Transcript – How To Achieve Big Results In Your Business
Katie [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principles to address trends, challenges, and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends, and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior vice president at SmartEgies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 02/2008. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to AEC Marketing for Principles. Katie Cash here, and I am ready to start talking about marketing, communications, and sales strategies that are shaping the AEC industry today. And I’m not gonna do that alone today.
Katie [00:00:56]:
Today, I’m joined by someone that I believe to be a powerhouse marketing leader, which is Carrie Gonzalez. For those of you that might not know Carrie, Carrie is the director of marketing at SSOE Group. She is an expert in all things, strategic marketing, brand elevation, team leadership, I think is one of her strong suits. And she’s played a critical role in guiding SSOE through some pretty major milestones, including various m and a integrations, some new go to market strategies that have helped her firm break into fun, like, really hard markets, like battery manufacturing and data centers. Plus, Carrie has led the adoption of AI driven solutions for her marketing team across the enterprise. So I’m really excited to have Carrie here where she can share her natural leadership, her approach to innovation, her approach to change management, and her love for all things AEC. So Carrie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on.
Carrie [00:01:54]:
Thanks, Katie. I’m happy to be a part of the conversation today, so thanks for having me.
Katie [00:01:58]:
I just wanna dive right in and address the fact that you have a very impressive career track record for marketing. And I know you like to joke about being the boomerang at SSOE, but maybe talk a little bit about your journey and how you found yourself in the marketing world, what led you to SSOE, and maybe share a little bit of that background.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:02:22]:
Sure. Like many in AEC marketing, it’s a field that I did fall into initially. I started with an internship in my senior of college and had an opportunity to learn so many different things and really just gain some hands on marketing experience. So once I graduated, it was an easy yes to accept a position. And from there, I just continued to say yes. Taking on new projects, gaining exposure to different parts of our business, which included different market sectors, some recruitment marketing exposure, m and a activity, and the ability to build skill sets and things like InDesign. I got pretty dangerous with HTML backend website management, and really just understanding target audiences. So the combination of that continuous learning and different challenges that SSwe could offer to keep it interesting is what has kept me here since then.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:03:17]:
So between that start and now, I took on nearly every position in the marketing department. When I was a marketing coordinator, so you alluded to my boomerang effect, I did leave the company for six months. I decided to go see if the grass was greener. It wasn’t, but I did do some pretty cool things in that six months that I left and got some additional experience as a marketing manager for it was still kind of in the industrial manufacturing world. I went to Germany and I came back and then I I kinda continued my career trajectory with SSOE and I became the director a little over three years ago. So, today SSOE is a 1,500 person architecture and engineering firm with about 20 offices across The US, Mexico, and India. We’re the number two manufacturing design firm and the number two semiconductor design firm. So we provide those AE solutions to clients in those industries as well as things like automotive and battery manufacturing, electrical solutions across healthcare and general building sectors like corporate workplace, education, and judicial.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:04:23]:
So it’s kept it interesting for me from where we came and where we are now.
Katie [00:04:28]:
For sure. Lots of internal clients to service and never dull moment I can imagine. Yes. I wanna spend just a quick minute and talk a little bit more about your role as the director of marketing, because this seems to be a growing topic that I’m seeing on job boards and LinkedIn posts, and a lot of our clients are trying to grow and scale up their marketing departments. But they don’t really know what a modern marketing department should look like. So when I first joined the industry early two thousands, it was pretty easy. You had a marketing coordinator position where basically you did proposals and then a senior marketing coordinator position where you did proposals, and then you were marketing manager that did proposals. And then sometimes, you might have these fun little titles like proposal specialist or marketing specialist and so on and so forth.
Katie [00:05:20]:
But really, when I first started my career, marketing was proposals. But a lot has evolved and more and more brands are starting to build out different teams. And I’d like for you to share with our listeners, what does your role do for the organization and kind of how is your team structured underneath you that you’re leading on a day to day basis?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:05:42]:
Sure. So how we have that structured is that we’ve got two sides of the house within marketing. We have a marketing communications group, which is focused on all of our broad based communication channels. So the website, our public relations efforts, our social media platforms, and then also things like recruitment marketing and internal communications. And then we have an operations marketing group, which is focused on those proposal deliverables, anything that’s client specific, whether it’s a presentation or qualification or or just responding to those proposals to win work and drive revenue for the firm. So that’s how we have structured it is with the two different departments that really collaborate and act as a whole. And I’m focused in my role on creating marketing strategies that are aligned with the different business plans of our different market verticals or different operations, and really just supporting them in what they’re trying to achieve with the marketing strategies that we can come to the table with to help promote or amplify or drive revenue for the firm, and that’s what we try to keep our eye on.
