EN2 Development Corp joined us for a live webinar to discuss the realities of digital media in the construction sphere and the importance of planning and utilizing digital media strategy in the everyday comings and going’s of construction organizations.

Want to watch the whole webinar? Available here!

Question One:

Most construction companies tend to be a little bit more reluctant jumping into social media marketing or digital marketing. And if the primary thing that you do is construction work on a commercial building or for other companies, it’s hard to see how social media can add anything to your bottom line. Even if your construction company does interact directly with customers or homeowners, social media doesn’t feel always like a natural fit for construction. The big question is, why invest in social media marketing for your construction company? Is this actually something that works for construction companies?

A: [EN2}
I think a lot of people when they get into the construction space, a lot of it is word of mouth.
The oldest way of marketing just referrals and stuff like that, however, as you start to get bigger and progress is greater, there’s always [the] “what if it might not reach everyone” going on in the background. So, the social media aspect of it is good because you’re able to reach out to candidates that wouldn’t be within your first or second degree of circles. And it also builds an online presence. So similar to a website, which you guys do and a lot of great work. The website works 24/7. Your business hours might be nine to five. But your website is always up and running. Same with your social media. If you don’t have a platform that’s out there representing the brand and what you guys are representing wanting to portray that’s not going to correlate into your future goals and other customers that you’re not diving into.

[Creative Partner]
In the construction world, you are the experts in transformation, and that’s such a natural win on social media, no matter what type of transformation, whether it’s a completely new build, mid rise, 15 floors or it’s going to be a home renovation. People want to see the before and after thing HGTV and the popularity of it. People like to see you took something from this to that. And I understand that storyline. That story translates very well on social media. If you talk about that online, people will immediately be excited about what it is you’re doing. And if you’re thinking of B2B, even something like LinkedIn, where you’re seeing the different partnerships of different companies and how they’re relating to your industry, you can now be a voice in that conversation and have direct access that you would otherwise wouldn’t ever have access to. So I think is it useful for construction. I think there’s so much room and space there that everybody can carve a little piece out to speak directly to the people that are looking for them.

Question Two:

How does that get me more sales? Does it work to have a digital marketing strategy?

A: [EN2]
For construction, you might not see the immediate results. Like, oh, a big client reached out to us directly on Instagram or LinkedIn. But those platforms, if you were able to pinpoint exactly who and what device looked at your website or looked at your social media at any given time, you’d be surprised who is actually out there on the Web doing stuff late at night, creeping your site because one of them might be a prospect, right? If you don’t have those platforms out there, you’re not really reaching that target market. You always have to make sure you cross your dot your I’s and cross your T’s. Make sure you look good on all the different platforms. You using those different things will kind of set you out from the crowd.

We like to kind of be a little more out there, hip kind of design aspect of it. We have, like, the hats as you’re seeing [in our office]. We got the beer and stuff like that. We have the QR codes that are going on right now with a couple of job sites that redirect back to our Web page. We also have Linked tree on some of our social medias that allows people to click through and see different things that we’re doing. I think it’s all important to have a fully integrated market communication system, and an operational plan to kind of roll it out.

[Creative Partner]
The price of the paid ad or being on digital is already worth the price or investment that you would make. Just because now, you’re getting so much more understanding of who your audience is and you can start to tweak things to make sure that you’re talking to them.
I think if you’re talking about results, helping the bottom line for any company, if nothing happens overnight, you mentioned this too. It takes a little bit of time. Start building an audience.

Start speaking to them. Don’t always focus about yourself. Focus on the things that they care about. And eventually you’re going to start to see one, two, three leads a month coming in, if not even more leads in a month or inquiries. But it’s one of those things, like a new skill that you’ve got to add to the tool belt to help you get where you need to go.

