If there’s one positive development of this economic downturn, it’s been my realization of the importance of marketing. From April of 1994 until last year, I operated from the position of “if you build it right, they will come”. To be honest, that mantra worked pretty well for about 14 years. Tailor Decks did very well and we frankly worked from the many referrals we got from the clients we had. We really focused almost exclusively on doing a good job as opposed to finding business.
But all that changed last year. I’d had my mind on developing an organized marketing program for when business cycled, which happened from time to time. But the general economic downturn last year hastened this process into first priority for us. Fortunately I found a good Atlanta marketing consulting organization in Impact Marketing, headquartered in Alpharetta, led by Scott Campbell. In addition to knowing how to market a business, Impact Marketing focuses on the home improvement sector…which made them an easy choice to partner with.
Scott could probably explain it better than I, but at the small business level, marketing is like working out with a personal trainer. We don’t have a budget to hire a marketing department, so I need to spend time working on marketing activities during the day…and these activities have to do with proactive business development…such as networking, making calls, advertising, etc. I’m quickly finding that companies that sit out and wait, particularly in this economy, are not going to survive (much less flourish). My plan is to become proficient in this area of the business as I am at designing or managing the actual decking project.
Since I’ve been working with Impact Marketing, I’ve really learned things I didn’t know about my business. More importantly, however, is that I believe we’re continuously building a more and more compelling reason for Atlanta area homeowners to give Tailor Decks a try. Keep your eye out for us as we build our “marketing deck”.
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