Are you happy with the results you’re getting from the money you’re spending on marketing? If your A/E firm is like most, you need to take steps to improve your firm’s marketing program.

ZweigWhite’s A/E Marketing Fitness Plan is an action-oriented book, written for firm leaders and marketing professionals of architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firms. It gives you step-by-step action plans so you can reap the highest return from your firm’s marketing program. With a marketing self-assessment at the beginning and the end of the book, interactive testing in each chapter, checklists, worksheets, and case studies, you’ll be able to assess what’s right and what’s wrong with the way your A/E firm approaches marketing. Get advice on how to develop a winning marketing plan and budget, create winning presentations and proposals, get your message out, build a public relations program that gets results, and much more.

• Get a step-by-step action plan to improving your firm’s marketing program
• Maximize the ROI on every marketing dollar you spend
• Identify ineffective marketing tactics and replace them with effective ideas that get results
• Use checklists, worksheets, and interactive testing in each chapter to implement the action plan for your A/E firm
• Get the most from your marketing staff and databases
• Learn hot tips to make your direct mail pieces more attractive
• Use the media to get attention for your A/E firm
• Build a database of potential clients that’s second to none
• Create a culture in your firm that values marketing

Are you happy with the results you’re getting from the money you’re spending on marketing? Or could you stand to maximize the ROI on your investment? If your A/E firm is like most, you need to take steps to improve your firm’s marketing program.

ZweigWhite’s A/E Marketing Fitness Plan is a comprehensive, action-oriented guide written exclusively for firm leaders and marketing professionals of architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firms who are looking to get their marketing efforts on target. This is not a dry, theory-laden textbook! This book will help your firm not only identify— but fix— the marketing problems that you may be experiencing. Follow the steps in ZweigWhite’s A/E Marketing Fitness Plan, from the beginning assessment to the closing reassessment, and you’ll reap the highest return from your A/E firm’s marketing program.

There are hundreds of books on marketing out there, but this is the only one designed for the unique challenges that A/E and environmental consulting firms face. A/E Marketing Fitness Plan combines all the knowledge of ZweigWhite’s expert marketing consultants in a single volume. These folks have helped hundreds of design firms just like yours improve their marketing, and now all their best ideas, tips, and warnings are available in clear, simple action plans that you can put to work in your own firm.

Do you know the current state of your firm’s marketing program? ZweigWhite’s A/E Marketing Fitness Plan starts with a complete assessment of where your firm’s marketing practices stand right now so that you can pinpoint your problem spots. You’ll be able to identify what’s working and what’s not.

After completing the assessment, you can use A/E Marketing Fitness Plan to get specific steps your firm can take to fix what’s not working. Get detailed advice on how to integrate marketing with your strategic plan, develop a winning marketing plan and budget, create winning presentations and proposals, and build a media relations program that gets results. You’ll also learn how to conduct effective market research that leads to new jobs.

ZweigWhite’s A/E Marketing Fitness Plan will also show you how to build a culture in your firm that values marketing and continually comes up with creative, effective business development strategies.You’ll get hot tips to make your direct mail pieces more attractive and the secrets to building a database of potential clients second to none. You’ll also learn how to get the most out of your marketing staff and how to tap the full marketing potential of your A/E firm’s web site.

The guide also includes a check-up so that you can monitor your firm’s progress in improving your marketing fitness. And in each chapter of A/E Marketing Fitness Plan you’ll get checklists, worksheets, case studies, and interactive testing that will help you implement the action plan in your firm.

Follow the steps in the A/E Marketing Fitness Plan, from the beginning assessment to the closing reassessment, and you’ll minimize the waste in your firm’s marketing program and make sure the money you spend on marketing is being used to the utmost.

Foreword

Chapter 1: Self-assessment: What’s your current marketing fitness

Chapter 2: Integrating marketing into your strategic plan

Chapter 3: Developing marketing plans and budgets that gets results
- Developing a marketing plan that gets results
- Developing a marketing budget that gets results

Chapter 4: Building or strengthening a marketing culture

Chapter 5: Getting the most from your marketing team

Chapter 6: Building your database

Chapter 7: Getting your message out
- Producing effective newsletters
- Creating effective brochures
- Writing effective personal letters
- Designing effective postcards
- Improving the effectiveness of direct mail

Chapter 8: Getting into print
- Creating a press list that gets results
- Writing effective press releases
- Distributing press releases via e-mail
- Getting original articles published
- Making the most of your press coverage

Chapter 9: Conducting effective market research
- Conducting effective market research
- Conducting effective client perception surveys
- Conducting effective original research

Chapter 10: Tapping the marketing potential of your web site

Chapter 11: Improving your sales and business development strategies

Chapter 12: Creating winning proposals and presentations
- Writing winning proposals
- Creating winning presentations

Chapter 13: Check-Up: Reassessing your marketing fitness

Appendix A: The complete A/E Marketing Fitness Plan

Appendix B: Sample marketing plan and budget

Appendix C: Chapter test keys

Appendix D: Additional sources of information