Society for Marketing Professional Services - Florida Chapters

By Katie Batill-Bigler, CPSM PATEL, GREENE AND ASSOCIATES, LLC

STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE: A Guide to Staffing an Appropriately Sized Marketing Team

As Florida’s metropolitan areas continue to expand and even bleed into one another, the list of projects demanded by both the private and public sectors grows. Agencies, developers, architects, engineers, and contractors all face the challenge of securing the necessary resources to deliver these projects to the public.

Hiring and retaining qualified staff is a burden we struggle to overcome. Florida has an undeniable talent deficit, including licensed professionals, skilled laborers and technically trained support staff, such as marketers.

THE GOLDEN RATIO

Various surveys over the years have reported a consistent figure; on average, marketing staff account for about 3% of most AEC firms’ total employment. That works out to about one marketing professional for every 33 to 35 staff members.

Many firms fall short of this ratio, and even those that do meet it can face chronic issues with employee burnout amongst their marketing team(s). According to seasoned AEC marketer Jen McGovern, CPSM, in her educational session, You Can’t Say that in Marketing, the average tenure of a marketer in the AEC industry is only two years. That is largely because marketers are often expected to handle an inappropriately extensive workload, and staff are often kept at “skeleton crew” numbers.

The roles of marketing staff vary widely from firm to firm. Some are exclusively focused on supporting efforts to secure new work. Others handle varying degrees of business development, company culture initiatives, recruiting, corporate communications, etc.

In practice, SMPS agrees that 3% represents an acceptable bare minimum for traditional marketing services and that an appropriate range is generally between 3-5% of a firm’s total staff. However, the more roles assigned to a marketing team, the higher that percentage should be to enable the team to specialize and adequately disperse the workload. While the term “marketing” can encompass many different and critical responsibilities that every firm depends upon to succeed and grow, it does not mean that any single marketer should be expected to perform all, or even most, of those responsibilities.

SMPS publications, including Markendium and Blueprints 3.0, can provide detailed breakdowns of the appropriate marketing roles that a firm should strive to fulfill at different stages of growth.

RETENTION

Universities and colleges across Florida churn out engineers every year, and vocational schools train CAD designers, surveyors and construction workers—men and women complete those programs with a relatively clear understanding of the field they will find themselves in come graduation.

While many schools have marketing degree programs, none introduce a career path in AEC marketing. That means that marketing professionals who enter this industry by chance are specially trained on the job and possess unique areas of expertise worthy of our protection.

Firm leaders must be as cognizant of the risk of burnout in support staff as much as any “technical” team member. With the appropriate levels of support and staff, marketing can consistently deliver the vital support necessary to win work and grow—enabling their firms to support Florida’s growth.

RECRUITMENT

As discussed, the pool of qualified AEC marketing candidates is shallow, but existing and developing avenues exist to reach available talent.

Every SMPS chapter in Florida offers a job board through their website visible to members. Firms are encouraged to advertise marketing-related positions through their local chapters to reach the most qualified pool of candidates.

Some chapters, including SMPS Tampa Bay, are building inroads with area universities to introduce and educate students about career opportunities in AEC marketing. The goal is to develop a steady stream of eager young talent to fuel our growing industry and our growing firms.

REACHING THE RATIO

When assessing what Florida’s growth means for the growth of your firm, keep in mind that with every new project manager hired, and every new service line introduced, an added weight is put on your marketing staff to support additional proposals and promote new capabilities to clients.

By maintaining open lines of communication with your marketing staff, you can monitor attitudes about workload to prevent burnout and identify when it’s appropriate to scale up the team. Beyond that, it can help identify opportunities for expansion into new areas of specialization within your marketing team, ultimately supporting your firm’s overall goals, growth and longterm success.