Builders Focusing on Web Marketing
by admin on September 25, 2008
in Builder Marketing
In a recent article from Associated Construction Publications – Reed Construction Data, Joe Dysart takes a thorough and in-depth look at construction marketing on the web.
Dysart reveals a heavy-duty list of online resources, and explores some testimonials based marketing ideas that are quite sophisticated.
Observes Paul Gillin, author of “The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media,” “Blogs, discussion boards and other forms of interactive media are the most cost-effective customer feedback mechanism ever invented. You won’t get a representative sampling of your customers, but you will get your most passionate customers.
Dysart makes an excellent point in noting that “tranparency” is king online these days, I liked some of the “testimonial” style approaches he suggests.
Although I don’t think it’s the best fit for most construction companies to create a forum-like online community, I do think some of the other ideas he lists are quite interesting.
For example, zuberance.com:
“Another service provider driven by the keep-it-positive philosophy is Zuberance (www.zuberance.com). Rather than soliciting individual testimonials, the company specializes in building an entire cyber-community around your website, which is filled with naturally occurring “evangelists” – people who are truly jazzed about a company’s goods or services and feel compelled to tell the world about it. (Think Apple fanatics.)”
“Zuberance’s governing principal: Devote your energy to providing as many online/offline tools to enable these evangelists to express themselves positively about your product or service.”
Although I don’t think most construction companies are going to acheive “Apple fanatic” status in their proponents, I do think the idea of a new form for testimonials deserves notice.
People are tired of your standard testimonial. Everyone knows that even someone as untrustworthy as Charles Manson could have created an impressive list of testimonials on whatever twisted website he would have were he still alive. But what would a “trasnsparent” online public do with him?
