Feel like you’re stuck in construction marketing Groundhog Day?
You wake up every morning, use the same tried and tested marketing techniques, reach out to the same list of prospects and end up not getting anywhere. It’s like someone switched the polarity of your marketing magnet!
Don’t be disheartened. There’s one, very quick and easy solution.
Changing your marketing plan.
If what you have been doing has stopped working, it’s the only solution to getting you back on track and making sure you’re reaching your construction peers.
In this blog, we highlight the ways in which you’ll know it’s time to change your marketing plan and offer some top tips on what you can do to start turning your construction marketing around.
You’ve probably heard the term ‘flogging a dead horse’ – trying to get results despite working with tools that won’t allow it.
This is exactly what happens when you’ve been using the same marketing plan for a long time.
Your tactics, your approach, your content; they all become stale and repeated if they’re not injected with life and some fresh insight.
Why would your intended construction-minded audience care now if they haven’t cared the previous dozen or so times you’ve reached out?
HubSpot suggests that a standard marketing strategy should last 12-months, although depending on where you look, you may hear varying opinions, from 18-months, to as much as 5 years.
Ultimately, it comes down to your overall business goals and whether what’s being done from your marketing plan is helping your construction business on the whole.
12-months is a fantastic round number and gives plenty of time for new techniques to make their mark.
If what you’ve been doing for a year hasn’t made a difference, it’s time to think differently.
Perhaps you need to re-think your social media, is it time for a new website or does your SEO need some guidance? Whatever it is, you need to set a deadline and be prepared to make a change.
The construction industry isn’t what it was 20+ years ago.
Famously dominated by white males, it’s becoming a much more diverse industry.
Though numbers are still low (7.4%), the percentage of BAME employees is up significantly when compared with data from the mid-2000s which was a mere 2.4%.
Things are changing.
The same can be said for your audience, too. As a construction business, looking to attract architects and specifiers to your products or services, you’re going to need a marketing plan that stands out.
But what stood out 10 years ago isn’t going to be the same.
You only have to look at recent data showing how the demographics of architects and specifiers have changed this century.
In 2003, the Architects Registration Board recorded a share of female professionals as just 14%, fast forward to 2021, although still disproportionate at 28%, it has doubled.
With a changing audience, it’s important to make sure that your construction marketing reflects this. If it isn’t, that might be the reason you are being left behind.
There’s a general rule of thumb that your marketing spend should be at least 5% of your business’s turnover.
Despite this, HubSpot reports that as recently as February 2021 budgets are now roughly 11.7% of the company-wide budget.
It’s then up to the marketing team to work out the best ways to distribute this budget, be it through traditional advertising, digital marketing or even automation techniques.
The reality is, marketing budgets usually remain constant despite fluctuations in wider business turnover. This means that your marketing plans can be restricted by a financial glass ceiling.
The UK construction sector hit a 24-year high earlier this year, suggesting recovery following the pandemic has been much quicker than expected but is your marketing budget allowing you to create a plan that can react to this growth?
If your marketing budget has remained stagnant over the course of the pandemic, now’s a great time to get out those calculators, work out what you can work with and start a new plan for your construction business.
If marketing is the flesh and bones of your business plan, then leads are the beating heart. You can have the most expensive, highly researched, and hand-crafted marketing plan, but if it’s not bringing in the right leads, what’s the point?
Only you know how many leads your construction business can handle and if your marketing plan isn’t reaching that level, maybe it’s time to rethink your strategy.
After all, the more leads you have nibbling on your marketing hook, the more likely you are to convert them into tasty prospects.
Your changed marketing plan could involve a number of things in order to bring more leads on board.
It could be something as simple as changing posting your latest blogs on social media so a wider pool of people can see it, or it might be something a little more complex like creating an eBook or even hosting a CPD in order to help drive your construction business forward.
Whether taking the initiative on yourself or using the help of a construction marketing agency, ensuring what you a doing is bringing in leads is vital to know if your marketing plan needs a rethink or not.
No one is in a better position to know if your marketing plan needs a rethink than you.
What we’ve done is this blog highlights some of the key points that will indicate whether your marketing plan needs a rethink or not, but it should be pretty self-explanatory.
If what you’ve been doing ‘forever’ has gradually stopped working, then the only thing to get you back on track is a change of plan – it’s simple really.
In order for your marketing to be successful, you need to have a consistent flow of leads. Combined with a budget that is an accurate reflection of your construction business's turnover, if both have grown stagnant it’s time for a change.
If you’re looking at addressing your marketing strategy and need a new plan for your construction business, then get in touch with us today.
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.
Book A Free Consultation Today.