How To Make A Successful Construction Company Marketing Plan[Bonus: Free Marketing Plan Templates]

It’s a cliche, but it rings true – fail to plan, plan to fail. Check out how a solid brand and promotion strategy can take your construction business to a new level.

As a construction company owner you’re open to taking on more business or growing your customer base, right?

As countries and markets reopen, your industry is ready to boom again with demand for new builds and home improvement projects rising in 2021 and beyond.

As the economy rebounds from the pandemic, the construction industry is set to grow by 1.4% in 2021 which means more chances to bring on new clients and start new projects – but only if people can find you.

And how do you make sure you’re found by the right people?

Marketing.

Aside from getting new customers, marketing (and a solid marketing plan) can help you:

• Maintain your current customer base
• Advertise current and new construction services
• Outrank and outmaneuver your competition (and siphon their clients)

A construction company marketing plan isn’t a silver bullet or quick fix – it should solidify the efforts you’re already making and amplify them with new tactics to make it easier for your ideal customers to find you.

If marketing or operational tasks are not your strength, creating a complete plan can sound downright dismaying. But don’t stress, because that’s why we’ve put together this guide to help you focus on putting an effective strategy together without putting strain on your resources.

In short, yes.

So many tradies follow the time-honored traditions of networking, referrals, and word of mouth to generate new business. And while these are excellent ways to get quality leads, they’re also restrictive by their very nature.

There are only so many person-to-person connections that can be made, compared to digital marketing which has the potential to connect you with thousands of new contacts every day.

And you better believe your competition are using digital marketing to get ahead (try Googling their name to see how many pages and reviews and mentions they have online). So you’ll need more than the traditional tactics that have worked over the generations.

That’s where digital marketing comes into play – if you use it properly. You’ll want to think like your ideal customer and consider how they might try to find a company like yours.

Let’s say you’d love to take new customers who are looking to renovate their older home. How would they go about finding you? Sure, they might call friends or ask a neighbor who worked on their house. 

But even after that, they’re probably going to take to the internet to do their research – which is why 93% of online experiences start with a search engine.

As you increase your online footprint, your ideal customer is more likely to come across your information. This can look like:

• Searching Google with something like “home renovation near me”
• Visit to your website based on info from a friend
• Flipping through construction company listings on Yelp
• Commenting on a friend’s Facebook post about their own project

Getting ahead of yourself? Click here to discover the step-by-step roadmap to starting a (successful) construction company

Sure, a marketing plan can supercharge your business growth, but there are some approaches that can slow that growth down or work against you in the long run. 

Here are some mistakes to watch out for (and flat out avoid), when you put together your construction company marketing plan. 

Mistake #1 – You’re creating a plan without hard numbers

You want more customers to increase business a lot. 

Great! 

But what does that actually *mean* to you? 

Can you define what a 10% increase in sales would be? And do you have the resources (i.e. staff or equipment) to support this kind of growth?

You need to know what you are striving for to make sure you don’t overspend on ads, too. If one out of every five free estimates you do turns into a customer, then you can figure out exactly how many leads you need to hit your sales goals. 

Struggling to land sales? Click here for 15 little-known sales strategies that dominate the construction industry

Mistake #2 – You’re advertising too widely

Chances are that you service a specific area. 

It might be a town, cluster of towns, or even an entire county. Local businesses can waste money and time advertising too broadly to people who might need a contractor but want one near to them. 

Make sure that your efforts are local. 

Most advertising platforms will let you narrow down who sees your ads with geotargeting. For your website and online listings, make sure your location and service area are clear to weed out anyone too far away. That way, you won’t spend on ads or spend time on estimates that will cost you more.

Mistake #3 – You’re limiting yourself to just one thing

Finding something that you know works is a wonderful feeling. 

Putting all of your marketing eggs in one basket only for it to die out over time is not. 

A solid marketing plan will tackle getting new customers in more than one way.

Start out with a blend of digital and traditional marketing. Within each, you can also diversify how you spend. Google ads and Facebook ads, for example, are both geo targeted online ads, but the user intent is quite different. 

One might work well for you while another may not. Or both might turn up new customers, which you would never find out if you stick with just one platform. 

Keen to expand your SEO? Click here for the beginner’s guide to construction SEO

As you start your marketing plan and look to get the ball rolling, you’re bound to run into a few road bumps.