Katie [00:06:47]:
I think that’s great, but it also speaks to the size and sophistication of SSOE. Right? You don’t get there overnight. You don’t get to build into that specialization from go, but it’s really starting to work in your mature strategy is coming to a place where you do have some specialists.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:07:04]:
I know I get
Katie [00:07:05]:
to work with a number of your team members on different initiatives, and they get to go deep in areas where they have a lot of passion and knowledge and expertise. And I think that makes it really good for them providing nice service to your internal clients. One thing I do wanna compliment you and your organization on is your openness to having external partners. Smartages was brought in to be a partner with your organization a number of years ago. And sometimes we find ourselves in those scenarios where it’s not always an open door policy of partnership. Right? Sometimes it can be quite adversarial and can get defensive, but your team has been very open and very collaborative. And I think we’ve found that we are better together than working in silos apart from each other. And I know you’ve had that experience with some other partners.
Katie [00:07:54]:
So what in your perspective makes for a good partnership in terms of having those external partners, whether it’s a PR agency or a website design firm or a partnership like you have with Smartergies? What makes for a successful partnership there in your opinion?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:08:12]:
I think a couple things, but building that relationship from the beginning so that you can have an open book, open door, and just understanding where we need support, where we’re strong, or maybe where our weaknesses are. So I know I lean on SmarterG’s for bringing some best practices. I have spent my career at one firm, but you guys have the benefit of working for all different types of firms in our industry. And so you’re able to kind of infuse the conversation with different things that you’ve seen. And, honestly, I think that that is what creates value for my team as a whole too is just that outside perspective and bringing in new practices for us. We know our firm and we know SSOE, but you all have a different perspective to bring to the table. And I think that that’s really helpful to kinda infuse in the conversation. And even kind of beyond my department, I think it positions us as a whole as more forward thinking within the organization just because we are not doing things the way that we’ve always done them, and we’re pretty open to exploring new ideas.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:09:12]:
So I think just building that partnership and then understanding what each brings to the table and having a mutual respect makes that a pretty successful partnership. So we’ve enjoyed that and my team is very busy. So any additional support that we get is always welcome.
Katie [00:09:31]:
Oh, we’re happy to be your overflow, extra capacity. And and I do think that this whole idea of leaning on some expertise here and there really penetrates your entire organization because I have had some exposure to some of those different business unit leaders that have done things one way or another, but they’re very open to considering new ways. And that’s kind of part of, I think, the secret sauce to a partnership is just the openness and willingness to realize that there might be another way to try and having the courage to move forward in a new way. I wanna push the conversation forward into an area, Carrie, where I think you might have a lot of expertise and maybe lessons learned or maybe even tips for our listeners, and that is around the subject of change management. You and I have built our careers in design and construction. And while, yes, you’ve been at SSAE for the bulk of your career, it’s not the same as it was when you first joined. And I think one thing we know being part of a marketing department is that we are constantly changing. The industry is constantly changing.
Katie [00:10:33]:
Our organizations that we support are changing. So whether it’s learning how to go from doing proposals in Word to InDesign, like, I remember doing that overnight, or supporting new service lines or new office locations or bringing together firms that you’ve acquired or that you’ve merged with. Or maybe it’s, how do we move forward with new tools and technology like utilizing AI? And I know the list could go on and on. You probably have some more examples. But what have been some major moments of change in your career and kind of what did you do to ensure that that implementation of moving forward was successful? What advice do you have for our listeners?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:11:15]:
Sure. I think that there were a couple that I thought of, and one of them is really just leadership change within an organization too. So while I have spent the bulk of my career at SSOE, we’ve had three different CEOs during my tenure there, each with their own communication style and different ideas of how marketing can help amplify that and reach our our internal audience as well as position SSO we externally for our clients. So I mentioned that our team has always supported internal communications, and it’s been an opportunity for us to kind of participate and support in different ways. We execute monthly videos for our employee population that feature our CEO today and other executives. We have quarterly town hall events to communicate more broad based messages and give a status update on the field of the company and really just bring our employee population together. But the way that we deliver news and communicate to employees has kind of fluctuated through those different transitions, and that’s been something really interesting to be a part of and then see through with kind of each of those transitions. So that’s one that is a moment of change that I witnessed and that’s been exciting to be a part of.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:12:27]:
I know we’ll talk about M and A a little bit more, but early in my career is when we made our largest acquisition and we expanded both geographically to the West Coast as well as into new markets, semiconductor being the major market there. And since then, we’ve done other acquisitions, but none larger than that one in terms of size of people added to the firm. So that was really exciting to see as I think I was a marketing assistant at that time and being a part of what that culture integration looked like and then having an opportunity to learn and understand and really highlight the new services and markets that bolstered our firm and helped push us into something completely different. So that’s another one that was a change that I got to be a part of. And I think we’re still seeing that through today, which is pretty cool.
