When you write a book, you invite comments. In fact, an entire industry revolves around reviewing others’ writing. Positive book reviews can help sell the product and create opportunities for valuable free media publicity. I’ve certainly seen these results in the two months since the publication of Construction Marketing Ideas: Practical strategies and resources to attract and retain clients for your architectural, engineering or construction business.
Ford Harding, author of Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field has joined the group of positive reviewers including Remodelcrazy.com‘s Paul Lessieur and Tim Klabunde, founder of The Design and Construction Network.
I truly appreciate these comments and am sure they are helping to sell the book. The results are encouraging: Direct payback from the hard publishing costs will be achieved within six months if current sales trends continue. The indirect benefits are probably worth much more.
We’ve sent the book to people to develop relationships, provide thanks for support and in the recruitment process for new employee. It is, after all, a great gift — truly tangible and with a rather high perceived value compared to the hard printing cost. I expect speaking and other marketing opportunities will follow.
However, the most valuable response I received since publishing the book is some 100 per cent constructive criticism from a successful industry leader who, in comprehensive emails, has pointed out some real flaws including several glaring typos that only are glaring now that I know about them. (This is after three-go-rounds by a truly qualified proofreader who caught many errors, but couldn’t catch these mistakes because they required industry-specific knowledge.)
I won’t name the less-than-positive reviewer here because I follow one of my main rules in complements and criticism as has my critic. Share good news publicly and widely; and share less positive news confidentially and privately. (Of course you can be self-effacing in public if you wish; sometimes pointing out your warts and flaws helps because you show you are human, not a phony marketing machine.) My straightforward rreviewer explained that the book really is speaking to two very different markets which have different needs: The residential, public market and the business-to-business audience, and thus should actually be split into two volumes.
This point is well taken. My decision to write a one-size-fits-all volume goes against the grain of effective marketing and focus: If you try to be too many things to too many people, you can lose relevance and effectiveness. My best justification for this wide-range is that I’ve based it on the actual readership of my blog and our business dealings with suppliers and contractors who live in both the residential and non-residential spaces.
I might follow the reviewer’s advice to split up the volume and will certainly fix the typos and factual errors. My respect for the reviewer has grown because the constructive criticism is as valuable as the positive comments in helping understand where I can improve.
Can you invite (and encourage) this sort of criticism and insight in your own business? Clearly, you need trust and respect in your relations and marketing to learn how to hear the negative as well as the positive and learn from the critics. Of course, most successful marketers know that speaking badly about the competition is a risky thing and generally should be avoided. (There are exceptions, but I think if you are just starting out in marketing you should just follow the basic taught by Dale Carnegie: Never Criticize, Condemn or Complain.) In this case, I’m writing about inviting people to truly speak their minds and then listening carefully especially when things aren’t totally positive.
