If you're feeling some unease in this post-pandemic, up-and-down economy—you're not alone. Lessons from the Great Recession have taught us AEC marketers that in times of uncertainty, our departments come under intense scrutiny. Developing flexible and adaptable processes and perspectives will help you 'change proof' your internal marketing resources and ensure you're ready to pivot to respond to shifts in the economy.
Tune in to this conversation between Wendy Simmons and Senior Marketing Strategist Allison Tivnon, as they expand on concepts introduced in Allison's book "Marketing at Low Tide." Allison, who also serves as a city councilwoman, possesses firsthand knowledge of the financial challenges faced by local communities and municipalities. The main takeaway? Even in times of economic turmoil and tougher competition, there is still plenty of valuable work for marketers to do to position our firms, protect market share, and keep sailing smoothly.
CPSM CEU Credits: 0.75 | Domain: 6
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we're talking with Alison Tivnon to discuss a topic that is near and dear to her heart, how recession impacts AEC marketing, or how to change proof your marketing department.
Hey, Alison.
Hey there, Wendy.
Thank you for coming on the podcast.
And we had been looking back at season one and how your very first episode, we introduced you to our listeners.
And we also said, Alison wrote this great book, Marketing at Low Tide.
And at some point, we're going to talk about that book and all those great things she has to tell us, which we have not done yet.
So here we go.
This is us making up for that promise we made back more than a year ago.
So Alison, tell us why this topic could be important or valuable for our listeners.
So you mentioned the book, and back in 2020, when I wrote it, I did subtitle it, How to Recession Proof Your Marketing Department, because that was kind of my benchmark for disruption in the industry.
But I think as we now know, it's not just recession that can do that.
We've been in such a roller coaster mode since 2020.
And even before that, honestly, there's just been a lot of change thrown our way from being in the longest economic expansion in US history to a global pandemic and shutdown to extraordinary inflation, to labor shortages.
And of course, there is looming conversations around recession, and that could be on the horizon as well.
But I think at the heart of all of that is just this idea of uncertainty.
And around uncertainty, there is the question of how is that going to affect decision making within businesses, and in our case, within the AEC industry.
That's a perfect overview of what people might be experiencing, feeling, things that are happening in their companies, their friends, family, spouses, companies.
It's just kind of all around us that there's a lot of uncertainty there.
And so then, you know, how does that impact a marketing department?
What are they facing?
Because I would say some of our clients are coming to us and they have a shortage of marketing support, and they're really trying to be aggressive and grow, while others are nervous and unsure of, you know, what they need to do and how to use those resources best.
So I'm just curious if you could kind of talk about that change proofing for a marketing department.
I think the metaphor that I keep coming back to our analogy is does the ground under your feet feel like concrete or does it feel like sand?
And I think a lot of folks right now are feeling that sense of what exactly is my place?
What is my point?
What is my future?
What's my trajectory in my job?
I think everyone's kind of feeling that.
We have all of these different topics popping up around the idea of quiet quitting, or how long are you supposed to stay at a job before you move on?
In marketing, we all kind of fall into our roles sideways.
There's not a college degree in this.
I hope someday that changes, but until then, we go off of instinct and we go off of good advice from our friends.
And a lot of times, we go off of what we are allowed to do or what we're compelled to do by the leadership at any given firm, of which we happen to work at.
And there's just been a lot of turmoil.
I think a lot of firms have felt that shortage, but they've also been in positions where they might have not set up their marketing departments for success and lost staff because of that and the staff that are still there, trying to figure out how to right the ship and make those departments run better.
I think for the most part, we love the firms that we work at.
We like the mission of our firms.
We appreciate the staff.
We appreciate the project work.
And of course, we appreciate the chase.
But that doesn't mean that your internal systems are going to be running perfectly all the time and in some cases, they might actually be working against you.
So what we really want to do is just take a collective breath and sort through things systematically.
How they're tied to your firm's strategic plan, how they're tied to the health of your internal marketing staff, and what are the ways that we can strengthen our internal efficiencies, our relationships, and our focus so that we work better and do better by our firms and by each other.
So Alison, in your experience and in the circles you run in, what are you seeing there as the outlook in the near future?
Well, outside of my job in AEC marketing, I serve as a city counselor in my city, Beaverton, Oregon.
And we have been going through budget conversations for the last couple of months.
