Guide to BRAND · 2014-09-24 · 16 > Brand Marketing > Brand Marketing is Vital to Your Success the people who work there know it or not. If your logo, name and reputation aren’t

CONSTRUCTION EXECUTIVE'S

Guide to BRAND MARKETING

and the Tools of the Trade

BYPERRYNOLSONCPSM, CCMPWITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY ROBERT J. FOLSE

Table of Contents Foreword 6

BRAND MARKETINGChapter 1 Brand Marketing is Vital to Your Success 13 Chapter 2 Marketing 101 28Chapter 3 Brand + Marketing = ? 34Chapter 4 Differentiation 43Chapter 5 Positioning 52Chapter 6 Think Like a Consumer 57Chapter 7 Audience 62Chapter 8 Brand Reach 75

TEAMChapter 9 Who Affects Your Brand? 82Chapter 10 Marketing vs. Business Development 86Chapter 11 In-House Marketing Team 90Chapter 12 Business Development Team 101Chapter 13 Outside Influences 113Chapter 14 Corporate or Local Marketing 118Chapter 15 Biggest Mistakes 122

TOOLS OF THE TRADEChapter 16 Marketing Tools 130Chapter 17 Name and Slogan 136Chapter 18 Logo and Icon 139Chapter 19 Website 145Chapter 20 Social Media 162Chapter 21 Marketing Your Website 174Chapter 22 RFPs, Proposals, and Presentations 177Chapter 23 Brochures 185Chapter 24 Stationery 188Chapter 25 Newsletters 191Chapter 26 Internal Marketing 194Chapter 27 Job Site Marketing 198Chapter 28 Tradeshows 201Chapter 29 Public Relations (PR) 205Chapter 30 Advertising 211Chapter 31 Integrated Campaigns 215Chapter 32 Internal Tools 218Chapter 33 Rebranding 221

Resources 230 Self-Guided Brand Audit 231

CHAPTER

BRAND MARKETING IS VITAL TO YOUR SUCCESS

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Brand Marketing is Vital to Your SuccessSo, why are we talking about marketing? After all, you’re in construction…right? Well, simply put, without marketing your company has no projects. Marketing, good or bad, is what brings in (or keeps out) projects, and helps you maintain the relationships you need to get them. Without marketing, no one has a job to do, including you. Marketing is the most important job in the company. This past recession proved it when we had fierce competition for fewer projects, yet some construction companies prevailed and grew during these lean years—they did it with marketing. Don’t worry; this book will explain how they did it and what tools they used.

If your company started out with one of those savvy and likeable people known as “client magnets,” who are naturals for marketing and business development, this person may not have considered themself a marketer in the traditional sense. Often they do not realize their personal/direct selling/marketing efforts are an integral component in the company’s marketing toolbox. Over time, as the company grows, it must replace or add to this “client magnet,” because he or she is not immortal. If not replaced, the company will go the way of this business developer and natural-born marketer – dead. I’m sure you’ve seen this happen in some multi-generational companies that are not structured to move ahead without the founder.

If you have a strong marketing and business development team, then your company most likely understands the importance of marketing and branding in both good times and bad. However, too many construction companies do not have a marketing team, or they have assigned those responsibilities to an ill-equipped

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executive assistant. This lack of understanding of the role and importance of having true marketers working alongside business development is often why marketing does not get the respect deserved. Marketing is disregarded as something you do when times are good, or when there is extra money to spend on “getting your name out there.”

Now, don’t freak out if you have an executive-assistant-turned-marketer. One doesn’t have to have a marketing degree to be a good marketer. However, they’ll need to understand how marketing works, and they should understand the importance and power of marketing. No one should approach marketing lightly. To do so could be a very expensive mistake; one, in fact, the company may never recover from. Your success ultimately rests on marketing’s shoulders. In Section 2, we’ll cover the essential elements of a good marketing team, and where marketers and non-marketers-turned-marketers can gather knowledge to continue their education.

If brand-building and sales came easily to your company’s founder, it’s possible he or she doesn’t appreciate how hard it is for others to do it well. This founder developed and maintained long-lasting relationships, and he/she built the company around them. Early on, the founder and key people represent the company’s brand. Once your company is well established, or it grows to a larger size (say $100 million in annual revenue); the founder needs to help evolve his/her role into a marketing and business development team, or even a business-building system. As the company evolves, a healthy brand will shift from founder-focused to company- value-centric.

