Can marketing experts screw up? Absolutely. Both Patrick King and I should know what to do to create an effective presentation/marketing message, but in terms of the upcoming webinar about Thought Leadership in the Construction Industry, we both messed it up badly.
King provided well-designed and technically proper marketing materials including promotional ads (some with sound and video). I “broadcast” these ads, including one to almost 10,000 readers.
Yet neither of us showed even the smallest bit of genuine thought leadership in our actions. ?We marketed and “sold” and (in my case) even spammed sufficiently to cause the spambot controls to kick in and knock my entire server/domain offline (I really should have learned my lessons here.)
What a mess . . .
Belatedly, I sought to rectify this problem. I restored my e-lists, and co-ordinated an interview with Patrick using the Google Hangout function yesterday. I haven’t used Hangouts for some time, and truly was impressed with the evolution of quality and resolution in the hangout system, which ties in with YouTube to achieve permanent video recordings that are easy to post and maintain. Alas, I didn’t quite realize that the system also has been redesigned to make it easy for users to have private video conference calls, which are NOT recorded (even though it seemed the system was supposed to record the conversation), so the great effort at video recording failed, as well.
Yet I certainly remember some words from Patrick about thought leadership, and how contractors’ return on investment can be incredible — like a $2.6 million successful contract one of King’s clients won because of some blog content.
Wow . . .
Well, then, what is thought leadership?
It is your showing your expertise in the subject area with relevant content and material, including blogging, published articles, white papers, speaking gigs and (if you have time) books. (Books are truly time-consuming, however, and are not for the faint of heart. But white papers and videos can be produced much more easily.)
You can certainly do this stuff yourself, without third-party consulting services. (I do.) If you want to spend some money on professional advice, you may find the results to be well worth the investment. You can easily blow $5,000 to $15,000 on advertising, conference fees and the like, let alone the time and energy chasing down and responding to cattle-call public RFP invitations, and receive little if any profitable business.
I’ll be speaking with Patrick again this afternoon, and hopefully will get the “record” button to work properly. ?In the meantime, please check out and consider registering for the thought leadership webinar Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 2:00 p.m..
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