A/E Marketing Summit recap

Last week I attended the ZweigWhite 2009 A/E Marketing Now Summit in San Francisco. I was invited to speak on how companies can leverage the “new media” tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Posterous but I also went to listen. I went to listen to those folks who are marketers for firms in architecture, engineering, and contracting and learned a great deal. Not much about what I know and have experienced changed because of this conference. In fact much of what my gut has told me (that this industry is undergoing a massive change) was reaffirmed. But allow me walk you through the sessions I attended.

Hitting the Ground Running
Landing on Thursday morning I arrived at the Omni Hotel (great location for this conference) and walked straight into the Securing Federal Contracts Now talk. While the information was good - and taught at most large companies (think Johnson Controls, Siemens, Honeywell) - I felt that the details were lacking with regards to how use some of the tools like FedSpending.org, FedBizOps, and FAR. The talk mostly focused on how to make sure you land the deal and the advice could been used on any project, public and private.

Link to: Presentation

Public Engagement
On to the next talk: Win More Work through Powerful Public Engagement. This was a very interactive session and I am a huge fan of that. The message boiled down to presentation and telling a story. The audience learned a few new industry acronyms as they relate to land development. Let me share them:

NIMBY: Not in my backyard
NOTE: Not over there either
DUDE: Developer under delusion of entitlement
NIMTOO: Not in my term of office
BANANA: Build absolutely nothing absolutely not anywhere

I also walked away with some interesting statistics:

1. Every month a $500,000 home is delayed the costs can range from $5-10k.
2. A/E Marketing Now Conference attendee ratios: 53% - female; 47% - male
3. Over 50% of the people in the room had more than 21+ years of industry experience
4. Biggest Challenge most people in the audience felt was standing out/being different
5. Clients choose companies in the audience because of: reputation, repeat client, experience.
6. 74% of citizens oppose development in their area

At the end of the day, the lesson here is that there is a huge cost due to lack of public engagement on construction projects. On a closing note I thought the title of “Public Engagement Specialist” interesting. I had never heard of such a person in the industry before, have you? You never know what you’ll learn!

Presentation

Connecting with your Client
While I didn’t have too many takeaways from this session I did come away with the point: determine what your firms differentiators. The speaker mentioned a book by Robert Gorman titled, Must Have Customer. The session did however hit a nerve.

One of the items discussed here that struck a cord with me was how companies in the real estate development & construction world are different from name brands like Coke, McDonalds, or Nike. In fact I believe this to be false. If you’re an architecture firm, MEP engineering house, or contractor you provide a service right? And as a service provider you need to compare yourself to other service providers like say for instance retail store Nordstrom. We all know that most companies in the construction industry provide average, if not poor service. If so, then why would we compare ourselves to that? Shouldn’t we be comparing to the best? Apologies for the short rant. It just had to be said.

Link to: Presentation

Integrated Marketing Campaign
I really enjoyed Kevin Fox’s session on leveraging print and new technology in a marketing campaign. Kevin walked the audience through how Burns & McDonnell executed a roughly $90,000 marketing campaign and how they measured success. This was a fantastic presentation for any company. Even if you don’t have the dollars to do what B&D did, you can still get a sense of how to plan a campaign.

Presentation

Listen or DIE
Like I mentioned in the beginning, I came to the conference because I was invited as a speaker, so allow me to link up a few things.

Link to: Highlight reel
Link to: Full Talk

Conclusion
All in all the conference was awesome! We all need to remember that regardless of how effective these tools are, it’s the face-to-face connections that make the difference and they will never be able to be replaced. Meeting folks like Rick Shlemmer with SAA, Michelle Jenkins with NAUE, Courtney Van Ostran with Jobes Henderson, Howard Wolf with WATG, and Claire Keerl and all the amazing folks from ZweigWhite was something no tweet, Facebook update, or LinkedIn recommendation could ever replace.

The ZweigWhite Marketing Now Summit is a must-attend conference for any marketing professional that is an architect, engineer, or contractor. Having spent a great deal of time working with professionals across the construction industry, this type of education and networking is a must as our world and industry are undergoing substantial changes. If you are debating attending, just know this: you will walk away from this conference with the strategies and tools to market effectively in the industry.