Keeping momentum in construction marketing ensures maximum impact

Applying a stop start approach to the way your company does marketing will lead to wasteful activities and fail to deliver results and most importantly ROI. In our experience the vast majority of marketing performed in-house is done so in an ad hoc manner, pacing through the year, with no defined strategy or benchmark to measure results.

Here are some common problems we have identified:

• Tactics replace strategy – you end up just doing stuff, then doing more stuff, without real direction and without real progress.
• ‘Reaction’ looks like ‘action’ - everyone confuses being busy with being effective.
• Progress is intermittent – a campaign works, then momentum and energy is lost.
• Mistakes are repeated – ad hoc marketing is notorious for ignoring all learning, so you never really get any better.
• You waste a lot of money – chasing opportunities instead of using your assets and playing to your strengths.
• Your marketing loses focus – and your audiences never get a coherent sense of what you're all about.

Why does construction marketing tend to be so short-sighted?

Maybe it’s because many construction marketers just aren't formally trained. Let's face it, many construction marketing directors move in to the job from sales or product management.

Others have marketing added into their remit and then never manage to lose it.

Or maybe it's because many construction businesses are not really marketing–driven like consumer brands Coke and Nike. Some fabulously successful construction businesses have been built with little or no marketing. Some thrive on the back of great engineering, sales and most importantly relationships.

But times are changing. The new, digital, social B2B and the new technology arsenal (marketing automation, lead nurturing, and revenue performance management) are bringing accountability back to B2B.

Marketing is starting to deliver more to construction businesses, we’re not just talking about branding and PR, we’re referring to strategic marketing.

How can you fight inertia and put the momentum back into your marketing?

Take four hours maximum and do these few simple things:

• Write a two-page plan – even if you only show it to team members.
• Make three explicit and quantifiable goals – with deadlines.
• Jot down three strategies for each goal – simple ones.
• Name three tactics for each strategy – also simple ones.
• Put them on a timeline – or chart.

A few hours – two pages – and you'll have done more for your marketing than all those meetings, decks and offsites put together.

Source: RIBA Insight, Doug Kessler Maintaining momentum in B2B marketing.