Washington, DC – Marketing is an integral profession that represents numerous industries, like the design-build space, and plays a key role in building and sustaining business for professional service firms. The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) sees marketing as, “a process in determining your firm’s niche and capitalizing on your strengths to create awareness of your firm, inform how your clients feel and think about your firm, and distinguish your services from the competition.” With all of this in mind, The Construction Channel had the opportunity to meet with Michael Geary, CEO, of The Society for Marketing Professional Services, at their annual Build Business conference, held in Washington, DC this year, July 31-August 2. Founded 46 years ago at an AIA convention in St. Louis, SMPS is the only organization dedicated to creating business opportunities and providing quality marketing services specifically for architecture, engineering and construction companies.
This year saw more than 1,000 people in attendance. Attending Build Business for the first time as an outsider was a little intimidating because the caliber of sharp, smart savvy professionals can seem overwhelming. But everyone I met was extremely cordial and kind to a first timer. I left the conference believing that it was possible to “transform business through marketing leadership”. After all, this is something SMPS is known for and advocates for as their vision statement.
Here are a few ideas Geary shared with The Construction Channel that you may not have known about SMPS:
SMPS represents a dynamic network of more than 7,000 marketing and business development professionals from architectural, engineering, planning, interior design, construction, and specialty consulting firms located throughout the United States and Canada. A particularly interesting fact is the gap that exists when it comes to medium and small contractor and construction participation in SMPS. Geary mentioned that while a small number of large contractors attend and are part of the leadership in SMPS chapters and executive boards, there are always opportunities for smaller and mid-size construction companies to benefit from participating in SMPS. These companies may not have the resources for multiple marketing professionals, therefore; there should be greater investment in their firm leadership to help them grow their businesses and position themselves as seller-doers.
If a construction company decides to attend a conference, it might typically be the World of Concrete or ConExpo, however, attending a smaller conference focused on business development and marketing, like Build Business, could be a valuable endeavor, introducing businesses to new networking opportunities in their field. I’ve often found many smaller to medium sized construction companies do not have a marketing department or have allocated resources to the “less important things” like making marketing or business development a priority. They are often focused on getting the job done in the field and letting the quality of their work speak for itself. Perhaps even some construction companies consider some of these things administrative rather than integral to business operations. Integrating marketing and branding into every aspect of a construction company is what creates a positive culture yielding exponential results. This was a topic in the classes I attended and the conversations I shared with people at Build Business.
When it comes to branding and marketing, construction firms are eager to join SMPS to develop consistency and continuity across offices. The distribution of SMPS members in contracting companies and in the broader construction landscape is about equal to SMPS members representing the architecture and engineering firms.
Geary mentioned more contractors could join SMPS and start benefiting from day one. SMPS can help smaller contractors engage and learn better marketing practices for a fractional annual fee.
“We have all this content to plugin to from how to write a proposal, to building a brand, and presentation skills, and membership is only $390 (a year)! Many smaller contractors are not as connected with SMPS as they could be and that’s an opportunity for us. Not only that but joining our organization can help companies learn from each other. We help companies focus on successfully capturing and keeping business.”
“We support all aspects of the business development side so contractors don’t have to recreate the wheel. At several other events, we even offer marketing evaluation services so any firm owner can meet with our team and review their website, publications or proposals. We’re here to help you with marketing, and we’re trying to expand these kinds of services with our partner groups like AIA, AGC and SAME. It’s surprising to me how CEOs from architecture, engineering and construction companies before joining SMPS say, ‘I don’t know where to start, or I don’t know if our marketing department is doing it right’. SMPS creates content and offers live and on-demand professional development programs through webinars, publications, events, and workshops that offer Certified Professional Service Marketer (CPSM) CEUs and AIA LUs for members and non-members and even customized training programs through our corporate training packages for large and small firms.’”
Naturally, The Construction Channel was keen to inquire about Geary‘s view on the increased use of video services for architecture, engineering and construction companies.
“The use of video is continuing to rise in the A/E/C industries. We surveyed our members and asked how the use of video is changing or can change your business. Not surprising video was ranked with high importance in the survey. Yet, although shooting an in-house video on an iPhone or accessible technology is probably not professional enough. Your competition is going to spend money on professional video services which will only increase in the future. As generations change, many millennials, who are now approaching their mid-to-late-30s are used to seeing videos. Yet, there are still not enough videos about our industry. We see this as an opportunity, and video production was even a featured topic of one of our Digital Skills Labs that we offered at Build Business and plan to continue to offer more programming on. We’re going to be expanding that at future conferences.”
In the meantime, it may make sense to contract or partner with a group of people, like The Construction Channel, that have specialized skills in video production, editing and writing, because you get a better product the first time without taking time away from your day to day workflow.
You can take the marriage of going to the SMPS conferences and sessions to get the high level view of what is needed from people at the upper management level and channel that knowledge into acquiring the various outside resources to staff your marketing strategy to the outside world. This leaves you with the ability to focus on your trade and the quality of your output. You can learn more at smps.org, and if you’d like to check out Build Business in 2020, SMPS hosts the conference next year in Austin, Texas on August 12-14. Learn more at buildbusiness.org.
As it turns out the end is only the beginning, because SMPS is an outstanding organization and we look forward to future collaborations together.