Construction companies help people’s dreams come true, by building them dream homes and renovating their dingy houses into beautiful warm ones. But it’s also important to know that these companies have dreams of their own, dreams of growth, revenue, and finding new clients. And only when their own dreams come true, can they help others achieve their dream homes.

If you’re the owner of a construction company or a manager of one, you might also be looking for ways to achieve your dreams. Well look no more, read this guide to marketing for construction companies for all the ways that get you and your construction business closer to its dreams.

Why should you consider marketing in the construction industry?

Many construction companies believe that marketing might not be necessary for the construction industry.

In fact, they usually relate the term “marketing” to “products” and not services like their own. However, this could be an extremely vital mistake as any successful company must be committed to marketing.

You can actually see huge well-known companies such as Apple or Booking.com that are still working on their marketing, even though people know them and use their products/services all around the world.

This belief could also stem from the fact that traditional marketing is not easily applicable to construction businesses which is understandable. Yet there are many marketing methods that work perfectly effectively for construction businesses.

A well-planned marketing strategy could help construction companies achieve the following goals:

• Increase in profits
• Increase in sales
• Higher client satisfaction
• Increase brand awareness
• Entering new markets
• Increasing brand loyalty

What is the difference between construction marketing and construction advertising?

It’s easy to get confused between marketing in construction industry and construction advertising.

The truth is it doesn’t make that big a difference, because, in the end, both try to introduce your business’s service to others. But as the business owner or manager, it’s important that you know it.

Marketing includes the whole process of identifying business goals, customer needs, and how best to meet those needs, advertising, other unpaid marketing methods, and tracking the results.

Whereas advertising refers to paid methods of promoting a company. In other words, advertising is only one element of marketing.

How should you plan a marketing strategy for a construction company?

If you’re working on construction marketing strategies, it’s important to keep the following steps and points in mind to increase your leads and ultimately sales.

a. Set your business goals

Every strategy needs a goal. The first step to map out your construction marketing strategy is to set your main business goal.

Nobody knows this better than business owners. There’s also no right or wrong answer. It could be to increase sales revenue or to increase brand awareness or extend services to energy-efficient solutions.

b. Do a SWOT analysis

Write down your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

This helps you get a good grasp of where you are standing and where your competitors are standing.

This seems like a formality for many small businesses, but trust us, once you do it, it makes a huge difference in planning all your business efforts. Check out this page for free templates of SWOT tables to make your work easier. 

c. Identify your target audience

Who is your exact audience? What is your ideal client like? It might help to ask yourselves questions like these: What kind of projects would you like to get? Private, government, residential or commercial? How much money does your target audience have?

Identifying your target audience helps you get your marketing material and channels right. For instance, if your main audience is governmental projects, then your marketing channels are definitely different from marketing end consumers, like people looking to build villas for themselves.

d. Estimate your budget

Budget estimation is a hard step for many small businesses. But it doesn’t have to be elaborate.

You just need to think about the average money that you are willing to spend on marketing and advertising monthly.
Don’t forget that you must consider enough budget for the following in your marketing:

• Paid advertising
• Building and maintaining a website
• SEO

e. Pick your marketing channels

After your audience and budget are set, it’s time to pick the best marketing channels according to them. Your channels could be paid, earned, or owned.

f. Track your KPIs

After all is set and you start your marketing efforts, it’s important to track KPIs and measure the outcome for efficiency.

This could help tell the good efforts from unuseful ones.

Traditional tips on marketing a construction business

The following tips are marketing for construction tips in the traditional sense.

Retention is key

Most marketers agree that keeping your existing clients is much easier and more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.

In fact, based on Harvard Business Review research, obtaining a new customer is about 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining a customer you already have.

Therefore it’s best to focus part of your marketing efforts on retention. It’s best to first estimate your current retention rate and then try to improve it.

The best way to keep your existing customers is to make them happy. How do you know if they’re happy? It’s simple, you ask. Regularly ask for your client’s feedback and take them seriously.

In addition, creating loyalty programs for your current clients could be a great way to make them feel appreciated and friendly with your business.

