Associations: Contributing to larger goals

Brian Blackmere, a senior planner with Stantec Consulting's Kitchener, Ontario office, and president of the Waterloo Region Home Builders' Association, in Ottawa for the Canadian Home Builders' Association Urban Council.Yesterday, Brian Blackmere, the new president of the Waterloo Region Home Builders' Association, met me at a downtown Ottawa hotel. Blackmere is in Ottawa for his final meeting as a member of the Canadian Home Builders' Association Urban Council, which represents CHBA members in larger communities. (The CHBA is similar to the U.S. National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), built on state and grass roots local/regional home...

Read More

Online marketing: Asking the trust questions

Perhaps with the previous blog posting in mind, I mucked into the debate on contractortalk.com when an Ohio-based vendor started the thread "Internet Marketing And Advertising For Offline Business". The original poster, Matt Shields, and I have communicated by email. He says (despite my assertions in the thread) that he hasn't used Frank Kern's materials, but cites some other gurus who live in the space of long email promo pages with various devices to get you to sign onto their online info programs. (Shields first appears in my life when he comments on the thread I started reporting on my visit last fall to Columbus, Ohio, to see canvassing...

Read More

Buying, marketing and selling -- an explanation of why the best contractors are often the least successful at marketing

Readers here may recall this rather fascinating piece of literature I received in the in-box a few weeks ago.You are an idiot. Remove me from your sophmoric (spelling as sent by Arthur House/ed) trash!You should attend my seminars - and maybe you should have attended my construction marketing classes at FIU (Florida International University/ed)But you probably are not MBA material. What a bunch of crap you spew!Respectfully;Arthur T. House207-338-5285www.arthurhouse.comWhat provoked this rather amazing observation?I had tried to turn my e-letter and blog into a selling tool for a truly ill-conceived Construction Marketing Course, something you...

Read More

Great needs and great deeds: The spirit of effective Construction Marketing

Can you do great deeds to achieve great needs?If so, you'll change the world."Sure," you might say, as you struggle to find enough business to feed your family (or yourself, for that matter), and you go through the daily routines and habits, good or bad, that define your current life.Maybe, however, greatness isn't that far away. Little things can sometimes mean a lot, and small changes in your life and your perception of how to market and promote your business could result in big changes in your results.Here are some thoughts to consider. Maybe your answers to these questions will provide you with clues about an effective marketing strategy.What...

Read More

Traffic, conversions and meaningful business

When someone asks me: "How can I get more traffic to my architectural, engineering or construction blog or website?", I'm tempted to throw out an answer: "Does it really matter? Isn't what you really want are real clients who will purchase or use your products or services?"This is especially the case if you are following the Marketing 101 principal and focusing on a specific niche. Since niches are either generally geographically or specialty focused and the Internet covers the whole world, you probably don't want "everyone" visiting your site and responding to you.But the word "niche" also suggests quality is much more important than quantity...

Read More

Does the emperor have any clothes?

Whose advice should you follow when we are in a time of economic distress? Can a guru whose sales are declining and laying off employees dare to tell you the secrets of marketing success?The answer is: Do you know what drives your own business forward, and do you really know what is going on around you?Yesterday, for example, I had a conversation with a well-placed person who I respect as a true genius about sales, marketing and business development for the professions. We discussed online marketing issues, pricing (we both agree that if your business is not a commodity, the last thing to do in a recession is to lower your prices), and the...

Read More

Not-so-painful pain

Yesterday's painful changes turned out not to be so hard, after all.The affected employees accepted their situation and even reflected relief. They should be eligible for Canadian Employment Insurance benefits and I hope they can be recalled; one by the end of the summer and the other when the personal stress issues affecting work performance have been resolved.The budgets, cash flow and general health of the business are much healthier, so a personal salary reduction won't be required (though I must carefully monitor and restrict non-essential expenses).So I will get back to the keyboard and a lot of writing this summer. It is my best way...

Read More

Painful (but necessary) choices

Today, I'll take some hard and painful business decisions.It is never easy to reach the point where you know you must hunker down and reduce costs drastically in line with much reduced sales projections, but every business knows there are red lines which must not be crossed, without dire results.These circumstances of course have affected many of you over the past year. Architects and engineers, early in the construction cycle, were the first to feel the pinch (after many residential contractors and sub trades). Now, as backlogs disappear within the non-residential environment, general contractors are feeling the pinch. Surety brokers tell...

Read More

Blogging and Construction Marketing: Should you do it?

I've been blogging daily since late 2006. The entries have varied in quality, some great, some lesser. Much has changed since this blog started -- notably, several others have joined the Construction Marketing space.Observing one of the most fundamental marketing principals, where "first in the niche is best" this blog has maintained the highest keyword rankings in Google.The questions are: Is Blogging effective for your marketing, and should you blog yourself. And if you do, are there some best practices you should observe?Here are some answers.Direct business results (and time cost)We can trace some real business to the blog and the related...

Read More

Relationships and Marketing: Untold stories

Many of our business's greatest sales and marketing successes never reach this blog, at least as they are developing. Generally, as things progress from initial possibility to final transaction, several things happen and putting the process into the public eye rarely helps.I should say, putting the WHOLE process into the public eye rarely helps. Sometimes the story includes a "public" element and since our business is publishing and publicity, we'll use these resources and capacities when they make sense.But what about all of the stuff you never see? Sure, much of what we do is the standard stuff -- building the brand, communicating, sharing...

