The Evolving Role of AEC Marketing Inside JE Dunn’s Industrial Business Unit

Katie Cash: Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principals Podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principals to address trends, challenges and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior vice president at SmartIgees, the AEC growth consulting firm that's been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008.

Judy Sparks: So if, um, you fancy yourself an AEC marketer, chances are you started out in your career either managing proposals, certainly managing some type of deadline, and helping technical professionals tell a project story. And for a long time that's been what AEC marketers do. But over the past decade, I think we can all agree that the role of marketing inside firms has started to evolve. And yes, we're slow adopters, but we're getting on the bandwagon. And some organizations marketers are now directly embedded into business units. They're helping to shape strategy, they're pursuing new markets, they're really looking at driving demand and driving long term growth and not just managing the day to day deadlines. That's still part of the role, but they're really looking beyond hitting that 5pm deadline. Justin Davidson is the senior Marketing Manager supporting the industrial and manufacturing business unit at UH JE Dunn Construction. And in his role he helps drive marketing strategy for a pretty large sector that seems to be growing rapidly across the entire United States as we see advanced manufacturing and high tech technology facilities continue to come on board, really across all the different regions. And Justin has spent more than 16 years at JE Dunn and while he has seen seen firsthand how the roles in marketing have changed within aec, he's also been part of the change within his organization. So today I'm excited to talk with Justin about exactly how that evolution happened, um, what the expectation for fellow marketers might look like. And I want to dig into maybe what the relationship between marketing and business development could look like for the next generation of marketers. If you guys are all listening. So Justin, welcome to the show. So excited to have you.

Justin Davidson: Thank you for having me. I've been listening to this podcast since almost when you guys started it. I feel like it's been four or five years now, maybe more. And it's exciting to actually be a guest and I hope I can say some things that leave people feeling, uh, a little bit more empowered after they listen to this episode. Uh, I've definitely listened to a few episodes over the years that made me feel that way. So I hope I can return the favorite. But I really appreciate you guys having me on.

Judy Sparks: Well, we're excited to have you on, and I love having on a fellow listener. And since you have listened before, you know, the whole goal here is just to have honest, candid conversations that can inspire and, you know, maybe entertain our listeners, but give a. Give a few takeaways that they could either consider or even implement. So let's kind of dig in. You know, Justin, one of the things you probably know that we talk about often on this show, and it's kind of the theme of this whole season, is this idea of change. Change and how AEC marketing continues to evolve. You know, we mentioned it just a minute ago. Most people start out doing proposals, and then, you know, once they get comfortable with proposals, maybe they get to help with interview prep. And then once they've done that, maybe they become a manager. And now they've got a team that are doing those things and they're kind of helping to orchestrate. And I'm a strong believer that doing the production work is one of the best ways to get into the industry, because I've never met an AAC marketer that went to school to be an AAC marketer. Right. Like, we all went to school and have degrees in marketing, communications, public relations. And then we land here. Um, and I find that working on the deadlines helps me understand the business of what we do in professional services. And I learn a lot. But I'm a little bit jealous of the AAC marketers today that might be starting their careers, because I feel like there's so many more options. You know, it's not like you're just going to be a proposal coordinator or marketing assistant. There's so many different ways. So you've spent 16 years at J. Dunn. How have you seen that role of marketing evolve? You know, I have to imagine the marketing team has molded and shift and grown and morphed in all kinds of different ways during your tenure there.

Justin Davidson: Oh, man, it's changed so much. Like you said. Yeah, it's. It started with marketing kind of equaled proposals, pursuits, Qualsdocs. It was very, very reactive. And I feel like JE Dunn has done a really good job of moving with the way the industry has shifted. I feel like now our department is moving toward more of a business essential partner to our client solutions or business development partners and our technical teams. We look a lot more closely now at what that entire client journey looks like and what all of the key touch points are throughout that journey. Like you guys talk about a lot on this podcast. And like was mentioned at smartwind, Buyer behavior has changed so much. It's still a relationship driven industry, but your reputation is built a lot more quickly now because of uh, digital and your reputation can be ruined a lot more quickly now because of digital. So yeah, when I first started working here and working in this industry, I probably spent 90% of my time on pursuits. And that was how most of our marketing team was. And I feel like over the past six to eight years it's really shifted to where I'm only spending maybe 30 or 40% of my time on pursuits.

Judy Sparks: You probably know about those projects too. When they hit your desk versus before it was just like, oh, here's the next one.

