Marketing is frequently used interchangeably with business development and sales in the architecture, engineering, and construction sectors. These three domains are very diverse departments inside a firm even though they are interconnected and require teamwork. Each calls for a particular personality, skill set, or employee.
Marketing
Marketing enables potential customers to become familiar with and attracted to your business. Branding, advertising, websites, social media, and sponsorships are all part of marketing. According to research, a prospect has to see your brand thirteen times before remembering it. Building your image and brand takes time.
Prior to the introduction of all digital marketing tools, it was challenging to quantify the performance of marketing campaigns. Marketers can view insights from social media platforms and Google Analytics (website traffic). Marketers may track email marketing results by looking at who opens emails and where they are clicked.
Business Development
Developing a relationship with customers and prospects is business development. Cold calling is one of the responsibilities of business developers, as is representing the organization at numerous community, customer, and prospect events. They are making it possible for the owners and project managers to complete the deal. Finding an architect, engineer, or construction expert with those skill sets is uncommon.
A detailed business development strategy gives the individual the direction and target audience. You must be patient because the results won’t show up right away. If you have given a detailed plan and set realistic expectations and still don’t see results in twelve months, then you probably don’t have the right person in charge.
Sales
Sales finalizes the transaction and executes the agreement. Many times, the owner, principal, or project manager closes the sale. Marketing and business development are accountable for shortening the sales cycle.
The sale usually happens during the presentation/interview for the project, in which the owner, principal, project manager, and/or superintendent are involved. The three departments of sales, business development, and marketing must work together.