Either you are a CEO of a big construction company or a one-man army for your small-scale construction Business, you should never underestimate the level of influence marketing do have on your revenue. Especially those general contractors who are doing it all by themselves, when it comes to marketing their construction company, they think of it as a task out of their budget or not too important to worth their time.

But in this digital era, even spending few bucks on online marketing for a consistent amount of time can go very far.

Therefore guaranteeestimation.com have brought 8 construction marketing to do’s for their general contractors’ friends and construction business owner that can literally make them word of the mouth.

Some of these marketing to-do’s you might have already done or find a bit difficult to make happen. But the further you go in this checklist of to-dos the closer you will get to becoming a word of mouth.

Let’s get on to our to-do’s……

1- Make sure your Business have a presence on social media

Showcase your Work to the targeted audience

All of us have accounts on social networking sites (or at least most of us), and so can our businesses have. Builder, general contractor, architect, homebuilder, remodeling contractor no matter who you are, you can put your work in front of far more people than you ever will offline. Besides that these people will be to your really targeted audience interested in what you do.

Can be your only professional online presence

The online world is quite bigger than the offline, not having an online presence means missing hundreds and thousands of eyeballs that could have built your brand awareness.

Especially if you don’t have a website (which is our next to do) having a social business account is more crucial than ever before. A regular social account can also do the job but having a business account gives you the edge and appears more professional. And why shouldn’t you, as a business account and business pages for all major Social Media sites are totally free.

Those of you who fall in the B2B category of construction working should focus more on LinkedIn and Twitter. As these can bear you better returns. The ideal case is you follow all the major social media platforms.

Can provide you with Social Proof

Social proof and familiarity play a significant role when your clients make their final decisions that where they want to take their business in the end. Having social media accounts can increase the chances that when you do the paid advertisement, your customer would not be seeing your message the very first time.

According to a study it takes nearly 7 visits before a customer finally buys something from an eCommerce site. Image how important it can be in a capital-intensive business like yours.

Can be beneficial for Website

Even if you currently don’t have a website, growing your social media business pages can bring a huge amount of traffic to your future website. Let us tell you that, Retargeting is a big thing in digital marketing that can provide you with high ROI (Return on Investment). So, put the effort into these of your referral traffic generating sources and get more traffic, leads, sales, and brand awareness.

Further To Do’s For Social Media

Though SMM (Social Media Marketing) is a complete domain of marketing itself. However here we have only mentioned those things we can do on our own.

Publish photos of your work, thoughts, ideas, positive messages, wishing your audience at special events. Just try to engage with your audience for the purpose of making a user base. Also, quality is more important than quantity.

You don’t have to post something every hour just be consistent as you continue your journey, week by week, month by month. Avoid disappearing for weeks or months.

Gradually you will have some fans who will acknowledge what you do. Try to reply to their comments and answer their queries as soon as you can.

2- Improve Or (if don’t have) get a website

After social media, the real To Do’s have just started. If you already have a website for your business great! Now you just have to improve it. If not, let me tell you that social media pages can be your only online existence, business is not individuals, therefore no one takes a business seriously that just exists on social media.

Creating a website on your own or getting it developed by a professional is far easier than ever before. You can go on different platforms (Fiverr or Upwork) to get a website for your business at a reasonable price.

OR

You can build a site for yourself on different CMS (Content Management systems), as nowadays simple portfolio sites can be built without any prior knowledge of web designing or any programming skills at all.

Get the potential customers

Even if your business is small, your website can be good enough to customers the same impression as they get from a million-dollar company’s site. For brands are made in minds of the customers, they can give you a try by at least calling you once, but if and only if you appear to be worth their time.

Think as if you were in your audience’s shoes, customers want to get their job done by professionals. The first thing they do after considering your business is searching your company on the internet. If you don’t make a good first impression you will lose that potential customer, no matter how appealing your brick and mortar outlet is.

Built brand

Make sure your website and everywhere on the internet where you represent your brand, should have logo, favicon, and color patterns that represent your brand. People often spend money on making brochures, posters, and flyers in the hope to get the attention of some potential client.

But where we can get so many views of our targeted audience, at a far lesser price we just don’t take that much seriously.

Just get digital logos, profile pics, favicons of all sizes to appear like a professional. Because if you don’t care much about how to appear online, customers don’t think you would care enough about them.

Improve your website

As mentioned earlier, just having a website is not enough, it should function as the visitors expect. If not, they will leave with their opportunity.

