How do you market and advertise your construction business? The chances are good that you’re implementing a variety of marketing tactics and strategies, but it can be difficult to choose the best options when you’re not a marketing expert. The risk is that you might put your working capital into strategies that don’t work.
Here at Select Funding, we have years of experience partnering with construction companies to help them achieve their growth goals. We’ve learned that advertising a construction business requires careful planning and budgeting. Here are eight construction advertising ideas to include in your marketing plan and attract more clients for your company.
What is a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is a blueprint that lays out what you will do to promote your construction business and attract new clients during a specified time period, usually a year. The plan may break down specific construction marketing ideas into months or quarters.
Your construction marketing plan should be as detailed as possible and include the following things:
- Marketing objectives that are measurable and attainable.
- Market research, including both prospective customer and competitor research.
- Analysis of your company’s current market position.
- Target market demographics.
- Marketing strategies to help you achieve your objectives.
- Marketing tasks that include any activities that must be completed to implement your marketing strategies.
- A marketing budget.
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) to be tracked to measure the success of your marketing efforts and strategies.
- A content strategy that details what you will post on your blog or social media accounts.
The primary purpose of a marketing plan is to help a small business achieve its growth goals and lay out the means for it to do so. While a marketing plan may specify actions and strategies for a full year, it should be viewed as a living document. If your construction marketing ideas aren’t yielding the results you want, it’s necessary to revamp the marketing plan accordingly.
What is a Marketing Campaign?
A marketing campaign is a focused and tactical plan designed to achieve a specific marketing goal. It differs from a marketing plan in that it is narrowly focused. The goal of a marketing campaign must be a SMART goal, meaning that it must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
Here are some examples of SMART marketing goals:
- Attract 500 new followers on Instagram in six months
- Book 5 new jobs in a month
- Win 3 bids in a new geographical area in the first quarter of the year
- Increase revenue by 10% in a year
You’ll note that these goals are all SMART because they include all five elements we mentioned. It’s important to think about what’s realistic and include a time frame that makes sense to achieve the objective.
A marketing campaign might include a variety of specific tactics, including digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine advertising, print marketing, and more.
8 Construction Business Advertising Ideas to Try
Now, let’s look at some construction business advertising ideas that you can use to achieve your business growth goals and boost your brand awareness.
#1: Update Your Website
While a website refresh is not advertising in the truest sense of the term, it is the foundation of everything you do with online marketing. It’s likely to be the first place people go to learn about your company, so it’s essential to have a site that’s user-friendly, informative, and aesthetically pleasing.
If it’s been a while since you updated your website, the chances are good that it could use a refresh. You should make sure that your information is up to date, optimize the user experience with simple navigation, and have a content marketing strategy to post new content (blog posts, for example) to keep your website branding fresh and relevant.
Once your website has been updated, it can and should play a role in your other paid advertising. For example, you can create individual landing pages for your advertising campaigns to help move prospective clients through your sales funnel.
#2: Take Advantage of Video Marketing
The construction business is visual by definition, so you can and should use video marketing to show prospective clients what you can do. Since construction projects may take months to complete, you can film your progress and cut it together into a video that you post on YouTube, your website, and your social media profiles.
In addition to showing your process, you may also want to consider using before and after photos or doing a video where you answer some frequently asked questions. Research shows that 96% of all consumers have watched a video to learn more about a company or product, so it’s clear that video marketing is a good investment.
On a related note, you may also want to consider participating in advertising programs on YouTube, since monetized videos always include ads either before or during the video. Creating short, snappy videos for your company can help you attract leads from YouTube.
#3: Create Ads Featuring Testimonials
Social proof is one of the most important things that consumers look for when they’re researching companies. They read customer reviews and they also view testimonials that companies feature on their websites.
You can take advantage of social proof marketing by filming testimonials and using those videos in social media advertising or pulling quotes from testimonials to share on your social media pages. Using testimonials in ads is useful if your objective is to generate more leads or increase your social media following.
#4: Run Ads on Yelp
Yelp is a popular crowd review platform where consumers can go to learn about local businesses and evaluate them. Research shows that 57% of consumers who view a business on Yelp make a purchase within 24 hours, so it’s a worthwhile investment to advertise your construction business on Yelp.
All Yelp ads are billed on a Cost-per-click (CPC) basis, which means you pay only when a prospective client clicks on your ad. You can set a daily budget to make sure you don’t overspend–and of course, you can always increase your budget if you’re getting great results.
#5: Partner with Local Businesses
One of the best low-cost ways to attract more business is by creating a referral program. The most lucrative option is to connect with other local business owners and forge an agreement to refer businesses to one another when it makes sense to do so.
Some of the types of business that may be particularly useful referral partners for construction business include the following:
- Real estate agents
- Interior decorators and designers
- Other construction businesses (for example, a construction company specializing in flooring might partner with a general contractor for referrals)
- Service providers
Anybody who might be in a position to learn about upcoming construction projects is someone who may be considered a referral partner.
#6: Social Media Advertising
We’ve already mentioned social media advertising as an example of an effective way to achieve your business growth goals, but it deserves its own section. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can be a great way to connect with prospective clients and help them learn about your construction business.
Social media advertising may include videos, reels, photographs, infographics, and written content. As you would with Yelp, you’ll have the option to set a daily budget for advertising, define your target audience, and review your results regularly to make sure you’re getting the ROI you want.
#7: Promote Free Consultations and Quotes
People love free things, particularly when they’re planning to spend thousands of dollars on a construction project. While you can’t (and shouldn’t) give away your services for free, you can create the perception that you’re giving something away with the right advertising campaign.
As a rule, you probably don’t charge to meet with prospective clients or bid on their projects, but if you advertise a free consultation or free quote, you’re likely to get a bigger response than you would without using those words. We suggest using ads promoting your free services in combination with a campaign to build your email marketing list. All you need to do is require people to provide their contact information, including an email, to get their free consultation and quote.
#8: Incentivize Customer Referrals
Business partnerships are extremely useful as a way to increase your profits, but so are direct customer referrals. A lot of people find construction companies and contractors by soliciting recommendations from friends, and you can encourage this process by offering incentives.
For example, you might tell new clients that you’ll offer them a discount on their project if they refer a friend who books you for a job. Of course, you’ll need to be careful to make the discount large enough to feel substantial but small enough that you’ll still earn a profit. You can also email past clients to encourage them to refer people to you and offer them a discount if they book you for a future project.
Get Working Capital to Fund Your Construction Advertising
Creating an effective marketing plan and advertising campaigns requires planning and money. The 8 construction marketing ideas we’ve provided here can all help you attract more clients, increase your profits, and meet all of your most important growth objectives.
Do you need financing to pay for your construction advertising campaigns? Select Funding is here to help. Click here to read about our construction financing options and begin the qualification process now.
