If you’re looking for a calm, relaxed business to start with little competition, then starting a construction company is probably not for you.
But on the other hand, if you want to enter an extremely lucrative industry that’s starving for talent and maybe a little stressful, then you’re reading the right article.
In this piece we’re going to go over exactly how to create a marketing plan for your construction business, going step-by-step from how to develop your brand, all the way to introducing you to social media advertising, and more.
Let’s dive in.
Develop your Branding
First and foremost, you’re going to want to create a brand for your company.
A brand is simply your reputation. It’s who you are through the eyes of people hearing about your company, about your name. It’s the first thing that comes to their mind when they hear about you.
Everything in the marketing plan stems from this critical principle, the branding of your company is the root to your marketing because everything stems from it.
For example, let’s look at Apple, an extremely well-known company around the world. They decided their brand would be a clean, modern looking take on the future of technology, and because of this, all their commercials and content everywhere reflected that initial branding choice. Just look at any Apple commercial and you’ll be witness to the power of choosing a brand and promoting it.
Now let’s look at a smaller example; for us initially, we wanted to be the go-to for people interested in construction estimating consultants, so we created ads and content to target that specific audience.
So, this is the first step in deciding your marketing plan,
Who do you want to be?
What do you want people to think of when they hear the name of your construction company?
The answer to this question will be your brand, and from here on out every single thing relating to your marketing will reflect the brand that you want for your business.
Create a User-Friendly Website
This is 2020, every single business needs a website.
To make this happen, you may need some help.
Consider hiring designers and developers on freelance websites like Upwork, or Fiverr, and letting him take over to give you the best possible website to attract the most business. Or you can hire a website building agency to handle it as well, keep in mind they’re a little more expensive though.
Regardless of who you hire to build the site, it’s important to have your branding set up before building your website so that you understand more about what you want to convey with your site.
If you want your branding to reflect a modern, easy-going contractor to rely on, it’s only natural that you would design a website with only modernism and simplicity in mind.
Use Local SEO
Having an effective Local SEO strategy means being at the top of Google when people look things up in your area.
For example, if a General Contractor is researching drywall contractors to work with, one of the things he may do is open up Google and type up something like:
“Good drywall contractors near me”
Wouldn’t it be nice to be at the top of whatever list Google shows him? To be able to get your logo in front of people’s eyeballs…
For free?
That’s why Local SEO is so powerful, it allows you to get exposure to your construction company and dominate your area.
To work on this, there are tons of over-qualified Local SEO experts on many different freelance websites that can take the entire load of for you.
It can be costly to pursue having a powerful Local SEO strategy, but it is by far one of the best marketing investments you can make.
Google Ads can Attract the Right Clients
Contrary to local SEO, Google ads cause you to get in front of any potential client no matter where they are.
Google ads are extremely effective and can give you immediate exposure to tons of potential clients which could give you tons of potential business.
The power with Google ads is that people only see them when they’re looking for specific things, so you’re only getting qualified leads to your website. You’re not wasting any advertising dollars on people who have absolutely no interest in your services, but you’re investing advertising dollars only on people that you can be of service to.
We’ve witnessed some of the power to this through ourselves, as we’re one of the only estimating companies utilizing the power of Google advertising.
Similar to the Local SEO, this is a very technical marketing strategy that requires a lot of understanding of both advertising and modern computers, so if you feel that that’s not your strong area, I definitely urge you to consider outsourcing the management of this to qualified agencies.
Facebook Retargeting
Retargeting potential clients on Facebook could vastly improve your marketing capabilities.
Getting every single visitor to your website and sending advertisements straight to their phones on Facebook could elevate your brand to new heights.
You’re getting in front of people who showed interest in what you’re offering.
You’re showcasing your brand to display your reliability and how you can get any job done.
This is so powerful, and I don’t see many, if any, contractors taking this extra step to promote their construction business.
Use Geo-Location in your Marketing
This ties in along with the Facebook retargeting strategy.
Obviously, as a new contractor or construction professional, you’re not going to fly out halfway across the country to complete projects, you’re only going to work in your area.
