perryn@aeccmos.comConstruction marketing is full of decisions. This book lets you make them.
Most business books tell you what the author thinks you should do. Choose Your Own Construction Marketing Journey takes a different approach.
You are placed inside realistic situations facing construction marketers and company leaders. Each scenario gives you three possible choices. You make the decision, follow the corresponding path, and discover the consequences.
Some choices work. Some create problems you did not anticipate. And some may feel uncomfortably familiar.
The goal is not to teach one supposedly perfect way to market a construction company. It is to improve the judgment behind the decisions.
Built around the realities of construction.
Generic marketing advice rarely survives contact with the construction industry.
Our sales cycles are long. Relationships matter. Proposals can consume enormous amounts of time. Competitors become joint-venture partners. Architects and other influencers can shape the shortlist long before a contractor sees an RFP. Backlog, capacity, safety, bonding, geography, recruiting, market sectors, subcontractor relationships, and operations all influence which opportunities a company should pursue.
Marketing decisions cannot be separated from those realities.
The scenarios in Choose Your Own Construction Marketing Journey were written specifically around the challenges construction marketers and leaders face rather than borrowing examples from consumer brands, ecommerce companies, or software startups.
There is rarely one right answer.
Should you pursue the project? Enter the new market? Rebrand? Invest in SEO? Hire another marketer? Spend another week on a proposal with questionable odds? Push back on the CEO?
The answer is usually not “always” or “never.”
It depends on the company’s strategy, capacity, positioning, relationships, economics, culture, and what leadership is trying to build. That is why the book asks you to choose instead of simply handing you another checklist.
Then it makes you live with the consequences.
More than a branching business book.
The choose-your-own-journey structure makes the book interactive, but the scenarios are only part of it.
Throughout the book, additional sections help readers understand what happened and apply the lesson to their own companies.
Executive Briefs
Concise strategic takeaways written for executives and senior leaders who want to understand the business implications behind the marketing decision.
Field Manuals
Practical guidance readers can use to evaluate opportunities, improve marketing decisions, and put the lessons into action.
The CMO’s Take
My perspective on the decision, including the experience and reasoning behind choices that may look very different from the marketing department than they do from the executive suite.
Plumb & True
Deeper observations about the underlying issue behind the scenario, because the obvious marketing problem is not always the real business problem.
Reframes
Prompts designed to challenge familiar assumptions and help readers reconsider how their companies approach marketing, growth, brand, and leadership.
Who is this book for?
The book was written for construction marketers and company leaders who want marketing to contribute more to the business.
That includes coordinators early in their careers, experienced marketing directors trying to move further upstream, business-development professionals, and executives who want stronger marketing decisions without needing to become marketers themselves.
You do not need a marketing degree.
You do need to be willing to make a decision.
Why I wrote it
I began working with construction companies in 2005, and I have watched the industry become considerably more sophisticated since then.
Marketing departments have grown. Digital channels have transformed how buyers research companies. Construction marketers have become more capable, more strategic, and more connected to the business.
Yet many companies still underuse them.
Marketing is still too often treated primarily as the department responsible for proposals, events, promotional items, social media, and whatever request happens to land in the inbox that morning.
Those things may need to get done.
They are not the highest use of marketing.
Strong marketing can help a construction company choose better markets, attract better-fit clients, increase perceived value, improve hit rates, strengthen client retention, recruit talent, launch new services, expand geographically, support business development, and create a more resilient growth strategy.
The book is designed to help marketers think more like business leaders—and help business leaders better understand what strategic marketing can contribute.
Read it alone. Then argue about it with your team.
The scenarios work as an individual reading experience, but they can become even more valuable when several people inside the same company make the decision independently.
Give a marketer, a business developer, an operations leader, and the CEO the same situation and ask each person what they would do.
The answers may reveal that they are solving four different problems. That conversation is part of the lesson.
The journey continues.
This book was designed as the beginning of a series rather than the end of one. Future volumes can explore new decisions, markets, technologies, leadership challenges, and changes in the way construction companies compete and grow.
The industry will keep changing. That means we will keep getting new choices.
Paperback · $24.99
ISBN 979-8-9972837-0-4
