Marketing in the Cloud Age

You may be familiar with “database marketing” – the way companies sort and prioritize customers so as to target their prospects most effectively.

In construction, this becomes particularly important as companies must continually search for new projects leads in order to stay in business.

Construction companies have a head start in that their customers are generally the first to initiate a request for services. This is what happens when a project goes up for bid. This means that contractors are saved the step of convincing prospects of the need for the service in the first place.

However, they face the challenge of convincing customers that they are the right company for the job. Once a project goes up for bid, they must be one of the first on the scene. And they must be able to perform that project with less cost and at as high a standard as their competitors. So it pays to have many prospects, and to have a way of quickly gauging your suitability for the job.

Traditionally, project lead gathering has been done through a combination of marketing methods. Companies may rely on word of mouth and previous interactions with customers to win them new bids. They may subscribe to project news bulletins like this one from Reed Construction Data. They may also promote themselves through paid directories such as The Blue Book. Yet many have not yet been able to benefit from database marketing.

Why is this? Database marketing has historically been reserved for larger companies with access to data warehouses. The larger the company, the greater the access to resources, the greater the likelihood of success.

Think of owning a personal library of 100 books. Now picture a public library with 10,000 books. Now multiply that by 10 libraries with an inter-library loan program. That is a 1000-times greater likelihood of finding the resource (or the prospect) you want.

Despite the Cloud being a nebulous and often-misunderstood tool, it will soon be changing the face of the market by opening this capability to smaller and larger companies alike.

In an effort to keep construction managers current, we’re breaking down the six main strategies of database marketing into their traditional and Cloud-enabled roles.

Segmentation	Sort customers by category; prioritize by potential	Search customer database by desired characteristics
New customer acquisition	Track acquisition; focus on high-ranking segments	Find customers not currently in your own database
Customer penetration	Compare total purchases to purchases per customer; increase purchases among existing customers	Receive real-time updates on customer needs; be first to reach out to fulfill those needs
Customer retention	Identify customer loss/inactivity; introduce loyalty-building strategies	Keep abreast of news on key customers; participate in social media conversations
Marketing intelligence	Gather qualitative information on customers	Customers add their own details to prepopulated profiles
Measuring results	Test effectiveness of programs & strategies	Track progress against competing companies

What does this imply for the construction industry?

For one, smaller businesses may receive more project leads as they are able to tap into the data-storage abilities of the Cloud.

There is the chance that marketing budgets may go down, at least in the area of data acquisition and storage, as this falls into the public domain. However, construction companies will find the need for new areas of expertise as they learn to promote themselves through these emerging channels.