Commercial Construction

Construction Leads | 13 Powerful Tips to Get More Leads (from Experts)

We can all tell a great website when we see it: it’s orderly, professional and encourages users to hang around and discover more about the organization. However, that doesn’t guarantee that your…

Estimated Read Time:  16 minutes

Share: 

5 ways to get more construction leads

We can all tell a great website when we see it: it’s orderly, professional and encourages users to hang around and discover more about the organization. However, that doesn’t guarantee that your site visitors will automatically consider using your construction services. For most residential construction companies, your website is your window of opportunity to make more sales. Most potential clients will come across your site from Google or Yelp, but it’s your content that will assure them that your services are worth their time.

But first, watch us give some marketing tips and CRUSH A CAR 😂 in this video:

YouTube video

Many in the construction business miss business growth opportunities because they lack alignment between marketing and sales. You may be investing your time and effort into branded collateral, trade shows and your social media, but your marketing may not be converting any new leads. The following strategies will help you get new leads and a leg up on your competition.

Here are the first five things we suggest – but check out the full guide for every strategy. 

1. Create Engaging Content

Most people look to experts for engaging content. Develop a blog about your residential construction business accessible from your website. A continuous flow of new and engaging content will move your website toward the top of search engine results pages. If you try to invest in construction lead generation without developing your unique content, you will always attract low-quality leads. Engaging content will make your prospects feel like they are making intelligent decisions for their construction solutions.

Engaging content may include:

  • Photos – Before and after photos can be a real deal-breaker for new prospects.
 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by DreamWorx Roofing (@dreamworx_roofing)

  • Videos – An excellent way to stay on top of the marketing curve. How-to’s, FAQs, and educational videos are easy to create and add value to your market.

YouTube video

  • Case studies – Featured projects are a perfect way of showing and explaining to your prospects how you handle your projects and the outcomes you deliver to your customers.
  • Consumer Awareness Guides – This content will assist in educating your market and also helps them in the process of decision-making.

2. Advertise

Since you already know your niche, the next thing is putting that knowledge to use. If you are carrying out remodeling work in a certain neighborhood, try placing locally targeted advertisements in as many places as you can – social media, Google ads, or even on more traditional billboards. When selecting a construction firm: potential customers will want to ascertain that you have done some great work previously. They want a brand they can trust.

Some ways that you can rev up your advertising efforts include:

  • Upgrade Your Website: A good website can boost your credibility with potential clients and it can show that your business is legit. Don’t scare away potential leads with an unorganized website. 

  • Pay-Per-Click: Pay-per-click is a paid marketing strategy that is a great way to speed up the lead-generation process when done well. PPC allows advertisers to pay to show up under terms that customers are already searching for

3. Contact Your Clients And Prospects

Call your clients, prospects, or referral sources each week instead of leaving messages. You can also create time to meet several prospects, clients, and referral sources in-person once a week. Try using Remodelers AutoPilot app to help you stay in touch with your former customers, leads, and prospects. By staying in contact with them, you will keep your construction company fresh in their minds and open new opportunities for yourself.

4. Focus On One Segment Of The Market

Carry out some analysis and select one section of the construction market to concentrate on. If you narrow your focus on a single market, you can generate content specifically for that market. Once you make relevant content, your users are in a better position to connect with your offer. Moreover, having this focus enables you and your firm to focus on those clients and projects that are more rewarding, more enjoyable, more profitable and less stressful.

5. Be Available For Your Construction Clients

Being available means that all your channels of communication are open, and there’s someone available and ready to take the calls of your customers and prospective buyers at all times. Do not allow your email account to remain messy with unread messages or your Twitter account to waste away. Your fast and timely response means that your clients will be glad you can solve their construction problems quickly and it will lead to better reviews and an upper hand on your competition.

Regardless of the strategies you decide to push on, sticking to your plan until it becomes a habit will guarantee your success. Habits often take effort to maintain, but they produce great results in the long run. So have a plan, stick to it, and you will get more leads than you can handle.

COMMERCIAL Construction Leads

You’ve gone to extreme lengths to form your company into something you’re proud of. You do excellent work, you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into it – and now it’s time to grow. 

Don’t let fate decide – you’ll need to push the marketing of your company in the same way that you pushed to get the work out of your team. Sometimes this means putting ‘sweat equity’ into your marketing – meaning your own time, and potentially allocating resources to the best possible options for getting more leads for commercial construction. Experiment with these ideas to find the right balance of value and how much resources they take to implement.

