Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Here are seven creative ideas to get your construction industry marketing strategy
1. At the beginning, throughout the project and in the end, it is all in the work
you do.
Ultimately you’ll succeed at marketing because you do your work well. Any
amount of ‘selling’ will just fall apart in practice if you don’t do the actual work you are
selling well – and good jobs give you the basis for repeat business and referrals, and a
sensitive areas.
mid-size Michigan city. The local hospital has lots of work, but everything must be
publicly bid, and the lowest price always wins the job. How can the well-established
contractor make money and still come in “low”. The key is in the terms of contract
which hospital administrators know and understand. The electrical contractor bids low
with qualifications indicating that change orders will truly be necessary for a totally
satisfactory project. The hospital, knowing the contractor’s reputation for reliability and
integrity, knows that the change orders are to be expected. The contractor wins the job,
legitimately, on price, and equally legitimately, change orders are processed allowing the
contractor a reasonable margin for the work. Note this only “works” if there is a
relationship of trust and integrity – low balling with the intention of pushing through
change orders regardless of the clients’ expectations is simply uncool and will sour any
3. Your employees, especially your project managers, are your best marketers,
but don’t ask them to be your sales reps (unless they want to do that type of work.)
A lot is made of cross selling, and “getting everyone involved” but the reality is that most
people don’t like ‘selling’ – if they did, they would be in charge ofthe marketing
department (or become the company president). Nevertheless, if you have staff who
show the ‘spark’ for marketing, give them business development responsibilities – and
compensation that matches their contributions. And if they aren’t ‘business developers’,
encourage them to report on interesting news and client reports to gain insights into
market opportunities.
A fast growing engineering firm (sales increased by 25 per cent to more than $20
million in one year), discovered it’s sales volume increased even though the number of
proposals it submitted declined from more than 200 per year to less than 100. As well,
after several months of expense implementing a database system, the company reduced
the preparation time for proposal documents by 2/3. Theoretically, this means the
company could have (at no additional staff costs), increased rather than decreased the
number of proposal documents submitted. But that is not the way to go. Focusing on
highly targeted and thought through niches, with expertise, the company can turn around
high quality proposals without straining its resources, and the hit rate has doubled to
stretch limousine and uses it as its ‘work vehicle’. Lots of room on top of course for
ladders and equipment, and reasonably comfortable seats for the staff. And of course, the
used stretch limo purchased for $4,000 is a shocking billboard for the company. A
reporter saw it, and the company ended up with national publicity.
6. Indirect often works better than direct, especially when the matter is really
field. You often find you meet the person you love (or the person you really want to go
out with is ready to go out with you) when your behaviour changes and you ‘connect’ in
ways far away from the individual concerned. Same goes for marketing. Hard rock cold
calls and submission of RFPs in response to public advertisements can work, and
certainly will keep you busy, but the real stuff happens off stage. The challenge is to
develop projects and initiatives that bring you close to the decision-makers you really
wish to know, without being manipulative. I’m doing this, for example, with my series
on marketing ideas and concepts. It opens the door to suggesting the advantages of our
own newspapers and websites – but I know this won’t work if I insincerely am just using
It is really hard to keep going if you aren’t enjoying the work. This means you
need to tailor your marketing approaches to your own personality. Perhaps you are sports
and social oriented; in that case, you want to look at how you can use tickets to sporting
events to draw yourself closer to clients; you may love golf, or in my case, I enjoy
writing. Now the challenge is dealing with a potential client who loves golf but doesn’t
like reading. No problem. I would interview him for a story and learn about his golf
passion; and if appropriate, would refer a colleague who loves playing golf to work with
him on that level. Whatever, you can’t do it well if you don’t like doing it.
U.S. and Canadian cities, and operates a network of websites in close to 100 cities. He