Read More

Remembering the basics: Owner or employee (or both)

This blog's readers fall into two groups, I think.One group are architectural, engineering and construction practitioners and business owners looking at marketing as part of the overall business picture. They may be in charge of large businesses, or small one-person start-ups.The second group are marketing employees or consultants seeking to come up with ideas to help their businesses. They have important responsibilities, but ultimately don't have final decision-making authority (or responsibility).In most organizations, owners and employees see things through different eyes. Owners, of course, set the leadership style for their business....

Read More

The General Contractor's Question: "What criteria do you use in determining which sub trade to use?" (2)

At the Ontario General Contractors' Association President's Panel last month, someone asked an important question: "What criteria do you use in determining which sub trade to use?"Only Frank DeCaria, president of Eastern Construction Ltd. of Windsor and Toronto, had the opportunity to answer at the Symposium, but I think the question is important enough for me to see if the other general contractor panelists could provide their own direct answers.Yesterday, Doug Burnside, president of Dolyn Developments in Ottawa, contributed this answer, which is worthy of careful review if you are a sub trade hoping to find work in the non-residential environment.Here's...

Read More

Getting your phone calls returned

Mel Lester posts some worthy suggestions in his blog entry: Getting your phone calls returned. Lester wisely points out that you won't get far cold calling with a scripted message that doesn't meet your prospective client's interests.Yeah, coming up with a good reason for the client to return your call (what I call your "entree") isn't easy. But it works. It requires more work up front. So you can make 20 shotgun calls to prospects and maybe get 3-4 to return your call. Or you can offer your entree to 5 prospects and get 3-4 to return your call. Which seems the better strategy? By the way, your chances of eventually making a sale are substantially...

Read More

Discretionary spending and marketing

Charles is my newest nagger. He's keeping a close eye on the company books, helping to impose some discipline in our operations. And lately he has been reminding me at every occasion that every dollar in discretionary spending requires $7.35 in revenue to offset. In other words, he says if I buy a business book for $20.00, I should appreciate that we will need to spend $147 to pay for it. "Go to the library," he said. (And I have, and picked some really interesting books I'm reading now that will cost exactly $0.00 in sales to read).So what do you do about your marketing budget? The advertising, new business cards, website redesign, your business...

Read More

Are they really interested?

Just two weeks ago, our email list included more than 11,000 names, and seemed to be in a trajectory of unlimited growth. Today, the list has 8,500 names but soon upwards of 5,000 will be removed.Is this marketing suicide?Your database includes a list of 1,000 "potential clients" for construction, renovation or related services. The names come from "somewhere" but you really don't know them at all -- and they haven't responded or communicated with you in any (serious) way in the past couple of years.Are they really potential clients?Sometimes we accumulate names -- or on online services "friends" -- way too easily and superficially to build...

Read More

Your marketing budget and plan

Sometimes the simplest and most common sense ideas fail to receive the attention they deserve. Here is one: You need a marketing budget and plan.Checking this blog's archives, I find I haven't discussed this rather important and obvious element of construction marketing, at least in recent months.You can choose to make the planning process complex, expensive and sophisticated -- and you can (as we do) engage all of your employees in the decision-making through open meetings and discussions.But you can also keep it simple. And simple is often best. Here is an easy-to-implement strategy which will allow you to pull together a marketing plan...

Read More

Business balance: Learning the lessons

Recent experiences have taught me some important new (but fundamental) business lessons.In the past two months, with the advice of a knowledgeable and highly experienced consultant who hasn't charged us for his time or services, we've learned much about the basics of financial reporting, accountability, and the separation of personal and business interests. Most of this stuff is common sense, in hindsight, but frankly it took a good few "whaps" and a decent-sized business crisis to drill some of the basics into my thick skull.But there is an irony here. If our most recent consultant hadn't been countervailed both in presence and experience by...

Read More

Lead generation services: Some further observations

Mark Paskell has posted this comment on a National Association for the Remodeling Industry (NARI) linkedin.com group thread, which is worthy of republishing here: LinkedIn Groups Group: National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI)Subject: New comment (140) on "Should NARI lead the charge to expose the unscrupulous tactics of lead generation companies to protect the rights of contractors?"Hello EveryoneThanks again for sharing. I think maybe its time to conclude this thread. I would like to share some observations.I think most agree that the relationship between contractors and LGC's is seriously strained.This thread did not receive...

Read More

Twenty years of success -- and just discovering marketing

Amsted Design/Build founder and president Steve Barkhouse outside his Stittsville, Ontario, office. The stones recognize employees for five years of service -- at the company's annual breakfast before our interview, several received the recognition. Yesterday, I met with Amsted Design/Build president Steve Barkhouse as we prepared a 20-year anniversary feature about his renovation business for the GOHBA Impact!, the newsletter of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association. Amsted's business longevity closely matches mine and, as we parted company, Barkhouse observed how few businesses reach the 20-year milestone, let alone as successful...

Read More

The "Wow" gift

Ned Overton of FW&D LLC in Arlington, Virginia gives out his own private label wines to clients and key referral sources. He says he makes sure the wine is of the highest quality.Can simple gifts be helpful both in attracting and retaining clients? Absolutely. Thoughtful remembrances really work, partly because of the reciprocity principal. Under this business guideline, simple and small acts of generosity are often rewarded many times over. The challenge is to get it right and match the generosity and spirit of your gift with the values of your clients. And don't forget the packaging!For example, consider these two gifts suggested...

Read More