To control risk on a construction project, there are a few factors that need to be analyzed before the job starts. The project team needs to understand the scope of work as established in the contract. Remember, that no matter how well a contract is written, it is only as good as the person or entity that backs it up. Sometimes a contract is worthless when you are dealing with a less than honest person. Probably the most important step in the process is establishing a documentation system early in the project designed to manage the potential risk. As contractors, we know it is a matter of time before something goes wrong. With that being said, you have to maintain current documentation of project activities.

For example, just yesterday I had to send a ?Notice of Delay? in written formal form to a big entity in my city. I was met with a return phone call asking me to get prepared to speak with an attorney. That was fine, because I knew I had all of the RFI?s and Proposals tied into my Critical Path Method schedule that all parties agreed to. Once my method of communication for delay was established, the entity kindly responded to me with all of the information I needed to get the project back to working status. If I had not done the previous legwork in the document control, I might be preparing for a court case!

Another key aspect is that the project team must remain aware of job progress, production, quality and scope of work. Once you have this in your daily activities, you can pick up when the construction scope actually has to deviate from what is represented in the plans and specifications.

The last item you'll want to pay attention to is the safety risk factor. Keep your staff drug free, train them constantly in safety and give them an incentive for being safe. This will help you minimize loss time on the job due to accidents. In return, your insurance modifier will be lower saving your company some money each quarter. In the next blog we will talk about minimizing risk through insurance, sureties and bonding.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available. Like search engine optimization (SEO), it places your company's message directly in front of prospects at the perfect moment - when they've demonstrated interest and intent.

Think about this for a moment.

I know several window replacement companies that send post cards to neighborhoods where they are currently doing a job. While targeted direct mail can produce a positive return on investment, what percentage of the people you send cards to:

A) Read or even glance at your postcard before they toss it out with the rest of their junk mail?

B) Are in the market for new windows?

C) Are in the market for the type of windows you want to sell?

Thinking through this example, you can quickly see why many direct mail marketers are happy if they get even a 1% response rate! These days, the odds of reaching a truly targeted prospect using direct mail are somewhere between slim and none (note: even with the slim odds, you can generate sales cost-effectively with direct mail).

PPC advertising is great in that it eliminates some of the marketing waste by allowing you to ONLY place your ads in front of people actually in the market for what you sell. For example, if your focus is historic wood windows, you can adjust the settings in your PPC campaign to make sure that your ads do NOT show up when people search things like, "vinyl windows", "best price on fiberglass windows", etc.

While this all might sound great, there is a catch - several of them actually.

Here are 3 secrets to running a successful PPC campaign:

1. Know your numbers (BEFORE you launch your campaign).

To run a successful PPC campaign, you have to know your numbers. At a minimum, you have to know:

• The average revenue per job by line of business
• Your gross margin by line of business
• Your sales reps' close rate (the percentage of leads they turn into sales)
• Your website's conversion rate

You should also have a very good handle on your company's profitability and cashflow. Ultimately, to manage an effective PPC campaign, you have to understand the maximum you can afford to pay per click. it's impossible to know this without the information above (and then some). I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing your numbers BEFORE you launch a PPC campaign.

If you Don't know the percentage of your website visitors that convert into leads, you CANNOT run an effective PPC campaign. Similarly, you cannot run an effective PPC campaign if you Don't know what percentage of leads your sales guys turn into appointments and sales. Marketing today, without exception, is a numbers game. Know your numbers are be prepared to FEEL what it's like to waste money.

Now, it's worth noting that you may have to spend a bit of money on marketing just to learn your numbers. A lot of business owners see this as a waste. it's not. When you spend money to generate enough activity to learn your numbers, you're investing in intelligence. you're spending money to generate the activity required to get some key metrics that you'll use in the future to generate some serious profit.

When you track things the right way, no marketing investment is really a waste. You either get results or you get data, and contrary to What'some of your contracting buddies might tell you, data is incredibly valuable. Some of the most successful and profitable companies in the world win ONLY because they have data and information no one else has.

