Client construction marketing Christmas gift ideas

Here are some intriguing ideas from contractortalk.com for client-focused Christmas seasonal gifts.  Do you have any ideas of your own which have worked well, and you would like to share?

Social media initiatives: Your observations

You can read my e-book about social media for the architectural, engineering and construction community and, if you've used social media at all in your business, share your stories, experiences, failures, successes, challenges, questions and visions. (Phew, that's a mouthful). Please feel free to comment about your social media initiatives. You can also connect through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Plus.

Genius and construction marketing: Can they be linked?

The unorthodox decision to invite a genius to speak at annual business planning meeting has led to some simple, but elegant, business advice (which applies for virtually any enterprise):

Truly successful businesses should be:

• Providing a product/service that people or organizations need.
• Providing that service/product better than the next company.
• Resilience to weather the inevitable bad times associated with business cycles.
• Businesses should be designed and operated for the long-term.
• It is important to always treat clientele with respect. Clients often remember the personal interaction as much as the service/product.
• Have realistic expectations for business development/growth – this  is why a long-term vision is required.
• Believe in the product/service being offered. It should be something that speaks to you as a person.

Alfred Simpson provided this advice from his son, who has built a highly successful research/consulting business relating to native land claims.  The Simpsons are members of a First Nations band.  Alfred lives modestly, in a rent-controlled apartment and takes public transport to get around.

Simpson is beyond brilliant.  He is at the 99.997 per cent intelligence level -- that is, if you gathered 30,000 people in a community, he almost certainly would be the smartest person.  I'm not sure of his son's intelligence, but expect it is at the same rarefied level.

I explain how I came to meet Simpson in the "other" Construction Marketing Ideas blog. Through a most unusual set of circumstances, my first-and second-degree network now includes about 150 geniuses. 

Your community service bragging opportunity

This might seem to be a contradiction.  "Community service" and "bragging" generally don't go in the same sentence.  One is selfless and humble, the other is self-centred and arrogant.

Yet, for this exercise, could you risk reversing the roles a little and share your community service story here.  (If you know someone who you can "share" it for, that is okay, as well.)  You can use the comment function here, or email buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com.  If you have an image to share, even better.

The goal is to build a repertoire, a library, of successful initiatives and provide them as examples for others.  See today's other Construction Marketing Ideas blog for some additional thoughts here.

Hangout will be at 2 p.m. this afternoon, as it is every Friday.  Please feel free to join.

How important is the typeface in your construction marketing proposal

This Google Plus posting has attracted some intriguing comments.  Yes, Baskerville is the best.

Customer empathy, business growth and construction marketing

Edward Hess and Anne Liedtka's The Physics of Business Growth:  Mindsets, systems and processes, has already provided me with a crucial business insight -- and I've just finished the first chapter.

The writers advocate that growth occurs when a business's leaders can truly empathize with customers, to the point of knowing and understanding them far more than from the simple product/service transaction perspective.  They suggest that if you can see into your clients' real interests and needs, you'll capture insights into innovations and product/service ideas that will truly make their lives better -- and of course, help your business to grow.

Simple, eh.  How much time do we spend on our internal processes or in dreaming up new products/services, and how to market them, when we could find what our customers really want and need by truly caring about their interests?  Of course, if we develop products/services that truly appeal to our best current customers, we won't need a huge marketing budget, either.

Have you learned about new ideas, products or services by empathizing with your clients?  Please feel free to share your observations by commenting or emailing buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com.

Referrals, repeat business, speeches and presentations, then advertising: Your construction marketing priorities

In this weekly Google Plus Hangout (Friday 2 pm), I discuss how and when you should advertise.  If you think that someone who earns 97 per cent of his income from advertising would urge you to pay for advertising in our (or any) media, you will experience a surprise.  I suggest that advertising should be carefully considered and only used after you've fully accessed the "low hanging marketing fruit" of systematized repeat and referral programs, and effective public speaking and presentation initiatives.

When you are ready to advertise, you should also be aware that the cost-per-lead will (short term) be much higher than through the repeat/referral and public speaking options and you should be careful not to put all your eggs in one basket.  If you have a $2,000 marketing budget and use it all on one advertisement, you are likely to be extremely disappointed in the results.