Justin Davidson: But now, yeah, that's been um, huge about supporting a business unit instead of supporting an office or a group of offices where you might, you might work with one team for a month on a pursuit and then, and then you win that pursuit and they go build it and you don't work with them again for like a year. So now it's the same group all the time. And I know what's coming. And we've gotten a lot better at pre, uh, positioning campaigns as a result because we know what our pipeline looks like and we have dedicated marketing, uh, resources to support the pipeline as early as we possibly can.

Judy Sparks: Well, I want to go back to something you mentioned and that was this whole idea of how digital is influencing relationships. And you know, sometimes I feel like our industry, we get caught up on thinking nobody's actually buying, you know, a $200 million hospital on a contractor's website. No, they're not, they're not doing that. But I kind of think of the role of digital, of your uh, website, you know, any of your online thought leadership. If you've got blogs or newsletters or you know, YouTube chann channels or webinars, then you've got all the social. It's just another way of, of amplifying word of mouth and amplifying, you know, ways that people can know you, trust you and you know, figure out in their own world if you're going to be a risky partner or not. You know, do I trust you? Can, can you help me? Are you relevant to my world? And that uh, used to all be facilitated through face to face interactions, you know, referrals from trusted parties, but now people can do their own research. And so yeah, digital is, is playing a Major role there. And I've, um, unfortunately witnessed a few times where digital did hurt reputations. Like you mentioned, I've heard horror stories of young AEC marketers excited to go out on the job site, taking some photos and immediately posting to social. And OSHA shuts down the job site because everybody wasn't in proper safety attire. And so there's different things like that that you learn. But I too, was part of an organization before Smarter Jeets Justin, that I think try to do things differently and try to find ways to be more efficient and tried to find ways to really bring marketing into the fold so that it wasn't just a reactive overhead function. And this was early 2000s. I was at a international design build firm, but I was focused entirely on the higher education department. So I supported our higher education group internationally. I did all the direct mail. Yep, that was the thing, like stuffing all the envelopes before conferences. You know, I helped prepare the conference activations. I did the PR pieces for it. I managed that part of the website, you know, But I knew anything and everything that was going on in the world of higher ed around the types of projects that we would pursue. And I knew, you know, every year that there were going to be maybe six or 10 projects that we were, uh, you know, really well positioned for that we were going to put a proposal together. And I had a whole story. And we knew exactly what the drivers were and who the decision makers were and what we needed to say to make them say yes to us. And I felt more invested. I also felt like a valuable part of the team where, you know, I could have ideas and I could suggest how different pieces could work together. And that was probably the first time I was exposed to what real strategy looked like in the AEC world. And that's not a model even today, you know, if you fast forward 20 years, that's not a model you see too often. So what do you think drove JE Dunn to think a little bit differently? What was the impetus there?

Justin Davidson: So I'd like to give credit for me even being in this role to our industrial business unit leader, Brent Strength. I've worked with Brent since day one at J, long before he was even focused on the industrial market. And I was an Atlanta employee working on marketing stuff for the Atlanta office. For the longest time, even though I moved to Nashville, I was still focusing on Atlanta, Atlanta. And then we opened an office in Tampa, and industrial started to become a larger and larger focus for our company. And we had never had a marketing person who was dedicated to a single vertical market. Brent decided he wanted one and it was really his idea more than it was the marketing idea. So that was the middle of 2020.

Judy Sparks: Perfect timing.

Justin Davidson: Yeah, exactly. I saw the role was posted and I called them and I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. I'm um, like this would allow me to stop being reactive. Like we can get out in front of proposals, we can make sure everything is up to date in the CRM, we can run campaigns, we can like, I'm picking up what you're putting down. Like I want to do this. Yeah. And he was like, okay, well you gotta go through the interview process. So I did. We had a couple of other candidates, but I think I was the only one internally. And um, I was given that role at the end of 2020. I think it was November of 2020. So I've been focused on the industrial market exclusively since then. And it was interesting to start with because J. Dunn has not traditionally been ah, a big player in the industrial and manufacturing space. So it's been really fun to build our brand equity in this submarket over the past six years. We were able to start having other marketers focus on vertical markets over the last six years. So now we have people that focus on aviation, data centers, semiconductor, uh, we have somebody who focuses on sports, federal and then those are kind of our national focus vertical markets. And then they work, they work nationally with our national teams and then they interface with the local marketers who focus on the non vertical pursuits at uh, the office and regional levels. So we partner on strategy, pursuits, conferences, all of that kind of stuff. And I think it's been a really advantageous model for us over the past six or seven years here. I'm able to be much more proactive and much less reactive and I'm involved in driving the strategy for the business unit. And I think this business unit had good strategy before, but there was nobody that was necessarily focused on, okay, how do we, how did we get the word out? And I wanted to jump back to something you said earlier about digital and winning projects from, from the website. The industrial space is interesting because there's so much foreign direct investment, there's so many clients that we're doing work with now that have never built anything in the United States.

