Construction Marketing Ideas that Guarantee Results
Digital marketing increases profits, sales, and client satisfaction, as well as develops brand identity, and improves customer loyalty. To rake in higher revenue, construction marketing efforts must address two key issues: targeting customers and creating value.
In this blog, we offer a variety of construction marketing ideas that deliver results and profitability.
Challenges Construction Companies Face
Despite the hunger for digital transformation, the construction industry still lags behind others when it comes to digital transformation. According to a Dodge Construction Network survey, only 15% of respondents have implemented a digital transformation strategy, and 38% said they hadn’t developed a strategy, or it’s not a priority.
While this refers to digital transformation as a whole, the knock-on effects permeate construction marketing. Construction firms are among the few ventures that engage in B2B and B2C on equal footing. Yet, many have not capitalized on the potential of digital construction marketing to maximize revenue in these markets.
Studies suggest there are many deeply held misconceptions about the appropriateness and general value of digital marketing campaigns. Because firm owners are unaware of the economic payoffs, they are often unwilling to incur the cost of a great construction marketing strategy.
Human factor-related marketing challenges construction companies commonly face are mainly due to:
- A lack of in-house marketing expertise.
- The engineer’s paradigm, whereby management practices are dominated by the belief that production is the most important aspect of the business.
- Inadequate resource allocation for digital marketing campaigns.
- Falsely equating marketing to selling.
While there are gaps in marketing differentiation and the application of information technology, these can be solved by hiring in-house marketing specialists or outsourcing your construction industry marketing to a digital marketing company like Comrade Digital Marketing Agency.
The Best Construction Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Construction Business
1. Create a Coherent Marketing Plan
Investopedia defines a marketing plan as “an operational document that demonstrates how an organization is planning to use advertising and outreach to target a specific market.”
A coherent marketing plan outlines your construction firm’s position, how its offering is segmented, and who its targets are. It defines what its route to market is, as well as its core mission, vision, and values. Lastly, it reveals how all the above informs your marketing messaging.
An effective marketing plan glues the strategic direction of a construction business and the delivery of results, ensuring the right activity takes place, at the right time, to the right audience through the right channels.
While the majority of marketing for construction should focus on customer satisfaction and maximizing profits, other marketing goals that fall underneath these objectives are worth considering too, such as:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating high-quality leads
- Acquiring new customers
- Establishing industry authority
- Boosting brand engagement
Creating a coherent marketing plan may also necessitate brand refinement. If branding is something you haven’t given much thought to, or your company needs to refresh its branding, now would be the ideal time.
1.1 Create a Customer Profile
Customer profiles, or buyer persons as we refer to them in marketing, are designed to help you understand who your ideal customers are. By doing so, you’re able to craft digital marketing campaigns that address their pain points and attract them to your construction firm.
Buyer personas are generalized, fictional characters that represent specific segments of your ideal customer base. Unlike generic demographics or market segmentation, differences in geography or socioeconomic status don’t always factor into a customer profile.
Construction firms may have multiple customer profiles, so they can tailor their offerings to match their customers’ needs—for instance, architects, designers, contractors, etc.
It’s important to note a customer profile for a B2C company is different from a B2B firm. The latter defines the ideal customer using firmographics like:
- Company size
- Revenue
- Industry
- Location
B2C customer profiles tend to look at specific consumer habits and preferences like interests, current lifestyle, and aspirations. Overall, customer profile data is a goldmine for sales teams because it actively helps generate new leads that fit the same criteria.
1.2 Set Your budget
New companies less than five years old should spend 12 to 20% of their gross revenue on marketing, whereas established ones with some brand equity should allocate between six to 12% of their gross of their projected revenue for construction services marketing.
Marketing is an investment, not an expense. An email marketing campaign, for example, can generate $36 for every $1 spent. If you’re bleeding money on marketing your construction business and aren’t seeing results, then there’s likely a disconnect between your marketing plan and its execution.
It seems like a lot of money, but if you’re a new and emerging brand or don’t have a digital presence, you need upfront investment to capture the market, especially if customers don’t know who you are.
Once your construction business has a robust digital presence, you can scale back on marketing spending. It’s helpful to build your marketing budget by identifying your goals, understanding your target audience, and selecting the best marketing channels to reach your audience.
Suppose you’re a small firm with a limited budget. In that case, we’d recommend first developing a mobile-friendly website that forms the foundation of a strong online presence and informs subsequent construction advertising ideas.