This is what happens in local municipalities is every single year, you set your budget.
And Beaverton, for the first time in recent memory, is facing a deficit.
This deficit is in large part due to the pandemic, but it was also due to some factors like inflation, rising cost of labor, and the stimulus money has run out.
And the stimulus money has run out for essentially everyone, not just cities and counties, but also school districts and other types of municipalities that have used that to kind of short fill any gaps that did result from the pandemic or from that awful inflation that we've been dealing with.
A reason I bring this up is city of Beaverton is a town of about 100,000 people.
We're facing a $13 million deficit and we have to plug those holes.
By Oregon law, you have to balance your budgets by July.
And that means making cuts and that means increasing revenue.
We're trying to do both.
But to focus today on increasing cuts means that the city of Beaverton, like many other cities and other government agencies, is going to be pausing big projects.
And we're going to be pausing the start of planning for future projects, only focusing on mission critical items.
What this means is that over the next few years, there's going to be less opportunity for firms like ours and the AEC industry to go after projects with the city of Beaverton.
They will come back, we will go back to good times, but we're going to be battening down the hatches for at least the foreseeable future, maybe the next two fiscal cycles.
And what that means is that there's just less opportunity within our particular city for architects, engineers and construction companies and affiliated firms to come in and help us and also to get that project work.
We are not an exception.
This is going to be happening throughout the metro area in the Portland region of Oregon, and it's also playing out in other places as well.
And we are seeing this kind of fatigue in voter sentiment around new taxes, which again, to that point, increasing cuts, increasing revenue.
A lot of jurisdictions are going to have to increase things like property taxes and special levies and things like that.
People are feeling frustrated by the amount they're being taxed, which means that when school districts and others go after bonds or levies, they might not have the same level of support as they did before.
So there's just a larger and looming sense of uncertainty over what's going to be happening in the AEC industry in terms of project opportunity and where is the opportunity going to be?
Where is it going to dry up?
And I mention all this today because it's going to start percolating up to the top brass of our firms and that's going to start to make them nervous and when folks at the top get nervous, they start looking at the bottom line and when they start looking at the bottom line, they start looking at places to cut and marketing unfortunately in past recessions has been on the chopping block.
So what can you do to, when those hard conversations happen, have a seat at the table instead of being on the table?
Oh, that's so fascinating and talking about all of that, it's amazing that you have this perspective, this real front row seat to budgeting on the public side of work.
But I'd also say that we're already there on the private sector.
I mean, just some real high level stuff.
I'm not an economist, but I picked up my phone today and the Dow is down 500 points to start.
That's the kind of news that we're used to hearing.
Now, it might go up again, 500 points is not the end of the world, but it's a big enough dip where it's a little bit uncomfortable.
I know I can kind of speak from some Seattle data, and it is private sector stuff, but vacancy, retail vacancy, office vacancy, apartment vacancy, everything is up, which is not positive.
That's negative.
There is more vacancy across the board.
That means less tenant improvement, less development, more...
I don't know if there's risk, but obviously, if a developer doesn't see that need to build that office tower or put in that apartment complex because the vacancy rates are up, they just don't have that surety that they can go in there and build in all those little spots across town.
And that's Seattle.
Seattle has traditionally been pretty...
I mean, it's gone through recessions.
It's had its troubles for sure, but with tech and other things, it's been pretty resilient, and then you wonder what the layoffs that are happening with tech now, how is that impacting?
And so I think that if leaders aren't already kind of wondering or concerned, they probably should be.
I mean, we're not trying to cause panic, but it's here in some form or another.
And some folks, depending on the timing of when they make big decisions in their firm, like a new office build out, re-blowing up their website, starting up new markets or moving into new geographic markets, they can kind of be left holding the bag, depending on when they made those significant investments.
And one of the things that I noticed in my research of how AEC firms react to economic downturns is, we all run off of bottom line revenue.
We all have to have those profits, not only to pay for salaries and overhead, but also to leave room to grow.
And when things start to get really tight, they have to make decisions on what's going to get cut.
And I think that's at the heart of the conversation today, is business development staff, in my opinion, should not be on that list of things to cut.
They should be preserved and protected at all costs.
And the core question is, why in the world would they be on the list in the first place?
What's driving that psychology that leads to firm leadership to often de-invest in their marketing and business development resources when times get tough?
