Marketers Take Flight

146: Performance Goal Examples for AEC Marketing Departments

• Lindsay Diven • Episode 146

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🎯 Setting SMART performance goals in AEC marketing? Dive into this episode where I unpack the art of creating Measurable Performance Goals. 📈 

Discover why hit rates & proposals don't always reflect true success and explore alternative metrics that can. 💡 From organizing information to tracking website traffic, get ready for actionable examples of goals related to pursuits, marketing communication, graphic design, and more. 🖌️ 

Tune in for some bonus SMART goal examples to elevate your team's performance and prepare for a career boost with our upcoming episode on salary negotiation tips. 💼 


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Speaker 1:

Hey there, I'm Lindsay Diven and I'm passionate about everything marketing, productivity and career growth. With over 17 years of experience in the architecture, engineering and construction industry, I know firsthand the ins and outs of this exciting field, from my early days as a marketing coordinator to becoming an award-winning marketing professional. In firm principle, I've learned the ropes through countless late nights and challenging deadlines. Now I'm thrilled to bring you the AEC Marketing Strategies Podcast. Here I'll be sharing simple yet powerful, step-by-step marketing strategies that you can implement to achieve the same level of success. Consider me your go-to marketing mentor, someone who truly gets the unique challenges you face in the AEC industry. Whether you're an AEC Marketing Pro or industry newbie, this podcast is your personal coffee date with your marketing bestie. Together, we'll navigate the ever-changing landscape of online marketing and digital trends, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. If you're ready to unlock the marketing secrets they never taught you in college and tailor them specifically to the AEC industry, then you're in the right place. Now let's get started. It's that time of year again performance review time, and this time affects everyone, from marketing managers, who have to measure the performance of their teams, to individuals that do self-evaluations and attend performance review meetings. Part of this process includes reviewing your goals and accomplishments for the current year, but also includes goal setting for the next year, and this may include identifying performance goals for yourself or for your employees, and we've all probably heard by now that our goals should be smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. However, crafting smart performance goals for AEC marketers isn't always easy. Performance goals should both push the individual's professional development as well as align with the goals of your firm, and this is why it can be difficult to write those goals for ourselves and for our employees. Over the years, I've asked many marketing managers and researched other industries to try to craft measurable goals for my team while meeting the strategic goals for my firm. So in this episode, I want to help make this process easier for you and your manager. It's loaded with information about the different ways you can quantify your marketing activities and success, and I give you exact examples of smart performance goals towards the end of the episode that are related to pursuits, that are related to marketing and communications and that are even graphic design related. So you'll want to make sure you listen to the end of this episode to get those examples that you can use for your own performance goals or your team's performance goals. So let's dig right into today's episode.

Speaker 1:

A widely used metric in our AEC firms is our firm's win rate or hit rate, and these are generally measured by taking the number of wins divided by the total number of proposals. If you want to dig deeper into hit rates, I've linked up an article that walks you through how to calculate hit rates at your firm and you can find it over at the show notes page over at marketerstakeflightcom, forward slash 2626. And because hit rates are so widely used, I have seen firms use similar metrics like new contracts, new sales or new leads as performance goals for marketers. However, I don't think it's fair to tie sales or new contract wins directly to a marketer's performance. While you do play a critical part in the proposal process, the contract award is the result of the entire pursuit team's efforts, including business development, technical or operations professionals and marketing. And also, what if your firm doesn't submit that many proposals throughout the year? Your work may mostly be negotiated work, repeat work or on-call or IDIQ type contracts.

Speaker 1:

So chances are, if you're not working most of your time on competitive proposals, then you are focused on other marketing activities. What are those marketing strategies you are currently implementing or should be implementing. Can you turn those activities into quantifiable measurements so you can track performance and success? And if you're not sure, just stay with me. You'll definitely have some ideas to quantify your marketing activities by the end of this episode. So let's talk about new leads. Can your performance as a marketer be based on new leads for your firm? Well, the answer is yes and no. If you look at marketing professionals in other B2B and B2C industries, like software, marketers' performances are often directly measured on qualified leads they pass to sales. Now, if your AEC firm has a robust lead-generating engine, then it might be fair to give your marketing team some realistic lead generation goals. However, if your firm doesn't have this or doesn't have it yet, then it won't be fair to measure the marketer's performance on leads generated, but may consider other metrics. So let's get to those other metrics, shall we?

