Make CFOs ♥ Marketing | Part 2 – Save the Company Money

Construction CFOs usually have two primary concerns: saving the company money and making sure the company is profitable for stakeholders. Unfortunately, not all CFOs see marketing as a positive catalyst for either of these activities. This misconception stems from many construction companies having inexperienced marketers, and, unfortunately, perpetuates itself onto the strong, experienced marketers. If you can change this opinion by demonstrating real, measurable and repeatable results, you’ll be a rock star at your company.

All assumptions aside, real marketing is grounded in establishing strategy, goals, objectives, measurable metrics, sound budgeting, and effective communications. Whether you’re an experienced marketer with degrees to back up your street smarts, or a come-up-through-the-ranks marketer who learned as you went, you probably know how to market your company through external marketing. What most marketers don’t have experience implementing (or time to research and implement) is internal marketing.

Whereas external marketing focuses on building brand awareness and recognition and assisting business development by providing tools and resources needed to promote the company, internal marketing focuses on making sure employees and subs are functioning as efficiently and effectively as possible. So what does that mean? The goal of internal marketing is to save the company money while making it as profitable as possible for stakeholders (exactly what your CFO really wants you to do). Internal marketing integrates with human resources, safety, project management and even business development. Operations love internal marketing’s results because employees become engaged in the business of the company, not just the tasks they do each day. Internal marketing gets everyone in the company focused on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and immersed in the company culture and thinking like a stakeholder (because they are). Internal marketing systems are designed to fix expense-generating issues most CFOs believe to be unfixable. Oh, and by the way… internal marketing is grounded in establishing strategy based on research, goals, objectives, measurable metrics, sound budgeting and effective communications (the same stuff that marketers already know how to do).

Just imagine if marketing could get your field teams thinking like stakeholders, improve employee selection and retention, and get everyone focused on achieving the company’s KPI’s on every project. Could this save the company thousands of dollars every month by cutting waste, while potentially earning it millions in KPI bonus? This method of marketing is much more than just branding your jobsites or stuffing info flyers into paycheck envelopes. And it can get complex at times. But the ROI generated by real internal marketing efforts is always worth it.

If your company has more than 350 employees, or if you’re numerous subs to represent you on the jobsite, give us a call to talk about designing a system for internally marketing your “stakeholder” culture to your “internal” brand community. Your CFO will love you for increasing company’s margins, your CEO will appreciate the cultural initiatives, and your HR Director may start inviting you to lunch.