Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Web marketing affects all industries and is becoming increasingly important for a company’s client acquisition strategies. The construction industry is obviously no different. In this special “construction industry” blog edition we will see how to set up a web marketing strategy adapted to the construction industry but especially: your budget!
The web marketing strategy of your competitors
Whether in the construction industry or any other industry, web marketing is all about how well you communicate on the web to showcase your service and how well you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
It is therefore important to pay attention to the actions of your most serious competitors. While it is interesting to analyze the web marketing of construction industry leaders, you should mostly stay within your own circle and compare with competitors of similar size to your own business. Indeed, the web marketing strategies of large construction companies my not be the same as your own, but this is not to say you still can’t stand out.
As you’ve figured out, the first step is to understand how those who “communicate well on the web” do it. First analyze their website: how it is designed, the way the company communicates all its information, the services offered etc. Then make a comparison between your competitors and yourself. The hardest part of this exercise is to remain objective.
Indeed, it can be tempting to say, “that company wrote nonsense, my services are much better etc.” But keep in mind that you’re not really there to look for their weaknesses (although that is an important to know) but more so their strengths! What interests us at this stage is to understand what they did to set up their web marketing strategy. They may be worse than you in terms of service quality but they currently attract customers who may one day want to contact YOU!
First free web marketing method: your Google My Business page
Google My Business is a free tool available to businesses allowing them to have a detailed description that appears on Google results when people search your name.
Here is the Google My Business page for My Little Big Web:
As you can see, Google allows us to easily bring up a lot of information that will be valuable to your customers: your company name, address, phone number, opening hours, and your services. However, it also shows reviews that other customers have written about your business.
This last point is particularly important because it shows your potential customers what your current customers think of you! Just like the customer reviews on Amazon or any online store, customer reviews are more and more used by Internet customers due to their importance in the purchase-decision process (or simply when making the first online contact). It is therefore necessary that you give great importance to your company’s Google Business page and that you encourage your customers to give you feedback.
If you like, we can help you create and optimize your Google My Business page. You can also read our article “create a Google My Business page to boost your local SEO” that will give you useful advice.
Second free web marketing strategy: SEO
For those who know nothing about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you can consult our “SEO” page that will explain everything you need to know. In a nutshell, SEO is the ranking of your website (or rather the pages of your website) on Google’s search results.
Improving SEO has become extremely important for the construction industry as competition is fierce. Indeed, people seeking a contractor will search Google for thing like “roof maintenance”, “tile”, “interior work” etc. Therefore, you should not waste time working on SEO equivalents that do not exist on the web.
While free, SEO (search engine optimization) is still a tedious science that can’t be completed willy-nilly. If you don’t want to take risks you can contact us and our experts will advise and support you with your Google SEO strategy.
Web marketing performance
When we talk about performance in web marketing, we especially think about Google AdWords: Google’s advertising system. For those unfamiliar with Google AdWords ads, it is often the first results on Google when you type a competitive request:
As you can see, it says “ad” in green next to the result. This means that the company which appears in query “general contractor” pays Google for this positioning. The payment system is based on the “pay-per-click” system, that is to say that you only pay when people click on your ad. So you are almost certain to attract only people who are potentially interested in your services.
This web marketing practice is widely used in the construction industry and brings an incredible number of customers every day to those who use this system effectively. However, keep in mind that this system is not free and can quickly become expensive if you do not know how to master it.
Analyzing your web marketing results
Analysis of web marketing results (web analytics) is often the most overlooked step for businesses. Indeed, companies invest quite largely in web marketing but are often not able to say whether the actions they have undertaken have really paid off. They often have a vague idea of whether “it works” or not for them without being able to give an exact figure regarding their factual return on investment.
It is therefore extremely important that you put the right monitoring tools in place before launching your web marketing campaign. This will allow you to track your real-time performance (number of calls, contact forms filled visits to your website, average time spent on your website, pages visited etc.). The first tool set up is Google Analytics (free and very powerful).
Again, do not hesitate to ask our experts if you need assistance in creating and managing your Google Analytics. We can even provide training if you want to manage your web marketing campaigns independently.
We hope that this web marketing blog entry dedicated to the construction industry has taught you things or has encouraged you to jump into an online advertising campaign. You can continue reading by visiting our many other posts dedicated to web marketing by browsing our blog or by contacting us now to start your web marketing strategy and win over customers via the web.
Till next time!
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