Pay attention to referrals

Referrals are great marketing tools. People are much more likely to try a business that others have tried and tested, especially if the results have been good for them.

Encourage your clients to leave reviews for you wherever possible. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for referrals. You can also offer them promotions if they bring in referrals. This makes them feel more appreciated.

Increase local visibility

Sometimes it’s all about the basics. People are more likely to try local businesses close to them. So it’s important to be discoverable in your local neighborhood.

Use signs to show people there’s a construction company near them, which would be more than happy to welcome them.

Use lead generation services

There are various companies offering lead generation services and connection projects to contractors and companies, such as HomeAdvisor.

Participate in events and expos

Events and expositions could be a great place to meet possible clients and impress them.

Keep up with events and shows related to the construction world and participate in them.

You can check some of them out here: Building & Construction Trade Shows in UAE and here: Building & Construction Events in Dubai

Do construction advertising

Advertising is an essential part of marketing. Below is a reminder of some useful methods for construction advertising, again in the conventional sense.

Magazines and newspapers

Although we live in an online world, people still enjoy reading offline. In fact, many people actually appreciate the physical sense of reading and turning paper.

Find out some local magazines and newspapers and try to publish ads in them. We know that print media is usually not inexpensive. But if you aim for smaller local ones, chances are you find more affordable options.

Lightboxes

One common advertising method is billboards. Now getting on billboards is like a dream for small businesses, even dreaming it might be expensive! But there’s another more affordable alternative: Lightboxes.

Get your company’s ad on a couple of lightboxes in your neighborhood or other ones that might be the residency of your target audience.

Tv or radio commercials

This one is another advertising method that is pretty much undoable for small businesses. But we just want to point out that it’s always good and free to ask and inquire.

There may be some chances and promotions for small businesses to get on these media at affordable prices.

Flyers

Don’t forget about good old flyers! Print out some attractive flyers and distribute them in places that your target might be present. It could be expos or events where potential partners for construction companies might be present or local stores that potential contractor clients might shop.

Digital marketing for construction companies

As effective as conventional construction marketing is, it’s just plain vital to also have a digital marketing strategy for your construction company.

Digital marketing for construction companies is more cost-effective, more targeted, and more measurable compared to traditional methods.

Here are some effective methods for digital marketing in construction industry:

Get an effective website Design

The first step to 90% of digital marketing for contractors and construction companies is to get a nice website.

In fact, in 2021 it is almost crazy not to have a website. It’s unprofessional, out of date, and just unreliable.

Your construction or contractors website should be:

• Attractive, not in a complicated way, but just simply well-designed
• Responsive, working well on every device, especially mobile
• Easy to navigate, giving clear mapping to users to find any information they need
• Fast, loading in few seconds
• Up-to-date, having unique and fresh content that answers all users’ questions

Run Google Ads

Google Ads is the perfect way to get your construction advertising started.

With Google Ads, you get to show up on Google for related search queries (that you chose) which are searched by potential clients.

For instance, when someone is searching for “best construction company in Dubai” or “plumbing contractors”, your ads can show up.

Of course, the ads that show up are written by you (or at least confirmed by you). They can also show up wherever you wish.

In addition to all these, they’re PPC or pay per click, which means you will only pay for them when they get clicked! And you can see the results and reports of your campaign.

As you can see Google Ads give you total control. Of course, this needs prior experience and expertise, but if managed properly, they could be one of the most effective and affordable ways to get your business some instant visibility, leads, and cash flow.

Invest in SEO

SEO refers to “search engine optimization”. It’s basically the process of optimizing your website’s content, technically and meaning-wise in order to serve best to users and therefore, rank higher on search engines.

Now there are a couple of things you should know about SEO for construction industry (or any business actually):

• It’s more complicated than its definition
• It takes time, depending on the business, its competition, and other factors
• It is not cheap. But there are various options to make it affordable for small businesses
• It’s more cost-effective in long term, as its results are more consistent

Run online ads

This option is kind of like the previous one, but the main difference is that Google Ads (as you can tell by its name) shows ads on Google’s network of various sites.

But in many countries or cities, there might be other networks consisting of local websites that give you the option to show ads in them.

