11 Construction Marketing Plan Strategies
Having a well-structured construction marketing plan goes a long way in gaining an edge in a highly competitive industry. With the right marketing plan, you can efficiently demonstrate the value you offer clients, generating more quality leads and retaining more current customers.
However, considering the numerous marketing avenues companies have at their disposal, developing a great construction marketing strategy can be a challenge.
At INDUSTRI we have compiled a list of 11 strategies that will help you, as a construction business executive, create the robust marketing plan your company needs.
11 Construction Marketing Ideas
Some of the leading marketing challenges various companies face include inadequate planning and undercapitalization. Your construction company or engineering firm might offer plenty of value to clients, but insufficient brand awareness can be a significant stumbling block to communicating that.
How can you develop an effective construction marketing plan that will help you establish and increase your company’s reach? The following strategies will help.
1. Define Your Company’s Vision and Mission
A mission reinforces the reason your company exists, while a vision describes your strategic view of the company in the context of its operational environment.
Why is defining the company’s mission and vision the first step in developing a marketing plan? Because your mission and vision will determine the direction your marketing takes both visually and verbally. Before knowing how to sell effectively, you need first to clearly define what it is your business is really good at and sell that. At INDUSTRI, we call it, “Branding the Benefit.”
2. Study the Construction Industry and Consumers
One of the leading causes of companies underperforming in their business development stems from selling services to the wrong people. Conducting in-depth research and analysis of your current market and target market will help make your marketing and overall construction business successful.
You do not need to break the bank to conduct your research. For instance, tools like Google Forms can help you collect data from your suppliers, employees, customers, and other industrial sector players.
3. Study Your Competitors
Developing your construction marketing plan should also involve assessing your competition’s marketing initiatives and exploitable weaknesses.
Begin by identifying your biggest competitors, then evaluate their website, content, and the marketing messages they are pushing. Consider looking into:
- The market segments the business targets
- The marketing channels they use and how they use them
- The uniqueness of their marketing plan
- How they employ modern construction technology
- Their market share
Doing so will help you get a sense of how your competitors position themselves in the market. It helps you understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses while enabling you to implement countermoves within your marketing strategy.
4. Perform a SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis allows you to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that your construction firm faces. Weaknesses and strengths are characteristics tied to your business, while threats and opportunities include internal and external factors that either positively or negatively impact your company, depending on how you react to them.
Performing a SWOT analysis provides you with an opportunity to improve your company’s weak areas and cement its strengths. It also enables you to exploit opportunities while shielding your business against potential threats.
5. Properly Position Your Construction Business
By identifying your company’s strengths and the possible opportunities you can take advantage of, you can better position your construction firm for success. Positioning the business determines how your target audience will perceive your brand and services.
While you will not directly use your company’s positioning statement in your marketing campaign, it will drive your overall construction marketing plan. The statement makes it easier for you to develop more focused and consistent strategies.
When positioning your construction business, you should keep certain factors in mind, including:
- Your target market
- Your company’s strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities
- Your competitors’ services and marketing strategies
6. Determine Your Initial Marketing Objective
While your company’s marketing strategy should ideally be a long-term plan that lasts several years, it is better to determine several short-term initial goals when developing strategies.
For instance, if you plan to run regular campaigns every year, it would be better to have not only an annual marketing plan but also a separate plan for each marketing campaign. Each campaign should have goals that must align with the company’s annual sales objectives and its overarching strategic goal.
Growth Marketing for Construction Companies
Ensuring your individual marketing campaigns align with your general strategy is easier said than done.
Through growth marketing, you can efficiently align all your marketing efforts. It helps get everyone on the same page, helping you avoid wasting time and money promoting a message that is not aligned with your business goals.
It begins with defining your desired objectives and outcomes. For example, do you want to increase brand awareness to become more visible, or strengthen your relationships with existing customers?
Write your end goal down, then come up with tactics that align with this objective. Next, establish metrics that will help you evaluate what works and what doesn’t work. Finally, ensure that you have regular check-ups to keep everything aligned, gradually adjusting these tactics as you get closer to your end goal.
7. Create a Marketing Budget
Your budget represents the most vital part of your construction marketing plan.
When planning your marketing budget, begin by performing a deep dive into the market research data. Assess the media habits of potential clients, then determine the estimated budgets you need to engage with them in those channels. Remember that your total budget should cover aspects like:
- Salaries for marketing personnel
- Paid advertising
- Building and maintaining the website
- Marketing tools like sales decks and brochures
If this is not your first marketing campaign, examine the historical data to identify each channel’s cost-per-acquisition. Doing so will help you determine the most effective channels to use.
