Does it ever feel like marketing your construction business is getting harder?
Marketing tactics change from year to year, and what once worked for you in the past may not be the most effective path forward in the future. If you feel like you're doing the same ol' thing without getting any results, it may be time to ditch the same-old-tired tactics and try something new for 2022.
First: a Clarity Exercise
Before you continue into our list of 5 out-of-the-box marketing tactics, you'll want to get crystal clear about a few things. Because none of the following tactics and strategies will work until you've nailed down the following:
- What's your niche?
- Who is your audience?
- What do they care about?
What's your niche?
Niching means leaning in (way in) to one service, problem, or audience segment.
Many people get their feathers ruffled when they're told to niche in. They mistakenly think that narrowing their area of focus down will somehow lead to less work and fewer clients. The opposite is true.
When you lean into one specialty service, problem, or audience, it allows you to become THE expert in that thing. People start associating you with the problem/service/ audience, making you more referable.
When you hear Michael Jordan, what comes to mind?
Jordan played basketball, baseball, and football in college, and he even played one professional baseball season. But his reputation as the GOAT pertains to one single sport: basketball.
Like Jordan, you may also enjoy -- and be competent at -- services outside your niche. But to be the GOAT of your industry, you'll want to devote most of your time, energy, and focus to your specialty area.
Who is your audience?
Niching is just the start. Because if you specialize in a certain service, you also want to be crystal clear about who needs that service. Have an audience in mind.
If your service is remodeling, your audience might be homeowners who want to purchase, improve, and flip fixer-uppers.
Maybe you specialize in building out dental or medical offices, and your customer is the practice owner who is expanding to fit a growing practice.
Once you define your audience, you can move into the next exercise:
What does your audience care about?
While this may seem trivial, it's not. Because people make major purchasing decisions based on their ability to know, like, and trust the person on the other end of that invoice.
And the easiest way to get someone to like and trust you is to prove that you have empathy and understanding for what they care about: their problems or their opportunities.
What problems does your fixer-upper remodel client often face?
What drives their desire to fix and flip homes?
Write everything down: your niche, who you help, and what they care about. Because this is how you bring it all together to create a know-like-trust situation that will help you find more work no matter the economic environment.
The Podcast Power Play
There are 383.7 million podcast listeners globally, with a predicted 424 million podcast listeners worldwide by the end of 2022.
There are two ways you can utilize the power of podcasts to reach new audiences and position yourself as an expert in your field.
Be a Guest
If you build out dental offices and your ideal client is a dentist expanding his practice, what would be the perfect podcast for you to guest speak on? If you guessed a dental podcast, then you're paying attention.
If you're helping people fix houses so they can flip them and make a profit, then you could be a guest on a real estate podcast, a DIY home design podcast, or even a financial-themed show.
Make a list of podcasts addressing your specific audience or the problems/ opportunities you help solve.
Getting yourself on someone else's podcast is an easy way to put yourself in front of a brand new audience of your ideal clients.
Start Your Own
You may find that you're loving the podcast experience. You can expand on your podcast efforts by starting your own show!
Keep the topic of your show niched to your particular audience, and you're sure to start building a following of people who want to listen to all of the paving-roofing-flooring topics you have to talk about.
Pitch to Publications
You can pitch the same topics you're talking about on podcasts to publications and other people's blogs.
The best part?
You don't even have to be a good writer to have an article published on other people's blogs or publications.
You can dictate your blog or article to a voice-to-text app if you hate writing, or utilize a service that can transcribe your audio.
Find a freelancer who can edit and clean up your transcribed post/ article for a few dollars, and voila.
You've got yourself a written piece of content.
Start reaching out to bloggers and publications serving the same audience as you. Remember, it's not likely to be the blogs and publications you follow as a construction pro! Get your articles in front of that audience of dentists or fixer-uppers, and you'll get even more exposure for your business.
The secret to pitching articles to publications or getting yourself featured on someone else's podcast or blog is borrowing their existing audience.
Self-Publish a Book
Want to be perceived as the expert in your field? Just add the word "author" to your byline. If you're the author of a book, you get immediate expert street cred.
These days, it's easier than ever to make that happen with self-publishing via Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). You can do 100% of the process yourself, or with the help of a few freelancing professionals.
- Come up with a concept for your book. Review your niche, audience, and problems/ opportunities.
- Outline what you have to say about that subject.
- Start filling in your outline. Include personal stories and actionable steps your audience can take to solve their problem or take advantage of an opportunity.
- Remember: you can dictate and transcribe if you don't like to write!
- Use a self-editing tool like Grammarly or find a freelancer to edit your manuscript.
- Create a book cover using Canva or find a freelancer to design a book cover for you.
- Upload your book to Amazon KDP!
Now when you appear on a podcast, you'll be introduced as you, the author of The Easy Home Fix-and-Flip!
Sounds impressive, doesn't it?
No one has to know how easy it was, and you've got one more support beam to back up your expert status.
Create Short Video Content
How do you take an old-school marketing tactic and make it new? If you've been making video content for YouTube, it's time to cut to the chase.
Short video content is all the rage, thanks to the booming popularity of TikTok. TikTok's short videos have become so popular that even existing social platforms like YouTube and Instagram have taken notice and adopted their platforms to encourage more short-form video content.
How can you share your wisdom in 30-seconds or less?
Pick one topic and share a single tip pertaining to it, and then include a call-to-action of someplace your audience can go to learn more. Your CTA could be to book a call with you, to watch a longer video on your YouTube station, or even to buy your book!
Keep your videos short and your content aimed at your ideal audience to win as a short-form video creator.
Create Better Blogs
Google is rolling out a new change to its algorithm called the Helpful Content Update.
The search engine update will target websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, such as content written for search engines rather than humans.
Google says the purpose of this algorithm update is to help searchers find "high-quality content."
If you're blogging for your business, it's time to audit your blogging strategy and existing content. The days of short, unhelpful, or keyword stuffed pages are dead and gone.
Google shared these questions about building human-first content:
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience?
If you notice anything about this list, it should be this:
Being clear about your niche, who you serve, and what your audience cares about is a surefire way to win the content game with this new algorithm update.
Write content aimed at your core audience and your niche, be the expert in your field, and you'll start attracting those online searchers who are looking for you.
Which of these five marketing tactics will you deploy for 2022 and 2023 to take your contractor business to the next level?