Every month the Business Development Committee reaches out to small business owners, marketing directors, and public relations specialists to gather valuable insight into the rapidly growing construction industry.
If you're looking to create marketing proposals, build relationships with customers, and increase sales, our Best Practices article series can help.
Rebuilding a website is no easy endeavor. Fortunately, if you ask the right questions at the onset of the project, you will keep your team on track and your soon-to-be new website on the road to exceptional.
In a fiercely competitive environment, small differences can play a major role in whether you win or lose a proposal competition.
Clients’ needs and expectations relative to the services provided by their design and construction partners are evolving. This has led designers and contractors to increase their focus on collaboration to provide not only planning and design services, but also the budgeting and constructability support that helps guide and define the design.
The idea of performing market research can often feel like a burden for small marketing groups. The everyday tasks already on your to-do list can easily fill up a 40-hour work week. Where do you find the time to research, compile, and analyze piles of data on top of everything else? Market research doesn’t have to be complex or require robust, expensive studies to be effective. By breaking it into small, manageable pieces, you can gather information that will directly benefit your A/E/C firm without overtasking your teams.
It’s time that professional services firms faced a couple of hard truths: First, no one wants to subscribe to an e-newsletter, and second, a single email is not going to make the phones ring. Companies spend significant resources on online marketing only to be left wondering why it’s not working. It’s not surprising. Gaining traction through content alone is not easy—especially if you want to do more than build awareness. The problem, however, is not that online marketing doesn’t work. It's that most A/E/C firms stop short of what it takes to see results. Specifically, their online marketing lacks strategy and disciplined follow-up.
Everyone wants and values their business relationships, but how do you establish effective business relationships? Is it just about meeting people? You meet someone, talk, and you have a relationship. Seems easy, yet effective business relationships take dedication and commitment. The following are key to building effective business relationships.
First Things First: What Is a Brand? A brand is NOT a logo. Or a tagline. Or an identity system. A brand is an expectation of experience and a promise delivered. It’s the perception others have about your company – its people, culture, products and services. Your company builds its brand, or rather the perception of its brand, with every customer contact, planned or unplanned. Every interaction, no matter how insignificant, shapes your brand’s perception and drives your customers’ behavior. Rebranding is about taking control of what your audiences think – and say – about your brand.
For many construction companies, marketing supports the Business Development department in winning new work. This includes responding to project opportunities through the creation of statements of qualifications, proposals and presentations. Depending on company size, operations staff or team members working in different departments such as HR or Accounting may have marketing responsibilities. In some cases, companies haven’t needed a marketing department until now. If you’re just setting up your marketing department, planning it to support Business Development is priority No. 1. Here are some tips to help you lay the foundation and set your company up for long-term success.
I’m going to go out on a limb and confess an unpopular view… I hate selfie sticks. I actually will alienate myself from almost every reader and tell you I also hate selfies. Now, before you stop reading and throw this offensive article in the trash, let me tell you why. I love networking! Every single little thing about it… from the first uncomfortable conversation to the rewards you reap in relationships built throughout your career, it is, in my opinion, THE most important business skill you can acquire. It’s not for everyone and it’s not as easy as most think to do it well. I will give you some of the best tips I have learned in networking all through the reasons I believe your selfie stick is ruining your networking life!
Along with many of you, I receive many marketing journals and articles about the newest trends in managing marketing and business development processes. I bring most of these articles home and highlight what might be relevant to me and my firm. Of course, if I did half the things I highlighted, I would run around frantically, driving senior leadership crazy. Unfortunately, what many people do instead of selectively committing to some of the work is do none of it. What is the best process or metric or program that will give you the biggest return on your investment?
