"We didn't want to be somebody that just came in and it was about the bottom line and the revenue. It was about being a part of the community."
In this episode, Michelle Calcote King sits down with Optima Engineering Director of Marketing & Growth Suzanne Epps to discuss why it is a mistake for AEC marketers to blindly transplant their existing strategies when entering new markets.
Through Optima's recent launch in Greenville, South Carolina, Suzanne demonstrates how becoming a true community partner — not just a service provider — creates lasting relationships that outperform traditional advertising investments. She shares practical tactics for leveraging strategic differentiators, such as sustainable design expertise and local community involvement, to build trust and credibility in new markets.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn
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Why simply replicating strategies from one market to another doesn't work and how Optima adapted its approach for the Greenville market.
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The strategic importance of establishing a physical office presence when entering a new market.
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How to identify and showcase measurable differentiators that resonate with clients in different markets.
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Effective ways to build brand awareness and community relationships without excessive marketing spend.
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The importance of asking questions and understanding what works in each unique community.
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How Optima leverages its expertise in sustainable design and net-zero energy solutions as a key differentiator.
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The balance between data-driven decisions and community engagement in market entry strategies.
About our featured guest
Suzanne Epps joined Optima Engineering in 2021 and is the Director of Marketing & Growth. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Suzanne is an accomplished marketing and recruitment professional with a passion for connecting top talent with exceptional opportunities. She has developed a deep understanding of both marketing strategies and the intricacies of talent acquisition. Suzanne has a proven track record of driving successful campaigns that generate brand awareness, increase customer engagement and boost revenue. She excels in crafting compelling marketing messages, developing comprehensive marketing plans and leveraging digital platforms to reach target audiences effectively. Suzanne’s collaborative and strategic approach to marketing and recruitment has enabled her to build strong relationships with clients, candidates and colleagues.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
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.
Transcript
Disclaimer: What you’re reading is an AI-transcribed version of our podcast. It may contain mistakes, including spelling and grammar errors.
[00:00:00] Suzanne Epps: Each community is very unique. It's shaped by its history, their local businesses, their cultures, their traditions. You need to be able to understand that and immerse yourself in it in order to see long-term success as opposed to just that project-based approach.
[00:00:23] Announcer: 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.
[00:00:40] Michelle Calcote King: Hi, and welcome to Spill the Inc. I'm Michelle Calcote King. I am your host, and I'm the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We are a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including architecture, engineering, and construction firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.
So when you are entering a new market and you want to make a splash, AEC firms must identify and reinforce their differentiators, but some fall into the trap of assuming that just because something that worked well in one market is going to work well in this new market.
Suzanne Epps is with me today to talk about why AEC marketers should reject the urge to carbon copy their past approaches and how they can lean into their differentiators more successfully. Suzanne is the Director of Marketing and Growth at Optima Engineering, where she recently helped the firm open its first office in the Greenville, South Carolina market. So thank you for joining me.
[00:01:45] Suzanne Epps: Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:01:47] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Excited to have you here. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at Optima.
[00:01:53] Suzanne Epps: I joined Optima in 2021. My career into AEC, like many people, was kind of unconventional or non-traditional. Kind of fell into it.
After college, I got into commercial real estate brokerage and development. Being a part of a developing firm was where I realized that I really enjoyed that construction part of the job. So in that 2008, 2009 recession era, I made a move to North Carolina, where I continued in the commercial real estate brokerage industry.
Then I decided it was time for a change. I've been doing it for a really long time and made the move, took the leap of faith into AEC and joined Optima, which has been one of the best career decisions. Moving into AEC is something that I'm pretty passionate about.
Optima Engineering just had a really great reputation in the industry. When I joined in 2021, we just had two offices, Charlotte and Raleigh. Charlotte being our headquarters. And since then we've added two more offices, one in Asheville, North Carolina, and then most recently, Greenville.
[00:03:11] Michelle Calcote King: Oh, awesome. I love Greenville. It's such a great town.
[00:03:14] Suzanne Epps: It's amazing. It has all the charm of Charleston, but more of that family, less tourism kind of feel. It's a really great community, and we've really enjoyed it.
So we're a mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection and technology consulting firm. We work in a variety of market sectors, almost all of them except for residential. We do K-12, municipal and government facilities and buildings and commercial. They're kind of our top three. And then we also have teams that focus on mission critical data centers, higher ed, healthcare, industrial.
And then something that we're really proud of is being an early adopter and at the forefront of sustainable designs and renewable energy. For nearly two decades we've been working on that and been a regional leader in net zero energy designs.
