Take speaker Peter Sheahan, for example, who delivered an inspiring, creative and intriguing presentation to the Economic Developers Council of Ontario conference.  I really enjoyed some of his stories, such as his explanation of how Apple focuses its research and development efforts so well that it needs to spend a relatively small part of its revenues (about three per cent) on R&D, compared to Microsoft, which spends upwards of 18 per cent, with far less successful results.  I also appreciated how stories and reality sometimes collide, creating marketing challenges.

Consider Harley Davidson motorcycles, for example.  The company’s major market is among 40 something doctors, dentists and lawyers hoping to relive their young-adult dreams, and gaining satisfaction by perceiving they are putting fear into the minds of townspeople as they rumble through on their weekend rides.  But there is a problem with this success.  If Harley is perceived as a biking option for people who really aren’t who they act they are, then what happens to the company’s marketing message?  So it elects to sponsor Ultimate Fighting competitions; with blood, gore, and no-holds bar violence.  Most of Harley’s real clients probably wouldn’t want to be seen near these sorts of fights — but the ability to reinforce the bad-guy brand is there; and so is the marketing story.

As I mulled on how or where we could apply these insights to construction marketing, I met with the conference organizer and, without fear, asked her the about Sheahan’s speaker’s fee.  “$20,000.00,” she said.  My jaws didn’t drop; I know speakers can command pretty hefty fees, but if you work out the conference had at most 500 visitors, that means delegates paid about $20 each to hear him.  (Probably more, because the attendance of paid delegates is a bit less and Sheahan probably charges expenses on top of his speaking fee.)  The conference organizer then remarked that she had to tell another conference organizing committee to get real when they wanted Wayne Gretzky, who asked for more than $150,000 to address the crowd.

This stuff is fair enough, but when you go to Sheahan’s website, you can view clips of other presentations — and guess what, he is saying mostly the same thing to others.  Good ideas, recycled, of course recycle the income and message.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve heard plenty of really bad speakers and Sheahan is good.  He offers stuff that isn’t widely known, packaged in an entertaining manner.  And I know there are plenty of people out there who want to make money giving speeches, and plenty of organizations out there looking for great speakers, but the linkage between the two isn’t that great.  It isn’t easy to be a great speaker.  (Similarly, it isn’t that easy to write a great book and, even if you get it right, the chances of striking it rich aren’t that high.)

Nevertheless, the more I speak with successful consultants, professionals and the like, the more I appreciate that the really successful ones appreciate the value of speaking and presenting cohesive thoughts in front of qualified audiences.  The payback in credibility, reputation and actual business is truly impressive.  When you add to the equation the fact that you can, if you do it right, be paid for your marketing efforts, you have truly uncovered the marketing success secret.

This represents something of an attitude shift (or perhaps more accurately) an attitude evolution to me.  I’ve previously been a little cautious about the ‘hype’ of business-related government programs and services, believing (perhaps incorrectly) that once you cross the divide into the government, your effectiveness in counselling and advising and actually supporting and encouraging successful business is diminished.

Now my views are changing to recognize that the value of working with business support services such as economic development offices relates highly to your overall marketing and business development approach.  If you can create a circumstance where you rightfully earn positive relationships and rapport with EDOs, you will find you are in a much better position to understand the government agency proclivities, rules, soft spots and — most importantly — you may effectively connect with a potentially invaluable hidden referral network which can help you discover other connections and contacts.

These relationships won’t come without effort and just phoning the “public face” toll free or local number or sending an email to work with economic development agencies will give you, at best, a superficial response– your challenge is to create value and relationship-earning capacities with the relevant officials.

In our case, we are able to apply our greatest business strength; the ability to generate positive publicity and help highlight successes in economic development initiatives.  Obviously, your will need to think about your own ability to create value beyond the cliches and self-serving messages.  (Part of our value, and that of others who have achieved some success in the marketing business, is the ability to advise you on these points.)

In a few hours, Chase will take the train back to his home in St. Catharines and I and Tim will drive back to Ottawa.  We have a hockey game to attend tonight in a box provided from the Ottawa Senators Foundation for our publicity of the Rink of Dreams project — another example of relationship-building and marketing in practice.

The Branson, Missouri's tourist and live theatre strip

At the Economic Developers Council of Ontario conference yesterday, two speakers provided entirely different perspectives on successful tourism marketing and promotion.  The first speaker, Garrett Anderson of Branson, Missouri, described how a unique and fortunate series of events over several decades (including a life-changing 60 Minutes broadcast segment), turned a backwater town into a massive tourism centre, with more live theatre locations than either New York or London, England.  Branson’s population of 10,000 or so residents serves a tourism market of upwards of 50,000 new tourists daily.

