How to Grow a Construction Business – Step by Step Guide

According to IBIS World, between 2016 and 2021, the construction industry in the United States grew by 2.5 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but in 2021, there are an estimated 3,570,224 construction companies across the country. How can you grow a construction business so you don’t get swallowed up by the competition?

Here’s how to grow a construction business:

• Put together a great team
• Invest in your business
• Find your niche
• Create an effective marketing plan

This article will be your guide to maximizing the growth potential of your construction company. We’ll talk more about the pointers above and provide actionable tips and steps for forging success in your industry!

How to Grow Your Construction Business

Put Together a Great Team

Even if yours is a new construction business with a bare-bones staff, with your goal of achieving growth, you need to make hiring decisions carefully.

Filling vacancies is not as important as hiring quality employees with the drive and determination to work their best and overcome adversity when struggles inevitably arise.

Remember that finding good employees starts with you. When you put together a vacancy ad, make sure your job description is as thorough as possible. Discuss the qualities of the candidate you’re looking for.

Be clear on what their daily responsibilities might look like. If you need employees who are willing to put in overtime, don’t dance around that.

Pay to run your job ad, and don’t only post it on Monster or Indeed. Look for construction-related job boards and post there as well. You’ll not only get more eyes on your listing, but more qualified candidates.

Once you’ve hired a team that you couldn’t be prouder of, make sure you keep them passionate and excited about working for your construction business. As employees excel, promote them or increase their salary. Make them feel appreciated and they should stick around. 

Invest in Your Business

In those early startup days, spending more money than what’s absolutely necessary is a gamble your business didn’t wish to take.

Yet there comes a time in every company’s history where you have to invest in your business if you want to move past whatever growth plateau you’ve hit.

That’s our next tip for how to grow a construction business: invest in what’s important. Maybe that’s hiring new staff in anticipation of growth. Perhaps you finally buy the hardware or software that would make it easier for your employees to plan jobs, track appointments, and manage invoices.

Maybe you invest in a better employee training program so all your new staff members are trained to the same standards rather than you training them individually.

You should certainly think about earmarking a sum for marketing, as that’s a sure way of achieving your goals of growth.

More than likely, rather than pick and choose, your construction business will dedicate funds to all these areas at various times. Since more money will come with increased growth, this spending should keep you in the green rather than tip you into the red.

Find Your Niche

Your industry is construction, but what is your niche? Maybe you specialize in door installation, spray foam, or garage doors.

If your city or town is already oversaturated with construction competition, then establishing a niche will allow you to differentiate your business from everyone else’s.

Make sure that your specialty is shouted loud and clear. The information should be on your homepage, in your social media bios, and in other content.

The goal is to present your construction company as the authority in this niche. When curious local customers search for spray foam or garage door services, yours will be among the top results to show up.

Please don’t choose a niche just to choose one. Rather, make sure that your niche is an area your team is knowledgeable about and skillful in doing.

Create an Effective Marketing Plan

If you’re still wondering how to grow a construction business, among the most effective methods is to have a marketing plan. You’ll likely work with a team of marketing professionals to achieve the following goals.

1. Increase Reach and Brand Awareness

Getting your construction company to household name status is not an overnight endeavor, but you can do it with brand awareness. Through marketing measures, your construction business can become the talk of the town. Your reach will also grow to surrounding cities so you can increase your customer base.

2. Generate Qualified Leads to Make More Profits

Generating leads is one thing and generating qualified leads is another. Qualified leads are readier to buy, which increases your chances of successfully converting them. An effective marketing plan will make it possible for your construction business to find more qualified leads, increase conversions, and steadily build your income.

3. Get Consistent Website Traffic

Your website should be a lean, mean, traffic-generating machine. Even if leads and customers find you from advertisements or social media, the traffic needs to be redirected to your site. There, you can use lead magnets and opt-in forms to capture the contact information of leads and begin the nurturing and engagement phases.

How to Achieve Your Construction Business Growth Goals

Now that you’re aware of what growth can look like, you can see how to grow a construction business can be achieved with the backing of a talented digital marketing agency.

Provide Value to Your Ideal Customers

Who are your customers? If you haven’t yet, you’ll need to segment your leads based on demographic, psychographic, and geographic criteria. This is the only way to identify what the needs and interests of your audience segments are so you can produce content that’s catered to those interests.

As a construction business, you might divide your audience into segments like high income versus lower income, the age of their home, and how close they live to the areas you serve. Once you have this information at the ready, you can create buyer personas, which are an amalgamation of traits among each audience segment.

Then go through each buyer persona you came up with and determine what kind of content would be most valuable to them. First-time homeowners might not know when it’s time for new flooring or how to price an add-on to their home.

You could make a video or infographic answering these questions. However, long-time homeowners are familiar with all this stuff, and their needs are different.

Webinars may be appropriate for some subjects whereas videos can succinctly cover other topics. Written and visual content such as blog posts and infographics are other great options. You may offer downloadable content as well, where the lead exchanges their email address for the content they want.

According to marketing automation platform Frizbit, interactive content is also expected to have a moment in 2021.

You can make your content interactive in all sorts of simple but effective ways, such as using widgets, hosting a giveaway or contest, or doing a survey or poll. Even interactive videos will engage with your audience. 

Create a Comprehensive Digital Marketing Campaign

Content marketing is key in how to grow a construction business, but it’s one piece of the overall puzzle that is a digital marketing campaign. You’ll also need to add email marketing, social media marketing, and local SEO to your list of growth tactics. Let’s talk more about each now.

