What We Learned in 2012

2012 is almost to a close and overall it’s been a good year. Like everyone, we’ve had our ups and our downs, and we’re still here as a much stronger, focused company. We thought you’d enjoy and learn a few things from our experiences

• It’s easier with a plan, even if you don’t stick to it – Last year we created a plan for this blog with a topic for each week. It made it easier to blog because we had an idea of what to write instead of thinking about it each week. If something new came up, we made a substitution. The plan also helped create flow from one topic to the next.
• Don’t sell your clients short – For years, we tried to keep our clients’ budget to a minimum and actually under served them by being nice in the proposal phase. After some “experimentation”, we give our prospective clients more options with explanations & examples allowing them to choose the one which is best for their objective and budget. Now we’re being nice by giving our clients what they need and want.
• Tell people what you know – A few years ago, we started doing more education marketing or as some people call it, content marketing. We give bits of education to prospective customers and position ourselves as the experts in construction marketing and websites. Our clients are now better educated and we have better relationships with them because of this and they have more respect working with us.
• Continue to grow – Every year that I’ve been with this company (11+ years), we’ve grown. Sometimes it’s adding team members or it’s financially or even growing with clients. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. We never went into “survival” mode with the recession and it has paid off.
• Have some fun – If you know us, we like to have fun and we generally share that fun. We play hard & work hard and it is infectious. If you visit our office, you’ll see its not your typical corporate office and you will also see lots of hard working people. Now we don’t have the slide and playgrounds that Google has at their office, at least not yet.
• Continue to focus – A big change we made this year was more of a mindset actually. When we started The Brand Constructors years ago, our plans were to work with the construction industry. After joining SMPS (Society of Marketing Professional Services), an organization for marketers & business developers in the A/E/C (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) industry, we expanded to the A/E/C industry. We’ve realized that we’re really suited best for construction companies and some engineering firms. Sorry architects, it’s actually a good thing.

In 2013, we’ll continue to be more focused and more visible. You will still see us active on Twitter (@brandconstruct),  this blog, and speaking engagements, but we will be expanding our education in more emails, white papers, and webinars. How was your 2012?