Architecture marketer spotlight: The warp speed evolution of AEC marketing with Jennifer Haferbecker

The marketing industry is evolving at warp speed, as Jennifer Haferbecker tells Michelle Calcote King in this episode of “Spill the Ink.” Role specialization, branding, research and technology are increasingly important players in an architecture firm’s strategy. Keeping pace in this constantly changing landscape means being more intentional with both strategy and professional development.

As chief marketing officer, Jennifer Haferbecker oversees the marketing and communications department at HGA, a national interdisciplinary design firm. In our new series featuring architecture marketers, Jennifer and Michelle reflect on the trends influencing the industry and how HGA maintains their strategy-focused, people-first approach. They cover a wide range of topics, including managing a national team as well as leveraging analytics, brand ambassadors and professional development initiatives to improve the client experience.

• Who is Jennifer Haferbecker and what is HGA Architects and Engineers

• How marketing is changing in the architecture industry

• The growing importance of role specialization

• How a strong brand impacts client experience

• Why HGA established a marketing technology department

• How to leverage research to improve marketing initiatives

• Why KPQs are as important as KPIs in a marketing strategy

• How to manage a large national marketing and communications team

• How brand ambassadors play a key role in HGA’s strategy

• What professional development and career resources Jennifer recommends 

As chief marketing officer at HGA, Jennifer Haferbecker is a member of the executive team, a board advisor, executive sponsor of the Planning Committee, and a member of numerous Steering Committees with the firm — all in service of achieving the vision for HGA’s future success and the success of its people. Jennifer collaborates with firmwide leaders to develop, implement and align HGA’s strategic planning process. With more than 20 years of marketing experience, she is responsible for directing market research and strategies, including research into growth initiatives, mergers and acquisitions. 

Jennifer manages the Marketing/Communications department and maintains a strong partnership with Business Development to improve marketing ROI by winning work with clients who value HGA’s expertise and want to collaboratively design an enduring, positive impact. She is currently helping to update and reinstate HGA’s internal Enterprise Leadership Program to advance future leaders within the firm.

• Check out HGA

• Follow HGA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram

• Connect with Jennifer Haferbecker on LinkedIn

• Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn

This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink.

Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms. 

Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more.

To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.

[00:00:00] Jennifer Haferbecker: The design industry is changing. To be open to learning, to be willing to be uncomfortable as you apply that learning, I think is extremely powerful. 

[00:00:15]: Welcome to "Spill the Ink," a podcast by Reputation Ink where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show.

[00:00:32] Michelle Calcote King: Hi everyone. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm the host of this podcast and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for architecture, engineering and construction firms and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com. 

Today we're talking about how do you successfully market an architecture firm? What are the firms who are doing it right? What are they getting wrong? And what are some of those behind the scenes secrets to running a well-rounded marketing department, especially at a larger architecture firm. We're tackling these and more questions in today's episode as part of our series featuring architecture chief marketing officers. 

Jennifer Haferbecker is joining me for today's episode — and I think I got that name pronounced correctly. She's the chief marketing officer and she's a member of the executive team at HGA, which is a national interdisciplinary design firm. Thanks for joining me. 

[00:01:30] Jennifer Haferbecker: Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. I'm very excited for our conversation. 

[00:01:34] Michelle Calcote King: I am, too. Let's start with, tell me how you got here. I always love to hear that. Because when we go into marketing, it's all often a very interesting path that gets us there. 

[00:01:46] Jennifer Haferbecker: I am one of those people. I think the vast majority of professional service setting marketing professionals went to college or started on a different journey. I am one of those cases. I actually went to school for nursing. 

[00:01:59] Michelle Calcote King: Oh, wow. Wow. 

[00:02:01] Jennifer Haferbecker: Exactly. While I was in school, I was working full-time for a commercial interiors firm. I made the decision at one point in that journey to switch my major to business. I ended up spending 19 years in practice for interiors. I started as a project manager, an account manager, that led to leadership on the marketing and sales support side. Six and a half years ago, I moved to HGA as their director of marketing, and then a few years later, I became their very first chief marketing officer. 

[00:02:37] Michelle Calcote King: That's fantastic. And I love to see that this firm really values marketing to have you on the executive committee. Are you the first marketing person to sit in that type of leadership role? 

