After Dawn Wagenaar discussed AEC marketing and branding strategies on EMI’s AEC Leadership Podcast, she was invited to contribute to their quarterly blog.
For Q1, she shares ideas for professionals who want to elevate their careers in the AEC field by being visible as a brand ambassador.
Wagenaar is a brand strategist and outsourced marketing consultant who has served AEC firms for more than 10 years. In this article she discusses why all professionals in an AEC firm are brand ambassadors and why it’s good for their careers to embrace this role.
Here are her quick tips for being a brand ambassador and elevating your career with communication and people skills.
Personal Branding: Craft a simple description that explains how you create results. Share it across your digital channels like LinkedIn and through your personal introductions at a business training or happy hour. Are you skilled at team collaboration, quality control, safety, design? What do you deliver and also LOVE to deliver? That’s your brand with personalization behind it. It will resonate more with other people than simply sharing your job title.
Networking: Try to remember details that matter to the other person. Congratulate them on their personal or professional success. Ask about their pets or their family. Offer condolences for personal loss. Send a quick note to check in. Be human and connect beyond the work as though you were making a new friend. You are!
Community Involvement: For individual community outreach, it helps if the organizations you choose match your personal interests and passions. For example, if your kids are in youth sports, consider being a coach. If you appreciate animal welfare, look into a committee to help with fundraising or special adoption days. If you love to ski or snowboard, then serve on the board of a winter sports organization.
We appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective with readers of the Engineering Management Institute (EMI). Let us know if we can contribute to other blogs or podcasts about strategic rebranding consulting, marketing or building a culture of brand ambassadorship in your AEC firm!