2. Create a Website
81% of consumers go online to research local companies. A website is a company’s online identity and is vital to its success. Chances are, potential clients have searched online for “contractors near me” or a variation thereof. Therefore, if you don’t have a website, you won’t feature on any search engine listings.
Websites act as a business card, sales pitch, and portfolio all in one. For small contractors, a website may seem like an unnecessary expense, but the consumer landscape is changing as more and more people search online to solve their construction-related issues.
In fact, 56% of consumers don’t trust businesses without a website. An effective website goes beyond look and appearance; it motivates visitors to do business with you. If impressive enough, it can level the playing field between small and large competitors. Look at good website examples to get inspiration.
3. Optimize Your Online Presence with Construction SEO
3.1 Search Engine Optimization
Construction marketing SEO* is crucial because it increases visibility and drives traffic, offering greater opportunities to convert contractor websites visitors into customers. It is the most viable and cost-effective long-term strategy for digital marketing in construction industry.
SEO for contractors has two main goals. The first is to help businesses understand what potential leads are searching for online, and the second is to help create a website and relevant content that search engines can find, index, and rank.
The better the score of your construction SEO marketing campaign, the higher your website will appear on search engines like Bing and Google. Users tend to defer to recommendations generated by search engines, so having a higher ranking for keywords users search for will solidify your business as trustworthy in users’ minds.
*SEO: By optimizing a website or webpage with keywords, you increase the quantity and quality of traffic from a search engine’s organic results. A keyword is a word or phrase on your website or web pages that match the words and phrases people are entering into search engines.
3.2 Technical Optimization
Technical SEO for contractors refers to improving the technical aspects of a website to increase the ranking of pages in search engines. It achieves the same goals as on-page SEO, like using keywords, except it has to do with making a website faster and easier to crawl. This means your website must run smoothly on desktop and mobile.
There are many aspects to technical SEO. For expediency, let’s discuss site speed. Google recommends a website takes no longer than two seconds to load. With each additional second of load time, its conversion rate will drop by 4.42%.
So, having a decent loading time is necessary to keep customers and search engines happy, as Google does consider site speed a significant ranking factor. Additionally, your website must also work efficiently across all devices, so users can interact without inconvenience.
Today, significantly more searches are carried out on mobile (64%) than on desktop (35%). Desktop users navigate websites with mouse clicks, whereas mobile users swipe, tap, and touch their screens. Your website design has to accommodate these differences in consumer behavior to remain relevant.
4. Boost Your Local SEO
Local SEO for contractors is the process of improving search engine visibility for local businesses. Any construction business that serves a specific geographic area can benefit from signing up for a Google My Business account to connect with potential customers across Google Maps and search.
Why? Well, if a potential client searches “building contractor near me,” then your business will pop up with a Google Maps listing, including a link to your website, reviews, and a call button, giving potential customers multiple ways to contact you.
Approximately 46% of all online searches include location. Since local SEO for contractors leads are from people who are specifically searching for products or services that your business offers, it is likely to provide a high conversion rate.
5. Engage in Social Media Marketing
Social media for contractors is a powerful way for construction businesses to reach prospects. Customers learn, follow and interact with businesses on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Construction businesses can use social media to achieve several aims, even though boosting brand awareness remains a key aim.
For example, if you want to reach a specific audience at scale, you can run a highly targeted social media ads campaign. However, if you intend to improve visibility, you might publish a series of curated blogs or video content on different social media platforms.
Before posting ad-hoc, you’ll want to determine your social media strategy. You don’t have to post on every platform to be successful, just the ones where your audience is.
In general, LinkedIn tends to work well for B2B communication, whereas Twitter and Facebook work well for Millennials and Gen X consumers who have the earning power to hire your services.
6. Start a Google Ads Campaign
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way to buy visitors to your website, instead of earning them organically.
Paid advertising in the form of PPC allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches for a keyword related to their business offering. For example, if you bid on “commercial construction,” your ad might appear at the top spot on Google’s results page.
Following these helpful tips and construction advertising ideas to get the most from your PPC marketing efforts:
- Focus on your and your competitor’s long-tail keywords
- Monitor results regularly and tweak where necessary
- Align your landing page with your advertising message
- Stick to a budget
7. Cultivate Your Construction Company Brand
7.1 Be More Personal
Personal branding tells a story, humanizing your construction company, so it’s relatable to consumers. Your construction company’s brand reflects its goals and values and is present in the way you communicate with your customers through your marketing campaigns and materials.
