As the construction industry undergoes continuous evolution and experiences the rise of new competitors, mastering marketing for construction firms has become increasingly challenging. Standing out from the competition now requires a complete marketing strategy from businesses.
Learning about marketing for construction businesses will help you understand how to attract new clients and foster company growth within the construction industry. In this blog, we’ll explore the role of marketing in construction and teach you the steps you can take to market your construction firm. By the end of this blog, you will have the necessary knowledge to build a marketing strategy for your construction firm.
What Is the Role of Marketing in a Construction Firm?
In today’s digitally connected world, where information is readily available at our fingertips, it’s essential to cut through the noise. You can do this by effectively communicating your firm’s expertise, vision, and capabilities to potential clients. A well-crafted marketing strategy for your construction firm not only helps you expand your reach but also enables you to showcase your portfolio, build trust, and establish lasting relationships with clients who value your construction projects.
In every industry, marketing plays a vital role. While delivering exceptional customer service is undeniably crucial for building a successful business, it is through effective marketing that you convince customers to explore what your company has to offer. Without the appropriate marketing strategy, your business could suffer from a loss of revenue and missed opportunities.
In the construction industry, actively seeking new clients, competing for projects against other firms, and striving to expand market share within a specific region are common challenges. Effective marketing plays a pivotal role in enabling construction companies to build connections with potential customers, stand out from competitors, and foster business growth.
What Are the 4 P’s of Marketing for Construction?
Marketing is a mix of different factors working together to bring a product from its initial idea to the customer. It is defined by the 4 P’s. The traditional 4 P’s of marketing, also known as the marketing mix, can be applied to the construction industry in the following ways:
Product: The services offered by the construction company to its target market. This includes the specific type of construction work, such as residential or commercial projects, renovations, or specialized construction services.
Price: The cost structure and pricing strategy of the construction services. Factors to consider include project estimation, competitive pricing, value for money, and the overall pricing strategy employed by the construction firm.
Place: The distribution channels used to get your services to the ideal buyer. This includes the location of your business, shop front, distributors, logistics, and the potential use of online platforms to directly sell products to consumers.
Promotion: The methods used for promoting the construction firm’s services and creating awareness among potential clients. This includes advertising, public relations, digital marketing, content creation, and other promotional strategies to reach and engage the target audience.
For successful marketing of your construction or design-build services, builders need to approach their products from the consumer’s perspective. Unlike sales, which focuses solely on persuading clients to purchase your product, marketing is about creating a genuine desire for the homes you construct.
How Do You Market a Construction Firm?
Whether you’re a small business or a major corporation, it is crucial to develop the appropriate marketing strategy for your construction firm. This will ensure your message is seen by your target audience. By having a compelling marketing strategy, you can establish yourself as trustworthy.
By following marketing best practices, you can reach potential clients who build an interest in your company based on the information you provide. Marketing, which is less direct than sales, provides a way to establish your brand identity and educate potential clients about what you offer.
Many construction marketing ideas exist, but the secret is to combine your best ideas to form an elaborate marketing strategy. Startup firms need a robust marketing strategy to gain a competitive market share while big companies must consistently market themselves to keep their ongoing success.
But, where do you begin? To help you, here are ten effective marketing strategies for construction firms.
1. Website
Having an attractive and user-friendly website serves as an effective means to promote construction services and offer prospective clients the necessary information they’re looking for. Web optimization improves accessibility and engagement for visitors, helping potential customers discover more about your business.
The best construction company websites are always:
- Easy-to-navigate
- Transparent
- Simple
- Attractive
When your website has these four characteristics, potential clients can quickly access all the necessary information without feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by irrelevant details.
A construction firm can enhance engagement by showing different content such as photographs, videos (more on this later), and testimonials. You should structure the website into various sections, allowing visitors to easily locate the information they need. For example, you can include:
- About page: Provides an overview of a company’s existing practices, history, and relevant experience.
- Services page: Educates readers about the services provided by a company.
