How you can win the Construction Marketing popularity contest

Paul Lesieur uses his "Mobile Kitchen Display" both as a showroom at home shows, but more impressively, as follows: " I drive it to the customer and bring a 1/2 pound of WoW kitchens coffee that I personally roast. I drive out, start the generator, make the homeowner a Cappuccino to drink while looking at my showroom. After were done I offer the homeowner the coffee. Do you think I stand out from my competition?"

Paul Lesieur of Silvertree Construction in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sent the following email last night. If you want to know why, read this contractortalk.com thread which he started, Wanna Trade Links, Watch this, in which he delivers a video from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guru Scott Willoughby.

Mark,

I wrote an article on how I blogged, very short.

How I blogged
Blogging is good for me on two fronts. It helps drive traffic to my site, and it puts me in the expert category because if you can write about something, readers feel you must be an expert.

First thing I did was get a Wordpress account, got a free template and then began to write. Since I was not a writer I used the free writing tools at Ezine. I learned a little about punctuation and grammar and spell checked my attempts, finally i was ready to publish.

What I learned was, you need to keep it interesting while keeping it short. A 400 to 800 word article was what I produced with a few articles only 150 words in length. Another thing I learned was its a lot of work, you need to come up with a snappy title and write relevant content.

Blogging produced some positive results, much more traffic to my website, and my first Internet lead. I also use my blog to promote my industry partners, and in turn they are referring me to others. If you are considering a blog be prepared to constantly be working on it and remember, what you put out on the Internet will be seen by many people, so make it relevant and interesting.

Its too soon to say where this will lead, but aside from the time it takes, my blog is a success, also I think its one of the best things I ever did to market my business.

Paul Lesieur
http://www.minneapoliskitchenremodeling.com

There are some other aspects to this story, however. Paul is certainly jot the only person coming here with useful and relevant information about Construction Marketing Ideas. This blog is getting easier to maintain and grow. This success in part relates to the one of the fundamental rules of marketing: Make sure you are first within your niche, and do your work well enough to hold that position. And there are other rules, suggested in Matt Handal's Help Everybody Everyday blog where in reading his latest posting, initially expecting just some more good advice, I received another ego boost!

Successful Marketers often establish themselves or people in their firms as experts in a particular subject. This is because people often take the advice of experts.

One great example of this is Mark Buckshon, who publishes construction-related news publications in Canada and the US. Mark's firm makes money through the sale of ad space. One of his primary marketing tools is a blog, newsletter, and an upcoming book about marketing in the construction industry. While you might assume that Mark's expertise is in publishing, he knows that his client base finds marketing advice much more valuable. By writing about this subject, he has established himself as an "expert", and has leveraged both the weapons of Authority and Reciprocation in one successful swoop.

In practicing and understanding these methodologies, you need to remember that marketing success gets much easier, almost on an exponential level, once you reach a break-through leadership point. Your challenge then is to determine if your initiatives are "me to" or will take you to first place.

There's of course nothing wrong with "me too" stuff, especially if you can copy and refine it to your specific niche -- for example, if your market is being a renovation or remodeling contractor in Minneapolis, you simply need to be top place within the category: "Remodeling in Minneapolis". You can copy and adapt stuff from elsewhere to be the leader in your own space -- I certainly did that in starting this blog, and continue to do it today!

Please feel free to communicate your marketing initiatives and stories by comment or email to buckshon@cnrgp.com. You'll receive editorial mention here, and a higher search engine ranking for your own blog or site.