Downtown Toronto skyline with CN tower

Top 4 Digital Strategies in Construction

The 15-storey Traders Bank Building located at Yonge and Colborne, was the first true skyscraper built in Toronto and was completed in 1913. Fast forward to today, where Toronto has one of the world’s most iconic skylines with 19 buildings that are over 200 metres tall. Like how different the Toronto skyline is, the overall construction business landscape has changed, with digital marketing being one of the main reasons. Around 93% of construction companies said that they would be increasing marketing activities in 2018.

Now, simply leveraging marketing won’t always work. 74% of the construction web marketing campaigns fail. You deserve the best. That’s why we’ve outlined the top 4 digital strategies a company in the construction industry should leverage in order to make sure they’re spending their budgets the right way.

Content

“Content is King” – Bill Gates, 1996

Although the quote is a little outdated, it’s still incredibly valid. The content you write about,  whether it’s a blog posts, info graphs or leveraging social media platforms, says a lot about you and your company. It’s simple, the better content you put out there, the more customers can appreciate it. The more customers can appreciate it, the more likely they will generate a sale. Content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing, drives six times higher conversion rates, and has the potential for a 7.8x boost in web traffic. In layman’s terms, it’s kick ass.

Not only does content marketing help in generating leads, it also helps you understand who your customers are. Every customer requires a unique customer journey, so it’s incredibly important to know who your customers are and what specifically makes them want your service/product.

Cool topics you can talk about include:

  • Industry Trends
  • “How to” Guides on performing beginner level jobs
  • Construction Safety Tips
  • Tips to picking the best contractors
  • Checklists
  • Construction related templates

Local SEO

When searching for a contractor, consumers usually look for a professional in their area as it adds to the convenience of the job. 46% of searches have local intent. This means that instead of searching for a General Contractor, you’re searching for a General Contractor in Toronto. There are a bunch of great ways to increase your SEO, here’s a few cool ways:

  • Configuring your Google My Business
  • Directory and Listing Citations
  • Website Localization
  • Review and Rating Management
  • Quality Backlinks

Don’t worry if you don’t know what some of these mean, we would be happy to explain them.

 Videos

 Construction in its purest form, is an art. You’re building something amazing. It’s one thing to explain the development of a beautiful modern home, and it’s another thing to show it. With modern day video technology platforms like Vimeo, Vidyard and Youtube , you’re able to showcase your work to your clients, in real time. Not only are you able to show it, you can choose from various cool methods such as VR, 360-videos and point of view.

Construction videos on your website will set you apart from competitors in your market. These videos can be anything from “how to” videos, to video references from customers, industry partners and anyone else who would put your company in the light.

Social Media

9.5 Million people are on social media in Ontario. That’s a whole lot of potential customers. It would take a lot of resources to capture the whole market, but there are various ways you can leverage your budget in an efficient way that yields the highest ROI.

The best way companies in the construction industry can leverage social media is through partnerships with various groups and micro-influencers.

  • Groups: Associations and Construction Specific Organizations (i.e BILD, Tarion etc.) are great groups to reach out to. Sharing your content with their followers is a great method to expose your service to a larger following base. This also allows for the associations to follow and repost your content with their followers.
  • Social Influencers: Micro-influencers are individuals with 10K-150K followers. These sorts of influencers are the best people to interact with on social media because their followers are very loyal and trust the content posted on their page. If they trust the influencer, and the influencer recommends your service, you’re golden.

Having a strong social presence allows you to engage with customer and subsequently creates brand loyalty. Having construction completed is on the higher end of a business or consumers budget, so to ensure that they choose you, they need to trust you. Social Media is a great platform to gain your customers trust and provide them with relevant content that they can relate to.

Don’t get us wrong, your brand, your quality of service and strong customer base is incredibly important to the success of your business, but in the modern era, you simply cannot afford to forget about digital marketing.