Just starting up your Construction Business? Here are five essential construction marketing tips to get you started and “open for business” in no time.
1. Use WordPress to build your construction website
When it comes to getting the right balance between professionalism, user-friendliness and functionality WordPress is an excellent website builder choice for start ups.
Yes, there are a lot of alternatives out there, including wix, squarespace and options provided by almost every website hosting company out there. WordPress is used by approximately 75 million websites, sufficient evidence in itself for its suitability for your new start up.
I chose WordPress because it is a platform that continuously adapts to modern website requirements, without demanding significant input or coding from the user. But here are the reasons I think you should be using it for your start up construction business
- It’s free to install on to your website hosting
- There are lot of free themes that you can customise to your business needs
- The premium wordpress themes (to buy) are incredible and can make your business look world class without any coding knowledge.
- WordPress works with plugins. The majority are free and you can literally plug in essential tools to your website, to really make your website successful. This includes:
- SEO optimisations tools such as Yoast
- Easy to use Free email newsletter software from your wesbite
- Social sharing tools
- Sliders
- Excellent blogging tools for publishing your latest products news and more
- Easy to embed dynamic content such as Youtube videos
There is a bit of effort required to begin with WordPress, but it’s the perfect choice for construction business’ eager to build a website that performs and easy to manage on an ongoing basis.
2. Testimonials/Reviews
Testimonials and reviews posted on your website are an essential tool persuading potential clients to do business with you. Like word of mouth, a recommendation by an existing customer can go a long way in convincing new customers you are right for them.
A lot of business’ offer the same or similar services and getting excellent testimonials and reviews can create a significant level of confidence in your products and services.
New visitors to your website will actively seek out testimonials and are likely to consult them before making any communication with you directly.
Ensure the most high profile testimonials appear on your homepage for maximum visibility and there is an additional website page of reviews from different types of customers for your viewers to read.
3. Construction project progress and result photos
Similar to testimonials, project progress and results photos provide proof to your potential customers that your start up construction business is capable of delivering an excellent standard of work.
The final build photos of your construction projects look great, but supporting progress photos add a genuine story to your construction marketing efforts.
Showing the development stages and your specific involvement makes your services appear more credible to new customers, and gives a clear indication of the standard of work that is being delivered.
There are number of companies from the construction industry working on each project, make your photographs more interesting and relevant by showing how and where yours were specifically involved.
Encourage site workers to take photos frequently and demand the highest quality pictures befitting to how you want your construction business to be perceived.
This type of content is fantastic for raising your profile on social media, which can also help to generate new business enquiries and awareness.
4. Social Media Automation
A successful start up construction business should not be spending all its time promoting itself on social media.
The focus needs to be on capturing paying customers to help manage the cash flow of your business.
Manual social media is a drain on your time.
However, that doesn’t mean your new construction business should neglect social media altogether.
Instead social media automation tools should be used to ensure your business has a social presence and enhance your online visibility.
Automation is highly effective approach for business’ in the built environment to deliver sustained, balanced social media marketing campaigns without risking the business’ day to day requirements.
Automation via tools such as Buffer, Dlvr.it and Hootsuite gives your construction business start up the opportunity to share content immediately or schedule it multiple times in the future across all of their business’ marketing platforms.
Work that would normally take up multiple hours throughout the week and would interrupt your regular schedule can be completed in a few hours in a single day, giving you one less thing to think about. Learn more about social media automation here.
5. Tell a Story
Achieving sales and getting new clients for your start up construction business is a lot easier if a narrative is adopted to promote the products or services you provide.
By placing your customer as the hero in your business or product related stories, you can also significantly enhance the performance of marketing campaigns.
The customer as a hero and your products and services as the stimulation behind them becoming a hero, can serve to convince customers that your business is the right choice for them.
Stories represent the perfect way to approach describing a new product or recent project, construction marketers could detail the process of how the product came to be invented or the stages of how a project was completed.
A story is also a very effective way of creating a personality for your business and engaging with an audience that have no prior knowledge of your business.
Given the technical details normally involved with construction products and services, telling a story can be significantly more effective as the first phase of educating potential customers who may be overwhelmed by technical specifications.
Combined with testimonials, stories, reviews and case studies you construction business start up has a strong foundation of creditability even if the company hasn’t been in existence for a long period of time.
Construction Marketing Tips for Start Ups
These are just a handful of marketing tips for your business start up, for even more check out last weeks essential construction marketing tools post for others you may consider. For additional support on construction marketing please contact me.
