Ep 95: Lost in translation: UK–US AEC marketing, AI, and business growth tips with Keelin Cox
Welcome back to The Built Environment Marketing Show.
In this special crossover episode with Keelin Cox from The AEC Marketer podcast. In this episode we're talking about what's really happening with AI in marketing (spoiler: quantity is up, quality is questionable), why AEC marketers still aren't getting the strategic recognition they deserve, and what UK firms need to know before attempting to crack the US market.
This is a rare behind-the-scenes conversation between two marketers who've spent their careers proving that marketing in the built environment is far more than just proposals and pretty pictures.
This is part II of the episode where I'm interviewing Keelin and if you want to check out part 1 where Keelin interviews me on her show head here http://aecmarketeer.fireside.fm/141
Key takeaways
How to use AI as a strategic tool rather than a content crutch - and why the difference matters for quality
Why marketers need to speak the language of business: KPIs, win rates, and bottom-line impact
The critical mistake most firms make when they think "marketing" means "proposals person"
What UK AEC firms must understand about US state licensing, office requirements, and regional differences before expanding
How to translate your strategic value into terms that leadership actually understands and respects
The game-changing mindset shift: clients aren't buying your time, they're buying your 20+ years of expertise
Links
About the show
The Built Environment Marketing Show is hosted by marketing consultant and content creator Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing. It is a show that is unashamedly about marketing for architects and engineers, as well as bringing forward voices that we don't always get to hear.
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Transcript
Ayo Abbas 00:00
Ayo, hello and welcome to part two of The Built Environment Marketing Show. This is a special episode which is a crossover episode with the AEC marketer, which is hosted by Keelin Cox. If you want to hear the first part, there is the link in the show notes, so you can listen to that and then listen to this one. So Keelin, hello. Can you introduce yourself and what you do? Yeah.
Keelin Cox 00:27
So I'm Keelin Cox. I am a Certified Professional Services marketer in California, and I have a podcast like Ayo mentioned, called the AEC Marketeer. I'm a consultant. I have my own consulting firm called aduvo marketing, where I help architects, engineers and contractors, usually on the smaller scale, with their marketing needs. Fantastic.
Ayo Abbas 00:53
And so what is the biggest change you've seen in the US, AEC market, marketing wise, in the past year or so, has anything changed?
Keelin Cox 01:02
Governor, yes, yes, yes, and no. So I think a lot of firms are more open to using AI Now, whether or not they're using it well, is a totally different conversation, but they're using it nonetheless, but no, well, yeah, I just think you can't you have to have an opinion. And using generative AI to write, I think AI is great, but when you're using it to be the start and end, it's not great, and it's you can tell even like I write with em- dashes, we talked about this, like, just because there's an em-dash doesn't mean it's now automatically crap, but it's like, a lot of the pieces that I read are so obviously AI, because they don't take a stance, they don't have an opinion, which I think is what's needed. But that is a trend that I've seen, is there's a lot more blogs out there. There is a lot more social media, again, quality, low, quantity, high. So hopefully, I've seen, hopefully
Ayo Abbas 02:14
that will switch in 2026
Keelin Cox 02:16
I really hope so, because that's the thing,
Ayo Abbas 02:19
isn't it? And you use AI, but use it wisely. Use it for ideas. Use it to, I guess, embellish what you're doing. Use it for facts and figures. But actually you're gonna use it for copy. It's like you need to kind of feed it a lot of content, even if you just speak into your phone with your ideas. Yeah, you know what I mean. It's like, you can use it, but then make sure you do some editing afterwards, or else it is very obvious,
Keelin Cox 02:40
yeah, or, like, use it to crunch data. Like, use it to inform your writing, not to be your writing. Or, if you have a bunch of ideas, have it come up with an outline for you. So then you can write to an outline. And you know, like, I love putting transcripts into it and saying, like, pick out some quotes that talk about this. So then I can sort of write to something that speaks to that quote that I because I had the conversation myself. I know what happened. I know if it's, you know, a true quote, like, let it let it help. Don't let it know everything
Ayo Abbas 03:20
that is a very good point. Okay, so actually, you had a game in your part. I've never done a game on my podcast, but you know, that
Keelin Cox 03:28
was my first time too.