Conversely, at a crucial stage in your business growth, you can experience a quantum jump in the amount you should spend on advertising, and the results you can expect to achieve.  This is because if you can afford enough advertising to be extremely visible to your potential clients, you'll benefit from the synergy of your advertising.  As well, while the acquisition costs of advertising-based leads are high, their lifetime value -- and their ability to generate repeat and referral business -- can also help your business.

Please feel free to join me at the 2 p.m. video broadcast/hangout.  You can find information about how to register for a Google Plus account to gain access in the sidebar at constructionmarketingideas.com, or you can email me at buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com.

Thinking differently about construction marketing and business growth

As a somewhat prolific blogger, I receive plenty of invitations to receive review copies of books, proposals for link exchanges, and the like.  Most land in the trash can, but a few stand out.  Today, a proposal for a review copy of The Growth Gamble: Why Business Leaders Need a 

Vegas-Mindset to Successfully Grow landed in the in box just as I experienced a classic test of small business flexibility and organization.

Writers Ed Hess and Jeanne Liedtka advocate that growth requires risk, and many different adventures and experiments, from where you learn about what works.  Since the failure rate of new innovations is so high, it is important to plan for this -- by playing your cards right (the authors use the poker analogy a lot.)  Conventional business management seeks to reduce errors, to systematize processes, to standardize things so the risk of operational failure is reduced.  This is deadly for innovation.

Fair enough.  Late last night, a person I knew well sent out an announcement for a new publication which might be seen as a direct competitor to my business.  I forwarded the announcement to our most effective sales representative.  The salesperson emailed me back:  "Why don't you offer him a job?"

Seemed far fetched to me, initially -- I knew this individual values his independence and he doesn't function well in large, bureaucratic organizations.  But wait . . . we are NOT a large bureaucratic organization, but we have some things to offer a potential employee that might appeal to someone who wishes a bit more security and stability, including a decent benefits program.

So I emailed and then called the person.  I explained our general hiring compensation model.  We discussed his non-competing business activities and how we could manage these in the context of an employer-employee (with benefits) relationship.  Within a couple of hours of our conversation and my brief email, he sent me a comprehensive proposal which involves some "asks" but sets a reasonable negotiating position.  

I don't know if we will reach an agreement, but there is a good chance we will.  If we were rigid and overly structured, trapped in processes and protocols, this sort of decision could never happen.  Yet the new employee, if we hire him, will still work within the framework of responsible operating business systems and processes.  

I'll ask the publicity people for a review copy of this book.  Here is a bit more from the promotional materials:

Growth, and particularly innovation, is a probability game. When large organizations pursue growth, their mindsets are often completely out of sync with the reality that guides professional gamblers and VCs. Chances are that these organizations expect ten out of ten projects not only to win, but to win big. They demand that their managers and employees produce growth, inadvertently thwart their attempts, and uphold a system in which pulling the plug on a failed growth opportunity is a career-threatening act. Would-be growth leaders in this environment are like professional gamblers who are unable to act independently but instead receive instructions from on high—from a source that has little information about what is happening this minute in this particular game. Not a formula likely to win in Vegas—or in business. “The reality is it takes on order of magnitude about 1,000 growth ideas to produce 100 good growth experiments,” explains Hess. “And doing 100 growth experiments may produce 10 viable growth initiatives worth investing in. Growth is an iterative learning process characterized by detours, zigzags, and remakes.” Growth is a learning process. Good growth companies understand the realities of growth. Growth requires the right mindset—a learning mindset—and the right processes designed to make small bets, learn critical information quickly, and then assess next steps. “We call that process Learning Launches,” says Hess. “Not only is the right learning mindset needed, but also the right attitude is needed individually and organizationally about failure. When you are exploring growth—when you are entering areas where you have not played before—by definition you will make mistakes and have failures. Remember, so long as you make small bets and use the right rigorous process, there is no real failure so long as you are learning.” Growth can be messy and inefficient. Most companies can’t stomach the uncertainty that comes with growth. It violates their dominant no-variance operational mindset. Well, guess what—growth and innovation are high-variance processes by their nature. If you do not accept that fact, then your growth initiatives will be limited to small incremental improvements, which at some point will not produce enough growth to keep your stakeholders happy. “Operational excellence strives for 99 percent defect-free performance,” says Hess. “Contrast this to growth experimentation that can result in failure rates of 90 percent. In operational excellence environments, managers are rewarded for stamping out variance. Yet, in growth environments, variance is the norm.” From The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, System, and Processes (Stanford University Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-0-8047753-4-2, $12.99, www.EDHLTD.com).

