It happens to every contracting company. You reach a point where you can only grow so much from personal referrals alone. To expand, you must create more public awareness of your business. By building a construction marketing plan, you can put your business on the road to greater prosperity.
5 Steps to Planning out Construction Marketing
1) Set Goals
Just like building a house, you need a blueprint to do construction marketing right.
Start by figuring out what your objectives are.
- Do you want to raise brand awareness?
- Are you looking to generate new leads?
- Do you want to hire new employees?
By developing well-defined goals, you will be better able to develop a strategy to reach your objective.
As legendary New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once said: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
2) Do a SWOT Analysis
A simple SWOT analysis can be a tremendous help with developing a marketing plan. This four-pronged analysis will give you a picture of where your company stands at the present moment.
The Parts of a SWOT Analysis
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
After performing a SWOT analysis, you will also see how your business stacks up to the competition.
3) Define your Target Audience
In marketing, knowing your target audience is half the battle. Your construction marketing plan will be more effective if you are able to identify a specific group of people you are trying to reach.
Your target audience is a group of people who share common characteristics, like:
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Profession
- Income
To help identify your target audience, research your current customers. It’s likely they share similarities that can help you develop marketing materials that will appeal to them.
4) Do Competitor Research
Before you get started with social media posts or any other type of marketing tactics, take a look at what your competitors are doing. There’s probably a lot you can learn from other companies in the construction industry. For example, you might get inspiration from reading a competitors’ blog posts or Twitter feed.
5) Make a Strategy
Now, comes the fun part. After all this legwork, you are ready to put all your construction marketing ideas into an actionable plan.
Build out a list of strategies and tactics that you think would appeal to your target audience. Depending on your business size or type, there are many different marketing options available today, including:
- SEO
- Social Media Marketing
- Blogging
- Email Marketing
- Pay Per Click
Your company could use any or all of these marketing strategies. In fact, they work best when used together.
For example, you could publish a blog, share the link on Facebook and then include the information in the blog in an email newsletter. Whatever strategy you choose, remember to align everything with your initial goals.
Once your campaign is live, the real work of construction marketing has just begun. Since marketing is now mostly digital, you will be able to review and update everything as it happens to craft the perfect campaign.