Today’s consumer is harder to reach than ever before, from a marketing perspective. But now there is finally a solution.

Your prospect is a moving target. People are no longer anchored to their desktop computers, they are on the move. Your prospect is now mobile, using a number of different devices to access information and entertainment, and build relationships with people. Gone are the days where you can use singular channels of marketing to get more customers, increase your conversion from prospects to buyers, and increase your profits using simple marketing systems. Well, at least, until recently those days were gone. Now, there is a huge opportunity. It’s called cross-channel marketing.

Watch this video (to your right) about the upcoming webinar, and then sign up below for a double dose of marketing strategy for your business. Observe the follow-up process when you register for the webinar, and imagine how a similar system could help your business increase profits. Then, watch the webinar for some specific and powerful tactics for getting new prospects through some brand new and extremely powerful high-ROI methods. Sign up now:

To Sign Up:

Text your name, email, website to (615) 547-2726

OR Scan this QR code with your smart phone, right from the screen.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing, Contractor Marketing

How to cut the fat & waste from your marketing budget and at the same time increase your sales by up to 30% in 90 days.

The business owners I talk to on a day-to-day basis are usually in one of three categories:

• Their business is OK but they want to do better.

• Their business is stagnant, flat-lined, no growth in sight.

• Their business is declining.

Where is your business today?

Here are some of the most effective local marketing techniques for service businesses:

1. How is the business handling existing traffic? Are people getting a warm friendly welcome and excellent follow-through? This is a VERY common problem. Everyone is so obsessed with Google traffic but then they have a site that won’t convert for squat, no clear compelling offer, and terrible phone answering infrastructure. A friendly voice goes a LONG way.

2. DATABASE: Does the business have automated follow-up to it’s database of customers? A fun, entertaining, engaging newsletter is cheap, extremely effective, and can foster referrals quickly. This can be automated. If I had a database of 100 clients as a builder and could only do one marketing effort, it would be this.

3. Sales training for all staff (or the business owner). More balls are dropped in this phase than anywhere else. Everybody thinks they are just naturally good at sales, but having a sales system is paramount.

4. Asking existing clients for referrals. Don’t offer anything in return, but then thank them and maybe send a little gift if they refer people. The single most effective thing a builder could do right now is just sit down in front of the phone and start calling past clients with the intent to get into friendly appreciative conversations and then ask for 3 names. You will call their friends and offer to come inspect their home for XYZ important preventative whatever. Or you could offer an educational lunch-and-learn on a topic of “How to Increase Curb Appeal” or “How to Maintain Your Home to Prevent Lost Home Value” or “Easy DIY Green Home Makeover” or something compelling. Have them come to your local library or Whole Foods or something and talk to them for an hour about your topic and then answer questions, and leave them with a nice newsletter or guide or book.

The above can be sold to cold prospects using a very similar script to the one on page 67 of Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.

5. Differentiate or die: Create a USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Sounds cliche, but it is a MUST. Integrate USP with all Marketing material. Integrate with all staff, vendors, customers, etc… Add USP to business cards, invoices, letterhead, trucks, uniforms, etc…

“Marketing and innovation make money. Everything else is a cost.” -Peter Drucker

6. THEN you think about your website. MUST HAVE a lead capture and compelling offer as the PRIMARY FOCUS on the website. Model after this guy: http://www.vamedmal.com/

7. The money is in the list. Set up e-mail responder. Capture e-mails on website. Create auto responders. Professionally written e-mails. E-mails can be forever, unlike a home address. Implement drip campaign.

8. Off-site online marketing: Press releases are AWESOME for SEO. Video marketing and distribution (Traffic Geyser or Tubemogul), podcasts on Apple.com and blog talk radio interviews, publish a book on Amazon.com (VERY easy to do…only has to be 28 pages long), big-budget PPC on all three major search engines, banner ads, build links.

9. Joint Ventures can be the fastest way to huge opportunities. What organization has a large list of your dream clients? Find ways to add value and serve their members or clients, and they will promote you to their list. This is a HUGE opportunity.

10. Direct Mail: use the Dunning mailer method (see this video, skip to 1:00:51 to get right to it) to your dream neighborhoods. Most people try direct mail ONCE and then quit. Direct mail works like crazy used as a CAMPAIGN, rather than a one shot deal. The keys are, mail to your dream neighborhood, have great copy, and sequence the mailer properly. It’s a campaign, not a single promotion. Most businesses aren’t serious enough about how they approach direct mail, so they fail.

Anyway, those are some of the best things a business can do to get results. If you want to have a conversation with me about how you can do this for your own business, talking is always free. Fill out my contact form here, and we can schedule a phone call.

Technorati Tags: Contractor Marketing, HVAC Marketing, Plumber Marketing

A Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is an excellent way to get instant, targeted traffic to your website.

In fact, recent marketing studies have shown that potential customers who click on Sponsored Links on Google are more likely to make an immediate decision to purchase.

With our PPC campaign management service, you can control your own budget, and know what you can expect from day-to-day.

Benefits of PPC Management:

• You pay for your clicks at cost.

• No mark-up, just one flat monthly fee.

• We build you an asset that you own (your own Adwords campaign with a high Quality Score.)

• Your cost per click gets cheaper over time as your Adwords campaign matures.

• It’s all hands-free, done for you.

• You can turn it on and off at will.

• You set whatever click budget you are comfortable with, and you can raise and lower it any time.

• You get weekly reports showing you where your leads/customers are coming from, click data, and more.

• You can call us any time and speak directly to us to resolve any issues.

Contact us for more information about starting your own PPC campaign.