The second speaker, Rob Spanier, senior vice-president of LiveWorkLearnPlay and a former Intrawest executive (who helped turn Canadian resorts such as Mont. Tremblant and The Blue Mountains (Collingwood) into major tourism enterprises, explained some practical and rather simple ideas that could turn virtually every town or community into a viable and profitable tourist destination.  His strongest and most elegant idea:  If your community hasn’t already done it, bring back the community market to downtown, which can be revitalized through a partnership of business and community leaders.

Thornbury Habour in The Blue Mountains, Ontario (photos from Wikipedia)

Fair enough.  I enjoyed Anderson’s speech, but frankly, towards the end, began feeling the effects from waking up at 4 p.m. to complete the work on this issues publications, my weekly e-letter, blog and the deadline for the Best Construction Blog competition.  Who, I thought, could even hope to start replicating the Branson experience.  Sure, Anderson has a wild story to share, but the stars aren’t likely to line up to make the story relevant to anyone in the room.

Meanwhile, although still nodding off at the start of Spanier’s talk, by the end, my ears were perking up.  Hey, this guy has done his thing in several real-life communities directly relevant to the audience.  His solution doesn’t require impossible budgets, incredible luck, or publicity from a major U.S. television network (when that sort of publicity could, indeed, create opportunities.)

At the end of the session, audience members could ask questions.  Every single questioner directed their inquiry to Anderson — not Spanier — even though as far as I can tell, Spanier’s talk was more proficient technically and Spanier actually offered some information the economic development officers in the room could implement in their real life world.

What is going on here?  Well, as we attended this EDCO conference, media covered Facebooks’ impending $5 billion initial public offering.  Sure, individual investors can now get in on the ride — and may do quite well — so the story is indeed newsworthy.  But how many of us will start the next Facebook?

Let’s take these observations closer to home.  In the AEC social media space, Tim Klabunde has undoubtedly achieved success with the Design and Construction Network.  The numbers are so good — probably upwards of a million dollars in attributed revenue (virtually all indirect from relationships initiated through the network) — that we want to hear the story, and get in on it.  Tim, however, is straightforward in saying that you won’t be able to repeat his success.  He happened to be on LinkedIn in the right place, at the right time and (to his credit) did the right things with the opportunities he had.

With social media these days, learning his story won’t help you achieve anywhere near the same level of success — except, perhaps, to encourage you to take some risks and go a bit beyond the obvious when it comes to opportunity arriving on your door-step.

Nevertheless, we will be more interested in Tim’s Kalbunde and Garrett Anderson’s stories because they are exciting, unique, and almost unbelievable in their potential and effectiveness.  As marketers and human beings, we want the excitement and success from uniqueness and special achievement and recognition, so we dream of success like Branson Missouri or the DCN.

The point we sometimes forget (but fortunately good marketers generally remember) is the exciting examples can be replicated if you notch things down a level or two.  You may not have an international community marketing success sensation, but you can re-frame your local community so that everyone in the vicinity — and maybe in some far off places — identify it as the leader in a special space.  Similarly, you can apply the knowledge, success and insights from the big market successes such as Facebook and even the industry niche stories such as Klabunde’s, and determine a market niche and space where you can be quite unique, effective and powerful.  In these areas, external consultants with proven success track records can actually help you replicate the “old” ideas so they are quite unique, new and exciting to your intended market — and that should be your goal in achieving marketing success.

Still, we want the excitement, the “big story” and the wildly improbable success to change our lives.  We are humans, after all.

The 30 blogs cover a diversity of themes and topics, reflecting different markets and interests.  (You can vote for the Construction Marketing Ideas blog, as well, by this vote won’t count for the selection of the actual competition winner, so if you want your vote to actually influence the decision, select at least one other blog, as well.)

Voting will remain open until 5 p.m. on March 30.  Periodically I’ll update you with progress reports about the voting tallies.  The judging panel will decide on its own evaluation criteria, but will likely consider issues such as content, graphic quality, reader interaction and frequency.

Your voting results will be confidential.  We need to collect your email address to avoid duplicate votes, but will only use this information to send the final results and other updates on the competition, unless you request anything else.

Let the voting begin!

We’ve produced for the conference a special edition of our regional construction publications and will have an exhibit in the conference’s showcase/marketing area, connecting with community economic development offices from across the province.  Our participation here follows the Economic Developers Council of Canada (EDAC) conference in October.  I’ve allocated more company marketing and business development dollars to these events than any project in recent memory, as (in both cases) Tim Lawlor and Chase are joining me, and for both events, we need to pay several nights’ hotel and expenses.

