This blog posting’s title is rather obvious but I think we risk losing our construction marketing direction if we fail to heed its message. Marketing, after all, is about spurring current and potential clients to decide to do business with you. If you can’t connect with them on a practical and emotional level, they will either continue doing exactly what they are doing now or follow the path which draws them to their natural and environmental selves.
The challenge is that if you try to change yourself to be someone who you are not, you will likely revert to your core self sooner rather than later. The same issue is even greater for the people with whom you try to do business. Do you really think they will change their stripes to do business with you or, rather, they simply find that what you offer validates who they are?
This is why I advocate in my upcoming Construction Marketing Ideas book that you follow a strengths-matching exercise. Combine your current strengths (the traits/skills which you do well and which you really enjoy) with activities which relate to your real current and potential clients’ interests, and you win — for want of a better analogy right now — marketing Gold. You have fun, your current clients will love you and you won’t have much trouble doing the work you need to do to attract new business from clients you really want to serve.
As well, to turn a cliche on its head, this strategy is easier to do than to say.
Simply look at your passions, the things you really enjoy doing and do well at and then assess your potential clients. Often they will tell you who they really are either indirectly or, if you ask nicely, directly. Then find a way to connect emotionally with more potential clients by finding the common points between your strengths and their needs and values.
When you think about it, this strategy is the most sustainable route to marketing success. It is hard not to succeed by spending your time and energies at work you enjoy and are great at doing, where your clients appreciate and will pay for your strengths.