Getting commercial construction leads by getting the right frameworks in place

 


 

1. Niche down to focus on a specific industry

Value: 100%     Time: High     Cost:  Low      

If you can narrow down the number of people you’re targeting your sales efforts at – their becomes efficiency in your marketing efforts. It’s also likely that your expertise in that particular industry goes up as you do more jobs within it. Imagine giving a particular kind of client (Apartment buildings) the last four jobs you’ve done, and they are all apartment buildings – you’re much more likely to get more leads for people looking for that particular type of work.

 


 

2. Get specifics on terms you’re willing to offer for referrals and partner with other local businesses in adjacent industries.

Value: 80%     Time: Low     Cost:  Low    

All it takes is to create a write-up outlining terms and create a place to sign for both parties. If you specialize in a very specific industry it makes it a lot easier to reach out to people you know to say, “If you ever get [these types of projects] we specialize in them and are willing to offer a 10%, $1,000, or whatever’s appropriate referral fee to any project you refer that we land.”

If you have something specific, in writing and ready to shoot off to other people in your industry, or in adjacent industries – you’ll not only have a solid sales tool but an attractive offer. An offer you can use to market yourself to new companies and individuals you previously didn’t have a great reason to reach out.

 


 

3. Call your former employees (or bosses!)

Value: 50%    Time: Low     Cost: Low

If your company has been around for a while, you may be tempted to rest on your laurels when it comes to the ways you get new leads – but this is a recipe for having fewer excuses if there’s ever a dry spell.

Make it a point to reach out to former employees, bosses, or work colleagues – particularly if they went on to start a different business. This is a good reason not to burn bridges as word gets around, and particularly when it comes to commercial work, the amount of people connected starts to be less and less with more and more influence.

For this reason you should always keep relationships open, bring former employees or bosses out to lunch and consider giving some clear referral terms (see point number two) for when they come across someone who needs your specialty (see point number one.)

 


  Construction meet up - ways to get more leads

4. Visit networking groups like BNI or a chamber of commerce.

Value: 30%       Time: High      Cost: Low

I cannot endorse Business Networking International, any chamber of commerce, or any ‘Business to Business’ networking group for that matter – but I do suggest you consider testing them out. Particularly if the B2B groups near you allow visiting 1 or 2 times, I’d say visit them all!

The weekly meetings are difficult because the time it takes to go to them is high, only for the hope of some leads months from now. If you’re anything like me, you like to focus your efforts on things that have a high-return without spending crazy amounts of time each month.

 


 

5. Create a website that showcases your best work, testimonials, groups you’re a part of and is easy to navigate and nudges people to contact you.

Value: 100%        Time: Medium         Cost: High

This should be and is a somewhat high expense at the beginning of commercial construction lead-generation tactics. If you try to scrimp on this step of the process though, you may find yourself wondering why the leads aren’t rolling in on a regular basis.

Just like construction can be done in a low-value and low-quality way, there are thousands of web design companies out there that are selling low-quality websites. Our specialty is creating SEO-friendly websites for construction companies that look professional and stylish, meaning they are built to get traffic from Google, AND they aren’t an eyesore.

There are many companies that do web design. I just encourage you to make this one of your more foundational lead generation sources, rather than glossing over it and trying to slap a coat of varnish on the top of a poorly and cheaply made website.

 


Niching in Commercial Construction - Case Study Example
Great example of both niching and a commercial construction case study

6. Write about how you are solving a current client’s problem through construction case studies, and offer compelling pictures

Value: 100%       Time: Medium        Cost: High

Not only do you showcase your expertise to anyone who gets to your website via a search engine or social media channel – but you can increase the value by sharing the post and pictures on social media as well through Instagram, a Facebook Page, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Putting out content regularly on your website should be a high priority – and ideally, it’s teamed up with social media marketing and SEO link-building efforts, so that the hard work you or the company doing your SEO is putting into content is getting found on Google and other search engines and social media.

 


 

7. Ask your customers to write reviews about you online, and publicize great reviews to get as much out of them as you can. When customers are extremely happy with your work, ask for referrals.

Value: 80%       Time: Very low        Cost: Low

Reviews are so underrated I almost put the value at 100%. By themselves they aren’t much – and although places like Houzz and Home Advisor will push you to get reviews on their platform they only really help your efforts on that one platform and people already using it. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone of any lead generation tactic, although I’ve seen some pretty discouraging things about the way Home Advisor makes you sign away the usage of your brand name and is often ranking above companies for their own name on Google and selling the leads back to them. Usually, these leads get sold to many other companies as well, and everyone is paying HomeAdvisor, but only one gets the job.

Point being is the way I push clients to get reviews revolves around places that get featured in Google search results pages. So Facebook and native Google reviews have the most visibility in this regard, and I suggest creating a rhythm around asking happy clients for reviews after you’ve completed a job.

