it all the time. and you’re right. Firms are becoming more savvy at what tools are out there available and, and they’re finding different ways to position differently, but let’s say, I, I, I had a client. This is kind of in the prepositioning and they were doing all of the right things. So, they were having their, you know, every 30 days they were doing their business development check in with this prospect and having great conversations. They had been nurturing this prospect for over a year. it was in the public sector, so there was some funding that had to be approved before the project would be advertised. And then they finally get word that, hey, it’s, it’s gonna get funded. You know, it’s coming up and the client came back to me and was like, would you believe that this joker sat across the table from me telling me that, hey, they’re gonna fund the project, but now they, they really feel like the scope has expanded and they need a national expert. And I’m sitting across the table from him saying, I am the national expert.

Lindsay: I just happen to live in Atlanta,

Katie: For a year, you know, like, and so immediately, and that’s what I’m talking about. The immediacy behind it because we had such a good partnership together and they knew that prospect inside and out, we knew what message was gonna resonate. So, we quickly deployed a campaign, on LinkedIn, a paid advertising campaign put in that particular organization, you know, filtered down to, particular people of a, a certain, you know, job function and seniority. And basically, the message was sometimes a national expert lives in your backyard for over, you know, 40 years, X, Y, Z company has been designing, you know, building X, Y, Z projects in and around this state. And I mean, it ran for, I think the next, two weeks in advance of the RFP coming out and then the R P came out and, and we took it down. But I mean, sometimes it’s just as easy as that as you have to reframe, a prospect. perception of your brand. Maybe they see you as one type and we see this a lot, you know oh, well, you’re the task order contractor. I didn’t know. You could do something over $5 million or, oh yeah. I only use you guys for renovation. but this is gonna be a new building and we see that a lot and there’s a great way of just kind of changing that, turning it on its head and putting the message right in front of them. so that’s, that’s an example that. Worked really, really well kind of in name phase. Another example that I, I love to talk about is, during the chase, and a lot of people kind of are like, what can you do during the chase? Well, one thing that we know is, you know, Smartegies we routinely do these owner surveys and still to like active today. We just did one, buyers on the public and private side, whether they’re, you know, corporate buyers or they, you know, work for a school district or they’re buying for the state when they get proposals, they really turn to, who’s gonna be my project team. Right. The people really matter.

They wanna know who they’re gonna be working with. Do they like them? Do they have that expertise? and so. What we know that they’re doing is they’re going to LinkedIn and they’re looking these people up to see, have they moved around jobs for a long time? You know, it’s not uncommon, Lindsay, that they see proposals from different brands that are all claiming the same project because it’s representative of the project team. And we all kind of move around for op greater opportunities. And so, they’re trying to figure out who really did that project. And so, one of the easy tools that we often work with clients on is actually updating their project teams LinkedIn profiles. So, like Lindsay, if you’re proposed on my, you know, I see your, your resume and my proposal, I’m gonna go to LinkedIn. And if you’re, you know, positioning for a certain type of project or area of expertise, I wanna see that reflected on your LinkedIn resume. And a lot of people don’t note this, but in every. Area of experience noted on your LinkedIn profile, where you can put, you know, Hey, I’m, I’m Katie cash. I’m senior VP at Smartegies. You have the opportunity to add in a portfolio section. That is beautiful for design and construction, because you can put your beautiful project photos there and they can, they can see, you know, at one glance. Oh yeah. They have done, you know, pediatric hospitals before. Oh, oh yeah. They really do know Highrise, you know, mixed use developments or, yeah, they’ve done schools work because your photos are there. And so that’s one way that we often help clients during a chase, where they’ve already done a proposal, but we know there’s gonna be some vetting is making sure that the digital presence of the team looks good.

Lindsay: I love that.

Katie: and sometimes people forget about that.

Lindsay: Yeah. And it’s going beyond the basics of just making sure you have a headshot on like your LinkedIn profile.

