Having the right marketing plan can make all the difference when it comes to getting new customers and new jobs.
If you have not put a lot of effort into your company’s digital marketing plan, you are missing out on valuable leads for your business. You cannot expect your business to grow based on handing out a few business cards at meetings, either.
In today’s reality, you need to have an excellent marketing plan that utilizes various kinds of marketing tools to keep your business relevant and visible.
Marketing Tips to Grow Your Construction Business
1. Make Your Phone Number Visible
The construction industry still relies on phone calls for many functions and processes. Do not miss out on chances to engage new customers by forgetting to have your phone number in easy-to-locate places on your website and marketing materials. If customers have to hunt for your phone number, they will probably just move on to work with another business.
Having your contact information front and center is really easy when it comes to web design these days. You can even make the contact information for your company a floating widget that layers on top of the things that people are checking out on each page of your site.
You won’t want to depend too much upon other forms of communication since most people want to call and get some real conversation in with you about what you can do for them and their project.
You will also need to make sure that your phone number is correctly listed for local search results. It can be easy to miss the boat on this part of your web design and advertising process. Make sure that you don’t neglect your local listing information and give up sales and other forms of connection-making with customers that you want to attract to work with you.
No matter where your business information is displayed, be sure that your phone number is visible. That means that Facebook and online ads, as well as online listings for construction companies in your area, all need to display your contact information clearly and visibly. You never know where people will find out about you these days, and you cannot afford to miss out on making contact with customers due to a lack of accessible contact information.
2. Use Social Media
While many people really don’t enjoy engaging with social media, even construction businesses cannot afford to be without a presence on these sites. You might lose a lot of business by being absent from a site like Facebook. Plus, a lot of these sites offer really good and cheap advertising that you can leverage to promote your business.
If you hate to manage a social media account or are too busy to do so, make sure that you hire a marketing company to take care of this task for you. Building a quality social media profile on each relevant site can take some time, and you will need to keep up with messages and other forms of outreach that are directed at your company on a daily basis.
Having a marketing team handle this work for your company is easy, and it can be a great way to ensure that this essential part of your marketing plan is taken care of while you are working on other tasks related to your business.
As mentioned before, social media ads are very easy to place and very cost-effective. You can get a lot for a small amount of ad spend from these sites. They offer you access to a wide array of ad types as well, which can make it very simple to find customers for your company.
Targeting is really easy on social media because everyone’s profile says so much about them. This means that the ads that are run on these platforms are highly effective due to their thorough targeting.
Not using the benefit of social media to promote your company is just silly these days. Remember that you yourself do not have to undertake this work and that you can hire someone to handle these accounts for you if you find social media to be a pain. Missing out on this important advertising niche doesn’t make sense, and you need to commit to this part of your marketing plan each month for the best results.
3. Use Google Local Service Ads
Google offers lots of advertising tools. Not all of them will be relevant to the construction industry, but there are some Google ad products that will be key for your industry. You will need to make the most of the Google local service ads that are offered through the platform to make sure that your ads are seen by the right people in your area.
These are the kind of ads that are shown to people searching for things like, “construction company near me”. This also helps your site to show up at the top of searches by those who are in your local area. Google can also place a Google Guaranteed Badge alongside your phone number and business information to help attest to your business’ compatibility with these searches.
These ads are not pay-per-click, either, which means that they will save you a lot of money and time. You will not have to optimize these ads nearly as much since Google will automatically show them to the right customers based solely on location. You will also get a lot of bang for your buck due to the way that these ads are used within Google’s ad platform.
The more local ads that you run and the more local optimization that you offer, the more effective your overall marketing strategy will be. Marketing just to a national audience is not enough, especially in the construction industry. Most of your clients will necessarily be in your local area, which is why this part of your ad plan is so key.
4. Make a Really Effective Website
No business can get by without a really nice website these days. People always search for information about a business online today, no matter what industry the business is in. Being without a website can actually make people mistrust your company and opt to work with another business that does have an online presence.
Think about your website as a great way to create a really positive first meet-up with a client. You don’t even have to be there for the meet-up, either. Your website will do so much of the heavy lifting for that first impression that needs to be made to secure new clients.
When you take the time to craft a really nicely-made and responsive website, you will be showing that you care about your customers and that you want them to be able to tell what you are all about. The more clarity that you can provide on your site about your business and the work that you do, the better. You want to seem like you are transparent and upfront, just as you would be if you were talking to someone in person.
Also, be sure that you are not using stock images or low-quality photos of your prior work. You need to be able to prove that you can do what someone is looking for and that you create really nice results with your work.
You should also take the time to be sure that the site is really responsive and that all of the buttons and functions work as they should. Nothing scares off future customers more than a laggy site that has broken links on it or sloppy and poorly-crafted pages.
This is another place where outsourcing to an expert is key. You might not have any prior experience with building websites, and that’s ok! You can have a marketing team or a website design entity take care of creating your website and keeping it up to date.
This is the best way to be sure that your site will continue to look fresh and operate smoothly while it does its job of bringing in new business.
5. Use Multiple Streams of Advertising
As mentioned earlier, social media offers you the chance to make a really personal connection with potential customers. These platforms also allow you to run some really affordable ads.
However, this is not enough all by itself. Since the construction industry needs to target a wide array of age groups and different customer types, you will need to utilize advertising across a variety of platforms.
You should be sure that you are using Google ads correctly, and you will also need to make sure that you are not giving up on print ads. If you sponsor any kind of local event or charity, you can use your print ads to make sure that people have something to take home and put on the fridge or in a drawer with your contact information on it.