The fabric of business: Discovering a consultant to become a consultant

Today, I had the opportunity to be creative -- working on two problems, one immediate, and the other longer-term.

The immediate challenge is discovering an economical and reliable method of generating interesting and relevant editorial content for a revitalized network of U.S. construction websites -- the foundation for our business regrowth south of the border.

This project dates back in original concept to 2005 -- when I registered a diversity of domains, contracted with offshore developers to design a content-management system, and envisaged soft-touch site maintenance with revenue from Google AdSense.

The project then never succeeded.  The Pakistani and Indian-built sites (yes, I actually had sub-contractors in both 'warring' nations working on the project), produced sites minimally to my specifications, but utterly useless in quality and design.  In any case, I didn't have any useful content to put on the sites, so they languished.  Foolishly, I left the AdSense code in place -- earning virtually nothing from the horrible under-construction sites, while I made a modest income from my active blog and core sites associated with our printed publications, which we maintained reasonably well.

Then, Google lowered the boom, disabling my business account with a "significant risk to AdWords advertisers message."  I didn't know at the time how the fact that I continued to have a valid personal AdSense account tied to my blog would change my life, and result in me becoming something of an AdSense expert a few years later (though the money from AdSense is still insignificant in the overall business.)

Well, now we are planning to restore these defunct domains to life, but we will take a gradual approach, building some useful content, looking for qualified local representatives, and tying the sites into creative and well-respected industry-specific live networking events (especially co-ordinated by the Design and Construction Network (mydcn.com).  We have a plan for a high-quality (but not wildly extreme) design update to increase the sites functionality and cross-media usefulness.

The unanswered problem, though, is content.  The sites need current news, updated with some frequency, and solid features to attract and retain readers (and ultimately local advertising representatives and advertisers.)

Accordingly, I've been casting my net for qualified writers to take things forward.

I started with the job board at our local Carleton University, receiving two applications.  I also posted on the Service Canada job bank -- so far no responses.  This afternoon, I tried another service, odesk.com, which provides an employee-type independent contractor system, where work is billed by the hour.  (You can also bid by project at fixed rates, but here, odesk competes against well-established project services such as elance.com).

The service attracts workers/contractors from around the world.  Not surprisingly, hourly billing rates are far lower for offshore suppliers than North American ones.  However, we need writers who can understand the nuances of the North American construction industry, write clearly and effectively in English, and generate relevant content geared for specific local communities and regions.  It is a tough challenge.

So far I've received six applications.  I'm taking a simple approach.  Each applicant will receive a three hour paid assignment at the rate the individual specifies (whether it be $3.00 or $22.00 per our.)  I want the writers to suggest three locally relevant stories, and write one 500 word piece.  I give some optional additional assignments, as well, without hourly compensation, to see if any of the writers will go beyond the minimum.

I'm not sure what results we will achieve, but at an average cost of less than $15.00 per hour for, effectively, 18 hours of work, the research budget is about $250.00.  If all goes well, I will have six decent stories, at a cost of $45.00 a story, relatively inexpensive compared to the usual freelance rates.  Of course, it is quite possible that the contractors will deliver garbage, or "work" without producing any valuable results.  This is a risk I am prepared to take.

The larger picture relates to our overall business strategic direction, succession planning, and growth, of which the U.S. expansion project described above is just one example.  The consultant had been recommended by another successful business owner.  He told me that he gets all of his business from referrals (something I think you can understand from your own experience).  However, he hit the right nerves when he suggested that one route for me to go as I advance in age and prepare to relinquish day-to-day responsibilities for the business is to become a consultant -- one who can and should earn upwards of $300,000 a year.  Not bad for a part-time "job".

I'm a long way from there.  In the meantime, we'll continue to build, experiment, grow and seek out better ways to find employees and contractors, develop content, and enhance and build the business.

I enjoyed the day.

Construction marketing basics: Focusing on repeat and referral business

New LinkedIn Construction Marketing Ideas group members are invited to share their biggest challenge.  I receive two or three emails a week, and do my best to provide a succinct answer.

