Why Advertisers are Bad Brand Marketers, Especially in Construction

This topic may seem like an odd post from us, but recently I found numerous construction companies going to large advertising firms to be rebranded. Although there are always exceptions to everything, this is philosophically a bad idea. Why? The core tenant of advertising is frequency. When in doubt, an advertiser will hit the target audience again and again, and then again.

Branding is about the experience and looks at your client, prospect, and even your employee’s experiences with your company. It identifies the problems at the core and fixes things from the inside out. Advertisers generally skip this step. While they can get the phone to ring and drive traffic to your website, it doesn’t translate to increased business. What it does is flood your business development team with unqualified inquiries, which they can’t handle that, in turn, creates a bad experience for everyone. This huge influx in calls leaves you with potential clients unhappy, current clients disappointed, and probably drives your business developers away. While a short-term increase in calls & website traffic appears to be great, it is usually fraught with long-term challenges.

Also, in many bid situations, you can not contact a selection committee once the bid is out. Most advertisers do not understand this and could get your company disqualified if they inundate a selection committee.

Not all advertising is bad. We use advertising when construction companies are entering new geographic marketing and business sectors, growing and need to attract numerous new employees, and for big events like anniversaries. I just see a conflict in advertiser’s mentality when it comes to rebranding and developing marketing materials.