What do you do to set your construction company apart from your competitors when viewed from a marketing perspective? How do your clients perceive your firm vs. how you and your employees perceive your firm? What is your competitive advantage, and how do you exploit it? Better yet, how do you go about simply getting people to put your firm’s magnet on their refrigerator and call you first?

Developing a marketing plan for your company does not have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be overly high tech or include a “wow” factor. It doesn’t have to have a stamp from an MBA or include tens of thousands of dollars in the budget to be successful. At the end of the day, a marketing plan doesn’t mean just advertising, it means conveying the “sum of the experience” that your firm offers. We can all place an ad in the paper. But can you pen articles for a local newsletter, or handwrite thank you notes to past clients and clients that you have met with? Where are you when it comes to thought leadership? Are you seen as an expert businessperson or an expert craftsman – or both? It isn’t just about placing an ad, it is about the venerable 4 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Notice that advertising (promotion) is only one aspect of the program.

Product:
What is it that you are selling? We sell a service that is dependent upon numerous products. Become as expert in your products as possible, but tout service if you are a high service provider. Service is the difference in most cases. It is important to actually back up your service claims with actual action or this will backfire in short order

Price:
Are you selling on price? Service? Believe it or not, I believe there is a market for firms in each category. But you must understand your target market and build your strategy accordingly. Very seldom will the markets mesh – you can’t be a low price volume firm marketing to demanding service oriented customers. No one will win in that arrangement.

Place:
Define your region that you have the most clear cut advantage in and exploit it for all it is worth. If you narrow your focus to those areas that have provided you with work in the past, your marketing dollars will go further and your success rate will climb. Blind marketing may yield results, but the yield will be much less efficient than defining the geographic areas where you have an advantage. Expand your regions of focus slowly and with thought, not just haphazardly.

Promotion:
Advertise; provide thought leadership (articles, lunch and learns); develop how-to videos; tighten up your website; get interviewed on the radio, etc. Pick a firm color and roll with it. Pass out shirts with your logo on them. Sponsor a lunch for past clients, such as an annual “Friends and Family” type of event. Bring in your subs. Bring on a forum of experts to discuss issues of the day. “Green” topics work well for a discussion (at least until the tax credits run out at the end of the year!) Sponsor a good deed – it is amazing what a team building exercise this can be.

I’ve seen so many great ideas. One firm I know hands out excellent quality brooms with their logo emblazoned on them to homes near where they are working, extolling the level of “care” that they provide to their clients. Another pays an artist to draw a pencil rendering of their home or office, frames it and presents it to the client after the final punchlist. We have used a “Good Neighbor” letter for years with great effect. We’ve also been diligent in handwriting thank you notes to people who have honored us by working with us or allowing us the opportunity to legitimately compete for their work, even if we were unsuccessful. We ask when we don’t get the job what we could have done better and learn from the responses, unless the client was driven only by cost. If that is the case, we learn that we didn’t screen them well enough and learn from it.

Developing a marketing package should not be an expensive proposition. In fact, many times marketing can cost a postage stamp. The key point that I am trying to make is that it is critically important to develop your own marketing plan and stick with it. Develop your own “stamp” to imprint on clients. I would love to be the company that “Dropped that darn broom on my porch” the other day when that client is thinking about building an addition. I would love to be the company that brought thinking capital into the workplace and discussed aging in place to a group of baby boomers or green technology to young families. We have the knowledge to market effectively, yet many (if not most) of us don’t do it and depend solely on word of mouth. Word of mouth is great – but that is only one P of the 4 P’s – don’t neglect the other three. And have some fun while you are doing it.

I would love to hear some low cost methods of marketing you have used successfully in the past.