From Branding to Marketing to Sales

By Tom Woodcock

Why do I have to be concernedabout my branding? How do I develop a marketing campaign? What is a sales strategy?” Good questions all! The problem is most contractors see these issues as too complex or time-consuming to put forth the effort to develop them. In today’s ultra competitive construction environment, having a solid brand reflected in a strong marketing campaign and supported by a strategic sales plan is a must to succeed at a high level. Too often contractors stick with the same brand format of 20 years ago, do-seat-of-the-pants marketing programs and have no legitimate sales strategy.
Even worse, many throw umpteen thousands of dollars at out of town consulting firms to build this dynamic for them. I know! I’m one of those firms some of those contractors turn to (though I’m not in the “umpteen” category). Though consultants can help, you have to design a program that fits your company dynamic and budget. These three areas are interlocked and not separate entities.

Branding

This is the hottest topic in the marketing consulting industry. “Specialists” are popping up everywhere and getting ridiculous sums of money for relatively little help. Though you may need some consulting and design help, paying $50K to get a new logo and a tag-line is absolutely absurd! Yet, it happens everyday. Branding, however, is critical in establishing your public image and setting the standard on how your firm will be perceived. Do you want to be like all the other kids on the block or do you want to stand out from the crowd? Does your image appear dated or mundane? Do your clients perceive you to be on the cutting edge? These are the questions you need to answer. We live and do business in a visual society so the look of your logo, the directness of your tag-line and the artistic impression of your marketing material all shape the customer’s initial impression of you. If you won’t invest here, what makes the customer think you’ve invested in the technology and innovation to perform effectively on their project? For those of you that say “Bah, humbug,” get ready to get smoked in the marketplace. Please join us in the 21st century before it’s too late. Overly busy business cards, wordy literature and over-developed websites are very common errors. You need to be edgy, clean, neat and efficient with your image. Think of some of the best tag lines, “Just Do It!” “Brown works for you.” “Quality is job One.” Sound familiar? What do these company logos look like? Now look at yours. Take the time to hire someone to evaluate your branding or do it internally. Either way, find someone who knows what they’re doing without charging some ridiculous fee.

Marketing

This necessary evil of business is probably the most misunderstood
aspect of promoting your firm or yourself. I’ve had VP’s of sales, CEO’s and ownership groups that had absolutely no idea how to go about setting a marketing campaign. They simply move from idea to idea, developing them to see what happens and become highly disappointed with the results. The main problem is fundamental. Marketing campaigns merely break the ice for a sales strategy. A marketing campaign CANNOT replace or be the core of a sales strategy. The sales team is the key to the success of any marketing campaign. Sales reps, estimators and project managers are seldom consulted in the development of marketing campaigns. Gee, why would we want to consult them? They’re only with the customer base day in and day out! Old, out-dated marketing methods are still the most common form of promotion. Power-mailing flyers to a huge mailing list, spending gobs of money on trinkets and hiring marketing firms that have no understanding of your customer type. If you’ve done this, look in a mirror and say, “What were you thinking?” Surgical mailings, concentrated spending and tiered attack methods have replaced the 5000 piece scatter-shot mailing program. How does your literature read? Would you read the whole piece? Does it have eye-appeal? Why does it need to be visually appealing, you ask? So people will look at it! Do you want your literature and website doing all your quoting and selling, or do you want your sales agents doing this important job? Did you know that 75% of people don’t link to more than three pages on a website? So why do you have five? Did you realize the average viewer-waiting
time for a website to download is 30 seconds? So why do you have that beautiful flash intro that takes two minutes to download? What type of event marketing do you do? What is event marketing?

Can you see my direction? You may have answers to some of these questions or maybe none at all. Either way, the questions you can’t answer are symptomatic of the lack of marketing insight many in the construction industry have. Keep in mind that your marketing efforts must be conducive to and reinforced by your sales plan. Sales and marketing are not two different vehicles -- a very common misconception. They directly feed off each other. Too many firms are completely disjointed in relation to this synergy.

Sales Strategy

Aaaaah, we close with the sales strategy. The long forgotten child of selling success. How can you fight a competitive sales battle without a plan? You need to determine target accounts, revenue goals, margin standards, separation points and marketing-reinforced attack strategies. Select the customers, projects and business you want, and develop a plan and go after it. Include your sales agents in the plan and structure it to maximize your marketing and branding efforts.

See how this all comes together? You’ll have confidence, energy and comfort knowing you have a plan going forward. You won’t be killing yourself trying to figure out how to win each piece of business. It will be easier to maintain margins and close a higher percentage of opportunities. If you don’t know how to set a sales strategy, hire someone who can help. Don’t fight without a plan! You will lose. (Badly!)

There you have it. Those are the basic strategies you need to maximize where your company is going in its growth agenda. Many contractors need to modernize in these areas and the sooner the better. Look at the strong performers you compete against and you’ll clearly see these elements at work. They don’t just have a pretty logo; they have a pretty good attack strategy behind it!