Speaker 1:

First up is information organization. Information is key to positioning and differentiating your firm. Not only information about what your firm does, but information about clients, projects and competitors. How this is organized and made easily available to those who need it in your firm when they need it is critical in our marketplace today. So take a look at how your information is currently stored and accessed. Can it be improved? Can you gain efficiencies in how you collect, store and access information you use for your pursuits, your proposals and other marketing activities? This type of information organization can be quantified. Examples may include configuring a new database or a filing system on your server.

Speaker 1:

And speaking of information organization, let's talk resumes and project information. Having up-to-date and easily available project history and employee experience is vital to a successful marketing department. How many project sheets and or resumes did your team create or update? You can set a goal for a regular frequency of creating new and updating existing information. Then measure against that goal and, just like proposals, you can consider maybe new brochures and qualification packages in your goal setting. Ask yourself did your firm add a new service or market sector? Did you update outdated marketing materials? These materials convey your firm's story that differentiates your firm in the marketplace. You can quantify both the volume of new materials created as well as the value of your firm's any other impact they may have caused, such as return emails, follow-up meetings scheduled, etc. And if these qualifications packages are electronic, how can you incorporate tracking links, maybe using Adobe InDesign or other PDF viewers like Issue or those magazine kind of flip websites. They allow you to see who opens or clicks on links inside the qualification packages. So that was information organization, information management.

Speaker 1:

Now, another area which has pretty much been a bust for 2020 has been is typically conferences. You know, most in-person conferences for 2020 have been cancelled and some are already being cancelled for 2021 or gone virtual. So, whether we ever go back to in-person events or even with virtual events, you can quantify the conference or the event follow-up. We and you probably spend a lot of time and resources preparing for and attending these events, both in-person and virtual, and then, when everybody, quote-unquote, gets back to the office or the event is over, a lot of times the follow-up gets lost. How can marketing, how can you in marketing, help turn the follow-up process or the follow-up phase into success? What would that phase even look like? It wouldn't be reasonable to expect a contract directly from a conference or a virtual event. But what should we expect? You could measure the number of leads collected, the number of leads entered into your CRM or your database, number of follow-up emails, phone calls and even number of meetings scheduled from the conference. These can all be tracked and measured and, at the very least you can compare conference to conference in year over year to help you evaluate the return on your investment, and it will be interesting to measure year over year or in-person conference versus the virtual event. It'll be interesting to start seeing those comparison.

Speaker 1:

Now let's turn to more quote-unquote traditional marketing metrics, and one that a lot of us are familiar with is website traffic. If your marketing team is responsible for updating and maintaining your firm's website, I would go beyond just reporting general traffic. General website traffic alone doesn't really mean anything. You have to make it relative. Do you want to grow the traffic? If so, what percentage of growth? And how are you going to attract more visitors to your site? You can then measure and report month to month or quarter to quarter, if you're growing, by the percentage of growth you're aiming for and where those you know and the method you're using to attract more visitors. You can report on those. And then there is not only visitors, but do you want your visitors to your website to do something on your website? Examples can maybe be watching a video, providing an email address in exchange for a case study download or applying for an open job position. Once you identify your goal for your website traffic, then you can evaluate how you are making it easy for your website visitors to take those actions. You can track and report on those actions, and the best thing that that happens is when you start tracking you start to see results, both good and bad and then you can adjust your strategies accordingly. Now I could do an entire series on website traffic and digital marketing strategies, and that might be coming in the future.

Speaker 1:

We're just scratching the surface on today's episode. So too many of us just do this work and forget about the value these type of activities bring to our firm. Think about the last three, four, five assignments or tasks you've worked on. How can you quantify the volume or the effect or the impact it's had for your firm? And let me know your ideas over on the show notes page over at marketerstakeflightcom. Okay, so hopefully that gave you some ideas of how to start quantifying the work you're already doing or want to do next year.