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
It is counter to what probably should be done.
It's a time to double down on your marketing and business development efforts.
It can be, you know, you and I have talked about this before.
We've talked about it with our clients.
It can be an opportunity for any firm when there are this approaching recession times, when other firms are cutting, if you can add to it, you're like getting double the effort, right?
Because others are receding and you are doubling or tripling down.
So you mentioned there's like some psychology there.
Why do you think it is this natural, like conservatism that comes into play where we're like, we need to cut and reserve funds and then cutting in areas that would be technically there to grow business?
Do you have any insights or?
So many thoughts on this topic.
It's not one thing.
There's so many things that go into play here.
There's the fact that, like we said earlier, there's no degree in this.
There's no diploma that you have on your wall that you can say, I know what I'm doing.
And a lot of us do suffer from imposter syndrome because there's always something new to learn.
And it's not often you get to do things like write a marketing plan, come up with a social media strategy, rebrand your firm.
A lot of the stuff that is really important like that happens and fits and starts when time allows, when the firm leadership allows you to do it or gives you the money to do it.
The bulk of our time is spent reacting to things.
The bulk of our time is spent responding to proposals, to trying to stay up with our social media content, trying to fix internal systems or just deal with things that aren't working quite right.
Of course, the topic of burnout is really popular in SNPS chapters.
We talk about how do we support each other, how do we get better at time management, how do we make room for doing these other really important facets of our jobs.
But what it really comes down to is there is a fundamental misunderstanding and mismanagement of internal marketing resources to only focus on reactive marketing and not make room for the proactive work.
Because it does cost money and you can't tie it directly to an ROI.
And those are two things that firm leadership are always very focused on.
So you're suggesting that it's not because it's just a, you know, we can cut this salary, which equals overhead, and this is what we have to do.
But it's more of that marketing is in a reactive mode.
And so, okay, well, if there are fewer RFPs being pushed out because the universities and school districts, you know, they don't have those funds, private developers don't have those resources.
So then it looks like marketing may not have as much need for time, right?
Is that how, do I hear that correctly?
And it's not, it's not that it's not valuable.
It's just that the proactive pieces is not in the forefront of the firm leadership's mind, that there's a lot that can be done to advance the share of voice and share of market from the marketing team.
Yes, and share of voice, share of market, are the absolute magic phrases in all of this.
And it's something that I think we have to continue to do a good job of educating our leadership, but also ourselves on what those two things are, why they're interrelated and why they are so important.
And of course, share of market is the amount of market share that you control versus your competitors, share of voices.
How noisy are you compared to your competitors?
And noise in our realm is, yes, it's responding to proposals.
How many of those are you going after?
How competitive are you on them?
How many of them are you winning?
It's also, how effective are you with your social media?
How effective is your website?
What affiliations do you have?
What organizations do you belong to?
And so on and so forth.
But coming back to why do our firm leaders not see those things as important as things like procurement and going after work is it, well, and it's the reason I named my book this, The Whole Idea of Marketing at Low Tide.
Just to tell you a very quick story, I read this article in National Geographic probably 20 years ago now.
Oh gosh, I'm getting old.
And I was so struck by this image.
It was a hurricane that hit off the coast of Georgia.
And an intrepid photographer had gone out to the beach right after the hurricane passed and the skies are clearing.
And there's shells up and down the beach, giant conch shells and fish.
And all sorts of stuff had washed up on the beach.
It was staggering.
And if you look, just Google beach after hurricane and shells or something like that, and you'll see images.
It's, they're just littered.
So there was just this beginning thought of like, hmm, a storm can bring treasure up to the shoreline in ways that you don't expect.
But then it got me thinking even more about this analogy of the tides and the tidal nature of the economy, of money coming in and going out and the stock market, like you were talking about, Wendy.
And it made me realize that for 10 years in that longest expansion in US history, we were treading water and feeling we were drowning.
I think to a certain degree, marketers always feel like they're drowning even in recession.
But we're treading water, that the water level is up to our necks.
And our firm leaders, they don't see underneath the surface, all of the peddling, all of the work that goes into staying afloat.
But when that tide goes out, and your feet touch land again, and you can get your equilibrium, you start to see that there's so many things that happen underneath the surface that allow you to keep treading water and keep your head above water, even if it's just barely.
