Many construction companies are good at what they do, yet they have trouble building awareness of their brand. This month, we received this question in our Construction Business Owner LinkedIn group:
We are a general contracting/construction company. How can we best market ourselves and get our name out there?
“What you have to do is provide a consultant services kind of approach. If you’re going to be in a given market, position and market yourself by writing papers and giving speeches. In other words, you need to go out there and talk about your approach and how you can help. And then what you have to have is ‘dominant proof.’ Dominant proof is when everyone has the same conclusion. … When you provide value to a client and say that your building will be 12-percent more energy efficient than most buildings, for instance, they’ve got to be able to call your clients and hear, ‘Yeah, we got at least 12 percent.’
When you have this kind of information and you can support it, then you need to write articles and get in front of people. Go do your networking and talk to clients. Go where your particular client is. One mistake contractors make is that they try to be a contractor to everybody. ”
Ted Garrison
Ted Garrison’s Construction 3.0 Strategies
“Today, customers find you via a search engine. The trick is to rank on the first page—if possible, [one of] the top three positions. Why? Because no one looks beyond page one of a search engine results page. There are many actions required to achieve high search engine results. Proper meta-coding is the most basic requirement, including meta descriptions, title tags, image or alt tags and header tags. Building landing pages for key search terms you wish to rank for is important. Submitting sitemaps to search engines and building back-links to your website are important. Every website should be submitted to paid and free website directories that will be indexed as a back-link. Effective blogging and social media support search authority. YouTube and Google+ are critical to search authority. Most construction firms do not have the technical expertise to accomplish this internally. Web development and search engine optimization are services with many vendors but few that have deep expertise. Ask for references and examples of other websites.”
Neil Brown
Chairman, Construction Marketing Association
“Whether you are a large or small company in this industry, there are several ways you can get your name in front of potential customers as well as keep top-of-mind for existing customers. Social media is one of the fastest ways to spread news and information across multiple channels while reaching a broad audience. With several outlets to choose from (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, blogs), you should choose the online platforms where your potential customers are most active.
Another way to get your message heard is to draft and release newsworthy information to the local and regional media within your industry. Some examples of newsworthy information could be a company anniversary or milestone achievement, an employee’s participation in an industry association presentation or a new product or service demonstration at an upcoming industry event. Keep in mind that your news should include good photos and details about the announced new technology, product, service or event.”
Wendy Ables
Marketing and Social Media Manager, Constructive Communication