[00:02:51] Jennifer Haferbecker: The person who preceded me at the firm was a vice president of marketing, and at the time, there wasn't really a full communications department. She was a shareholder. She was part of the leadership, but she did not sit on as a board advisor, and I also play the role of sort of executive sponsor to our planning committee through my board advisor role. So, she did not have some of those roles but she was definitely instrumental in paving the way within HGA, and really teaching the firm the value of marketing and business development and left me a very strong foundation to jump off of to continue advancing that work. 

[00:03:32] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, that's great. Kind of paving that way. 

I know this is a very large question since you're the head of marketing for a very large firm, but can you tell me what is your approach? What's your firm's marketing approach in a nutshell?

[00:03:47] Jennifer Haferbecker: In a nutshell...

[00:03:49] Michelle Calcote King: I know that's a complex one. 

[00:03:52] Jennifer Haferbecker: Our approach is, I'm going to say, strategy focused. The firm in the past has always had a very strong entrepreneurial spirit. Since 1953, we've been really successful by leveraging expertise and passions to grow the firm. In 2016 under our current CEO, we developed our strategic point of view, articulated our values, and then defined our targeted client. The following years, we did a full rebrand, and then in 2019, we developed a strategic plan. It was really the first time that the firm had articulated goals and initiatives on how to realize that vision. Since then, we've been working to align our planning process at all levels, trying to make sure we're all pointed at the same North Star. We've been really trying to build some rigor into our marketing analysis and market readiness. 

So I'd say strategic planning around a united vision is really what's working. It's really our approach, as is being people-focused. It's allowed us the ability to really prioritize a list of targeted clients and partners, to identify the caliber projects that we want to be working on to allow us to have the impact that we desire, and it enables marketing and BD to understand how our markets are changing so that we can prioritize and better position the firm through a deeper understanding. 

There's so much change happening economically, socially, environmentally. Not only are people internally facing those challenges, but our clients and communities are as well. 

[00:05:32] Michelle Calcote King: So, finalizing a strategic plan in 2019 and then being hit with COVID in 2020, how did that impact your ability to continue forward with that strategic plan that was just done when you had such a wrench thrown into things? 

[00:05:48] Jennifer Haferbecker: That plan was a three-year plan and we've had it for four years because of the pandemic. So we are right now in the process of updating it for the next three years. So looking back on it, it's amazing how forward-thinking we were. We did enter the pandemic with the desire to thrive. We did not want to just survive. 2022 and 2023 have been record-breaking for us in a number of ways — and that's our employee count, recognition, and PR and awards. And that's also one of the biggest challenges because so much has changed and we've had such rapid growth over the last few years. It's challenging, especially on the marketing and business development side. You have so many new people joining the firm; we've been fortunate to be able to promote people within into new roles; and then we have all of these initiatives through equity and sustainability research technology, it's harder for marketing and business development to know all the subject-matter experts. You know, who within the firm can we best position and connect to clients? How to build the right teams? How to understand the skillset of those new people that you're now going to put in front of a client? Do they know how to message and present from the marketing perspective? The warp speed that marketing is changing and evolving, it's crazy how there are thousands of new technologies. 

[00:07:14] Michelle Calcote King: I know. Isn't it wild? It's like, we just caught up with the last thing, and now AI came out of nowhere. 

[00:07:21] Jennifer Haferbecker: And now you need to say strategy, true strategies for content and digital, account-based marketing. And now we have more people to teach inside of the firm about the brand and strategic point of view and marketing process altogether.

In some ways though, it's been amazing to see the change, even within the marketing communications and business development roles themselves. Roles are changing as all of those processes also change. So as a people-focused firm, we really want to stay ahead of how those jobs are evolving so that we can offer training and development. We want our people to be successful. We want them to stay at the firm. So we're really focused on trying to understand how to try to slow some things down in a way that people can learn and have capacity for the amount of change happening. 

[00:08:13] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, that's really important. I had read on your LinkedIn profile that HGA had its highest revenue in 2022, and that year marked your fourth consecutive year increasing marketing ROI. I'd love to understand how do you measure ROI. What are some of the ways that you're reporting back and being able to really benchmark that? 