Katie: A headshot without a dead animal in it, please. I know we love to hunt and fish, but please save that for Facebook.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. We want you to show your personality, but without offending anybody else. and Jeni how, how about you in terms of, when Katie brings some, these crazy marketing ideas to you, how do you react? Or how does this help you either while you’re pursuing work or, you know, while you’re in the thick of the proposal process?

Jeni: Well, you know, it’s funny cuz I, I, I actually, I personally like the crazy ideas. Right. You know, I, I, I really think, I really think standing out from the norm is, is a good thing, you know? And so when Katie might come to me and be like, Hey, so what do you think about, and that this is what we do, like on a, on a day to day, what do you think about this idea I have for, a newsletter, you know, to put in the newsletter for a particular client it may be because that client is going after, a new market sector. I like it. I mean, I appreciate it.

Lindsay: Yeah. So, Katie, from what you were saying, the examples that you were giving, I saw a common theme in them in that a lot of our messaging that we, capture during our prepositioning or pre-proposal positioning so often. And, you know, I was guilty of this too, until I just had this conversation with you is we kept it all for the proposal. Whereas you’re taking some of that messaging and some of that Intel, and you’re putting it into marketing strategies to get exposure before the proposal, in other ways,

Katie: Well, and how many times have you worked with a client? when they come in second place and then they say, well, this was rigged from the get-go. Well, how do you think it got rigged? They were someone else was prepositioning it stronger? So, yeah, don’t, don’t save the good sauce till the end,

you know? you don’t wanna give everything away for free, but you’ve gotta use some of it, but you’ve gotta know when the right appropriate time is.

Lindsay: Yeah. Cuz when you were giving the example of the LinkedIn ads of the national expert, I’m like that’s a ghosting strategy. And we used to use that in our writing of our proposals. Well, you could take Just that one. You, you might have a couple messages. Just that one message. And how can you get that in front of the potential decision makers or influencers for that pursuit. So, I love that idea of, you’re not putting out your whole proposal, but some of the key, messages that you would, you know, interweave throughout your proposal could be part of a marketing strategy. during even, I don’t know how overtly you wanna do it during the chase, but definitely the prepositioning

Katie: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. if you’ve got that insight and you know that, especially if it, if you know that it’s going to be a barrier to, you know, Either getting a yes at the end of the day or achieving all of your points, you wanna start changing that narrative sooner, cuz you wanna give them time. it’s marketing and advertising 1 0 1, right? Repetition, Repetition, repetition. They’ve gotta see it more than one time. They’ve gotta hear it. Different ways. They have to have time to reflect on it and form their own opinion around it. And so, you don’t wanna just save it for the proposal.

And, you know, I, I love a good proposal as much as the next person. And I used to be the one that had to review them, but people are busy today and everybody’s not going to read it, cover to cover. And so, if you’re saving all of your good sauce till the end, it might get missed. so, I would make sure you leverage it wherever you can. and Jeni, I think something that might be good for you to share from your sales perspective is, is when marketing comes up with these ideas, like it can’t just be on a whim right? You, you often ask some really, pointed questions around, well, how is this gonna work? How much is it gonna cost? Well, what about X, Y, Z, but from a sales perspective, there’s some other questions that you often ask that I think are worth talking through. I just put you on the.

Jeni: Do I really like, do I really,

Lindsay: She’s like, am I really that insightful?

Jeni: am I really that good? No, I’m just kidding with you. No, you know what actually, what, what you were just saying, and I, this might be totally off topic, but what it, what it actually made me think of was, and made me think of some things that we do for ourselves. Katie, like, you know what, I, I really think it has been effective for us, in terms of certain tactics and techniques that we’ve used.

 When we go to conferences, Lindsay, I think we, you might have seen this firsthand. So we have these little cards with the barcodes on ’em and, you know, instead of exchanging business cards, you know, we might, we might ask Our new connections to scan our barcode because when they do that, not only do they get our contact information, but would they get everything else that we want them to have. and we’ve shared that with some of our clients, in follow up conversations, you know, when we’re talking about things that they’re going to be doing or activating when they do meetings or conferences or trade shows, and it’s actually been a very, Exciting kind of thing for them because it’s new and I know it’s not a new, I know barcodes have been out there for our, what are they called? QR codes.