The good news is that by being involved and aware, you can take the edge off of their impact.

Here are a few challenges you could run into as you are writing or implementing your construction company marketing plan:

Data can seem boring, and analysis sounds even worse. 

But they can also guide growth with limited unnecessary time and expenses. Defining what success means to you and what your goals are is a perfect place to start. 

And nearly every successful marketing plan will include these four types of analysis:

 SWOT analysis

This marketing-speak acronym helps you see the potential for success (or failure) in your business plan. It’s made up of four components:

• Strengths: What is your company exceptional at, or what makes it stand out?
• Weaknesses: Which areas of your business need improvement to operate successfully?
• Opportunities: Where can you take advantage of the weakness in your competition?
• Threats: What are you missing that your competitors already offer or excel at?

Market analysis

Take a look at the bigger picture in your industry and area of service. By understanding actual opportunities for growth, you can figure out if your goals are realistic. Start by asking some of these questions:

• What does the demand for services like yours look like in your particular locale?
• How many competitors do you have locally? How many just started up recently?
• What do you define as your target customer and how many are there potentially in your service area?
• Is there growth in your industry and/or only for specific job types?
• What does the average customer pay for services and is your pricing in line with these trends?

Competitive analysis

You also need to know what you are up against when it comes to competition. More than knowing who you are competing with, you need to understand why you lose bids to others in your market. 

One way to do this is to dig into each competitor and explore which services they are offering, how they are positioning their brand, and what they seem to be telling customers. Does it align with your own message, or can you make yourself stand out in marketing?

When you do lose after providing an estimate, follow up with those individuals and ask why they chose to go with another provider. You might get some really interesting feedback that can help continue to shape your understanding of competitors on an on-going basis.

Budget analysis

As the old adage says, to make money you have to spend money. But you don’t want to spend more than you have, or more than you need, to bring in new business. 

As you get ready to set your marketing budget, make sure you understand your current cash flow. How many jobs do you have in a given month, and how much profit do you bring in? Do you know how much it cost to bring in that new customer? 

Not sure what to spend on marketing? Click here to learn the 10 steps of a profitable marketing budget

With the dos and don’ts outlined, you’re ready to start creating your marketing plan. 

Avoid wasting time or missing opportunities with our 8-step guide to putting together a strategy that fits your business. 

 #1: Define your vision and mission

This is going to sit at the core of your plan and every action you define should be a step to make this happen.

It can help to be specific here. 

Don’t just jot down that you want to increase your customer count. 

How many customers do you want? Does the number of customers really matter, or do you just need to increase overall revenue by a certain number?

Your mission can also be about more than just new sales. 

Perhaps you want to be known in the community for both quality work and a commitment to local causes. This will factor into your marketing message and branding just as much as your ad spend. 

 #2: Identify your target audience

We’ve talked a lot about knowing who your ideal customer is. 

It’s time to put this in stone now and make it as specific as possible. Aspects for defining this include the following:

• Location: Town(s), zip code(s), counties
• Profile: Homeowner, renter, building manager 
• Building type: Residential, commercial, industrial
• Project needs: New build, tear-down, renovation, addition, storm repair
• Project budget: Minimum customer spend to make the project worthwhile
• Subcontracting needs: Electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing
• Demographics: Language, job title, motivation, income, family status
• Search tactics: Possible keyword matches, phrases, or search platforms

 #3: Check out your competitors

Now let’s see not just who your competitors are, but what they are doing for their own marketing. 

Do they have a website? If so, what are their hits and misses when it comes to explaining what they offer?

When you search the terms you’re thinking of advertising with, does the competition come up? Try searching “construction companies near me” or your own services and see how your competitors are positioning themselves. 

You can decide what works, what doesn’t, and how you can change your own marketing to stand out. 

This can also have an added benefit when it comes to your overall business strategy. 

Construction can be a bit of a vague term to start with. What exactly do your competitors offer? Do you have specific services that you can then create more targeted keywords for? Consider the competition for something like “construction near me” and “mid-century home remodeling near me”. 

 #4: Optimize your website

First and foremost, make sure you have a solid, professional website. 

DON’T HAVE A SITE YET? You can create one in less than an hour with Pedestal. the website builder for construction companies

From there, your website needs to be search engine ready.