With a website, you can reach out to a far wide range of geographic locations than can ever be with offline conventional marketing.

• Should be mobile friendly: Nowadays most of the consumers surf the internet with their mobiles. Therefore, your site should be mobile-first.
• It should have good navigation: No matter how good your interface is, if you can’t make sense out of it, it hardly meets up the target. Make sure visitor can easily find what he or she wants.
• Your site should be fast: Get the help of a developer or do it yourself, make sure your site should load fast. You can use CDN, AMP, and cache, there are some more options you can find online. Most important these are doable by a non-techie.
• Don’t forget to mention your USP: Unique selling proposition is a vital core of any marketing campaign. Therefore, it is necessary that you mention it on your home page.
• It may sound a bit before time: but if you have a website not having a Facebook pixel is about losing a vital advertisement distinctive advantage.

3- Invest in Content Creation & SEO

A site is as good as the number of people who visit it. Here comes Content Creation & SEO.

Those of you who don’t know what SEO is, it’s Search Engine Optimization, means to rank your website as high as possible on search engines like Google, where user find your service online.

But without Content, your site hardly can make it into the top 3 of the SERPS.

Remember that digital marketing is far more effective with a far lesser budget than that of conventional marketing. By investing in content creation and SEO, you are achieving the same result, as you would with bigger expenses.

Content helps you in two ways

If you can heir a content writer or have some time to share the helpful experience with the world. Then you will get benefited not just in terms of SEO but will also reap more benefits from your social media.

Social Media platforms push content that is useful, original, and easy to understand. This provides more exposure to your business without spending anything on ads.

• Publishing blog: Posting blog posts that can either guide your customers about making the right buying decision or just teach others what you do. There can be hundreds of topics you can write about.
• Video is watched far more than blogs: Start making videos, show prototypes, showcase your projects on the video. You can publish it on a video platform like Youtube along with embedding it on your site too. Far more users watch videos than reading something.

SEO really pays off

You can learn SEO or can get hire someone to do so, but SEO is one of those aspects of digital Marketing that really worth your time and money.

• Get Google My Business: The SEO professional can get your business listed in local directories or you can do it by yourself. But listing yourself for Google My Business allows your potential clients to find your business when they search something like “general contractors near me” or “best construction services in the city”.
• Mention your phone no and professional email id: Don’t forget to mention your professional email (buy if you don’t have one), business phone number, and working hours on your site.
• Place testimonials on your site: You can ask your happy customers what they liked best in your business. This way the reviews will appear more real on the site and that is the actual purpose of testimonials.
• Display your portfolio: Trust between a client and the business only develops when, they see your work without that it’s very difficult to gain trust, familiarity, and relation with visitors.

A photo from a phone is a content

Some people get so hard on themselves when it comes to creating content. They look for information and sources that are novel, that even sometimes it takes more than a week to create a single blog post.

But it shouldn’t be this way. At the start, if you can’t think of anything, just show what you are currently working on. Photos of your current project is also content and can be quite a value if you choose the right platform.

At the start, it’s okay to take photos of your current daily work, (the best moment can be your videos) and post them on your social media business pages. Obviously, you have to do it with the right number and right kind of hashtags, so can have the best reach. But you will learn gradually.

4- Do spend on Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing

There are generally four steps in the Purchase funnel of digital marketing.

In the first step, you create AWARENESS, which we did by making potential prospects visit our site via content marketing, SEO, Digital Marketing, etc. Once it been a while, the returning visitors will start getting interested in what you have to offer. Which in your case is construction services.

Now, whenever they have to get something constructed, they surely will recall your brand. They will also consider your competitors at that time. This phase is “consideration” which comprise of the and step, INTEREST and DESIRE.

In the end, some of all the prospects will choose you over others and make the purchase. This phase is “conversion” consist of the final fourth and final step ACTION.

After investing time and money in content creation and SEO for a while, it’s time to reap the value we have created among our targeted customers.

To do so, we have some options. Each with its benefits and drawbacks.

Paid Social Media Marketing (SMM):

There are dozens of social media platforms as you know and each has its advertisement program you can join to promote your product.

You can do some research about which platforms suit you best. However, if you take Facebook, for instance, you can do Retargeting Marketing which Is about showing ads to only those visitors who have shown some interest in your website.

