We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julie Cook. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julie below.

Alright, Julie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

The architecture, engineering and construction (A/E/C) space has a reputation as a late adopter when it comes to digital and social trends. However, the firms I work with that have the edge over their competition are the ones who really think innovatively about the solutions they bring to their clients. Having the right qualifications for a project will get you in the door, but the team that often wins is the one that creatively thinks through solutions – whether that be for ways to construct better and faster or engineering a solution that limits impacts to key stakeholders.

Julie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started AEC Marketing in 2017. We offer marketing solutions specific to the needs of professional services firms. Most of that work encompasses proposal responses to government clients, but we also offer traditional marketing services such as social media management, advertisement placement and website design. Since municipal work is tax-payer funded, they must publicly advertise through and RFP/RFQ-type process. Private engineering or construction firms then work with me to prepare and submit their response. Many people don’t know that in most states, cities or towns cannot request price information for professional engineering services. Selection for these types of projects, by law, must be based on qualifications. So, AEC Marketing works with our clients to take their qualifications and make them look the very best in hopes of being chosen for a project by the particular city or town we are submitting to. Projects for our clients can range from $10,000 to $10 million so it’s serious business!

I started AEC Marketing after seven years of working at an in-house marketing team for a mid-sized, southeastern-based engineering and surveying firm. I had worked my way up to the Marketing Manager responsible for their efforts in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Florida. I left that company in 2015 due to a myriad of personal and professional reasons. In 2016, I started freelancing for a small engineering firm and the more I did that, the more I realized how necessary providing marketing services to small professional service firms was. Marketing is not billable work for engineering companies so it is lumped into overhead much like legal or finance, and often, it can be very expensive for small firms to hire a full-time marketing person when you factor in the  salary, insurance and paid time off that comes with a full-time employee. I felt that I could offer small AEC firms the services of a seasoned marketing professional at a fraction of the cost of a full-time person, making it not only affordable but allowing them to compete on a more even playing field with their larger competitors.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The AEC space is a very tight-knit community. One day you’re competing against someone, and the next, you’re teaming together to go after a big project. The key to maintaining relationships is to always put your best foot forward and stay professional. I also never ever speak negatively about another firm or colleague. I’ve seen this happen in some cases, and it always left me feeling like I couldn’t quite trust that person or firm. I would never want people to feel that way about me. When you’re in the professional services industry, trust is really all you have!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I was working on a statement of qualifications (SOQ) with a private engineering firm for a local government client. It wasn’t an incredibly challenging project, but it was good work over a long period of time. My client had three employees, and I knew they would be competing against firms with up to 800 people. I also knew this local government client would be receiving 15-20 proposals of the same type of information, so we needed to do something to stand out. To do that, I took my client’s “field notes” of the project site and turned part of our SOQ into a handwritten notebook, complete with coffee stains and pencil smudges. The goal was to make the local government reviewer stop in their tracks as they were reading through the SOQ and catch their attention so they’d want to read more. I’m happy to say that my client won that project against all odds, and it led to several years of work that allowed them to grow their business both in staff and with new projects with that same client.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.aec-marketing.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieelizabethcook/

Image Credits
Season Moore Photography