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10.
CASE STUDY
Value You Can Feel: How The Primestone Group’s Core Values Shape the Client Experience
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CASE STUDY
When Values Impart Value: How Culture Creates a Competitive Edge at Lowe Engineers
FROM THE EDITOR
Insight - Gather, Filter, and Inform
Clare Kelly, MS, CPSM
Clare Kelly, MS, CPSM, is Principal Consultant at FUSE Marketing and a member of SMPS Colorado. She is an insightful, multi-disciplined marketer for firms that impact the built environment. Clare aligns thoughtful marketing strategies and tactics to each client's unique business development goals. She brings a never-ending curiosity to client relationships and projects, seeking to uncover opportunities and create a spark that will ignite growth for all.
As passionate A/E/C marketers and business developers, we are committed to the viability and growth of our firms, clients, and the communities we all serve; it's what drives us. One of our key roles is to gather and analyze a diverse range of valid information and then communicate our insights to enhance decision-making. Our work influences the work our firms and clients do to positively impact the built environment.
As members of local and broader communities, we have a personal stake in our industry's effect on our quality of life. A/E/C growth professionals weigh potential outcomes, anticipate change, see opportunities, create connections, and make informed decisions to keep our personal and broader ecosystem viable amidst constant change.
Understanding change drivers, the size, needs, and values of the five generations that comprise today's workforce, as well as economics, regulation, educational and social shifts, and technology and its change drivers within and outside our industry, is a significant task. Providing accurate insight into these complexities is a cultivated skill—something we develop throughout our careers.
This issue of the Marketer features a great lineup of articles that highlight best practices to drive insightful outcomes.
In "From Loyalty to Leadership," Julie Witecki highlights the insight that can be gained from structured Voice of the Customer research, as it "moves beyond assumptions and uncovers the underlying drivers of client decisions." In a related article, "Reading the Signals," Michele Raftery and Fawn Radmanich state that "Insight doesn't mean certainty. It means tuning into signals before they harden into trends and then grow as best practices." Voice of the customer research is one way to tune into early market signal shifts.
Sabrina Bauer offers four practical steps to increase your insight in Becoming a Market-Connected Marketer. The career-enhancing goal of her process is to position yourself as "a vital, proactive colleague who can. . . significantly contribute to your organization's overall strategy, prominence, and success." Hope Trory also encourages marketers to step out of their comfort zone. She gives examples of looking to best practices outside the A/E/C industry in The Cross-Industry Playbook for Better A/E/C Marketing.
A Minimalist Approach to Knowledge Management, by Kristen Ruiz, is a practical guide to decluttering your marketing database. She provides helpful insight, "like any material possession, every piece of content has an attached cost: it requires space to be housed in as well as time and mental capacity to keep track of and update."
Amplify is Only a Few Short Months Away
Higher Education is the theme for Thursday night's big event at Amplify 2025. As a celebration of lifelong learning and conversation starters, attendees are encouraged to "Rock your favorite college sweatshirt, show off your school colors, or don a CPSM pin with pride."
Call for Contributing Writers
Your voice, perspective, and experience are essential to maintaining the Marketer's position as the thought leadership journal for the A/E/C industries. Reach out to marketer@smps.com with article ideas or questions. Check out the themes for the remainder of 2025, along with deadlines for submission on the Calendar page in this issue.
Clare Kelly, MS, CPSM