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VOLUME 43 | ISSUE 5 | SEPT/OCT 2024
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Management

The Critical Role of Marketing Operations in A/E/C Firms

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By Julie Huval, FSMPS, CPSM
DOMAIN 6
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In the dynamic landscape of the A/E/C industries, marketing operations is emerging as a critical function that bridges the gap between your company's strategic vision and marketing/business development's tactical execution. Marketing operations encompass the processes, technology, and people that enable efficient, data-driven marketing initiatives aligned with business objectives. Excellence in marketing operations is no longer optional but imperative for firms seeking to thrive in an increasingly competitive market.

Excellence is a quality, not a destination.

You don't reach "excellence" and then get a lifetime achievement award. To personify excellence, you must maintain and elevate high standards consistently. Too often, firms attempt to do an audit of a piece of marketing operations and then table the effort because project pursuits are knocking down the door. Often, marketing efforts in the A/E/C industries are not nearly as efficient as they could be because, in general, marketing operation infrastructure is still the same as it was decades ago.
The A/E/C industries face unique challenges, including long sales cycles, complex stakeholder relationships, and project-based business models, which demand a sophisticated approach to marketing operations. As senior leaders navigate these complexities, mastering marketing operations excellence becomes a key differentiator in driving your firm's growth, enhancing client relationships, and maintaining a competitive edge in the built environment sector.

Alignment of Goals

To excel in marketing operations, you must first align marketing goals with the business's objectives. It may seem like a no-brainer, but this alignment helps with the following:
  • Go/no-go decisions
  • Social media channels and messaging
  • Industry event prioritization
  • Cross-departmental collaboration
  • Team organizational structure
If your firm has an objective that sounds like "Generate $XX million in revenue from the new business segment," then a marketing goal that would align with this objective may read "Create a dedicated web page, 3 case studies, and host a networking event for decision makers that shows how the firm specializes in that new business segment." As an experienced marketer, aligning goals allows you to bring a higher level of strategic ideas and experience to help accomplish company objectives. Make those marketing goals public knowledge to the whole company so others see and understand the strides marketing is making to achieve excellence.

Championing Revenue Creation

A big piece of marketing operations is connecting the dots between marketing and revenue. Marketing plays a significant role in revenue generation for your firm. Business development may have an easier time connecting their efforts to revenue because it is likely a one-to-one correlation. However, if you are not attributing revenue to what you are doing in marketing, then you are likely spinning your wheels. In addition, when business developers know which marketing activities impact revenue, they can be more focused in their one-on-one follow ups and outreach. In the end, higher revenue generated by a collaborative effort between marketing and business development means greater growth for the firm.
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Document all the touchpoints from initial awareness to becoming a customer.
Map your customer journey
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You can start with a first-touch model that assigns a source of what caused a customer to convert from initial awareness (what got them in the customer journey).
Choose an attribution model
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It may be a tag in your CRM that you can modify to indicate how a person became aware of your firm (i.e., golf tournament, attended a webinar, met at an industry conference).
Implement a tracking system
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After tracking the data for some time, you will start to see a trend of which marketing initiatives are driving revenue. For example, let's say a major conference your firm attends annually allows your team to meet five key decision makers in a week, and within six months, your firm was asked to submit four projects from those decision makers, and your firm won two of them. That's how you connect the dots between marketing efforts and revenue. Next year, you may plan to go bigger at that event because it worked well for you.
Analyze and interpret results
When you champion revenue creation with what you do in marketing, you'll start to receive the additional resources to do more of that thing that works. It will allow you to continuously elevate marketing's excellence.

Marketing Tech Progress

Your marketing tech stack should be the packhorse for your team. Your technology systems should work hard for your business and make your role enjoyable. Technology audits and maintenance fall under marketing operations. If you have gaps in data or need more clarity on your analytics, you may have a marketing tech issue. This is not just pointing the finger at CRMs, however, they are a big piece of the marketing tech stack. You also want to consider:
  • Email marketing platforms
  • Social media scheduling and analysis
  • Website analytics
  • Event management platforms
  • Online stores (i.e. swag shops)
  • Digital asset management platforms
  • Project management software
Automated processes for your tech stack also fall within the purview of marketing operations. Let's walk through an automated process designed with excellence in mind.

A new hire has joined your company, and HR has toggled them to "active" in their HR information system. Through a series of automated processes, the "active" toggle has added the new hire to your email marketing platform and tagged them as "internal" so they'll get company newsletters and announcements. They get registered for an online on-boarding session that they need to complete on their first day, and when they complete the on-boarding session they get a welcome email and a code that allows them to grab some sweet company swag from the online store at no cost. The "active" toggle has also added the new employee to the online store, so when they select their items, the system already knows where to ship the goods because they are located at a regional office. As a marketer, you did not have to do anything extra to give that new hire a great first impression of the company.

High-Performing Marketing Teams

Marketing operations excellence is also how your team is structured, and it requires continuous improvement because your business is continuously evolving. Your firm does not want to employ professionals who are stagnant in their careers. Keeping your team excited and happy is also good for business. A study by the Society for Human Resource Management stated that the average turnover cost per employee is equivalent to six to nine months of their salary.
High-performing marketers are exceptionally skilled, eager collaborators, and continuously learning. They are problem solvers and are in control of their career path. Having a marketing organization structure that allows each team member to excel in their area of expertise while pursuing marketing goals aligned with business objectives is a win-win-win situation.

Measuring Efforts in Excellence

Through all of these marketing operation pointers, the question that will no doubt bubble up is "How are we doing?" The A/E/C industries are notorious for needing more benchmarking data. We tend to hold those numbers and facts close to the vest. To continuously strive for excellence, benchmark against yourself. If your email click-through rate is at 7% today, aim to increase it to 11%. If your ROI on the annual conference that drove in revenue is 120%, make it a goal to increase the ROI to 150% next year. However, only measure what matters. Don't get caught up in vanity metrics or data points that don't move the needle for the business.
The best way to know if you are executing excellence in marketing operations is to run ROI calculations against your annual marketing budget. The return on investment takes into account the amount of resources (money and people's time) it took to generate revenue for the business. If you don't track ROI today, you should start, as it will give you a baseline to improve going forward.
Once you have an idea of the ROI from marketing efforts, share that data with other company leaders. Share the data even when it is "negative". ROI data is a great business communication tool for aligning other company leaders with marketing asks and resource load. When you get other business leaders thinking about the ROI in marketing, you are getting them to think about the company being marketing-led.
Julie Huval, FSMPS, CPSM, is the owner of Marketing Operations Advisor and helps companies improve the business of marketing. Based in the Dallas area, she has been in the A/E/C industries for 20 years and has grown marketing departments and companies throughout her career. She is a sought-after industry author and public speaker on marketing, technology, and business leadership.
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