However, early indications are that these expenses are providing justified, both directly and indirectly.  Indeed, municipal economic development offices have marketing budgets and several have decided to advertise in our publications.   More importantly, they know their leading local contractors and construction industry partners and, in many case, their influence is helpful in co-ordinating profitable advertising features.  As well, we are seeing signs of the holy grail of marketing success:  the conversion of what had been originally cold leads into ongoing, continuing relationships with repeat sales (and genuine satisfaction that we’ve delivered on our commitments, adding to the positive word-of-mouth marketing.)

Meanwhile, this year I’ve received an impressive array of more than two dozen diverse entries to the Best Construction Blog competition. In case you are wondering, the marketing value of this event is much greater for the participants than my own business, especially since qualifying blogs receive free hyperlinks, publicity and of course the chance to win some meaningful recognition from a real competition.  In previous years, several competitors have set up campaigns to get out the vote, resulting in a flurry of inquiries, but the bloggers and voters are generally not likely to be current nor prospective clients for our business (a truly different story from this week’s EDCO conference).

However, as I’ve learned over the past few years, participation in social media initiatives still is extremely useful for marketing.  My blog, certainly, has resulted in leads that have converted to profitable business.

If you know of a blog you think worthy of the competition (there is no cost to enter or win), please share the news with the form below.

James Pader (at interview for The Franklin Press)

As the deadline approaches (tomorrow, January 31, 2012) for the 2012 Best Construction Blog competition, the we received an impressive last-minute entry from James Pader with Mountain Laurel Handrails (Apex Wood Railing) in Franklin, NC.

He writes:

My name is James Pader and I’ve personally been crafting mountain laurel handrails on special requests from clients since 2004.

In 2009, I posted pictures of a deck railing project my construction company installed. I started receiving inquiries about the availability of the product nationwide. The first national shipment went from Franklin, NC to Washington State.

Mountain Laurel Home Accents is currently expanding with orders both nationwide and locally.

Pader’s simple blog showcases the products, applications, clients, testimonials and practical ordering information in a manner that I sense inspires trust and confidence — in part by keeping things at a human level.  You sense you are not dealing with some big, bureaucratic corporation.  The Internet and blog are the perfect resource for promoting Pader’s products:  He can deliver across the U.S., but demand in any individual market will quite focused and would be truly challenging to co-ordinate without a solid web presence.  In his case, the blog “makes” the entire website, meaning this is one of the most practical examples of successful blogging I’ve seen to date.

If all goes well, the voting systems will be in place by Feb. 1 or 2 after nominations close.   If you wish to nominate your blog or one you like, please complete the nomination form by midnight on January 31.  There is no cost to enter nor win the competition, which will be decided by a combination of popular vote and independent judges’ recommendations.

topcoat review

Topcoatreview.com is indeed a worthy entry in the Best Construction Blog competition.  This blog, written by Vermont painting contractor Scott Burt, focuses on painting product and technology reviews — but is written from the perspective of real-life experience of a working contractor and a competent published writer.  (This skills combination isn’t that common, but I also see it in former Construction News and Report Group employee Daniel Smith, who operates the Strokes of Genius painting contracting business in Ottawa.)

In Burt’s case, however, the “about me” component of the blog explains his credentials quite clearly:

Scott Burt is a freelance writer who has written the monthly column “From the Field”, in American Painting Contractor magazine since 2008. Scott is a full time painting contractor/business owner of Topcoat Finishes, Inc., located in Jericho, VT and online at www.topcoatfinishes.com.

Holding a Master’s Degree in Education, a B.A. in English and over 20 years in the paint industry, it is only natural for Scott to be running a successful paint contracting business, and writing about it in order to help educate others in the industry. The purpose of the Topcoat Review is to capture the neurotic, symbiotic relationship between paint contractor and paint columnist. This blog archives and expands upon the paint and product reviews that we complete for publication, as well as promoting paint industry issues and resources.

In addition to APC, the work of Scott Burt and Topcoat Finishes have been featured in: Better Homes and Gardens, Tools of the Trade, Architectural Digest, Fine Homebuilding, New England Home, The Paint Dealer, Cleaner Times, Profiles, Homestyle and other regional and national publications.

If you are a painting contractor or wish to gather more knowledge about materials, technologies and best practices relating to painting, you will find much value in this blog.

