Building a credible brand is extremely important, as it’s how customers will identify you. It’s crucial that your branding is on point, because once established, it’s notoriously hard to change. Here, Gyproc Tools discuss 7 ways in which you can brand your construction company, in order to combat any competition in sales.
In 2016, the value of construction work in the UK reached a record high of £99,266 million, with numbers employed skyrocketing by 55,831. The truth is, the construction industry is a saturated market, with thousands of companies completing numerous projects across the country.
So, how do you set yourself apart from the rest and gain those sales? It’s all in the branding. These 7 tried and tested tips will help you to differentiate yourself from competitors, and gain a reputation as the company that people trust and want to hire.
Understand Your Audience
Before you can even begin the branding and marketing process, you must first know who your target market is. Ask yourself the following questions:
· What do they look for in a construction company?
· What’s their budget?
· Whereabouts do they live?
· What’s the scale of their project? Are they homeowners with a small job, or bigger companies – think shopping centres, hospitals, housing estates etc?
Once you’ve conducted your customer research and drawn up a profile of who they are and what they’re looking for in a construction company, you can begin to effectively brand yourself.
Determine Your Selling Points
Once you’ve gathered your customer insights, it’s time to think about what you want to be remembered for. This is highly important, as it will form part of your brand, and help to sell your services.
Do you want to have a reputation for being reliable? Trustworthy? Professional? Don’t just spend a couple of minutes brainstorming ideas: these terms will form part of your branding strategy after all, so it’s important you choose the right ones.
Don’t go down the route of wanting to be “low cost” because all that means is low margins, and provides customers with the opportunity to knock your prices down even further. Instead, opt for “quality”, showing customers that whilst you may not be the cheapest, they’re certainly getting value for their money.
Design a Professional Logo
One of the most important aspects of any brand is the logo. It doesn’t need to be super fancy, but it must convey your business and what you stand for, whilst being relevant to the construction industry.
Don’t be afraid to pay a designer to create a logo for you – you’ll be using it for years to come and it’ll be splashed across all of your marketing material, so it’s important you like it.
If in doubt, don’t attempt to do the job yourself. Pay an expert to design it, so you can be totally happy with the end result.
Don’t forget that your logo will also heavily influence your website design too, with the same fonts and colours used.
Get Social
It sounds obvious, but don’t doubt the power of social media. At the very least, set yourself up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Post regularly, showcasing recently completed projects, linking to blog articles on your website (which we’ll discuss more later), and highlight your hardest workers.
You can also test the waters with paid Facebook advertising. Suitable for all budgets, you could spend as little as $1 a day, depending on your ad objective – which includes clicks to your website, or Facebook page likes.
The great thing about Facebook advertising, is that you can really drill down about who you want to see your ad: gender, age, location and interests – you can specify them all.
Over half of the UK’s population log onto Facebook at least once a month, so it’s imperative for your brand that you have an active presence on there, so potential customers keep you at the front of their mind when considering a construction company to hire.
Humanise Your Company
Customers like to see the face behind the brand. As a construction company, your employees are your biggest assets: they’re the ones with the knowledge and experience to complete projects to a high standard. Therefore, they will help you to stand out from the competition and gain those extra sales.
Add a “meet the team” section to your website where you can add in pictures and a few short sentences for each employee. You can also feature staff on your social media channels, congratulating hard work or showing how you work together as a team.
Also, don’t be afraid to network! Get out there and speak to members of the public and potential clients, or chat with potential suppliers, as you never know what it could lead to. Just make sure you maintain a professional image, and show your drive and dedication to get the job done.
Get Blogging
Do you want to be seen as experts in your industry? Then prove it. Blogging is a great way to do this: articles that have expert advice on specific topics, or showcasing recently completed projects on a regular basis will gain your brand credibility.
Regularly uploading content will not only gain you a loyal following, but it will prompt Google to crawl and index your site, helping to climb the rankings on search engines.
Just make sure that you don’t publish duplicate content, and try to keep to a minimum of 500 words per page – although for blogs, you can go crazy, even 1,000+ words is fine. As long as your content is good quality, informative, and SEO optimised, you’re fine.
In fact, blogging and PR are closely interlinked. Why not reach out to trade publications and offer to write expert pieces for them to publish on their website? Not only will that give your brand more exposure, it will likely gain you a link to your website, which can help to further increase your organic rankings.
Speak With Past Clients
A recent survey found that 93% of people’s purchasing decisions are impacted by online reviews. You want to make sure that people are talking about you, and in a good way.
When you’ve finished a project, ask customers to review you (provided they’re happy with the job!). You could either purchase a service like TrustPilot, use free methods like Facebook and Google, or manually upload reviews yourself on your website.
For particularly big jobs, you could even create a case study to sit on your website, which you can then show to potential customers in the future.
Construction companies largely rely on word of mouth and recommendations, so for the sake of your brand, you really should be encouraging positive conversation. A glowing review from a previous customer could be what separates you from the competition, and gains you that extra sale.
To conclude, building a brand takes time, it’s not just something that happens overnight. However, it should be a well thought out process, so that you’re fully happy with it. Another important thing to remember? Brand reputation can be tarnished in a second, so you should always have total control. These 7 tips will help you to create a brand that you can be proud of, whilst setting yourself apart from the competition.