Yesterday, a reader observed:

Here is what we struggle with. 

Getting potential clients to do an apples to apples comparison. We give detailed spec sheets with our bids and referral list of past clients to call. Yet unless it is a direct referral from a past client who has seen our work first hand, we hardly ever get a job. Any leads we get from our website so far have not got past the bid stage. Just trying to find out how to get a better percentage of signed contracts.

My answer:

It is hard to get anyone to do a true "apples to apples" comparison because of the invisible variables relating to branding and trust.  Direct referrals from satisfied clients, obviously, are golden -- they are able to share their experience with people they trust, and radiate their trust in you.  When you go outside that orbit you are competing against others who have earned a similar level of trust, or you are competing against "low price wins" clients/competitors -- a loser's game for most of us.

The best advice I can give is to spend more of your time finding those referrals,  building them into the basis of your marketing; coupled with testimonials (videos may be effective) to back them up on your website and in other media.  I offer some suggestions in my "construction marketing ideas" book. 

In my ongoing poll, about 3/4 of most contractors' business arises from repeat/referral -- so even an incremental gain in the percentages in these areas will pay off more effectively than other media.   

Now, in terms of capturing the "other" 25 per cent, I tend to believe that marketing should have its highest impact with approaches that bring you as close to real clients as possible.  Again, if you are seeking to build your brand (trustworthiness reputation), perhaps the highest and most effective longer term approach is to focus energies on community service and charitable initiatives.  Of course, you can't put these in your "marketing budget" because if you do this sort of stuff, you can only succeed when you absolutely don't expect anything in return (a real paradox, but one I've seen play out many times.)

Indeed, the challenge with most contractors' efforts to reach beyond repeat and referral business is that they fail to capture the trust and reputation inherent in their successful client relationships in their outbound marketing, and in communicating with new clients not within the repeat and referral orbit.

You can "build a brand" with lots of money, but I think a more effective approach is to build on the successful qualities that lead to happy clients being willing to refer their friends.  You can do this in two ways:

First, focus on enhancing and improving the "wow, this was great" element of your client experience so you can naturally attract more repeat and referral work -- and strong visual and written testimonials for your other marketing;

Second, reach out into the community with service and contributions which have nothing to do with selling, but everything to do with sharing and community respect/involvement.  This enhances your trust and reputation.  You should worry far less about reciprocation and recognition than in conducting your good deeds -- but these arise naturally when you least expect and demand it.

Social media and video in construction marketing: A special live video event

You are invited to a special live video event outlining my latest discoveries about social media and video for construction marketing at 2 p.m. on November 9, 2012.

This special one hour session will focus on how AEC marketers can most effectively use these new techniques in marketing, without squandering resources or setting themselves up to fail.  I'll suggest some sustainable, practical ideas, with live demonstrations.

If you register before September 30, the admission fee is $9.95 (and includes a copy of my social media book, which sells for $4.95 on Amazon.)  After then, the price increases to $19.95.
(If you have advertised in any of our publications, you can attend without charge.  Just email me at buckshon@cnrgp.com for a special free pass.)

(If you register and cannot attend, or don't think the event has provided genuine value for your business, just email within 48 hours of the event and I'll refund 100 per cent of your payment, without question.)

For more information and to register, visit here.

Some video plumbing fun

For viewers in the mechanical (and electrical) trades, here's a little (old) comic relief:  The Three Stooges in "A plumbing we will go," including a beautiful 1940 television scene with an extra "live" dimension.

This video, in itself, has absolutely nothing to do with construction marketing, but the use of videos in marketing is absolutely and increasingly important.

My social media book for construction marketing is now available through a diversity of channels.  You can find it on Google Books, Amazon, the IStore, Barnes and Noble, and a bunch of other places.  The only way you cannot order it is directly from me, unless you are have been an advertiser in one of our construction publications or previously purchased the Construction Marketing Ideas book.  In that case, you can email buckshon@cnrgp.com and I will send you a link to where you can obtain your free copy.  (Easiest way to find the book on the various channels is to type in the search words "buckshon" and "social" and you'll find it soon enough!)

If you wish, I can present the observations developed in the book to your group in a 20 minute feed by Skype, Google + Hangout, or if you wish to cover travel costs, in person.  (You can see a sample presentation, sans audio, on prezi.com.)

