Guidance for AEC Industry Marketing Coordinators
Marketing plans require hours and hours of research, input, evaluation, and company resources to complete. Usually, this effort ends up collecting dust on a shelf or lost on the server as proposal deadlines and interview rehearsals take over our day-to-day focus. As a marketing coordinator, you can become a valuable team member by prioritizing the marketing plan and helping to make the goals measurable. Without measurable goals, your team members have no way of knowing whether your marketing efforts are worthwhile. Think of it like planning a trip. To know when you’ve arrived, you need to select a destination first and then find a map and route that can lead you to this destination. Otherwise, you would be traveling aimlessly.
There’s another word for that: getting lost. If the management team asks the marketing team, “How are our efforts progressing?”, would you want to report that you don’t know? Of course not. You’d like to show you have a clear plan, one that’s held accountable to hard numbers and actions. Fortunately, setting goals doesn’t have to be complicated.
What are marketing goals?
Your marketing goal should be a specific, measurable, aspirational, realistic, and time-bound metric that drives every marketing effort.
Why is goal-setting important?
Setting goals leads to greater success. According to Mareo McCracken, “goals provide clarity.” Without this roadmap, we can wander from task to task without a clear direction. With established goals in place, we can construct a strategy to achieve them.
Make your AEC Marketing Goals SMART
SMART stands for specific, measurable, aspirational, realistic, and time-bound:
- Specific: Your goal must focus on one clearly defined metric.
- Measurable: You must have a way to measure the objective and task you define against that metric.
- Aspirational: Your goal must push you beyond the results you can achieve easily and generate progress toward that metric.
- Realistic: In the same breath, keep your aspiration in check with what you can reasonably complete with the resources that are (or will be) available to you.
- Time-bound: Your goal must have a start and end dates upon which you will achieve that metric.
What is your role?
Marketing coordinators are crucial in making sure the plan has metrics that gauge progress. As you communicate the overall program progress to your team, you will influence the right behavior, which often produces the right results.
For more specific ideas on creating a measurable AEC marketing plan, please review our article Begin with the End in Mind – Create a Measurable Marketing Plan.