Speaker 1:

Now let's boil it down into some smart performance goals. Remember that smart stands for smart goals which are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time based. You just can't, you can't just be measurable and time based. They have to be specific, attainable and realistic. The realistic part is why I don't necessarily like to make performance goals on new sales specifically for marketing staff. It's just not realistic because so many other folks in our firm are involved BD, technical staff, et cetera. They're involved in the whole pursuit and proposal process. So, anyways, I'll get off my soapbox now and get to the good stuff. Let me share some examples of smart goals for AEC marketers, and I'm gonna go through the examples and I'm gonna group them by different areas of a typical marketing department. And I wouldn't recommend giving all of these goals to one person, but wanted a way to group them somehow, especially since we are on the podcast and I can't just display a list.

Speaker 1:

So first let's start with some pursuit related smart goals. So one example could be develop capture plans for all your must win pursuits by the end of quarter one, update them at least quarterly so you can see there it's very specific, time bound and relative to you know, in supporting your firm's strategic plans. Another example could be conduct at least one quality control, peer review of a proposal or presentation outside of your market or office each month. Now, this is very valuable if you have a big marketing team and so you have several marketing coordinators or senior coordinators that are assigned specific offices or markets and you want to, you know, keep them. You wanna have them do peer review and even though they might be assigned one market, you still want them to, you know, just kind of know what's going on in other markets. So this is a really good goal for that. Another pursuit related goal could be lead at least one proposal debrief per quarter, and, whether you win or lose, I love that goal. Another goal example could be identify your market's top 10 projects that you use in your proposals by quarter one, update all that project information for those top 10 projects by quarter two and enter them or upload them into your firm's database by quarter three. So I like this one because this goes back to that information, organization and management. Okay, so those were some pursuit related smart goals.

Speaker 1:

Now let's talk about marketing communication related smart goals. So one example could be develop and implement at least one traditional or online marketing campaign for your assigned market in 2021. The campaign plan should be written by quarter one and implemented by the end of quarter three. Another example could be coordinate, including writing, if necessary, at least three blog posts for your office or market in 2021, with the first one completed by quarter two, and so I like this. When you have multiple, like three blog posts, I like having saying you know the first one completed by this. That way, not all three blog posts come out in December.

Speaker 1:

Another example could be develop report metrics for online marketing campaigns by quarter one. Now, if you have online marketing campaigns or digital marketing campaigns, then this is relevant. Another example could be implement content slash online marketing training program for marketing coordinators, market sector leads and key project managers by quarter two. This includes one marketing campaign per market sector, to be completed in 2021. So this is really helpful if you have a marketing or a communications manager or director that's solely responsible for your online marketing. This is part education internally and then part execution. Another example goal could be develop system to capture traffic from website and transmit potential leads to business developers by Q one quarter one. So this is again if you have some lead generating marketing strategies in place. You know this is a little bit more of an advanced goal.

Speaker 1:

And then another example for marketing communications related goals are could be increase website traffic and email subscriptions by 25% by the end of 2021. And so I like this. It's pretty broad. It doesn't say like what kind of website traffic? But it is saying, you know, we don't want. It's giving specific by 25%. So it's not just saying, oh, we need to increase website traffic. We're going to put a goal around it. We don't really know what it is right now, so you can get a baseline and then you increase it by 25%. This is a good goal to start. If this is the year you're starting to actually do inbound marketing or online marketing to drive people to your website, so that is a good goal. And I've used this goal in the past and we just didn't know what the growth would be. So we just kind of arbitrarily picked 25% and we just evaluated it each quarter to see if we were like way under or way over and um, and adjusted accordingly.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about graphics related or performance goals for graphic designers. This was always my hardest area to develop goals in, so I really leaned on my network and other industries for this. So some goals related to graphic design or graphic design professionals could be um. One example could be identify one new graphics related technology or trend and educate the marketing team by the end of quarter two. Another example could be create a new market or office or service line fact sheet design by quarter one. Create a new resume template design by quarter two develop a creative holiday card or holiday campaign by quarter three. And then, last example could be attend at least one workshop or conference related to graphic design trends by quarter four and report your findings back to the marketing team.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so another area that marketing tends to play in in a firm is business development support, um, and so that could be planning business development, coaching business development, doing business development, um. So if that is part of your job or your department, some examples of perform a smart performance goals could be example one lead the annual business development planning process for your assigned market or assigned market or geographic region. Um plans need to be ready to present to the board of directors or principals or executives by December. One Another example could be attend three to four conferences or networking events related to your assigned market, industry, geographic area by quarter three. Again, this one might be a little bit more difficult in 2021, um to attend in person events, but, as some of us are finding the virtual events are way easier to attend.