Here are a few things that I really feel help once you have a digital marketing system.
It can amplify the platform for your brand. It can increase your brand awareness. More people can find who you are and what you do. It’s a better way to connect with your audience. Like I said, we have so much more data. And lastly, it’s a lead generation machine. It operates on its own. Once you set it up, you now can accept leads, let’s say, on your website and you can be sleeping. This is how you’re going to help people find you. People who actually care about your business who are actually looking to give you money. That’s what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to get you from point A to point B, further faster.

Question Three:

I want to make sure we talk about how construction companies can get started.  What types of things does EN2 does as part of, like, Holistic marketing campaigns?

A: [EN2]
I think when you take a step back and you look at it from that approach, your marketing campaigns are a little more sophisticated than they were back in the day. Back in the day newspaper ads, all the old traditional methods – create one and send it to every single platform, and then whoever printed it out, you never know what happened to it. But right now, you could use a post of, let’s say, a project that you’re working on or got awarded, and you could share that to each platform. But you might tailor your wording on the delivery or image size to different specs, depending on what’s available and who your target audience is. I just think that it’s important that if you are going to do something like that, know who your target audience is.

Some platforms might younger demographic like you said, Snapchat. Traditionally younger, maybe not the decision-makers of companies. Maybe there are some, but not the majority. So we don’t use Snapchat, for example. But we do heavily use platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. We have a presence because it was some years ago, but obviously, Facebook is kind of moving now compared to what it used to be. I think it’s just important to kind of be somewhere that’s relevant to who your target is.

[Creative Partner]
Yeah, I agree. Start with one platform. I think even before that, start with the goal, what do you ultimately want? Is it just leads? Is it awareness?  Are you just trying to get into the right rooms with the right people? So maybe you just do a couple of articles on LinkedIn and you do a couple of posts on LinkedIn, so people get to know who you are. And then that allows you to have conversations with people that you otherwise would never be in the room with.

Sometimes it’s, “hey, I want people to come to my website”, so you can find me and hire me. That might be your goal. So, the goal might be multiple things. Maybe you need to have a website because you’re trying to win an award for whatever Association there is in your city or your town. All these things matter, but you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Start with a goal. Pick a platform, which is what you said, I think is huge. Where do you want to focus? You don’t have to be everywhere, but you need to be somewhere where people can find you and understand that you’re representing yourself. So pick a platform, use it well, post consistently.

You don’t have to post all the time, but just do it on a regular basis. If you can only do it once a week, do once a week. If you can only do once every two weeks, do once every two weeks, and just let it run as long as you’re actually talking to your audience and not just talking about yourself, vary your content, get involved so people respond to you. Respond back. Treat this like your first impression with somebody. If they like your post and they leave a comment, you should probably comment back and talk with them and say, “hey, thanks for commenting on this. Is there anything we can do? Always hit us up. We’re here to help answer questions.” That’s the best way to get started. But as you get the hang of it, the last thing is think about this as a bigger content strategy.

[EN2]

I think you’re right. And I think the main thing there, too, for people to take away is if you’re trying to get into the social media space and advertising and branding as a construction company, whether you be new or older, I think that one of the most important things is to sit down with a company like [Creative Partner]. Someone who’s invested in this and knows what to look for and also just get in it, do it. First of all, do it. Don’t just keep delaying it and keep pushing it because I’m busy this week. It’s always going to be busy.

Just start the conversation with somebody like [Creative Partner] and they’ll help get the juices flowing and the mindset going, and that’s going to help you get in the right track. The last thing I can add to that is also we need to look at other companies for advice or see what they’re doing. Other construction companies don’t be shy to do that. How people go visit your website, part of my website and get ideas actually come for leads and prospecting. The same thing happens with other competitors. It’s okay to look at your competition and see what they’re doing.

How can you stand out in a crowd that’s so focused in this area or diving into it? Now you got to give yourself the advantage. So, I think it’s good that we had this chat, and I think it’s important that people realize just like every other industry, you have to be on social media. You got to do it.

Thinking about your marketing strategy? Reach out at hello@creativepartner.ca today to set up a meeting with our team!

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Website: www.en2.ca

Instagram: @en2group

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