1. Email Marketing

Email remains a primary vehicle for furthering your construction business. When leads give you their email address, you can begin an email drip campaign full of great content to engage with and nurture the relationship. You can also inform your audience of company news and even promotions and deals through email.

You’ll use the audience segments you created to make subsets of email recipients. Like you tailored your video and blog content to your audience segment’s needs, you must do the same for email. If you have an audience segment with leaky roofs and you email your whole list about your roofing sale, you won’t get the kinds of email open rates you want.

The question of how often you should email your mailing list is a perpetual conundrum among business owners. If you email too frequently, you could get flagged as spam. Yet if you email too seldom, your customers will forget about you.

You want to email your list at least weekly unless you’re running a deal or promotion. Then it’s appropriate to send out emails twice or even thrice that week. Do keep an eye on your email metrics, which will tell you whether more frequent communication is appealing to your audience or turning them away.

2. Social Media Marketing

Still not sure how to grow a construction business? Social media marketing is a large part of the equation. Social media resource Sprout Social states that, as of February 2021, across social media, there are more than 3.6 billion users. By 2025, that number will increase to 4.41 billion users.

Selecting which social media platform has staying power is a bit of a guessing game, but with a digital marketing agency on your side, you can begin promoting your construction business to platforms with receptive audiences. It’s never a bad idea to stick to the classics, including Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Sprout Social says Facebook is the most popular social platform as of 2021. That’s followed by YouTube and Instagram.

3. Local SEO

How does your construction business become the first search result when a person types in “construction company Chicago” or “door installation Houston”? Through search engine optimization or SEO.

Google’s algorithm has become more advanced than ever. Today Google uses the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT for short. BERT relies on a combination of natural language processing and machine learning across 70+ languages to better master what searchers want and then showcase results.

The BERT algorithm is less about content length and more about content intent. If you make it sound from the title of your page that you’re going to talk about spray foam insulation in New York and then your page is about garages, then your website will be ignored.

Use Consistent Brand Messaging Across All Channels

If you ever watch brands online, you’ll notice that, whether you’re emailing them, reading the copy on their website, or perusing a social media comment that their brand voice doesn’t deviate. Your brand voice is a larger part of brand messaging, or how you persuade your customers to do business with you.

As a construction business, your brand voice may be friendly but knowledgeable, like talking to an old friend who’s very well-versed in something.

Staying true to your brand voice, your brand messaging wouldn’t be pushy or salesy, as you’re trying to come across conversationally. Inconsistencies with your brand messaging will confuse your customers and dissuade them from proceeding.

It’s easy enough to maintain a brand voice and brand messaging when you’re the only one overseeing this area of your construction business.

Yet we’re talking about how to grow a construction business, and that means other chefs will be in the kitchen, so to speak. No matter who’s responding to what correspondence, maintaining that brand voice and brand messaging is paramount. That goes for all channels, from social media instant messages/direct messages to emails.

Make a Lead-Generating Website with Landing Pages

Remember earlier how we mentioned that your website must be a lean, mean, lead-generating machine? Here are some tips on how to do just that:

• Use whitespace: There’s no need to fear whitespace provided there isn’t too much of it. By not overlapping element on top of element, especially around your CTA buttons, they can stand out more.
• Make landing pages for every service you provide: Your construction business has a niche, but you offer other services as well. For each of those services, you need a landing page. Consider adding videos as well as written content so you break up the copy and make the page more readable.
• Add testimonials: If you have some glowing reviews, post them! You can also contact customers and ask if they’re willing to write a testimonial. These reviews build trust in your service.
• Use opt-in forms: We’ve mentioned opt-in forms throughout this guide, so don’t forget their inclusion in your website design. You could even have an opt-in form on every page to encourage email signups.
• Include your phone number: You want curious leads to contact you, right? A phone number that’s above the fold and even built into the navigation makes it easy to get in touch.
• Test and test some more: Before your site goes live, split-test every element. Make sure you go back to your site every few months and test again, updating the website if necessary.

Start a Referral Program

As your audience numbers grow, a referral program begins making more sense for your company. This is an exceptional method when it comes to how to grow a construction business. If you do go the referral route, make sure you’re clear about what’s in it for your customers. Maybe they get more money off their next construction job for every referral they make.

A referral system like this will inspire your audience to refer not only one friend or colleague, but several.  

Consider Paid Ads

While your construction business seeks to improve its Google search result listing, you can maximize visibility by paying for advertising. According to marketing resource Constant Contact, Google is a construction company’s best advertising avenue.

Social media advertising is another great means of getting your business seen. Compare the costs of advertising campaigns to determine if it’s within your budget at this early stage. If not, you can always come back to paid ads later.

Utilize Google My Business

Our last suggestion for how to grow a construction business is to use the service Google My Business. Unlike Google advertising, Google My Business is a free service that business owners in all niches and industries ideally should use.

Once you set up your Business Profile, you can add pertinent information like your days and hours of business, your phone number, physical address, and more. You can even link your website to your Google My Business account so users can click and visit your site in an instant.

In your Business Profile, Google will tell you how many follows, bookings, calls, and clicks you have with its built-in analytics.

Conclusion

Knowing how to grow a construction business starts with a well-thought marketing plan. At Mediaboom, our digital marketing agency can generate more qualified leads, increase brand awareness, and boost your online traffic. Our team specializes in website services, design, advertising, and marketing campaigns for construction companies of all sizes.