All of the keywords your customers are using to find companies like yours should be incorporated in your website copy. The simplest way to do this is to break out your services into separate pages. This makes it easier for search engines and customers to find what they are looking for. 

To get even more technical, you’ll want to make sure every page has a title tag and meta description. This makes it easier for search engines to know exactly what your content is about. That way, they’ll be more likely to recommend it as relevant when potential customers go looking online. 

 #5: Plan your blogging strategy

Blogging is a great way to show off your credibility in the construction industry and give Google (and other search engines) more content to work with. 

The goal here isn’t to throw in any old keyword, but the *right* keywords to help potential see that you know your stuff. 

A blog strategy should include:

• Regular posting frequency
• Topics that match target customers
• Copy with keyword inclusions
• Articles that show off your expertise

 #6: Invest in paid advertising

You’re now ready to explore paid ads. 

Most often, this takes the form of digital advertising (because billboards and newspaper ads don’t have the same reach as Facebook or Google, which connect you with massive audiences). 

For example, you can pay for ads on Google, which will point users back to your website or designated landing page. These can be shown in regular results as well as Google Maps (which users rely on 86% of the time to find local businesses). 

You can also use remarketing, which positions ads to be displayed to potential customers who leave your website to browse elsewhere. This can keep your message top of mind as potential customers casually consider the options for their construction project.

Every local construction company marketing plan should look to make use of local service ads. With this option, Google gets your message in front of people searching for services exactly like yours, and you only pay if they call you through the ad itself. 

 #7: Engage via social media marketing

Social media might not be the place people go to find a new contractor, but we all spend hours on these platforms. 

So why not advertise where everyone is spending their time? 

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offer different options for geotargeting and narrowing down your audience based on profile information. For example, you can get your name in front of homeowners in your town. After all, you never know when they might be ready to take on a project. 

Keep in mind, engagement is more than just advertising. 

By having a social media account on the biggest platforms, you can benefit from the built in SEO they offer. You can also turn these accounts into communities where you engage with customers, answer questions, showcase current and completed jobs, post pictures, and collect customer reviews. 

All of this can have a positive impact on your marketing plan and your brand awareness.

 #8: Track your success

All of this planning and spending is no use if you can’t track how well it is performing. 

You don’t want to keep spending on Google Ads if no one is clicking on them. You also don’t want to keep sinking time and money into keywords that aren’t getting you a lot of traffic.

Define what success means to you and your business. Then, make sure that you can confirm this success for every marketing initiative you have in place. For example, your website can be set up with Google Analytics to show you how many people visit each page and how long they stick around.

Advertising platforms are able to tell you how many people see your ads (impressions) and how many engage with them (clicks). If these numbers are high but the estimate or sales requests for them are low, you might need to make some changes.

With these steps, you should be able to create a solid draft for your marketing strategy. 

And if the thought of starting with a completely blank page is off-putting, never fear. There are a number of free templates you can use online to get you started, making them your own based on your construction company. 

• Mayple Marketing Plan: Great for tracking spend and success 
• More Business Template: Includes 20 pages with a complete sample
• UMass Amherst Worksheet: Lets you fill in answers to build a complete plan

There’s nothing stopping you from running a few Facebook ads to try and drum up interest in your services whether you specialize in building homes or demolishing them, but if there’s no strategy behind those ads then you’re wasting money.

So how will you know if you got your money’s worth or if your ad got in front of the right people?

The proven strategy is to take the extra time to create a construction company marketing plan. 

Even if you feel like business is slowing or you’re in a hurry to add sales, creating this blueprint will pay off in the end. This means you should:

• Understand what your company can, or can’t, tolerate when it comes to marketing expenses
• Define who you need to advertise to in order to generate sustainable revenue
• Analyze and compare your competition to understand what marketing channels work for them
• Optimize your digital presence (website and social media) to maximise exposure
• Build genuine relationships with your audience to cultivate a loyal (and paying) customer base

A well-thought-out marketing plan can help you make sure every effort lines up with your goals and business needs. From there, you can create consistent messaging directly from people to a professional website with a clear call to action whether it’s to request a quote, get a free estimate, or call you!

Looking for help with a winning marketing plan? Save yourself the sleepless nights wondering if your plan will work and contact our experts for a custom marketing plan that’s guaranteed to bring in leads

Click here to explore our full range of digital marketing services and schedule your free consultation