Lindsay: yes.

Jeni: Sorry.

Lindsay: That’s okay. We knew what

Jeni: Right, right, right. I know that, you know, it’s not a new technology, it’s those have been out there for a long time, but I think it’s when you, take a gadget or you take something that is, you know, maybe a little trendy or something like that, but you use it in a different way. And then you share with your clients how it’s helped you because you’ve done it from experience. And it was, you know, recent. Like we literally did that at Circ and then we had, I don’t know, two or three other clients that we were talking to, and we just kind of shared our story. Just like how, you know, you were telling us about how, when you came to the presentation that we gave at Circ you know, you remembered certain tidbits about it, that kind of stuck out in your head.

So, these were, these are the kinds of things, you know, that stuck out to me that I use just in a business development kind of role, like, maybe it’s not rocket science. Maybe it’s not, you know, the shiniest thing out there, but they really worked, they started conversations, they got us, connecting with people that maybe we normally wouldn’t even be talking to because they came up to us later after the presentation. And, you know, instead of giving ’em a business card. I, flipped over my, badge. And I was like, hey, you know what, just do this. And then we’ll catch up later. So, you know, they had my contact information and it just kind of extended that conversation we were having, it just made it even longer.

And sometimes that’s really hard to do from the business development side of things is to have that second conversation. You know, you see him at a trade show, you see him at, coffee or something, but then the follow up gets difficult sometimes. So, when you have, some of these little marketing tools that we use, I think it makes it more fun even and just memorable, an experience.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Well, we’ve talked about some strategies, lots of really good ideas. If firms wanna get started, kind of using some of these marketing techniques to really help their business developer, seller, doers, pursuits. Do you guys have like a tip or two of just how they could get started? Start thinking about this or start actually doing it.

Katie: The two tips that I often recommend most is, first and foremost, share your business plan. have a conversation, you know, between sales and marketing to understand. What are you chasing? And, you know, what does new growth opportunities look like and, and kind of start building that, collaboration together.

I, I think that if you continue to work in silos, either you’re gonna have, mixed messages in the marketplace and you might be working against each other, but come together, have that. And then a lot of what we’ve talked to about today, Lindsay has really been about the digital channel in terms of marketing tactics and distribution.

And so, if you’re gonna. Lean heavily on the digital channel. I think the first step a lot of firms need to do is do a digital audit and there’s lots of tools out there. Smartegies is a HubSpot agency. You can Google HubSpot website greater. It’s a free tool. Anyone can use it. And it’ll tell you about the performance of your website. how is it shaken up? do you need to make it mobile friendly? Is it you. Are you losing people cuz of page feed or whatever that might be. There’s a host of other tools out there, but you wanna make sure that your website is gonna be your quarterback for digital campaigns, that it is up to snuff. so those are the two tips I would, I would start with.

Lindsay: Okay. Any tips from you, Jeni, to get started from a business development seller, doer perspective.

Jeni: I feel like whatever I say right now, it might be sort of in your next question. I’m not really sure, but you know, one thing I, I really advise, I don’t know if it’s, Specific to, getting started with this approach. But one thing that I really wish, all marketers would do is especially the younger ones, the newer ones, you know, the ones that are just coming out and sort of learning the industry really, really get to know your operations team, you know, really get to know the people that you are marketing, for.

So, you know, sometimes I appreciate the marketing aspect of all of it, but you know, coming from the operations side and coming from the side that is, like, Hey, marketing. Aren’t you sort of, sort of pushing what we do. Do you know what we do and really just getting all of those, questions answered. I think that does a lot for, I hate to make it sound like it, like no one does it, but I, I just find so much that, Sometimes, you know, you’re so you’re so, I guess ingrained in, you know, making this proposal great. And. Making it look Good. But you don’t necessarily understand what you are writing about or you don’t necessarily, you know, so, I would say first and foremost, this is just from, an ops person, from one of the AEC firms, let’s just say it’s really understand the process and who the people are and the players that are a part of the projects that you’re going after. Then when you go back to, develop your pursuits, you know, your proposals and everything else and all your collateral that goes with it, you have a better appreciation. and then I think that, you know, goes even goes further into the back and forth with the sales and marketing team.