Most business owners that test pay per click advertising select their keyword bids based on ego. Don't DO THIS. What you bid for each keyword you target must be based on the economics of your business. Don't assume a competitor paying for the top spot on Google (at an insanely high cost per click) knows what he is doing. At this point, most of them Don't. Select bids based on your ego and you'll end up as just another contractor on an industry forum whining about how terrible PPC advertising is. In nearly every case, if you tried PPC and it went terrible, you either failed to execute correctly or you're not tracking things the right way - you might have stopped 10 yards from the goal line and you didn't even know it!

you're probably shaking your head in disbelief but it happens all the time.

Track everything. If you think numbers are boring, go watch the movie Moneyball and hire an accountant (or an online marketing expert that thinks like one).

2. Analyze your competition.

If you have a competitor investing in PPC, with a little bit of research, I can tell you EXACTLY what they are spending each day, which keywords they are fighting for, the techniques they are using to convert clicks into leads, etc. You can find almost the exact same information. All it takes is a little bit of money (well worth it) and an time (more for you than for me because I know where to look).

Go to Google and search for keywords related to your business. Do you see your competitors in the PPC section of the page (typically the top and the right side of the search results page)? What do their ads say? Go to their websit's. What are the calls-to-action? Look at the source code of their site - are they tracking things the right way (and what actions are they tracking)? How does what they are offering compare to what you're willing to do? How can you differentiate your business?

3. Learn everything there is to know about the PPC platform you are using.

Like everything in life, the devil is in the details. If you're going to have any hope at running an effective PPC campaign, you need to learn everything there is to know about the platform you're using. For most of you, that means learning everything you can about Google AdWords. Seemingly little things can make a HUGE difference in terms of your return on investment.

For example, failing to bid on the keyword 'custom bottled water' using the exact match keyword option cost one local custom labeled water company $36,000 in lost profit (over the course of the year). Amazingly, he this same business owners till profited from the endeavor - just not as much as he could have (or should have). If you're going to generate a positive return from your PPC campaigns, you have to know and understand things like:

• When to use geo-targeted campaigns vs. geo-qualified keywords
• Whether to bid on your brands names or not
• Keyword match type options and situational bidding
• How call tracking and keyword-level call tracking works
• Why day-parting is important
• A/B testing and how to determine whether a test was statistically significant
• How to create (and test) effective landing pages
• How to use dynamic keyword insertion in your ads

If you're a small contractor, you might have more time available than money. Invest in learning this stuff. If you're a bit larger, you've got to ask yourself, "is this the best use of my time." To grow a business, you should only do what only you can do.

Conclusion

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can be a highly-effective way for contractors to generate profitable leads and sales, but it's whether it's a homerun or a strikeout depends on the how you play the game.

"I need more leads and sales." For most small businesses, this is the number one problem. Virtually any contractor can benefit from getting more leads and sales. When leads outstrip your capacity, you can raise prices, pick and choose your customers/projects, confidently hire more people, the list goes on and on.

Here are 3 reasons you're losing sales to the competition:

1. You Don't have the right data.

Marketing is a numbers game. Accurate measurement and tracking is the foundation of EVERY high performing marketing organization. you've heard all the famous quotes, "what gets measured, gets managed", "failing to track is tracking to fail", "you cannot maximize what you do not measure", etc.? Well, They are all true.

You can't win the game if you Don't know the score.

Would you ever hire a sales rep without giving him or her a quota, specific goals, and requiring him/her to be accountable for certain levels of daily activity? Of course not! So then why do you allow your website to play by a different set of rules? Did you know that most people that answer a phone for a living stink at handling new business inquiries (read: sales)? If you know this, why aren't you tracking, recording, and listening to samples of your phone calls and training those in need? Too busy, right?