- Gallery page: Showcases the company’s best work through pictures and videos.
- Testimonials page: Incorporates positive customer reviews and serves as an effective method for establishing trust with a specific audience.
- Contact page: Mentions all contact information, enabling potential clients to reach out to the relevant department or individual within a company.
Moreover, having a well-designed website can help construction companies of any size establish credibility and promote brand awareness.
2. Content
Through high-quality content, you can enhance awareness of your services and attract home buyers as well as large remodeling projects. While adopting a content marketing strategy may appear daunting for construction companies, it is one of the most effective inbound marketing tools available.
Developing a compelling content marketing strategy is the key to gaining an edge over your competitors. By regularly producing engaging content across various platforms, such as landing pages and blogs, you not only excel in content marketing but also position yourself for success in other areas. For example, content marketing serves as an excellent method to enhance your SEO (more on this later).
Additionally, content marketing allows you to establish authority within the construction industry. By creating content on topics that resonate with your target audience, you will garner their interest and loyalty, as they will be interested in staying updated with your insights and opinions.
3. Video Content
Video drives organic SERP (Search Engine Results Page) traffic for businesses an impressive 157% higher. This holds particularly true in visually-oriented industries like construction. Construction projects often result in incredible outcomes, making it all the more essential to showcase them through captivating video content. Ignoring the impact of video as a marketing strategy would be a missed opportunity in leveraging the visual appeal of the construction industry.
Video content can:
- Help prospective clients to understand your construction business
- Help prospective clients gain insight into your approach to projects
- Make your construction firm appear more personable
- Help interested clients learn the details about your company
- Give your brand personality
- Help build your audience
- Establish trust with your target audience
When creating professional videos, some content ideas are:
- Introduce your company and/or its services
- A time-lapse video of the construction process
- A company culture video
- A portfolio of impressive work through image compilations
- Video tours of completed construction projects
- Informative videos that share tips on completing renovations
Your professional videos can be shared across a variety of channels, such as a website, social media, or email. Various social media platforms prioritize video content as a primary means of communication, facilitating effortless sharing of content with a broad audience.
4. Email
Email campaigns are an effective way for construction companies to regularly connect and maintain relationships with their target audience. Even with the rise of social media, email marketing remains a crucial component of a marketing strategy. To make email marketing effective, organizations need to send well-crafted emails to the right audience.
Construction companies often use email campaigns to send newsletters to their customers regularly. These newsletters may be sent when:
- Introducing new projects
- Communicating company updates and changes
- Highlighting sales and discounts
- Promoting community outreach initiatives
- Sharing company achievements and milestones
The secret to effective email marketing is to pay attention to how people interact with your website. While sending monthly emails regularly is better than nothing, you can see the difference when you send personalized emails to prospects based on their interests and actions on your website. By doing so, you can provide them with relevant information and make your emails more engaging, increasing the chances of turning them into customers.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Going back to the importance of great content, a robust educational blog holds countless benefits for construction firms. Including a construction-focused blog on your website can inspire potential clients to reach out to your construction business, as they find helpful information through your blog posts. In addition to enhancing the overall quality of your website, a construction blog plays a vital role in improving your business’s SEO.
Implementing SEO techniques can drive more website visits and enhance the visibility of your construction firm. This usually means optimizing a website with various elements to improve its ranking in the search engine results for significant keywords related to the construction industry.
Incorporating relevant external links, strategically placing keywords, and following other SEO best practices for construction companies will help your website appear for common internet searches. By leveraging SEO, websites can reach a broader audience of potential clients who actively search for construction-related terms.
6. Social Media
With social media, there are now more platforms and opportunities than ever to promote your construction business. However, in such a competitive landscape, standing out can be a challenge.
Social media platforms offer construction companies a valuable opportunity to establish trust with their target audience of followers. Additionally, social media can function as an effective referral tool, allowing followers to easily share your construction firm pages and posts within their digital networks.