But only If you have acted upon the 2nd step, where we have mentioned “Add Facebook pixel on your site”, only then you can do the retargeting. Don’t worry if you still haven’t, it’s never too late. Add Pixel or add any of its counterpart you feel right for you.

PROS: Running a Social Media Marketing campaign is cheaper than Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

CONS: Consumers are not using social media for searching something as they do with Search Engine, therefore doesn’t produce the same level of results that they will with SEM.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/ PPC/ Display ads

The most popular search engine is Google and so is their Search Engine Marketing, AdWords. There are several further options for SEM of Google you can look on the internet.

However, SEM also allows you to perform retargeting which you can search in detail on Search Engine.

PROS: SEM is more effective than Paid Social Media Marketing because people do come to Google when they look for something to buy online.

CONS: SEM expensive than social media marketing and can’t work out with smaller budgets.

5- Make an alliance with other complementing businesses (OFFLINE)

Try to make an alliance with businesses that complement yours. It can be supplied for your construction business.

That way you can do the advertisement contract with the suppliers of construction material and can do DOUBLE the promotion in HALF the budget.

What makes the alliance successful is the helping hand each of the businesses gets from the other one, thus achieve the benefits that can match big corporate construction companies.

6- Do out-of-the-box marketing (OFFLINE)

There are some inexpensive ways you can use to place your brand into the targeted segment of the market.

Can do Guerrilla marketing:

Things like Guerrilla marketing can be performed on a very limited budget. Though it may take some money to do the work on a very limited budget you can do a very good job.

You can easily find dozens of ideas about doing Guerilla Marketing without breaking your bank.

Some examples may include, placing a Funny caution sign near the premises of your outlet or printing the QR code of your website on unconventional places like windows, Doormats, Cars, etc.

Can do by some public service:

Raising your sales numbers shouldn’t be the only intention to do public service but with a positive attitude and good intention, it can do wonders.

Such as keeping in view the current circumstances you can distribute face masks with funny, windowful, or factual messages on them and of course with a logo on them. This way you are not just spending money growing your sales, and even if your sales don’t boost, you have served the society.

Other ideas may include distributing small plants (your logo or QR code on the pot) as a gift to geographical zones, where your targeted audience is most probably to exist. In this way, you will be a savior of the earth and the plants will always remind your customers of you.

7- Your past customers are your gold mine (OFFLINE)

Past customers are of great value (of course if we’re happy with service) because these are the people that surely will be your customers if have any project in the future. For the proof is they have been in the past.

We waste a whole lot of time, money, and energy in just reaching out to the targeted audience, let aside the real purchase. Why not make the customer feel special that are living testimonials of your brand.

And asking them to provide positive reviews to your site is also a good idea.

Provide discounts:

Discounting is something brands take for granted, but sometimes people who are availing of your service just paying you just because of your discount.

Maybe there is some small construction job. Maybe they think their small outhouse is not something they should set a proper budget for, as they are about to sell the property in a year. Now they saw your discount and thought why not you.

If someone buys from you without any discounts previously then there is a pretty good chance, they will again buy the service from your construction company in the future. Not the other way around.

Treat them especially:

Something as small as a Christmas greeting card can do wonders in the world of customer public relations.

They have already bought from you, now it’s the time to show them that you do value them.

Calling once in a while, about the consideration of construction you did for them OR wishing them their Christmas or sending them a Birthday card (obviously should have their DOB at the first place) can be helpful.

Put 80% of the focus on the 20%:

Most of us know the 80–20 rule, means that 80 percent of our sales made by just 20 percent of the customers.

Putting your focus on the segment that helps you generate 80% of your revenue, is doing a favor to your own business.

Provide warranties, once a year free repair or renovation ideas after site checkup, you can offer any of these free to these customers.

Remember loyalty has to be earned and these are your loyal customers.

8- Find a niche

Any specific market segment that has particular needs regarding service and product can be seen as a niche. In your case, you can find the right niche for your business after some research and analysis.

Should have enough profitability

The niche you are thinking about serving should be big enough to be profitable for keep making profit for your business.

In the construction business, your niche can be commercial plumbing, residential swimming pools, commercial electrical work, etc. Something you can show specialized expertise of. Though construction business covers all aspects of the construction industry.

However, to start having a profitable business, one has to have a competitive advantage. Hence choosing one for the beginning is a smart move to get the message across and more often.

But the whole point is to be best at a specialized task is for providing stellar quality they can’t find anywhere else.

Originally published at https://www.guaranteeestimation.com on June 9, 2021.