Judy Sparks: Yeah.

Justin Davidson: And we have actually had a lot of clients and potential clients reach out directly via the website that they kind of get a list together, they do their research and then they will literally send a contact us form through the website. And that is how the relationship begins. So it's so important to make sure that what you're presenting externally is something that's going to resonate with the client profile that you want to attract. And then to that end also if they're working with an architect or a site selection firm, if they give that client a list of 10 or 12 names, they're going to go to those companies websites and outreach that way. So the digital presence is so important with the uh, FDI clients because they don't know what they don't know.

Judy Sparks: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a really good reminder that your digital footprint can drive demand, can drive leads and with some intentionality. Justin. So I want to know if you experienced something similar that I did when I kind of focused heads down on my particular market. And I had been doing AEC marketing for a number of years before I got to focus. Right, and I think that's the same for you. When I got to focus I didn't realize what all I didn't know about that market because I had just been surface level on so many that I hadn't had the chance to really dig in and understand like say funding mechanisms or delivery method preferences based on institutions or geography. You know, like some place love design build some places, it's like you don't mention it. And so being able to just kind of focus intently on that particular market really opened up my eyes to how much I didn't know and how much more of the business that I needed to learn and grow. And I found that my business development counterpart was a great mentor to me and allowed me to ask the dumb questions and helped me kind of act like a kid when I was like, well why are we doing that? Why not this? Why are we doing that? Why not this? So I want to know what advice do you have for marketers that might be stepping into a new role? Maybe they're working with a new partner to kind of uncover all that they don't know yet and find a way to get up to speed, read a

Justin Davidson: lot, read the industry publications, go to your competitors websites, find out how they talk about these markets. If you have a competitor that you really respect who has been in that space for a long time and wins a ton of work, go look at the way that they've been successful and then to learn the market better, the best thing you can do, like you said, is be a sponge, be honest with your technical and business development counterparts. I'm going to ask a ton of questions. Please include me in meetings that you Think I shouldn't even be included in. And I just want to listen and soak all of this up and try to get close to the projects that your company's working on that are being delivered. Get to know the teams, go visit the projects, ask those questions, ask why things are being done the way they're being done. And then another thing that's, that's helped me a lot is I just asked for, for me to be invited to all of our, all of our project websites so I have access to all of the project files so I have all of the info uh, for the projects and I can really go through and dig into the files and try to find stories that way and then go to see if, see if you can get invited to the conferences that uh, your technical team and your business development staff are going to like, listen to the conversations they're having. And after, after a few months or years, maybe years, you'll start to, you'll, you'll say something and you'll say, oh, maybe I know more than I thought I did because sometimes things come outta my mouth now after six years in this market and I'm like, maybe I do understand this better than I think I do. I mean I still feel like I'm learning each and every day. The delivery method preferences in this space and the contracting methods are completely different than almost any other market sector that we do work in. We're not doing EPC work with front end engineering design and front end loading gate stage gates in healthcare or higher ed. Like it's just a totally different world, a uh, totally different series of acronyms. But it's been really fun to learn it all and just ask your technical teams to be patient and understand that you're going to ask a ton of questions. And usually if you're in a role like this where you've been brought in to support a specific business unit, they're not going to be annoyed because they understand that they have that dedicated resource for a reason. And if you work for a company that has been smart enough to create roles like that, then chances are the technical team is going to be completely on board with you being at their hip, uh, and asking questions about any and everything to try to find stories to tell.

