AEC Marketing | Account Based Marketing for Design and Construction Firms

Account Based Marketing for Design and Construction Firms

JLL is a global Fortune 500 design and construction firm that offers facilities management, transaction administration, and consulting. Katie Fisher, Sr. Director of Field Marketing, works on the corporate solutions team, responsible for the retention of major accounts, and the growth and scaling of accounts into larger enterprise accounts. In JLL’s AEC marketing strategy, ABM plays a major role.

Why Use ABM?

Fisher is a major proponent of account based marketing (ABM) because it enables her to focus on the high-end clients that are most likely to generate revenue. By building relationships with the key prospects, Fisher can reach them at a point in the sales cycle when they are ready to buy. This AEC marketing strategy increases the likelihood of closing a deal before the sales team makes the first touchpoint. ABM still employs one-to-one sales tactics, but it deviates from traditional relationship-based sales by redistributing resources to areas that will generate more marketing-qualified leads. 

The BD Side of ABM in AEC Marketing

Relationships have always been a fundamental part of the AEC industry, but with the help of ABM, sales teams can use AEC marketing to start the relationship development process with warm leads. At JLL, Fisher’s new leadership team saw the value of ABM and completely overhauled their marketing strategy to implement ABM. Knowing that ABM requires complete buy-in from leadership to be effective, they decided to pilot the program in their division before scaling it to JLL’s entire organization. 

They shifted from a product-centric to client-centric approach and started exploring the different ways JLL could use ABM to drive demand. Fisher and her team worked with best-in-class partners to become certified experts in ABM. They also spent a significant amount of time educating their stakeholders on ABM so they could embark on the new journey together. 

Launch Then Scale

The corporate solutions division has an exceptionally long sales cycle. To measure the success of the new ABM strategy, Fisher started looking at vanity metrics such as traction and engagement. She also looked at the numbers for AEC marketing-qualified leads, sales-accepted leads, and booked revenue. As Fisher and her team rolled out the ABM strategy, their focus shifted to how they built the pipeline. They have already experienced an uptick in funnel velocity due to their efforts, and the data from the implementation process is what they need to start planning an approach for large-scale rollout. 

JLL has always been a media thought-leader with great content, but the problem was the content didn’t always fit into the sales funnel. Throughout the ABM process, Fisher and her team are producing consistent messaging in a consistent voice that is tailored to the target and created for the buying authority. ABM is an extremely powerful practice, facilitating a revolution of marketing in the AEC industry. To learn more about using ABM strategies in the AEC industry, listen to our podcast episode, Using ABM to Generate Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL’s) and Grow your Business, with Katie Fisher, Sr. Director of Field Marketing at JLL.