INTRODUCTION
Construction companies are rapidly seeking and embracing digital transformation as the device-driven economy takes over today’s business interactions. In our work with construction clients and building out their construction marketing plan, we’ve found that construction companies who approach marketing the same way that they would approach a physical project have much higher success. Construction companies are rapidly seeking transformation as the digital economy takes over today’s business transactions. In construction, you can’t start without a blueprint. In marketing, this blueprint is called a Marketing Plan. Having a well-structured construction marketing plan goes a long way in gaining an edge in a highly competitive industry. While a comprehensive marketing plan could include a nearly endless list of goals and initiatives, we believe these five elements are the most important to increasing qualified leads and getting your company name in front of the right decision-makers. You’ve worked hard to build a strong brand and business, but did you know the slogan “on time and on budget” doesn’t set you apart anymore? It’s the qualifier in today’s market. What sets companies apart is quality and proof of workmanship through testimonials such as word of mouth and reviews. So how do you go to market in a highly competitive marketplace? Here are five elements you can incorporate that will help your construction company go to market:
TLDR SUMMARY
1. Goals (SMART)
What are your goals for marketing? Defining your goals is the first step to an effective construction marketing plan. If your goal is to attract new website visitors, you may want to invest in paid advertisements. If your objective is to grow your email list, you may want to focus on your webpage experience. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. In order to develop SMART goals, you need to look at the past performance to get an idea of where you were successful and areas for improvement. Some questions to consider as you set your goals are:
Did you get more leads last year?
Where did those leads come from?
Where in your sales channels do leads fall off?
Did you have good leads that didn’t show up for the next step?
Are your goals customer retention or expansion?
Example Scenario: Garret Co. gained 300 new leads last year, 5 scheduled consultations, and 1 booked a deal. This would indicate Garret’s sales team does a great job closing the deal once consultation is scheduled, but improvement could be made to the process of getting leads to schedule consultations. Example Goal: Increase consultations from 1.6% (current 5 consultations divided by 300 leads) to 5% (15 consults) of leads over the next 10 months. Whether your goal is to increase leads by x%, or control more market share, the core of a successful construction marketing plan is ensuring each goal is SMART so you can track progress and measure success.
2. Market Assessment
After setting SMART goals for your construction company marketing plan, take a step back to objectively look at your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). You want to get honest about where you are compared to where you want to be, and have line of sight on what your competitors are doing, what’s working for them, and where the gaps are in their marketing. For example, if Garret Co. is a commerce company, Garret’s SWOT analysis will look something like this:
After having a good idea of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, Garret will also want to do market research on their customers. Market research is the process of gathering information about your potential customers. It helps you define your buyer personas and target market and understand the viability of your business by answering questions like:
Who are they?
What are their buying and shopping habits?
How many of them are there?
Exploring your ideal customer’s problems, desires, and current solutions, will help you build your product, service, and strategy to better serve them.
3. Persona Buildout
Persona building is a fancy way to say you should know who your ideal customers are. Persona build-out is a practice that helps companies create avatars that help put a face to a concept. You’ll create a different buyer persona for each of your idea target audience members that may have different company titles, goals, concerns, questions, and challenges. For example, if Garret’s core customer is a stressed-out general contractor with too many irons in the fire who found using breakfast food delivery to get his men to work on time (or early), Garret’s core customer would look something like Michael Kruger in the example below:
Building high-quality personas in your construction marketing plan allows you to create very targeted marketing that’s relevant to your buyer. Relevance is what each buyer is looking for when making a purchase, and you’ll utilize your buyer personas to create messaging that’s specific to each one.
4. Message Development
Once your construction marketing plan goals, market assessment, and persona build-out are complete, it’s time to develop your core message. This message needs to articulate who you are, what you offer, and what makes you stand out from competitors who are offering the same goods and/or services. For example, if Garret is creating messaging for customers like Bob, core messaging might sound something like:
“Crews arrive early when breakfast is served.”
“Don’t lose man hours over breakfast burritos.”
“Jobsite food solutions so your men want to show up early.”
“Food truck without the lines.”
Drill down into what you are known for and want to be famous for, then make sure this message finds its way into every piece of content from your website to emails to socials. Ask these questions when developing your core message:
Who you are and what you do
Who specifically you do it for
Why you do it
The results/experience your clients can expect
The unique value of working with you
There’s a lot of noise out there and being able to articulate your core message clearly, concisely, and consistently is the only way to stand out.
5. Implement And Measure
Marketing implementation is the process of turning your marketing plan into a reality. This is the “putting into action” of everything you worked to build in elements 1-4, and where you see marketing in action. For example, we know that:
• The gap in Garret’s sales volume is converting leads into consultations.
• That a core strength is one-hour delivery, and that they need to reduce cost in order to eliminate weakness. • Cost can be reduced by increasing business volume.
• That their core customers are stressed out field managers that need quick food delivery to maximize production time.
• That once their core customers know about their service, their close rate is a stunning 20%.
This means if Garret’s delivers their value proposition more clearly and succinctly to other busy field managers in the initial advertisement and organic messaging stage, they can massively increase their consultations and close at approximately 20%. Garret’s then hires an experienced agency to help them build a digital presence that reflects their improved sales message, website, and SEO to implement their marketing plan. Their new marketing partner deploys, redesigns messaging, and tests again, each time incrementally improving consultations as a percentage of leads. With this data, Garret’s leadership is able to know where to pivot and reallocate resources. The result needs to be measured against the goals set out as the first element, and measuring these results enables you to make intelligent decisions for the next round.
“Construction companies who approach marketing the same way that they would approach a physical project succeed more often.”
CONCLUSION
THINK OF THIS AS LEARNING FROM EACH BATTLE TO WIN THE WAR. The construction industry is changing rapidly. If you feel like you’ve hit a plateau to generate more leads, send us a message. Estes Media is the leading marketing agency for construction companies. Get your FREE personalized marketing plan here.
