BuiltEnvironment

The need for good writing in marketing materials

I have served four times as a juror for SMPS National's Marketing Communications Awards program, serving on the committee that reviewed pursuit programs (including SOQs, proposals and other print and digital submittals) three times. In all three such committee assignments, I was often amazed at the wonderful creativity of design concepts, and the high quality of graphics and photography in the documents. At the same time, I was often quite appalled at the low quality of writing—the misspellings, incorrect punctuation, poor sentence structure, lack of clarity in descriptions of projects and their individual components—in some of those entries.

While great images can often make a winner out of a second rate submittal, poor writing can often make a loser out of an otherwise top-quality submittal.

In my 40+ years in a variety of marketing roles in the A/E industry, I have learned that, while I am a good proofreader for other people's work, I am not a good proofreader for my own work. I tend to see what I think I put on the page rather than what I actually put there. I miss spelling and grammatical errors, and sometimes don't see that something won't be clear to a reader who is not already familiar with the subject.

That's why I always look for someone else to proofread my work.

I was taught by a junior high school English teacher that the way a person writes and the way a person speaks are reflections of the way that person thinks. So writing that is full of typographical errors, or that is confusing because it lacks clarity, could be an indication that the writer is careless or suffers from flawed thought processes.

If your writing is full of errors that could have been corrected by a good proofreader, errors that might come from carelessness, from lack of focus or concentration, does the client want to hire your firm for an engineering project—a project that requires accuracy and careful attention to detail? Does the client want to hire your firm when your staff's thought processes may be flawed, or cannot be seen to be comprehensive and reliable?

And then there's the challenge of reusing text from existing in-house sources (boilerplate, or text libraries). I cannot tell you how many times I have pulled text out of a boilerplate file or a previous proposal and found topographical errors, incorrect punctuation, run-on sentences or sentence fragments, or writing that lacks clarity, and which has been copied over and over again without ever being read, noticed and corrected. Or how about project descriptions that talk about the project in the past tense but indicate that the project is still ongoing?

I don't say that all marketers are great writers. Some are, some are not, most fall somewhere along the continuum. But most marketers have had some kind of training in writing, which is more than one an say for most technical folks. In some American universities, one can complete a degree in Engineering or Architecture without taking a single English class.

So make sure there is someone with great writing skills responsible for the quality and clarity of the writing.

And by the way, this editing task is also a place where marketing staff can actually acquire billable hours, but that's a subject for other posts.

Technical staff and the proposal effort

In the world of architecture/ engineering (A/E) and related firms, it is anticipated that marketing staff hours will be 100% overhead. When a marketer picks up any direct labor hours at all, it is generally a pleasant surprise. Although sometimes the possibility of direct labor makes marketing and other managers nervous (but that's the subject of another post).

On the other hand, most A/E and related firms (planning, surveying, landscape architecture, environmental, and construction management firms) prefer that their technical staff have as few overhead hours as possible.

Of course, as one moves up the ladder in these firms, marketing activities become more and more a part of their jobs.

But during a technical person's first 10 years of professional experience, there always seems to be a supervisor standing over them with a whip and screaming "Billable hours! Billable hours!" So many technical folks come to believe that the only overhead chore that has value is the filling out of a timesheet so the company can get paid by the client.

But what about the parts of a marketing pursuit that require input from technical staff? More specifically, what about the parts of a proposal that require technical knowledge? These may include:

• the project understanding;
• the project approach;
• the detailed work plan;
• the proposed project schedule;
• the proposed fee (if applicable).

Sometimes the project understanding can be taken directly from the Request for Proposals (RFP). In that case, the proposal manager (a marketing staff member) or senior marketing coordinator can craft this section. However, if you want to address additional issues—i.e. why the project is needed, why now, community NIMBY impacts that might delay the project, etc.—the section needs to be written by someone who has been in relative frequent contact with the client. And this usually means a technical person of some seniority.

Obviously, the project approach requires participation by technical staff, even if they just tweak the approach section from a previous, similar pursuit. But only a technical person can craft a truly innovative approach that is both workable and affordable.

Sometimes, an RFP asks for a detailed work plan in addition to a project approach. This plan is a detailed listing of tasks: first, we'll do this; then we'll do this; finally, we'll do this. Most RFP's don't ask for this. But sometimes they want enough detail to prove your team really knows what it's doing.

The project schedule has to be prepared by someone who knows how long each task will take, whether it's completing a draft design or applying for and acquiring necessary permits from local, state, federal, or other jurisdictional authorities.

Finally, if the project is for a private entity, or for other than A/E services (i.e. environmental), the RFP might require a fee proposal. This must be prepared by someone who knows not only how long tasks take, but how much tasks will cost given the salary ranges of the personnel who will complete the task.

Given all this, there are many reasons why technical staff must be not only allowed, but encouraged, to support proposal activities. In addition, with public sector pursuits, it can often take from a few months to more than a year to get from the RFP to selection, contracting, and Notice to Proceed.

So I always ask one question of technical staff who drag their feet in supporting marketing efforts:

If you don't help me with this pursuit today, what will you work on tomorrow?

Competing for client attention

There are thousands of A/E and related firms across the United States, and many more outside the United States. Some of them are single-discipline firms with only a handful of full-time employees. Others are mid-size and large, multi-discipline A/E firms, each with hundreds, or maybe thousands, of employees. And still others are mega-firms that provide every kind of service you can think of and then some, each of them having tens of thousands of employees.

So who among all these is your real competition, and how do you distinguish your firm from the others?

Most firms look to identify internal attributes that distinguish them from their competitors. Unfortunately, it often seems that few firms actually understands what it means to "distinguish" themselves from the competition, and they wind up with lists of attributes that are very similar to those of their competitors. For example, if ABC Engineering provides the same services as XYZ Engineering, a somewhat larger firm, that does not distinguish ABC from XYZ. In fact, it proudly proclaims "we are the same." This is NOT the message ABC wants to convey to the marketplace.

Let's assume that ABC has come up with a list of its ten best differentiators. And ABC determines that this information can be most helpful in marketing—winning new clients and new work, as shared in Statements of Qualifications (SOQs), proposals, the company's website, and the various social media platforms the company utilizes.

So let's look at the company website as one of the tools ABC Engineering uses to distinguish itself from the competition. On its "About" page, ABC lists the ten distinguishing attributes. OK, great. Now look at the "About" pages in the websites of a few of ABC's competitors. How many of the items on THEIR lists of distinguishing attributes can be found on any or all of the others? If most of those lists say "client focused," "committed to quality," "visible experts in relevant fields," and "large firm services with small firm service," these are "good things" but they are hardly differentiators.

The website of one firm, EFG Design, actually has a navigation button labeled "How We're Different." But when you click the button, you get a list very similar to the others you just looked at. In fact, five of the ten items can be found on all of them.

The same with proposals. When the client moves on to the next proposal and five items on the list of differentiators are the same as the list in your proposal, the client thinks the two firms are interchangeable. 

The client really doesn't care how your firm is like the other firms it might select. The client wants to know how your firm is different. They want to know what they will get if they select your firm that they won't get from any other firm that submits an SOQ or proposal. They want to know what they will learn in your short-list interview that they won't learn in any other firm's or team's short-list interview.

It doesn't matter whether the difference is in the services you provide, the quality of those services, the efficiency of your methods, the ease in which your administrative processes are navigated, the levels of creativity and innovation for which your firm is known, or any other factor. As long as you can say something the competition cannot.