It’s just a fact that in this day and age, we spend a lot more time online, and can perform many more of our important tasks online. You can pay your bills, check your bank balance, shop, and even pay off your credit card at the touch of a button. (Or a few). A whopping 25% of the entire population uses social media! This is almost hard to wrap your head around.

With consumers spending so much of their time online, this gives businesses the potential to evaluate and match their habits with the use of marketing research, and reach them in a variety of unique and effective ways. We know that construction companies have traditionally been slow to get on board with the latest social media fads and trends, giving your company an opportunity to shine if you’re looking to embrace social media marketing and online marketing! And why wouldn’t you? 34% of marketers have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy, which is integrated into their entire marketing strategy.

These new advances have inevitably changed the way people seek out and apply for employment. Having a strong web presence will, naturally, bring you closer to your prospects and desired customer base, but can also help you to eradicate a common issue within the construction industry. With people turning to the ease of using the internet within the comfort of their own homes, companies have learned to adapt to capitalize on this new trend by utilizing various job posting forums to seek out and attract the talent they want. It’s well known that construction companies often find themselves in need of skilled labourers, and typically have an immediate need for them in order to complete their projects. Depending on phone calls and resumes to appear when you need them the most isn’t enough – you need the help of social media marketing to assist the hiring process and make sure you have a constant stream of talented applicants. So, how do you make sure you don’t get stuck with too few people when you have to meet those deadlines that always come far too quickly?

 

 

Embrace Online Job Posting Forums

here are literally hundreds of forums to utilize to advertise any open positions you may have. Embracing Indeed would be an ideal place to start – as far as job posting sites, Indeed is the most popular one in the world. There are options to post for free or to sponsor your advertisement to reach more users and increase the volume of applicants you receive.

Glassdoor is also one of the largest hiring websites, though it isn’t free to use. Though this may seem surprising or unusual, Facebook is also a great way to post your job online at no cost and to interact with your applicants on a personal level.

Due to the frequent need for help in the industry, periodically posting ads to one or more of these forums would be ideal to ensure you always have a sizable amount of recent, qualified applicants in the event they’re needed with short notice.

With an unlimited amount of forums and social networks to choose from when you need all hands on deck, including some new ones, you can begin to eradicate the issue of insufficient labour so it becomes a thing of the past for your company!

 

Be Active on the Right Social Media Platforms

It is well known that construction companies have been slow to embrace newer social media channels, and only utilize a few, sometimes inefficiently. In fact, only about 45.1% of contractors report using social media!

When applicants perform research on your company to determine whether or not the environment will fit their needs, having a strong online presence will be both encouraging and will provide them with the necessary information they need to make an educated decision.

Furthermore, clients are looking for you online, too; people do make phone calls to request quotes and estimates, but you can’t wait around for the phone to ring to keep your workflow steady. Without a concrete presence on social media, your construction company will pale in comparison to others in the construction industry that has developed a unique, strong presence online.

If you’re like most with nothing more than a Facebook page you remember to update once a month, you’ll be surprised by the number of platforms that are on the rise, and how easy it is to take advantage of them! Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Periscope are all great platforms, who’s numbers have grown drastically in recent years – Periscope is a particularly interesting one to focus on. It can be especially useful for your construction and social media marketing strategy; plus, it’ll appear innovative to your prospects. With Periscope, you can:

  •  Go live at any time from wherever you are
  • Be interactive with your viewers
  • Post video content with a lifetime of 24 hours

So, what can you post with Periscope? You can live stream your various projects throughout the building and designing process, your meetings, the creation of blueprints or your finished products, even safety training tips – there’s endless opportunity there! Get creative, and create video content that will get you noticed, and help you to stand out in the saturated market.

This is a fun way to showcase your individuality as a company, and interact with your prospects and existing clients – plus, they can interact with you through the app, too!

While we’re on the subject of video content, we shouldn’t forget to talk about the video giant, Youtube. Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world next to Google and was purchased for 1.65 billion in 2006, giving you the potential to rank highly on Google’s search pages and yield solid SEO results. Youtube has launched in no less than 88 countries and is the third most visited site after Google and Facebook. In addition, did you know that 43% of new customers buy something they saw in a YouTube ad? You’d be crazy not to take advantage of these statistics!

So, why does all of this matter? It just so happens that people are constantly looking to YouTube for DIY videos, and other assorted entertaining content you can’t find on live television. In fact, YouTube processes 3 million searches per month, and about 300 hours of footage are uploaded to Youtube every minute. There’s a reason it’s so popular, and there are so many opportunities to make the popularity of the platform work in your favour!