Let’s get something straight! By brand, I don’t mean your logo, or even your company name. Every company is a brand, whether

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> Brand Marketing > Brand Marketing is Vital to Your Success

the people who work there know it or not. If your logo, name and reputation aren’t a brand, what is?

Your brand is much more than the sign hanging on the outside of your building. It’s the collection of experiences someone has with your company, such as seeing your job sites, interacting with your receptionist who answers the phone, and visiting your offices. It also includes your truck drivers’ courtesy (or lack thereof, such as when the guy cuts someone off in traffic, then flips them off).

It’s your concern for others and your participation in your community. It’s the way your people represent your company in everything they do and say. This viewpoint is one reason construction companies that construct buildings are stereotypically viewed in a more positive light than road construction companies, which are often associated with traffic and delays.

Essentially, your brand is what people perceive your company to be. A strong brand will:

¤¤ Make your company appear established and more successful than it may be.

¤¤ Lower your client acquisition costs and increase your hit rates.

¤¤ Reduce advertising and marketing costs.

¤¤ Increase employee retention and company morale.

¤¤ Attract the right projects and the best employees.

¤¤ Create and stabilize manageable growth for long-term success.

¤¤ Strike fear and loathing into the hearts of your competitors and make your company appear unbeatable.

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A strong brand does all this when your company truly understands what it is, what it does, and who best to do it for. A strong brand presents a cohesive and united brand image, captures your prospects’ attention, attracts the best employees and clients, and slices through your competitors’ vague and generic marketing clutter.

On the other hand, a weak brand can:

¤¤ Hinder growth in your preferred service areas.

¤¤ Ineffectively represent your company’s capabilities and credibility.

¤¤ Raise your costs for attracting the right clients, employees, and subs.

¤¤ Be erratic, unpredictable, and easily beaten out on value bids.

¤¤ Allow competitors to enter your market and push you aside - thus stealing your best employees and most profitable clients.

¤¤ Create competition with yourself by confusing your audience.

Your logo is not your “brand.” Instead, think of your logo as the visual representation of your company; similar to your picture on Facebook®, or the picture that appears when an acquaintance calls your mobile phone. Do people cringe when they see your logo, or does it invoke trust and confidence? I suspect if you’re reading this book that the answer is “trust and confidence,” because you care enough about your company to look into how brand marketing impacts your organization.

Essentially, your brand is what people say about your company when you leave the room.

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Over the last decade, a great deal of research has gone into understanding and developing brands. There is a significant financial difference between owning a well-branded company versus one with a “bad” brand. Well-branded companies’ brands often makeup 60% or more of those companies’ market value. Consider these behaviors: people will drive across town for a “good” burger, wait in long lines for concert tickets to see their “favorite group,” and save up money for a sporting event featuring “their team.” They all do this because they want to be connected to those brand EXPERIENCES, not the logos; they want to be a part of what those brands are creating. They wear the brand’s logo as a sign of support for the brand and to connect with others in the brand’s community.

It may be easier to understand consumer-centric branding better than B2B (Business-to-Business) branding because all of

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us interact with consumer brand every day. Like your preference for Coke or Pepsi, but construction companies are brands, too. In fact, every company and person, for that matter, is a brand. When you hear a construction company name you recognize, what is your immediate reaction? Whatever comes to mind, that is your personal perspective of that brand. Good or bad, it is their brand image in your mind. Even though you may not consider your company a business-to-consumer (B2C) business, you are selling to consumers – your consumers just happen to be other businesses, governments, and project representatives. Those buyers, even for a business-to-business (B2B) company, still want and expect a good experience. No client wants to spend millions of dollars on a project they wind up regretting or suffering through.

BRAND EXPERIENCE

A client’s experience with your company creates their perspective of your brand, and the experience varies for everyone. If I ask five of your clients about your brand, they will probably offer slightly (or even vastly) different answers, as would five of your employees. This variance is due to each of them having had different experiences with your company, and these variances have served in creating their unique brand perspective. Some will describe your brand from the perspective of the service and products they’ve experienced, others from interacting with your staff, some from what they know about your reputation, while others will base their perspective on individual issues from the past. As an executive at your company, you may be surprised by how much your customers’ and employees’ perspective of your brand varies from what you believe it should be. The reason for variations is because what your company creates is known as a brand identity, while what others perceive your brand to be is called your brand image. Think about how a prospective new hire appears when he wears a suit to a job interview with you. Now,

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think of that interview experience if he showed up wearing shorts and sandals – you can imagine how his choice of clothing fosters a completely different perspective of the same person.