Katie [00:13:17]:
Let’s unpack something there real quick. So the m and a thing, it’s been part of SSOE’s growth strategy for a number of years, continues to be part of the growth strategy, and I don’t think you’re alone in that camp. I think there are plenty of other AEC firms that are finding that the way that they can grow is really through acquisition. So you’ve got a few behind you now. What are some of the biggest challenges and pitfalls that you’ve seen happen that you would advise people against? What do you think makes for a really seamless, positive transition after the deal is inked? Right? We know that’s outside of marketing’s lane, but the integration is where you sustain the value of what you’ve just acquired or merged with. So what makes that successful?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:14:02]:
Absolutely. And I think one of the challenges is always navigating the change for the employees that we’re adding to our team and understanding what’s meaningful to them in terms of what SSOE can bring them and letting that inform our communications to kind of bring them along as part of our full team. So we spend a lot of time in that early integration phase while externally we’re talking about all the exciting things that we can do together for our clients. There’s a lot of focus on the internal component there and navigating, you know, different cultures at times. We’ve found that especially with some of the smaller firms that we’ve acquired, they’re doing things a little bit differently. So it’s a daunting thing to become a part of a larger firm, but that also comes with enhanced flexibility and different benefit offerings and things that we can kind of rally them around to get excited about joining this new firm and opportunities that they might have for their career. So that’s one of the things that we just have had a big emphasis on making sure that that internal communications is a thoughtful approach and that it’s successful in order to then allow us to kind of bridge these two firms coming together to execute on the projects that we get to talk about externally and all those different opportunities that come with it. So I think that’s one that maybe isn’t always the obvious first thing to be concerned with, but it is one that we have kind of prioritized internally.
Katie [00:15:32]:
Having been part of some of those strategy teams looking at these on paper, they look it’s a bit it’s a business transaction at the end of the day. Right? That’s what it really is. But I feel like the way that the team at SSOE really approaches it is that of understanding there’s people on the other side and wanting to be really mindful in how you communicate the impact of said business transaction on how it’s gonna influence their daily lives. And I know your team does a lot in the lane of internal communications in partnership with your HR team and the m and a integration teams around what benefits look like and training and onboarding and new job descriptions. And, I mean, all of the things that you have to communicate during those really crucial moments in time. And I think the thoughtfulness that you all have shown that takes into account the person goes a really long way at your ability to retain the staff once the transaction is done and keeping them engaged a year to five years down the road. And I think that I wanna give marketing all that credit, but I know there’s more players behind it.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:16:41]:
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s a team effort. And the other thing that I’ll add to that is just having respect for where they’ve been and what they’ve built to date. And from our perspective in marketing and really across an entire team that’s working to integrate a new firm, we wanna act as a partner to that firm and understand what we can learn from them. So we don’t usually come to the table thinking that we’d know it all, but we know that they’ve been successful to get them as far as they came. And so there’s probably something we can learn from them too. So just making sure that that is more of a collaborative discussion rather than it not being.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:17:17]:
And I think that that also plays into how we’ve approached branding and messaging discussions and decisions for m and a transactions too. It’s been helpful in that realm for us to bring in third party unbiased support to help navigate some of those early discussions and to make sure that that’s laid out on the table so we understand the feelings that are involved there.
