In 2024, everything is expected to be tailored to people’s expectations and needs. As a contractor whose construction business exists online, it is crucial to keep up with these many changes. Perhaps you have heard about inbound marketing and how it has continuously become a formidable vehicle to engage, attract, and delight target customers by building trust and nurturing customer relationships.
2024 is the year of inbound marketing, and this article will be your complete guide to this strategy. Learn everything you need to know about inbound marketing approaches – from signs you need one to how to structure your own. Also, do not miss out on diving into the top inbound marketing strategies for 2024 and beyond.
So, What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a methodology that simply focuses on content creation to attract the right audiences and move them through the sales funnel. The objective is to curate evergreen content that connects you to your target construction clients and build long-term relationships with them.
Unlike traditional outbound marketing, which largely depends on ad advertising and cold calling, inbound marketing focuses on more organically pulling potential customers toward your construction brand.
Inbound marketing can help you build credibility and brand loyalty over time by delivering valuable content that addresses the interests and needs of your audience.
Signs Your Construction Business Needs Inbound Marketing
If ever you have never taken advantage of inbound marketing or are probably not satisfied with your present marketing approach, below are some strong signs that help you realize that inbound may work for your construction business:
1. You are relying too much on outbound
If your current marketing strategy relies on cold calling, direct mail, and print ads, it is high time to reconsider your approach. Outbound marketing activities like answering calls from an unknown number and having junked emails are completely irrelevant to the person on the receiving end – which is ineffective in generating leads.
On the other hand, with inbound marketing, potential clients find you may cost less than outbound marketing, which is proven to be most successful. According to research, 32% of participants stated that they would invest more in inbound marketing by cutting from the outbound channels budget.
2. You gain low-quality leads
Are your leads not converting into paying customers? Perhaps your conversion funnel is losing traction. In many instances, your business attracts the wrong leads, which can only waste time for you and the customers. With inbound marketing, you can target the right ones, attract the right customers and keep them more engaged.
Inbound marketing focuses more on the needs of potential customers, answering their questions and providing them with the knowledge to make well-informed decisions.
3. Your Marketing ROI is poor
Marketing ROI is a critical metric measuring the profit and loss your construction business generates through all its marketing activities. A higher ROI means your campaigns generate more money than you spend on them, which is basically what you want. However, a lower ROI implies something needs to be fixed in your marketing plans.
Inbound marketing proposes the “flywheel concept” to help your construction business save money by creating a growth cycle. Unlike the traditional funnel approach, where a cycle has a definite end, the flywheel concept enables potential customers to become ambassadors of your construction brand. As a result, it spreads the good word to their circle of friends and acquaintances, driving organic growth and getting new leads.
Overall, inbound marketing’s flywheel approach gives your business a very effective and inexpensive way to maximize your ROI.
4. You are not taking advantage of social media
You are missing out if you are not using social media. People of all ages spend an enormous amount of time on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These platforms, alongside other channels, become a central place for building and nurturing personal relationships between businesses and customers. Over time, companies can boost engagement, brand awareness, and loyalty with their potential customers.
Powerful Inbound Marketing Strategies You Must Not Miss this 2024
Here are a couple of inbound marketing strategies that remain consistently useful, reliable, and still promising for 2024 and beyond.
1. Local SEO
Local Search engine optimization is an optimization strategy primarily focused on getting your construction business to appear in the top results on Google Maps. Optimizing your construction website for Local Search engine optimization is a strategic approach for 2024, especially if you want to attract clients near your locations.
Here are some core strategies for local optimization that you can get started:
- Set up your Google My Business profile for your business.
- Create a specific landing page on your construction website that directs to your Google Maps address.
- Ask your customers and clients to post reviews on your Google Maps profile.
2. Video Marketing
Engagement with video marketing implementations has risen over the last few years, and today it still matters. Video content is a staple of inbound marketing now – and for good reasons.
Video marketing helps engage your viewers on an emotional level and allows you to inform and convert while entertaining them. Overall, video content can help drive traffic, increase conversion, boost engagement, and more.
3. Artificial Intelligence
AI is everywhere, and in 2024, marketers are increasing their efforts in this area. When it comes to inbound marketing, AI can be used as a great source of creativity or even as an assistance in your content generation efforts.