Your reviews and comments are welcome.

Most online services allow you to view substantial portions of the book free so you can be confident it is right for you before purchasing.

Easy going, hard going for construction marketing

In the past two days, I have enjoyed fascinating meetings with two successful renovation contractors.  In many respects, the two competitors have contrasting business styles and practices. Both share an incredible intensity and depth of thinking, and an extremely assertive attitude towards their businesses.

Both have done all the easy things.  Now the challenges are intensifying.  I won't go into details in a public posting, but there are scales of energy and effort and work involved here which would blow most of us away.

Construction marketing, I've grown to appreciate, can be handled on three levels.

The first, "we don't market" level is unfortunately where most people in this industry operate.  They "rely" on word of mouth, or chase low bid jobs like lemmings.  If they do any marketing at all, they generally throw their money away on scams, telemarketed "advertisements" and other garbage.

If they took just a little bit of time and some simple thinking (perhaps by reading my Construction Marketing Ideas book) they could easily grow to the second level.

Here, they would have a simple but modest marketing budget, focusing on building a reasonably good website, developing an organized system to capture and encourage repeat and referral clients, and (depending on the market), some association and public speaking initiatives.  The true cost of administering this type of marketing would be minor and, with some sweat equity, you probably could build a really good set of marketing processes for less than $5,000 a year.

The third level, the type of marketing practiced by the competitors I met this week, is at another level.  These guys might spend 10s or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on marketing. It is thoughtful, strategic, and carefully measured.  These businesses have picked off all the low hanging fruit from repeat and referrals and simple website and association marketing arrangements.  They need to spend quite a bit more to get to the next level, but their businesses are well enough organized that they can afford the costs.

These businesses, also, will soak up professional advice, consulting and other resources -- to a level that would probably exceed the basic frugal marketing budget you need to succeed.

Which way is best?  Well, clearly the first, "no marketing" methodology is stupid.  You might survive in business, but you won't go far, and you certainly won't achieve your potential.

Reaching the second level is quite economical and should allow your business stability, security and even the capacity to survive truly hard economic conditions.  It is a good place to be if you aren't terribly ambitious to reach the top.

The third level takes more than just marketing drive; you need to think on a whole different and much more challenging and higher level.  One thing is certain:  If you try to go to the third level before you know what you are doing, you can be burned -- and so you should be very cautious before dumping huge sums of money into rapid marketing and business expansion projects.  Things can go wrong, fast.

Social media and construction marketing: How effective, really, is it?

In today's email, I received at least three e-letters suggesting ways architects, engineers and contractors could make more effective use of social media in their businesses.  We can be overwhelmed with the amount of advice flowing here.  However, the question we need to ask is: "Does this stuff really work?"

Here, I have some painful challenges.  In researching my social media e-book Social media and marketing for architectural, engineering and construction companies: What you really need to know to achieve profitable results, I have found it difficult to quantify success.  Sure, there are some great examples, such as Tim Klabunde's success in generating upwards of $2 million in business through the Design and Construction Network.  But how replicable is his success -- few of us will be able to be early enough in the game to start 40,000-member LinkedIn groups.  (My Construction Marketing Ideas group is growing at 10 to 15 members a day and should reach 5,000 members within a few days.)

The Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association renovators' council

Today, at the Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association (GOHBA) renovators council meeting, I took these observations to a practical level.  The association represents renovators/remodelers who care enough about their work to belong, and some are reasonably large and successful businesses -- who can spend tens of thousands of dollars a week on marketing.  After my presentation, the largest renovator in town invited me to provide some one-on-one (fee-paid) consulting on social media best practices.  He tracks and measures everything and knows (for example) that the printed magazine we publish, Ottawa Renovates, generates useful leads.  He couldn't say the same for the various social media platforms.

It seems the biggest social media successes are consultants selling social media services or extreme early adaptors who combine their first-to-market advantages with some luck and general marketing/business development skills.

With these observations in mind, how would I recommend anyone approach social media?

The answer, it seems, is that you should do this stuff if you enjoy it. If you have "office staff" who would like to connect in the social space, then you could assign your employees to help out.  Set some controls -- obviously you want to make sure your interactions are appropriate -- but social media allows some "non sales" employees to actually help out in marketing and business development.

