The three Es of Construction Marketing: Empathy, Energy and Enjoyment

If you wish to succeed at construction energy marketing remember these basics:

Empathy: Do you care, and respect, your clients, potential clients and strangers receiving your marketing message. Since three quarters of contractors, architects and engineers report that most of their business comes from former and referred clients, empathy is especially important to the people you are working with, and whom you have done business with in the past. Do you clean up your job sites, respond promptly to their calls and enquiries, and deliver a positive and rewarding experience?

And, for those of you who think there is nothing wrong in sending untrained canvassers around neighbourhoods in the evening to blindly knock on strangers' doors, you really need to go to school to learn some empathy to strangers and the community at large.

Energy: Forget the half-baked efforts where you try something once and then give up. Occasionally you will hit the home run, but most marketing success occurs after you make some blunders -- and in any case, even the most effective efforts take time to achieve measurable results. You need to put some energy and effort into your marketing. How? Best solution I know is to relate your marketing to activities and relationships you enjoy and where you have real talent: You'll stick it out even when others give up.

Enjoyment: Will your clients enjoy your marketing experience -- will you enjoy the process as well? Go back to things like telemarketing and canvassing, or calling cold leads, or irritating yourself, your employees and your potential clients with hard-rock selling. Maybe you can find people who enjoy these things (good for you, if your representatives aren't sociopaths).

Here is a simple tip: Find ways to spend more time doing things you enjoy with current and former clients doing things they enjoy -- and watch your referral and repeat business skyrocket.