Speaker 1:

And then last are stretch goals, and I love stretch goals. These are really to stretch the person. When I was a manager, to stretch each individual person professionally like stretch them out of their comfort zone and beyond their job their quote unquote day to day job, and so my first stretch goals examples were manage and implement one new marketing initiative in the current year and as a department we identified two to three to four big marketing initiatives each year and then each of our marketing coordinators would pick the one that they gravitated towards and they would lead that initiative. So let me give you examples of some of the bigger like marketing department initiatives. So one was to implement our client feedback process, and so we had a senior marketing coordinator who was like the project manager for that and helped orchestrate that internally. We had another senior coordinator who was very heavily creative and design oriented and so she set up all of our new resume templates and our merge templates out of vision. So she led that initiative and so those were like big initiatives and they would spearhead them. They were like the project managers of those initiatives and I tried to align them with their personal interests, to stretch them a little bit. So I love stretch goals. So that's one example.

Speaker 1:

Another example of a stretch goal is to develop and conduct proposal, storyboarding and writing training sessions for your marketing coordinators and technical proposal writers by quarter two, let's say. So who couldn't need more help with writing? We all can help, need help with writing, persuasive writing, and so if you have somebody on your team or you're personally interested in writing, go and attend some training and then teach internally and so just stretch goals are kind of a little bit more personal, focused to stretch the person, but still somewhat align with what the firm needs and the department needs. Now I think a good number of goals for each person is somewhere between three to five goals and if they're big enough and they have to be big goals, and big I mean stretches the person beyond their current capabilities while meeting the firm's goals. So I don't like it when people come to me and they have 10 goals because either they're too small and their tasks right, or they should just be on their to-do list or so that they have 10 and they're small, or they have 10 and they're just never gonna achieve them. So it makes the performance review at the end of the year just a little disappointing, and we use the goals in determining pay raises and bonuses.

Speaker 1:

So I was very conscious of let's do what we think can be achievable. Maybe a little that makes us feel uncomfortable and try to stretch ourselves because they got evaluated on them. So just be cognizant of that and how that is applied at your firm. So I hope these examples give you some ideas to start developing smart goals for yourself or for your marketing team. And if you want even more help with even more examples of goals for every position in a typical AEC marketing department, from marketing assistant to director, graphics, bd and communications go over and check out my marketing recruiters starter kit over at marketerstakeflightcom forward slash, recruit or find the link in my show notes. And the starter kit includes a guide, instructions, resources and swipe files including 30 plus measurable performance goals for each level and function, again, of a typical AEC marketing department, and each performance goal is based on the smart goal setting principles I described in today's episode. Okay, so I've shared with you some ways you can quantify marketing success and some specific performance goal examples for your marketing department. Do you have any other measurable performance goals that you have come across or you've used that are specific to AEC marketers? Let me know if any of these ideas I've shared with you today generate any new ideas for your own use, and I would love to hear what you come up with. So leave those ideas. Whether you've used them in the past or you came up with some new ideas, leave them over at the show notes page over at marketerstakeflightcom.

Speaker 1:

Forward, slash, forward, slash. Two, six, cause we love learning from each other. And in just a few episodes I'm gonna be bringing on a guest to talk about how to ask for a salary increase or promotion, even during these COVID times. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss that episode. And a lot of it starts with goals. So it's, you know. I think it's gonna be in two episodes. So, okay, until next week. Bye for now.

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Lindsay Diven, CPSM

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