[00:04:09] Michelle Calcote King: Oh wow. Fantastic. So tell me about entering the Greenville market. You were telling my producer Sophia about when you went into that market, one of the things you really thought about was that a lot of AEC firms might just take what they've done in other markets and replicate that, but you knew it was really important to not do that. Every market can be really different and to think through that. So tell me about that experience and what you learned through that expansion into that market.
[00:04:49] Suzanne Epps: We entered the Greenville office last year in October, so still a very new office. It's been about four months. That was not a cold market entry. We have been doing work in South Carolina since the inception of Optima, but it was more on the private sector and the commercial side of things.
One of the hurdles that we have come up against in part of the decision to move into the South Carolina market was that public sector work. So really being able to put some roots down in South Carolina because we have been doing work there and we wanted to be a part of that community.
So being able to come in there and have a little bit of a warmer entry. We had some clients, but also realizing that there's a lot of new opportunities there of firms that we haven't necessarily worked with, and we have to build brand presence in the market.
[00:05:51] Michelle Calcote King: What were some of the ways that you did that? Tell me about what were some of the tactics that you used?
[00:05:58] Suzanne Epps: So entering a new market, we wanted to make sure that we thought about more of the community. We didn't want to be somebody that just kind of came in and it was about the bottom line and the revenue. It was about being a part of the community for us. That's something that we're pretty proud of in all of the markets that we're in.
I've taken the opportunity to really learn that. It's not always just about numbers, it's about meeting people and understanding that community, which is where that, you know, it's not—you can't just carbon copy. What works in Charlotte doesn't work in Raleigh. What works in Raleigh doesn't work in Greenville.
Each community is very unique. It's shaped by its history, their local businesses, their cultures, their traditions. And so you need to be able to understand that and immerse yourself in it in order to see long-term success as opposed to just that project-based approach.
[00:07:03] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, absolutely. And so Optima decided to build a physical office there. How did you leverage that office?
[00:07:15] Suzanne Epps: Going into South Carolina has always been a long-term strategic goal for Optima. We wanted to make sure that we did it at the right time and that it was the right move for us.
We evaluated Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, looking at a lot of the different factors, economic, just growth and proximity. Greenville was the best fit for Optima with proximity to Charlotte, our headquarters. And then we have another office in Asheville. So Raleigh's our farthest office. But I'm able to kind of visit all the offices. So that's been something really great.
And I think it's growth within, having those major investments that have come in manufacturing, life sciences and then just their overall investment into their own infrastructure was something that really lent to that decision making.
[00:08:15] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, absolutely. And I imagine having that physical space says to the community, "Hey, we're invested here. We're a part of this community now." Versus not having that space. It gives that commitment factor, right?
[00:08:34] Suzanne Epps: We didn't want to be somebody that was just doing work in South Carolina. We wanted to be amongst the business community and in with the fabric of that community, not just teaming or doing a project and stepping back out. We wanted to contribute into the community.
[00:08:57] Michelle Calcote King: And so when you're entering a new market, and I know you guys were already doing some work there, but when you're entering a new market, the AEC industry is such a relationship industry, how do you go about helping your seller-doers build the relationships necessary to continue to grow? How do you help facilitate that?
[00:09:21] Suzanne Epps: A lot of that has been—it's a little intimidating at times. You're kind of the new kid on campus. So we've really embraced asking questions and getting to know the community, not coming in and telling them what we know.
It's been about, we wanted to enter the market and learn about their community and their business models and what works there. What are the industry organizations that you're gonna find most people leaning towards.
You know, in Raleigh we have a very robust chamber community with the Raleigh Chamber. Charlotte's a bigger city. So Raleigh kind of has that traditional chamber that's really robust. And I think in Charlotte it's a little bit more diverse in different areas.
So we wanted to make sure that we approached Greenville with that openness to say, what does work here? We wanted to have time to understand, to learn, and then start to reach out and see where our services fit in. That's about building trust. It doesn't just—it's not something that comes quickly or is just given. You have to earn it.
[00:10:53] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. That's so important to make sure that you're asking those questions. What works here? Sometimes the chamber is a big deal in some towns. Sometimes it's not. I've definitely seen that. And it's always surprising what's really important in some towns isn't as big of a deal in other towns. It's really important to just sort of ask people and see where everyone goes to connect here.
[00:11:23] Suzanne Epps: Yeah. In the industry organizations too, you can see it in different industry organizations where ULI might be really big in one area. Or Crew, for instance. Commercial real estate women, there's really strong chapters and then there's chapters that maybe don't have the same or SMPS, where it's really strong in one market.
For instance, the Charlotte market, very strong SMPS community there, and I love it. So just being able to be adaptable and flexible to those things.
[00:11:55] Michelle Calcote King: Absolutely. So the other thing that I know you and Sophia talked about were really fleshing out and identifying measurable differentiators. I love that, and I'd love to hear your take on some examples of what that looks like at Optima and kind of how you've done that for the firm.