[00:08:34] Jennifer Haferbecker: Well, of course, it starts with metrics and an equation on financials. We are an employee-owned firm, so I think the first question to our shareholders is about that investment. If we spend all this money on marketing and overhead in the firm, what is it giving us as far as MSR? So, there's a financial equation, definitely. We've been working very hard over my tenure at the firm to expand that definition of return. We want the impact from the projects. We want to be leveraging our expertise in marketing in a way that puts us in front of the right clients for the right projects. And that we are truly building a brand that is going to last beyond any of us currently at the firm. 

So we talk a lot about the legacy of the projects that we have; the impact on communities. We really seriously take the responsibility of designing something right now that will have impact in future generations and impact on the firm. We are starting to shift to understanding, instead of KPIs, we're trying to understand KPQs, you know, key performance questions that can inform those indicators. And we're trying to understand how to better define what impact it is in a number of ways, instead of just having financial metrics as that ROI. 

[00:09:55] Michelle Calcote King: I love that, looking at it kind of holistically.

I also saw that you have a team of about 40. Can you give us a sense of what is that? Because I work with a lot of smaller firms. Yeah, 40 people doing marketing. Tell me what those disciplines look like. Is that mix changing in terms of, you know, the skill sets that you're looking for? 

[00:10:15] Jennifer Haferbecker: For sure. So we have marketing and communications departments on the communication side. They are national experts that are all specialized in a specific area. So, we have a PR director and a PR assistant. We have a creative brand director. We have writers on staff. We recently hired a content strategist to help us manage all of the content that we have within the firm and elevate it. We have research librarians that sit within communications, and we also have a whole digital team around web, social and our intranet.

On the marketing side, we have a director of marketing and regional marketing managers that are working with our local offices and practices to support their regional goals and building campaigns locally to meet their engagement, and to help them be successful. The marketing managers also manage a staff of marketing coordinators that are really focused on producing marketing content specifically.

Within those departments, we recently developed a marketing technology department. So we have a director there who has a team of people that are experts within all the different softwares. So our CRM, our content asset management platform, our intranet, even the digital person, actually on the communication side, reports up to the marketing technology director. All of those platforms are being updated and changing over the next three years, so we wanted to bring that team together to really manage and grow a marketing technology stack that can talk to each other and really leverage the efficiency of how we're creating and reusing content. Also, we hadn't in the past been great about analytics. We have so much content, but we were really focused on just how to get it out, and then we were on to the next thing. So that MarTech stack is really helping us to learn from how we're putting content out so that we can apply it to the next piece in a better way. 

[00:12:28] Michelle Calcote King: That's a common struggle. It's so overwhelming just actually getting content right and understanding your customers. 

What about the role of research? How does that play a role in your strategy? 

[00:12:40] Jennifer Haferbecker: Research more and more, like I said, in that market analysis, the market readiness, I would say it's two ways. We do have, like, in the communication department, a knowledge manager and a research librarian. And I forgot to mention on the marketing department size, we are a seller-doer model, but we do have dedicated business development professionals. I think we have 18 of them across the firm. So our business developers are really the ones that are hands-on in research at a number of levels to understand their markets, identify potential clients, and qualify those clients. They're tapping our research librarians to help them with that. To dive deeper into clients and/or selection panels, understanding what's happening in the trends of the market itself. Our research librarian also helps project teams look for, you know, code things or changes in materials or a number of ways they can help our projects advance.

In-house we also have what we call our Design Insight Group, and that is a group of PhD researchers and design anthropologists that are doing evidence-based research to help advance design. And we've connected that team with our marketing strategy and our national leaders so that we can identify research that's needed for how the markets are changing for our clients so that we can come to those clients with evidence and proof that design can truly impact and help their business. So, research in a number of ways. 

[00:14:12] Michelle Calcote King: From a high-level industry perspective, how would you say marketing for architecture is changing? What are some of the trends that you're seeing impact your work and how is it changing than, say, how you did things five years ago? 

