Why Should Contractors Use Social Media?

Social media has been transforming various businesses through the power of networking, community, interactions and an array of media by helping them engage with their audience resulting in a personal connection.

However, is social media also powerful enough for the construction contractors as a marketing strategy?

Nowadays, many small businesses, individuals and enterprises are actively utilizing social media as a powerful marketing tool to reach out to consumers directly. The ones who have started to use social media have reported successful stories on how it’s working for them.

Although there are various platforms available for customer outreach, each platform has its own learning curve. However, with practice, you can learn the most result-oriented approaches.

It is 2019, and the Internet is flooding with a variety of social media platforms. Users are all over it depending on their tastes, preferences, age group, language, and location. While teens are hooked to Snapchat and Instagram, audiences above 25 years to 60 years choose Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for professional networking.

Hence, it is essential for you to choose every social media platform wisely and aim for the right kind of audience. Knowledge of the subject, intention of each post, and empathy with the user will help you develop a distinct online identity.

Social media can help you automate your digital marketing if done in the right manner. Let’s check some of the top social media platforms for construction contractors:

1. Facebook

Undoubtedly, the go-to social media for adults, Facebook provides you features like profile creation, business pages, different variety of content, interactions, and robust group dynamics.

These all features are unique and provide you different methods of communication to create an engaging audience. If your business mission and vision are clear, you can map out a digital marketing campaign such as Facebook ads. It lets you target potential customers and get the most out of them by getting higher returns on your advertising dollars. Utilizing Looker Studio Facebook Ads templates can further streamline the creation and analysis of these campaigns.

This platform cannot be missed for individuals as well as businesses. A Report by Statista states that more than 1.52 billion Facebook users were active in 2018. That’s more than one-third of the world’s population. With images, animation videos, and live videos, you can showcase your portfolio to the audience right away.

2. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform for construction businesses to expand their presence and share the wisdom with the users. LinkedIn is also a powerful tool for hiring, sourcing amazing talent, make official announcements, share business updates and company information.

LinkedIn provides multiple tools for employees such as Lynda – a set of online courses to upgrade your skills, and Sales Navigator – for lead management and creating a sales funnel.

Moreover, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016,  resulting in seamless syncing of information from LinkedIn to Microsoft native apps like Microsoft Planner, which helps you increase your productivity.

LinkedIn helps you to laser focus on B2B marketing strategies as all the big corporations and startups are available on this social media platform. Moreover, the entire employee hierarchy of these corporations is actively using the platform for business updates.

The contractors can utilize this platform to increase their presence and make a name in their respective sectors.

3. Houzz

Houzz is a dedicated social network for the construction management industry. It is a fantastic tool for contractors, architects, and interior designers to showcase their projects and directly connect to the homeowners by interacting with them in forums and solving their queries immediately.

This platform will help you to create a brand, and let your work speak for itself. Consumers also flock around Houzz to find home professionals, consultants, products for their interiors and discover ideas and inspiration from existing projects. The pro feature of Houzz enables you to directly reach out to your consumers by creating a business profile, and help you improve your web presence.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest is of a visual bookmarking platform for users to help them create boards and save pins which are basically URLs with a visual preview. The user behaviour on this platform focuses on creating inspiration boards and sharing it with their friends/colleagues.

For example, you can find various interior designing boards, which include a beautiful collection of home decor and visual styles for home designing. This platform can help construction contractors to understand user tastes, preferences and check the current trend in the market.

The Advantages of Social Media for Contractors

Portfolio

Social media is a great tool to showcase your work through images, text, and videos. A report by Smart Insights suggests that more than 3.3 million posts are posted on Facebook alone in 60 seconds. This statistic provides us the overview of the quantum of content flowing on the various social media platforms each minute.

Everyone is actively performing on social media to gain consumer mind space and allure them with their work. Gone are the days of physical portfolios. Welcome the digital portfolio era which enlightens consumers with insights, your taste, and style, and checks the community’s response.

Lead Generation

Social media is a powerful tool which helps you create and expand your audience. While many strangers may respond to your post, amongst those people, you may find some potential customers.

Tools like LinkedIn help you generate leads and drive queries straight to your inbox. By actively engaging with the customers and answering their queries, you can increase the audience engagement and eventually enhance your search ranking in the respective platforms.

Being notable on a social media platform has its benefits for networking, which directly results in phenomenal sales growth. However, you have to make sure your sales funnel is ready before you start posting about your business. Irrespective of your niche, whether you build houses, commercial buildings, or government bridges, you will find a dedicated audience.

Company Announcements

Businesses and people have been using social media platforms for formal announcements, like project induction, news & updates for stakeholders and even reporting the quarterly revenue.

If Donald Trump can do that, why can’t you? By posting company announcements, you position yourself as a transparent organization which is willing to share all the nitty-gritty of the business to the world. By doing this, you enhance the overall trust factor and improve your goodwill in the market.

Understand, Iterate & Network

Before implementing a social media strategy, it is essential to understand the current buying journey from the eyes of your consumers. The Zero moment of truth (ZMOT) states that the consumer already knows what to buy and the product specifications beforehand.

The Internet has changed how people purchase things. The buying process starts with Google, the user inputs keywords of the product, and the consumer thoroughly reads the information to understand the pros and cons of them, and also compares similar offers from existing competitors.

As a construction contractor, you need to understand what your consumer on the digital platforms ask for and iterate accordingly. You can find a ton of insights on comments, blog posts, and images.

People are speaking their hearts out on the digital platforms and provide clear signs of their needs and want on different mediums. Integrating website analytics and understanding the social media monthly insights will offer you tons of information to remain relevant in the market.

Feedbacks

Whether you like it or not, users on social media like to speak their heart out. Parameters such as comments, likes, share count or using emojis provide instant feedback. Sometimes the feedback can be brutally honest, and you may not like it.

However, it’s important to understand the content from a consumer perspective and take it as constructive feedback. You are getting free advice and feedback from a consumer through these tools, use them wisely without hurting your reputation.

B2B and B2C Marketing

You can directly reach prospective customers by writing blogs, articles, creating infographics, using an AI writing tool, and developing a knowledge center. This will help you gain a trustworthy brand in your industry.

The more you make people aware of the right technology, the best practices used in the construction site, the more people will follow you and believe in what you say. Once you have created the trust factor, sales flourish.

Using social media is no more an option. It is a mandatory tool in today’s marketing world. It is cost-effective, has excellent exposure, and is ever-changing in a fast-moving world. There are many reasons to join the bandwagon today and experience the magic of social media networks help your business presence grow dynamically.

Choosing a social media system which is intuitive yet easy to use, will cut down the training costs and will save you money.