So, we need to retarget people only in our area on Facebook.
You can do this by creating an audience and specifically setting the location of people receiving the advertising to only in your area.
When you blend in Local SEO efforts, with Facebook retargeting efforts, office phones tend to ring non-stop all day with potential clients.
This is because you’ve decided on an effective, powerful brand, and you’re just channeling that reputation onto these platforms.
So all potential clients end up seeing is a hard-working, reliable contractor.
Use Demographics in Marketing
Target the right people.
This can be obvious but it’s concerning how many construction companies miss out on this crucial point.
When you display advertisements on social media, you don’t want to get in front of people who won’t buy from you.
You only want to invest advertising dollars on potential work, not waste it on people who have absolutely zero interest in hiring a contractor.
So, don’t target Middle School girls with construction company ads (it’s happened) and instead target people who are in the industry, are of age, and are already interested in what you have to offer.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth marketing is essentially creating situations where people are more likely to talk about your company.
How does that happen?
By having a brand that can move people to talk about you.
I wasn’t lying in the beginning of this piece when I said branding is the root to your marketing.
Have a strong brand, and have an effective operations department, and your company name can suddenly start popping up in more and more conversations and giving you more and more potential business.
Go Door to Door (or Don’t)
Ol’ reliable.
Door to door is a strategy that many new players to the game take.
They go to offices around their area giving sales pitches and offering work for crazy discounts and over-selling themselves on why they’re the best in their field in the area.
Don’t do that. Develop a brand and layer in online marketing efforts to cement that brand in the minds of potential clients and you can expect to have a predictable, effective stream of income.
Market plan presentation: Marketing should be viewed as your construction company’s strategic is key to intend to boost qualities and make light of shortcomings. It’s additionally an approach to discover zones where the organization has an upper hand, further evaluate which markets to concentrate on, get socioeconomic, and set a serious estimating structure.
In order to achieve these goals and help your business grow, your company must take a few simple steps to develop a solid marketing plan.
- Analyze the current market: Your team should ask themselves,what openings adjust most intimately with the target that you set? Where does your firm have an upper hand? Does this territory of solidarity line up with your system? Sometimes, your organization’s qualities won’t really fit into your underlying promoting objective, however, don’t be reluctant to alter your goal as needs are. Continuously contend in the regions where you see the potential for development, that you are as of now solid in and that your organization has an upper hand in. Likewise, this doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t start to work in regions you see having potential yet don’t yet have a preferred position. Your objective ought to be to build up a bit of leeway as fast as conceivable … except if the expense and boundaries for passage are unreasonably high for it to be intelligent.
- Sales Strategy: The most basic piece of deals isn’t the advertising, however the offering procedure, wherein organizations offer their structures, administrations, material quality, venture course of events gauges, and expenses. The organization that offers the best blend of these factors is the destined to get the agreement. Subsequently extremely itemized venture arranging, including supply understandings, work needs, subcontractors, introduction, and different variables, is essential for Fosse in winning agreements. We will be structuring a normalized strategy for doing this with every one of our agreements, with an accentuation on quality, practicality, and ease to outbid our rivals.
- Create a Marketing Budget: Creating a marketing budget isn’t easy. I have known about organizations utilizing somewhere in the range of 0.5 percent to 4 percent of incomes as a beginning stage and afterward altering appropriately. In the event that your arrangement is for radio and TV spots, at that point it will presumably be toward the better quality, yet you will contact more individuals. In the event that you would prefer not to submit that numerous dollars, you should be innovative and proficient and will presumably elevate to fewer people. You should set a strong dollar figure you are eager to spend and building up the blend inside your financial limit. It is critical to create and utilize assessed spending plans for your expanded deals – if your showcasing plan works, do you have enough individuals to deal with extra work? Do you have a reinforcement plan for recruiting in the event that something goes wrong?
Conclusion
Running a construction company is very tough, to say the least.
But having an effective marketing plan can make your life much easier and can even end up bringing you business on autopilot.
Thank you for reading this piece, I hope it brought a ton of value. Good luck in your marketing efforts!