Bleeding edge or leading edge

Do you need to bleeding edge to be leading edge in your marketing strategies?

By "bleeding edge", I mean, far at the tip of risk --testing untried and new concepts, soaring to the heights of creativity and accomplishment to get it right?

The answer is, unequivocally, "No".

Most construction industry marketing is in the dark ages compared to other industry sectors. "Relying" on word-of-mouth, or (far worse), conventional public bidding opportunities, most people in this industry have marketing strategies which might have been common in other sectors a few decades ago.

So, to keep ahead of the crowd -- to be leading edge -- in this industry, we only have to emulate tried and proven methods of other industry groups.

To make the point crystal clear, consider that the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), the association representing marketers in this industry, only started in the mid 1970s.
Surely, marketers representing other industry groups had their own associations long before then.

You don't need to create a new wheel, or even reinvent an old one, to be successful at construction industry marketing. Just learn from, and copy, the best practices of other industries, and you'll be much closer to success.

The Design and Construction Report is not the first online magazine. But it is the first for the industry. Leading, not bleeding, edge.