If you are looking for sure-fire quick answers about construction marketing, you’ve come to the right place. Of course, I may well be restating the obvious and you may just elect to bury your head in the sand and ignore these ideas.
Your current clients (and how you work with them) will provide your best and most immediate marketing rewards.
Love them. Abuse them. Cheat them. Doesn’t matter. Unless you are an an idiot, if they’ve purchased your services in the not-t0o-distant past, they are still the most likely to either purchase or recommend your services to others in the not-to-distant future. You can win major marketing points by avoiding mistakes and really hit home by treating the clients so well they love and rave about your experience. Spend 80 per cent of your marketing time/budget here (at least at the outset) and you’ll win on ROI.
Don’t buy anything anyone sells you, ever. (Wait, my own company’s sales reps will kill me for this, at least until they read the narrative.)
I mean, combine some reason and common sense with your own experience in deciding whether an inbound marketing solicitation/call is worthy, then make your own decisions. Great and effective salespeople will generally only sell you services which truly add value and respect you, and they effectively facilitate rather than “sell” your services. Successful organizations, of course, have a strong selling team, but most of these representatives correlate their work with effective marketing, and that is largely built on the first point, referenced above.
Your best outreach marketing occurs with generosity. Community service. Information. Client-focused associations. Good deeds.
I have great respect for some individuals who don’t (because of our previous errors) really love my business. They have given and shared their time and skills for the betterment of their industry and the community. They are also quite successful in their own businesses. But I can also brag a bit as well. We encourage at our sales representatives to spend at least 25 per cent of their time on community and association activities without any expectation of return/reward. Then, when the time is right (for both us and the client), they pull in the business from their relationships. But neither they nor you will achieve anything by cynically thinking you can just give a little, then win a lot because you plan it this way.
There. Three ideas. If you put these into effect, you’ll succeed. I guarantee it. And you can do everything on a miniscule marketing budget, if you wish.
Please feel free to comment if you agree, disagree, or wish to add your own thoughts.