Judy Sparks: Calling all AEC marketers, It is our time to rally. The next generation of leaders in AEC are not going to look like our predecessors. The next AEC marketers are not just going to respond to RFPs. They will shape demand before pursuits ever exist. They, they'll understand brand, they'll understand visibility and market strategy. And they're going to understand it not from just a standpoint of marketing buzzwords, but truly how it drives revenue for their specific firm. That is the shift that my partner in strategy, Judy Sparks, has laid out in her latest edition of the Modern AEC Marketer. Her new book is a guide for marketers, seller doers, and principals alike, all who know that the industry is changing and they want to be part of that change. Maybe some of them even want to lead the change. And if you're ready to stop playing it small and start influencing how your firm grows with intention, this book is for you. Go on over to Amazon. You can search for the Modern AEC Marketer and you can get a copy of Judy's new book today. It's available in paperback as well as on Kindle. Yeah, I think that was really, really solid advice. No matter where you are in your marketing career journey, there's always something new to learn. And early on in my career, I was exposed to conversations that at the time, my younger self, the younger Katie, didn't understand why I was there. I'm like, this has nothing to do with marketing, has nothing to do with marketing. And I had a great mentor that was like, you are here to learn. Like, you need to listen, you need to keep a note of all the things that they talk about that you don't know so that we can figure out how to plug those holes. And I want you to listen and see if you come up with any ideas that might trigger marketing activities. And so those are like two directives. So I sat in on some OAC meetings and, you know, they were talking about unsuitable soils and, you know, this, that, and the other. And I was like, why does this, okay, why does this matter? Like, what does this really do for the project? And, you know, I didn't, I didn't understand liquidated damages at the time. And I was like, okay, so let me this, we could do an award submittal around this, you know, if we can solve it. Um, you know, like, that's where my mind starts going. And it's like, okay, Katie, think deeper, think deeper. But being exposed to some of those quote unquote, non marketing related conversations did open my eyes to, like, the hierarchy and pecking order of the AEC world. You know, who, who plays to who, and, and all of that. It helped me understand relationships, helped me understand some of the sequencing of work. It helped me understand the owner's pain points and what they were concerned. I was like, hey, you know I. They mentioned this three times. This whole idea of the neighbors. What's the deal with the neighbors? And they're like, oh, well, you don't understand. Like, this school renovation is happening in the middle of, uh, the largest and the oldest HOA neighborhood in Atlanta. There is a bunch of Karens that don't want the streets dirty. They don't want the noise before this, and they don't want traffic getting in the way of them getting to Pilates in the middle of the day. So, yeah, it's an issue, Katie. Like, oh, okay. You know, all these different things, but being able to be exposed to that. And then now I just think about all the tools and technology that marketers have. You know, maybe you're not part of a meeting, but you might have Fireflies recordings or teams recordings that you could go back and listen to. We're big advocates for, like, recording everything and then deciphering tonality and what stories. And, you know, you could use AI and get inspired by all kinds of different things. I learned a lot, too, going to conferences. And I learned two things that I didn't expect. Number one, I learned how big events happen and that, you know, I was really only focused on activating my little trade show booth. And, you know, I thought, you know, my little tchotchkes and stuff were really great. I didn't realize. No, there's 362 of us here. We all look exactly the same. It's like people walking down the hall are switching the channels, trying to skip the ads that they don't want, and I need to emotionally find a way to drag them in, you know, And I was like, oh, okay. You know, and I, uh, never understood why one booth always cooked fresh cookies in their booth. And I'm like, that's. They don't. Are they food service? Like, I don't understand that. I was like, oh, no, now I do. Everybody follows their nose and they go get a sweet treat between. You know, I, uh, didn't even realize that. So getting exposure, I think, to all of that kind of helped me understand the business and kind of more of who the clients were and kind of what we were up against in different scenarios where I could start framing some strategy. But what were some things, Justin, that you experienced that kind of helped you transition from being the reactive proposal coordinator producer to maybe helping your team upstream with some real strategy ideas and support?

Justin Davidson: The main thing, and it's something that I'm very thankful for, is that the leadership of our business unit is very aligned on what Our ideal client looks like. We don't do RFPs for practice. We do them strategically. We do them when we know we have a good chance of winning something. And as a result, that makes it where we're not spending all of our time responding to RFPs. We're not working on pursuits. Six years ago, it was a little bit more pursuit heavy than it is now. But I think still, by and large, over the last six years, I've been able to spend about half of my time on strategy and about half my time on executing pursuits. So I had a decent amount of time freed up. And when I first started in this role, we worked with a consultant and we really tried to figure out what our, what our why was in, in this space. And we really started to try to focus on some of the unique processes that we have. We really tried to focus on some of the unique team members that we have. And we knew that at the time we did not have a massive book of business that we could go show someone in this market. So it had to be around authenticity. It had to be around people that had previous experience doing this. And we were able to get some, um, get some conference speaking opportunities that really, I think, went a long way early on in helping us be more legitimized in this market. When you're on stage talking, no matter what you're saying, I've always felt that if, if you're on stage talking, you're immediately seen as the subject matter expert.