Run social media ads

Another great way for digital marketing for contractors and construction companies is to advertise their business on social media.

Now based on your business, your chosen social media could be different. For instance, if you’re a contractor whose main clients are end-users, you can use Facebook ads or Instagram ads.

If you’re a construction company whose main target is B2B, your best bet could be LinkedIn ads.

Do social media marketing

Other than running social media ads, you can market your business on social media by creating attractive content.

If your content is attractive and engaging enough, you will gain a valuable audience base that can become your actual clients.

Get listed on Google My Business

This is a must for any local business. Google My Business has free listings. You can claim your business on it, add contact information and also manage reviews on it.

Consider Email marketing

Try to collect emails from your actual clients and also leads (or potential clients who reach out to you at least once).

Keep these emails organized somewhere. Use them to send news, updates, or promotions to their owners. This reminds you to your previous customers, and also to the potential ones. It’s always easier to convert people who have shown interest in you at least once.

Other tips for construction marketing & contractor marketing

We know that there could be so many marketing and advertising techniques at hand, but here are some other tips to keep in mind whatever strategy you choose.

Make your number & website easy to find

Doesn’t matter where you advertise, wherever it is, make sure that your phone number and website address are easily seen.

The shorter you make the journey for people to find your contact info, the faster and more likely they are to contact you.

Update & upgrade your content

Content is arguably the most important thing that impresses and keeps users with you. It could be on your website, your Instagram page, or just on your brochure.

Having up-to-date, engaging, and fresh content is the key to people’s hearts. Don’t just go around copying content from similar businesses. Spend time, effort, and money to write one-of-a-kind content that describes your business and services best.

Create videos

Today the trends are changing in favor of videos.

In fact, users retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.

So it makes sense to spend some time and money on creating videos.
Videos could also be shared in many places including YouTube channels, website galleries, and social media pages.

Introduce your employees

This is especially useful for contracting businesses. People like to connect with others. They also tend to trust professionals with actual faces and feelings! This means if they can see your actual employees (rather than just seeing you as a “business”) they trust you more and are likely to become your client.

Introduce your employees and staff whenever you get a chance. This could be in the form of blog posts for your website content, video interviews for your YouTube channel, or just photos and captions for your Instagram page.

Showcase your clients’ good feelings

Ok, first of all, we just have to say it, you know, just for the sake of saying it: if you don’t have clients with good feelings, then you should try to think of other things rather than marketing!

But if that’s not the case with you (hopefully!), then don’t miss any chance for asking clients for leaving reviews or writing down their feelings.

This could be reviews on Google My Business or Yelp, comments on Instagram or LinkedIn, or sending real images and videos of their projects done by you. In any case, true reviews are amazing marketing tools.

Do some guerilla marketing

Guerilla marketing uses marketing methods that are a bit unorthodox and relies on small locations and budgets rather than widespread media.

It could actually be a great marketing tool for small businesses as its impact is much wider compared to its small budget. Actually, even big businesses do it too. Because it has the potential of going viral.

Partner up

Partners are powerful assets in marketing. Whatever marketing path you choose, you can always use the help of some partners.

Whether on social media or at events, you can promote your business through partnerships and help similar businesses promote their business.

The only important thing is to choose your partners strategically. Their business must be related to yours but they should not be direct competitors.

Work on your brand identity

Before you run any marketing efforts, pay some attention to your brand identity.

Brand identity refers to all the visual elements associated with your brand. These elements could be your logo, fonts, colors, website design, and even your social media graphics.

Build up your brand identity nicely and use it in your marketing and advertising.

Share some free wisdom

People love freebies! Of course, you can’t give away construction projects for free or do hours of contracting work for free, but the least you can do is to share some information for free.

Try to create some DIY content and publish it in your company’s media.

Conclusion

As you may have noticed, the possibilities and ways for marketing a construction business are endless. From digital marketing to conventional methods, there are many things you can do to promote your contracting or construction business.
Our advice is to start by implementing a couple of methods from both conventional marketing methods and digital marketing methods.

If you’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, we’re always there to give you some free advice. Count on us.