Proactive marketing is anything that takes work from your side to get your brand out there or to help with the sales, this includes:
Telesales
Introductory visits
Door to door sales
Anything where you are approaching your customer direct and having a conversation
Reactive marketing is where you put something out there and wait for a response back, such as:
Billboard adverts
Magazine/TV/radio promotions
E campaigns
Websites
Leaflet drops
Most companies use both of these strategies while some just choose to focus their resources on to one strategy. I would recommend doing a bit of both.
Reactive marketing is amazing for getting your brand out there and takes very little effort, when doing this kind of marketing, I would always suggest doing such in a campaign like format. Meaning you do several different types of advertising simultaneously. Such as a magazine advert, e campaign and leaflet drop within a short period of time.
There are many reasons for this, but the main reason is that it is psychologically proven that it takes a customer 3 times of seeing your advert/brand before they decide to pick up the phone to you. So, they may see an advert of yours in a magazine and think that it looks interesting, they may then see you again on a billboard and get reminded of the magazine advert they saw, then finally you may pop up in their inbox or mail then decide to start looking into your business more.
It is also important to make sure you advertise in relevant places, research your target audience and the best places to engage with them, posting an advert in magazine like Cosmopolitan selling lawnmowers would make no sense as you’re appealing to the completely wrong demographic. This would be a complete waste of both time and money.
Ensure that you use a reputable company to deal with your marketing, should you choose to do so, ask to speak with customers, see stats or get testimonials. Don’t waste your money on people who would promise the world and instead provide an island at best. If marketing is being done in house make sure you are able to track your adverts and their success so you know where you should allocate the budget on your next campaign, this is a matter of trial and error in most circumstances as you are doing the marketing without external expertise.
I’d highly recommend that no matter what budget you set yourself for marketing, always stick to it. Marketing Is very easy to run away with, especially with the millions of opportunities there are out there. You can easily find yourself eating up your profits trying to find a new customer.
Have a strong sales process following the marketing, if you’re lucky, the phone will ring off the hook. If this is the case make sure you have the right people taking the calls and closing the deals, receiving the enquiries is amazing but if you don’t know what to do with them from there then the efforts won’t amount to much.
Always ensure that your adverts/posts are on point. They should be clear, concise and interactive where possible. The content must be of professional quality and enjoyable to read. Again, try to keep track of what has worked where and repeat the best examples with the following campaigns.
If you’re looking for a reactive marketing opportunity, we offer advertising to a readership of 190,000 with our magazine, Design and Build UK, a leading magazine in the construction sector, allowing you to be exposed to our clients in a professional manner and guaranteeing new clients looking your way.
Proactive marketing is a completely different ball game in comparison. It will take hard work. You’ll need good trustworthy staff on fair wages to help you achieve this. However, if successful, it has the potential to turn an entire business around.
Telesales, door to door sales, promotional events etc are all about meeting your customer physically and establishing quality communication. You will need a strong process/pitch and a clear understanding of how to find those customers.
One of my companies is a lead generation platform for the construction industry, www.weconnectconstruction.co.uk. We provide leads to the construction industry on tens of thousands of projects throughout the north west.
This type of data is invaluable to companies who push for proactive marketing, they will receive these leads then make a call or visit the site. They will then introduce their company and try to tender on a project. In order to win the contract, they will need to be the best price/company to win the job, this may need to go through a few departments within a company before finally securing the contract, but these contracts will be big.
As a company you need to work out how you will acquire those vital leads, the value of those leads, are they hot or cold? What cost can you put on these, how many people can you put on the contract for these leads? The logistics of working with the sub-contractors and the supply chain to produce the best work you can for your client. These steps are imperative to making sure you tender for a project successfully, ultimately turning over a healthy profit.
The construction industry is a highly competitive market and having the right contacts to communicate with on the shortest notice is incredibly helpful to scoring a contract. Marketing is the most important tool that a business can capitalise on if pitched to the correct people. Using both proactive and reactive marketing will allow you to have a maximum outreach to potential clients, opening the most opportunities possible for dealing in a profitable and overall beneficial contract for your business. This power is especially useful in construction as you may have to compete with more reputable contractors if you plan to do larger jobs, so making a name for yourself through contacts is vital. The aim of advertising is to get your name on people’s mind, so they reference you when they think of a possible contractor. By being able to contact as many people as possible you will be able to observe stable or even rapid growth a lot more efficiently than previously possible. Especially with huge cultural shifts to social media networking allowing for instantaneous communication with millions of clients. This would have been unimaginable even just a decade ago. So, if there was ever a time to start advertising your business, the time is now.
Thank you for reading my explanation of proactive and reactive marketing. It’s important to mix and match between the two but these are the main methods for getting your name out there. Make sure to be active with your marketing and that your name is circulating in the target sector all the time, that’s the best way to catch clients attention.