Hint: It can require a couple of nudges, and may include giving them some bullet points you want to mention (they’ll often ask for this).

 


 

8. Join groups for contractor networking and find ways to make yourself useful to other companies.

Value: 60%       Time: Medium-High        Cost: Somewhat low

Depending on the region you’re in there will be construction industry gatherings, which can be round-tables, networking events, or just pure fun. If you haven’t been to a few of these, it may be a great place to increase the amount of connections you have, and prepare your mindset for bigger jobs.

Often these kinds of events are rife with companies that have been around the block and can share some insight into the current challenges of the industry – or even the types of work you may want to avoid. If some of your work is earned working through other companies, these kinds of events may be the ideal way to rub shoulders with other company owners who may want to hire you as well.

 


 

Create the framework for your lead generation tactics
Create the lead generation frameworks that will serve you in good and bad economic times

Final Thoughts on Ways to get more Commercial Construction Leads

Getting commercial construction leads is not an overnight task,  because of the higher bar for earning these types of jobs. Many companies have to cut their teeth on smaller projects first and earn a reputation and work examples before they get the opportunity to bid for higher value jobs.

Don’t get discouraged – but do specialize if you can, and find ways to be useful and available to your fellow construction industry comrades, while positioning yourself as the expert in your community. Whether the economy is good, or the leads are slowing to a trickle – continually refresh your systems for getting more commercial construction leads, and set yourself up for success in the future.

Frequently asked questions about getting more construction leads

What’s the #1 thing I can do to get more construction leads?

The basics of helping people find you are somewhat simple – you need new, useful content and landing pages on your website that are targeted for specific terms people are Googling, you need to get more links back to your site from around the web because it helps Google know they relative importance of your site, and you need to find strategic ways to pay for visibility on Google remarketing, and Facebook promoted posts.

This is a good start

Do I need to hire a professional marketer to get more leads?

You don’t need to hire someone like me to do your marketing, it’s just that marketing experts (particularly ones that have specialized in construction marketing) will allow you to move more quickly on these types of strategies, and allow you to spend more time on what you’re best at – running your construction business.

How can I get endless construction leads on autopilot?

Working with a lead generation company that knows your industry in and out can significantly improve your chances of turning on the lead flow, much more so than a large corporation like HomeAdvisors or Houzz. Because a lead-generation or SEO company like Hook Agency works with you and ONLY YOU in your area. We create exclusive partnerships for a particular service and don’t take any new clients in that area – then help create content and get links back to your site from around the web – the two biggest pieces that help with getting higher on Google. We also know how to help you get more phone calls and contact form submissions by making tweaks in your website design – this process is called ‘Conversion Rate Optimization,’ and we’ve seen amazing construction company owners who have told us “we are getting so many leads, we don’t even know what to do with them all.” Send us a message today if you’d like to move towards that kind of future.

Does a brand / logo matter in getting more construction leads?

Does your name and brand/logo say what you want it to about the quality of work you do? You may think it doesn’t matter but does your ideal customer care? The data would say that they do. A group of women er polled and asked if the aesthetic of a website would drive them away if it was done poorly – and 73% of them said it could. They said they would ‘click away’ if they felt the look of the website reflected poorly on the quality of the company. Just the look of your companies marketing can attract or repel. The name matters as well – Advertising magnate Ogilvy puts it this way “What’s in a brand name? Perhaps everything, or at the very least a brand’s identity – its personality, values, recognition, and reputation. It differentiates you from your competitors and gets customers interested or at least curious. The name is not the brand, but a shortcut to the brand promise. Sometimes, the brand name is so apt and describes what it does so well that customers call all similar products by the same name. Google is the universal term for internet searches, Saran Wrap in the US for all plastic cling film and Hoover in the UK for all vacuum cleaners, and as a verb to describe the process.

If you’re still not sure then apply these 5 tests to check your brand out. Is it short and easy to understand, remember, pronounce and spell? Does it use figurative language that creates the imagery you want? Does it resonate with your target? Does it stand out, or can it be confused with other brands? Can it be shortened or abbreviated in an acceptable way?

Customers build brands, not companies. They give brands value by developing perceptions and expectations for those brands. Your brand name is shortcut to these associations. A brand name should be easily remembered, catchy, explain what your product does as well as communicate the message you want to send. What does your name say about you?

Are You a Home Service Business Who Wants to Increase Your Qualified Leads?

Contact Us Now

 100+ 5-Stars

 Award-Winning

 Industry-Vetted

The Roofing Academy