Your brand identity will never perfectly match someone’s brand image of your company; you will always have a disconnect here, and this is okay. It is similar to when you visit a job site to find everything is in order and well maintained, while knowing good and well that your crew is just putting on a show because you (the boss) are checking up on them. You know your customers do not get the same experience from your company as you do. This “false front” is the reason shows like Undercover Boss became popular – executives need to disguise themselves to see their “real company” and experience the brand as their customers and employees do. While the boss is undercover, people do not pretend to be something they are not, thus revealing a truer perspective of the experience the company delivers. A vast disconnect between the brand identity and the brand image can attract the wrong employees and clients to your organization, which, in turn, can lead to a downward spiral of costly activities that are hard to escape.

Companies with strong brands aren’t necessarily the ones with the best-designed logos. The strong brands are created by pleasant, consistent, memorable experiences that provide “added-value” for customers and employees while building an emotional connection. When you pair an outstanding experience with cohesive marketing materials and brand-communication initiatives, you create an unstoppable business-attracting force. Unfortunately, most marketing and advertising firms skip over building the brand experience. They jump straight into attracting new clients to the brand through advertising, even though the core of the company’s brand may need attention first. How will they know what kind of customers to attract if they do not have

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a road map to guide them? A company’s branding toolbox should be this guide. If it isn’t, and your brand is disconnected from its perception, you should start working on building out your toolbox before spending money on promotions designed to grow your company. Growing your company before fixing your branding only exacerbates the problems and makes it costlier to correct your direction in the long run.

You’ve seen this in action first hand. Think about how a small restaurant thrives with no advertising; they have a good product (food) and a good experience (service and atmosphere) that people want to share with others, otherwise known as word-of-mouth advertising. However, we’ve also all seen companies advertise and still fail, in spite of spending big to attract attention. This failure happens when instead of fixing the problem (experience or product); the owner tries to plow through the problems with advertising, which creates an expensive “turnstile” of customers who come in once, try the service, and never return. These patrons complain to other potential customers and discourage them from buying as well.

This turnstile madness occurs in construction too, due to bad experience delivery. Many construction companies do not think their customers have a brand experience. However, poor communication, frequent work change orders and project delays lead to a bad experience for you and your customers. I’m sure you never thought of your company as a turnstile before, but stop and think about it. If you’re constantly trying to acquire new clients because you have almost no client retention or referrals (and probably high employee turnover), then you’ve created a turnstile.

Poor communication, frequent work change orders and project delays lead to a bad experience

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In the construction industry, you win when you negotiate work and when your clients hire you over and over, meaning you don’t have to go through costly bids for each job. This streamlined process means the customer likes the experience of working with your company, and all future work is yours to lose. I’ve seen construction companies grow quietly into giants because they take extreme care of each customer’s individual experience, which keeps them from losing those customers. Thus, they do not need to allocate large amounts of marketing dollars for advertising. Outside the company’s brand community, onlookers may have no idea just how large the company has grown or how it achieved such success, because it was all done behind the scenes. This growth is probably due to great brand marketing.

Let me give you another example of how the experience, good and bad, affects buying habits. Years ago, I started changing my own oil; not to save money, but because I had such bad experiences with local mechanics. I got tired of sitting in a mechanic shop’s waiting room for an hour or more, which disrupted my day, just to get my oil changed. It was not worth spending an extra few dollars to have the professionals do something I could do with a little effort. That is until I found a company called 5-Minute Oil Change. They save me time and hassle by letting me stay in my car while they drain and then add new oil. While I’m there, they are courteous, offer me a drink, and top off my other fluids. I pay a little extra compared to doing it myself, but it’s worth it because it’s less hassle for me, and I can work on my mobile device while they get their hands dirty – it’s simply a better experience and value.

I’m not trying to compare marketing a construction company to marketing a consumer brand. I need you to think as a consumer so you can truly understand what your customers are thinking. People buy on emotion, not logic. If your clients’ experience

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1 Miles, Josh. Bold Brand. Cleveland: Content Marketing Institute. 2012.

consists of missed calls, unanswered emails, delays, safety issues, and work change orders; you’re not getting the next job. Period. This client will even look for ways to throw out your low-bid with small technicalities and fight to do negotiated work with your competitors just to avoid working with you. Ouch!

