Strategic marketing for AEC firms starts with a simple discipline: understanding the business before producing the deliverable. Katie sits down with Kevin Johnson, Senior Director of Marketing and Sales Enablement at H.J. Russell & Company, to talk about what it actually takes to build a marketing function that operations leaders trust enough to bring in early. Kevin shares the mindset shift that changed how his team operates, moving from "make this for us" requests to a real seat at the table, and why that shift only happens through relationships, not mandates.

Kevin sees marketing and sales as working toward the same goal. Marketing helps build awareness and gives seller-doers the tools and messaging they need to have stronger conversations with clients. But that connection also has to happen internally. Kevin talks about the importance of understanding what operations and technical leaders are dealing with every day, from managing risk and protecting margins to handling urgent job site issues. When marketing understands those pressures, it becomes much easier to get their attention, earn their trust, and work together more effectively.

Kevin shares a firsthand look at what it takes to introduce a CRM into an established AEC firm that had never used one before. Instead of rolling it out across the company all at once, his team started small, built the system behind the scenes, and introduced it gradually. As people began to see the value, adoption grew naturally, eventually reaching about 70 percent utilization in a year and a half. He describes the process as “crawl, walk, run” and connects it to another leadership principle he follows: fire bullets, then cannonballs. Start small, test what works, prove the value, and then make the bigger investment once you know you are headed in the right direction.

Marketing as a growth partner is the vision Kevin closes on, urging AEC firms to stop treating marketing as a production shop that simply executes requests and start treating it as a genuine growth partner that helps generate leads, strengthen client relationships, and hit the firm's financial goals. For any marketing or business development leader working to build trust between departments, this conversation offers a clear, tested path forward.

Key Takeaways

• Strategic marketing starts with understanding the business first. Learn the firm's goals and pipeline before producing deliverables, so requests shift from "make this for us" to "here's what we're trying to do."
• Marketing and sales enablement function best as one growth strategy. Marketing builds the content and positioning; seller-doers put it directly into clients' hands.
• Introducing a CRM, or any new system, works better as a crawl, walk, run process. Build quietly, prove value in small wins, then scale adoption once trust is established.
• Understanding an internal client's day-to-day world, their deadlines, risk, and pressure, leads to more collaborative requests and faster responses than transactional asks.
• The goal is for AEC firms to see marketing as a growth partner that helps generate leads and grow the business, not just a production shop that fulfills orders

Connect with Kevin Johnson

Sr. Director Marketing & Sales Enablement, H. J. Russell & Company

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-johnson-91046814/

https://www.hjrussell.com/

Connect with Katie Cash:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kacash/

https://smartegies.com/

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Project management in AEC firms generally doesn't go beyond the technical aspects of the business, such as schedules, budgets, and quality controls that keep a building on track. Marketing rarely gets the same discipline. Even though marketing teams juggle their own budgets, deadlines, and quality standards every week. Listen in as Katie Cash talks with Meredith Schroeder, Director of Operations at Smartegies, about why AEC marketing departments need real project management systems, not just good intentions and a color-coded whiteboard.

Marketing workflow visibility comes up early as the clearest sign that a team has outgrown its current systems. Meredith shares the telltale signs of a reactive marketing department: missed deadlines, last-minute requests, and no single place to see the full workload, and explains why a new tool or process document rarely fixes the problem on its own. She and Katie also dig into proposal management, tracing what it takes to coordinate a dozen internal contributors who do not report to marketing while chasing a must-win RFP deadline that never moves.

AEC marketing operations round out the conversation with a practical look at staffing versus workflow problems, and how time tracking data can show whether a team truly needs more people or simply needs better prioritization. Meredith closes with her five core project management practices: creating alignment early, building timelines around reality, making it easy for others to contribute, making the work visible, and owning the deliverable, along with her top tip for listeners: start before you start.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing departments deliver against budgets, schedules, and quality standards just like technical teams, and benefit from the same project management discipline.
• Reactive, last-minute work is usually a visibility problem, not a staffing problem. Get the full workload in one place before deciding you need to hire.
• Internal clients respond better to specific, well-resourced requests than to vague asks dropped on short notice.
• Time tracking by task, not by a single daily bucket, reveals where a marketing team's hours actually go and whether workload is balanced fairly.
• Meredith's five practices: create alignment early, build timelines around reality, make it easy for others to contribute, make the work visible, and own the deliverable.

Connect with Meredith Schroeder

Director of Operations, Smartegies

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mer-schroeder/

https://smartegies.com/

Resources Mentioned in Episode:

• SmartSkills Session: *you do have to have a subscription or pay to hear this webinar* https://www.bigmarker.com/smartegies/smartskills-work-smarter-not-harder

Connect with Katie Cash:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kacash/

https://smartegies.com/

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts:

We hope you’re finding value in our AEC Marketing For Principals. Your feedback is important to us, and we’d love to hear from you.

Here’s how you can help. Scroll to the bottom, rate our podcast with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Let us know what you found most helpful from this episode!

And if you haven’t done so already, give the podcast a follow, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.