Maybe this is the time to assess all of those different things that are happening under the surface and make sure that they're working well.
To your point, invest in those things when others aren't, so that when the good times roll back in again, you're in a much stronger position to take advantage of them.
That starting gun goes off, you are off and running while others are still crouched to the ground and tying their shoes.
All right, the million dollar question, probably what anyone who's listening to this podcast tuned in for then, Alison, is how does a marketing team put things into place, prepare to get less reactive, you know, having their legs spinning a million miles a minute down below the surface to be prepared for when the tide goes out, or just in general, actually, maybe to just like to have some sanity, to feel better about the work we're doing is based on strategy.
You know, what would you recommend?
Where do you start to get out of reactive mode?
Well, the book you'd mentioned earlier, it's broken out into a few things.
It is recession-proofing.
It's also change-proofing.
There's four things in there that I think should happen.
The moment that you start to sense that the economy is gonna shift downward, whether it's just a blip or a deep recession, the others, there's 10 things I think every marketing department should do every year, regardless of what's happening in the economy.
But to focus in today on those four things, I think of it as the oxygen masks have fallen from the ceiling.
You put yours on first and then you help others around you.
The marketing department has to help itself first.
And a lot of our marketing departments aren't well.
They're sick.
And we have to understand why.
I think a lot of us sense that they could be working better.
I know a lot of folks that have lost members of their team or they've up and quit and they've gone to another firm because something was just not working right in their marketing department or in relationships, personalities, processes.
And some were left holding the bag.
They had lots of people leave, and now they're trying to figure out how to rebuild.
It's a predicament to be in.
And the very first thing that you have to do, and this is recession tip number one, is this idea of doing basically a diagnostics checkup.
I have this form that I created called the Checkup Checklist, and it's all about internal systems.
The Marketing Checkup Checklist is everything from efficiencies and shared approaches to communication and transparency.
And is everyone on your team trained consistently?
Do they know what they're doing?
Because a lot of us nod our heads, and inside we're like, I don't know how to do this.
I'm gonna have to Google this, figure it out.
Having these honest conversations internally with a yes, no, or somewhat inconsistent needs to be worked on, answer to several key questions around the internal workings of your marketing department is the place to start, because some things are working good.
And you need to acknowledge that, focus on that, and then stop thinking about it, because those things are working good, and start thinking about the things that aren't.
And once you understand that list of the things that aren't working good, aren't in place, or are frankly completely overlooked and need to be introduced, you can then prioritize those and start tackling them to start to increase efficiency, decrease the level of burnout, and start showing results that are visible to your firm leadership.
Okay, a couple listener notes there, I was just confirming, but it's episode 15 of The Shortlist, where Alison walks through the checkup checklist, and we also have it on our website, so if you want to go through it and do that exercise, like Alison advises, and you can see the columns for almost there, needs more attention.
I'm probably not getting those wording just right, but there's a little flexibility, right?
Because some things we may not be doing at all, it's not on our radar, maybe it's not applicable.
Some things we're doing really well, we've got it dialed in.
I mean, I think that gives you a good visual when you filled it out of where the gaps are.
How do you prioritize what needs time, resources, money to ramp up, and what can, like you said, you're not going to worry about, it's not the right time.
Any thoughts on how you figure out the next steps with that checklist?
Yeah.
And I think it's important to note two things here.
One, like you said, is you can't tackle everything, and you should not put that on yourself to try and fix everything.
It is not a race.
It is a methodical, iterative process to fix things.
That's number one.
Number two is that some of our listeners are a marketing department of one, others work in a department of many.
Or two, or three, who knows?
But some have a lot of resources, some have very, very few, and all of us are expected to be everything to everyone at our firms all the time.
You're going to see a lot of similarities and some unique properties, depending on what type of an environment you're functioning in.
So if you are a department of one, sitting down and doing that checklist is just as important as if you're working in a team environment.
If you're in a team environment, it's really important to sit down and do that checklist together in the same room, paper and pens and quietly grading yourselves together and then discussing the results, because you might find that some people think something's working just fine and others think it's utterly broken.
And that in itself is telling on getting on the same page with the rest of your team members.
If it's just you and you go down this list and you honestly and clinically look at your systems and what is and isn't working, there's going to be more there than you can fix on your own.
So it is them putting in place that priority list of if this one thing could get fixed, it would make my life exponentially easier.
