Here are three simple construction marketing priorities.
Your current clients are absolutely your most important marketing resources and indicators.
“Customer satisfaction” is essential — but, if you can achieve it, a wonderful “wow, this is great” client experience will allow you to achieve a marketing home run. I’d like to say I could tell you how to achieve that level of success. My own business still has challenges here. However, you can get a good start on the problem by understanding client complaints and (a) developing an extremely responsive system to make things right and (b) creating a situation where complaints don’t recur. ?(I realize some customers are basket-cases who can never be satisfied, but you should only reach that conclusion about an individual client after you’ve reached the stage where you know you have everything under control.)
You should be prepared to experiment, with commitment and thoughtfulness.
This is a challenging one. Many things don’t work right the first time, and much advertising/paid marketing fails at the start. Our survey of “what works” (still underway) suggests that virtually every marketing technique works for some businesses, but not everything works for all. You need to be strategic and thoughtful and be ready to spend some time and resources to validate the marketing approaches you select.
Marketing is all about your clients, but your business is all about you.
This concept may seem contradictory, but I get concerned when I see advice from others suggesting you should focus everything on your current and potential clients (see above), especially their interests, values and priorities. Yes, if you fail to relate/connect to your clients, you will fail. But if your clients are not the type of people you want to work with, will you really be happy with your business. If you can align your values and your clients interests, you’ll enjoy the less expensive but more effective “sweat-equity” type of marketing, and you’ll be more ready to persevere for your larger objectives.
