Reaching Customers Through Value-added Marketing
Effectiveness of your marketing effort can be significantly improved by offering your potential clients information other than qualifications of your firm to do their specific projects. This value-added information can be conveyed in the form of research results, magazine articles, or lectures/presentations by members of your firm. For this value-added approach to be productive in promoting your firm, the firm must have its goals and objectives clearly established.
Growing a Strategy
The strategy that James Hornik, president/owner of Integrated Planning Services, implemented in the early 1990s while he was senior vice president of marketing and development at Flad & Associates in Madison, Wisconsin, was to refrain from jumping into opportunistic projects that fade as quickly as they spring up, such as speculative core-and-shell office buildings.
“Instead, at Flad we focused for more than a decade on a very methodical, multi-specialty approach that yielded stable, steady growth over the long term," Hornik says. With clearly established objectives, value-added marketing played a significant role in the firm's promotional efforts.
Researching the Industry
Hornik offers the following example to illustrate the value-added process used at Flad based on their goals. In the early 1980s, Flad's experience designing research laboratories for hospitals, medical schools, universities, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture led them to wonder what might be the future markets for laboratory design. After several months of research, including talks with governmental and industry associations and publishers of trade magazines, they uncovered some interesting information.
First, the market for research facilities seemed to be quite large. Second, more sources than not felt that this market was growing. Third, these sources indicated the industry needed a study and asked if Flad would consider doing it.
The National Science Foundation, the Industrial Research Institute, the University of Wisconsin, and Research & Development magazine, which served as survey advisors and interpreters of the results, helped Flad coordinate a national survey of 7,800 United States industrial laboratories. They surveyed capital spending patterns on plants and equipment for three years past and anticipated patterns for the next three years. The survey predicted a tremendous increase in capital spending.
Value-added Results
Flad paid for this study and published the results and received more than 300 requests for copies. The study results were also picked up by the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times, and industry publications.
“The more the results got published, the more the phone rang,” Hornik says. “Flad repeated the study three years later and has considered doing it again.”
This study also led to the creation of a week-long seminar by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Engineering Professional Development, for industries planning to expand their research and development facilities.
Flad & Associates had done a study to show prospective clients, Hornik points out. Potential customers recognize the survey as a valuable resource. "Sharing information is a primary method that businesses can use to reach their customers,” says Hornik.
Besides promoting your business to owners and operators of companies, this value-added marketing research, writing, and lecturing can be a valuable tool for connecting with other design firms. This can result in collaborative projects, often in new areas of the industry.
As for the prospective clients who respond to the outreach information, some have immediate needs and some don't, so this approach gives businesses a marketing mix of short and long-term projects.
Hornik advises that if you stay abreast of trends and ideas in the marketplace and use that information in a value-added marketing approach, you create a synergy before you actually talk with a customer.
Edited by Lisa Schuetz
This article is based upon work supported by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Engineering Professional Development. It is for general information and distribution. It is not intended to provide specific solutions or advice for specific circumstances, which should be sought from appropriate professionals.