The pandemic has caused varying degrees of both short term and long term challenges for the construction industry. Direct impacts have ranged from a slowdown of available goods and labour, through to suspensions and, in some instances, terminations of parties or entire projects. For this reason, a strong marketing strategy for construction companies is more important than ever.
The construction industry is currently crowded with traditional marketing methods. Many companies are yet to fully leverage the prowess of social media platforms, and digital marketing as a whole. Those who innovate and think outside the box will leapfrog the competition, boost their bottom line, and expand their customer base to make 2022 their most successful year yet.
Digital marketing is targeted, cost-effective and measurable. You can reach an audience that’s both local and global, and can use different marketing techniques to showcase your brand in ways that create impact for different audience types. You can use blogs, podcasts, emails, eBooks, visual content, infographics, whitepapers, social media posts, webinars and more to increase engagement and drive consumer traffic to your website.
Knowing your audience and competitors
The first step to building a successful digital marketing strategy is to understand your target market. You already have knowledge of the construction industry and your product, so this should be a relatively easy process. You want to determine who they are, what they value and how they use each advertising channel at the various stages of their purchase journey.
From here, you can start to build content that speaks to your audience.
Analysing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses relative to that of your own business can also give you the tools to create strategic marketing strategies. By looking at products and services already being marketed in the marketplace and by keeping up with competitor news, you can better understand the popularity of a product or service and then use a different approach to provide content that’s new and innovative. You can also learn from your competition about what marketing strategies work well and then replicate successful strategies (with a twist) or identify unserved or underserved gaps.
Four marketing trends to get you started in 2022
1. Blogging
Blogs help businesses rank higher in search engines and they are great for maintaining customer relationships and building your brand’s reputation. Frequent blogging can garner you a loyal following and by sharing guest posts you can reach new, yet similar, audiences.
Blogging helps to humanise your company through relatable and down-to-earth content. It moves you away from being a faceless entity that’s only interested in taking people’s money, and it transforms you into a company who puts the customers’ needs first. Telling readers who you are and how your construction company got started makes you appear personable and trustworthy.
2. Referral Programs
Word of mouth advertising is some of the best advertising you can get and by launching a dynamic referral program you can encourage your existing customers to spread the word and advocate your brand on your behalf. Your referral program strategy may be as simple as encouraging clients to leave online reviews, but ideally you want to find ways to let customers share their brand experience with partners, colleagues and friends.
An effective referral program strategy requires you to actively ask your clients to think about people who would benefit from your product or service and to make referring to them as easy as possible. Timing is critical when it comes to asking for referrals, so choose the right moment in your customer’s journey when they are most likely to refer. Why not follow up with a client to see how they’ve been using their new composite deck? Do they love the extra space and the fuss-free maintenance? If so, ask them to pass on the details of someone else they know that’s looking to design their dream deck. Add a compelling reward and incentive into the mix for extra encouragement.
3. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate marketing is when you make an agreement with another business or influencer (the affiliate) that sees you give them a commission for sending traffic and/or sales your way. The affiliate typically gets a unique link where clicks and conversions can be tracked.
Affiliate marketing is a sales and performance-based advertising method that offers benefits to both parties. When a product or service is excellent, and the marketers’ online advertising skills are on point, both will achieve high engagement and brand awareness. Unlike a sales team, affiliate marketing works for you 24/7, making money for both parties at all times. The cost for upkeep can be lower than managing your sales team and the reach can be wider. Work with well-known construction influences on social media and you can quickly reach audiences of 500,000+.
4. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
PPC is a performance-based marketing method that allows you to show specific ads for services or products to a defined audience, the goal being that the viewer visits your website or landing page. These hyper-targeted ads connect you with potential clients who are searching for exactly what your business provides and can give you some of the best ROI when it comes to marketing.
Pay-per-click advertising is all in the name: a search engine displays the link to your website when a user searches a keyword term you’ve designated, and you pay for each click that ad generates. You get to choose how much you want to pay per click and what keywords you want to use for your campaign.
Refreshing your marketing strategies
Campaigns go stale fast and committing to one medium limits your exposure to new clients. Give a new medium a chance to work and determine how you are going to evaluate if it’s working or not before you get started. Poll your customers. Watch how many open your emails. Track comments on Facebook. If you start tracking, you can start to identify patterns. If you want to try something new, say a podcast, let your customers know.
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