January 10, 2019
29 Construction Marketing Ideas that Work!
Explore
Explore
Back to Blog
Construction Marketing Ideas—Strategy
Construction Marketing Ideas—Online
Involve the Local Community
Now, It’s Your Turn!
The construction industry consists of businesses that create all types of new buildings and engineered structures, or manage the maintenance and renovation of existing facilities.
Stiff competition, high customer involvement, poor industry image, rapidly changing technology, and scarcity of specialized construction marketing agencies are some of the challenges facing an average construction business today.
Here are 30 brilliant construction marketing ideas to fill the knowledge gap and get your marketing juices flowing.
Account-based marketing is a B2B marketing technique that targets a specific set of high-value customers with personalized selling strategies. It delivers significantly higher sales with less effort. If your construction company is into institutional sales or you want to pitch your project to investors, ABM is the strategy you must follow. Contact Josh Meah to learn more about account-based marketing.
As a small homebuilder, you probably can’t compete with the likes of larger construction companies like Toll Brothers or KB Home. Or can you? You can, if you follow a niche marketing strategy. You can’t be all things to all people, so focus on a micro market and be the best in what you do.
For example, Green Magic Homes creates prefabricated “Hobbit Homes” -- they’ve become the new sensation in eco-friendly living.
Join one or more construction associations to make your business look more credible. Association memberships enable you to tap into industry resources and provide valuable networking opportunities. Construction marketing is all about relationships, so you need to build relationships before you build projects.
Welch Team, a Florida-based construction company, features its association membership and awards on its homepage.
Acquiring a new customer is six to seven time more expensive than selling to an existing customer. Don’t forget your previous customers when marketing a new project. Take stock of the leads you lost during previous campaigns and let nothing slip through the cracks.
The typical construction business cycle includes periods of frantic activity interspersed with lull periods when the company has completed a project and is looking for work. Use these quiet periods to build and strengthen relationships. That’s the only way to build a robust brand. Make a schedule to meet investors, attend industry events, and bolster your presence on multiple marketing channels.
You need to be on the first page of Google search results before you can receive serious customer traffic and leads from organic searches. Getting up there can sometimes take months or even years of search engine optimization (SEO). If you don’t want to wait that long, or even if you’re already on page 1 for some of your keywords, you should not ignore pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Take a look at how many paid ads pop up when you search for “construction company” on Google. This is an incredibly valuable marketing channel you need to be a part of.
If a picture is worth 1000 words, imagine the power of a video! You can use this power by creating a video of your latest project. Create interesting videos by featuring your crews at work, or producing positive video testimonials from your clients. Don’t forget to upload these videos to YouTube and Facebook, the world’s biggest video viewing platforms, to generate business leads and to build your brand image.
Residents are the most likely buyers of your properties, so make sure they can find your business or project in local searches. Local marketing will keep the phone ringing and people visiting your project sites. List your business in online directories and claim your Google My Business account to get started with local SEO. Contact Josh Meah if you need assistance establishing your local online marketing presence.
Incoming links from quality domains are one of the most important factors for improving your search rankings. Contact building material companies you’ve worked with and request that they include your name in their list of clients. Many construction material suppliers have pages listing construction firms that use their building materials. This is helpful for increasing brand visibility and improving search results.
With its 1.5 billion active users, Facebook has pretty much become the place for all types of businesses, including construction. You just have to be on Facebook if you want your business to look like a credible brand.
Engage with prospective customers by posting updates about their favorite topics and your company’s activities. Publish photos and videos of your current and completed projects and other construction news or trends that might interest your clients.
Does your website look like it’s a blast from the past? Construction involves capital-heavy projects that require a high level of customer trust. An outdated, broken, or no website at all can quickly vent away that confidence.
Make sure your website looks professional, slick, and contemporary. Use interactive elements and educational content to inform the visitors about your company and projects and to answer the questions they might have.
Venture Construction displays its specialty upfront on its website.
Optimize your website for SEO and conversions, so it keeps sending you a healthy flow of business leads, even when your offices are closed. You’ll need to build a sales funnel and create landing pages to capture leads. Contact Josh Meah now if you need help creating or redesigning your company’s website.
Start a blog on your website and write about the hottest trends in architecture and construction. This will make you look smart and well-informed. Approach construction websites that accept guest posts and regularly publish articles with them to expand your reach and acquire valuable backlinks.
Become a thought leader in your specialty area by creating and publishing deep, authoritative content on key topics.
Green Building Solutions regularly publishes valuable content relevant to its niche.
Any medium you use for marketing your business or interacting with your clients is called a marketing channel. Customers can shift from one channel to another in a blink. They might see your post on Facebook, go to your website to learn more about you, read your reviews on another website, and call your office using their mobile phone. That’s why you need to be present on more than one channel.
