I’m always challenged?by business and marketing paradoxes. Here are a few:
The more eyeballs you reach, the more business you achieve.
True, sometimes, not true at others. Are the eyeballs the right eyeballs? Do you leave a positive or negative impression (or just a fleeting one) on your potential clients.
You need consistent, effective marketing and business development strategies to succeed.
Sure, a system which provides a wonderful, continuous source of new leads will be helpful — if your resulting sales are profitable. But isn’t it true that your best results arise by really doing the work so well that your clients enthusiastically ask for more and refer their friends? So, if you are realistic, your most effective marketing would be to figure out who in the community/market zone are the greatest influencers, wow them with amazing service, and then replicate. That’s a system, but not the typical marketing and business development approach.
You need marketing and business development specialists to achieve the best results (and often these are different people).
But why is it, the best sales reps are also really good at marketing (themselves)? And in the AEC community, why are “seller-doers” far more effective than plain sales representatives? ?It seems specialization is helpful, but the best results arise when key individuals have interdisciplinary talents, and the organization that employs them can encourage these talent combinations.
In all of your marketing, you should have a call to action. ?Marketing without metrics (and measuring the results of the call to action) usually is a waste of time.
Heck, I’ve been blogging for almost a decade, and most times, there isn’t much action even when I call for it. Maybe a few individuals will link the blog on their Twitter or Facebook feed. Sometimes there is a comment or two. But is the blog a waste of time? Not really, because just one or two really big orders — which have led to spin-off and follow-up business — have paid the time cost here countless times over. However, if I was doing this for fast results, I should have quit long ago.
There — a few paradoxes.
I’ll leave with a call to action. (This will seem dumb, but there is a purpose here, which I’ll share in a few days.)
Please tell me the weather in your area. You can do this anonymously (by commenting) or by email to buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com.
Here’s the weather here?today:
