Effective Strategies for Communicating Your Firm: Successful Outreach

This past spring, Dr. Tami Hausman participated in a panel at SMPS Northeast Regional Conference (NERC) that discussed the rapidly changing landscape for marketing in the A/E/C industry. The other panelists included this month’s featured guest bloggers, Kirsten Sibilia, Principal of Dattner Architects and Brien McDaniel, Director of Communications at FXFOWLE.

In this next post, Tami shares proven communications strategies that help firms effectively build influence in the A/E/C industry and attract new clients.

By Dr. Tami Hausman

Now that you have created your mission and vision, you’re ready to align your outreach program with your strategic goals. You want to give people information about your firm that highlights your expertise. Above all, you need to know your audiences so you can focus on where you want to get published and what you tell people about your firm, your projects, and your experience. The most successful outreach is proactive, compelling, and targeted to client groups.

Here are a few tips that can help get you moving in the right direction: 

1. Drop the jargon: it’s really important to create messages that differentiate your firm. At the same time, you must be able to clearly explain what you do to potential clients who may not understand your field. Business expert Stanley Bing defines jargon as “a business-specific term that implies knowledge of the subject and also injects unnecessary complexity into the utterance for the purpose of 1) obfuscation and 2) showing off.” So, if you want to engage potential clients, don’t use it.

2. Write a story: people remember stories much more easily than straight facts (let’s face it: did your parents read you the newspaper every night when they tucked you into bed, or a fairy tale?). Every firm has its own story that relates to its particular DNA. At the same time, every project that you work on has multiple stories as well. It’s easy to think of the design or technical story – that’s the most obvious, but there are many more! Get creative.

3. Grab attention: Look, we’re all bombarded by media these days, from e-mails to voice mails to social media. Before you send out a press release – or any other news – ask yourself: what would grab the attention of the media? What is the one key idea behind your project? If you can’t come up with a good headline, then maybe you need to go back to the drawing board.

4. Teach, don’t preach: Your goal is to engage your clients and audiences – not talk AT them. Good communication is a conversation between people. And the best way to do this is to provide information that your audience doesn’t already know. They will walk away with more knowledge and you will walk away with a captive audience interested in hearing more.

Finally, we at Hausman LLC feel that the way to gauge whether or not a public relations plan is working is if you’re no longer having to reach OUT to other people. You can tell that you’re getting your name in the right places when people hear about your firm and come to YOU.