I have heard some version of this statement more times than I can count in my career: “Marketing isn’t really how we get work.”
If you are an AEC marketer, you have probably heard it too.
Maybe it came from a principal who believes relationships are what drives the business.
Maybe it came from a seller-doer who can trace nearly every project on their desk back to a client they already knew.
Maybe it came during a budget conversation, right before someone questioned the value of the website, the newsletter, the podcast, social media, advertising, or the conference strategy.
And if you are the marketer sitting in that room, I know how frustrating that can be.
Because you are looking at the whole system.
They are looking at the last mile.
Here is the part we need to be willing to admit:
Sometimes they are right.
There are AEC firms all over this country that have built very successful businesses without sophisticated marketing. They grew because they did good work. Clients hired them again. Those clients referred them. Their principals built enormous networks. They developed a strong reputation in their markets. They hired people who brought relationships with them. They became incumbents. They got bigger, which created even more opportunities. Some firms have enough scale, reputation, geographic coverage, market momentum, and existing client volume to continue growing even if marketing never becomes particularly sophisticated.
That is real.
But here is where the logic starts to fall apart.
The fact that you have grown without a strong marketing engine does not prove that marketing has no value. It proves that you had another growth engine.
There Is More Than One Way to Grow
You can absolutely grow a professional services firm through relationships. Find great seller-doers. Give them enough nonbillable time to develop business. Get them into the market. Have them build relationships, go to conferences, ask good questions, stay close to clients, make introductions, have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with people, and keep doing it.
That model works. We have been doing it in AEC forever. But let’s stop pretending it is free. If your principal is spending 20 hours a week developing business, there is a cost to that. If your most senior people are 50% or 60% billable and you also expect them to produce the next generation of clients, there is a cost to that. If you hire dedicated business development professionals, there is a cost to that. If you recruit rainmakers because of the relationships they bring with them, there is a cost and a risk to that, too.
The other option is to build a marketing engine that allows the firm to reach more of the market at scale. That costs money too.
Either way works. Either way requires investment.
The fantasy is believing there is a third option where we substantially grow without investing much in either one.
I Think This Is Where AEC Gets a Little Too Comfortable
I hear firms say they want to grow all the time. But I have started wondering whether that is always what they mean. Sometimes what they really mean is:
We would like to grow if our existing clients happen to have more work.
We would like to grow if referrals continue to come in.
We would like to grow if our seller-doers can squeeze in a few more meetings.
We would like to grow if the right RFP lands in our inbox.
We would like more visibility, if we don’t have to spend very much to get it.
We would like more leads, but we don’t really believe in advertising.
We would like thought leadership, but our experts are too busy to produce much content.
We would like to enter a new market, but we don’t want to invest in building an audience there.
We would like marketing to prove ROI before we adequately fund the things required to create it.
That’s different from having an actual growth strategy. And frankly, there is nothing wrong with choosing modest, comfortable growth. A highly profitable firm that serves great clients, retains its people, and grows a few percentage points a year can be a terrific business.
Just call it what it is. Because there is a big difference between wanting growth and wanting growth badly enough to fund it.
“But We Spend a Lot on Marketing.”
This is another conversation AEC marketers know well. A firm believes it has made a significant marketing investment. Then you look under the hood.
There is a newsletter that goes to a relatively small list.
A podcast comes out when everyone has time.
There are a few thousand social followers.
The team posts organically.
They attend some conferences.
Maybe they sponsor a few things.
There is little or no paid media.
There is limited marketing automation.
The CRM is mostly an empty database.
Nobody is systematically identifying engagement and handing qualified interest to sellers.
And content gets created, posted once, and then disappears into the feed.
That can be good marketing activity. It is not necessarily a marketing engine.
Publishing is not distribution.
That is one of the biggest distinctions I wish more AEC leaders understood.
You can spend a lot of time and money creating an excellent podcast episode and still have very few of the people you need to influence hear it.
You can write a brilliant article, and have it reach mostly your employees, competitors, and people who already know you.
You can post on LinkedIn every week and still reach only a fraction of the market you want to penetrate. Then leadership looks at the results and says:
“See? Marketing doesn’t really get us work.”
Maybe.
Or maybe you built the asset and never funded the part that gets it in front of enough of the right people, enough times, to change behavior.
