Marketing for a Quantity Surveying practice
Now that the building and construction industry is slowly beginning to find its feet once more, projects are once again resuming and quantity surveyors will of course be in demand. It has been a very challenging few years and we are not yet out of the woods so marketing your practice is a key activity.
The problem is of course that construction firms will no doubt have their own established relationships with individual firms of quantity surveyors. So, the challenge to you as the owner or manager of a surveying practice is two-fold. First, to quickly and regularly identify any startup building or construction firms who don’t yet have any such relationship in place; and secondly to make existing firms aware of your presence within the market. Tell them what you can offer to out achieve their current contracted firm.
You Probably Have The Tools Already
An established marketing plan is of course vital. Ensure that you have a good mix of appropriate marketing activity, whether that includes website copy, advertising, PR, e-shots, Social Media Marketing (SMM), SEO online article writing or events. A great deal of this will of course depend on your budget but remember that creative, consistent marketing can now be carried out relatively cheaply. I say relatively because the major input is time.
What is important is that you do carry out some form of marketing, continuously. Regardless of the state of the economy, your competitors will continue to reinforce their branding and market positioning and you must do the same, or you will simply fade into the background and lose your competitive edge.
Quantity surveyors, like any other business, must battle to remain in the spotlight. Effective marketing will help you to do this, and ensure that you will continue to be a significant market player through varying market trends and the unstable economy.
One of my clients recently put together a data sheet with photographs which advertised a specialist job we carried out. It was very well put together and out of forty letters sent out we now have three very good enquiries which will need to be nurtured over the coming months. This happened because we had something ‘special’ to say about a project which achieved a very good BREEAM rating.
“Marketing is too important to be left to the Marketing Department.”
David Packard
