Freya Oxton-Grant
We’ve picked the latest construction marketing trends that can help your building product business reach your targets for the next 12-months.
As we gradually move out of the global pandemic, it’s clear to see that there has been an obvious shift in all sectors towards digitisation and the need for new and fresh ideas.
You only have to see recent reports from the CPA that suggest output in the construction industry is set to rise by an additional 6.3%, returning to pre-pandemic levels despite material shortages and increases in cost.
On top of this, our findings suggest that 75% of exhibitors at UK Construction Week see digital construction marketing as the most critical method moving into 2022.
With this and more in mind, is your building product business ready for this output increase? Could your construction marketing do with a digital push in 2022?
If yes, we’ve highlighted some of the key trends that can help take your construction marketing to the next level, ready for whatever 2022 has to offer.
Construction Marketing: using Content To Capture Leads
Using your knowledge of the construction industry and your product, you already know what architects and specifiers are looking for. Creating content around these trigger points for your target market is the first step to developing a content marketing strategy that produces high-quality leads.
Producing content that explores how your building products deliver exactly what an architect wants for their current and future projects will generate enormous ROI for you.
In turn, your pieces can make your building product business the thought-leader in the construction industry and gain those top spots in the google rankings.
The type of content you should go for will depend on what kind of specifiers or engineers you are targeting. Ideally, it would be best to use a combination of a few different content formats that resonate with your prospects.
Use Email Marketing To Automate Lead Nurturing
Despite the world opening back up post-pandemic, emails should still be essential to your construction marketing efforts. The new' socially distant' approach to construction marketing means that by introducing automation, you can maintain a strong relationship with your buyers without having to be face-to-face.
Architects and contractors don't make decisions overnight. But, like any other buyer, they need to be nurtured with construction marketing materials that build their understanding of your brand, products, benefits, and experience.
Marketing automation delivers ongoing and consistent messages, usually through emails, moving buyers from prospects to sales qualified leads in an efficient and well-structured manner.
Automating this process will save your business time and money by nurturing prospects for you and leading them further down the sales pipeline from awareness to consideration, and finally, decision.
You can start with things as simple as a monthly newsletter of your case studies and recent blogs before moving into more targeted strategies the further down the sales funnel your prospects go.
Consider Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
For those unfamiliar with ABM, it’s essentially a strategy that directs marketing resources to engage a specific set of target accounts.
You can achieve strong engagement with less effort by personalising your construction marketing approach to a specific architectural firm or sizeable contracting company.
If you know precisely whom you want to target, you can build relationships with critical gatekeepers at that company to get your foot in the door. This will elevate your chances of being specified in future projects they work on.
Optimise Your Construction Website for Search and Conversions
Creating a high-quality website that works as your lead generating engine is a mainstay of any digital marketing strategy. After all, all your marketing leads back to your website and how easily your prospects can find information and contact you.
Optimising your website through technical and on-page SEO gives you a greater opportunity to rank on the first page on Google for keywords linked to your building products. In addition, focussing on this strategy will increase your reach and produce a healthy flow of leads, making your website an extra salesperson that works by an inbound strategy, not outbound tactics.
As we can see from our findings, 2022 is the year the construction industry is set to go digital, with everyone focussing their efforts online. Therefore, a structured content strategy with informative blog articles, buyer-focused landing pages, and high-quality lead magnets are crucial elements of a sales funnel that not only works but stands up against competitors.
.
Engage Architects with an Online Digital CPD
CPD’s are perfect for building product businesses to engage architects as they deliver essential and informative knowledge that they want to hear whilst also showcasing your products and establishing your brand’s thought-leadership.
Using a platform like Teachable is a great way to deliver an effective and easy to use digital CPD as it hosts your CPD video clips and allows people to enrol themselves and work through them.
A digital CPD allows you to automate the process while also monitoring sign-ups so you can keep the conversation going, increasing your chances of specification.
Using Social Media For Your Construction Marketing
Using social media to generate awareness of your building product brand is an excellent idea as these platforms have huge organic reach meaning some posts can generate thousands of impressions and likes.
Making sure your sales reps and MD/CEO utilise the power of social for networking, and product promotion is a great strategy to reach prospects you might not have been able to before. It can also help build your brand in your network's eyes as it shows you are forward-thinking and on the ball.
Consider getting your construction product business on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but it's also essential to think about more contemporary social media channels such as Tik-Tok.
With 82% of online traffic coming from video streaming and 38% of Tik-Tok users now over 30, it's an exciting avenue to explore for your construction marketing in 2022.
Invest in a Tech Stack that Works
A tech stack is a term used to describe a company's tools, services, software, operating systems, and programs to build work systems.
It's known as a stack because each component builds on top of one other, thus stacking up.
Creating the best tech stack can mean you can benefit from increased communication, using tools such as Slack, and increased productivity with task management, such as Click Up or Monday, which is task management tools.
A more marketing and sales-focused software for your tech stack should be HubSpot. This technology offers an all-in-one marketing, sales and service platform, which means you can create and monitor your entire sales pipeline.
The benefits of a tech stack are limitless to your business, which is why getting it right is so important.
Utilise Construction Specific Platforms
Thousands of building products are specified every day through platforms such as NBS, Barbour and SpecifiedBy. Getting your brand on one or all of these websites means you can get in front of specifiers that might not have heard of you before.
These platforms allow you to publicise information about your brand and products that give prospects everything they need to find, select and specify your products. You should spend as much time promoting your products on their websites as you do on your own.
Use construction Marketing Experts
Developing your construction marketing ahead of 2022 might seem like a big task but getting someone on board helps share the workload. This means that you will have industry experts helping with things like strategy, design, content creation, website development and much more.
Hiring a digital marketing agency that is a specialist in the building products industry means you can take advantage of years of marketing experience to help you propel your building product business to the top of the construction space.
You only have to see our findings from UK Construction Week 2021 to see that the construction industry needs to adopt digital marketing strategies.
With so many different avenues to take, why not remove that pressure from your team and work with construction marketing experts that know your target audience?
Conclusion
There's a lot to consider and do, but times are changing, and buyer behaviour is changing with it.
Developing a construction marketing strategy and breaking it down into actionable tasks is what we do best. Tapping into 30 years of experience delivering exceptional results in the building product sector and growing businesses is what we love.
Just give us a call, or book a meeting, and we will take care of all of it for you.
About Insynth
Insynth Marketing is a leading UK construction marketing agency based in Shifnal in the West Midlands.
They use the latest inbound marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to support building product companies to grow their business by proactively driving sales lead generation activity.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.