技术交流: Strategy

Dear Single Law,

As others have posted good marketing is both complex and simple. Every member of the Team needs a lexicon (data dictionary) of marketing so each person can use marketing terminology with a modicum of assurance that both it is used correctly and your audience has a good probability of understanding your message. The second entity you need is a central authority that blows up marketing myths before they can be implemented (real-time). Once these two are in place any marketing team that can drive marketing systems through every department and then link their data streams for real-time evaluation and marketing ROI your ready to begin brain storming!

This somewhat (2%) tongue in cheek explanation is to hopefully prevent you from running where 99.999% percent of engineers or lemmings go... over the cliff. We are so far beyond 9 out of 10 new products failing that we are down to tenths of percentages for success. It all comes from some group in charge (engineering/finance/executive take-your-pick) hurrying and getting the order confused when they... READY --- FIRE ----- Oh... AIM!, on a new product or service. Good marketing, like good engineering comes from serious study and follows rules of science. It's just very rare that marketing science gets applied with even 5% of the rigor or vigor that the engineering science that is applied to a given product/service. The results are why we are at such a stupendous record of product and service failure.

I hope you chose wisely.

Best regards,

Mark Walker
Head Coach
Marketing Whisperers, Ltd.

Hi Fiat,

I noted and agree with all the comments above but I would like to add a little different perspective.

I have had a little experience with your type of consulting / engineering business.

You mentoined in your post marketing 'SALES but no one replied ragrding the sales aspect.

In my opinion, you don't need any innovative marketing strategy becasue your company doesn't have an innovative service.

What you need is to just get out in the market and sell, sell, sell.

Get your sales guys out banging on doors, chasing projects, hanging around the city planners office to see who is applying for planning permission / building permits. Mingling at chamber of commerce meetings and rotary club dinners. Handing out businss cards everywhere and following up with courtesy calls etc.

Make sure ALL the contractors in the area are aware of your services and track record. make sure they are giving you the opportunity to 'bid' on the projects.

In your business it is all about 'who you know'. You have to know everybody and they have to know you and your track record.

Just be sure hta you have a professional looking portfolio that you can present as a printed document and or a PDF that can be emailed. Make sure it details your past successes and be honest about the SIZE of project that you can successfully handle. (capacity is an issue and you may need to pair up with another engineering group to pick up the slacka dn combine efforts to get the bigger projects).

Thats all there is too it.

Sell, Sell, Sell.

Hope this is useful,

Matthew

My answer is somewhat different as well. A couple of days ago I posted an article on my blog Why I Hate the Purple Cow.https://themarketingsurvivalist.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-i-hate-purple-cow....

Innovative marketing and sales strategies do you no good if you don't get the basics right. By all means, hire a consultant to guide you. But, at the very least go back and do "first things first". Off the top of my head, here are a few basics:

- Make sure you have clearly defined your target market. And it better not be "anybody who can use what we offer."
- Make sure you develop messages that resonate with your audience and not with your own team members.
- Tie your marketing lead generation goals to your sales goals.
- Make sure your website is a lead generation tool and not just a static brochure.
- Check out simple to use lead generation tools like Google Adwords, but test everything. Because Adwords is so simple don't assume that you can be successful immediately. Dig into the strategies behind some of these "simple" marketing tactics.
- Cold calling is not a "basic" it is a waste of time. Cross time and money wasters like this out of your marketing plan. Same goes for trade shows in a lot of industries.

If none of this makes immediate sense, go invest in a few good marketing books or watch a few of the profs seminars. You'll get plenty of ideas in no time.

All the best!

Melissa Paulik