Are you afraid marketing a construction company could become a snooze-a-palooza? It doesn’t have to be. With some creative content ideas and following great inbound marketing practices you can keep your audience’s attention and win their business.
Besides, construction marketing content won’t be boring to the people who are in the industry or the market for construction services. Unless you write like Ferris Bueller’s social studies teacher, played by Ben Stein, (Bueller? Bueller?) what you have to say will be of deep interest to them.
Find Your Voice
Presumably construction isn’t boring to you; put the same interest into your marketing content. If you write like you speak the passion will come through. If you do podcasts or videos, show your audience how great construction is. Go ahead; let the Tim Taylor in you come out.
Remember as kids how you and your friends used to marvel at those big earth-moving machines and cranes? Oh Oh Ooohhh!!!! Or how you tried to hang around home construction sites just to watch the builders work? Some of that desire still lives on in most adults. Take advantage of it by putting that same wonder and excitement into your marketing material.
Remember, content isn’t just textual; it includes images, video, audio, and anything else that provides information. Your construction projects have photo-op written all over them. Images taken during construction can be used in how-to videos and posts, as attention getting pictures on offers or covers of ebooks and white papers, or to show the general progress of the type of project you specialize in.
Be Relevant
You can’t keep the attention of your audience if you talk about stuff that has nothing to do with their current concern. Avoid the temptation to write about the latest thing just to get traffic. Inbound marketing isn’t just about generating traffic; it is about generating qualified leads.
What problem is your ideal customer trying to solve? That is the topic you need to address. The customer that wants to build a church will have a different need than someone wanting a barn. Create specialized content to address the specific needs of a construction customer. Content about monster trucks is a waste of time and resources.
If you specialize in a particular type of construction, provide clear content that highlights your expertise in that particular field and differentiates your company from general contractors. This is the type of information your prospects will want to know.
Don’t Be Afraid to Post Data and Advanced Content
People don’t just want to be entertained. They want to be informed. In fact, most prospects do a mountain of research before ever contacting anyone for a product or service. Give them the information they want and need; they will remember you as someone who is an expert in solutions to their problems.
Infographics are important in marketing and can be very effective and pleasing, but you don’t have to go to that much trouble. Providing lists of data and statistics plus blog posts are all big winners in the content race.
Where Does All This Content Come From???
Finding and producing content is not as hard as it sounds. Content is all over the place. Remember: content isn’t just the written word. It’s images, videos, podcasts, infographics and anything else that can provide a vehicle for information.
Ask your employees to pitch ideas and posts. Those who work directly with your customers will know exactly what problems are brought to them time after time. Give them a podium to show off their expertise and interact more fully. Make a video highlighting your best heavy equipment workers or an employee hobby that relates to the job.
Your customers can provide content, too, in the form of testimonials, reviews and as the star of a case study.
And how about your products and/or services? There is a gold mine of information to share in both overviews and detailed articles about every facet of construction from the materials used to how to hire a company like yours. You are in the perfect position to write about the trials and travails of local building ordinances, how to get permits, and why roof slope is an important decision to make.
Another way to both create content and create a valuable inbound link is to guest post on an industry website. You can write something for an online magazine, offer to blog for one of your vendors or one of your customers, or even write for something more general interest on a site frequented by your ideal customer.
Here are some industry sites where you can get ideas for content and to see excellent examples of exciting content about your type of business. None of these sites looks boring!
- Metal Construction News
- School Construction News
- ForConstructionPros.com
Marketing your construction company doesn’t have to put your audience to sleep. You actually have a very exciting industry to write about. People are always asking, “How did they do that?”
You can be the one to tell them.