Think giving tips for certain projects, doing demonstrations, showing your audience how to complete certain things on their own time with their own materials. It may seem strange to give free advice to your prospects instead of attempting to convert them into clients, but doing so is a great way to build trust and credibility with them. If it goes well, you could even consider doing a series!

As a contractor, it would be smart to look into Houzz, the niche marketplace, directory, and online community for discussing and planning home design. There are a plethora of qualified homeowners 90% of Houzz users own a home!) along with local industry professionals that have the ability to engage with one another, ask and answer questions in the public discussion forum, and share insights and experience from and within the industry.

Answering inquiries and providing quotes and advice within the public discussion forum will help generate both visibility and credibility for your construction company. Of course, in addition to increased exposure, there’s the potential to convert a simple inquiry into a customer once you make that personal connection. Speaking directly to them and providing honest responses to their questions will display your experience, motivation to help, and trustworthiness.

Need more motivation to look into using the site? Houzz currently has 40 million users, 1.5 million being local professionals. In addition, Houzz showcases no less than 9 million products to 25 million unique monthly visitors. For a newer platform, these are promising numbers!

 

Consider Remarketing

Remarketing is a great tool to keep your company fresh in your client’s mind! Here’s how it works:

  •  Your prospect visits your company’s website, presumably looking for information
  • Your prospect clicks off your page to continue their research – a lot of people naturally look at multiple companies before making a final decision
  • When on other pages, an ad for your company will continually pop up that encourages them to go back. Or, at least, keeps you in the forefront of their mind!

 Did You Know?

  • Retargeting on Google’s Display Network reaches more than 90% of all internet users everywhere
  • Only 11% of users report having negative feelings about remarketing
  • Web site visitors that have been re-targeted by ads are 70% more likely to convert back to your website
  • 46% of search engine marketing (SEM) professionals think retargeting is the most underused online marketing strategy
  • Retargeted customers are three times more likely to click on your ad than people that haven’t interacted with your business before. 

These are promising numbers! Not to mention retargeting gives you multiple chances to connect with your prospect, instead of having one shot that could go either way.

 

Utilize Paid Search

Success in the construction industry has historically been driven by the building and maintenance of interpersonal relationships, creating a good reputation with your clients and upholding it, and building awareness for your brand through various positive interactions with the community.

Like most industries, the looming presence of social media has made the construction industry increasingly competitive; your reputation is important, but it isn’t everything anymore. If no one can see you, your reputation can’t save you – even reputable companies can easily lose out to companies with high rankings in the search results, simply due to the effective nature of SEO.

Paid search can help bring you to the top of the results, and this is impactful for a lot of different reasons. If someone is from out of town and looking to do business, your company will stand out at the top, opposed to being buried in pages of search results that most people don’t bother to sift through. In fact, 75% of users don’t scroll past the first page of results. Being at the top builds credibility for your organization, and will help with your lead generation.

As we approach 2019, it may be time to stray from the traditional Google, Bing and Facebook methods of paid search and utilize newer paid channels that have been currently driving the professional industry.

LinkedIn factors into this list, and while extremely effective, is more for business targeting – it’s much less useful as it pertains to construction. However, if you can get creative and make it work, give it a shot!

Snapchat, however, could prove to boost your ranking with a younger audience. Snapchat provides similar benefits to that of YouTube, allowing room for creative video content that will engage your prospects. Snapchat, unlike YouTube, has a variety of filters, borders, and lenses that can be utilized for more fun, energetic way of marketing. The same tips apply; you can post how-to stories that have a lifetime of 24 hours.

Of course, going with traditional Google Adwords is just as effective. Here are some stats to prove the worth of pay per click!

Now, we’ve touched on both SEO and PPC (pay per click) at this point. Some assume they’re the same, and while each method provides a similar result as it pertains to search engine results, the two strategies themselves differ greatly.

PPC is paid advertising that requires a marketing budget. As stated in the name, your company pays for every click your website generates.

SEO is based on strictly organic traffic, making it far more difficult to boost yourself to the top of the results. With SEO you have to earn your place up there and keep it, too. If your construction company has the time, investing your time and resources into an SEO strategy is a great idea, not to mention cost-effective!

Hopefully, these four ways will help strengthen your online presence, and, by association, increase your lead generation and following, and find great employees to keep your team strong!