How to make your Business ROAR
Small Construction Business Marketing Advice
Construction and building business’ can often suffer from appearing to be too small or being a start up with no credibility. It’s difficult not to be overshadowed and outmuscled by the industries big players and lack the financial firepower to do anything about it. However, being small provides its own advantages, including greater flexibility and being able to provide a more personal dedicated service. Small and start up construction business owners shouldn’t be overwhelmed and instead adopt these small construction business marketing tools to professionally bridge the gap between themselves and the major competitors.
Looking Established in the Construction Industry
Small and start up building business’ don’t need to invest heavily to give a better impression of themselves to potential customers.
It is simply a case of presenting themselves to the highest standard throughout all of their marketing activities.
This approach is known as omnichannel marketing, which is designed to make the process of selecting your products and services as effortless as possible.
Here a some great ways to make the buying process effortless through a consistent high standard of representation across all your construction business’ marketing:
Construction Marketing Essentials
Branding
Your building business’ branding is an opportunity to express to your audience what is special about your business. Effective branding helps to promote what makes you unique compared to the competition, your position in the market and the value of what you offer.
It is important for small and start up business’ to not leave holes in their marketing activities that may undermine the integrity of their brand. Adopting the following three features at the early stages, or from the beginning of a new brand being introduced provides a great foundation to further external communications with your customers.
Style Guide
The style guide is an internal document that all members of the internal/external marketing team will address when creating new literature, letters, presentations, emails and more. The style guide details exact colours for logos and design, text size and spacing that must be met to present the business professionally. By continuously utilising the style guide all communications will remain at the highest standard possible and ensure consistency. Failure to have a proper style guide in place, will inevitably lead to errors being made and the credibility of your marketing efforts being reduced.
The Logo
A poor logo can be hugely damaging to your business. Used in all of your external communications, a logo can make the difference between whether an individual chooses to approach your business, let alone do business.
Take Barratt Homes for example, there logo looks professional and gives a strong indication of what their business is about. The logo successfully passes the first stage.
The logos ability to be clearly recognised helps enhance its credibility. Imagine if Barratt Homes marketing communications started using different variations of the logo or changing colours without explanation.The audience would become confused and begin to question the companies professionalism.
Therefore, a well designed logo that is used consistently throughout all communications is essential.
A logo that can be clearly identified as representing your business is a great place to start. When approaching the design of your logo, think about what makes your business unique, how it will attract your customers and whether it is sending the right message about your business. All of these elements can help to create a more effective face for your business. Get in touch if you need support for your logo design.
The Small Construction Business Website
As a small business in the industry your website represents the best opportunity to “ROAR”.
Combined with a strong brand and logo, your website represents a platform where you can really emphasis the professionalism and qualities of your business.
Other business’ may have larger premises, more vehicles, more products and more staff but none of this matters when it comes to your website.
When people visit your website they see one page. The same can be said for your competitors. So it is up to you to provide an experience which captivates the audience provide the resources within that enable them to effortlessly make confident decision.
Your website will often be the first place your customer visits to guide their decision making process. Therefore, it is important to make it an enjoyable experience that encourages them to return or make an enquiry. Focus on the user experience and make it easy for people to find essential resources such as contact information, technical guides, literature and videos.
Essential Marketing for Small Construction Business’
With a small or limited budget at your disposal it’s important to prioritise marketing activities that are the most cost effective by prioritising maximum exposure at minimum expenditure. Here are some great ideas to get your business noticed. Remember to be consistent in adopting the company style guide and the logo throughout all of these communications.
1. Case Studies & Testimonials
As a small construction business cases studies and testimonials are the best place to start to give your business some much needed credibility. The chances of your business attracting new customers is massively enhanced by highlighting the excellent work you have done.
Professional looking case study documents and testimonials can prove to be even more valuable than complete technical literature in the decision making process.
2. Technical Brochures and Literature
Even if your start up construction business only has a few products and services to offer at this time, great looking literature in digital format, is an excellent way to showcase the professionalism of your business. A single expertly designed data sheet that looks the part may make all the difference and is certainly more beneficial than a word document.
Featuring images, descriptions, specifications, projects used and accreditations begin to create data sheets for all your products and services early on and build towards a bigger brochure that you may choose to print when finances become available. For support on producing technical literature and brochures get in touch
3. Create Video of On-site installations
Put your workforce to good use and get them to capture your products and services being installed and applied on real live projects. This type of content really showcases your business expertise.
Emphasise the importance of quality content to your team when capturing video and photos on their smartphones and adopt in-house quality assessment before publishing anything on your website.
With some minor touch-ups using adobe creative suite or other online tools video can be personalised quickly, hosted on your website and shared via social media and email.
4. Giveaway a FREE Guide on Your Website
Offering your potential customers a free resource in return for their email address, is a great way to build up credible leads for your construction business.
- Enhance the credibility of your construction business
- Maximise the opportunity to capture leads with a softer approach to your sales activities
- Be viewed as an expert/authority in your field
- A free guide is a pro-active marketing activity, that is less dependent on the customer making contact
- Make your website work for you
- A free guide is a long term marketing resource you can continue to promote
- GENERATE MORE LEADS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Contact us for assistance on producing a lead generation guide that will get you more business.
5. Email Campaigns and Newsletters
A well structured ongoing email campaign can provide a constant reminder to your subscribers of what is going on in your business. Email services such as Mailchimp represent great signup and newsletter services that can be set up to automatically send out email. As an added incentive the service is free up to a number of subscribers, which the only cost to you in the early stages is your time. It’s a great way to offer product incentives, showcase your business’ expertise and keep them aware of the latest company updates.
6. Social Media
The essential thing for small and startup construction business’ is not to spend all day promoting your services on social media. Instead be strategic and maintain a constant presence by promoting content from your website using automation tools.
Automation tools allow you to set up all your social media activity so it is published at set times of the day. The investment of a couple of hours of your time, removes the need to manually update social media at random times and also allows you to focus on more on the actual running of your business.
Social media should be used to promote all of your best content including product news, press releases and videos. The following articles provide some great advice on how get the most from your content using social media:
- 7 easy steps to refurbish you construction business’ social media
- Social Media: The Ever Changing High Street
- Prepare for Launch : How to launch construciton products and services on Twitter
Small Construction Business Marketing
It’s not easy as a small or start up construction business to make an impact. With these marketing tools at your disposal your building business can start to achieve recognisable traction and enjoy early success. In a future post I will highlight some of the marketing activities available to reach the next level of interaction and status within the industry.
