The Future of Marketing

As you may already know, I’ll be speaking at the National Convention on The Future of Marketing – expanded from a presentation at the AEC meeting in Carmel. I mention this because I think it is so important for all of you to get on board with the changes taking place in marketing technology

With internet penetration at 70% of the entire population, on-line advertising reaching $20 billion, mobile marketing positioned to become the number one form of permission advertising within the next three years, and 58.7 million Americans blogging, it may take some catching up to maintain an image that adequately represents the best contractors in the industry. Many of their customers are engineers, architects, developers, and facility managers – people who depend on technology for their existence. They need to know that your contractor members are as technologically advanced as they are. The association that represents the contractors is a big part of each member’s image.

Take a very critical look at your Web site. Is it clean, easy to navigate and informative? Have you thought carefully about your industry and geographical key words to optimize your site for search purposes so you are easy to find on the Internet? Have you shared links with industry suppliers, your contractors and industry news sources? Have you considered offering education or news feeds to attract new visitors to your site?

We recently completed and posted a Webinar on Psychrometrics for MCA of Chicago. Not only will it be useful for member contractors, but will attract engineers to the valuable seminar. What better way to position our contractors as knowledgeable about topics of crucial importance. If you haven’t seen the Webinar, visit either mca.org or mcaproof.com for a viewing. Other additions to the site include humorous flash animation and RSS news feeds from several industry publications. Web stats have doubled in the last year – a sign that the new additions are definitely attracting new visitors.

MCA of New Jersey had similarly great results from their direct mail/Web site campaign and continues to see new visitors to their site daily. Realizing that not everyone has the resources to upgrade their sites to the same degree, there are very inexpensive ways to spruce up the content of your site and optimize it for maximum exposure.

Every market has Web designers in every price range. Just be careful to see their work and talk to previous clients. We do hear lots of horror stories about sites that were never completed, don’t work right, etc.

The future is here and the Internet is a huge part of it.
See you at the National Convention!.

Watch for emails with more steps for
successful marketing.


© Nehlsen Communications 2006-2008