We are reaching the deadline for nominations for the Best Construction Blog competition.  Entries close on midnight on Tuesday, January 31.  You can nominate your own blog or ones that you like (it is okay to nominate more than one blog).  There is no cost to enter nor win the competition, which will be decided by a combination of popular vote and independent judging.  You can access the nomination form here.

Recent blog postings focus on the company’s carpet protection products, certainly of relevance and value to painting and renovation contractors in both residential and commercial markets.  The company’s blog doesn’t put on airs, but describes contributions and community projects initiated by employees, while suggesting new and practical product applications.

The company has adapted state-of-the-art social media practices with links to the relevant services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus.

Overall, I think any product supply business can benefit by reviewing this site and blog.  I think you would not have great trouble creating your own website/blog model reflecting your own brand and product line using Protec’s example.  This is indeed a worthy Best Construction Blog entry.

Nominations close on midnight, January 31.  You can nominate your own blog or another one you like.  There is no cost to enter the competition.   Finalists will be decided by a combination of popular vote and independent judging.  The nomination form is here.

Most contractors have some sort of emergency plan and system in place — but a crisis is still a daunting experience, especially when the news media shows up unannounced.  We might know how to deal with insurance, safety inspectors and the like — and even have specialized consultants on call — but how many people in the business have an emergency media relations specialist on hand?

I think, likely, very few.  Outside of some exceptionally large or well organized practices and businesses, the construction industry doesn’t really think much about the media, except, I fear, for stereotyped approaches and communications.  So, yes, you’ll line up your staff with the giant charity cheque or arrange for a bunch of gold shovels for a ground-breaking ceremony.  You probably could go your entire career without a real media-sensitive accident or incident.

Then the four-letter-word hits the fan.  No time to think.  No knowledge of what to do.  And you dig yourself into a gigantic reputational hole by saying the wrong things at the wrong time, ill prepared for the consequences, stressed, and fearful of your future.

Of course specialized consultants are available for this type of situation, and one of them – Steve Gray of Rockford Gray based in Denver, Colorado, provided some tips and advice to members of the General Contractors Association of Ottawa annual general meeting last night.

Gray of course recommends the prevention/planning approach — developing the crisis plan and training staff on the situation before things go wrong.  But he acknowledges that most contractors will only appreciate the value of his service when they’ve experienced a media crisis first-hand.  So, in outlining his services and some basic survival strategies, he suggests the use of a “buy time statement” and then you call his office right away — 24/7 — for emergency consulting advice.

I won’t steal Gray’s thunder — and marketing and lead development materials — here.  You can download the Buy Time statement and a 12-step emergency action plan at his website (in exchange for your contact information).

The Blogging Painters are an eclectic group of business owners whom are passionate about the painting industry. Sounds kind of silly doesn’t it? Like a bunch of guys who like watching paint dry? But it is more than that!

Let me tell you how it came about.

While my husband manages the day to day operations of our company, I manage the office, work with customers and spend time online building websites and using Social Media. I also work in an elementary school as a media specialist, so yes, I am a computer geek! I am a moderator on 2 online forums for trade professionals, Painttalk and RemodelCrazy. where I have met a variety of professionals and made many online friends.

In the course of the past few years I have helped many of my peers set up their own websites and navigate Social Media, I was recently called a “Social Butterfly”, and yep, I am and I love what I do! And I am much happier since I traded my TV in for a laptop! I believe that paint contractors who invest sweat equity in their digital footprint will be well positioned going forward in the big picture, it seems to be just a matter of breaking ourselves of the habit of looking for the instant ROI gratification.

The latest project many of us have been undertaking is writing and networking blogs, which is a cutting edge way to gain credibility and differentiation within the paint industry. A group of us were having a conversation on Painttalk about blogging after several of us entered the  Shootout. My “Blogging Buddy” suggested that someone needed to create a place for all of the talented painter/writers to gather, share their knowledge and learn. There are alot of contractors who have great thoughts and experiences to share, but lack the time or the technical skills to create and maintain a blog. This venue may help some of those people learn how to assemble an effective blog post, and maybe even build a blog. I hope to have the best in our industry share their thoughts on marketing and business practices as well as product reviews and project posts. The best way for us all to learn is by doing, and I am happy to create a format in which to do that!

Many of our contributors were recently listed in the 2011 “Who’s Who in the Painting Industry”, I feel we are already off to a great start, and I look forward to the journey. I hope you will join us!

Thanks for reading!

If you are a painting contractor, or simply want to see social media at its best, I encourage you to view this site.

Nominations for the 2012 Best Construction Blog close on January 31.  You can enter your own blog or suggest others, and there is no cost to enter nor win the competition.  You can enter here.