Learn how to generate construction leads online for your company with these digital marketing for construction strategies and tactics to grow your business.
Lead generation for construction companies is hugely important, but due to the stiff competition within the industry, it’s often difficult. A business card or a simple sign on the road just won’t cut it these days. The online world is far too profitable and opportunistic to ignore.
Unlike many other industries wherein much of the “work” can be performed online or from a distance, construction-based work is majorly done on-site. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on local search results. Ensure your business is listed on every nearby online search directory you can find. Some of the best free business directories that you should ensure your business has a presence on are as follows:
- Apple Maps
- Google My Business
- Bing
- Yelp
- LinkedIn Company Directory
- MapQuest
- HubSpot
- Yellow Pages
- Super Pages
- Thumbtack
Now that you know some sources you should appear on, let’s dive more into depth.
Here is how to generate online construction leads for your business:
1) Inbound Marketing
As opposed to digital outbound marketing, which forces itself into the view of the prospect in the form of traditional media and paid advertisements, inbound marketing, also known as content marketing, means that the quality of content you produce will naturally bring leads to you.
You want to produce content that your audience will find useful. Your audience is anyone in the home service/building industry, therefore, this shouldn’t be too hard. People in this industry tend to enjoy content such as how-to guides, tutorial videos, home-improvement suggestions, before and after renovations content, common home-building mistakes, and anything else you believe you can provide your knowledgeable expertise in.
Examples of inbound marketing include blog posts, videos, webinars, and eBooks that potential clients will want to read, find valuable and educational, and hopefully encourage them to view your company as credible. Additionally, be sure to include content on topics that are unique to your company while maintaining professionalism; don’t be afraid to show personality!
2) Website Optimization
Your website is your front page on the Internet; it’s how your clients “meet you.” Therefore, your site will be the platform by which prospective clients will take advantage of your inbound marketing efforts. Optimizing your website will not only ensure that potential clients find your content quickly, but that they also view you as a professional and be more inclined to stick around.
Don’t have a website? We build websites for construction companies.
Here are 3 ways to optimize your website:
A) Search
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website will be the bread and butter of your efforts. Google is constantly crawling and ranking search results and websites using their system Rankbrain, which allows you to play a role in where your content lands in this process.
By adding one particular relevant keyword or phrase to your website (and per piece of content), making sure it loads fast (use Pingdom Website Speed Test to find out your website load speed), and making your website convey professionalism, you’ll generate website visitors that stick around longer and check out more than one page.
Common SEO tactics include boosting your social media activity (which is also an easy way to connect directly with potential clients), improving your DA (Domain Authority) score through appearances on other sites, applying special keywords to documents (which can be easily found using tools such as LSI Graph), and optimizing your website, article, and image metadata. Search engines will take notice of these aspects and place your website in higher slots on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
In order to keep track of your optimization and website traffic efforts, be sure to install a service such as Google Analytics. You will be able to see data such as demographics, CTR (Click Through Rate), time spent with your content, and whether or not website visitors choose to interact.
B) Content
As mentioned earlier, providing high-quality content is essential when generating quality leads. Be sure to create content that’s up-to-date and accurate. Content that provides answers to specific queries is why people will visit your website and is what will keep them coming back for more.
Take a moment to consider the clients you currently have – what kind of questions do they ask you? Are they curious about how the process works? Do they want to know how to build things? Are they inquiring about where you obtain your materials?
Additionally, creating content that answers common questions will mean people will be more inclined to recommend your website. People trust their friends more than any piece of content you could create, and shareable content makes for easy referrals!
C) Conversion
When you begin to see traffic on your website, it’s important that you give these prospective clients clear instructions to take the next step through lead magnets. Lead magnets are call-to-actions that prompt people to either contact you about their construction needs, provide steps to receive a free consultation, display incentives, or simply to opt into your newsletter to follow along on your content creation. Don’t let your website get lost in the competitive shuffle.
Ensure that every page of your website, including your content pages, have these lead magnets. Keep in mind that it often takes users a few times of viewing them before they’ll take action, so be sure to place them in more than one location!
3) SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Search engine marketing is the process of purchasing ads on search engines. When utilizing this process, consider whom you are targeting. In addition to potential clients, be sure to create ads geared towards companies you want in your referral network, such as realtors.
Below are the basics of SEM as well as some things you can do to get your content shown more frequently in high-traffic locations:
A) PPC (Pay Per Click)
PPC, sometimes considered in conjunction with CPC (cost per click), is a branch of SEM that allows advertisers to display ads for their products or services to potential clients that search for relevant topics.
What makes PPC unique is, as its name indicates, construction companies are only charged for the placement of an ad when a user clicks on the ad. While this sometimes takes the form of a fixed price charged per click, most often it is handled through a set daily budget. Then, depending on how often the ad is clicked, the price per click will adjust accordingly. Tools commonly used in this process are Google Ads and Bing Ads, for Google and Bing search, respectively.
The incorporation of PPC then begs the question, if advertisers are only charged when someone clicks on their ad, how do they ensure that their ads are shown on a SERP in the first place? Well, given the nature of the model, advertisers cannot pay more to have their ads shown over their competitors; therefore Google has implemented something called the Ad Auction that determines the relevance and order of the ads.
So basically, keyword your ad correctly, keep on top of your ad data, and watch the clicks roll in.
B) CPI (Cost Per Impression)
Similar to PPC, CPI is when construction companies are charged for their ads. This will only happen when their ad is displayed to a viewer. In this way, it is similar to traditional media such as newspapers, in which a newspaper will charge for ad space based on readership and reach.
High traffic websites offering CPI advertisement space may choose to measure ad impressions through CPM (Cost Per Thousand). For example, an advertiser would only be charged $5 for every thousand impressions incurred on the ad.
To measure the success of these ads, advertisers will compare the number of impressions to the number of clicks on the ad, and come up with the CTR, shown as a percentage.
C) SEO
Search engine optimization is essentially a free form of SEM, therefore SEO and SEM are oftentimes seen as separate entities. However, given the nature of SEO and the similarities it shares with SEM, it will be an important part of your marketing strategy. As with your SEM ads, SEO involves specially curating your content and website so that they show up on search engines such as Google.
4) Social Media Marketing
Social media can be a large contributor to lead generation for a construction company. If you are not active on social media, you are missing out on the opportunity to connect with potential clients. Social Media allows companies the opportunity to share their industry knowledge, connect with other construction companies, build brand awareness and answer questions from potential clients.
It is important that you regularly post on these platforms to ensure that you do not go dormant. It is a good practice to post engaging and insightful content that benefits your audience around twice a week.
Considering social media is increasing in popularity by the day, it is important to stand out from your competitors. One method that construction companies can utilize is by getting referrals, reviews and recommendations. After each client you serve, ask them to leave you a review on both your social media pages and a Google review. Not only will you be able to build trust from the community to generate new clients you will also be able to improve your services from the feedback given.
Digital marketing consistently provides qualified leads. If you are using social media to generate leads for your business, it is critical that you properly set up Google Analytics to ensure you collect the most information possible from users who have clicked on your ad and visited your website. It will also allow you to determine which pages from your site are generating the most traffic, so you can optimize your website.
Looking for ideas on how to generate online leads for your construction business? Schedule a Discovery Call with Sheldon today to get started. We’ll help you create a campaign that gets results and gives you a great return on investment.