Katie: think that’s great advice, Jeni, cuz I mean just because you have a journalism degree or communications degree, or even if you’re a great writer, doesn’t mean you can write for construction

Jeni: it’s so specialized and, I think that’s, you know, that’s, I think that’s what makes us really special, in our industry is because, you know, we’re doing marketing, we’re doing business development, but it’s really, we’re not generalists. we have to understand what’s going on in architecture, engineering, construction, commercial, real estate. What’s happening in the economy right now, you know, it’s like, we just have to, I’m not saying you have to know every detail, but you need to have, an interest in it. and it’s just very specialized because, when you don’t, we’ve experienced this, like we’re, we hand something off to a writer and we’re hoping that they write, about a topic, we give them notes and, but, you know, if they don’t, if they haven’t really spent much time, Researching or, or in the industry or talking to anybody who’s done it before, the product comes out and it’s like, huh? Well, this could have been about, automobiles or it

Lindsay: Yea, just replace some words.

Jeni: Yeah, it doesn’t sound like anything that would be really an AEC. Sometimes, you know, as a tactic, that’s what you want. Right. You want it to be set apart. what everyone else is doing. So that could be a good thing,

Lindsay: but it, it needs to be intentional. It

Jeni: correct. Yeah. that’s exactly right.

Lindsay: Great. Okay. So, our next segment is the rapid-fire questions. Jeni, I think you just answered number one. What is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to the industry, the AEC industry. so, I’ll turn it over to Katie. What is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to the industry?

Katie: so, I like to share a piece of advice that was given to me at my first, post grad position. And that was from a mentor of mine. And she told me, you know, Katie don’t ever eat lunch alone. every day you should be having lunch with someone. And she always said it needed to be on the op side. Right. So, I had lunch with superintendents, civil engineers, you know, structural engineers. And it was all about like what Jeni just mentioned, getting to know them, getting to understand their profession, how their area of expertise stacks up in terms of the development of a new project. And I can’t tell you Lindsay, how much those conversations really shaped the foundation of my knowledge of our space.

And, still have those relationships today. They’ve been a great influence and, and great mentors to me along the way. And at the end of the day, you know, some, I was this really introverted, you know, like timid marketer, talking to, someone that a very established career and asking them what the difference between project management and program management was, you know, that’s very, very intimidating over Chick-fil-A, right.

Lindsay: Mm-hmm

Katie: but they really did appreciate the curiosity. And I think that it did show in the product that we were developing, because I knew what to look for. I knew when to use those terms correctly, I, I knew what questions to ask during the kickoff meeting because I’d been having some conversations. so that, that is still the number one tip that I would give to new and young marketers alike is, is forge those relationships with your operations team, ask a ton of questions, and ask more.

Lindsay: Nice. Okay. Rapid fire question number two. Um, this one, I’ll start with Jeni. What has been your favorite or most memorable win?

Jeni: Favorite or most memorable win. Okay. On a personal side, let’s just go there for a second. So, this is it’s so such a departure from where we are in AEC space, but I auditioned for the Atlanta Hawk’ dance team when I was 31 years old. and I made the team. That was, that was incredible.

Lindsay: awesome. I love that boy, Katie. Now I should have had Katie go first.

Katie: that?

Lindsay: can, what are you gonna

Katie: I mean, I didn’t make it to a professional sports team.