Katie [00:17:41]:
Yeah.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:17:42]:
Make sure that we’re continuing that respect for what they’ve built and what they’re becoming a part of. So we have SSOE is has historically been a bigger player in the industrial engineering realm. So a few years ago, we made an acquisition to really bolster our architectural presence, and we were integrating a well respected architectural brand, and we needed to build upon that prominence in order to bring some of those services internally. And one of the we were able to use that acquisition as a springboard to win some new work with some of our longtime industrial clients to show them new things that we can do. So that’s been a a really successful acquisition for us and brought a whole suite of services and new markets for us to play in that’s deepened our bench and and been beneficial for our clients too, and internal learning opportunities with that and other things that have come along, but each one is different. So we just have to navigate those things delicately and with a respectful kind of collaborative intent in mind.
Katie [00:18:51]:
Yeah. I think even if you have, like, a m and a playbook, each transaction is different. The culture within those firms are different. There’s always this little nuance. And so realizing that, sure, you may have a playbook, but you’re gonna have to make some modifications and be flexible to that. Let’s talk a little bit about AI. You joined some of our panel discussions at Smartwin this year, and we’ve had some fun projects together all about AI and adopting AI for marketing. So for our listeners that are kinda on the fence on whether or not AI is taking over our jobs or supplemental to our jobs or whether there’s a place or if it’s useful or are we being too reliant on the robots, weigh in a little bit on that from your perspective and maybe share with our listeners the process that you took with your team at SSOE.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:19:46]:
Sure. And I think that all kind of stems from where it started. So our CEO has been a champion for AI since chat GPT was released, and it was on my radar even though we couldn’t use it internally. But that only something that you can’t have only makes you want it more. I think it’s fine. You just have it. Absolutely. So that kind of initially piqued my interest.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:20:10]:
And then I also attended a marketing profs b two b conference, and the keynote speaker there, this was a couple years ago, really prompted my initial interest because it stressed the impact that AI was gonna have on our marketing profession as a whole. And so from there, I just took it upon myself to do some additional learning and exploring. I did a day long course at a university that really explored the different avenues for AI and marketing communications. And the whole time I sat through it, I was like, my whole team needs this. I can’t be the only one who knows this information, and I can’t do all of this myself. So that springboarded me to bring that to my whole team and engage SmartOGs for partnership in developing a training program that would really resonate with the team and show them what’s possible. But I think that we had to work through some different misconceptions in the beginning about what AI could and couldn’t do, not only for my team, but for our company as a whole, as we did eventually move toward adopting Microsoft Copilot as an enterprise, but it’s not replacing jobs, but it can really enhance the product that we deliver. And those that use it are gonna have a leg up on the competition, and that’s the foundation that we built with my team.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:21:26]:
And I think knowing that as well as you don’t have to be a prompt engineer to be successful with it, but understanding different things that do work or seeing different ways that it can be applied that are very applicable to your role or your day to day, what you’re working on, was really impactful and resonated with my team. And I think that’s what I saw initially, and that’s what I tried to translate for them and the different trainings that we’ve done, and we continue to use it today. So it’s been pretty exciting to see that evolve and grow.
Katie [00:21:58]:
When you went through that training, were there any, like, misconceptions that you had or your team had about AI use in marketing that you debunked and now you’ve got people that are advocates for? Or walk us through maybe some of those takeaways.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:22:16]:
I think it was probably just the fear of the unknown. I don’t know how to use this. I don’t know what it’s gonna do for me, but when we are able to really break down that training and show specific use case examples. So, okay, I’m looking to write a press release and we made a strategic hire. Here’s their resume. Here’s the information. This is what a standard press release from us looks like. How can you help me get this draft off the ground? What questions should I be develop optimized social media posts across our different platforms.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:22:53]:
And being able to just see how easy that is to give you a start. It’s not perfect. It still needs human interaction. It still needs someone who knows about the subject matter at hand to impact that or influence it in different ways, but but it gives you a starting point. And I think once we were able to show the team that it was that much easier to not have a blank piece of paper or just as an idea generator, I think that’s when we had some light bulb moments. And that’s really what has driven my team to continue using it today is they’ve seen what it can do, and they’ve seen how that can impact what they’re working on every day. And it’s exciting. So it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great.