I have some other ideas in my social media book, which you can purchase through Amazon.com or the IStore, and other channels.  For Amazon, you can link here.  For other services, just key in the words "buckshon" and "social" and you'll find the book soon enough.  It is only $4.95.

Walking the walk (or riding the ride) . . . Charity, community service and construction marketing

On Sept.8, I'll be one of several hundred people participating in a 100 km bicycle ride to raise funds for cancer research at The Ottawa Hospital.  Frankly, while I'll certainly raise some money for a worthy cause and get plenty of exercise that day, the real story is with the business leaders and organizations who have made much more meaningful contributions to this initiative.

There are paradoxes here.  Robert Merkley of Merkley Supply Ltd. and Claude Des Rosiers of Boone Plumbing and Heating Supply are both in the building supplies business, though in different sectors (Merkley focuses on brick and masonry supplies, while DesRosiers works in the plumbing and mechanical spaces).  Neither are push-overs for business humility (you wouldn't be in business long if you couldn't effectively self-promote) but they aren't encouraging others in the construction industry to support this initiative because they expect it will generate more business, or more positive publicity for themselves.  They are doing it because they believe in the worthy cause.

The irony is that the more the business leaders genuinely commit themselves to community service without worrying about recognition for their efforts, the more recognition they receive.  They didn't ask me to write this blog posting.  I chose to do it.  They didn't issue news releases or brag about their contributions.  The hospital foundation, however, has recognized their contributions at special awards and recognition events.

The challenge is that to earn this level of recognition you really have to "walk the walk" (or, in this case, "ride the ride") with genuine, meaningful and time-consuming (and often cash-consuming) support behind the scenes, with sincerity and genuine effort.  This isn't always easy to do -- unless your business culture, personal values and priorities are aligned to achieve genuinely selfless goals.

Then, of course, you are recognized for who you are.  And I cannot think of many things better for a business's brand than to be genuinely appreciated by the wider community (and especially by employees, colleagues, industry peers and clients) that you are true community service leaders.

You can focus your research with LinkedIn Signal

LinkedIn Signal is a little-known function that allows you to gather insights into specific individuals, organizations and topics.  You can narrow or widen your search by "degrees of separation."

Interestingly, I could not find any associated data (even to two degrees of separation) with the keywords "construction marketing" in quotes.

The power curve, the long tail or in-between: Where are you in the construction marketing universe?

Despite protestations that we all should have a fair shake in life, in fact, the most goes to the fewest.  Power, wealth, and success are highly concentrated in a small number of individuals, compared to the multitude of the masses.  These painful facts influence our businesses, as well.  Even in a group of successful entrepreneurs, you'll find a few near the top and a whole lot somewhere else.

Undoubtedly, the power curve applies in the architecture, engineering and construction industry.  Look at the numbers in the ENR Top 400 and see who is at the top, and who is at the bottom.  Then realize that these are the top 400 -- obviously most contractors would consider themselves to be near the pinnacle if they could get anywhere near that level.

Ironically, the Internet has redefined and increased the power curve's impact.  In the "old days," some markets would be simply too small and specialized to serve effectively.  You really couldn't make money publishing a book unless you sold a few thousand copies, at least.  Now, well, you won't make much, but you won't lose much either, with just a few dozen sales or less.

My book on social media and construction marketing, for example, had a "hard cost" of about $120.00.  I went out on a limb and spent $100 on the cover design, and another $20 for the services of a specialized e-book formatter.  Of course, the book required some time and effort to write, but I'm a writer, anyways.  In the last week, the book has sold four copies at $4.95 each.  After Amazon takes its cut, the net revenue is about $ 3.45.  So, if sales continue at present levels,  the book will hit "break even" in about three months.  Of course the net revenue at the end of the year will be about a whopping $600.00.

The question is:  How do you apply the power curve effectively in your business?  It is generally unwise to put all of your eggs into one basket, especially one big and powerful client.  (The biggest successes in business these days, like Google and Facebook, are, of course, skyrocketing on the power curve because of their ability to reach deeply into its lower levels.)  One answer is to think about big and small in somewhat different balances.  Realize you can capture micro-niches and own the market for tiny relationship groups.  The individual revenue potential for these groups and niches may be small, but they can open the doors to bigger things.