A crucial step includes ensuring your campaigns do not exceed their marketing budgets and provide you with a solid return on investment.
8. Create and Maintain a Construction Company Website
Your company’s website is more than just a brochure. It often serves as the first place prospective clients and employees will go to get more information about a new business and the services it offers. As such, it is essential to create a well-designed site that offers clients the precise information they need.
What Your Site Should Include
Having a highly developed construction website will allow you to do more than generate quality leads. It will also help give your company its competitive advantage. When creating your website, always have your clients’ personas in mind, asking yourself:
- Who they are
- What solutions do they want or need
- What solutions do we offer
While having answers to these questions will help you determine the information to include in your website, other key elements should also feature. These elements include:
- Menu Bar: Including a descriptive navigation tool will make it easy for clients to find the information for which they are searching
- Chatbot: These automation tools help visitors get the answers they need without having to reach out to your customer service or marketing team
- Construction Blog: Regular blogging (article posting) is an excellent way to provide prospective clients with content that not only informs but also establishes your company as an industry expert while boosting your SEO efforts
- Call to Action: Include creative and descriptive calls to action to help you convert quality leads
9. Implement a Social Media Strategy
A successful marketing plan taps into the massive potential of social media. It currently provides an excellent way of reaching new clients and building brand recognition and loyalty.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Your strategy will depend on:
- Who your ideal client is
- The platforms they use
- The nature of the content you post
- When you post your content
For example, if your construction firm offers home interior refits, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter prove ideal for engaging homeowners. Alternatively, if you need to target Presidents/CEOs/Owners etc to land major construction projects, doubling down on your LinkedIn content marketing could be a beneficial strategy.
Besides reaching new clients, social media also gives you an excellent community outreach channel, helping you build relationships with your employees and clients giving them insight into your company’s personality.
Also, do not be afraid to include video marketing in your social media marketing strategy. Video remains one of the best mediums for content consumption, creating incredible conversions, especially when optimizing it for SEO in your marketing mix.
The key to capitalizing on digital marketing is doing your research on the platforms your target audience engages with most, keeping in mind the message you would like to put across.
10. Include Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is a strategy that involves spending money in order to get your construction company in front of your target audience. This strategy can quickly generate measurable results from your construction company’s marketing plan.
Reports show that traffic from pay-per-click advertising yields 50% more lead conversions than traditional advertising. In doing so, pay-per-click advertising can offer you greater returns on investments.
As always, remember to do your research before you allocate resources. Targeting the wrong audiences can waste a lot of money, quickly depleting your marketing budget.
While you have several options to invest in, when including paid advertising as part of your marketing’s wider strategy, consider investing in any, or all of the following:
- Google ads
- Facebook ads
- Instagram ads
- Display ads
- YouTube ads
11. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Successful marketing plans involve establishing key performance indicators as well as tracking and measuring the progress you make. Let’s review the most essential indicators to include in your construction marketing.
- Leads
- Email marketing leads
- Sales growth
- Customer acquisition cost
- Customer lifetime value
- Website traffic
- Incoming website links
- Website traffic-to-lead ratio
- Social media reach
- Social media engagement
While not all these KPIs will need assessing, it is vital to regularly keep track of your campaign’s performance, making adjustments as needed.
Streamline Your Construction Marketing Strategy
Developing a construction marketing plan plays an integral part in streamlining your marketing strategy and goes a long way in helping you improve sales and gain a competitive advantage.
Considering the increased competition in the construction and industrial sector, and given current market conditions, improving your storytelling and aligning your marketing functions has never been more crucial to your company’s success. While this is often not as straightforward as you might like it, INDUSTRI can help.
At INDUSTRI, we remain committed to delivering strategic brand positioning and marketing services that help your marketing campaigns achieve your desired goals. Backed by years of experience, we have developed a process that breaks down the best practices of construction marketing into three steps.
- Step One: We begin by creating your company’s brand, defining and visualizing the main idea that will resonate with your target audience.
- Step Two: We create relevant content that consistently communicates your brand message, turning every engagement into a branding and selling opportunity.
- Step Three: We then determine the value of your clients, ensuring the cost of acquisition does not exceed it.
When your marketing story does not align with your company’s sales strategy, your marketing efforts will fail to perform optimally. However, by following these steps and capitalizing on efficient project management, the right answers will emerge, enabling you to implement effective strategies with lasting effect.
Brand advertising is a mature science. While you can find well-documented practices to help you achieve your desired results, tapping into INDUSTRI’s experienced team gives you the best possible chance of effectively applying these practices.
Get in touch with us today at 212-634-9383 Ext. 701 to learn how we can help you develop an optimized construction marketing plan that will help you drive sales and win more of the work you want to win.