That's the way you should think of that list.
Go after low-hanging fruit, things that are really easy to fix, knock them off the list, sure.
But then, and this goes to the team environment, you have to get on the same page with each other on what that priority list should be.
And that then leads into the next step in these four tactics for recession-proofing your marketing department.
You're feeding that perfectly to me because I was just going to ask, like, how closely aligned is the checklist with the staff assessment?
That's it right there.
Recession tactic number two, the staff assessment.
They are extremely closely aligned.
And let's think about what are you exactly assessing?
You're assessing for skills, you're assessing for responsibilities, you're assessing for role.
And some might remember in a past shortlist, we talked about this concept of the marketing functions that surround proposals.
I do this talk a lot for different chapters of S&PS and some other organizations.
And I have a graphic that starts with just the gigantic circle with proposals written in it, and how a lot of us, that's our job.
At least that's what we feel when we think of our job as just proposals.
But it's not.
You got to back it out and realize that surrounding proposals are four key functions, and within each of those key functions are numerous types of discrete tasks, to-dos and processes in and of themselves that help the whole thing function well and helps your proposal engine at the center of it function well.
Each of those function areas needs to have oversight.
It needs to have someone or a portion of your time, if it's just you at your firm, dedicated to thinking about that particular function and giving it the time and attention it deserves.
And then thinking about it in concert with all the other so that they're all running properly.
In no particular order, you have marketing administration, you have communications, you have events, and you have client and partner outreach.
Solid.
Yes, it's very solid.
And if you think about all of this, you're like, oh, there's lots of other things that I do.
Each one of those other things that you do likely fits within one of those areas.
So for instance, marketing administration, the administering of marketing.
This is all of your boilerplate, your assets, your data entry, client surveys, leads tracking, your style guides, infographics.
These are all of things that exist within your marketing department, your tools, your resources, how you plan for them, how you file them and organize them, how you utilize them.
That all could be deemed administration type of materials and tasks.
Communications, of course, social media.
Your mind often will go straight to that one these days.
But there's also your newsletter and white papers and your website and advertising, anything that results in that noise that we're talking about that goes out into the world.
Events can be the event development, sponsoring events, attending events, helping to train your staff to know how to work a room or how to speak in public and in front of a podium.
It could be job fairs.
It can be your philanthropic giving and going out and doing pro bono work, Habitat for Humanity, the 5K race that your firm participates in.
There's all sorts of things that are tied to some sort of an organized event, whether you plan it or someone else does, that your firm is going to play a part in, in one way or another.
And then of course, there's business development, the client partner outreach.
There's the coffee meetings, there's teaming negotiations, all of the prepositioning efforts that we do that requires us to get out of house or on to a Zoom call or a Teams call and interact with those other folks.
The lunch and learns, conferences and attending those and networking the touch points that we have with those potential partners and teaming partners.
So again, client partner outreach, marketing administration, events and communication.
In my mind, those are the four base functions that surround that proposal engine.
Within each one of those are discrete activities.
Each one of those needs to have somebody thinking about it and watching over it and taking care of it.
Or again, if you're a department of one, time that's allocated to thinking about it, taking care of it, watching over it.
You've mentioned in earlier podcasts too, that even if you are a department of one, you're not the only marketer in your firm.
So that might be another way to look at the staff assessment is that there's only so much one human can do in 40 or 50 hours a week.
So how do you pull from other resources in the firm to support marketing and administration and business development activities?
And I remember the page in the book.
I don't have it in front of me, but man, there's a lot of activities.
And it's a nice thing to look at with your team, or if you're a single marketer, make some notes, see where there are strengths and natural talents and weak areas or places that you might want to bring in outside resources, and then show that visual to the leadership team so they get that full picture, the understanding of all of those different tasks that need to be done, and the different expertise.
You know, it's hard to be just amazing at every element there, and your firm probably wants to support, you know, their goals with having good resources in those categories.
So it's a good visual.
It is, and you're right.
It's important to remind staff, technical staff, other types of staff, even the accounting department and administrative folks, HR, whatever the departments might be that function outside of marketing, that we are all marketers of our firm.
Every single one of us, every single person who works at a firm has opportunities they might not even be aware of, of developing the business, supporting the brand and marketing the firm.
You're right.
