Here’s a reminder of three simple yet effective options for construction marketing success
Word-of-mouth referral business provides the most business for 42 per cent of companies who have responded to the ongoing constructionmarketingideas.com poll. Anything you can do to encourage and enhance referral business will pay dividends. Do you have an organized system in place to induce, capture and follow-up on this vital business source?
Repeat clients are second, at 29 per cent. Again, do you have processes to encourage previous clients to return, or to add to current purchases. Obviously, the same elements that lead to referral business apply here, perhaps with more urgency.
Advertising. Yes, it comes a distant third, at 11 per cent, to repeat and referral client business, but effective advertising generates the new leads and clients you need to offset the inevitable fall-off of some of your existing clients, and to allow for growth. The value of your advertising investment should be seen in the lifetime value of your new business: How well you retain the client — and even more, how well you induce repeat and referral clients.
Of course, you should make sure clients truly enjoy doing business with you and enhance and improve your client service quality (and that doesn’t mean bragging about “great customer service” please — only your customers should?do that!) before you pour money into external marketing.
But if you get your repeat and referral business under control, and manage your advertising effectively, you have covered 82 per cent of the business you can expect to achieve from any marketing initiatives. And that’s a pretty good score, in my opinion.
