Creating a marketing budget for any business is difficult, but the construction industry has more competition and overhead than almost any other landscape, making the process exponentially more difficult. Many times, construction business owners spend thousands of marketing dollars without ever knowing what is working and what isn’t. This wastes both time and money and leaves business owners feeling frustrated. However, a well-organized marketing plan can help identify your business goals, track customer knowledge, and facilitate a higher ROI. In order to create a balanced, productive marketing budget, use these expert tips.
Learn Your Funnel
In order to create an effective plan, you must first know your customer base. This information can be easily tracked online with programs like Google Analytics and can tell you exactly where your customers are going, what’s bringing them to your site, and when they are completing the conversion or sale.
A Great Marketing Plan Promotes Your Business Effectively and Continuously.
Take a look at these metrics for in-depth information:
- Interactions Per Visit: Tells how many interactions your visitor had before leaving
- Bounce Rate: Defines the number of visitors that only visited one page before leaving
- Session Duration: Reports how long each visitor was on your site
- Direct and Assisted Conversions: Shows which efforts lead to each conversion
Know Your Competition
Research your competition’s marketing efforts including their website, social media, and any other platforms. Study which methods seem to be working best and take note of productive strategies that you can implement. When performing your research, consider these points:
- What marketing efforts are they using?
- What keywords are they implementing?
- Are they on social media channels that you’re not utilizing?
- What content seems to be the most popular?
Know Your Operation Cost
When planning any business budget, it’s important to know what your average project costs. This includes product used, time spent bidding, planning, and completing the job, and any equipment usage or rental use. Once you know what your average job costs, you can effectively decide how much marketing costs should be for a specific period of time. Marketing should be around 10 percent of your overall budget. For instance, if a $400 repair service costs you $200 to complete and your goal are to complete 20 repair projects per month, then your expected costs and profit are each $4000 for the month. With this in mind, you can set an effective marketing budget with built-in measurement metrics.
Know Your Goals
When creating a marketing plan, it’s crucial to know your business objectives. What do you want to accomplish in the next year? If increasing your air conditioning repair business is your main goal, then heater marketing efforts would not be the way to go. Create marketing efforts that align with your business goals and help you reach them.
Common Marketing Efforts for Construction Companies
Even after you have your marketing budget, deciding where to spend your marketing dollars can be difficult. In today’s landscape, online marketing is King and should be the number one marketing outlet used by just about every type of business. Construction is no exception to this rule. There are multiple ways to market your business online, from organic optimization to social media coverage and even syndicated content.
Google Ads
Google Ads
Advertising with Google helps you reach your exact target market with a predetermined budget and plan. This platform allows you to create unique marketing campaigns easily to get in front of just the right people. It also offers in-depth analytics for accurate evaluation and revision.
Social Platforms
Social Platforms
Each social platform offers a paid marketing option for businesses. These options help get your content in front of the right people with customized demographic and psychographic targeting as well as analytics metrics to show you exactly what’s working.
Syndication
Syndication
Syndication efforts are designed to distribute your content more effectively and involve another site displaying your original content. This directs visitors back to your site for increased traffic. While more difficult to measure, pixel tracking and Google Analytics are both great helpers.
Because of the intricate nature of the construction business and the never-ending competition for clients, creating a productive marketing plan is essential to the success of your business. Your plan should be intricate, multifaceted, and detailed, leaving little room for error or deviation. When you need a design that works, the professionals at Contractor Webmasters can help you create a viable, productive marketing plan for your construction business that generates leads and higher ROI than ever before. Receive expert advice, guidance, and direction from experienced marketers that know the construction landscape. Call us today at to learn more.