So what other items are on your kind of like larger bucket there for the marketing team to prepare and to do analysis as they're going into a recession or just kind of preparing for change?
Yeah, this gets to Recession Tactic Number Three.
And to back out of that for a second, when we think of analysis, some people call them metrics or KPIs.
A lot of folks analyze their hit rate, how many projects they went after, how many they brought in the door.
Sometimes they'll dig down into priming versus subbing, private versus public, things like that.
That's the analysis that a lot of our firms are known for and that they expect to get.
And sometimes, depending on your CRM, it's really hard to get that information and to stay on top of it.
But there's another form of analysis that I think is critical to do as you're heading into economic uncertainty because it's kind of the idea of if you don't understand history, you're bound to repeat it.
And so what I mean by that is most of us were not with our firms when the Great Recession happened.
Some of us weren't even in the industry.
Some of us are still in high school, which again is making me feel old.
But the fact is most of us were not at our current firms back in the last recession.
And even for those that were, it was a while ago, it's important to understand how your firm weathered the last major economic downturn.
So how do you do that?
You go to your accounting department, you go into your CRM or your intranet, or the place that holds all of the records.
And you can just do a simple analysis.
It works kind of in the same way that your your win rate or hit rate analysis works, and that you kind of rustle up all of the proposals that were submitted over a certain period of time.
So in the Great Recession, for those that don't remember or were kind of young at the time, it officially started in 2008.
And the recession itself lasted, I think it was like 11 months.
There's a delayed impact that happens.
So most of our firms started to really feel it around 2010.
That's when things really got hard because it has to hit, and I'm focusing on the public sector work.
It has to hit the public sector first.
So their tax income, the revenue that they're pulling in has to dry up just enough to really mess things up for our public entities so that they then have to balance those budgets in the ways we talked about, and the work has to start drying up, and then it hits us.
Construction gets hit typically first.
The stop work orders come in, the cranes start disappearing, the new starts don't happen, architects get hit second, and then the planners typically get hit last because the planners are doing work that's lower dollar, it's longer fuse, and cities and other jurisdictions tend to keep those going because they want to continue planning for the future, so they continue to award those contracts, but even those will start to dry up as well.
I just have to interject here really quick, Allison, because I'm so curious.
I have always thought that the architects were the Canary and the coal mine in AEC, that they get a little bit nervous about their architectural buildings.
We kind of look at that as an indicator out there that you can see that buildings might be down.
And then for construction, they have this backlog because pre-construction can be a few months to a few years on really large projects.
And so they burn through that backlog.
Obviously, they're not adding to the pipeline in the meantime.
But from being on the general contractor side of things, I remember not feeling the recession until, like you said, 2010, last time around.
I'm not saying that there's a right or wrong.
I just wanted to show that other option out there that sometimes our architect friends come to us and say, okay, how's it going out there?
We're seeing a little slowdown.
And they're usually the first ones to mention that to me.
Well, and that's really good perspective.
And you're right.
There is no firm bucket.
And you can look at impact from the inside or from the outside.
A lot of folks remember all of a sudden a building that was hot and heavy, cranes in the sky, just sat there as a skeleton for years.
In the ground, nothing.
Yeah, or the hole in the ground, or something got ripped down, and then it's just a lot for several more years.
So there's that impression of almost this symbolic impression of recession.
But you're right.
Who is the canary in the coal mine?
I think different firms would raise their hand to say, oh no, I was.
Yes, right.
And it could be depending on your market.
Some firms are very specialized and may just be in one or two markets.
Others are more diversified, and that dynamic is really going to have a big difference, too.
Well, yeah, and that gets to diversification is what it's all about.
And most of our firms are diversified in one way or another.
And doing that, that look back, that historical analysis of how your firm performed in the last recession will show you the services that they flexed into and did more of, and the kind of work that kind of dried up and wasn't as active, because there's always work out there.
There's always going to be work.
I'll give a really quick example of this.
At one of my last firms that I was working at in-house, I did this analysis, and I went back to this one guy.
I was looking at his resume, and I noticed that he had all of this sewer rate analysis work.
And I went to him, and I said, Hey, Carl, I noticed that you do a lot of sewer rate analysis.
I haven't seen that anywhere else on the website or in our quals that I've been submitting in proposal packets.
Did you want me to add this to the leads tracking list so that we can capture this?