Judy Sparks: Yeah.

Justin Davidson: And I think that helped a lot early on, and we were able to promote that quite a bit. We were intentional about going to a lot of conferences, but not exhibiting at them early on and trying to figure out where are the right places to play, where are the right players in this market, where are they going to? And then take that, uh, a lot

Judy Sparks: of people just jump in and exhibit. And I'm like, you don't, you don't understand the culture or even kind of what's going on there. And before, yeah, before you drop that kind of cash, maybe just go, maybe just scope it out, you know, and then let's make a priority list for next year. I think that's really smart.

Justin Davidson: I think we still, even now that we're bigger in this space, I feel like we still do that. We don't ever just drop a ton of money on a conference and exhibit and sponsor without kind of going a year before and feeling it out and making sure that it's the right place to be and the right people are there and getting a Lay of the land so that the next year we can really start planning it months in advance and figure out, you know, do we want to do a dinner, do we want to do a happy hour, do we want to sponsor and if we sponsor, what are the deliverables associated with that sponsorship and do we want to do a booth or not? Is it worth doing a booth? And like there's, there's so many considerations. So yeah, I was able to have a seat at the table really early on and start to figure out who do we want to be when we grow up in this market and start to find creative ways to get us there. And looking back on it, it's been really rewarding to see the growth and that, uh, you know, in 2021, I think we said we wanted to, we wanted to grow intentionally and add two partner oriented clients every year until 2030. And we've definitely done that. I think we've done a good job of finding clients that do business the way that we want to do business and deliver projects in a collaborative way. And as a result we have really good stories to tell from a lot of those projects and that propels us forward to continue to find clients like that.

Judy Sparks: I think so. We've been really intentional, really smart, Justin. Especially, you know, sometimes firms that are trying to break into a new industry, you know, say there's a lot of people trying to get into data centers.

Justin Davidson: Right.

Judy Sparks: Like they're like, uh, you know, it's hot, there's so much demand, everybody can't do it. And that's true. But at the same time, if you don't find clients that believe what you believe.

Justin Davidson: Exactly.

Judy Sparks: Friction from the start, you can really fracture your reputation before you ever even start. So I think being really thoughtful with who's the right partner, how can we make this a success for both of us? Having confidence in both sides of the team. Right. And then using that as a jumping off point to find other like minded folks instead of just taking whatever opportunity is out there. Because that could be risky business. Especially you know, if you're dealing with some foreign direct investment stuff. You might be going at risk for some things that you're not really ready for.

Justin Davidson: Exactly. And thankfully J. Dunn has been great about allowing us to build this with intention. Instead of saying, okay, go build the industrial market as fast as you can. You need to be a billion dollar market. That's just not how it's been. And as a result we, we've been intentional about hiring and growing and you know, we haven't I don't think we've grown too quickly and we have a really great client group now.

Judy Sparks: So I think everything that we've shared so far about how to understand more of the business, I mean, I think that's applicable even to AEC marketers that might be supporting an office or a region, multiple markets. It's just a matter of how much time you really have to go deep there. I'm curious, what does an average day for Justin look like? What are you really doing? If, uh, you're not just doing proposals all day, what are you doing? Right.

Justin Davidson: I'll answer this question because I don't have. We. We don't have any, we don't have any RFPs right now in house. And that may be a crazy thing to think about. Like how for some people that listen to this podcast of how. How do you busy yourself when you don't have proposals to do.

Katie Cash: Ooh.

Judy Sparks: Uh, there's.

Justin Davidson: We focus a ton on content generation.

Judy Sparks: Yeah.

Justin Davidson: And when I say content generation, I think a lot of people immediately think articles. And some of it is articles, some of it is blogs. We focus a great deal on video content. So I've had, I think, three calls this week around different video projects that we're working on. Like I had a, I had a call yesterday about a video that we're doing internally that I think we may end up being able to repurpose as an external video. I worked some on a project case study. I worked on another outline for another video, which is the last video in a series of videos that we've done for, uh, the largest industrial project we've ever built, LG Chem, here, just near Nashville. Um, we're finally going to do the last video in that series because the project is wrapping up. So trying to get that outlined with the videographer and then working a lot on strategy as we enter the power generation market. So we've gotten a lot of like, general qualifications documents out for, um, the person who's heading in that business unit or that submarket up. So now we're starting to try to work on content to position ourselves in that market. So just kind of working on evergreen content to support that market with our communications team and with our, uh, with our internal subject matter experts. And then, yeah, sitting on a lot of meetings. I don't know. It's a blessing and a curse. When you've worked somewhere as long as I've been here, and I've been here my whole career, you get pulled into a lot of things.