Jeni: You know, and I, I didn’t even prep that just popped in my head. I’m like, you know what? That’s a pretty good win. I think I’m going to mention it.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s an awesome one. I think you’re the first like professional athlete I’ve had on the show. Jeni

Katie: that explains a lot about Jeni, right? Like she’s the most peopley person. You know, positive person that I know, she doesn’t need the QR code on her badge to make friends, but she, she uses it as a tool for sure. I think my win is not remotely that cool because I’m always, you know, business minded, but We work with a lot of firms and, and we help them chase different things. And so, whenever our clients win, we, we have a great deal of, of celebration that happens at Smartegies. And we keep champagne on ice just to pop champagne when our clients win

Lindsay: Oh, I love it. I love

Katie: and it’s, it’s a lot of fun it’s procurement season right now. And so, it’s busy. but a couple years ago I had the opportunity to shoot video on location with the former manager of the Atlanta Braves organization? So, I got to shoot this video. About his vision for the new home of the Atlanta Braves when they were getting ready to build, battery Atlanta and things like that. And, couple weeks later we found out who was selected, but it was still very, very hush hush, and then it hit the news, you know, that they were moving. and I got the phone call from my husband and his question. Did you know about this? And I was like, how did you think we got invited to Bobby Cox’s Thanksgiving? like, yes, we knew about this. so that was probably one of the most exciting wins because it was high stakes. It was a major project. There was a lot of, hush, hush and NDAs around that. So that was super, super exciting to be part of that. And I still, you know, I, I go to games there today and my husband gives me a hard time. He’s like, so you built this, right? You, you designed this? I’m like, yes, Was the orchestrator behind this whole deal. because we did help, you know, I think we had four or five different clients that we helped, secure spots. Yeah. Secure spots on those projects. Yeah.

Jeni: you, Katie.

Katie: that was a lot of fun. And then from the agency standpoint, you know, Judy did find Smartegies back in 2008 and quickly built up a Rolodex of, of very happy clients and fast forward to today. And we’ve worked with over 200 brands across north America, but it was just a couple years ago when we started getting, invitations to compete for, um, you know, pretty, pretty large contracts with, with major brands in our space. And. like, we had never heard of these brands before, you know, and, and they were, they’re not here in Atlanta where we’re located, and they were finding us on the pure merits of our marketing. And so that felt like a huge win, a marketer that actually does marketing and it’s, you know, driving business development and leading us to forge new relationships. So that couple years ago when we started getting those opportunities, those were some really big wins for us,

Lindsay: Well, those are pretty awesome. all the wins are awesome.

Katie: and I think everybody should celebrate wins. Find something fun to do.

Lindsay: yes. Yes, absolutely. I like having champagne on ice at all times. that might be a rule. I work from home, but I might have it in my office. Quote, unquote.

Katie: Yeah. I think it’s totally

Jeni: Why not

Katie: super excited.

Lindsay: All right. Last question for today. This time, Katie, we’ll start with you. What are you excited about?

Katie: Oh, I’m super excited these days I feel like, for better for worse, you know, COVID has made design and construction kind of look differently at sales and marketing. And I feel like a lot of attention has been placed on marketing recently where, you know, we’re being viewed more as a profession, which I, I feel very excited about and wanna help continue forging that moving forward.

Um, but you know, brands are starting to adopt some new things. You know, we’re working with a lot of firms now that are adopting account-based sales and marketing strategies. And that’s exciting for me. Certainly, a lot of firms that I’m working with adopting, digital campaigns. So, I think you’re gonna start seeing your competitors advertising and you’re gonna start seeing, um, the competitive landscape shift and change a little bit again.

So, I’m really excited about that professionally. personally, my daughter is seven months old, and she is about to crawl. So, I am pretty excited for that milestone, but equally terrified because I’m told that, hey, it’s all over after that, cuz she’s gonna be in everything. So.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. It’ll completely change your household. That’s for sure. okay. Jeni, how about you? What are you excited about?

Jeni: What am I excited about? Well, I’m yeah. I mean, I’m excited about all those same things in the industry that Katie just talked about. I mean, one thing that the pandemic did was, yeah, it really normalized, right? The, how we work, you know, remotely or hybrid and just making it okay to not be in the office all the time. and I’m just really excited about that because, what I didn’t mention earlier about how I got to where I am in my career is that part of my role. when I was with Wakefield, Beasley was leaving Atlanta, coming to central Florida, opening in a new office and being away from, you know, my, home ship basically.

