Most construction companies begin with referrals.

You’ve used word-of-mouth for years to generate business, you’ve got a loyal customer base, and things are going pretty well.  However, you eventually realize word-of-mouth may not provide the rate of growth you’re hoping for, or even sustain your business during slow times of the year.

You try online marketing ideas you’ve seen other businesses use, and perhaps even hire someone to help. However, incoming leads don’t meet your expectations. Leads are coming in too slow, or not the high margin projects you’re hoping to attract.  You may not even know how to measure results of what you’ve done thus far.  And, although you’ve had frustrations you believe that digital marketing is still the key to growing your business.

Create a Strategy with Budget

The problem you’ll face is that there is no silver bullet for creating growth in your market.  Taking a step back creating a clear strategy using sound business practices is best. Each channel is coordinated with the others to stay on message, and each using a clear call to action.

Setting a budget is part of developing the plan and helps set priorities – giving a clearer sense of guidelines as to what you are willing to invest in, and what you aren’t. Creating a framework based on lead conversion rate, and expectations for growth in the coming year will help clarify your overall strategy.  Professionals helping you with marketing will also be better able to make projections that fit into your goals.

I’ve mostly seen companies use the “spray-and-pray” method – a mix of social media, search marketing, and lead gen portals to generate business.  However, without clearly defined business goals, and strategy, it just creates frustration.  Or worse, creates the feeling that it’s not possible to drive lots of business through marketing. This will help guide your process of creating a plan and budget.

Decide what you want to be known for

I worked with a contractor whose business performed many types of services (remodeling, custom builds, tenant improvement, etc.), but as we dug deeper it became clear the highest margins and easiest to execute jobs were yard drainage system installations. Since it was in high demand in their area, we decided to position that service as their specialty.  It was a huge success for them.

If you market several types of services to everyone, you could waste a lot of money.  You probably should be focused on serving a specific geographic region. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tap into the successful strategies used by major contracting businesses to get better results locally.

Define what you’d most like to be known for when building a strategy. Then, create content and offers for that market. This will help you stretch your marketing budget, and your company can focus on projects that are more rewarding and profitable.

Develop Worthwhile Content

Recently I worked with a company who knew it was beneficial to have a blog section on the site, so hired a college student to create and post articles. With little direction, or budget, this student published topical information twice a week to the “Blog” section of their site. After reviewing some articles it was apparent they were of very poor quality, and Google Analytics reports confirmed my opinion – nobody visited those pages on their website for more than a minute.

To position your company as an authority it’s essential to have unique, thoughtful, and helpful content. Low-quality content generates low-quality leads, since the prospective customer has nothing to determine value of your services other than price.  Illustrate how you’re an expert and clients can justify paying a premium.

Content can include:

• Portfolio Photos – Before & after photos are common, but try to show intermediary steps as well. Hire a professional photographer, since these photos may need to be used for brochures, lead-generation portals, and trade magazines at a later time.
• Informational Articles – Educate your clients about the process, and why paying a premium for your service is worth the money. Blog posts are often used, and posted on social media to drive customers to the site.  eBooks are also a great way to generate leads, since the prospect has to give their email to receive the booklet.  Be sure to have quality information so the client doesn’t feel like they’ve wasted their time.
• Featured Projects – Advertise your work with stories about recent accomplishments, or case studies related to your business, are a unique way of showing off your work. These can often be leveraged for PR distributions.
• Educational or Testimonial Videos – Potential clients are often searching for videos for research on an upcoming project – especially for construction.  Anyone watching these videos are highly qualified leads, so recommend they visit your site afterward to get their information.  Quality is important, but you don’t need a professional film crew.

Optimize Your Website

All marketing leads to one place – your website.  All social media, lead generation portal pages, even print and radio ads should drive traffic to your site.  Formerly used as a type of brochure, contractor websites are now collecting data and sharing wisdom with every visit.

If your website is not enticing visitors to stay longer, leave information, and view multiple pages it isn’t engaging them enough. Put yourself into the clients place and ask yourself what you would be interested in reading.  Personalize it with information about your staff. And, craft content in such a way that prospective clients may want to spend a few moments reading and learning – not wasting their time.

Follow-Up with Clients & Prospects

Once you’ve executed one or more methods to drive traffic to your sites, and perhaps months or even years of doing business, you should have a significant database of prospects that either expressed interest or have made paid for services.  While you continue growing this list of prospects, one of your biggest opportunities is to stay connected with these leads by continued communication.

Additionally, if you’ve been regularly attending networking events you may have a large number of potential partners by now. These are also very important opportunities for new business by keeping your brand top of mind.

When creating a marketing strategy it’s tempting to ignore all the leads and contacts you’ve made over time, and just work on fresh new leads. But, setting up simple processes to store lead information, and engage at least once a month with these prospects can yield not only new business but referrals. Cost per conversion overall is very low once this process is made routine. Just be sure to add value to each correspondence, and always lead to the website.

Next Steps

Many contractors won’t have time or the expertise to create processes for rolling out weekly/monthly campaigns, and keeping up on reporting or optimization.  Trades Leader is here to help with developing your strategy, and helping create a schedule for implementation.  Maintaining these standards will help you get more attention on search engines, and help you get better word of mouth referrals from prospects researching a solution. Results don’t happen overnight but over time you’ll see a measurable difference.