And he wrinkled up his nose.
He's like, no.
He's like, I only did that work during the recession.
I don't do that work anymore.
And I kind of tucked that nugget away.
And the more I thought about it, I was like, hmm, that's really interesting.
So sewer rate analysis work is recession proof.
And there's other types of work that's recession proof as well, that has to get done.
And they have to have consultants do it.
So how about if stuff hits the fan and we have to start thinking about how to batten down the hatches and get through a deep recession, economic downturn, maybe we add those back to the website.
Maybe we put that in as a service.
Maybe we do add it to the leads tracking sheet.
You know, so that was a direct result of thinking about it from that historical perspective of how did the firm get through it before.
Another thing, this is true for a lot of firms, is Greenfield vs.
Brownfield work.
During economic expansions, Greenfield work gets really hot and heavy.
And during economic downturns, people do a lot of Brownfield development, redevelopment work.
Really interesting.
I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it does seem to be a thing.
And I don't know if anyone else out there has noticed, but Brownfield work seems to be popping up again.
A little indicator there.
Maybe that's the canary in the coal mine.
Before we move on to your next topic, I have to ask, do you think this historical analysis is the marketing folks' job to do or leadership job?
I mean, does marketing have access to all of that information to be informed and advised?
Should they have access to that?
I don't know, I'm just curious what you think there.
Or if your firm is just not inclined to either make the time at the leadership level to do this, can you differentiate yourself as a marketer by bringing that to them?
Whose job is it to do this strategy work?
I honestly, I think it depends on where the data lives.
Nobody wants to sit there and have to shuffle through reams and reams and reams of reports or numbers unless it's really easy to automate.
And a lot of our firms do have things like Dell Tech or Uninet.
Some folks have internal intranets that they've had forever.
And others have Excel spreadsheets and this information lives there.
The information is usually findable by marketing.
It's not a big secret.
It's going back to past proposal efforts and having to put that against the actual billable accounting number.
And the closer those two things are connected, the better.
It means less work to do it.
You can also do a sample size.
So you can look at one particular service area at a time.
Who does the work?
I think it's one of those things where everyone's like one, two, three, not it.
And marketing should take on something like this if no one else either wants to or sees the value in it.
But there's two things that come to my mind.
There's the do now and ask for forgiveness later, which I think is the mark of and a key facet of becoming successful in your career is taking chances and putting your neck out there on occasion and doing the hard thing and showing that it was worth it.
That can be kind of nerve wracking.
And it does take some courage to do that, but it is the mark of a true leader to put your neck out and on the line sometimes.
But the other thing is, I don't know, some of us have probably heard this parable of a CEO saying, I don't want you to come to me and say there's a problem.
And I don't want you to come to me and say there's a problem.
And I think I found a way to fix it.
I want you to come to me and say there was a problem.
I figured out how to fix it, and now it's not a problem.
So a lot of our firm leaders don't know what they want until they get it in certain respects.
They don't know something is a problem, and they've got enough problems to deal with, so they don't want you adding another one to their list.
But if you come to them on a silver platter and say, hey, I did this diagnostics, and I found some really interesting and compelling information, I think that you should take a look at this.
You're giving them value, and you're giving them food for thought, and maybe in some cases, you're giving them purchase.
You're giving them solid ground to stand on when they might be feeling like they're on sand.
Yeah.
It seems like they very much appreciate the extra set of eyes and thinking on this because doing that analysis takes time.
And obviously, you have to juggle how much time you can divert from other things to that piece, but I think it would be well received.
And in my dream world, there is a marketing seat at every senior leadership table.
So that voice can be there in all the conversations and not just once a year for an annual plan or an update.
Amen.
Okay.
Well, then take us through your fourth and final step in your recommendations.
Okay.
Well, and this kind of gets us back to the beginning.
It's full circle here.
Firm psychology is you have to reinvigorate the trust and the back and forth communication with your firm leadership.
And the you here is typically your marketing director, your marketing manager, or the person who's been left holding the bag if they've left, because I keep hearing this.
A lot of people are dancing around the different firms these days.
But whoever is the one who's essentially your spokesperson for your marketing department has to have a direct line of communication to the firm leadership.
And this gets back to that sense of firm psychology, understanding what we do, establishing trust and confidence.
And this is directly tied to reports and a not only system check diagnostics.