[00:12:20] Suzanne Epps: So one of the things we wanted to do when we were looking at Greenville, we wanted to find those key differentiators and really showcase those. What do we offer that maybe others don't? How does it directly benefit our clients? Things like that.
And so when we looked at Greenville, we found a bit of a gap. There are definitely firms that offer the full service, kind of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection. But we found that there wasn't a lot of firms that offered the in-house technology lighting design, commissioning some of the additional services that our team offers.
And having that all in one firm and being able to provide all the services so that it's a well coordinated project internally for our clients has really been helpful. And our biggest differentiator is that net zero and sustainable designs.
Our team brings decades of experience in solar PV and geothermal and high performance building systems, energy modeling. So that's been something that has really driven our decision making and project designs, but also how we approach and I think our clients really value that we can look at a project from inception and see how we can improve efficiencies on those projects.
[00:13:48] Michelle Calcote King: That's great. I think that's the critical point that you just made, is our clients value that. So that's always figuring out what's unique about your firm and then figuring out do clients care. And finding that intersection. So it looks like you were able to really find that intersection. And that's the critical point—it doesn't matter if nobody cares about whether you know what's unique, so. Yeah. That's great.
How are you communicating those differentiators? Is it different per market or are you finding that those differentiators tend to stand out in every market that you're in?
[00:14:42] Suzanne Epps: You know, the sustainability part of our—the differentiator of our sustainability that we've actually done a number of net zero schools in South Carolina, in the Horry County area. So that's something that really kicked off a lot of our net zero side of our business model.
So that was something that existed already. So being able to showcase that. But I also think one of the things that's really important is it's hard to showcase reputation. So it's really building that. It's not something that you can—it's leaning on your previous experience. It's leaning on previous client experience. It's that brand presence, it's really bringing that to the forefront, because that's something that's not as, it's a little harder to illustrate.
It's really about making those connections and making sure that people can trust you. It's a service. You're selling a service and a knowledge and an expertise. So there's other people that have the same expertise. So you're leaning on a different set of differentiators that has a nuance to it.
[00:16:00] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. It's definitely different than selling that product. And this last thing I want to talk to you about is that there's often this idea that you have to spend this gigantic sum of money to get noticed in front of the right audiences. And you're saying, look, there are ways to build that brand awareness, make those connections, without the huge budget. What are some ways that you're doing that that doesn't necessarily include that huge budget?
[00:16:42] Suzanne Epps: Yeah. I think going into a market, especially a new market, I don't want to underestimate or discount the fact that it does require an investment, securing office locations, talent acquisition.
But I do think some of the things that make a lasting and long-term success aren't necessarily always the big advertising budget dollars. Sometimes it's really engaging chambers or economic development organizations, making yourself present at city council meetings or planning meetings and getting involved in the municipality side of things.
And starting to get involved in community involvement, giving back to a community I think is a really important way to show your commitment and be a part of that business community that you want to be welcomed into. And also helping in, if there's educational workforce programs, I think there's ways that you can provide your time and really let yourself immerse into what makes that community different and unique and learn about it and really find your space and your place in that landscape.
[00:18:06] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Well, it sounds like, and also being inquisitive about what this community cares about, what works in this community and taking the time to build those local relationships. While that might not have a dollar amount to it, that can go very, very far.
So the that is the kind of thing that makes it a big impact long term. And I know it has a time cost to it, right? But those kind of things are, and it's a culture thing internally that often people like you have to create internally for it to happen.
[00:18:51] Suzanne Epps: Yeah, I think there's a balance in finding, you know, you have to make data-driven decisions in markets. And you have to do all those things. But I think there's a balance in both those, the connectivity as well as the data-driven business decisions.
[00:19:07] Michelle Calcote King: Absolutely. Well, I'd love to give you the opportunity. Is there one final thought you'd like to leave our listeners with on this topic? I, we have clients entering new markets right now. So from someone who's done it recently, do you have any final wisdom?
[00:19:26] Suzanne Epps: Yeah, I think entering a new market can always feel a little overwhelming. It feels like the new kid in class sometimes where friendships and routines may have already been established. And I think you gotta find your space and build that trust to get a seat at the table.
It can feel a lot sometimes like an uphill battle, but I think if you stay true to your firm's core services, your values, integrity, people will take notice of that, they will start to gravitate towards that. I think being consistent and reliable, those are things that with a solid strategic plan to enter a market, I think that really sets somebody up for long-term success.
[00:20:11] Michelle Calcote King: That's great. Thank you so much. So we have been talking to Suzanne Epps of Optima Engineering. Thank you for joining us.
[00:20:19] Suzanne Epps: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
[00:20:24] Announcer: 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.
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