I’ve been thinking about us marketers in construction and the problems we face when it comes to marketing & improving results. Marketing in construction is perceived to be difficult because of the number of parties involved in a specific project and businesses want to market to everyone.

See, I’ve had business owners say “We need to focus on the specification market”.

8 months go by and then “We need to focus on the merchant market”.

Another 4 months and “We need to market to the self builders”.

Always be chasing.

Yet, most marketers don’t know which audience is the most rewarding or profitable.

What then happens in marketing, it resembles something that looks a little like this:

Marketing to Many = Spreading Yourself too Thinly

You’re actually not helping anyone.

In fact, you’re not marketing to anyone and cutting through the noise.

Nor are you helping yourself, budget or resources.

You treat everyone the same and you broadcast the same things to everyone resulting in noise, being irrelevant and diluting your messages.

You also don’t get an opportunity to learn about specific audience behaviours and needs and act on them.

You end up becoming a bozo. Always chasing, not being effective but look like you’re working hard.

Take websites for example. If you create a website to fit the needs of every single audience above, what you actually end up with is a messy, un-controllable, irrelevant and complicated website. Your website isn’t actually helping anyone. Thus yielding poor results, poor quality leads and low impact.

Over time, what you will see is the same results. No change. Nothing. Just more mess.

Marketing to Specific Audiences = More Focus

Because of this, I wondered what would happen if you just focused on one or two audiences. For the whole year. Or even two.

You know, just become the best for Architects.

Or provide the best communications and online services to interior designers.

That’s your focus.

What you may find is something that looks like this:

Outcome? 

Better impact and higher quality of leads as you’ve been able to focus on delivering the needs of one or two specific audiences. You’re being relevant.

Much more effective management of budget, time and resources.

You now have a focus.

You can say “no” to things.

Let’s say 90% of your website was focused on Interior Designers. Everything you did for the last 12 months was build information, tools and resources for this one audience.

Wouldn’t that yield greater results than spreading yourself thinly and running around chasing audiences?

What do you think?

Are you marketing to many and finding yourself not being effective at all?

Is your budget focused or is it spent ad-hoc?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this one….

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