As a construction business owner, operator, or manager, you understand better than anyone how hard your team works to complete projects and represent your company well. But without effective ways to market your business, you might not be maximizing the amount of exposure your business is getting and this could be blocking your growth.
In this article, we will discuss 4 ways to market your construction business effectively at little to no cost. With these methods, you will soon be reaching a larger audience of potential customers to improve your business outcomes and increase your brand awareness.
1. Create a Compelling Website
The very first thing you should do is create a modern website for your business. I emphasize the word modern here because, unfortunately, I've seen far too many construction businesses still maintaining terribly outdated websites.
Remember that your company website is your most important marketing asset because, without a well-designed website, your customers simply will not understand what sets you apart from the large (and growing) sea of competition. What better way to stand out than by wowing prospects with an impressive website design? First impressions are key!
While it's easy to create a free website nowadays, I would recommend setting aside a small budget towards producing a great, professional, and modern website experience. Ultimately, this will make a huge difference in your customer's experience and do a great job of representing your brand.
Whether you hire someone else to help create a new website or you do it yourself, you want to make sure you cover the basics of good website design.
What Your Construction Website Should Include
Photos and Videos
When working on any jobs, make sure your team takes photos and/or videos of the before and after. You want your website to showcase your absolute best work!
Customer Testimonials
Testimonials should also be an important part of your site. If you ask your past customers to sit down for a brief 30 minute interview to discuss the work you have done for them, you can add some powerful quotes to your site to provide positive social proof of your services. Testimonials add authenticity to your website and potential customers can feel confident in picking your company when they know you have done a great job for others.
Pro tip: Ensure that the website is mobile-friendly. Web traffic from phones makes up a large amount of all web traffic nowadays so it's important that you can provide a clean and easy-to-navigate mobile experience.
2. Run a Blog
One of the best ways to engage with your target customer base and attract new clients is by creating content. A blog is an example of an effective content marketing strategy as it is a way for your team to produce some great written content for your target market.
Your blog can include any content that is relevant to your customers or partners. You can write blogs that outline past projects and describe them in detail. You can also talk about construction news or provide insider knowledge that you may have. A blog does not have to be hard work either, you can spend an hour quickly outlining a project that you have first-hand knowledge in to further promote the great work your company has done.
Running a blog can be a really effective strategy as it creates a place for your customers to consume your brand's domain expertise. Once again, it can build trust in your customers if they see that your business is knowledgeable in your specific field or market segment and can get the job done properly.
But the most important thing to keep in mind when running your blog is that you must be consistent and frequent. I've come across way too many poorly-run construction blogs that think they can get away with posting just once every few months.
Content marketing requires constant content creation. If you're not willing to invest the time and/or money to maintain that consistency, there's almost no point in creating a blog in the first place. A low volume of posts will not create any meaningful traffic to your website and this will just end up being a pure waste of time and money. Based on my experience, you will need to produce at least one post every 1-2 weeks for 6 months before you start seeing any meaningful results. But once the wheel is turning after those first 6 months, boy does it work!
Pro tip: When posting blogs, be sure to add some nice visuals/images throughout each piece of content. Blog posts that are too text-heavy will appear dry to the audience and most readers won't stay tuned in until the end of the post.
3. Leverage Social Media
Being able to promote your brand through social media is something that takes time but with consistent posting and providing content that's relevant to your followers, you should see more customers reaching out. The best part about the social media channel is that it's completely free to create accounts and post, so it can be a very organic way to attract clients.
There are plenty of social media platforms out there and you need to find the ones that make the most sense for your demographic. For construction, the best platforms would be LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Having accounts on all of these platforms ensures that you will be targeting all potential audiences. Experiment with each of these and see which ones produce the best results for your company.
From a content perspective, you want to post about a variety of things. For example, you should be posting photos and/or videos of your successful projects. Social media is a great way to quickly catch the eye of a potential customer after a job well done!
Other pieces of content you could post are:
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Construction news
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Holiday posts
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Testimonial pieces
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Company culture & announcements
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Promotional posts
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Anything else you would consider relevant to your audience
Not only can you use social media to post about past projects and other content, you can use it to engage with customers as well.
Always respond or react to comments made on your posts as it shows that your company is active and willing to engage with your audience. Furthermore, you should comment on other posts or content that is targeted at your same customer base. By doing this, others can see your comments and check out your business.
If you don't have time to manage your social media accounts, consider hiring a student intern or designating someone on your team to do it. There are many students out there who are looking for opportunities to run social media pages to boost their resumes so you might be able to find someone willing to do it for a small fee or even for free.
Pro tip: DO NOT OVER-ADVERTISE! The point of your social media pages is not necessarily to advertise. Instead, you want to think of it as a way to build an online community around your company. Your audience won't continue to follow you if all they see from your company are ads and promotional posts. A good rule of thumb for a strong social media presence is to make sure promotional posts don't make up more than 10-20% of your posts. So be sure to mix in other helpful or interesting content to keep your audience engaged.
4. Advertise on Search Engines and Social Media
The last method to improve your marketing efforts is to try some online ads in the form of google and social media ads.
If you are willing to spend some money to create ads that can help build awareness for your brand and drive more customers to your website, online ads are the perfect place to start.
Google ads provide a variety of ad types including search ads. With search ads, you can target an audience that is within your region and looking for the services that you provide. For example, if someone searches "electrical company in Seattle," your search ad will pop up, giving them the option to check out your website and potentially contact you for assistance to get started.
Social ads are another avenue worth exploring.
Pro tip: If you have videos that you would like to showcase, add them into your social ads. The longer a person will view your video, the stronger the lead could be. Moreover, you can use the video on the landing page for your google search ad so that it can be the first thing a customer lead sees.
Final Thoughts
With so many people using google to search for companies that can fix or build things for them, it goes to show how important a presence on the internet and social media really is.
Not only will you be able to get a leg up on your competition if you can effectively showcase your company, but you will also be the first brand that comes to mind when someone needs a construction job done!