Hey, here's this look back that I did on how we perform in last recession.
It is your hit rates.
It's the analytics from your website and social media.
It's looking at your performance on sponsorships.
And did you really see any kind of ROI from the money that's going out the door for giving or affiliation going to events and being a part of different organizations?
A lot of us, when we get into the role of being a manager or being the director of a marketing department, know that those reports to senior leadership are expected.
They're very important.
They're also really time consuming.
Sometimes it's hard to find the information.
And let's face it, when you're a manager or a director of a marketing department, you're still getting sucked into doing proposals.
A lot of us do.
You don't have the time to do these, or you feel like you don't, or they just fall down that list of priorities.
So if you are starting to feel like, oh, I was supposed to give a quarterly report, and it's now two quarters later, and it's starting to weigh on you, and you've put it down on a post-it, and you stuck it to your monitor, quarterly report or something like that, and it starts to become this thing that just doesn't get done, know that your firm leadership know that too.
And they are wondering why you're not keeping them in the loop.
And they know that you are not keeping them in the loop.
But what they don't know is the reasons why.
You're extremely busy.
It doesn't mean that there isn't stuff to report back.
It just means that they don't have it in hand.
And if they don't have it in hand, if they don't have facts and concrete figures, they're gonna fill in whatever holes exist with assumptions.
And you do not want your staff leadership or team leadership to do that.
You want them to have the facts.
And you want the facts to be coming from marketing to inform their decision making.
Because if they don't have those coming from marketing, they're still gonna be doing decision making.
They're just gonna be doing it without any input from marketing.
And their trust will get shaken.
And you're in your leadership.
If you're not coming to them and leading, they don't get a chance to see you do that.
And if you're not sending them those reports, if you're not giving them that information, they're much less likely to include you in those conversations when it does come time to make difficult decisions, like say having to make cuts within their firm.
Share a voice.
It comes back around.
It can be your internal share of voice, you know, bringing that information to the front and feeling confident in what you're doing, that you're focused on the right things.
If tough choices need to be made, that you've done this analysis of what you're doing really well and where the needs are, and then you can be informed, or you can actually help inform how you should move forward with your firm.
And hopefully actually retaining because you mentioned earlier that the last recession was about 11 months.
I think in the Pacific Northwest, we've been really lucky to not have a long, super deep recession.
So if you can ride through it, if your firm can find a way to invest and do more marketing during that time, they will be well served when it gets busy again, and they're not looking to bring in new marketers that need to learn everything about their firm.
Well, Alison, thank you so much for this deeper dive into marketing at Low Tide.
I think it was really helpful, very timely for what we're seeing out there right now in the marketplace.
I'm going to do two shameless plugs right here because I think that they will also be helpful to our listeners.
So Alison's book, Marketing at Low Tide, How to Recession Proof Your Marketing Department, is available on Amazon.
That's the easiest place to get it.
There's probably other places too.
But that one, you can order that.
It's a really nice, fast read with great graphics and visuals that you could even use to help.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, to help tell your story to your firm leadership.
I would definitely recommend it.
We've actually shared it with some of our clients too.
You're like, this will be helpful.
So it's very digestible.
I recommend that.
And then Alison has given the presentation, Marketing at Low Tide, to many, many SNPS chapters.
Certainly not all of them.
Alison, I'm not sure if you know what the tally is, but I'm guessing it's something like 40.
I mean, oh my gosh, a lot.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's that many, but I'd say closing on 2025.
Okay.
Yeah.
Out of the gate, there was a whole bunch right when the book came out, and you were actually presenting on this topic before it became a book.
So you were presenting to chapters, SNPS Seattle got to hear it before it was a book.
Then after the book came out, people really wanted to hear from you.
And it continues to be one of our most popular presentations.
People call or email me and ask for it by name.
We'd like Alison to come to our chapter and present Marketing at Low Tide.
And I think it gets customized based on the part of the country you're presenting in, and there's just an amount that you can kind of connect when you're delivering that presentation to people via webinar or in person.
So consider those things, because Alison's a wealth of information on this, and she's a big supporter of Marketing departments and can help advise to on what your specific situation is.
So thank you, Alison, for being here.
Really appreciate it.
We'll see you on the next one.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you so much.
And to everybody out there, hang in there.
We're all in this together.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
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The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.