Are you ready to profit from the upturn?

Last week the most popular article on CNPlus.co.uk was ‘2010 Preview: Reasons to be cheerful’ by Greg Pitcher and Michael Lane in which they look at where construction work is likely to appear in each sector over the next 12 months.

Not surprising really but assuming things do improve, how ready are you to take advantage of any new opportunities? Is your website up to date? Are your brochures relevant to what you want to achieve in 2010? If you’re not careful, your marketing materials might even be working against you.

Which means that now is a good time to check over your website, look through the technical literature, check what you’re doing on Linked in, dig out that old corporate brochure that people are still sending out, and when was the last time you emailed a newsletter?

Specifiers have high expectations of technical information so it is remiss of you not to make sure it’s all correct and up to date.

And check you’ve got enough and in the right format. You don’t want to ration potential customers, or feel you have to qualify them before you post a complete specifier file off to them, you must be able to react quickly and completely to any opportunity.

If you’ve got a whole bunch of CDs with your technical literature on, throw them away and make sure the information is on your website, or rather put the information on your website and then throw the CDs away.

Which would you rather receive, a nice highlighter pen (with a useful website address) that you’ll keep on your desk or a CD that you’ve got to keep somewhere and cannot refer to without finding the CD, putting it into the drive, looking through it, wondering how up to date it is and then remembering to put it away safely.

It is interesting that the existence of websites has been a real shot in the arm for the corporate gift industry, you need to tell people where your website is. So add corporate giveaways to the list of marketing materials you are going to review this week. Search engine optimisation is important, you want your site to appear on the first page of a search engine’s results, but the point is to get people to see your site, be careful not to pay thousands of unnecessary pounds to optimise a website when a few hundred pounds worth of pens could drive more potentially profitable visitors to your site.

If you want people to visit your site, you have to tell them about it. A secret website is of little use in promoting your products. Make sure that your web address appears on pens, stationery, business cards, advertisements, keyrings and anywhere else you can. It is usually easier to remember a web address than a phone number.

Finally never forget that case studies are vital in assuring new customers that your products do what they are supposed to; and make sure the information is available as both print and on your website.

As well as being a CIMCIG committee member, Rick Osman is a partner in Highwire, a design and marketing agency that specialises in the construction industry, and one of the team that created www.hotel-standards.com.

For further details of marketing in the construction industry click here.