FREE – Download our Pay-Per-Click Checklist (pdf) on how to manage your own Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click campaign. To download, click here.

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Get a free Pay-Per-Click consultation from a Google Adwords Qualified Individual.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing, Google Adwords, Pay-Per-Click

If you are trying to master your marketing because you want to grow your construction business, you’ve come to the right place.

This blog is a vault of resources that you can use to get your marketing plan humming along nicely, so you can spend your time focusing on your actual business, and what’s important in life. (Imagine that, right?)

Rather than pulling your hair out trying to find that next project, you can put a marketing system in place to help “automate the process” and get a steady stream of new targeted leads flowing in.

There are some great FREE resources available in the blog posts below. But don’t just take my word for it…read for yourself and decide. The goal here is to give you at least one marketing idea you can apply RIGHT NOW to your business to help you bring in new projects.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing Resources

Here is Your Webinar

Learn how to get more leads from the internet with these PPC techniques.
Also, Pay-Per-Click is not your only option. For a comprehensive marketing analysis, click here to contact me about a free Contractor Marketing Consultation.

For some instant marketing tactics you can use right now on your own, check out the Marketing Manual for Contractors.

For more information, click here to contact me about your free Contractor Marketing Consultation.
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I keep getting a kick out of how so many people keep talking about Twitter, Facebook and social media (et al.) like they are ridiculous time-wasters, unable to be comprehended by a reasonable, practical, effective person.

Are you one of “those people?”

I got the headline for this post from an article in Wired Magazine, talking about the difference between Jimmy Fallon interviewing a Twitter guru, compared to Charlie Rose doing the same. Rose’s interview is referred to as seeming like an episode of “Grandpa Learns of the Magic Computer Box.” Jimmy Fallon, on the other hand, is doing his best to stay current and understand these modern social tools.

Which camp do you fall in? Social media hater, or social media participant?

The Case Against Social Media

For those of you pessimists, you can read this article about how Facebook may risk the effects of “infantilizing the human brain.”

Quote from the audio in the above article:

“Every generation is phobic about the effect of new technology on the morals of the next.”

She goes on to discount the application of this phenomenon concerning social media, and why this time it’s different.

So, you can find good information in both camps.

My point, relative to Construction Marketing, is this:

You can either grump around, refusing to understand or participate in the new social media trends, and fall behind. OR, you can experiment and try to find cool new ninja ways to use this stuff to expand your relationship base and perhaps even grow your business.

It’s your choice. If you want to remain a grinch about it, I totally get it.

But the truth is, this social media stuff is all just a new, very powerful way of communicating with the world. And it’s trending like a juggernaut.

So ask yourself: Do you want to waste time throwing a futile tantrum about how you think it sucks, and you want to go back to the “good old days” of wasteful, one-sided shotgun marketing?

Personally, I’m going to keep my eyes on the horizon, and scoop up what I can along the way.

Now go follow me on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing, Social Media

Merlin Mann of 43Folders.com and InboxZero.com talks about the book he is writing on productivity, in your inbox and in your life.

I’m Writing a Book. from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

For those of you contractors and construction marketing enthusiasts who are trying to get good at using online video to market your blog and/or your business, there’s more: Pay attention to how to be compelling with just yourself, the wall behind you, and whatever food you have on your desk.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing, Productivity

Jeffrey Gitomer says he often introduces himself as “The Best Sales Trainer in the World.”

Read, listen to, and watch his stuff, and you will end up believing it!

Take this video as an example.

Technorati Tags: Construction Marketing, sales

There are some great insights in this book. It’s a book about networking…sort of.

The general principle is that by cultivating just three key relationships in your life, you can turbocharge your success, overcome all obstacles, and reach your highest dreams and aspirations.

The key is to first find three people who you think have the potential to see your life in the “big picture” and provide honest, forthright insights in a safe, non-critical environment. He calls these relationships “Lifeline Relationships.”

Here are Ferrazzi’s four key mindsets that one needs to learn and practice in order to to cultivate lifeline relationships:

1. Generosity

2. Vulnerability

3. Candor

4. Accountability

It all starts with generosity. When you give away value with no expectation of return, you build trust and gain many benefits from the “transaction.”

So, you start by being very giving and generous.

Next comes Vulnerability. The principle here is that when you open yourself up and let down your barriers to a person, they tend to react in-kind by doing the same. You establish mutual understanding.

Candor is third. In order for the lifeline relationship to see it’s full effects, you must both be willing and able to have complete candor. Constructive candor. Truth and acccuracy about the over-arching restraints, limitations, and shortcomings of one another, with a mind toward true achievement and improvement.

Finally, there’s Accountability. This one may seem obvious to some. It’s based on the same principles of recovery groups and many other programs based on improving lives or dealing with obstacles. No one can do it alone, in other words. We need core peer groups to help hold us accountable.

Now, if you’re anything like me and you have serious tendancies to lean toward independence and individualism, some of this might make your hackles go up. Believe me, I feel the same way. I would much rather go it alone, and take my chances, thank-you-very-much.

But I see the benefits of this type of thing. I can see how, in my life, there are huge opportunities for me if I incorporate some of these ideas and put them into practice.

How does this relate to business and life as a contractor, builder, or construction company?

Well, I can see some real practicality here. For example, as a contractor, could you imagine a situation where it would benefit you to have someone who can tell you where you might be dropping the ball with how your present yourself to clients? Or could you see how it might be helpful to get an outsider’s perspective about your company’s image to the general local population, and how that might be improved with only a few minor changes?

Wow, I sure can imagine some ways this could help me in my business.

How about you? Do you have your lifeline relationships humming along? Does anyone have your back?