The range of digital marketing methods available to businesses simultaneously allows for a great degree of versatility in campaign approaches but a certain expectation of which route they should take. This pre-established route might vary based on the type of industry that a business finds itself in, such as construction, but neglecting this path completely might be seen as just ignoring established paths toward success.
Knowing what this route is for your own industry though means that you can find flexibility within that formula, carving out campaigns that make the most of what has come before without sacrificing that more individual edge that you want to be apparent in your branding.
Creating Your Branding
The first step is creating a brand that’s capable of standing out. Importantly, this doesn’t mean that you make decisions that look as though they’re trying to be different from the norm for the sake of it —you want reason to drive your decisions, after all. However, when your customers need a construction job done, they’re going to have so many options at their disposal that you have to ask the question—why should they choose you? Many of your competitors are going to be larger and more established, and this means that you need to be capable of offering something that they can’t.
Supporting Small Businesses
If the approach that you take is one that tries to use your smaller size to your advantage, you have to make sure that you lean into the proper areas. For example, if it’s about supporting the local economy and smaller businesses, you might want to make certain pledges and have values that also support those aims. It could be that you make yourself present at local events and networking gatherings (a good opportunity to make connections and spread your branding further), or it could be that you encourage incentives that integrate you further in the local community—hiring locally, for instance. It might be that you also think about using local suppliers so that you’re providing more business to people in the community.
Going Green
It might be that your competitors have more resources than you, as well as a more established reputation, but they might not have the kind of up-front, moral fiber that you do. Making quality and customer service core aspects of your branding is important, but it’s hardly unique. Environmentalism, on the other hand, is a topical issue that might turn some heads, and it gives you a way of putting a unique spin on your own brand of construction. A sustainable approach might require a change in the way you do things and the materials that you use (lest you be accused of greenwashing), but if the result is that you become a pioneer or a positive example, it could be money well spent.
The Affordable Option
One obvious way of standing out from the more established crowd could be by presenting yourself as a more affordable option. This could help to compensate for your relative lack of experience and might give audiences a reason to choose you. This might have a knock-on effect when it comes to your branding elsewhere, perhaps coming with the connotation that you’re going to offer a reduction in quality, but it at least gives you a foot in the door. Another difficulty that you might have is pricing your services in such a way to be affordable but still high enough that you’re making a profit. This has to be done in tandem with your market research so you can adjust the price based off the kind of business that you can expect to get.
Increasing Visibility
Once your branding is up to snuff and you have a confident website to draw your audiences toward, you’re in a good spot to start marketing in full. After all, you don’t want to try and get your name out there before you’re even sure of what kind of message you’re trying to convey. A firm and clear approach to your brand can help to encourage customers to think that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re a safe choice if they choose to work with you.
Social media pages might be seen as an extension of your website, and these can be a good of increasing your visibility. Finding communities and groups that share the kind of audience that you’re looking for can help you to create content that has a chance of getting shared here, and once you’ve drawn the right attention, visitors can flock to your pages and see what you’re all about. From there, it’s only one small click away from your main website (provided you’ve linked this in with your social media pages) and this means that customer conversion is close at hand.
Even then, you might think of taking a more proactive approach. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the more popular methods around for increasing brand visibility, using optimized blog posts to have your brand appear more regularly in search results. Simply seeing your brand pop up more and more might lend you an air of credibility among audiences who hadn’t heard of you up to that point. If the content also persuades them to do some digging into what you’re offering, that’s even better. However, even if that time doesn’t come immediately, you’ve done enough to make an impression and increase awareness of your brand—something that’s important even if you only see the results further down the line.
User Reviews and Quality Results
The best marketing of all might be simply providing a high-quality service. Word of mouth carries a lot of weight, and repeated positive testimonials from past customers are one of the best ways of getting new customers on board. The difficulty is visibility. Unlike something like SEO, this isn’t a form of marketing that thrives in getting the good word out there, but it does carry a big impact. This is especially true for user reviews which are entirely under the jurisdiction of third-party platforms and the customer. If people who have worked with your business in the past go out of their way to say something positive about the experience, people reading this might feel as though it says a lot for how capable you were. The same is true of negative reviews too, of course, but even these offer some valuable feedback, and give you a chance to reply (either clarifying a point or being humble and apologetic if there was fault to be had).
In order to get these reviews in the first place, though, you need to make sure that your structure is in order. Even if you lack the resources of larger competitors, being targeted with the parts of your business that you bolster can provide a strong result. A coordinated and skillfully trained team that knows how to work well with each other is perhaps the most important element, but they need the right tools, meaning that knowing a supplier where you can affordably get everything from aggregate materials to heavy duty concrete machinery can make all the difference. Lastly, a routine, rhythm and structure that enables patient efficiency can bring all these disparate elements together.
Video Marketing
One of the marketing methods that is perhaps most popular in the digital age is video marketing. The sheer number of different platforms that enable video content means it’s not hard to see why, but when you extend that further into the widespread nature of smartphone use, it becomes clear that this is a quick and stylish way to make an impact. Construction as an industry can lack of some of the flair that makes other industries more exciting to general audiences, but this might mean that you lean on conveying information in a simplified and useful way (while still leaving some room for presentation).
Style of Video
This is understandably a difficult needle to thread, however. Do you try and make it funny? Do you go for a more sincere approach? Perhaps just dry information can prevent the feeling of audiences feel as though they’re being talked down to? It’s about knowing what’s right for your brand and what kind of marketing would work best for your own target audience. Including the caveat that more information can be found on your website means that you only have to include the most important information here, but a sense of charm and identity can work wonders for having audiences feel compelled to find out more about you.
Versatility of Video
Short-form video marketing is perhaps one of the more currently popular forms of content. Its quick nature means that this type of marketing can get in, make its point, and leave, all while making an impression on the viewer that will linger for a long time to come. The good news is that this doesn’t even mean that you have to make an entirely different video—an edited and condensed version of a longer video means that one piece of content can be adapted to multiple forms.