Ayo Abbas 03:31
We are actually making our podcast fun. There you go. Anyway. So I have come up with my own game, which is called Lost in Translation. Obviously, you are in the US, I am in the UK. So what I have done is done some research on words that we say in the UK, that I don't think you say in the US, okay, to tell me what you think the word or what either what the US equivalent is or what it means. Okay, first up, I've got Quantity Surveyor. Okay?
Keelin Cox 03:58
I think I know this one because I worked at Faithful and Gould and their UK firm, yeah. So this is actually a title. Do I know what they do? I think it has something to do with, like, like a facility inspector, or maybe, like, a cost estimating kind
Ayo Abbas 04:17
of estimator. Okay, so off. Well done. All right, next up, we've got tender.
Keelin Cox 04:27
Is that like a bid? Yeah,
Speaker 1 04:30
okay, two out of two. Next one, snag or snagging?
Keelin Cox 04:37
Oh, okay, so Ooh, here that means, like, take something away from someone. But you can also, like, hit a snag, which is like a roadblock. No, that's not too dissimilar. Okay. What is it?
Ayo Abbas 04:52
It's a punch list item. Oh, so when you've got minor defects, so you have to go and finish something. Cough, isn't it, you can turn around and go, well, that bit's not for. Finished in that and then
Keelin Cox 05:01
completed building. We call that snagging. Oh, that's so much more fun. Yeah, progress, projects.
Speaker 1 05:12
Schedule, it's a schedule, a schedule, schedule, schedule. How do you schedule
Keelin Cox 05:21
a project? Timeline, yeah, oh, very good. Okay, yeah,
Ayo Abbas 05:24
no, that would Okay. Me, I'm gonna, this is my final one, planning permission.
Keelin Cox 05:29
Planning permission, like a permit,
Ayo Abbas 05:33
yeah, okay, nice. You've done pretty well.
Keelin Cox 05:37
Thank you. I I'm surprised I was, I was ready to be roasted here.
Ayo Abbas 05:44
I think you've done pretty well. Well done. So that was fun. Enjoyed that more podcasts need to do this all right. Back to my question. So where do you think US firms are on the spectrum, as in, in the kind of are they finally treating marketing as being more strategic, or is it still like admin person does proposals? You know, we don't value marketing. Where do you think we? The US is,
Keelin Cox 06:14
I think the larger and more successful firms are definitely on the side of like marketing professionals are important to work? Yeah, I think a lot of AEC firms saw what happened when they let go of their marketing staff in a downturn, that their work also dried up. However, with the smaller firms that usually like sub out, where they're not like the prime contractor, you would see a lot more admin staff doing the work of a marketer, and probably not doing it super well, but getting it done. But getting it done, yeah, I would say, like, if it was on a scale of a one to 10, I still put it somewhere around a seven, just because I think now, when you talk about a marketer in AEC, they're thinking only proposals, which AEC Marketing goes so far beyond proposals. It's sort of like an aspect. It's like, if you were to look at a building and say, like, the contractor did that, yeah, when really it's like, there's so many more people involved, and there's so many more facets of a project. There's, I don't think marketers in every company are recognised for our strategic mindset. I think that's like a real big superpower that we have that I don't think we do a good enough job of communicating like the royal we not me and you, because that's our jam. But like the overall, I think marketers in general need to learn how to talk about the work that they do and just continue to emphasize that its strategy is what they're really doing.
Ayo Abbas 07:56
Yeah, I think for me, one of the things is, when you speak to junior people within large organizations, I can never forget, like, sometimes they'll be like, Oh my God, you deal with how come the CEO knows who you are? And it's like, well, I work with him all the time. And I think I've always realised that actually that's the level you work at. Even as a relatively junior marketeer, you're having to work with leaders, and that does mean that you have to, you know, have more gravitas and actually have conversations that are more strategic, even if you don't realize it. But I think that I and you're right, it's something that we do as an industry. Have to own more, and I guess talking the language of business as well. I think that's the other thing. It's like people aren't always going to be into likes and impressions. It's like we need to show the value of what we're doing in the and how it hits the bottom line, which can be harder to prove and demonstrate.
