Ask the Digital Expert

Ask the Digital Expert WHAT MAKES CONSTRUCTION MARKETING DIFFERENT? AND WHO THE HELL ARE WE TO TELL YOU HOW TO DO IT?

By Sharon Bowles

Ask any marketing agency in Kent if they work with construction clients and 9 out of 10 will say yes. Of course they do! Construction is Kent’s biggest industry, and every business needs marketing. But do they ‘get’ construction?

Construction is complex and ever changing. It can’t just be put in a box alongside other industries. It’s in a league of its own.

Keeping up to date with the construction industry’s developments and changes is a fulltime job. It’s no wonder then, when you think of all that the industry has to deal with: skills shortages, material costs and new building regs to name a few, that proper marketing often falls by the wayside.

All too often, the task of marketing falls to someone in the office to ‘get some socials out’, ‘get a brochure made’ or ‘build a new website’. Don’t get me wrong, an online presence and something to hand out is all well and good, but proper marketing, that brings you leads and a quantifiable return on investment takes input from someone who doesn’t just know your business, but knows the construction industry, and knows marketing. The breadth of the industry is huge. For starters, no other industry has as much attention from government and regulating bodies, so awareness of these is vital. Then there are the multiple disciplines across the construction process, from town planners to product manufacturers, that each have vastly different objectives and routes to market, not to mention target audiences. On top of this, they each have a language of their own. So, yes, we’re all in construction, but there are acronyms that apply to each sector, as well as across the industry and that is why not every agency ‘gets’ construction.

What about the ‘sales process’? This differs for every discipline too. The tender process, the specification process, the long tail buying process, all of these elements mean the product or service you’re looking to promote has multiple targets, multiple messages and multiple channels to distribute to. What other industry has over 400 different digital publications and news websites to serve it?

And make no mistake, digital is the way forwards. Traditional forms of marketing and advertising will always have their place, but we can’t ignore the power of digital, especially since the pandemic hit. People’s habits have changed over the years as well as technology having continued to develop. Digital not only provides a wide range of platforms for your marketing, it also provides a source of invaluable information about your targets and allows you to track them and ensure that the messages you put out there are having the desired effect. Our focus as a digital marketing agency is on research and reporting using all the tools available to us, to prove what proper marketing can do.

Hold up. Who are we to advise you? In case you hadn’t realised, we’re experts in construction marketing. We have clients across every discipline. And as part of our day-to-day, we’re constantly researching what’s going on in the industry, as well as being involved in various bodies and groups that support and develop the industry.

We also carry out in depth research to facilitate our content creation service for clients, including the most technical of requirements, from whitepaper writing to submitting applications for sustainability accreditations.

So yes, we’re a full-service marketing agency but we’re unlike so many others. The difference being, we ‘get’ construction and know how to increase your profits through marketing that actually moves the needle.