[00:14:25] Jennifer Haferbecker: Lots, lots of change. I've been doing a lot of recruiting lately, and so I have often told the story that marketing in architecture is really not very old. Marketing was forbidden until the AIA changed its ethical standards in 1972. So in a lot of ways, we are still trying to catch up to other industries. But I do at the same time, we are really navigating all of the disruptors that others are challenged with. The first big disruptor is that customization, that technology piece. We will want to move to a customization of how people engage with us and engage with our content. They've got a company's marketing in digital experiences that are specific to each person's URL. We're trying to remove boilerplate and move to custom messaging. And then move to new formats of content, including video. So that in itself has really advanced how our marketing coordinators work, and in some ways that role within our firm has become a unicorn. They have to know how to write in graphics and technology and ePoms and all these things, landing pages, you know, that role didn't do even, you know, five or eight years ago. 

And then we touched on it, but technology disruption around AI and, you know, all of the different marketing technologies that we can use in itself, it's disrupting how we work and those also require, like I said, our new marketing technology group within the firm. 

I think I also, as an industry, we are still learning the importance of having a really strong, consistent brand. And we're learning how a really strong brand truly encompasses everything, but most importantly, that experience of our clients. You know, the channels and the format or the language that we use when we talk to a dean of music of a music school versus a clinic manager or a developer who wants to build life science or innovation campuses, that the language and those formats might be different, but there really needs to be consistency in our comprehensive approach to design that will lead us to sustainable, resilient and equitable outcomes that we really want to improve the human experience with and help exceed our client's goals.

So regardless of the project type or the geography or the service, we are really trying to consistently leverage our interdisciplinary expertise. The research that I mentioned and really engage diverse stakeholders to prove that design can result in better projects and have a more positive impact. 

[00:17:08] Michelle Calcote King: That's fascinating. Along the same lines, when you were talking about brand, it reminded me — I also saw when I was doing a bit of research that you had spoken recently about creating brand ambassadors. How do you do that? What are some of the ways that you encourage that and enable that?

[00:17:24] Jennifer Haferbecker: The rebrand a few years ago definitely helped us with that because we were able to travel throughout the firm and meet with people, especially before the pandemic, and talk about our new strategic point of view. What that was. You share the values and how they were developed and ensure that they truly resonated with everyone. We slowly, through the strategic point of view, started to teach value propositions, and how we could use a similar structure in how we tell our stories. So, just the education around the brand itself and what brand means, and just empowering people that, you know, everyone within the firm has the ability to impact our success, and to help the future of the firm. So, what does that mean for them in their role and how can we help them be successful in that? 

We have a long way to go, especially over the last few years. We recently had a group of leaders — we have an Enterprise Leadership Program within the firm to help train the next generation of leaders on how to run a firm of our size. They did a research project around brand consistency, you know, the balance of having a national brand versus some sub brands that are starting to develop within each of our sectors. And what they learned, even right now, they did a survey asking I think 200 people within the firm, what our values were, and they ended up with over a hundred different responses. So as we look at this new evolution of our strategic plan, there's a huge opportunity for us to redo that training and get a bit deeper with everyone around what it is and how to live it authentically. 

[00:19:05] Michelle Calcote King: I can see that being such a core step to take, which is educating your internal stakeholders about your brand, and really helping them articulate it in a way that makes sense for their particular world because the bigger you get, those worlds are all quite different. Yeah, that's fascinating. 

[00:19:20] Jennifer Haferbecker: Well, we want it to be authentic. It's harder, but I don't want to give them a script on “This is what you say about the firm and what it means.” I want them to be able to talk authentically about it in their role, and that's harder. It's harder to teach. It's also a bit harder to make sure that they have the opportunity to practice within the firm so that then when they are externally out with others, they can feel comfortable in it. 

[00:19:42] Michelle Calcote King: From a pure self-interest perspective since we're a PR agency, tell me about the role of PR in your strategy and how it weaves in. 

[00:19:51] Jennifer Haferbecker: The director of PR that we brought in, I think she's been with the firm now three years. So that's another example of how marketing and communications has evolved within the industry to have that in-house now. I think she had an amazing impact very quickly because she's an expert in PR. So to bring that expertise in, we are another example of constant learning and education, teaching people what that means. Very quickly, people point to needing more content out or needing more PR, and we spend a lot of time explaining what PR is, how it works. If we can get to a defined creative brief around content, it'll help us ensure that the level of what we're talking about is to a point that other outlets would want to pick it up and feature it. If it's something that we want to have a patrol over and be able to publish on our own or through different marketing campaign processes, but people don't understand the difference of it.