Keelin Cox 08:42
But yeah, I think also knowing how to a lot of it is like you understand it instinctively, like what you're doing and how it impacts business, just because you kind of you see it, but you don't know how to communicate it. And I think being able to show that you know, when you have a social media post that ties back to a blog, you can see the location of the people who are reading that blog. And if it's a blog about quantity surveying, then you know that. Then you know that you need to that, like someone in this area needs to know about quantity surveying, and now you have your BD person say, Okay, which of our clients are in that general area? Now that I'm sure that's a little bit more difficult in London, but we have, like, a lot of cities that are spread out. So it's like everything feeds into each other if you're doing it correctly. And as a marketer, A, you need to know that, and B, you need to communicate
Ayo Abbas 09:43
it, yeah, so the business can then act, and that's the thing, isn't it? You can give them the role so they can go out and do their jobs, yeah, yeah. But it's, it's always a difficult one. So why do you think numbers are important and that kind of financial aspect of what we do? You know? You see marketing,
Keelin Cox 10:01
I think because you can't function as a business if you're not making money, and the like, the ultimate sort of success indicator for marketing is KPIs. And KPIs are measurable, and so if you don't know numbers, you don't know how to measure what you do.
Ayo Abbas 10:21
So how can people learn that? If they don't?
Keelin Cox 10:24
I mean, especially today, you can literally go on to chat GBT and say, I'm a marketer, and I do this. What are some metrics I need to know? Explain that or perplexity. If you want to have like, everything cited out for you. Like there, there are things that you can do now that you couldn't before, and there's every resource at your fingertips. YouTube has loads of great information on like what revenue is and what profit is, and you know what the standard win rate should be for a company of x size. And, you know, are you performing at that level? Like, let's, I see a lot of younger marketers, and I was one of them. So I feel very comfortable saying this is like, you just sort of expect to go up and go quickly, because you want to move quickly, and you're ambitious. And it's like, you can want that, but you also need to back it up. So you know, if I know that I, when I was doing proposals, I had like a 70, 80% hit rate. Okay, then what does that mean for the company? That means that they to win this work, they only have to spend x amount of dollars on me. They give me their good pursuits, and that win rate translates over to work. That means that, you know, people still have jobs like understanding our role in the business, because marketing is like a key business function. You can't, you can't not know numbers and be in marketing or be successful in marketing, but
Ayo Abbas 11:59
you're right, but it's also that thing isn't having knowing the impact of marketing across the business, and you're right, and it's the wider it's the wider impact. It's not just that. It's like, you know, you might be looking at some internal comms, but that means that people aren't going to be leaving as much, and they feel more bought into the company, which means they have better retention. So it's like looking at that bigger picture of what we do and the impacts of it, right? Yeah, to the different lens of actually looking at ROI rather than just the kind of numbers in front of you.
Keelin Cox 12:24
It sort of made that, like, I know that we're well past covid, but it was a wake up call. Like, it was like, Oh, if we don't win this, we don't know how many more projects are coming out. We don't know if Joe has a job. Like, I felt an immense amount of pressure because I was like, these people's jobs are on the line based on what I do and if I'm compliant, and if we get everything in on time, like, try and tell me that that has nothing to do with finance and money, you know.
Ayo Abbas 12:54
So I have a question for you, which is actually a true question. So if you're a UK company, AEC company, you're like, Oh, we really have got our site set on marketing the US next year, not this year in 2026 What tips would you give any kind of UK companies looking to kind of do more work in the US?