Katie [00:23:35]:
Well, I mean, I think we kinda have the mindset of, think of it like you have fresh out of school intern with no work experience, have a conversation with it. And what I found to be really helpful is using it to make me more educated to have conversation. So if I’m gonna go in and interview my subject matter expert so that I could get some quotes to put in a press release I’m working on, I can have a conversation with my AI tool on educate me on the state of semiconductor development in The United States. Who are the top players? What are the trends? Why does that matter? Who are the biggest buyers? And I can go back and forth so that then when I’ve asked the subject matter expert for their time, I can be very thoughtful in how I want to phrase the questions, and I’m not wasting their time asking things that I could easily find. And I think it helps bring a lot of credibility to the marketer as well, being able to be prepared and better prepared in those scenarios.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:24:31]:
So I think it’s fair
Katie [00:24:32]:
to stay. I think those of us that are finding ways to work with it are working smarter, and it’s not the scenario where we’re getting it to do the work for us, but helping us think about it and maybe go from, like you said, a blank page to a starting point, especially when you’re in those tight deadline scenarios and going back and forth. I wanna pivot to one other topic that you kinda mentioned early on in your role of director of marketing. You’re you kinda have your hand in everything. And one big portion of that is this whole, like, content creation engine that’s your brand communications team. So everything that’s going out on the web, all of your PR, all of your social, you’ve got all of this video that you’re creating, and you’re doing it across markets and geographies and languages in some scenarios. So how do you make sure everybody understands, hey, this is SSOE. This is our brand communications platform.
Katie [00:25:31]:
This is what we stand for. So everything we’re producing, we need to be on message here. How do you ensure that that happens with an organization as big and diverse as y’all are?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:25:41]:
Yeah. I think that’s an interesting question. And the more I think about it, we have ways that we do it. I think that they could be better, but I’ll share what we have. And, you know, we have brand guidelines that outline the kind of tone and style and visual elements of SSOES communications just really help with that consistency. It’s not as robustly documented as maybe you might think or that you made us seem, but I feel like that continues to evolve organically as we grow, which could just be a testament to our team and the collaboration that we have there. Our marketing communications team really they’re talking about the different things that they’re doing. They’re having each other review to make sure that we all feel like this is in line with what we should be presenting as SSOE and sharing examples and meetings of things that, you know, one person has created because they’re working on something completely different than another.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:26:38]:
And I think that helps kinda bridge that gap between what you’re doing and what another person is doing and helps foster that unified brand approach across the different channels or mediums that we’re working in. It really just helps to have that collaboration and conversation so that we can, make sure that what we’re presenting to the world is consistent. And that’s the key there.
Katie [00:27:02]:
I like it. I love your brand, being able to partner with you guys and help kinda bring it to life through trade show activations and whatnot. The red is very eye catching.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:27:12]:
Right? I feel like to the red.
Katie [00:27:15]:
In our industry, I kinda get nose blind to all the blues. Right? Because everybody loves blue, and blue conveys trust and loyalty and not a not a great color theorist. I get it. But when you’re in a trade show floor and everybody else has all of these pictures and stuff, and what y’all do is so technical, you can’t use photos, and you’ve got the big red that they we it it does draw attention, and it’s really strong. And your team does know it inside and out because they’ll tell us. They’ve told me and my team when we haven’t used the right font before on, like, a mock up.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:27:48]:
No. They know. Yes. Everybody’s pretty aligned with that. And there were a number of years where we try we we kinda strayed from the red for a while. We used some other primary colors to communicate, and a couple years ago, we didn’t comprehensively go through a total rebranding exercise, but we did redefine some of those parameters where we were saying, yes. We’re definitely gonna lean into the red. We’re gonna have some other supporting accent colors, but that’s what’s gonna differentiate us, and that’s what people need to recognize when they’re thinking about SSOV.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:28:19]:
So I think that has transformed over the past couple years, and it’s a lot stronger than it was maybe previously when you see that that’s us. So
Katie [00:28:27]:
So I’m gonna do a quick little rapid fire questions as we get towards the end of our chat. So I’m gonna ask you to look into your crystal ball. What trends do you think are gonna shape AEC marketing in the next few months or years?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:28:44]:
Well, we talked about AI. That’s the immediate first one that comes to mind. So I think not only driving efficiency, but it’s gonna help us personalize content and improve client engagement there too. We’re gonna have different ways to reach target audiences. We’ve explored different things over the past year and a half that you didn’t know were possible in the more recent past geofencing. You can exactly who’s who’s where and what they’re doing and capture them through things like geofencing opportunities for digital advertising, Meet them where they are later and remind them who SSOE is or who your firm is. Continuing to kind of have targeted messages toward audiences is something that is only gonna get more sophisticated in the future. So all of those things that excite me about new things that we’ve been able to try and have seen some success with, I don’t know what else is next, but I can only imagine it’s gonna be better than what it is today.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:29:43]:
So that excites me to be honest.
