The industry is saturated, and the competition is cutthroat – in the construction industry, you need to identify a niche in order to survive, and in order to maintain your niche and remain profitable, you need to stand out both online, and in the field.
With the pressure of meeting deadlines, communicating ideas and guidelines with clients, along with making sure your work is fresh, unique, and completed on time, the act of showing off your work for the purpose of lead generation and branding can feel like one extra thing on the to-do list that can be left on the back burner. Unfortunately, in the interests of successful client retention and to capture the attention of your prospects, you have to show your work to prove that you have what it takes, you can get it done, and if you’re lucky, that it’s better than the competition out there!
This can seem quite daunting if you don’t know how to properly go about putting your work in view of the world. Taking photographs of finished products for your following is good, effective, even, but the competition will be doing more, meaning you should, too – so, let’s think outside the box, and share your unique projects with the world!
Moving Through Time
People have become increasingly interested in the process and procedures of things, opposed to just the finished product. Think of all the television shows out there featuring how various things are made, and the science behind it – if people are curious, capitalize on this curiosity to show your clients the true value of what you do.
A great, creative way to do this is to film the entire project from start to finish – document the beginning stages, and the entire process of building a school, a dream home, a hospital, or flipping a dejected home into a habitable one. The real-time transformation will be stunning, even to you and your team! This also has the potential to get an emotional response from your clients, especially if it’s a project that has a specific meaning to a certain client, or group of people.
This will showcase both the quality, and the complexity of you work – clients often only get to see the finished product, and aren’t always around for the life cycle of the entire build. This will open their eyes to your talent, efficiency, and hard work – plus, it’s interesting to watch!
Busy scenes also look great in a time-lapse video; you can show your crew rushing around, building the project from the ground up, illustrating small, crucial details that are often missed in real-time. This kind of content is good for strong user engagement, and is very shareable on social networks!
In addition to being compelling for your prospects, time-lapse videos are also extremely cost-effective – in fact, they can cost you absolutely nothing aside from the cost of promoting them on social media. Your potential clients will love to see this type of content, and so will your existing ones!
Choosing What You Want to be Known For
You’ve identified your niche – something you’re good at, know everything about, and effectively deliver on every single time. Perhaps you’ve chosen project management as a goal, or interior design, cement production, roofing, electricity and lighting; whatever it is, you need to display to your audience that you’re successful in your efforts of making it happen for each and every client, and produce content that proves this notion.
Once you’ve chosen the company mission statement and message that you want to put on display for all clients to relate back to you, make sure aspects of this are incorporated into all the work you put out online.
Have you decided to focus solely on interior design? Make all of your blogs, posts, statuses, and content supportive of content that supports your niche; post content that speaks of trendy developments in the industry, including colours, furniture, patterns, etc. Your target audience will quickly begin to associate your brand with this chosen niche and view you as a trusted expert in your field.
You’re in control of your brand, and how your audience views you; in order to achieve your brand goals, you’ll need to showcase and own your niche online.
Show a New Perspective
We mentioned time-lapse videos earlier in the blog, which provide a fresh perspective on what you and your team can do.
Drones, however, are an even more effective way to provide a fresh, almost startling perspective of the work you’re proud to show off to your clients. In fact, the use of drones in the construction industry has grown 239% in 2018 alone!
Drones give close and personal insights into areas of your finished project that would otherwise be left unexplored without that up close and personal look – you can see the tops of buildings, and travel along the perimeter to glimpse all the finite, intricate details along the way. This will give prospects a glimpse of the stunning view, unique and different angles, into high windows and doors, and make you appear more innovative to your prospects.
Using this advanced footage is far more superior than just taking traditional photographs, and posting them online – it provides an exclusive look into a project, and clients love exclusivity, and detail!
Have a Countdown
What builds more suspense than a well-done countdown? If your firm has a big construction project that’s close to being unveiled, you can use social media to drum up some hype for it, and build the excitement in the days, even weeks leading to the unveiling.
This will naturally increase user engagement, along with giving your following more reason to frequently interact with your page.
If you do decide to count down, make sure it’s to something big – you may want to put the focus on a project that’s been time-consuming and a long time coming in order to really gauge user interest.
Have the countdown on all social media platforms – you can add a live countdown to your website that will count it down to your visitors in real-time, and post day by day countdowns on all platforms your company has an active following on; Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Periscope, and add a personal touch with the use of all.
With Snapchat and Periscope, you can stream your office and team members counting down to the day, or reveal an office-specific countdown that you have in your boardroom – whatever will show your prospects that what’s coming is big, and you worked hard on it!
Create a Pinterest Board
Creating a creative, well-designed board of all your completed construction projects to date is a very easy and effective way to show a detailed portfolio to your customers and potential clients, while utilizing a popular social app in the process to drive your social media marketing strategy.
There are a few elements to creating an effective Pinterest board that will not only give your clients a look into what you can do for them, but will also help to drive new clients right to you with simple marketing tactics.
Optimize For Search
This will take basic SEO skills that your company is more than likely already using online to generate traffic. 50 million people use Pinterest every month – you can capitalize on this overwhelming number by optimizing each and every one of your pins for search so you’re easy to find, with increased visibility.
Optimizing your pin simply means using the keywords your audience is already searching for throughout your post – this involves thorough keyword research so you’re able to accurately target the right audience, and the prospects that are most likely to interact with and respond to your content.
Utilize these relevant keywords in your image file name, and make sure you fill out the description. When writing content within your post, you also want to be conversational, and make the text clear and easy to read. Being conversational will make you more relatable, using the language your prospects also use in order to open the dialogue.
Choose Keywords Wisely
As we mentioned before, you want to have a clear idea of who it is you’re targeting, so you have a good understanding of how to speak conversationally to them, and the topics they’re interested in.
If you’re a home builder, your keywords may be more house and home-focused, with couple or family-oriented keywords you can use within your content. The important thing is to be as specific as possible, take a look at the most popular keywords, and incorporate them in any way you can. The option to go back and evaluate how effective your keywords are with bringing your base to you is always there.
Give the Camera to your Employees
Not everything has to be professionally, stiffly shot from a company, or corporate sounding perspective – though there is a lot of work to be done and you can’t always make the time to film and shoot for social media with rigid deadlines to meet, having your contractors take a few minutes out of their day to offer a new, creative perspective on your project that only employees can offer can truly be eye-opening, and put your work on an interesting pedestal.
Let them shoot their coworkers working, giving a tour of the worksite or completed sections of your construction project, collaborating and planning, revising, anything that shows progress. The contractors you have in the field every day know the project like the backs of their hands, and can give your audience interesting visuals, inside looks, and give notice of what’s to come.
Instagram Formatting
I’m sure you’ve seen this before; companies strategically plan their social media posts so they create a stunning, visually appealing effect when you view their profile as a whole.
This can be done in a few different ways – you can photograph individual pieces of a project, with the final intent to construct a complete image of the project. Each picture can be captioned with a countdown to the completion stage of the project, or with fun facts about the building process, construction tips, or stories about how the project has been going – whatever you believe would best suit the theme and the finished product overall. Get creative, and give your social media following something interesting to look at that fully represents the work you do as a construction company!
These are just a few ways to creatively show your base and the rest of the industry what you’re capable of aside from just taking photographs to post and caption, as well as a great way to attract curious visitors online with intriguing, visually appealing content!