So, I mean, I’ve, essentially been a remote hybrid worker since. 2016. So everything that, a lot of people are experiencing now, I’ve been going through since then. and it was hard. It’s like, you know, I remember it feeling like it was, you know, I’m living on an island and it’s really hard to communicate. But you know, I’m really excited now because everybody’s doing it.

Lindsay: You were the old pro You were probably teaching them how

Jeni: Basically, the old pro. Exactly. And you know what, I don’t know why I didn’t use zoom as more back then. You know, we had, we had the numbers where you punch in, you know, you call in and you have a code and all that stuff.

Lindsay: my gosh

Jeni: office calls

Lindsay: numbers.

Jeni: Yeah. I think that’s really cool. And, you know, I guess just from a design, perspective, it’s, I’m excited to see where we’re going in the industry with, with all of that. It really changes the landscape of, of leases and, you know, and what are, what are the big companies doing now? And is it gonna change? I mean, it’s changed a little bit, or it’s really changed a lot, but it’s still changing. So, I’m just curious and excited to see how all of that, how it all turns out.

Lindsay: That’s great. Well, thank you guys. Thank you, ladies, for being on the show today. Was just so enjoyable to talk to you as always. one last question. If someone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way, where should you direct them? How they can get in touch with you to work with you, at, over at Smartegies

Jeni: I think the best way would be to go to, you know, an email address is info, Smartegies.com. and that actually goes directly to. Me and to Katie as well. You can also go to Smartegies.com and, you know, scroll through. And I think at the bottom of the, the homepage we have a form you can fill out and you can even put in comments. So, those are the best ways. And since we’re talking digitally, as well do that

Lindsay: And then you guys also have a podcast, so make sure you guys

Jeni: go, Katie

Lindsay: yes. Katie, tell us the, a little bit about your podcast.

Katie: Yeah, shameless plug. Thanks for that. the podcast that I host is called AEC marketing for principles, and it is really, you know, designed to be a conversation between marketers and non-marketers alike to talk about the things that cause friction between, you know, Principles and their marketing teams. And this season, we are in season four and we are talking about the gaps. So, we’ve been talking about communication gaps just in terms of, you know, technical principal talks about things this way. And your marketing team is talking about impressions and, you know, quick through rates and all these kinds of types of terms.

So how do you break down that? And we’re talking about skills gaps and generational gaps as new, workforce comes in and some of our legacy legends in the industry are starting to retire what that looks like and feels like. So again, would, would love to have you guys listen to the show. AEC marketing for principles. Lindsay was on a couple seasons ago, so you can find that in the archives, but yeah,

Lindsay: Yeah, I’ll link. I’ll link up your show and Smartegies and contact information in the show notes. So, thank you again for being on the show. It was a lot of fun.

Jeni: It was, thank you so much for having us.

Lindsay: What a great conversation. I had a real life aha moment while I was talking with Katie and Jeni. And that aha moment to me was not you know, those key messages or those key talking points or differentiation points that your sales team is discovering during the pre-proposal phase. Don’t keep those just in the proposal.

How can you get those into different marketing messages, using different marketing strategies. Digital ads, LinkedIn ads, email campaigns. To get in front of the influencers and the decision makers before the RFP is out and don’t save it all for the proposal. That was my virtual, like my real time aha moment during our conversation. Did you guys have one? did you have an aha moment? and if you did share it with me over on the show notes page, Marketerstakeflight.com/71. Leave your aha moment over there. And you’ll also be able to find the links to get in touch with Katie cash with Jeni Dzenis, with Smartegies I’ll also link up to their podcast. So, there’ll be a ton of links over on the show notes page as well. Again, that is episode, 71 and the show notes page is MarketersTakeFlight.com/71.

Okay. Until next time buy for now.