It’s an exhausting time to be in marketing.
Although I’m not an AEC marketer, I’ve spent nearly a decade marketing to AEC firms on the vendor side and watching this play out, account by account. Over the last few years, AEC marketing has turned into one of the more demanding jobs in professional services. Teams that used to own proposals and a website now own brand, demand gen, AI adoption and transformation, plus client experience—often without adding a single headcount.
And across the board, there are five big problems that keep coming up consistently:
- Chronically understaffed teams buried in proposal work, not strategy. 69% of AEC marketing teams have fewer than 10 people regardless of firm size, and 86% regularly produce pursuit materials like resumes and project sheets (SMPS, Key Takeaways From State of A/E/C Marketing Report). Separately, 63.2% of marketing teams report spending more than half their time on proposal work specifically (OpenAsset, 2024 State of Proposals in AEC Marketing Report).
- A widening AI/data-literacy readiness gap. 68% of firms rate AI-enabled workflows as highly impactful, but only 13% feel prepared to execute them; general AI and data literacy shows the same pattern (58% impact vs. 15% readiness) (Stambaugh Ness, The Future of AEC Marketing & BD).
- Manual processes and weak MarTech foundations. Half of AEC marketing teams still track opportunities in spreadsheets instead of a CRM or proposal-specific software, and a third handle recurring content requests with no formal system (SMPS, Key Takeaways From State of A/E/C Marketing Report). This lines up with Stambaugh Ness’s finding that 71% of firms say data management/infrastructure needs improvement, but only 10% feel highly ready (Stambaugh Ness, The Future of AEC Marketing & BD).
- Underinvestment in growing existing accounts. 80% of AEC firm revenue comes from existing clients, yet only 32% of firms feel ready to build real account-growth strategies, and just 22% feel highly prepared on client experience programs generally — despite 65-74% saying these matter (Stambaugh Ness, The Future of AEC Marketing & BD).
- (Compounding factor) – the talent crisis: 81% of firms cite recruiting difficulty as a moderate-to-extreme concern, and 76% point to a “missing middle” shortage of mid-career professionals, meaning marketing teams are competing for the same scarce talent pool as the rest of the firm (Stambaugh Ness, What’s Ahead for AEC Firms in 2026).
Of these five, the first four are really symptoms of one root problem: most AEC firms don’t have a data foundation solid enough to support the strategic work everyone agrees matters. A clear process (the “what should happen”) and the context layer (the why to perform the work today) is critical before you add AI.
You can’t operationalize AI (#2) without clean(ish) data. You can’t free your team from manual proposal grind (#1, #3) without integrated systems that talk to each other. And you can’t credibly grow existing accounts (#4) without visibility into what’s actually happening across your client relationships. The talent shortage (#5) just makes it harder to staff your way out of these gaps, which is exactly why the fix has to be structural, not “hire more people.”
I promise this gets less boring by the end. Stick with me.
A lot of these problems aren’t unique to AEC marketing, but are overwhelmingly felt across many marketing teams today. Throughout this article, I’ll give you a glimpse into how I am addressing these problems at Unanet, along with some practical tips for how to apply these same methodologies at your AEC firm.
- Chronically understaffed teams buried in proposal work, not strategy.
I could write a book about being buried in non-strategic work. For AEC marketers, as the demand for buildings continues, so does the demand for proposals. Every RFP shows up like it personally scheduled itself to ruin your Friday, and there’s always another one right behind it. The problem isn’t that proposals don’t matter (they clearly do, they pay the bills). It’s that “strategic marketing” quietly becomes the thing you’ll get to once the queue is empty. But the queue is never empty.
The work never ends, so a good marketing mindset has to be focused on the journey and constant improvement rather than hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel, or a very finite “done.”
Tip: Block your calendar – Protect strategic time the same way you’d protect a client call. If it’s not on the calendar as a hard block, it’s the first thing that loses to an “urgent” proposal ask.
Tip: Have dedicated focus days – Pick a day, or even an afternoon, each week where proposals don’t get to touch you. Tell your team, tell your boss, and then actually defend it when someone tests it.
Tip: Delegate – You don’t have to be the one formatting every resume and project sheet. Figure out what only you can do, and hand the rest to someone else, even if that means it gets done imperfectly at first while they learn.
Tip: Go touch grass – Burnout doesn’t make you more strategic. It makes you tired, resentful, and worse at your job. Step away from the proposal template occasionally, on purpose. Some of the best ideas come from monotonous activities.
- A widening AI/data-literacy readiness gap.
It’s hard to learn something new when you can’t get out of the grind of #1. It’s also very hard to learn AI when it isn’t connected to the right sources to give you the insights you need. Or even worse, it’s connected to a data source that is messy and untrustworthy.
