Last week I wrote about my intention to understand marketing plans in the AEC industry. Afterward, I gathered knowledge related to the way firms in the AEC industry may structure marketing plans that differ from a typical B2C plan. For example, surprisingly, benchmark analytics and goals are not necessarily implemented. A firm might track employee time spent preparing a proposal as “cost,” or it may choose not to do so per specific pursuit. There may or may not be a set marketing budget– there may be an idea of how much is needed to spend annually and numbers may be tracked, but a notion of “cutoff” after a certain amount of spending may be fluid or not exist at all.
It is very tough to argue a figure needed for an annual marketing budget when any analytics performed, while helpful, can’t explicitly tell an AEC company if a specific digital marketing action resulted in a profit.
What we can focus on,
however, is the customer relationship. These relationships are everything in
this field, perhaps on a more personal level than for a B2C business. AEC firms
would be wise to implement advanced CRM databases and stress the importance of
entering comprehensive information to employees. It’s much more feasible to connect
the beginning of a project “win” to a networking event involving a potential
client. Next might follow submission of a quals package, cemented with a
successful meeting.