Keelin Cox 13:12
Do more work in the US? I think if you can show the successes you've had in the UK and how they translate over to us infrastructure. One of the things that we have on the US is, like, a pretty severely aging infrastructure, and the UK has been around quite a bit longer. You've seen some stuff. I don't think it's enough to just say, like, to one of your points on on our episode of like, we're innovative. Like, tell us about an aging project that you brought up to par, and tell us how you can use time zones to work to your benefit. Like, that was a huge selling point when I was at Faithful and Gould is, like, we had cost estimators in in California. And then if there was a real tight timeline, you can use the people in the UK while everyone in the US is sleeping. So it's like a
14:12
24 hour response,
Keelin Cox 14:14
yeah, yeah, working on the same data, because now we can all be connected. It's not like all of your information is on one hard drive, like you're all presumably sharing information somehow, or you should be. Yeah, I think, I think showing how, how the work that you've done in other places translates over to the US, and why that's a benefit to the client themselves, like why they would want that. That would be, that'd be a good idea.
Ayo Abbas 14:43
I think the other thing for me is just the sheer size of the US. I think we don't always realize it's huge. Like, California is huge on itself.
Keelin Cox 14:52
Yeah, yeah. Like, there are companies that only work in California, I think, like, even though, conceptually, Ayo. Also know that the US is is very big. I had to fly out to Boston for a weekend. And I was like, Yeah, I'll be there in, like, what, three hours, three time zones. Like, three hours. No problem, it was six hours. And I was like, Oh, shit, that's far, same distance to get from Boston to Ireland as it is, to get from Boston to California. And I was like, my god, yeah.
Ayo Abbas 15:26
And I think for me, that's the one thing I know when I actually had a year when I worked for an education technology company, and we did a lot of business for us, and it was just like, even when you're just like, New York State, you're like, This is massive. You start and you start to understand how each kind of, even just these states, or, like, you know, how they all break down, and you're like, This is a really big market. And I think, I think that kind of thing of, you know, look at some characteristics and look at which bit of the market you want to target. Yeah, hone in on that, I think, and just be realistic about what you can do.
Keelin Cox 15:59
Yeah, pick a spot, pick, pick a spot and pick, pick an area that actually needs the services that you provide. Like, there are some states that will not work with with companies that don't have an office, like a physical office location, yeah, where they are. So, like, places in Ohio, I know won't work with any company that doesn't have an actual office building, to a point where, if you want to break into that market, like if there's a really big project coming up, it is worth signing a lease to have an office somewhere near that public agency or client as a means of just like
Ayo Abbas 16:40
Having an address that is their address and their postcode, their zip code, postcode and zip code. That's another one that's different.
Keelin Cox 16:47
Yeah, I still don't understand. Like, my husband's from Ireland, and I like the air codes. Like zip codes make far more sense to me, but you have to, like, specify the state and then the zip codes and the number, yeah, yeah. I can see how it'd be confusing.
Ayo Abbas 17:07
Question on the Ohio would they actually, would they say that publicly, that they would do that? Or is that just for people in the know?
Keelin Cox 17:14
Some of them would, yeah. Public agencies sometimes will put in the bid like physical office location in state required. They won't actually say that you need to be in the city, but they will say you need to be in the state.
17:32
Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah.
Keelin Cox 17:35
And like with engineers and architects, I don't know if it works the same for contractors, but you have to get each state has its own licensing. So, like, you can be a licensed California engineer, but, but no work anywhere else. Yeah. So, like, if you want to do, if you want to be able to sign plans, you have, like, let's say, for a project in Texas, you have to become registered in Texas. And that's like, a non negotiable,
Ayo Abbas 18:03
wow, or you couldn't partner with somebody who's based there,
Keelin Cox 18:06
or you could, you could, you could, but, like, you wouldn't be able to sign plans or documentation. You could do some of the work, but you wouldn't be the be all, end all.
Ayo Abbas 18:16
Yeah, so yeah, if you want to go to the US, you need to do some research. Basically, yeah, yeah, it's a lot though, isn't it? And I think that's that's really interesting, some of that I didn't know before. So thank you for
18:26
that. Yeah, I've learned a lot.
Ayo Abbas 18:30
And like I said, Thank you so much for coming on to my show this time. And yeah, if you want to listen to the other episode, I'll put the link in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Take care. Bye.
