9 Marketing Ideas for Your Land Surveying Company

For years I never worried about marketing my land surveying company. We just made sure we paid for the Yellow Pages ad and that was that. Well, maybe it wasn’t that simple, but that was about all we budgeted money for.

Now, successfully marketing your land surveying business requires you to focus on your firm’s professional expertise. Then, you find the best way to get exposure for those particular services. As you know, land surveyors offer a very diverse list of services. This includes land surveying (boundary and lot surveys), topographic surveys, construction surveying, subdivisions, elevation surveys, ALTA surveys, and several other new ones like scanning and drone surveying.

Prospective clients also want you to provide great customer service during all phases of the transaction. Your customer service will determine if you’re in business for the long haul or if you have a short-term business.

Consistently emphasizing these two goals (expertise and customer service) through varied marketing activities gives your land surveying firm a good platform for market growth. Now here are 9 marketing ideas for your land surveying company.

1. Market Emphasis

Increase your company's emphasis on the market segment in which your firm has the most expertise. For example, if you have expertise on ALTA surveys and topographic surveys, you may want to focus your marketing efforts on those services. If your organization has a hard time making any money doing lot surveys or boundary surveying, cut the marketing effort on those services.

By focusing on your company's excellence in its top-performing segment, and by showing how your firm provides better service than its competitors, your company will find itself well positioned to increase this segment's revenue.

2. Real Estate Partnerships

Create a mutually beneficial partnership with your area’s largest real estate agencies. Work with a graphic designer to create a professional-looking brochure showcasing your land surveying company's services and expertise. Get matching business cards featuring similar colors and graphic elements. Ask real estate agency owners for permission to present a short land surveying program during the agency's next sales meeting. Keep the presentation short and concise, and ensure the content will help the real estate professionals better serve their clients. Reinforce your initial contact by regularly sending land surveying tips via email or through social media.

Early on I created a handy Public Land Survey System handout to pass out at these and other meetings and events. After 20 years this still hangs in some offices for reference.

3. Legal Partnerships

In the same way, seek out meetings with the leading real estate attorneys in the area. They frequently get asked for recommendations from clients for a surveyor. And, when that attorney calls with questions, drop what you’re doing and help them out. This includes their paralegals.

4. Home-builder Partnerships

If your expertise is lot surveying and small subdivisions, home-builders should be on your radar to connect with. Most areas have Home-builders Associations that are always looking for a speaker. Go and give a talk (remember the handouts) to this group on something beneficial to them. Home-builders are a great source of repeating business

5. Giving Expert Advice

Contact your city's most prominent newspaper, and volunteer to write a regular column on land surveying and related topics. You should also adapt these articles a little later to share on your website blog. Include information about the surveying process and the many applications of land surveys. Develop a short business profile, including contact information, to be published with the column. Although you’ll likely not receive any pay for this, this consistent print presence will help establish your firm's credibility, and will keep your company's name in front of the reading public and will hopefully result in future business.

6. Home Show Participation

Consider participation in a regional home and garden show. These are frequently held at a city's convention center or other exhibition hall. Contact the Chamber of Commerce or the newspaper's marketing department for show information. Request a booth space near real estate or land development exhibitors. Distribute your company's brochure to complementary businesses and to show attendees. Donate a service-focused door prize for the event, and create a prospect mailing list from the entries.

7. Presentations

Presentations include speaking at conferences, training seminars, small events, and company meetings (real estate, legal, home-builders) as mentioned above. If you’re not comfortable speaking in front of people, practice in smaller settings. If you develop just one presentation and present it 4 or 5 times it will become much easier next time. Then develop your next one.

I’ve given talks on elevation surveys, boundary surveys, writing legal descriptions, the different directions of north, stormwater inspections, construction surveying, ALTA surveys, and perc testing. All of them gave me opportunities to meet new people and most all produced new work for my firm. Some for many years.

8. Branding

This is all about being seen in your city. Start with signs for your vehicles. Having your business name and logo imprinted on everyone you can is what branding is all about. Hire a good graphic designer to create a memorable logo for your business. Choose the best colors. Then slap your ads on everything you can think of, including your vehicles, your people, the internet, your office building, and your jobsites. I even had t-shirts printed and supplied to local kids recreational programs. I would see them all over town on people I’d never met. Make sure all of your employees wear these as well.

Jobsite signs are a great opportunity for branding. If a project is on a busy street, put up as big a sign as you are allowed. If you get a good one it can be moved to the next project in a few months.

9. Permission-Based Marketing

So far, everything we’ve discussed has been Interruption-based marketing. Now you need to make sure you can be found when someone is needing your services. For most people this will involve searching for you on a Search Engine like Google. That’s when they give you permission to market to them. Being found in the Top 5 places on the front page of Google gives you over a 70% chance of getting a call, or at least a visit to your website.

Summary

You can’t sit in your office any more and wait for the phone to ring. You have to be seen in the community and be recognized for your expertise and experience. This means you have to meet people where they are. Figure out your preferred land survey type and prepare your marketing materials. Then, go for it…

J. Keith Maxwell is a land surveyor and civil engineer in Alabama. He loves thinking of ways to market land surveying businesses and then passing that along to others. He has created over 80 surveying related websites. He also helps engineers and other professionals.