You don’t need to wine-and-dine customers to win work... you need to perform consistently and provide a pleasantly memorable experience for them. Also, because of my consistently positive experience with 5-Minute Oil Change, I spread the word about them by telling others.

This instance is similar to many construction companies I work with that work primarily within a geographical region. However, occasionally their clients will ask them to work out of their normal geographic area because they want that brand experience from a company they trust. So much so, that they are usually willing to pay a premium price for this company to work out of state. Understand the difference? The difference is the experience and the trust, not price.

CONSISTENCY

My friend, Josh Miles, a brand marketer focused on professional services, said it well in his book Bold Brand 1, “Your brand is like a living, breathing, malleable, and pliable entity.”1 Your brand is an ever-evolving living thing that everyone in your company affects. Because your company is always changing and is affected by a variety of dynamic factors and people, you need to keep what you can consistent.

Your brand marketing should be as consistent and on-point as possible. You may think that using the same resource (creative and marketing team) over and over would be more expensive than subbing the work out to the lowest bidder each time. However, it is a proven fact that working with multiple firms for each new

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marketing piece will mean starting from scratch each time, which is much costlier. Put a reliable team in place that is capable of understanding your goals and building your brand so that there is no disconnect in creating your brand marketing tools. Ideally, the bulk of your brand’s look-and-feel is derived from the design of your logo and large marketing pieces such as the website or large brochure. After these materials are in place, maintaining brand consistency gets easier and more cost-efficient because each marketing piece utilizes 80-90% of the overall look, tone and message that is already in place. Think about the stock letters you have ready to go. You can create a well-crafted message in just minutes opposed to starting from scratch each time. Your marketing materials can be this efficient too.

Even worse than being expensive to manage, inconsistent branding creates competition with itself. You will confuse your brand community by throwing different-looking materials at them. It makes you look like a Jekyll-and-Hyde company. You appear to be one company today and a completely different company tomorrow, thus creating competition for yourself. Don’t you have enough competition already?

For example, I met three people at a networking function a few years ago that worked at the same company. Initially, I didn’t recognize the company name, and when I received their business cards, each looked different. I didn’t connect the dots until later, when I saw them talking together, and I made a comment about knowing your enemy. They laughed and said that they worked for the same company and were not in competition. They were shocked when I explained my misunderstanding and showed them their three different business cards. By allowing each office location to take care of managing and printing their own office’s business cards, they unwittingly created

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three different brands while raising their costs. One office used “LLC” behind the company name, while another just had the name without a corporate designation. One had even placed the franchise owners’ name before the company name.

Each location paid their respective printer to create and use similar-but-different identities, and they did not take advantage of cost-cutting by purchasing materials in larger quantities. Essentially, each office was operating as a separate brand underneath the parent company, and paying a hefty price for it. This is a common occurrence where a company unwittingly is competing with itself.

Because I am active on numerous boards, I see a lot of membership and registration lists. I’m amazed how often I see 3-5 members in the same organization call their company by different names. Some of these variations are slight, such as a company with or without the “LLC” or “Inc.”, but others are drastic, such as ABC, Anybody Building Construction, or A.B. Construction (hypothetical names to protect the not-so-innocent).

So, I ask you: What is your company’s name? Do all of your brand ambassadors use the same “name” when communicating on your company’s behalf? [I’ll explain brand ambassadors on page 195.]

One of the core tenants of brand marketing is consistency. Without consistency in your look, tone and personality, your company may appear to be smaller or less organized than you want it to be. So don’t allow your people to deviate from your established branding by having numerous company names. Lack of consistency confuses your team, your clients, and your prospects. If you can’t get your name right, how

One of the core tenants of brand marketing is consistency.

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can someone trust you with a multi-million dollar construction project?

From the top to the bottom, everyone on your team needs to know what your company name is and what you do (services and products). It’s okay to use an abbreviation internally, but don’t use it outside the company unless that is your name. Although I dislike the use of acronyms for company names (I call them “Three-Lettered Monsters”), if that is the name your company is known by, then you should stick to it or educate people otherwise. Internally, my team uses BRC for The Brand Constructors, but that name doesn’t leave our office. Why? Because we’re The Brand Constructors, not BRC or TBC. Numerous other companies use acronyms like BRC, but that acronym means nothing, for the most part, to anyone. The Brand Constructors says something about who we are and what we do, and represents our expertise in constructing brands.

