An Awesome Construction Company Blog

Annual construction revenues in the United States exceed $1.7 trillion per year. There are approximately 730,000 U.S. based construction companies competing for their share of this work.

If you are one of those companies that’s a lot of competition in your market for projects and jobs.

In fact, that equates to one construction or home improvement company for every 430 people living in the United States.

Feeling overwhelmed yet? Nervous about how you are going to compete for customers?

There are numerous niches in construction and home improvement. Luckily that means that you won’t have to compete with all 730,000 construction companies in the United States for your future projects!

You are able to pare down your niche by focusing on a specific geographic service area (e.g. tri-county area, etc.) or by looking at a specific type of work that you do (e.g. high-end kitchen remodeling).

If all construction and home improvement companies were alike they would all have to compete on price. Each company however has unique skills and talents. You and your company have talents that are unique to you. By focusing on what makes your company different you are showing what makes your company valuable to your customers.

How do you show your knowledge, skills and value to your customers?

Competition in the construction and home improvement industries is intense. You can choose to compete on price. Competing on price and price alone leaves you with little room to absorb the unforeseen conditions that can come up during a job.

These unforeseen conditions cannot be covered by change orders. They are factors that are beyond your control including weather as well as other conflicts. Conditions like these can impact the profitability of a construction or home improvement project.

Instead of competing on price you can choose to compete by sharing your unique value with your customers.

If you want to survive you either need to compete on price or you need to find ways to communicate your unique value.

Competing on price requires you to estimate with a great deal of accuracy. Adding value to your customers requires you to be able to estimate accurately as well as sell to close the deal. But adding value allows you to cover those unforeseen conditions that might otherwise not be covered in a purely competitive bid.

There is a well-known saying among marketers – content is king.

But what does this mean for you as a leader or business owner in the construction and home improvement industry?

The construction and home improvement business model is simple. You:

• Start by finding project opportunities.
• Develop a bid or offer a proposal outlining your proposed scope of work.
• Win the bid or sell the work.
• Move forward to execute the scope of work and deliver your project.
• Get paid for the work that you have completed.
• Rinse and repeat the process.

The main focus for construction and home improvement companies is their jobs or projects. Everything that they do revolves around contracting projects and then successfully completing those projects. Each and every activity within the business needs to contribute to this primary mission of the business. It is the thread that runs through everything you do in business.

Successful owners and leaders evaluate how each activity in their business contributes to this main thread. Is the activity contributing to the flow of projects through the construction or home improvement company? Activities in the business either accelerate the process or they slow it down. There are very few actions within a business that are neutral.

So how does marketing contribute to the positive flow of projects and cash through the company? What role does marketing play in the overall strategy of a successful construction or home improvement business?

You Can Lead a Horse to Water….

Sales is responsible for closing deals. Professional sales people in construction and home improvement close deals. They talk the horse into drinking. Without a sales team that can close deals most construction companies would not have new projects to move onto.

But who leads the horse to water so that the sales professional has an opportunity to convince the horse to drink and ultimately close the deal?

Marketing contributes to the flow of projects in a construction or home improvement company by generating sales opportunities for the sales team. Without opportunities, the sales team would not be able to sign new projects. And without new projects the company cannot exist.

There are many different ways for a construction or home improvement business to market their services. Marketing in itself is a discipline within business that helps determine if a business will be successful.

How can a construction company blog help grow your business?

What is the purpose of marketing for a construction or home improvement business? Will marketing sell projects?  Will you get an order for a new project because someone read your construction company blog?

The answer is almost always NO. You will not get someone calling you out of the blue and asking you when you can start based on your company blog.

Think about a car commercial as an example. Do car dealers and manufacturers expect to sell cars through their commercials? NO! The role of the commercial is not close a deal. A car commercial is designed to gain the attention of customers and get them into the showroom.

Once the customer is motivated to get into the showroom to look at cars the dealership takes over. The customer works with a sales team member to complete the deal and sell the car. The commercial motivated the prospect to become a buyer.

Your company blog is your commercial. It is your voice that represents you when your prospects are looking for a solution. It motivates them to reach out to you giving you and your team an opportunity to sell a project.

A great home improvement or construction company blog represents you to prospective clients. Without the blog you have less opportunity to reach those who are looking for the solutions you provide.

In order for a blog to be successful it must have great content.

Let’s look at a few ways you can create some good content for your company’s blog.

