There’s no denying marketing in the construction industry is key to your business’s success. Creating an online presence that drives new business to your website is absolutely crucial in the construction industry today. Luckily, you don’t need a digital marketing agency, instead take advantage of the wide range of digital marketing tools available at your fingertips.
To help get your digital marketing wheels turning, we’ve rounded up five digital-driven ideas to get you started:
1. Take Advantage of Free Google Products
When it comes to ranking in search engines, there’s no surprise that Google reigns supreme! But did you know Google also offers a full range of digital marketing tools to support your business needs?
Google My Business
Free advertising on Google with Google My Business. Yes, you read that right! Just by setting up your Google My Business listing, you’ll reap the benefits of getting your business featured on Google search results as well as Google Maps. Your Google My Business listing is a powerful tool to share images, service descriptions, business hours and more with absolutely zero associated costs. Activate your Google My Business listing to kickstart your digital marketing campaigns.
Google Analytics
Track the performance of your web pages, keywords and more with the Google Analytics tool. Google Analytics makes digital marketing for contractors, and home improvement pros alike easy. It can provide you with all the data and insights you need to effectively analyze your website traffic and measure your advertising ROI. It truly is the most efficient tool to assist you with your contractor’s digital marketing.
Google Trends
You don’t need a degree in marketing to implement an SEO strategy for your construction business, just a little bit of help from Google Trends! Identify the top keywords for your business and industry, monitor keyword popularity throughout different regions, run comparisons between multiple terms, identify trending keywords and receive recommendations on new keyword terms. Talk about SEO for contractors made simple!
2. Pay to Play with Effective Digital Advertising
Taking advantage of the right paid digital marketing campaigns goes a long way to build your construction business and improve your overall lead generation.
Use Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Help put your business at the top of Google’s search results with pay-per-click advertising. While search engine optimization (SEO) takes time to improve your website’s rankings, PPC helps residential contracting businesses hit the first page of Google immediately. Through a combination of the right key terms, ad copies, and audience targeting many pros see a growth in their web presence and ROI.
Give Remarketing Campaigns A Shot
Ever notice that little advertisement that follows you around the web after you’ve left a website? These are called remarketing banners and they are highly effective in the realm of digital marketing in the construction industry. Remarketing banner ads are designed to remind your audience of your offerings and drive traffic back to your website. By targeting only people who have previously interacted with your business, you increase your chances of converting visitors to leads.
Run Social Media Ads
Social media platforms are a great way to connect with your business’s audience. But if you’re looking to reach your target homeowner audience fast, putting some cash behind your social content takes digital marketing for your construction company to a whole other level. Through social media advertising for the home improvement and renovations industry, you can build brand awareness, increase traffic to your website and generate more leads to help close more jobs. There are a variety of different advertising options depending on the platform, just make sure to advertise through the networks that are most popular with your targeted audience to improve your results.
Mind Your Budget
Implementing paid digital marketing tactics is a great way to drive lead generation, but it comes at a price. Create a realistic budget for online advertising that works for your construction business, and stick to it!
A couple of ways to maximize your budget to its full potential include:
- Identifying and Target Your Audience
Get specific when targeting your audience through your ad campaigns—narrow your audience by location, age demographic, profession, interests and more. For example, if you know your target market consists of homeowners between the ages of 30-65 living in Edmonton, with an interest in home decor, home improvement, and kitchen renovations, use this to your advantage when selecting your ads targeting options. - Offer Promotions Through Your Display Ads
Reminding your audience of your services is great, but offering them an incentive (such as a discount on services or complimentary consultations) can do wonders in guiding them back to your website. Display ads are small graphics composed of text or images that promote your brand messaging. These strategic graphics are used to advertise your company on relevant third-party sites, engage your target audience, and direct them to your business.
3. Optimize Your Company’s Website
Creating a website that works for you should always be the top priority. Optimize your website’s performance through content, images, and page responsiveness to improve your site’s user experience and better your lead generation.
Build a website that drives leads with the following 3 steps:
Apply The Right Keywords
Ranking for keywords that best fit your business and industry is a sure-fire way to help market your construction business online. You’ll gain greater exposure to potential clients and receive more clicks on your site from your targeted audience. Don’t forget to use Google Trends to pinpoint the best keywords for your business and use them authentically within the content on your site pages.
Optimize Your Images
Sharing high-quality images through your website is an extremely beneficial digital marketing practice. After all, they say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Uploading optimized images of completed projects, building materials, and your team can help build trust amongst potential clients. However, when large image files are added to your website, they can slow down your page load time, test your user’s patience, and increase your site’s bounce rate (users who leave your website before performing any actions).
A couple of helpful tips for optimizing your construction business’s website images:
- Compress all images before uploading them to your website. This will decrease the file size without impacting the image quality. Try www.tinypng.com to help you with compressing images quickly!
- Use industry-relevant keywords in image meta-tags and descriptions. A meta-tag is a short description that summarizes the image and page’s content and helps Google accurately index your web pages on the search engine. Using key terms in your meta-tags and descriptions will help your images better appear in search results and improve your Google search rankings.
Create A Responsive Website
Gone are the days of stationary web browsing from a desktop. From laptops to smartphones, to tablets, and even voice search with Alexa, there are more ways than ever to search the world wide web. In fact, a whopping 40% of all internet traffic in Canada comes from mobile or tablet browsing. Responsive web design means building and maintaining a website that is fast, mobile-friendly and user-friendly to get the best results for your business.
4. Develop a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
Without a comprehensive content marketing strategy, your digital marketing efforts won’t get you very far. Provide your audience with relevant, engaging and useful content to build a loyal audience that converts into homeowner leads.
Create Engaging Content
In today’s digital marketing landscape, crafting engaging content for your target customer is key to building successful construction business. Frequently producing new and valuable content provides your audience with a reason to return to your website time and time again. This helps improve your website traffic, search engine rankings and most importantly your lead generation.
Consider creating and sharing posts on topics such as:
- How-to and DIY tutorials
- Current home renovation, repair and design trends
- Safety tips for residential construction
- Reviews of popular building materials
Remember to include relevant keywords and a strong call-to-action statement to encourage your reader to convert into a new lead for your construction business.
Produce Video Content
Videos are a highly effective way to facilitate engagement between your audience and your construction business. They are quick and easy to consume, accessible and can be shared for free across a wide variety of platforms from Facebook to YouTube.
5. Register Your Business On Digital Directories
Marketing your business on digital directories is a cost-effective way to get your construction business in front of more project-ready homeowners.
Join HomeStars, Canada’s #1 Online Home Improvement Network
Get your construction business in front of millions of homeowners with HomeStars. With all the right tools to build your construction business, reap all the benefits HomeStars has to offer!
- Gain exposure to the 9 million homeowners who visit HomeStars every year
- Take advantage of the 1 million leads that are sent to our pros every year
- Win more jobs with a strong online reputation backed by HomeStars moderated reviews
Get Started with HomeStars Today!
With moderated reviews and exposure to thousands of homeowners, HomeStars is the perfect solution to jumpstart your business’s digital marketing efforts. You’ve got the skills, we’ve got the network, together we’re unstoppable. Improve your digital marketing presence to grow your business with HomeStars. Click here to get started.