[00:20:58] Michelle Calcote King: You articulated that well, though. 

[00:21:00] Jennifer Haferbecker: That in itself has been extremely helpful in setting the right expectations, and then just the impact of it. We've definitely seen more articles and more features and more clients, the partnerships of clients very early on. So the sooner we can connect our communications teams to clients when we're awarded projects, the stronger those relationships become throughout the project and beyond because it really helps us with the advocacy after in the long-term relationships. 

[00:21:33] Michelle Calcote King: The other thing I wanted to ask about was professional development. So I saw that you're involved in AIA and SMPS. If you're advising your younger team members to, you know, develop, what are some of those resources that you've found the most valuable over your career?

[00:21:49] Jennifer Haferbecker: We definitely encourage everyone within the firm, especially the marketing and communications speakers, to build a network externally. That can be overwhelming all on its own, so to start with one thing that they're passionate about, one organization, and when they connect with that organization to be active in it. Try to be on a committee, try to be part of events, and things going on to really build stronger relationships. A lot of the things that I've experienced in SMPS, both nationally and locally, they can be very different. So when we talk about professional development, we are really trying to understand what people are driving towards. What is their passion so that we can find opportunities for them in the right way?

We send a lot of marketing coordinators to, you know, Adobe MAX Conference. We have a few going out for a conference in AEC in a couple of weeks. We have a few of our marketing leaders participating in leadership executives training, either through programs or through one-on-one coaching.

On the communication side, there's so many different organizations for writers and graphics and PR and communications. It's really about understanding what people want to do so that we can align them with the right resource. 

I also teach that it might not be the right one, right? Go try and see how it fits and see how it resonates with you. Even if it's a personal coach, we might need to try a few until you find something that definitely resonates and you can be comfortable with moving forward. 

[00:23:23] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, that's smart because you're right there. So there's so much, there's so many disciplines and I'm sure you've got so many specialists, and it's really important to tailor it to that. 

What would be the most important lesson, and let's think in terms of somebody a bit younger in their career starting out in marketing for architecture, what's the most important lesson you hope they take away from this conversation?

[00:23:43] Jennifer Haferbecker: To stay open. One of the pieces of advice I received year way back, I think it was in middle school actually, was from a counselor. She explained to me that the act of learning is intellectual. There's a method to it, but the experience of learning, applying that knowledge, developing something, trying something new, it's emotional. And that is supposed to be uncomfortable because you are trying something new and it's awkward. So that is a lesson that I can apply in every aspect of my life, especially in the marketing realm where we are constantly trying new things. We are learning new technologies and learning new marketing strategies. The design industry is changing. To be open to learning, to be willing to be uncomfortable as you apply that learning, I think is extremely powerful. 

[00:24:41] Michelle Calcote King: That's so smart. It's similar to what a personal trainer will tell you, you know, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Very similar.

[00:24:49] Jennifer Haferbecker: Exactly. Also recently, there's been too much research that proves that women in particular will hold themselves back. When a woman is presented with a new opportunity, she'll look at the requirements and will not apply until she can check every single box of that requirement. A lot of women will go back to advance their degrees or they'll go for a certification and that will prolong their growth and also add expense to it. Men, on the other hand, are very comfortable with their ability, and so they'll look at a list of requirements for an opportunity and if they can check even half those boxes, they'll apply. I've really been encouraging women in particular, just take your shots. No matter what. You're going to learn from it. You're going to learn one way or the other. And in that also remember to just celebrate your courage for trying. 

[00:25:44] Michelle Calcote King: I'm sure having someone like you who has elevated to such a high role within the industry, you serve as a great role model for that. So, I appreciate that advice.

Well, thank you very much. So, we've been talking to Jennifer Haferbecker of HGA. If people wanted to connect with you, what's the best place for them to do so? 

[00:26:01] Jennifer Haferbecker: They can learn about the firm through HGA.Com. The best way to connect to me is probably LinkedIn and then my messaging and email is connected there as well.

[00:26:12] Michelle Calcote King: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was a great conversation. 

[00:26:16] Jennifer Haferbecker: Yes, I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:26:20]: Thanks for listening to "Spill the Ink," a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click "Subscribe" to get future episodes.