10 Free Marketing Tools You Can Use to Market Your Construction Company

Digital Marketing is one of the most powerful ways to help you become successful in the competitive construction industry.

First, let’s define digital marketing:

Digital Marketing is advertising delivered through digital channels. 

Channels such as social media platforms, mobile applications, email, web applications, search engines, websites, or any new digital channel.

Or a simpler version…

Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic devices.

If your potential customers don’t know about your service, they can’t buy them, right?

While some kinds of online marketing cost money, such as website hosting and email list management services, some of the most powerful and effective marketing tactics don’t cost anything at all.

More than anything, good marketing is all about knowing your market. 

• What does your market want or need? 
• How do you entice them (with words, graphics, or video) to check out your business for those wants and needs? 

Once you know who your market is, what it wants, and where to find them, simply apply that knowledge to the following 10 free ways to market your business.

Related Reading:

• 10 Questions to ask when creating a marketing plan for your construction company
• Website design for your construction company
• Why is SEO Important?
• Marketing Strategy vs Marketing Plan – Similarities and Differences
• Websites for Plumbing Companies
• Digital Marketing for Plumbers: 8 Strategies to Grow your Business

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

All construction firms should have a website, and while website design isn’t free (our web development services are affordable, though), you can optimize your website for search engines without spending a dime. 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

What Goes Into SEO?

To understand the true meaning of SEO, let’s break that definition down and look at the parts:

• Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead, you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in the products that you offer. (this is called “searcher” intent)
• Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
• Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is SEO also involves putting keywords in your webpage’s meta title and meta description to help search engines find and rank your website.

Understand that this is just a brief overview of SEO, and most Baton Rouge SEO companies stop at keyword research.

But there is so much more to search engine optimization.  There’s also:

• Technical SEO
• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Content Marketing
• Matching User Intent
• Plus much, much more.

The good news – we can help you make take a holistic approach to SEO and help you make sure that your construction business marketing efforts provide an acceptable Return on Investment (ROI).

There’s a reason we’re the leading SEO agency in Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, Hammond, New Orleans, South Louisiana, and beyond.

Don’t believe us; check out our credentials.

Social Media

Today’s consumers want to interact with the companies they do business with. 

Interaction involves so much more than building a website and slapping a phone number on it.

According to a recent Nielsen report, 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family more than advertising.

And 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions. 

Social media is one of the best ways to show your dedication to customer satisfaction to potential clients.

By using your construction company or home builder’s social media, you can

• Share information and promotions
• Communicate and engage with your market
• Benefit from the buzz your audience generates through shares.

By being responsive to people who engage with you, you show that you care, and you can increase loyalty and improve your chance of referrals. (and increase your overall visibility in search engines).

Google and search engines call these social signals.

Social media is now more than a messaging and acquisition channel: it directly impacts your company’s SEO, making it more important than ever for your construction company’s marketing strategies to include a cohesive social media strategy that focuses on promoting high-value campaigns, sales, and products. 

Kill two birds with one stone, boost your online presence and build credibility at the same time through your social media channels.

Share your Expertise

Google’s quality rater guidelines describe good content in terms of E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In February 2019, Google confirmed that these qualities are a very important part of its algorithms, and it added “experience” to the list in 2022.

E-E-A-T in SEO stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Demonstrating good E-E-A-T both on and off your website can potentially help improve Google rankings.

Sharing your expertise through articles or interviews is also one of the best ways to get in front of your market. 

You may land an opinion piece on someone else’s website, get interviewed on a podcast, or guest lecture for a webinar or online summit. 

Articles and interviews allow you to show off your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness in a way that’s more genuine (and more effective) than a traditional ad. 

Don’t limit your guest appearances to online events. Print publications and TV shows often need experts and guests.

Press Releases/Publicity

Similar to being a guest writer or being interviewed, free publicity offers credibility that will increase market response more than traditional advertising.

 The trick is to submit a newsworthy PR idea relating to your business. 

A press release isn’t meant to be an ad, so avoid the temptation to just send an email about your business to a newsroom. 

Your PR pitch needs to contain something newsworthy, such as winning an award, reaching a milestone, or connecting your business with something going on in the world (like volunteering resources to a worthy cause). 

Media outlets use a great resource to find guests and experts: Help a Reporter Out (HARO). You can join for free and then respond to media queries.

Joint Ventures and Influencers

In a joint venture, you partner with someone in a similar industry, typically in a cross-promotion, although there are a variety of ways to form a joint venture. 

Joint Ventures are one of the best ways to grow your company fast. JVs are all about creating relationships with people who already have access to large audiences that contain the target customers that you are trying to reach.

Influencers are a great way to do this.

Influencers help you leverage their popularity to get your product or service in front of another audience.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is similar to joint ventures in that another business promotes your product or service in exchange for a commission based on the sales facilitated. 

The difference is that a joint venture is usually a one-off event and usually involves a small number of partners. 

On the other hand, an affiliate program is ongoing, and you can have as many partners as you want to promote what you offer.

Although you might need to invest in an affiliate software system, finding affiliates is, for the most part, free. You only pay them if they deliver results.

Discussion Groups/Forums

Just like managing a solid social media presence, participating in online groups can be time-consuming, but when it’s done well, the benefits are well worth the time invested. 

First, it’s a free way to learn about the needs and trends of your market.

Second, it provides a way to help others and share your expertise, which builds rapport and credibility (remember E-E-A-T). 

If you help someone through a difficult situation, they’ll want to learn more about you and the services you offer. 

However, success in discussion groups comes from being helpful, not from overtly promoting your business.

Check out the two most common discussion groups and forums, Reddit and Quora.  You might not only help someone else out, but you may gain some knowledge as well!

Videos

Visual content has a higher chance of gaining traction online; fortunately, it’s not hard or expensive to create a promotional video. 

Sure, you could pay professionals to make a high-quality video for your business, but with a little extra effort, you can do the whole thing yourself. 

You can make a video using your computer’s webcam or a cell phone. 

Most computers and phones include free video editing software, and it’s free to upload videos to YouTube. 

The trick to successful videos for business marketing is to be helpful (i.e., tutorials) and/or entertaining.

Oh, and to optimize them for SEO since Youtube is owned by Google.

Speak or Teach

Credibility is an important part of marketing, which is why it comes up a lot (like being a podcast guest or making PR pitches). 

Especially on the internet, people need to feel like they’re working with honest, quality, trustworthy (there’s that word again) businesses.  

Speaking and teaching are other ways to show off your expertise and build credibility. 

Sometimes you can get paid for it, as well. 

Do it right, and you may become an influencer too.

You can use a free service such as Zoom to offer an online seminar or contact local groups about speaking to them in person.

For example, many towns have adult education programs that could use some expertise from a local business owner. 

You can also look for any civic groups and nonprofit organizations in need of speakers.

By speaking and teaching, you not only help gain credibility, but you help your local community as well.

Offer Something for Free

People love a good deal, and deals don’t get much better than free.

Many companies online offer freebies with a subscription to their newsletter, but that’s not the only way a free item can help. 

You can offer a free sample or a free 15-minute coaching call. 

The idea is that once people have tested your product or service, they’ll want more, and they’ll be willing to pay the next time around.

But don’t focus on freebies too much.

Conclusion

If you really want to level up your construction business’s online footprint and dominate the competition, take advantage of the free marketing tools mentioned in this article.

If you have any questions on exactly how to use them or want some advice on digital marketing for your construction business, feel free to contact us for your free digital marketing for construction business consultation.  (see, we’re using one of the free tools right now!)