If you're not accurately tracking and monitoring your key marketing metrics, you're losing sales to your competition. What is considered a "key marketing metric" depends on the type of business you have, but at an absolute minimum, you should be tracking:

• Return on Investment
• Sales and Cost Per Sale
• Sales by Marketing Source and Cost Per Sale by Marketing Source
• Leads Per Month and Cost Per Lead
• Leads by Marketing Source and Cost Per Lead by Marketing Source
• Website Visit-to-Lead Conversion Rate
• Web Visits Per Month and Web Visits Per Month by Source
• Non-Branded Organic Visits Per Month
• Cost Per Visit and Cost Per Visit by Marketing Source

The single thing that stops most people from accurately tracking their advertising and marketing happens to be the same thing that stops them from fixing the other two issues listed below. You know what it is? The statement, "I'm too busy." If you're a small business owner, you need to eliminate this phrase from your vocabulary. If you say it, all your people probably say it too. Being too busy is a function of not setting priorities. You can rationalize things until you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, you know it's true.

Accurately track your advertising and marketing.Collect your key marketing metrics, monitor them, and analyze them. If your time is better spent in other places within the business, hire someone to help you with this task.

2. You Don't have a marketing strategy.

What's your marketing strategy? A written marketing strategy provides order and direction in an area that can be pretty chaotic for most small businesses. Prioritization is easy(ier) when you have a strategy in place.

What are you'really trying to accomplish with your website? Should you invest your (limited) time and money on redesigning the aesthetic of your website or launching a blog? Should you be testing Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or social media marketing (or both!)? Who is driving the ship?

Businesses today are more resource starved than ever. Your success comes down to focus and prioritization - saying "no" to most things so that you can stay focused on the (few) things that really matter. A written marketing strategy helps you do this. Your strategy doesn't have to be long or overly complex.

The companies killing it on the web today - in terms of traffic and lead generation - tend to have a very specific idea of what they want to accomplish. They know where they are going to focus their time, attention, and budget as well as the key metrics that will determine whether they have succeeded or failed.

If you Don't have a written marketing strategy, you're losing business to more sophisticated competitors.

3. you're not working the leverage points.

Should you spend your (limited) money and time trying to acquire more website traffic or trying to convert more visitors into leads? Most companies can't afford to do both (well). Which marketing sources deliver the best traffic at the lowest price? Is your staff doing the best job they can converting calls into booked appointments (forget "best"... are they even doing a reasonable job??).

Because your time IS limited and valuable, it's important that you invest a little bit of time trying to determine the leverage points within your marketing process. For example, spending money on SEO when your plumbing website only converts 5 percent of visitors into leads is complete insane. Of course, if you're not accurately tracking your site, you probably have no idea what your TRUE visit-to-lead conversion rate is!

Failure to identify and work the leverage points of your marketing process is a surefire way to send sales to your competitors.

Takeaways

You can learn a lot from publically available information about your competitors. In a very short period of time, I can tell whether a company is accurately tracking their website; what website actions are important to them (and if they've associated a dollar value with the action); how much they are spending on pay per click advertising and an estimate of what they are spending on SEO; which keywords they are targeting and some idea of their overall online marketing strategy.

I've reviewed contracting companies from most major markets around the US, so I know that the savviest folks ARE accurately tracking their websit's, have a marketing strategy in place, and do a pretty darn good job of focusing their (limited) time on the leverage points. Do likewise gentleman and 2012 will be your best year yet.

You probably spend more time this year trimming your Christmas tree (or toenails) than you have researching marketing trends, so let me offer a candid tip: The future of advertising and marketing is online. Over the past five years, every marketing research house has been saying the same thing - advertising and marketing dollars are moving from "traditional" channels to the web.

So, how does your website and overall online presence measure up?

Are you playing to win or doing the minimum necessary not to lose? As I cruise surf the web, I see an awful lot of contractors that appear to be doing the latter. The number of outdated, untracked, poorly optimized websit's that are practically invisible to prospective buyers, continues to be mind-boggling.

It appears that many contractors are employing a "bunker mentality." Given the current economic downturn, They are trying to play it'safe by either staying put and making no changes (gotta conserve my cash) or doing the bare minimum in order to say, "yeah, I tried XYZ marketing strategy." Trouble is, this "staying put" mentality - or tip toe testing mentality is almost always a bad idea. This is playing to not lose. Of course, the ironic thing is that when you play to not lose, you almost always lose.