Moreover, creating compelling and consistent social media content can effectively engage potential clients, enhance brand visibility, and generate leads.
To engage your audience, you should be posting content that is entertaining and relevant to your audience. Some ideas include:
- Creating short videos showcasing the work process
- Highlighting completed projects
- Engaging in industry-related posts
To expand your reach, you must be active on multiple social media platforms. For construction companies, popular platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For larger-scale construction companies, professional networking sites such as LinkedIn provide an excellent platform to connect with businesses in search of project proposals and engage with an online community of potential clients.
When your social media strategy is aligned with your goals, your construction firm is bound to achieve positive results.
7. Targeted Advertising
Targeted advertising focuses on displaying promotional content to specific customers based on their demographics and online search behavior. When someone searches for construction firms online, they may encounter targeted advertising tailored to their search. Using this advertising approach can help construction companies reach potential clients who are genuinely interested in their services.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer targeted advertising options, leveraging their knowledge of users’ interests and activity to display relevant marketing material. Investing in targeted advertisements can effectively help your construction firm reach specific clients and improve your likelihood of securing projects.
8. Co-Marketing
Co-marketing and cross-promotion present opportunities for construction firms to expand their reach and connect with new audiences. By collaborating with similar businesses and participating in community events, joint promotional campaigns, and shared advertising initiatives, construction companies can tap into a new market, reaching potential client bases that they may not have reached otherwise.
When forming a partnership with another construction company, there are three crucial aspects to focus on:
- Select a partner that can provide value and help to your business.
- Ensure that your partner has a big audience or customer base.
- Build relationships with companies that offer similar services, but are not direct competitors.
Collaboration between two companies operating in similar niches and with aligned objectives can result in highly productive outcomes.
9. Showcase Employees
The reality of construction marketing is that it presents significant challenges. This is not only due to intense competition but also because building trust with leads is crucial to successfully convert them into future customers. Because construction projects often involve a large investment of time and money, clients want to be certain they can trust your company to complete the project successfully.
To build trust, construction firms can showcase their staff in marketing initiatives. This will present a more personable image their audience can relate to. By featuring dedicated employees in marketing campaigns, clients may feel a stronger connection or relate better to the company. In turn, this increases the likelihood of trusting the company with large construction projects.
For example, you can include some of your employees on the homepage of your website. You can also regularly post photos of your employees on social media, celebrating achievements completed at work.
Incorporating a human element is essential as it fosters a sense of connection between your business and potential clients, ultimately building trust. By adding a human touch to every marketing strategy, even in small ways, you can significantly strengthen the trust between you and your target audience.
10. Follow Up
While attracting new customers is undoubtedly significant, it is equally important to prioritize the audience you already have.
Staying in touch with past clients can help your firm by:
- Demonstrating integrity
- Developing a positive reputation
- Helping you find more jobs
To maintain engagement with past clients, businesses can use newsletters, websites, or social media. This allows clients to seek assistance with construction issues, share feedback about the business, and request quotes for additional work. By staying in touch with past clients, businesses foster loyalty and increase the likelihood of clients recommending their services to others.
Nurturing these positive relationships is an excellent construction marketing strategy. Not only does it facilitate ongoing collaboration with satisfied customers, but it also has the potential to generate new business through referrals.
Implement a DAM for Construction Marketing
Need to manage your firm’s digital assets? To enable all teams to use digital assets such as images, videos, and graphics, you will need a seamless content creation and distribution process. Your digital assets will continue to grow as your firm and team expand. It’s essential to manage and organize your digital assets as a marketing team to help you find them easily and ensure the correct and updated digital assets are being used.
Designed for firms in the built world, OpenAsset works as a “single source of truth,” where marketers can find every relevant version of media assets created for a brand. OpenAsset is an industry-leading and project-based DAM solution designed specifically for AEC marketers. Contact us to schedule a demo to experience for yourself how a DAM tool can elevate your creative workflow and unlock new possibilities.