Judy Sparks: Like you're you're a resource for a lot of things. Um, you're the go to. You're the guy. I get it. On the subject of content though, I think you're right. I think a lot of times people hear, you know, content generation, they automatically think that you're writing blogs or, you know, whatever it might be in there. And there is a lot of writing. And I do think that a solid AEC marketer needs to be a good writer. You can't get chatgpt to write what we need to write. Not well. So you gotta be a good writer. But I also love that you mentioned this whole idea of video. And there's different ways you can think about video. There's the project stories, there's the people stories, there's the challenges, you know, there's the, your whole. Why, you know, there's lots of ways videos can be used. Short form, long form. I love that you're thinking about, hey, we've got this internal video and I'm trying to find a way to make it go external to get some additional ROI out of it.

Justin Davidson: And video takes so much effort that I, uh, hate doing a video. And then it just sits there. Yeah, it takes so much planning. Like it's hit, you have to shear. Somebody has to shoot it and edit it. And it's like you may as well take a few more hours and just edit it down into 30 or 45 second cuts for reels. Or if you're paying a videographer to do it, just pay the little bit extra. Go ahead and get, go ahead and get it. Uh, if it's a vertical video or if it's a horizontal video, I'm sorry, go ahead and get it cut down into vertical for, for reels that are way shorter. So we've really started trying to focus on making sure that we have kind of starting with a longer form piece on most of our stuff. That's when I say longer form, I mean like under three minutes, like two to three minutes.

Judy Sparks: A two minute video. Yeah.

Justin Davidson: And then making sure that we have really short 15 to 45 second cuts for uh, for social campaigns.

Judy Sparks: It's so funny. You know, I think kind of across the board we all know this because we personally do this. If you're scrolling on social media, you know, while you're at, on the sideline of your kids, you know, soccer practice, or you're in traffic or you're waiting for a meeting to start, you're not reading static posts. Most people aren't anymore. They are just scrolling and watching the videos. And I think it's really smart that we're now realizing we want to be where the people are and it's not just at professional association conferences and directories. Right. It's a little bit, the line is a little bit blurred and showing a little bit more of the, the personality behind the professionalism.

Justin Davidson: Exactly. Like I'm not trying. I might do a 2 1/2 minute long video about a project that's a beautiful video that has great footage and talks about challenges and talks about the people that are delivering it. I don't really think that uh, the vast majority of people are going to watch that video all the way through.

Judy Sparks: Right.

Justin Davidson: But I do think that what that accomplishes is maybe somebody watches 30 seconds of it and they think, oh, I didn't know Jay Dunn did that kind of work. Or that's a really cool project. Or these LG Chem videos have just like, they've been beautiful. The color grading is incredible. The video company's done an amazing job. Like I just want that to, to come up on somebody's feed and over time start to connect the dots of uh, they do big manufacturing projects. I should call them the next time I have one.

Judy Sparks: Well, and like on the subject of videos, what I love about videos is like if you run say a video advertising campaign, say on LinkedIn, you know, you promote it to the 100 top industrial developers in the Southeast or whatever, that's your target market. Kind of get a two for one there because when you do a video views campaign, the stats are going to show you like, hey, this is how many views you get. But it also gives you the opportunity to retarget to those that watch 50%, 70%, 90%. And the more and more that they're watching of your video, like you could assume they have more interest, you know, there, there might be a heightened intent there, you know, things like that. And you can kind of get them into a workflow where now you're the mother content, you're staying top of mind. So that when they do have a project or they do have something to consider you for, you know, JE Dunn is owning that, that mind space and they do understand that you're relevant to their world. So I love, I love videos just in terms of. I'd rather watch that than read a long form blog. I've even started getting some newsletters that I think is super cool where it has like a button at the top and it's like watch this newsletter instead. And then the author is like talking through it. And I go to YouTube, I'm like, oh yes, do that while I'm doing this. And I can just listen. I love it.

Justin Davidson: Totally. We have pretty much, we've pretty much gotten rid of internal newsletters for our different office leaders and business unit leaders. Like, we've just gotten to the point now where we just do a quarterly kind of town hall style meeting where we'll like, we, we actually have one coming up in a couple of weeks for industrial. And we get all, all of our team together, 70 or 80 people now, and our business unit lead leads it. But we have different, we have different projects, give updates, we have different people talk about what they've been working on. And it is so much more interactive and it really engages the people who are kind of out on an island building this work to feel more connected to the whole.

