AEC Marketing Communication in the New World:
Low cost strategies
that really work
By Mark Buckshon
What are the best techniques and
methods to find new business in the
current era of rapidly developing
technologies and intensified compe-
tition? The answer to this question com-
bines some new approaches with
long-standing traditional and effec-
tive marketing strategies. You need
to build on your brand - and that is
primarily based on your actual client
experiences and their genuine enthu-
siasm and enjoyment in working with
you. Then you apply technological in-
novations to accelerate and enhance
your positive reputation, with effec-
tive client-focused editorial and vi-
sual marketing content, a solid
website, and some easy to manage
social media strategies. Finally, if you
wish, you can package these quali-
ties, combining current technologies
with future-looking concepts includ-
ing Building Information Modelling,
virtual/augmented reality, and – look-
ing forward – the powerful potential
of machine learning and artificial in-
telligence. At root, the basics of effective
AEC marketing haven’t changed in
decades. People (and business-to-
business clients are of course indi-
viduals working for companies) like
doing business with organizations
where they feel good about their ex-
perience. Clearly, your actual
work/service/product must be com-
petent, but if your clients’ overall ex-
perience isn’t at least satisfactory,
you will have a one-time relationship.
However, your goal should be to
make their experience super great,
by anticipating needs, communicat-
ing frequently, and where you can,
providing value added extras that
14 – MARCH 2018 — Florida Construction News
don’t cost much money but make
the process more enjoyable.
Why is the client experience so
important? Consider the fundamental
data that I’ve gathered over the past
decade through an ongoing poll on
my constructionmarketingideas.com
blog. At least 71 percent of the con-
tractors, architects and engineers
who have responded over the years
say that repeat and referral business
is their most important source of rev-
enue. (It breaks down to 41 percent
from word-of-mouth/recommenda-
tions and 30 percent from repeat
clients.) Advertising (at 13 percent)
and leads services/open RFPs and
public tenders (at 11 percent) are sig-
nificant business builders but don’t
really move the needle as much. Irri-
tating and intrusive techniques such
as telemarketing and door-to-door
canvassing work for only a few con-
tractors (at five percent).
The point in these numbers is that
anything you can do to improve your
repeat and referral business will have
disproportionate impact on your bot-
tom line. So you need to do every-
thing you can to connect with and
deliver value to your clients.
Your goal: Win sincere testimoni-
als and recommendations – so you
can make it easier for other clients to
say “yes” - and of course, to develop
additional repeat or recurring busi-
ness. Please note: While it is essential
to provide great client service, you
must never assert that your market-
ing/business strength is providing
“great customer service”. This is inef-
fective. If anyone asserts this fact
(assuming it is true), it should be
your customers themselves, through
their actual experience and testimo-
nial statements, either written (or
even better) in video format.
That said, there are some things
you can do beyond delivering an in-
credible client experience These in-
clude: • Developing an expertise and rep-
utation building content creation
strategy (blog, white papers,
videos); • building a truly effective website;
and • adapting your website and con-
tent to responsive social media
relationships and concepts.
None of these strategies requires
much money, though they all require
some effort and coordination. I’ll out-
line some approaches to succeeding
in these three focuses.
marketing presence, without costing
you any additional money.
You’ll want to develop tools to
monitor and manage your social
media image, inducing positive testi-
monials and comments while avoid-
ing negative comments and reviews.
There are some third party services
that help this process. They invite
your clients to provide a “satisfac-
tion” report, and if it is excellent, they
will encourage customers to post
their positive comments directly on
the social media sites. If they are
negative, they will encourage your
clients to communicate with you pri-
vately so you can resolve the issue
and avoid negative reviews.
Content creation
The goal here is to make it easy
for current and previous clients to
say good things about you, and to
learn valuable information to build on
your quality/expertise reputation.
Your blog provides a good starting
point – because by regularly
writing/videoing your insights, obser-
vations, and stories, you add to your
reference points and knowledge.
Your blog messages can easily be
posted to your website (see below)
and then auto posted to social
media. Videos don’t need to be slick or
fancy. In fact, testimonial videos that
are grainy and rough are in my opin-
ion more credible and effective than
slickly narrated commercially pro-
duced efforts.
However, I think your writing
should be solid and well-edited. If
you don’t have someone who writes
well on your staff, you may need to
contract with a freelancer to gener-
ate or edit your material. This will
cost you some money, but will be far
less expensive than conventional
paid advertising.
How much will all of this cost?
Your greatest expense will likely
be the review/enhancement of your
internal processes and existing client
service/relationships. You may need
an outside consultant to look more
closely at your operations and sug-
gest improvements, but if you can
see the issues that need to be re-
solved and make things more
friendly and satisfactory for your
clients, you’ll be well on your way.
Full-scale website development
services vary in price, but generally
you can get a specialist to complete
a solid project for you for about
$5,000 or so. If you are ready to do it
yourself or contract directly with
website developers, you can reduce
this cost by one or two orders of
magnitude. (Yes, that would mean
$500 or even $50.)
Writing services can be free (out-
side of your time) if you are compe-
tent and literate or have an in-house
staff person who can write well. Ex-
pect to spend upwards of a few hun-
dred dollars per significant piece if
you need to pay a freelancer or out-
side marketing consultant for these
services. Developing your social
media relationships
Company profile pages for Face-
book, Twitter and LinkedIn can be
created without fee, and you can
easily connect them to your website
so that every time you add a relevant
post, it will auto feed to the relevant
social media sites, leveraging your
Forward thinking options
If you are ready to step into the
future and embrace new technolo-
gies, you can achieve a significant
marketing advantage by building on
your uniqueness and forward think-
ing vision.
I think the best starting point for
most AEC professionals will be to
embrace Building Information Model-
ling. Costs for BIM resources have
been declining, and there are in-
creasing opportunities to learn how
to use these tools. With BIM skills
and resources, you can have fun
with automated/virtual reality (and re-
ally showcase your
presentations/projects in an interac-
tive way).
If you want to go even further into
the future (but we are talking years,
not decades), recent developments
with machine learning and artificial
intelligence offer exciting if some-
what scary automation options – be-
cause the machines can learn from
their environment and ultimately the
science fiction concept of computers
being smarter than humans could
become a reality.
Conclusion: You don’t need to
spend much to achieve a lot
Even if you go full-bore and con-
tract out all the services described
above, I can’t see it necessary for
you to spend more than $10,000 a
year on a truly effective marketing
strategy. This is a drop in the bucket
compared to even the cheapest
forms of paid media advertising. If
you elect to spend money on other
forms of marketing/advertising, in-
cluding trade show exhibits, print
and paid online advertising, the client
relationship, website and social
media models will provide you with a
powerful backbone and will boost
the effectiveness of your more ex-
pensive marketing approaches.
Go for it. You can truly achieve
great marketing communications re-
sults for very little money.
Additional resources
I’ll provide you with a list of serv-
ice providers (and some observa-
tions/recommendations about them)
without charge if you email me at
buckshon@constructionmar- ketingideas.com.
Florida Construction News — MARCH 2018 – 15