Jerry LoCocco and Drew Pilklington received powerful free publicity in this Yuma Sun article.
On Friday, I had a rewarding and insightful conversation with Jerry LoCoco, a partner with Drew Pilkington in LoCocco-Pilkington Construction in Yuma, AZ. Jerry had purchased my Construction Marketing Ideas book, liked it (he has added his review to the Amazon.com collection) and arranged to speak with me to see if his marketing is on track.
Yuma, a city of slightly under 100,000 in southwestern Arizona, has certainly experienced the U.S. recession like other areas. Conditions are challenging for the young company (founded in 2007) and the two entrepreneurs — Jerry was 30 and Drew 28 when the Yuma Sun profiled their business editorially earlier this year in May.
But they are certainly doing much that is right and effective and following the guidance in my book.
Earlier, he wrote to me:
I wanted to take a moment to tell you that I enjoyed the “Construction Marketing Ideas” book and found it to be insightful. LPC is a new construction company founded in 2007 right when the market really fell apart! Since inception my partner and I have worked extremely hard to develop a strong reputation within our small community (100,000 full time residence) completing primarily design bid build and recently design build construction projects. While reading your book and reviewing our backlog I was alarmed to find that more than 80% of our current workload is from previous clients.
We pride ourselves on being “next generation” in all facets of our commercial construction delivery method however, I must admit I have a lot to learn about marketing. Our competition (5 companies) which are ran by owners mostly in their mid fifties, relies primarily on word of mouth and repeat business. I agree with your statement in the fifth paragraph on page 3 where you say that due to the newness of construction marketing the barriers to entry are reduced when compared to other industries. To expand on that idea I believe that my local commercial construction market and its current leaders do not have the experience nor the desire to utilize effective marketing strategies within their business. As a result I see a huge opportunity to distinguish LPC from the competition and capitalize on this void in our current industry.
As I have previously stated we are a new company founded in this challenging economy and quite frankly we do not have many resources to implement a marketing plan. After reading your book I have so many ideas in my mind of what our next step needs to be. I would appreciate any advice that you may have which would help me focus efforts in the development and implementation of a cost effective marketing strategy that capitalizes on this void and set LPC apart from the competition.
Last Friday, he explained how the Yuma Sun had profiled their business and the publicity had resulted in one significant new account. He said the business newspaper had asked if he would like to write a regular column. After confirming that Jerry truly enjoys writing and reading, I of course told him to go for it. I also encouraged him to develop other resources including a weekly e-letter to connect with current, previous and potential clients. He might also want to start a blog.
Regular scheduled publicity in local business media read by potential clients (in the editorial rather than advertising sense) is undoubtedly one of best marketing “investments” in time rather than cash you can make. You will over time become recognized as the local expert on the topic, gain the opportunity to speak with local groups and write and be interviewed for other relevant topics. Potential clients will begin to trust you and current clients will be satisfied they are working with the local industry leader. You will be able to win more work where price is secondary and reputation is primary. And you will find the writing you do for the regular column can be recycled to other purposes, reducing the overall work and stress.
These opportunities are worth grabbing when they occur. Can you invite them to happen? Well, you can certainly propose the idea. It is good to have some samples of your work available. Most larger and more meaningful publications and media outlets will be wary if you recycle canned material from editorial services, ghost writers (unless they are exceptionally good) or you try to write something that reads like an advertisement.
You can also seek guidance from professionals about media relations and publicity. Your challenge, in this case, is much like the challenge in finding most great service providers. Word-of-mouth and relationship-based reputations are probably the best indicators of potential effectiveness. An inexpensive solution can be to connect with your local community college and work with a student intern (but of course you may find the quality of the work to be uneven, and if you don’t have experience in the field, you may not know the difference between good and less-than-effective publicity services.)
However, I encourage you not to be deterred — if you have any budget for conventional paid advertising, I certainly recommend you take a portion of that and devote it to seeking and discovering free editorial publicity. And if you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to obtain more publicity without spending anything on advertising, of course, accept the offer. You have achieved the closest thing to a free marketing home-run.
