In this very modern marketing age, you are not in the contracting business. You are a marketer of contracting services. The closer you adhere to that definition, the better both parts of your business will get.

Aren’t sales and marketing the same? No.

Marketing is a method by which sales opportunities are created. Marketing can bring you the leads, but if you can’t close them, what’s the point? 

Literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in sales are generated mostly by the “stealth” marketing tactic of publicity. That’s a huge return on investment, because publicity is free.

Pick a trend, any trend, and hop on board. Or, you can wait for everyone else to start doing it and play catch up — your choice. By being proactive, you can divert more traffic, capture more eyeballs and leads, and slowly cause your competitors to lose relevancy and cool points, which isn’t a bad trend either.

You know how it is. You look back at a marketing idea that worked really well, and all of a sudden, success seems so obvious.

“No wonder that worked,” you say. “It was a great idea.” 

Ever wonder why the most irritated people always call you? Actually, it could have less to do with you than it does with the kind of contracting business you operate. (Plus, there’s actually good news in the call, which we’ll cover in a moment.)

Let’s begin by looking at the marketing that maximizes branding.

According to word-of-mouth and social-marketing expert Gary Spangler, most businesses do social media wrong. Follow these rules to make sure you don’t fall into a social media trap.

Let your company, every employee, and your website be a mirror held up so the customer can see himself. It’ll reflect nicely upon you and your profits.

Remember those nice little postcards we used to see in restaurants or hotels with that ever-so-soft message, “Your opinion matters to us.