If you’re like most construction companies, your existing and potential customers call your office to ask questions and get details about your building projects. These are your most qualified and interested prospects, and you must not lose track of them. Set up call tracking on Google Analytics and Google Ads to stay on top of your phone leads and establish a system for following up and nurturing those leads.
SMS or text messages boast an open rate of 98%, compared to 20% for email. It’s a cost-effective medium to pitch your construction projects to prospective buyers. Make sure you send messages only to the people who have subscribed to your messaging list. Otherwise, they might block or report you for spamming them.
According to different researchers, the construction industry has an image problem synonymous with high cost, low quality, chaotic working practices, poor health and safety record, tedious, dirty, nontechnical, nonprofessional, hazardous, cyclical, and associated with difficult working conditions.
Of course, it’s not your fault, but the negative image affects your business all the same. To counter this image problem, define your community goals, build strong bonds with charitable and community service organizations, and start giving back to society.
Don’t forget to promote the good you’re doing!
Gilbane Building Company promotes the company’s involvement with the community.
There must be sports clubs, event organizers, and local school teams looking for sponsors in your area. Support a local team and print your company logo prominently on their shirts and caps. Sponsor an event and display your brand at the venue through billboards, posters, video projection, or another innovative branding technique.
Nonprofits like Sports Marketing Network and World Team Sports can help you find events and teams to sponsor.
Donate leftover building materials to a nonprofit like Habitat for Humanity or Second Chance. Ask them for backlinks to your website and try to gain some PR mileage from it.
Events and exhibitions provide an opportunity to come face to face with prospective buyers. You can learn about their tastes and preferences, as well as the latest market trends in materials and architecture. Distribute brochures, play project videos, use interactive digital technology, and try to capture as many business leads as possible.
Click here to see a list of construction-related trade shows and exhibitions in the USA.
Good ole snail mail is alive and kicking despite the current obsession with digital marketing. Direct mail still works because as humans we are hardwired to interact with objects we can touch and hold. It breaks the clutter of digital media, gets your brand noticed, and is the perfect match for something as tangible as construction and architecture.
Get creative with your direct mailer design to generate even more brand awareness, recall, and leads. Consider aligning your approach with your professional construction business card design as well.
An innovative direct mail from CAT.
Construction and outdoor signage go hand in hand. If you can’t afford expensive roadside billboards, erect some display signs at your construction site. It won’t cost a fortune but will expose your brand to visitors and passersby. You can display safety or marketing messages and promote your project and brand without going overboard with the budget.
Reverse graffiti is a cheap but wonderful way to make your construction site more engaging.
Nothing quite compares to the traditional tangibility of brochures and flyers. Create an impressive visual design that includes strong branding, great copywriting, and quality photography. Print and distribute them at your marketing office, stall, trade show, or construction site. Either that or engage a flyer distribution service, but make sure they have good customer reviews.
Immersive and interactive experiences are fast replacing the conventional site visits and sales pitches. With hosted solutions like Amazon Sumerian, you can create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise.
View a scene created using Amazon Sumerian.
Companies like GestureFX or TouchMagix provide plug-n-play solutions to create interactive walls, floors, screens, and more at your booking office, new building, or construction site. You can even rent these solutions to engage your clients and kick-start bookings.
Lead nurturing can be tedious if you do everything manually. Use automation to reduce your workload and streamline messaging. Write an email sequence, schedule social media updates, integrate SMS with your website, and synchronize messaging with the stages in your buyer’s journey.
You can automate marketing using the CRM software mentioned in the next paragraph.
Leads are the lifeblood of a construction business. You need to generate as many qualified leads as possible and nurture them throughout months and years before closing the sale on a project costing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. Using a CRM will ensure that you track all leads and let nothing slip through the cracks.
There are numerous specialized construction CRM software applications available in the market. Evaluate them and select the best one for your needs.
Most Americans use a mobile device to access the internet. That’s why Google has made its mobile algorithm the primary algorithm for ranking websites. A mobile-first marketing strategy doesn’t only mean you have a mobile-friendly website, it also means you use mobile effectively for lead generation, lead nurturing, SMS marketing, app marketing, and more. And, that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
Mobile apps are revolutionizing the construction industry right now. Integrated mobile solutions are available to manage all types of construction activities including design and drawing, material calculation, cost estimation, site management, project management, project coordination, quality assurance, and much more.
Trends such as e-tendering are making it mandatory to embrace new technology. Companies that evolve with technology will survive. Companies that don’t will not. It’s that simple!
Can you help expand our knowledge base? Have you tried any construction marketing ideas that are (or aren’t) on this list? Let us know in your comment and we’ll publish your ideas in the next update!
Happy building!
The art is building the right growth campaign. The science is in the results.
.svg){kind=small}
©2022 joshmeah.com // All Rights Reserved.