I used to be a semi-professional cyclist and a cycling coach. Whether it's mountain biking or road biking, one of the hardest things to teach new bike racers is that speed is their friend. The faster you go, the more stable the bike is. If you're mountain biking and you come to a "rock garden", the natural tendency is to grab the brakes and slow down. Do this, and you're asking for serious trouble.

Counter intuitively, the right way to get through the rock garden unscathed is to let go of the brakes and accelerate.

In some ways, the same is true in business and marketing.

Forward motion is your friend. it's more dangerous to tip-toe along (playing not to lose) than it is to accelerate your level of advertising and marketing activity (play to win). Besides, it's not like going "all-in" with online marketing is taking a big risk. Five years ago, online marketing is "the new way." Today, it's just the way.

Take a look at this chart put together from a study by MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in what works in all aspects of marketing, recently released the following data:

The chart above compares the responses for the questions:

• "Which of the following sources generates the greatest volume of traffic coming to your website?" and
• "Which of the following sources generated traffic with the greatest conversion rates on your site?"

Three standout sources really stand out: Organic search (aka. SEO), Paid search (aka. PPC), and Email marketing campaigns. These are the online marketing sources responsible for the greatest volume of traffic and the most web conversions (typically leads). Now, think about your online marketing strategy (you do have an online marketing strategy, right?). What percentage of your 2012 marketing budget went into testing these three? How will your strategy and your budget change in 2013?

Of the contractors I know (that are not clients of mine), I'd say about 40% invested a couple thousand dollars (total, not per month) in an attempt to optimize their, often woefully outdated, website. Another 20%, also took the $100 AdWords credit Google sent them at some point during the year, and used it to test Pay Per Click advertising (most mistakenly concluded that PPC is a waste of money). Another ~10% tried a self-created, monthly email newsletter using Constant Contact, MailChimp or some other provider.

These guys are the epitome of playing not to lose.

If you're still reading, you're probably at the point where you're asking, "Okay, okay, I get it, but what does 'playing to win' even look like? I Don't have time for all this crap." Here are some web marketing tips to help you make the shift from playing not to lose to playing to win in 2013.

1. Get an online marketing audit and have a written online marketing strategy.

it's virtually impossible to create a plan to get to your goal/destination if you have no idea from where you're starting. An online marketing audit will show you exactly where you are today'so that you can create an intelligent plan based on your goals.

A typical online marketing audit will include the following:

• Implementation of the analytics tools required to get an accurate baseline of where you are today
• Review of your website - the code/structure, content, and linkscape
• An analysis of your 3-10 top competitors (how their websit's measure up, their online marketing strategy, etc.)
• Review and assessment of your overall online presence
• Creation of an online marketing strategy and implementation plan (your blueprint / plan of attack for 2013)

Don't fool yourself into thinking that the "free analysis" offered by virtually every online marketing company is sufficient. An effective online marketing audit takes 50-100 hours to create. The best online marketing companies in every niche are in very high demand. No decent web marketing firm is going to do this for free. Your website is your single most important and valuable marketing asset. Playing to win means making the investment of time and money to understand how your site performs today, how it compares to competitors, and working with a professional to create a plan to achieve your business goals.

2. Make data-driven decisions.

You can't win the game if you Don't know the score. Imagine building a house without measuring anything - just eyeball it. You wouldn't do that in a million years, so why do you operate that way with your website and your online marketing? When it comes to making advertising and marketing decisions, your gut intuition stinks. All of the plumbers using this website probably think that print yellow page ads are worthless. Smart plumbers - the ones actually accurately tracking their ads - know that print yellow page ads are not worthless (far from it).

Your website is like a virtual sales rep for your business. At a minimum, you must know metrics like:

• Visits per month
• Non-branded organic visits per month
• Visit-to-lead conversion rate (web forms/emails AND phone leads)
• Cost per lead by traffic source
• Lead-to-sale conversion rate
• ROAS

If you Don't know these numbers, you are getting crushed (or going to get crushed) by all the contractors that do (and more contractors invest in marketing and web analytics with every passing day). When you know these numbers, you can continually optimize your visit-to-sale conversion rate. Contractors that track and methodically work to improve this metric dominate their market. Most contractors have no idea what this number is, let alone how to improve it.