Artificial intelligence can analyze massive amounts of information deeply, and it is a useful tool to qualify leads and make more informed decisions that enhance your content. AI tools such as ChatGPT can help you develop interesting ideas and enhance drafting for content creation – from blogs to educational video scripts.
4. Marketing automation
Taking advantage of inbound marketing strategy and including it in your campaign requires overwhelming tasks – brainstorming ideas, editing, content distribution, scheduling posts, answering comments and emails, analyzing metrics, and many more.
Marketing automation is a process that can help optimize all your marketing tasks and will save you more time. Here is how marketing automation works:
- Create personalized email workflows to send targeted emails to multiple segments of your audience.
- Schedule social media posts in advance using automation tools to optimize your content creation and distribution process further.
- Make use of chatbots to answer questions and concerns from potential clients.
- Get accurate performance reports in your emails.
Marketing automation is really about standardizing and automating your processes. In return, you can save more time and use this time to deliver a more enjoyable user experience to your audience, keep improving your construction business, and expand your brand.
5. Blogging
Marketers will always agree that blogs offer a drastic increase in lead acquisition. So, creating a blog section on your website and regularly publishing new content can help you:
- Increase conversion by adding CTAs or Calls to Action to your blog posts. Entice people to download a lead magnet, join your email list, or avail themselves of your construction services.
- Improve SEO by curating content and targeting relevant keywords that can help drive more traffic to your construction website.
- Build brand authority by discussing niche topics from an expert view.
Structure a Powerful Inbound Marketing Strategy using Three Fundamental Steps
A successful and powerful inbound marketing strategy lies primarily in following three core steps.
1. Understand the cycle of inbound marketing
Well, first, you must know that inbound is typically divided into three cycles – attracting, engaging, and delighting.
- Attracting: This stage is primarily focused on content. This is where you need to produce and share blog articles, tutorials, videos, infographics, or anything that is valuable and makes so much sense to your target customers.
- Engaging: This part of the inbound strategy usually focuses on lead acquisition. Also, this is where social media shines, which makes it crucial for you to take advantage of social media platforms, as discussed earlier. Overall, the main goal in this stage is to deliver great customer service, showcase your best-selling points, and present true value for your customers.
- Delight: This stage is where you must pay attention to one crucial keyword – experience. The act of purchasing, the delivery of your services/products, and the support post-purchase are all critical for an inbound strategy.
2. Know your buyer persona much better
Now that you know about the inbound marketing cycle, it is time to answer this question – how can you be certain that you are attracting, engaging, and enticing the right people? The answer is buyer personas. Any inbound marketing strategy is based on buyer personas.
The more data you have on your current buyer persona, your messaging will be more accurate. With this tactic, your brand gains a real personality, ultimately creating even deeper connections with your leads that matter.
3. Focus on SEO
SEO is practically the backbone of inbound marketing. It is everywhere and is a crucial part of any inbound marketing strategy. Also, it is one thing that deserves more investment. Make sure to put a lot of effort into your SEO.
You can start first with having a well-structured website that focuses on usability and information architecture:
- Placing relevant keywords
- Optimizing tags
- Curating informative titles and meta-descriptions
- Optimizing photos for loading times
- Working on a responsive website
Start Your Inbound Marketing Campaign with ConstructionMarketing.io
Companies that understand the value of emotional connections and relationships with potential customers use Inbound Marketing. So, make sure to start designing your inbound marketing strategy the right way, especially since it’s already 2024! But how?
Your inbound marketing strategy is only as strong and effective as the people you choose to execute it.
At ConstructionMarketing.io, our full-service construction marketing agency consists of top talents – from writers, marketers, social media experts, SEO specialists, web designers, and developers. One of our many specializations is inbound, and we are capable of designing a strategy that allows you to achieve the following milestones:
- Improved your lead generation and lead quality
- Increased your website traffic from multiple organic sources
- · Higher rankings on various search engines, like Google
- Your construction brand becomes more visible
- Increased conversion rates and overall marketing ROI
Get in touch with us today and discover how we can help you with your marketing needs.