A construction business without customers is as good as dead. Therefore, you must develop an extensive clientele base to help grow your business.
Recent studies indicate only 45% of companies in the construction and contracting industry have experienced growth. In this post, we’ll discuss effective marketing strategies you can use to grow your home-building business. But before that, let’s look at the mistakes you should avoid and the challenges you should expect going forward.
Construction Marketing Challenges And Mistakes To Avoid
While construction company owners understand the importance of marketing, most are not strategic about their marketing. And that is the biggest mistake contractors make that hinders success.
They usually have good marketing ideas but don’t have the right strategies to implement these ideas. Others know what they want to accomplish in the long term but do not have a proper framework or plan to get there.
Besides these mistakes, there are challenges that contractors encounter when establishing and growing their brands. The most common construction marketing challenges include;
- Providing great customer service
- Use of latest technology
- Developing solid strategies that work
- Keeping up with the increased workload
Avoiding these mistakes and overcoming the challenges is the first big step in the right direction. Most home builders who effectively take this step when marketing their firms will be successful in their initiatives.
Ways To Advertise Your Construction Business: Ideas That Work
1. Create A Fantastic Website
When searching for clients for your construction company, here are nine construction marketing strategies you can use that work;
Having a simple, well-designed, and attractive website is such an underrated aspect of any business. Whether you rely on referrals or social media to market your business, having a website is a PLUS to your marketing strategy. It is the center of your marketing efforts.
With consumers’ purchasing habits evolving in the current business world, you’ll need a website for your home builder company. Research shows approximately 63% of customers use a construction company’s website to find and engage with them. Further, 30% of consumers say they would never consider a business that doesn’t have a website.
Thus, invest your time, money, and effort into creating an easy-to-navigate website that showcases your products and services.
Ensure that your website has:
- A homepage detailing all information about your brand
- An About page that elaborates your vision, mission, and accomplishments
- Blog Page that communicates directly with your customers. The page can include the latest trends, upcoming feature updates, and responses to customers’ FAQs
- Product or Services Page that highlight the products and services you sell
- Contact Page that tells consumers how they can reach you
You can add more pages to the list. The goal is to get your customers as much information about your business as possible. Also, strive to showcase what you can do by providing photos of your past work on the site.
2. Utilize The Power of Social Media
Whether you own a small home-building company or have a multi-million firm, social media is a powerful way to reach your customers and prospects. The only catch is to use it properly.
Proper social media marketing can bring you exceptional success, drive leads and create loyal brand advocates. Take advantage of Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest, and Twitter to advertise your products and network with homeowners and other contractors.
You can regularly post images, videos, or comments on various social media platforms, which helps personify your brand. And guess what? About 66% of consumers consider human interaction a crucial factor in their experience with a brand. As a result, these clients are more willing to transact with personified brands rather than a company.
Your close adversaries are already interacting with customers through social media, don’t miss out!
3. Use Videos To Showcase Your Brand + Projects
Did you know that a video is capable of driving a 157% increase in traffic from SERPs for your business? Yes. You heard that right! You can use video marketing to drive leads and conversions for your contracting business. All you need to do is design suitable videos.
Create a list of the content you want to post and use it to create videos for your business. For example, you may consider making the following videos for your construction firm:
- Videos of already completed projects
- Videos of current projects
- Videos with advice to homeowners or other contractors
Whatever video you create is up to you, but the above list gives you an idea of what type of content to make.
4. Adapt Your Marketing Strategy To Your Target Customer
Just like any other type of marketing, construction marketing is never a one-size-fits-all strategy. Companies target different customers, and what might appeal to one corporation may never work for another.
Instead of copying strategies from one competitor, just because they are successful, take time to understand your customers and then adapt your plan to suit them. Talk to your clients and know them, then create a strategy that fits them well.
For instance, you can ask how your client found out about your company. If you discover social media is the most used platform, you can start working on your social media channels. Run paid ads, and create social media content, including videos, text, and images, to generate a buzz around your company.
5. Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What if I told you there’s a way to advertise your products or services to potentially 67,000 people every second, all for free! Yeah. That’s possible. All you need to do is take advantage of SEO marketing to promote your construction firm.
Research shows that approximately 67,000 searches are performed on Google every second. Therefore, if you want your company’s name to rank highest among these searches, you need to create relevant content that will impress the search engines and those that visit your website.
To do this, you ought to understand the needs and preferences of your customers. You should then create engaging content around home builder-relevant keywords and post them on your blog page. Keyword planner tools can help you identify the common search keywords in your industry to use in your content.
6. Work With Your Competitors/ Other Related Businesses
However absurd it may sound, working with your competitor or other related businesses is one of the best ways to market your construction business. From fellow contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers, teaming up and having a good relationship with them is phenomenal for your business.
Teaming up is good because it helps you connect with a more extensive base of clientele and prospects. However, be sure to work with reputable firms only to protect your brand image and reputation.
7. Create and Maintain A Good Reputation
Did you know that a whopping 70% of consumers use online reviews when deciding whether or not to buy a product from a particular vendor? That means if you have negative reviews, you’re losing business!
That said, you need to build and maintain your reputation regardless of the size of your construction company. You can achieve this by following several steps, including:
- Always accomplish your promise to your clients
- Go the extra mile in enhancing your projects
- Act with integrity
- Help others achieve their goals
- Have your company engage in Corporate Social Responsibility practices
- Have employees that respect your customers
- Be consistent
The list is endless. You can add more points to this list, provided they paint a good image of your company.
8. Stay In Touch
Customer retention is low-hanging fruit. While you may spend a lot of time and resources to acquire clients, it will only take a short time to leave your company if they don’t feel valued.
According to research, about 68% of customers leave your business because they feel you don’t care about them. And this is because you don’t stay in touch. When you neglect your customers, they can easily forget about you and move to your competitors.
Given that a 5% growth in customer retention can boost your company’s profitability by up to 75%, there is reason enough to stay in touch with your clients. Always make a point of following up on completed projects a month after the completion to check how things turned out.
Also, occasionally talk to your clients, educating them about your company and services. Address their concerns promptly and ask for input on how to better your services and products.
9. Partner With Other Players
Besides enhancing the quality of your project, the right partnerships also help in marketing your construction business to the public. From subcontractors to architectures, the people you partner with help network and increase your clientele base.
Look for trusted vendors and join or start partnerships with them. You can look them up on LinkedIn or other social media platforms.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of approaches to construction marketing that you may use to promote your firm. We have saved you the hassle of testing each one of them individually by providing you with ten battle-tested strategies that will work. Contact us today to see if you’re the right fit for our agency.