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Increase Your Land Surveying Business With Improved Marketing and Customer Communication Strategies

Members OnlyMarketing your land surveying business and services is not something you can ignore, anymore. Talk to most land surveying business owners at the height of the real estate bubble and you’d likely discover very little, if any, marketing and customer outreach on their part. Jump ahead a year or two into the height of the Great Recession, and you’d often hear those same land surveyors complain about dwindling business and the lack of new clients or new projects. Then, almost as an afterthought, these business owners “discovered” marketing and hoped that it would be the great white hope to save their businesses. What they discovered, however, is that they waited too long and did too little, too late.

This is not an indictment against marketing – not at all – nor is it saying that if you’re late to the game to start effectively marketing your business that you should not begin, and give up all hope. NO, just recognize that marketing is important, and if you’re just starting now, then your journey to success will just take a little longer – but you’ll get there!

The typical land surveying business model for customer contact goes something like this, doesn’t it?

  • Customer contact when client calls for new survey.
  • Customer contact when client calls to find out why you haven’t completed their survey.
  • Customer contact – sometimes unsuccessfully so – to get paid
  • Customer contact ….. Oh, wait, there is no other customer contact!

If you look at the above three customer “touch-points”, at least two of the three are loaded with negative customer feelings and the last one is non-existing. The first one, when the client contacts you for a survey, also may fester negative customer sentiment if the client is being “forced” to get a survey or is not expecting the survey cost altogether.

What’s a more effective marketing strategy with robust customer contact and “touch-points”?

A much more effective marketing strategy is to include full-circle customer contact from the beginning of the sales lead generation cycle, through the actual sale, and after the survey is delivered. Remember, the cost of generating a sale from an existing customer is far less expensive than what it cost to find and make the sale for a totally new client.

This is a simplified web-based example of a more robust customer contact marketing solution:

  •  Inbound content marketing to draw potential customers to your website, build trust, initiate contact and get contact information, including email.
  • Sales lead converted to a paying customer.
  • Regular (weekly) client project updates.
  • Project closeout client contact – get paid..
  • Post-project client contact to get service feedback and offer more services.

With this strategy, you are developing and benefiting from many more positive touch-points with your clients. Each of the above steps, when done right and when delivering good service, creates a first-class user experience that distinguishes your company from your competitors. Even if your new client is  not happy paying for a survey, knowing they hired a trustworthy and capable land surveying company.

A real-world example

Here’s a recent real-world example from my land surveying business. First, I created relevant inbound marketing content that my client found via online search. She read that article and related information on my company website. This built trust which was increased when she contacted me via email and I responded (email and phone) in a very timely manner.

She then purchased my services for an Elevation Certificate and I contacted her via email thanking her and scheduling with her when I would be on site. Again, more trust because it removed any doubt about her hiring me. I then provided the service within a week, as promised, and delivered the final report via email. Because there was an issue, I also spoke with her on the phone to make sure that she understood the problems and how to resolve them.

About a week later, I emailed her asking if our service – from first website visit, service purchase, actual service and communication – was everything that she’d expected. I also included information about other services we offer. Her reply was extremely positive, saying that she was extraordinarily satisfied with our service. She went on to say how impressed she was with how we communicated throughout the process and she would highly recommend us to her friends and family!

End of story? NO!

Last week, I was beginning a new survey in the same town as this other client. Knowing that I have a pre-qualified and highly satisfied customer who might also need and want her property surveyed, too, I sent her an email telling her that I was doing this other survey in her town and I could also survey her property.

Fifteen minutes after hitting send she replied to my email saying that she was very glad that I had contacted her because she had thought about getting her property surveyed. She then said to go-ahead and she’d drop a check in the mail that day!

The first learning point is that the cost of this new sale was negligible. The second learning point is that getting another survey in the same time and at the same time as the first survey, I can cut my business cost by combining effort: reduced driving, research at the same time, etc.

Are you ready to improve your land surveying business with improved marketing and customer communication strategies?

Please contact me so that I can help you to improve and increase your land surveying business with improved marketing and customer communication strategies.