Judy Sparks: Yeah.

Justin Davidson: Um, than just here's a newsletter that nobody's going to read. With some pictures.

Judy Sparks: Yeah, with some pictures, yeah. Okay, let's talk maybe a little bit about the future. So we're now the veterans of AEC Marketing. We've been through the changes. What do you think the future of AEC Marketing is going to look like? What kind of skills do those folks need? What should firms be investing in? I think that's another thing is firms that have made these changes, they're finding that they need budget items for things that they've never thought of before. And so how do you plan for those?

Justin Davidson: This is cliche, but AI, uh, is like the biggest thing I can think of. Um, every time. I mean it's going to make us more efficient, but it's also going to make buyers more efficient. And if you're not thinking about not only what SEO looks like, but what your digital, you know, what your digital footprint is for, AI optimized search, then you need to be. Yeah, somebody's going to say, I have a, I have a $50 million project. Who should I consider building it? Uh, you want the AI agent to come back and you want to be in those results. I think the way that people select partners in this space is starting to change. Relationships are still important, but I don't think that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going to want to go hang out on a golf course all day.

Judy Sparks: Um, funny, I was talking with two boomers yesterday and I love both of these gentlemen. They, I mean, they're titans in the industry. They are well known, so I'll protect their names. But their relationship, Justin, was based on, they picked the same kind of bait for on a fishing Trip, and like, they immediately hit it off and now, you know, there's a great deal of trust there. And then I've heard similar stories about, you know, whether or not both of the folks shot well or didn't shoot well at, uh, some golf exchange or, you know, whatever. And I, I mean, I still have clients to this day. I had a call with one yesterday that instead of spending $4,000 on an advertising campaign for a market that's not super hot right now, that used to be hot, but it's kind of flattened out, he'd rather just spend that money and take a few clients on a fishing trip.

Justin Davidson: You know, it's interesting. I just had that conversation with our industrial market lead last week about one of the submarkets that we focused on is starting to dwindle a little bit. Should we just take a bunch of people hunting or take a bunch of people to Masters or something? I mean, there's, there's still value in that.

Judy Sparks: Right.

Justin Davidson: And, uh, I love those things too, because that takes no effort from my end.

Judy Sparks: You're like this.

Justin Davidson: Yeah, you should do that.

Judy Sparks: Love it. I'm a size medium and bring a

Justin Davidson: back shirt to, like, really answer your question. What skills do the next generation need? Um, it's been interesting to watch. I have a marketing specialist who interned with me, and she's been at J E Dunn now full time for coming up on a year since she graduated. And the value of building relationships internally with the people that you're working with every day is still the absolute most important thing that you can do. And that's what the very first boss I had here 16 years ago told me. You know, I got hired in 2010. It was a, uh, very dead industry, which was a blessing and a curse because these people weren't running crazy. I could go sit in their office and hang out and learn and talk. And I've tried to make sure she's being intentional about, like, you're gonna have calls with these people, like, get to get to know them, like, ask them what they did over the weekend. And I mean, that's a pretty general thing to ask, but, like, just get to know them, get to a point where you can make fun of each other. And then it makes everything else when the actual work comes so much easier. I think it's a foregone conclusion to keep up with all of the evolving technologies that are, that are happening. And, you know, uh, the marketing specialist that I have has a, has a marketing degree. I have a newspapers degree. Yeah. So, you know, it's been enlightening to be around someone who just graduated with a marketing degree and kind of what, uh, they're learning now compared to what I Learned in college 20 years ago almost. I feel like she's been very prepared for the digital things. I've been able to give her entire digital campaigns to take and run with. So that's awesome. You know, think of if you're young in this industry, like, think of campaigns that would be good to run and what the components of those campaigns would be and how you measure success for those campaigns. But I still think the most important thing is to be able to build a trusting relationship with the, with the people that you're working with every day, be it business developers or be it your technical staff, so that when you do have pursuits and stuff come along, that it's a, uh, solid foundation.

Judy Sparks: Well, and I will say the one thing reflecting back on, on my career, I came out of school with a marketing degree, you know, understood marketing philosophies, advertising, you know, all the things didn't understand professional services, didn't understand sales. Very different. So learning that and then what I had to learn on the job, what a large portion of my job really was, Justin, was project management.

Justin Davidson: Totally, yes.

