TZL 1554

5

FROM THE FOUNDER

More marketing involvement

I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day where the author (rightly) pointed out how marketing people are typically relegated to working on only the promotion aspect of the “four Ps” that make up the firm’s “marketing mix.” This is certainly true for firms in our industry. AEC firms that restrict their marketing leader’s role greatly impact their success and that of the company.

Mark Zweig

As a refresher for those of you who forgot your “Marketing 101” course in college, the four Ps are price, product, physical distribution or “place,” and promotion. How a business manipulates those variables determines your “marketing recipe” and ultimate success. And yet, we tend to restrict our marketing leader’s role to promotion, and not get their involvement in any of these other areas that greatly impact their success and/or that of the company. Why, you may ask? I think there are several reasons, including: 1. There is a lack of respect for marketing people in general from technical or design professionals. I have been fighting this battle for years. For whatever reason, many technical and design professionals don’t understand or believe

there is a body of knowledge on marketing just like there is for their discipline. 2. The marketing people firms have in place may not have a broad enough business background to contribute in these other areas. Many of these folks came up through communications or graphic design backgrounds and they don’t have wide-ranging business knowledge, and are therefore not sought out for input on anything beyond promotion. 3. There’s fear that getting marketing’s involvement could rock the boat and make things more difficult. Maybe marketing will want to lower prices to make a project less profitable?

See MARK ZWEIG, page 6

THE ZWEIG LETTER SEPTEMBER 23, 2024, ISSUE 1554

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