We have all read about it and probably experienced it‹when the economy is strained, businesses cut back, and more often than not, marketing and advertising is the first expense that gets cut.

When a business struggles to get work and cash flow slows, the business owner often decides to stop spending on marketing and advertising. But marketing and advertising generates the work, so this isn¹t particularly logical. Yet, it has been happening in many businesses throughout the United States over the past year and a half.

Interestingly enough, I have noticed some companies have actually begun marketing more regularly to the construction market; these are businesses determined to maintain a presence in construction. Through regular advertising in this industry, they are keeping their brand visible and apparent to the construction business owner. These businesses know that construction will build again, so to speak, to be a productive, profitable, evolving industry. And each of these companies wants to be the first one you think of when you need what they have to offer.

You, too, need to keep your name and brand visible to your customers and prospective clients. Marketing a construction company takes effort, and if you have had to cut your marketing budget, then find creative, less expensive ways to keep yourself in the minds of your clients.

Don¹t let them forget you. It takes very little time for your name to be forgotten. Rethink your budget and your time spent on keeping your name in the mix.

Keep attending local events and chamber of commerce functions; contact your clients and past clients through phone and mail; and do everything you can do plus a little more to keep your brand alive.

Don¹t cut the expenses and efforts that generate the business. Keep your business presence constant with your customers to make it through this very tough time and profit down the road.

I read this past week that employment rates may be slower to rise due to the fact that employees have become more productive.  I assume these analysts mean more productive due to layoffs and that fewer employees are expected to get more done. Employees are doing just that, mostly because anyone with a job is just happy to have one and scared of losing the one he/she has.

Some of this increase in productivity may be due to investing in technology, some may be due to the fact that people are working a lot more overtime and some may be due to the fact that some businesses were overstaffed before the recession hit. 

Businesses are slow to rehire after a recession.  If you have had to lay off staff or not replace staff lost due to normal attrition, you tend to be hesitant to build that staff back for fear of starting the process all over again.

If you are in a position of trying to decide to hire again, take the time to evaluate what your current staff is doing.  Can you use outside employment/labor services to assist you in the busier times and avoid increasing full-time year-round staff?  Do you even know what your staff is doing? Work on your organizational chart, and write out new job descriptions for your staff. 

During this very tough business atmosphere, you may have stretched people thin with little thought of what assignments and responsibilities were being assigned where.  People just took up the slack, with no consideration of strengths and long-term employee or business growth. And you may think that if work is getting done, then what’s the point of hiring? The work may be getting done, but is it getting done the most efficient way? Sometimes one smart new hire can pay for hiscompensation and put profit on the bottom line in a very short amount of time.

Is your business now organized and positioned for maximizing long-term growth? As business begins to pick up, truly evaluate how the workload is allocated, and rework those systems and job descriptions with a forward-thinking approach. 

You may well not want to do things the way you used to do them, but you will always need the right people on the right jobs to build your business.

I’m trying to get back on track with my blogging, and I wanted to put out a request for editorial ideas for 2010.  We will be working on the CBO’s print editorial calendar, as well as ideas for our e-newsletter, webinars and web original content.  We will be looking at what relevant and practical topics we need to tackle to enrich our readers and website visitors in the coming year.

I’d love to have your feedback as we work through our ideas.  I just attended an invaluable three days at the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) annual meeting last month and, as always, returned with a multitude of editorial ideas. But I’d also like to hear from our readers, print and online, about what you need or want to read more of to help you get through and manage your business during this very difficult time.  What do you have questions about, what are you struggling with, what wonderful new concept, investment or product is helping you or what is driving you crazy?   

Let me know what you think and what research we can do here to get you the advice you can use to maintain and/or grow your business right now—and I’ve heard more than once lately, “maintain” is the new “grow”.  It would be nice, though, to defy the odds and effectively cut expenses and build business just enough to show some growth through this period.

Help us to help you.  I look forward to hearing from you. 

Great customer service is a requirement for repeat business from clients. And repeat business probably represents a significant portion of your business, or should—that and referrals, also the result of a satisfied customer. It is not only important to provide excellent customer service, but to also remind your customers of that fact regularly so they don’t forget. You can do this in very inexpensive ways. 

Create a customer satisfaction survey to send to your clients after a job is complete. Make it simple, one page, and provide them with a stamped envelope so all they have to do is fill it out and return it. Ask them to rate the job you did, ask about timeliness, cost, communication, courtesy, cleanliness and safety issues. Ask about how your staff performed. Give them 1-5 boxes to check—good to poor. Within this survey, you can also ask for quotes to share with others on promotional material and ask for referrals from them at the same time. Thank them when they respond, and if you get negative responses, then address those issues with them and with staff in the hopes of saving the client and improving your service.

If sending this survey out throughout the year is too difficult to manage, do it once every 6 months or once a year to all your clients served since the last survey was sent. This is a simple way to both find out what you did right as well as what you did wrong. It shows that you care about your customers and it reminds your customer that you are still around and want their business again.

OK, so here is my first blog—now that I have started, there’s no stopping me…. 

We are excited about our new blogging section and hope that you find it interesting and beneficial.  We have enjoyed seeing all the comments posted so far for our other bloggers.  What would you like to read about?  Let me know what we can write about to make this site the one you go to first every morning.

How has your business been in the past few weeks/months and what is the outlook for you moving toward year-end and into 2009?  What kind of changes do you anticipate making to keep your bottom line positive?  Will those changes relate to equipment, people, cash flow, marketing or technology?  Where do you expect to focus your energies, cut back or re-evaluate to deal with a volatile economy?

Now is certainly a time for action, reflection, and…well, more action.  None of us can rest on our laurels or assume that what has always worked before will continue to work.  We must be educating ourselves, reading and listening to all that is going on around us.  That is why I blog now, that is why I went on Twitter this weekend and started to Tweet (check this out http://twitter.com/tambram and follow my tweeting).  You may want to Tweet as well, or blog to market your business.  I have also been on Linked in (www.linkedin.com) for a while—a business network you might consider as a marketing tool.

We must all look for how to better market ourselves, better provide for our clients, better run our companies, better manage our staff so we can stay in this business until we no longer want to or no longer can work.  That is our challenge—a big one.  But learning something new every day just makes it more fun to get up every morning.  What is something new you learned today?