Katie [00:29:46]:
Okay. You lead a really high performing team. What is one piece of advice you have for other marketing leaders that you feel like has helped you encourage creativity and collaboration across your team?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:29:58]:
One thing I think makes our team high performing is that we’ve tapped into people’s individual strengths, and we’ve given them an opportunity to grow and develop in different ways with that. We talked a little bit in the beginning about the traditional kind of career path within marketing, and we have done different things there. We know that we need some exceptional individual contributors, and we need to let them keep impacting things in marketing so that we can continue to push the needle. And so we’ve developed some different career paths, and we just really try to tap into the strengths of our team. Not every person is the same, so embracing those differences and using them to our advantage.
Katie [00:30:36]:
Okay. And then what advice do you have for our listeners today that are sitting within the marketing department of an AEC firm that are really wanting to make a difference in their organization? Like, you were able to achieve growth through professional growth and different achieving different positions within SSO. You certainly have the ear of your CEO and the partnership with them. What advice do you have to others that seek that?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:31:05]:
Embracing learning and staying updated is a really easy way to continue to make sure you’re always evolving your skill set and learning different things. So whether it’s raising your hand to attend a conference or listening to different podcasts or newsletters to subscribe to within the industries or markets that you’re serving, just so you can be at the forefront of what’s happening and have that to be able to impact the things that you’re creating. And then I think it’s also really important to always develop your communication skills. So having the ability to clearly articulate ideas and collaborate both within your team, but then within the greater organization is also crucial.
Katie [00:31:46]:
Yeah. I think some early advice I got in my career is I went to school for marketing. So in theory, I should understand the basics of marketing theory, but what I really needed to learn was the business of design and construction. And so when I’m subscribing to newsletters, I’m often subscribing to, like, commercial real estate news or industrial news and logistics magazine, and I’m trying to understand the markets and the clients that my clients serve. It’s not too much that I’m subscribing to a bunch of marketing things. I do do that. But I often find that I need to better understand the business in which my organization is operating in so that I can then overlay marketing tactics there. And sometimes I feel like marketing professionals in our space just stay in the marketing realm, and they don’t get exposure to how does an engineer make money, or what part of the process does commissioning happen, or what is a project delivery system to really understand how that influences how you communicate about something in a proposal, in a press release, even on social media and having that context is really helpful.
Katie [00:32:54]:
So those are easy, free things that listeners can do today is subscribe to those newsletters. Most of them are free. Follow those people or organizations on social media. I love your idea of raise your hand, go to a conference. If there’s something happening locally, go to it. Experience what it’s like to go and work a booth and understand how do you get traffic to the booth? How do you make sure that people have a a pleasant experience when they’re interacting with the brand? If someone’s speaking, go and listen and learn about what they’re talking about. Maybe sit in on those continuing education lunch and learns and learn a little bit more about building envelope or those really sexy things that we often learn about in our space. Makes you really fun at parties and really good on a trivia team to to collect.
Carrie Gonzalez [00:33:40]:
It’s true.
Katie [00:33:41]:
It’s all that crazy information. Carrie, this has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, sharing your stories. For listeners that might want to learn more about SSOE, maybe your work, what you guys do, what’s the best way for them to find your organization?
Carrie Gonzalez [00:33:58]:
Best way to find our organization is either on our social media platforms. LinkedIn is the one we’re most active on, and then Facebook and Instagram. You can also go to our website, ss0e.com, and I’m also available for any questions. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.
Katie [00:34:14]:
Carrie’s a good connection, so listeners do connect with her. She’s a really good, good networker. So I think I just wanna leave everybody today with a final thought around marketing and AEC is more than just proposals. It is about strategy. It’s about storytelling. It is about driving change because we’re in a constant state of change. And Carrie is proof that great marketing leaders don’t just follow trends or just fall in line, but they create them and they find ways to create opportunity and create a path forward. And so if you’ve enjoyed today’s conversation, be sure you subscribe.
Katie [00:34:49]:
Make sure you leave us a review. Do connect with Carrie and follow SSOE online. And until then, keep up with your smart marketing. Thanks, everyone. AEC Marketing for Principles is presented by Smartergies, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 02/2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior VP at Smartergies. I would love to hear from you. If you have a question, a guest request, or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to [email protected].
Katie [00:35:28]:
And if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast page at smartages.com/podcast. We hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues about our show and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.