3. Invest in the big three - SEO, PPC, and Email Marketing.

The web is a real estate game. Your primary website is your main sales funnel. Each micro-site, social media profile, etc. is like another funnel leading prospective customers to your main sales funnel or to the front door of your business. If time and money were no object, you'd put your business everywhere online. Since no contractor has an unlimited amount of time or money (far from it), you should start maximizing your real estate on the search engine results pages.

Why? Let's say you own a roofing company. While there are a lot of people on Facebook, not all of them own a house or need a new roof. Contrast this with people living in your service area Googling, "roofing contractor city, state." Search engines offer the potential to put your business in front of people that have INTEREST and INTENT. This is where you want to invest your marketing dollars first.

The way to maximize your search engine real estate is to invest in SEO and PPC. On the SEO side of things, you need to understand that Google doesn't rank websit's. Google ranks web pages. The easiest way to increase your organic visibility, traffic, leads, and sales is to create more web pages (this assumes your site has been coded in a way that makes it easy for search engines to find, crawl, and understand). But Don't create content just for the sake of creating content. You want to create content that answers your prospects' implied questions. You want to create content that establishes your company as THE authority for what you do in the markets you do it.

If you're a computer savvy contractor, you might be able to get away with managing your own SEO and PPC. Based on my experience, I'd estimate that less than 2% of contractors fall into this category. The rest of you will end up wasting a lot more money than you make. Think about the average homeowner you serve. What do their DIY projects look like vs. the work you do? Marketing your business online isn't much different. Hire a pro.

The goal with SEO and PPC is to bring qualified visitors to your website for targeted non-branded keywords. Non-branded keywords are keywords related to the products/services you offer that do NOT include your company name. Every time you a new visitor reaches your website using a targeted non-branded keyword, you're building your brand and your business. Some percentage of these visitors will inquire immediately. These leads are like diamonds.

However, some visitors will not contact you during their first visit - either because of the timing, where they are in the buying cycle, etc. If you do nothing, some percentage of these visitors will return and eventually become a lead/sale. However, many will never return. You can increase the number that do by investing in opt-in email marketing. If SEO and PPC bring new visitors into the top of your sales funnel, opt-in email market helps nurture them through to the bottom of the funnel.

Conclusion

2013 is almost here. Are you going to stay in your bunker and take a "wait and see" approach or step up and decide to start playing to win? Five years ago, it was a big risk to go "all in" with online marketing. Today, the big risk is NOT going all in.

In 1879 a 16-year-old Henry Ford walked 10 miles to Detroit to take an apprentice position at the Michigan Car Company, a railroad car manufacturer. He was fired after six days because?

A. He kept flirting with the boss? daughter who worked in accounting.
B. He was too brash and brazen.
C. He was a slacker.
D. He didn?t have the first idea about anything mechanical.
E. He couldn?t afford to buy his lunch and so was looked on as an untrustworthy moocher.

(From the book THE FORD CENTURY by Russ Banham, Artisan, 2002.)

Last week's question and answer:

Which of the following is untrue of Zappos.com?

A. The number one priority at Zappos is their company culture.
B. Zappos embraces and encourages change.
C. Everyone that is hired into Zappos headquarters, regardless of department or title, goes through the same training that their call center reps go through.
D. At the end of their 1st week of training Zappos offers everyone in the class $4,000 to quit.
E. The Zappos mantra is: ?Meet customers expectations every time.?

(From the book, DELIVERING HAPPINESS ? A PATH TO PROFITS, PASSION, AND PURPOSE, Tony Hsieh, Round Table Companies, 2012.)

The most correct answer is E. The Zappos mantra: ?Meet customers expectations every time.? is inaccurate.

It is Zappos goal to ?Deliver WOW through service.? They strive to exceed customers? expectations and in fact meet unrecognized customer needs, such as overnight shipping.

Zappos feels that their very brand IS their culture, that their company can succeed only if their culture is right and properly nurtured.

Regarding Zappos $4,000 offer to quit after one week of training, less than 1% of trainees have taken them up on it.