Finding clients in the construction industry can be challenging at times. Everyone may need builders, contractors, tradesmen at some point in their lives, yet even the best contractors can find themselves in an empty shell on some occasions. Have you found yourself in the same situation? One of the most common challenges that every contractor is facing today is how to grow their client base.
If you find yourself struggling to get more clients and fill those dates, explore these twelve construction marketing tips below to get you going.
1. Use Professional, Clear Signage
Brand image (how prospects view your company) is more than just a nice tagline or a logo in today’s marketplace and industry. It is a representation of who you and what your reputation is as a company. It is often developed based on your company’s values.
Constant and clear signage on your vehicles and construction equipment must reflect your company’s values and all of your subs and other employees. Everyone should recognize and honor your brand.
2. Social Media
Nearly everybody nowadays is on various social media. In fact, studies have shown that social media platforms are the preferred method of searching a contractor and tradesperson for over 80% of people. It falls to just 11% on its biggest competitor, Twitter.
Make sure to make the most of your social media presence, especially in your Facebook channel. Make it your business page and keep the channel with updated images of your latest work, feedback, testimonials from your customers, and available dates.
3. Keep Jobsite More Professional
You want everything related to the work you do to be decent and professional. Ask and answer the following questions to yourself to determine if you are making your job site just the way you wanted it to be:
- Is everyone OSHA safe?
- Do my employees clean up right after themselves?
- Are you laying down tarps to collect debris?
Your answers to the questions above have an impact on people’s perception of your professionalism. In fact, having a safe job site and a professional-looking team can also impact your bidding. It is much easier to bid on jobs at a high price point if your crew members look professional and wear matching apparel. It only shows that people’s view of your professionals greatly impacts how much they are willing to pay for your construction services.
4. Blog Content
If you desire to improve your Google rankings, get people to share your site around the web and the Internet. If you want people to share your site, you need to create a very effective content marketing strategy. You must have a blog site with relevant and unique content about your niche. It can be about construction management, construction tech, construction inventory, etc.
You can take other market’s new sites and blogs as an example. Pick the ones that get more shares, comments, and likes, and reverse engineer their strategy.
5. Build and Maintain Your Reputation
It doesn’t mean just doing good work. In the first place, you must always put your best work out there. And if the work you do is quite stellar, your reputation does not solely depend on the projects you complete.
After every done work, you must ask for reviews and ensure that you provide good customer experiences. Everything begins with your word and the way you take action. If your clients have issues, address it right away and carry out a process on how you and your team handle those complaints.
Moreover, nurture your relationships with your clients, and they will become your ambassadors for new prospects.
6. Learn about Marketing
Today, marketing is entirely different than it used to be before. There have been many advances and changes over the years. Make sure to familiarize yourself with social media marketing, Local SEO, and buyer personas.
It is crucial to understand how everything works in online marketing and, at the same time, track your ROI for every marketing channel. Yet, digital marketing is essential for you to understand as a contractor because it is a competitive advantage to growing and becoming profitable.
Additionally, strategic planning for your construction business is also part of transitioning to digital. Being strategic in business is what makes your company alive during a recession. Other than familiarizing digital platforms, you must be wise on spending your money on every investment, particularly in marketing.
7. Have Everyone in Your Company Involved
Your crews served as your ambassadors. They represent your reputation and your company, leading to more clients. Make sure everything and everyone is clear on how you want to be viewed as a company to avoid potential mistakes. There are many things your employee can do to contribute to the positive image of your business.
While technology is also one of the biggest challenges on your business, software solutions like construction software tools increase employee accountability to improve your professional appearance. Certainly, anything that enhances your professional image will market you much better than anything else.
8. Adapt your marketing to your clients
Advertising and marketing is not one size fit for all type of process. You have to be aware that what works for other contractors may not work for your business. Hence, it’s crucial to take time to get to know your target clients before reaching out to them.
Sponsoring a local event or cause is a helpful tactic. Even if everyone is digital nowadays, you can still use traditional marketing like distributing flyers, etc. In fact, integrating digital marketing to conventional marketing fits well and works best in some businesses today. It’s just a matter of figuring out and exploring a mix of tactics in your marketing plan.
9. Website Development and Design
This is very important. No questions. You need a working website that is fully optimized on the search engines but one that truly makes sense from a user’s standpoint. You do not want viewers to visit your website and look at it, leaving without contacting you.
In terms of design, do not overcomplicate it. You have to be very clear with your intention and your message to your target audience. Point out the three questions below and consider having this on your homepage:
- Who are you?
- What can your business do to help them?
- What should they do next? (referring to CTAs)
If you are a builder and own a website, you want your viewers to call you immediately or fill out a form on your site. If that is the outcome you expect, ensure to give them a good reason to do so.
10. Getting Links from any Authoritative Sources
Yes, you need link building. So, you need to look for authorities in your specific niche and geographical area and get in touch with them. Doing so will bring you more targeted prospects to your site and business. It will also help you with SEO which is a great advantage.
You must learn to connect with highly significant content to their platforms and try to get featured with any of those properties.
11. Recommendation websites
To make your business aware of those prospective customers, you also want to have a strong online presence on recommendation sites. Local citation sites can help elevate your local SEO strategy and be known in your target area.
Getting yourself listed on these sites is a valuable asset. Having their stamp of approval will add trust in your business and another layer of security.
Your site is the right place to host all of your blog articles, organized and curated just as you require it to maximize your company’s appeal. Nearly every contractor or construction business owner has their website these days, and you should own one too.
12. Network, Network, Network
There are several ways you can become more popular and widely recognized in the construction sector. Being part of a reputable association is one. Associations are an excellent way to get more connections to regional people within the local area. Also, educational conferences are a great place to interact and connect with other contractors.
There are events where your vendors hold at some of the bigger Expo conferences around the U.S. that will be great to establish relationships. Meeting people from various parts of the U.S. can be greatly helpful, especially when you have questions about how other business owners handle their companies, firms, and people.
Attract More Clients with ConstructionMarketing.io
Defining your ideal client is the very important first step in construction marketing. This marketing strategy will use the profile of your ideal client to execute lead generation strategies, keeping a stable flow of leads coming to your business. We can help you with all of that! Start collaborating with us and take advantage of the many benefits of online marketing today!
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If you want to take your construction business to new heights, talk to us today and we will help you put your construction business on the map where your audience can easily see and connect with you.