A brand encapsulates a company’s competitive edge, as well as what it does and stands for. Think of iconic brands like Adidas or McDonald’s. They sell products, but they also represent certain values and emotions.
The best brands are authentic and trustworthy. They have a strong reputation because consumers rely on their consistency. Besides delivering excellent service and products, good brands are also relatable, which has to do with being personal.
Don’t be afraid to share who your team is and their or your company’s accomplishments on your website. Potential and existing customers respond well to companies that have a human presence as opposed to being a faceless entity.
8. Create a Blog
Content marketing for contractors is a gateway for people to get to know your company. Blogging is particularly powerful as 77% of people regularly read them online. When your target audience encounters a problem, it will turn to search engines to find information that helps them solve the issue. In this context, you want your company’s blog to turn up in their search results, which is achievable through construction marketing SEO.
For example, let’s say you are a residential construction company. Now, you might blog about “10 Things to Know Before Renovating Your Home in Chicago.” When a potential customer searches for “renovating your home in Chicago,” your blog page will rank in search engine results pages.
When you become an expert whom customers can always turn to when they need help, then you’re more likely to receive their business. SEO-friendly blogs also drive more leads to your website and improve its rankings.
9. Use Other Media
Content marketing for contractors isn’t limited to blogging alone. Have you recently completed building a skyscraper or residential development? Why not create a video with drone footage to showcase it as part of your portfolio? Take a look at the Construction. Co’s header video on its website. A picture, or in this case, a video, is really worth a thousand words. It communicates strength, ambition, and scale far more effectively than words.
Or take The Construction Brothers podcast, produced by 6th generation builders who own a virtual building and construction company. As you can see, large and small businesses benefit from using all possible mediums to attract their target audience.
White papers, infographics, Instagram stories, videos, and blog posts can be used at any stage of the buyers’ journey. As of this year, online videos have made up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. The type of media you decide on depends on the goals of your digital marketing campaigns, resources, and audience.
10. Follow Up on Past Customers
When you follow up with customers, you improve their experience and show you care. Not only is customer retention cheaper than acquisition, but it is also extremely valuable to increase profitability. Keeping in touch is a great way to upsell, make a new sale, and nurture old leads.
Additionally, email marketing delivers 122% ROI! The purpose of a follow-up email is to reinvigorate conversation and generate a response. Effective follow-up emails are short, professional, to the point, and end with a clear call to action.
Email marketing with engaging content around topics based on Google Analytics intel and other statistics drive leads further down the marketing funnel. With today’s marketing technology, it only requires a small investment of time and resources to develop personalized email marketing campaigns based on a customer’s previous interactions.
11. Build Your Online Reputation
Social proof drives purchases. An online reputation can make or break your construction company. Approximately 90% of consumers read online reviews before engaging with a business.
Naturally, positive reviews make them trust a business more.
More than that, search engines like Google use reviews to gauge website ranking. According to the Google My Business support page, “high-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.”
Search engines want to recommend the most credible businesses to customers. Positive reviews signal business credibility, as does your response to negative ones. Most consumers expect a brand to respond to a review within 24 hours. To accomplish this, you will need to have a review response strategy.
Conclusion
There are loads of construction marketing ideas that provide opportunities to connect to your audience and convert leads into customers. Leveraging digital channels like search engines, social media, email, and your website to connect with qualified leads is a sizeable undertaking. That’s why most construction firms outsource this work to a professional marketing team.
Because construction marketing presents so many options and strategies, it can be challenging to discern which marketing ideas for construction businesses work best. That’s where Comrade Digital Marketing Agency can help. We’re a full-service agency offering web development and comprehensive digital marketing strategy development services for construction businesses.
Contact us today to develop a great website and marketing strategy that generates more qualified leads.
Where do you operate?
Comrade originates in Chicago, but we worked all around the United States. We can help your business grow and increase revenue whenever you are. We have offices across most major cities in the US. For example, we can offer digital marketing services in Seattle or Houston. You can even find our internet marketing experts in Dallas! If you want to know more about our Miami digital marketing agency or find out how exactly we can help you, contact us via the phone or email.
- Website UI/UX, content and conversion review
- SEO: 20-point performance check
- Digital marketing strategy