Tip: AI Days – Set aside recurring, protected time (weekly or monthly) where the only job is testing AI tools against real workflows. Not squeezed between proposal deadlines, but actually protected, or it won’t happen. Listen to podcasts, attend webinars, and learn from others about where you want to go.
Tip: Start Small – Don’t try to automate your entire lead-to-close process in one swing. Pick one annoying, repetitive task, prove it works, and let that win build the case for the next one.
Tip: Dream Big – Envision the exact workflow you need to make your organization’s jobs easier. Pretend there are no humans to execute the work. How could automation and AI get the job done for you? Map it out and dream it first. Then find the path to get there.
Tip: Try it for personal projects (non-work related) – Use AI tools on something low-stakes: planning a trip, organizing recipes, whatever. You’ll learn what these tools are actually good at without the pressure of it needing to be perfect for a client deliverable.
- Manual processes and weak MarTech foundations.
Our data is gold, but it’s often treated as an afterthought. When things are changing so quickly, why do we as marketers STILL insist on using spreadsheets? The fact is, we love them. No judgement…we all do. But spreadsheets are dead. They’re static unless you have the right systems in place to properly sync and update them. And for most of us, they require manual updates (which is really just a system with extra steps and worse handwriting).
Separately, we often start by thinking we need a new technology or tool to solve our problems. But rather than starting with “what tech do I need?” start with “what problem am I trying to solve?”
Tip: Define the problem first – Start with the problem you are trying to solve, not the shiny new tech you’ve heard about at a conference. “We need AI” is not a problem statement; “we can’t tell which proposals are worth pursuing” is.
Tip: Gather requirements for what you need a tool to do, then put together a list of tools to evaluate – Once you know the problem, shortlist a few tools against it and weigh build vs. buy honestly. Building your own is rarely as cheap as it sounds once you factor in the staff and time it takes to keep it updated, maintained, and not quietly broken six months from now. Then demo and shortlist the top tools to put through RFP.
- Underinvestment in growing existing accounts.
This one is huge. Marketing and sales love to chase after any shiny and new account but often fail to nurture what is right in front of them. Sometimes your best leads are sitting right there in your database and even cheering you on. Do you have the right data foundation in place to actually hear the applause of your biggest fans, or are you ignoring them because you’re too busy going after the next big thing?
Tip: Grow your relationships and account growth will follow – In AEC marketing, relationships are literally everything. But as marketers, it’s hard to find the time to do this, or even to know when the right time is to reach out with the perfect message to the perfect person — especially when you’re buried in #1’s proposal queue. Going back to #3, having a CRM with cleanish data does a lot of that timing work for you.
Tip: Listen for signals – Watch for signals from your customer accounts: leadership changes, sentiment (are they happy with you or pissed at you?), whether you actually have your contacts’ birthdays on file. Have you sent a birthday card to your biggest fan lately, or does that only happen for prospects you’re still trying to win? Cleanish data can automate the reminders. It can’t automate you actually caring (that part’s still on you).
- (Compounding factor) – the talent crisis
Ahh yes, the age-old talent crisis. The facts are, we are all being asked to do more with less. So how can we do that if we can’t keep our heads above water?
Focus on fixing the foundation first. If there were no humans (going back to the tip from #2), how would you get the work done? What problems would you need to solve (automate), and what things could 100% not be automated?
Tip: Perform an audit of your data – Go into your CRM or spreadsheets (again, no judgement) and honestly assess the accuracy of what’s in there. Are there fields nobody’s used in two years? Automations that are still running for a process that doesn’t exist anymore? Old contacts sitting dormant that should either be re-engaged or finally let go? An audit won’t fix your talent gap, but it will make the team you do have measurably more effective, which is the closest thing to “more headcount” you’re getting this budget cycle.
None of this requires a six-figure platform overhaul or a Chief AI Officer with a fancy title (though if your budget allows, no judgement). It requires treating your data like an asset your firm can’t function without — something you maintain and actually use, not something you inherited from whoever built the CRM in 2019 that everyone has been avoiding ever since.
The firms that pull ahead here won’t win because they ran the flashiest AI transformation. They’ll win because when the AI, or the account manager, or the new hire on day one asks a question, the data underneath actually has an answer.
Data used to be boring.
It used to be an afterthought.
But the truth is…
Data is hot.
Article written by Sarah Lorek. Sarah is VP, Growth & Performance Marketing at Unanet. Unanet is the leader in AI-first ERP and growth software for project-based businesses. Trusted by more than 4,200 government contractor, architecture, engineering, and construction firms, Unanet unifies financials, projects, and pursuits with built-in automation and compliance— all supported by a dedicated customer success team. This empowers leaders to make confident, real-time decisions that drive growth from pipeline to profit. Learn more at Unanet.com.