Judy Sparks: Managing the deadlines, managing up, uh, for reviews, managing the technical team to help me with project approaches, and also had to kind of learn on the job some emotional intelligence because I needed to understand why my engineer wasn't getting back to me. Well, he wasn't getting back to me because his phone's been blowing up because the project's upside down and, you know, all this is going on and that client work's always going to come first. And so it's not personal. He doesn't want to not help Katie, but I needed to find a way to make a process where I could still own my deadline, but make it less taxing on my internal clients and finding ways to communicate and kind of hold people accountable for those pieces. And that's, that's hard to learn on the job young. And when, when your internal clients are, you know, senior to you and you don't know the industry and you know that that's, that's a hard pill to swallow. Now fast forward to smartigees. I have a whole team of project managers that kick my butt every day and tell me what I'm supposed to do, when I was to do it, how long I have to do it, and I don't have to use that part of my brain anymore. But every day I'm like, okay, Caitlin, Meredith, Jen, what do you need from me? How long do I have to do it? You know, help me prioritize. But that's not a skill that you come out of school with a marketing or communications degree competent in. And I feel like even with the best technology out there, you still have to have some basic organizational skills and communication skills. And the project management piece is critical.

Justin Davidson: Oh, completely. Uh, that's a great point. And I think that goes back to building those relationships to where you can, where you're comfortable enough with somebody that you can call them out. And that's kind of what I meant when I said like making fun of people, like poking fun at them. If you work with the same group of people all the time and they're not doing what they agreed to do, you can do it in a fun way and hold their feet to the fire a little bit and then they laugh and then. But the point gets taken. And that, that is one thing. To go back to what we were talking about earlier that has been so valuable about working with the same technical team all the time is I understand so much better now what they go through every day. And I think a lot of young marketers in this industry are unfortunately taught to have an us versus them mentality with marketing. It's like almost like marketing versus the technical side of the business instead of it being a partnership. And I've come to learn that the work is always going to come first. What we're being paid to do as a company is always going to come first. And how can I balance that and make their life easier for what they need to work with me on? Because whether they want it to or not, a lot of times that's the stuff they're working on after hours, at night, after the kids are in bed, that kind of thing. Like, I've pretty much stopped expecting someone to write a section of a proposal for me. Yeah, you just can't expect that anymore. Thankfully, we have really great AI tools to aid in that. Not do it for us, but to aid in that process now. Yeah, but yeah, I just, I'm very passionate about the us, uh, versus them mentality that I think has become pervasive in this industry. And I don't agree with it. And I think that if marketers work correctly and build relationships with the technical side of the business, then marketing just becomes another group that those people work with, like finance or accounting or risk management. Instead of it just being this whole back and forth situation that has a lot of animosity built into it and I, I see that so much, especially with friends at other firms and I, uh, hate it and I wish that it would not be that way. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way.

Judy Sparks: I think there's, there's a lot that we can do, you know, take some chips off our shoulder, have m some empathy, have some sympathy and understand what their world looks like. And you know, it's the architects, engineers and contractors didn't sign up to be an architect, engineer and contractor to have to do proposals and presentations. Like they do the work, they, they earn the money that pays our paychecks. Yes, we help position so that we can get the next job that keeps the flow going. But it's a partnership, it's one team and there's no reason it has to be be this struggle. So may and maybe we ask this, this final wrap up question. What is one shift that you hope AEC firms would make this year, you know, next year in terms of how they think about marketing?

Justin Davidson: I hope that more AEC firms recognize that marketing is not a one person last mile effort that is tied only to proposals.

Judy Sparks: Nice tie m in to the industrial group.

Justin Davidson: Love it when you treat it as, uh, a shared strategic discipline that shapes how you show up long before an rfp. It fundamentally changes how your proposals and everything else can position you.

Judy Sparks: Yeah, I would, I would echo that wholeheartedly. Dustin. That's been great. I'm so glad we got to connect screen to screen and you could share your story and you could give us some insight from what things look like from the inside of J.E. dunn as the lead for the Industrial and Manufacturing group. Best of luck to you and your team as it continues to be a booming market here in the US and thanks everyone else for listening. We'll see you next time right here on AEC Marketing for Principals.

Katie Cash: AEC Marketing for Principals is presented by smartegis, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior VP at Smartigees.

Judy Sparks: I would love to hear from you.

Katie Cash: If you have a question, a guest request or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to podcastmartigees.com and if you're looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast page@smarter g's.com podcast. We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about our show and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.