That is why one of my core beliefs is: Repetition builds reputation.
And repetition requires distribution. Sometimes that distribution comes through sellers. Sometimes it comes through email. Sometimes through conferences. Sometimes through search. Sometimes through paid media. Sometimes through account-based marketing. Usually, it is some combination of all of them.
But one podcast, one article, one conference, or one social post was never going to change your market position.
If You’re Going to Do It, Do Enough of It to Matter
This is where I want AEC marketers to stop apologizing.
You should absolutely be accountable for results.
You should know your audience.
You should understand the business strategy.
You should measure what people are engaging with.
You should connect marketing activity to seller behavior and pipeline.
You should kill tactics that aren’t working.
You should be able to explain why the firm is spending the money.
But you should also be willing to say when the level of investment does not match the expectation.
If leadership wants to enter three new markets, attract buyers who have never heard of the firm, increase pipeline, recruit talent, grow existing accounts, and compete with firms that have significantly larger sales and marketing organizations, that ambition has a price tag.
You cannot simultaneously say:
We aren’t going to invest in paid reach.
We aren’t going to produce much content.
We aren’t going to hire business developers.
Our seller-doers need to stay highly billable.
We aren’t ready to invest in the technology.
And then ask:
“Why isn’t marketing creating more opportunities?”
Something has to give.
And No, Marketing Does Not Replace Relationships
This is another place where I think the industry creates a false choice.
AEC will always be a relationship business.
Good.
Relationships are powerful.
Seller-doers should absolutely be developing them.
Marketing should make those relationships easier to start and easier to grow.
I heard someone describe this recently in a way I loved:
Marketing softens the wall.
That is exactly right.
The prospective client has heard your name.
They have seen your expertise.
They understand what you are known for.
They have encountered one of your ideas.
Maybe they listened to your podcast.
Maybe they read your article.
Maybe they saw you speak.
Maybe your point of view appeared in their feed five different times.
Then your seller calls.
That is a very different conversation from:
“Hi. You don’t know me, but I’d love 30 minutes to tell you about our firm.”
Marketing does not eliminate selling. It gives selling leverage.
And the further you move away from the relationships you already have, the more that leverage matters.
Want more work from a 20-year client? Great seller-doers may be enough.
Want to enter an entirely new geography, sector, or buyer group? Now you have a different problem. You have strangers. Someone has to turn those strangers into people who know you. You can do that one handshake at a time. Or you can build a system that helps you do it at scale.
For the Marketers Who Keep Having to Explain This
I want you to stop having the conversation as:
“Do you believe in marketing?” That makes marketing sound like a religion. Ask better business questions.
How much do we actually want to grow?
Where is that growth supposed to come from?
How many new opportunities do we need to create to hit that number?
How many of those can realistically come from existing clients?
How many require relationships we don’t have today?
Who is responsible for creating those relationships?
How much time are we willing to take out of billable production to do it?
What are we willing to spend to reach the rest of the market?
How frequently do those buyers need to hear from us before we reasonably expect them to remember us?
What infrastructure do we need to know when someone is showing intent?
Now you aren’t defending marketing.
You are helping leadership choose a growth model.
That is where marketers belong.
The Investment Has to Match the Ambition
This may be the entire argument. If you are happy with the business your existing relationships can produce, keep nurturing those relationships. Do exceptional work. Ask for the next project. Protect your reputation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that strategy.
But if you tell your marketing team that the firm wants to grow faster, enter new markets, reach new buyers, diversify revenue, compete for larger work, reduce concentration risk, and become less dependent on a handful of rainmakers, then you have changed the assignment.
That requires a different level of investment.
You don’t get scalable growth with a maintenance-level investment.
And you don’t get to underfund sales and underfund marketing at the same time and then blame either one for a thin pipeline.
AEC marketers, when you feel like you keep explaining the same thing over and over, you probably are.
Keep explaining it. But change the conversation.
Don’t ask leadership to believe in marketing. Ask them what they are trying to build.
Then show them what it will take to build it. Because sometimes “marketing doesn’t matter” really means:
“What we’re doing today is good enough.”
And if that’s the truth, fine.
But let’s be honest about it.
There is a lot of opportunity in this industry for firms that decide “good enough” isn’t the growth strategy anymore.