1 – Create Evergreen Content

Evergreens are trees that stay green all year round. They are full of life no matter the season.

Evergreen content and posts are similar. These posts contain content that is always relevant regardless of the season.

These posts are about topics that are always in season. Customers and prospects are always looking for information on these topics. Creating an evergreen post will give you a voice in the conversation regardless of the season.

You want to create content that is always being searched for. Seasonal and news topics are harder to maintain since they wear out quicker.

It is suggested that an evergreen post be a longer format. Neil Patel points out that posts that have more than 1500 words perform receive much higher amounts of social shares.

To Learn More About Creating Evergreen Posts CLICK HERE or watch the course preview here.

2 – Research Your Topics Before Writing

Are you passionate about your topic? Most likely the answer is yes. But that may not matter at all when it comes down to getting people to read your blog.

Customers want to read about what is important and interesting to them. If what they are interested in matches your passion than you have a connection. If there is not a match then you will not be able to connect no matter how much passion you have for your topic.

If you write about topics that interest you but no one else you may find that your blog does not get any traffic. Remember that the point of a construction company blog is to get customers to call you. You need to connect with them to create the opportunity for future projects.

How do you write on topics that your customers want to read about? Start by spending time researching content before you start writing. Avoid acting on a hunch or you may be writing content that no one will ever read.

To research potential topics for your construction company blog take a look at these useful sites and tools:

• Google Trends – choose your keyword search term. Look for a trend that shows the term is searched for on a year round basis.

• Spyfu – enter your keyword search. Look for local search volume. Local search volume refers to your country of origin. Focus on the total volume of searches as well as the click through rate and the ranking difficulty.

3 – Create Content and Post on Consistent Basis

Your reign as king of content will be short if you are not consistent in your blogging. Customers and prospects want to read your posts on a consistent basis.

Posting consistently, even if it is one time a month, will show that you are a professional. Being able to read your thoughts and insights on more than one occasion will help customers form an impression of who you are.

Your customers impressions of who you are and your ability to solve their problems is formed over time. The more engagement they have with you the more they see who you are. They form a comfort level with you before they reach out to you.

Your construction company blog is your voice. Creating consistent content allows your customers to see that you are consistent in your opinion. It helps them build a comfort level with you. This eventually leads to them reaching out as they start to look for solutions to their problems.

4 – Optimize Your Content for SEO.

One of your goals for writing a blog is to create opportunities with new customers. Blogs are your voice to your prospective customers.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. You are creating content that matches what your customers are looking for.

This requires you to think like your customers and prospects.

What are they searching for? They probably are not searching for industry terms. Remember that they are thinking about the problems they are trying to solve. If they knew about the solution they probably would not be searching.

Think about how your customers would search for your solutions based on the problem that the solution addresses.

What problems does your construction or home improvement business solve? Identify those problems and write content to respond to the searches your customers are making.

For help improving SEO for your construction company blog and web site take this course.

5 – Share Your Blogs Through Social Media

What does social media have to do with leading a successful construction or home improvement company?

As much as 86% of customers use a combination of search engines and social media before making a buying decision. Almost 9 out of 10 customers go to search engines and their connections on social media before they make a buying decision.

Your customers are talking on social media. Facebook – yes. Twitter – yes. Pinterest and Houzz – yes and yes.

Sharing socially does two things for your construction company blog.

First you have to let people know your posts are out there. Your blog is not the field of dreams. You won’t write it and magically customers will flock to your door to hear what you have to say.

You have to promote the blog. Consistent sharing among your tribe will help to spread the word about your blog. It will let them know about your unique skills and what problems you can help them solve.

Second, increased social engagement will help your SEO ranking for your blogs. Social engagement drives page views. And pageviews help site ranking. And you want to be at the top of the list when your customers search for solutions to their problems that you can offer a solution for.

Conclusion

Your construction or home improvement business is a small fish in a very crowded and large pond. A successful future is based on you being able to show your value to your customers.

There is always someone who can do a project cheaper. That is the nature of pure competition. Profits are continually driven towards zero.

I have found that customer relationships last much longer when the relationship is built on value. Customers will find value in you when they recognize you as an expert in your niche.

Build your company blog with consistent posts and quality content that help your target audience solve their greatest problems.

Those whose chief skill is problem solving never run out of opportunities to practice their trade.

Speak into your customers’ lives with solutions. Your backlog of opportunities for your construction company will continue to grow.