So now that we’ve discussed some of the important reasons modern construction companies need good marketing and branding tools, we’re going to look in detail at the specifics of marketing your company.

“It is the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent.

It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin

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THE IMPORTANCE OF A NAME

Ideally, your company name paints a picture in your brand community’s mind of what you do. It showcases not only your function, but also your personality, and even better, your differentiator. For example, do you envision something different between these two fictional companies: Mega Construction and Peter’s Construction? I’m sure you envision something different for each.

Be warned, acronyms can kill brand awareness and understanding unless you’re a behemoth like IBM®. When I say, “DEF” - what picture pops in your head? Probably nothing. Acronyms are often confused with other companies of the same name, sometimes even in a different industry. Not so long ago, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF®) sued the World Wrestling Federation®(WWF®) for the name “WWF®”. The wildlife organization won because the acronym confused their supporters, and the wrestlers had to change their name. Would you rush to register for an AMA conference? Is that the American Medical Association or the American Marketing Association? Better check before you book that hotel!

We live in a global economy where names transcend geographic markets. Companies like Turner Construction and Turner Industries are two of the largest construction companies in the United States. In the past, they used to be geographically separated, but now Turner Construction works globally, including in Turner Industries’ backyard of South Louisiana. One key difference between the companies is their market sectors. Turner Industries works almost exclusively in the petrochemical industry in the Gulf Coast, while Turner Construction constructs buildings, stadiums, and just about everything else outside of the industrial industry.

Company names are important, your brand is even more important.

About Perryn OlsonPerryn has been at the helm of The Brand Constructors since it’s inception in 2008 as the construction marketing division of Design the Planet. He is a graduate of Loyola University New Orleans and is a multi-disciplined designer, business developer and marketer. He holds the designation of CCMP (Certified Construction Marketing Professional) from the Construction Marketing Association and the CPSM (Certified Professional Services Marketer) from SMPS (Society of Marketing Professional Services). Perryn serves as the president-elect for SMPS Southeast Louisiana and the co-chair for the 2015 SMPS Southern Regional Conference (SRC). He is the past president of Executive Connections, a business networking organization in New Orleans.

Perryn has written articles for CFMA (Construction Financial Management Association), SMPS, AGC (Associated General Contractor), AIC (American Institute of Constructors), ABC (Associated Builders & Contractors), and many more. He has spoken at national conferences including for ABC and SMPS as well as many regional conferences and workshops on topics such as Brand Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing, Creative Thinking, and Website Development.

He participates regularly in construction marketing group discussions on LinkedIn, shares his knowledge through the company blog, and engages fans and followers on Twitter (@brandconstruct).

Perryn is an Eagle Scout and was selected as one of ENR’s “20 Under 40” in 2014 for Texas & Louisiana and was honored as SMPS Southeast Louisiana’s “Member of the Year” in 2013.

About The Brand ConstructorsThe Brand Constructors is a division of Design the Planet and was launched in 2008 to allow us to focus more intently on the construction industry. This specialized focus and expertise gives us the edge to position our clients for improved profitability while maximizing marketing efficiency. The Brand Constructors work exclusively in the build industry with General Contractors, Sub-Contractors, Engineering Firms, and other companies that support the construction industry. We understand how to overcome the lowest bid mentality to earn more negotiated work, the need to get to the project interviews using RFPs and SOQs, and how to recruit the best employees and sub-contractors. We work as a partner with our clients, augmenting in-house talents and capabilities to provide them with the marketing and business development tools needed to get the job done.

The Brand Constructors are a dynamic team of marketers, graphic designers, web developers, and business consultants focused on maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing communications and dollars. The team has won local, national, and international design and marketing awards, and have helped clients win construction excellence awards, including the coveted National ABC Silver Eagle for Excellence in Construction.

Our primary goal is to help you streamline your marketing efforts, get marketing costs in-line with expectations, and become more profitable. Construction industry pros understand the value of sub-contracting work to specialists. So, whether it’s award-winning submittals, improved website functionality, attention-grabbing branded materials, or improving your entire brand through our brand base audit, the Brand Constructors are Your Marketing Subcontractors.

www.BrandsUnderConstruction.com

Guide to BRAND · 2014-09-24 · 16 > Brand Marketing > Brand Marketing is Vital to Your Success the people who work there know it or not. If your logo, name and reputation aren’t

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