Week 7

Marketing Communication in Construction

This past week we talked about marketing communications.We reviewed different advertising and promotion strategies, customer relations and public relations. One item that caught my attention in the educational portal video was the relationship selling video. This also related to the lecture when we were talking about long term customer relations. Having good long term customer relationships in the construction industry is very important. Most of our work is repeat business, we would not receive these jobs if we did not have a good relationship with the customer. If we were to use a traditional sales model, we would not have any repeat business. We would price the job, get the job and complete the work. We would not help them through the process and offer additional services to help as they move in. We use a relationship selling strategy. It starts when a client, architect or engineer first contact us to budget a job. Once the budget is complete they might as for was to cut costs or proceed to finalized drawings. Once drawings have been completed we can proceed with estimating the job and propose a hard final price. After pricing is accepted we schedule to start the job. We use weekly meeting to stay in touch with the custom and keep on top of any changes that might come up. Once the job is completed we check on the customer once in a while to make sure they are satisfied. Many times there is additional work requested, things that they didn't know they needed until they moved in. Keeping a good long term relationship with our customers is very important.

Another topic we reviewed this week and it was our Try This! for the week was a push-pull strategy. This strategy relates to the products path down the supply chain from manufacturing to the consumer. A push strategy is when the company uses advertising/promotions to push the product through the supply chain. A pull strategy is when the company is filling a consumer need. Basically, the consumer requests the product and pulls it through the delivery channel. Working in the construction industry we do not use any push strategies. If we were to use a push strategy it would not help us get much work. We can not push ourselves onto potential customers like a company could do with an actual product. However, we do use a pull strategy. When a customer notices a need for improvements to their office space that requires some construction they would contact us. The customer has a need and pulls us in to fill it. For example, Company A has decided to lease and additional 3,000 sq.ft. to use as conference space. They would contact us to build the additional space to their specifications. As a construction company we use a pull strategy.

Working in the construction industry had made it hard to relate this class to my current job. We operate much differently then a company selling a product. I have noticed that there are theories or strategies in which we do follow. They are not strategies that we have laid out in a marketing plan like some companies but we do use them. It has been very interesting to learn about the strategies and relate them to my job.