Emotions, choice and reason in Construction Marketing

If you want to be successful in construction marketing, you will need to be successful in both managing your own emotions and in causing your potential clients and influencers to emotionally want to do business with you.  In other words, you need to understand and manage the psychology of the marketing environment.

These skills can be learned and are ingrained in some of the fundamental practices of successful marketers, such as the principal of reciprocity.  If you are generous and respectful of the people around you, they are generally generous and respectful in return, although the economic value of the generosity and respect don’t necessarily correlate.  Sometimes by “giving” a dollar, you receive $100 in return.

Since we are also all emotional beings, our own reactions and feelings — and prejudices — influence and affect our marketing decisions.  We write off some potential opportunities far too quickly, and battle for others far too long.  Sometimes these traits result in quite surprising results.  In one case I know, joint venture partners from a marketing business went through hoops to “change” the business plan in response to an inbound inquiry in part because inbound inquiries are so rare in their type of business.  Fortunately, they drew the line in getting to desperate to complete the circle of the initial inquiry — which was just that.  Throwing the existing business model out because of one friendly call might seem dumb, but I’m sure this type of thing happens more often than we might expect.

I believe effective construction marketing occurs when you can control your own emotions while appealing to the emotional “hot buttons” of your potential clients.  This applies both in the consumer and business-to-business markets.  We don’t need to be cynical nor should we lose touch with our own humanity here.  (People can smell insincerity and manipulation miles away.)  Frankly, if we have fun and enjoy the marketing experience, our potential clients will enjoy working with us even more.  When you think of it more deeply, this means that your success in applying the reciprocity principal starts at the beginning:  If you have fun in your marketing and enjoy it, then your clients will want to do business with you.  So if you really enjoy things like canvassing and cold calling, or rushing out countless unqualified responses to RFP proposals, go for it.  You will likely succeed.  You will also be part of a very small minority of successful construction marketers doing things they love that most others distaste.

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