Another concept which I've been exploring is the application of concentrated, seemingly irrational energy, in places where you can stretch and defy the power curve's norms.  As an example, I certainly have a tiny AdSense account, not quite at the bottom of a really long tail, but certainly nowhere near the top.  And yet I have phone numbers, personal email addresses, and amazing connections within Mountain View because of some odds-defying decisions to help out as a volunteer in a space few wish to tread.

We won't all be at the level of Bill Gates or Barack Obama but I think we can all discover some excellence and areas where we stretch to the heights of the power curve within special interest groups or niches.  When we can, we'll achieve marketing and business success.

You can share your power curve success stories here, if you wish, through the comments function.

A video about website creation for the construction industry

This video proved to be a learning experience.  A few minutes before the planned Skype conversation with Nick Piscitello, I discovered that Skype doesn't have a built-in recording capacity.  With a little help from Google, however, it took only a few minutes to discover a software product (CallRecorder) that does the job, for less than $20.00.

Then, to the interview.  Quality isn't perfect.  While YouTube has some interesting editing capacities, I didn't see (at first review) how to crop out end-takes (or in this case, beginning takes.)

So, what you see is what you get . . . uh, not exactly.  I'm not a video editor nor am I a website creator or graphic designer.  Technical quality at any do-it-yourself project in these disciplines (and yes, the blog counts in that category) is likely to be less-than-perfect.  The key is to hire or contract with competent employees or contractors to do the actual work.

Nick certainly can handle the website design for most AEC businesses, at a price you'll undoubtedly find to be affordable.  You can see his website at completionwebdesign.com.

(The site he is working on for us, the corporate website for the Construction News and Report Group of Companies, is still in development, but you can see the work in progress at cnrgp.com.)

Losing your construction marketing job: Creating your construction marketing opportunity

Today, I received emails from two individuals I know well who have just received the axe. One, a marketer who poured her heart and soul into helping an architectural practice grow, lost her employment as the partners decided they needed to cut back and trim virtually all non-billable employees.

In the second case, a marketer left a relatively secure employment to accept a new opportunity about a year ago, which included both salary compensation AND the opportunity for equity/partnership. The partnership agreement had an "out" clause, where either side could end the relationship without cost or vested rights within the first year. Towards the end of the year, the marketer discovered his erstwhile partners were growing cold and hiding information from him. Yes, he received the axe, just in time for the deadline.

I'm quite confident that both of these individuals are not slackers, they were truly contributing to the success of their respective enterprises, and the employers probably erred in dismissing them. I'm also reasonably confident both will land on their feet.

The question is:  Is there a better way? I've been perhaps spoiled by the self-employment mantra, drilled into my head from an early age by my now long-deceased father, who, working 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, kept a pharmacy going through good and hard times. No way did I want to follow his example -- stuck in a store virtually every waking hour most days. (And when he at one point hired someone to fill in for him, the pharmacist turned out to be an embezzler, stealing enough money to truly deplete our family's resources.)

Yet self-employment has its advantages, especially when you combine some systematization with reasonably honorable and fair hiring and employment/contracting policies. (The successful marketer who lost out in the partnership, left a successful engineering practice to take the new opportunity -- but he left on good terms, and the practice had enough capacity/backfill to replace him.) I can't say I've always made the right decisions or treated everyone who worked for our organization perfectly, but hopefully I've learned from my mistakes, without seizing up in fear to never take any hiring risks.

Thoughts:

• You are always better off in hard times if you have a solid network. Relevant trade associations are great places; you can hang your hat and as a volunteer during your unemployment, while retaining connections, respect and your credentials. However, you need to get involved when you think your job is secure to fully reap the rewards if things turn sour. (SMPS is great for this sort of networking.)
• I've always believed you should work for love far more than money. This can be easier said than done when you need to meet basic needs, especially if you have dependents. If you can, take some risks to find what you really want to do.  
• Self-employment isn't right for everyone, but ultimately provides the greatest job security for those who can manage it. After all, you have far more control over your circumstances when you make the decisions.

P.S.  If you have sales orientation/ability, please check our site, www.adsalessuccess.com. You might find a career opportunity worthy of consideration in Canada. If you are in the U.S. and are independent-minded and willing to explore an independent contractor (self-employment) approach, please email me at buckshon@cnrgp.com. We'll run some tests (quick and easy) and explore options which may provide some income security as you get started if you qualify.