It can be frustrating when you did try your best to reach your target clients but have nothing to show for it. One of the reasons could be that you do not have a plan or structure for your marketing initiatives. This is exactly what marketing funnels can offer you and your construction business – a structure.
So, for this blog, we will discuss what a marketing funnel is and its importance, with a complete guide of how to create one for your business.
Marketing Funnel Explained
A marketing funnel is a roadmap laid out by a particular company to guide potential clients from their first interaction with the brand to becoming paying customers. This roadmap typically consists of content marketing, social media, SEO tactics like Keyword Research and many other digital marketing tactics. While the concept itself seems basic and simple, marketing funnels are somehow complex for many reasons, including:
- There are various marketing funnels to pick from (SEO, social media, etc.)
- Your clients might be presenting different pain points.
- Each client has a different level of awareness (Some people have heard already about your brand and are looking at some options. However, they do not know that you have a wide range of construction service offerings)
With all that being said, it is easy to understand how crafting a marketing funnel can quickly become very complex. Moreover, here’s an example of a marketing funnel that travels from one point to the other:
- Blog content post > Email List > Conversion
- Facebook Ad > Landing Page > Conversion
- Influencer Social Post > Landing Page > Conversion
If the majority of your target audience chooses to reach you online, you need a marketing funnel for your business, whether you know it or not. But here’s an important thing to keep in your mind – while your marketing model/funnel might appear quite clear and straightforward on paper, it is not always linear in real life. There are often jumps and regressions as people go thru your marketing funnels.
Why Your Construction Business Needs a Marketing Funnel?
The term funnel may be confusing or foreign to you if you are new to marketing. Good thing that it is generally easy to understand. Once you have understood everything, the application will be the next stop. A marketing funnel is powerful once you begin implementing. This concept can take all your digital marketing efforts from unpredictable and random to effective and consistent.
Creating and sticking to a well-structured marketing funnel means all your marketing efforts are functioning/working in unison. Bear in mind that the goal of an effective marketing funnel is to guide your potential leads from one stage to the next. That will make it more compelling for them to do business and negotiate with you.
Here is a hypothetical scenario showing how a marketing funnel could work:
· Someone searches for “different types of construction services” via Google.
· Because SEO is a significant priority in your construction business, a blog post about that particular topic shows up closest to the top search results. And so the person searches click the link to read more.
- Consequently, they like the blog post and begin to trust you as an expert on this subject.
- In addition, you have provided a free download so that anyone can learn more about your construction service offerings. All they need to do is to input their email address.
- Upon receiving their emails, you can now begin reaching out to nurture them as your potential client.
- You have set up some automated emails that cover more about types of construction services. These should be written to provide value to the users and establish brand loyalty.
- Once you have sent these people a few helpful emails, it is now time to ask them to become your client. Make sure that your last email explains how your construction business helps them in their needs.
- Before you know it, they are impressed with your blogs and emails that they decide to partner with you. And just like that, you get yourself a new customer.
Upon reading all of it, it was evident that it is quite a lengthy process comprising multiple steps and touchpoints. Hence, you should build a system and take a marketing funnel seriously that attracts and send customers to you.
Your Guide in Creating a Marketing Funnel
1. Understand your Target Audience
The first step in crafting a marketing funnel is understanding your target audience. You have to know who you want to target even before making a marketing funnel to target and convert them into paying clients. To understand your target audience, consider web analytics data, site audits, social media, surveys, etc.
This is to understand your customers even more on how they behave and interact online with your construction website so that you can form a marketing funnel roadmap.
2. Identify the Number of Stages in Your Marketing Funnel
Once you fully understand your client’s journey before availing of your services, you can now determine the various stages in your marketing funnel. After all, the marketing funnel is just a way to direct more people in the right direction on their journey. Thus, your customer’s journey map will become the basis for forming the stages of your marketing funnel.
To explain things in the simplest way, consider the three-stage marketing funnel first.
- Awareness and Interest (Top) – The goal at this stage is to reach more and more people and have them aware of your construction brand and evoke their interest.
- Desire (Middle) – This is the next stage where the client already knows about your construction brand and is interested at that point. However, he might not be sure whether or not to avail your service offerings.
- Action (Bottom) – So, this is the final stage of the marketing funnel. This is where the prospect has already purchased intent. On the other hand, you have to close the deal.
3. Add Marketing Tactics to Every Stage
Once you have figured out the stages in your marketing funnel, the next step will be determining which marketing tactics to utilize at every stage. Remember, you can establish a marketing funnel as long as you think fit, depending on your target clients. After doing that, you can begin thinking about every stage in more detail.
Below are some of the most known marketing tactics utilized at various marketing funnel stages. To make it simple for you, we choose to consider a primary three-stage funnel:
Top of the Funnel
The most commonly used marketing strategies for this stage include:
- SMM or Social Media Marketing aimed at increasing traffic to your construction website.
- Blog posts and other valuable content like a guest post to acquire more organic search traffic.
- Paid ad campaigns to reach your target audience in the most accurate and fast manner.
- SEO techniques aimed to get more organic and referral traffic to your website.
- Videos are also practical content formats to attract more prospective clients at this stage.
- Host contests and giveaways to reach more people and get more online visibility for your construction brand.
Middle of the Funnel
This is the stage where the leads will either engage more on your content or leave perhaps. Below are some of the most popular marketing tactics you can implement in this stage:
- Leverage user-generated content to build trust in your brand and provide social proof.
- Invest in Conversion Rate Optimization for your construction website to engage your visitors longer, causing to direct them to the right service pages.
- Case studies show how you helped other clients and anything that benefits your services and products.
Bottom of the Funnel
This is when leads with a clear intention of availing services are present. And all you ever have to do is give them a nudge in the right direction. Here are some marketing tactics under this funnel to help you close the deal.
Provide discounts and offers to encourage your target audience to use your services.
Use remarketing to target the audience who visited your website or interacted with the brand.
Free product trials and demos are a great way to entice your target audience, nudging them to avail of your services/products.
Are you ready to begin your Marketing Funnel?
Understanding the marketing funnel for your business is just the beginning. You should make it an actionable and consistent part of your marketing efforts in order to achieve the results you want! Making a strategy document and continuing with random social media posts and emails is not enough. That is easier said than done. Marketing funnels are very powerful, but making an effective one takes dedication and time to work.
So what do you exactly do if you do not have the time and knowledge to start your marketing funnel? Well, we recommend you to partner with us. Here at ConstructionMarketing.io, we got your back!
Creating marketing funnels is at the central core of what we do. We do our best to work on something that is best for your construction business regarding digital marketing. So if you are ready to build and execute a solid marketing funnel, contact us today. We want to hear from you!