This can be the business card or ad that they pull out when they need to have a remodel taken care of, or their home needs a major repair.
Due to the nature of the construction industry, you need to have print ads, digital ads, and social media ads all working hard on your side to create the maximum visibility for your business. If you find that one type of ad is not working at all for your business, you can drop it.
However, do not assume that this is the case and hold back on trying some kinds of ads just because you think they might not be a hit. You never know until you try, and it's worth it if the ad type that you did not expect to work out turns out to be your best form of outreach.
6. Make Informative Video Content
The construction industry is one of those business types that requires a fair amount of trust from consumers. After all, construction companies build people’s homes, business structures, and things like patios or decks.
The things that you create will be permanent and have a lasting impact on people’s lives. This is why trust is so crucial and so hard to achieve.
Using video content to make memorable and informative forms of outreach is really critical for the construction industry. From short how-to videos that show people how to take care of simple fixes at home to tutorial videos that show what your company can create and build, you will make a big impression on people’s trust in your business with this kind of marketing.
Videos are very easy to share as well, which means that you can maintain a YouTube channel and share your videos in ads and across social media. People will share your videos with their friends and family, who might be interested in what you can do or show them. You can even use these videos to help sell your services when people have questions online about your work.
Building trust with potential new clients can be a snap if you have the right video-making marketing plan in place for your company. It can be time-consuming to make videos, and you might not be able to afford to make lots of them right away, but it is well worth the trouble to make some informative videos to use to market your company.
7. Work on Your Brand
Your business brand has to include more information than just how you build things. Companies without a strong branding message fall behind when it comes to marketing and visibility online.
Whatever you want people to walk away with after they see your ads is a big part of your branding message. Maybe you want to communicate that you care about your customers like they are family. Maybe you want to make it clear that you can do exciting and unique custom building for your clients.
Whatever your main branding theme is, you need to generate ads and marketing content that makes it clear that this is what your company stands for. People identify with companies much more strongly when they have a branding message that is clear and well-stated.
They also want to work with companies that stand for something that they believe in. Working out a branding message that really carries some weight and means something that consumers can understand right away will help form bonds that last with your customers.
Branding can be a complex part of a business’ marketing identity. You might need to work with a marketing team to help you to build a new or improved marketing plan that includes a strong branding message. Many companies miss the mark on this part of their marketing strategy, but with some guidance, they can create a branding message that says it all and creates interest in the company.
8. Feature Your Employees
As part of the process of building trust with your consumers, you need to be sure that you make it clear that real people work on the jobs that clients pay for. Make it easy for clients or people seeking more information on your site to see who works for you and what they do.
Make sure that you use quality pictures of your team members and offer up some information about them that is personal and helps them to seem like real, flesh-and-blood people.
When you offer up real information about who you and your staff are as people, you can market your company much more effectively overall. This is one of the places where many practical industries, like the construction industry, miss the boat.
They are so busy showing what their company can do for clients that they forget that people have not met them before and might have found out about them solely from a blog post or an ad on social media.
Being just transparent enough to make it clear that you are a company that is great to work with and that hires real and caring people can make you stand out from the crowd. This is one of the areas where it is so simple to make a good impression. You should not neglect this aspect of your marketing plan just because it feels like it won’t matter that much.
9. Seek Customer Testimonials
While it might seem like you are fishing for compliments, seeking out customer testimonials is really key for the construction industry. This used to be a business that was marketed almost solely on word of mouth.
This means that the favorable reviews of people who have loved the work that you did for them are key to making a good impression on potential new clients.
Customer tutorials are a great way to ensure that your business is visible on Google as well. Many of the testimonials that you will use on your site can be shared as reviews of your business as well. This can help people to know more about you and what you can do for them just by reading the online reviews and the testimonial section of your site.
You do not have to be pushy about getting this information. Most people are more than happy to offer up some comments about the kind of service that they experienced when they worked with your company.
This is also a great way to let customers have their say about what they loved and what they didn’t love as much about working with your business. When you allow customers to feel heard, they are much more likely to come back, again and again, to work with you.
10. Follow Up With Prior Clients
While it might seem pushy, it is actually really easy to reach out to customers that you have worked with in the past. You can collect their email information and send them emails about specials that you are offering, or you can use this contact information to just reach out and see how the job that you did for them is holding up.
When you handle this kind of outreach properly, you can create the chance for people to remember that they need that fence job done or they want to build a new deck.
Working to connect with previous clients can be really easy, and you can make the most of these connections to ensure that you get repeat customers or word-of-mouth referrals.
Plus, it gives you a really good chance to reach out in a personalized and pleasant way to talk to people that you have worked with before. People like to work with someone that they trust, but they might not be prepared to pull the trigger on new jobs unless you remind them that you can help them out.
Creating a Marketing Plan for a Construction Business is Essential
When you operate a construction business, you need to make sure that you have a marketing plan that will make your business stand out from the crowd.
The more thorough and meticulous you are about your marketing place, the more likely it will be that your business will thrive. This is one of the key elements to any successful business, even construction companies.
Taking the time to build a cohesive and really effective marketing plan can take some time and effort. If you are feeling out of your depth, always be sure that you reach out to a marketing company to help guide your process.
You can choose to do as much or as little of the work on your marketing plan as you wish when you use this kind of teamwork model. Marketing a construction business doesn’t have to be a struggle, and using the right tools, and ad types can make a world of difference for your business over the long run.