Lead generation is a key metric many construction companies are working to improve. But, like anything, it's easier said than done. You want to boost lead generation, but you don't just want any leads. You want qualified leads — people and businesses who are looking to start the kinds of projects that deliver the greatest returns for your construction company.
If you're working to boost lead generation for your construction company, here are 5 proven tactics that won't just get you more leads, but more of the leads that drive revenue.
As you might expect, quality lead generation starts with your website.
Your website is your construction company's greatest lead conversion tool. Bar none.
Sure, you've been getting a ton of word-of-mouth referrals. But where do you think those referrals go the minute someone recommends your construction company?
Your website. They go to your website.
Even if it's just to figure out what number to call, any 21st-century consumer is going to Google you before they talk to anyone on your sales or project team.
When they do make it to your website, it's important that there are plenty of opportunities to convert those leads.
Beyond just word-of-mouth referrals, you should also be optimizing your website to convert leads coming in from the web.
If your goal is to increase lead generation, word-of-mouth referrals shouldn't be your only stream of leads. You should be optimizing your website and marketing strategy to draw in more traffic (we'll get to that in #2), and you should be utilizing conversion tools that can help you generate those leads once new visitors make it to your site.
Three key conversion tools you'll want to implement on your construction company's website include:
This is the best way to generate leads from your website. A call-to-action is any button or page on your construction website that encourages a lead to take an action. Buttons like "Request a Quote" and "Get a Project Bid" are easy to implement, and they make it really easy to generate leads.
When calls-to-action are available and visible on your site, you're making it easy for a qualified lead to convert when they're ready to talk to your sales team.
Calls-to-action are a great way to convert qualified leads who are getting ready to make a purchasing decision. But, requesting a quote might be too much to ask of someone who's just started researching construction companies for their project.
For those visitors, a softer conversion opportunity is necessary. That's where content offers come in.
Content offers are pieces of content you put on your website behind a gate. That gate is usually a contact form. Here's a great example of a content offer that's directed to contractors.
If you were a contractor interested in saving money, this content offer might appeal to you. When you fill out your contact information, you get the offer, and the company gets your contact information.
Voila — that's a new lead.
Content offers present qualified lead conversion opportunities, without your sales team having to do a single thing. They're a great soft-conversion opportunity that can increase your construction company's lead generation, without putting a lot of extra work on your sales team.
Conversational marketing is another great conversion tool you can use to boost your construction company's lead generation, while also saving your sales team some time qualifying leads.
Implement conversational marketing tools, like a chatbot, on some of your more highly trafficked website pages. Your home page is a great idea, as well as any pages that showcase your previous work.
If a potential lead thinks of any questions, or wants to know more about one of your past construction projects, all they have to do is type a message to the chatbot the minute they think of that question.
The chatbot can either answer that question according your pre-set conversations, or someone on your sales team can respond directly through the chatbot.
If that lead seems qualified, the chatbot can collect their contact information for your sales team to follow-up, and you've just generated another lead.
If the lead doesn't seem qualified, your sales team can point them in the right direction, and they're on their merry way immediately. This helps remove a lot of the unqualified leads that could be clogging up your sales pipeline.
Conversational marketing is a newer technology, but it's a great way to remove any friction between the visitor to lead conversion. Most studies have shown that the easier it is for a visitor to get an answer to their question as they think of it, the more likely they are to continue the conversation and become a lead.
Conversational marketing tools solve the challenge of providing the right response to a question at exactly the right time, by ensuring your website is always on, answering questions even when your sales team is out of the office.
More traffic = more leads.
And you get more traffic by putting out more content.
I'm not going to go into the mechanics of blogging or content marketing, but if you want more info there, check out these resources:
The long and short of it is that if you're putting out content that is:
a) targeted to keywords that people are searching for, and
b) relevant to the questions your ideal leads are asking,
you're going to pull in more qualified traffic.
And when you have more qualified traffic coming to the website that you've already optimized with conversion opportunities (See step 1) you're going to generate more leads.
Write content that answers the questions and pain points your commercial construction leads typically face.
Topics like, "How to Determine A Budget for My Business Construction Project?", or "How Long Will My Office/Hospital/Apartment Building Construction Project Take?" are things your ideal buyers are probably searching for.
If those don't sound great to you, then what do your customers typically ask? Ask your sales team what questions they field the most when it comes to starting a new construction project.
When you're writing blogs and articles that answer those questions, you'll start pulling in the qualified traffic you want. When they do, your conversion tools will be ready and waiting to help convert those visitors into leads.
Most commercial construction companies function in a specific geographical range.
Even if you're a large industrial construction company, you're probably restricted to a region of the country, like the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest.
While you want to boost your construction company's lead generation, you don't want to pull in leads that aren't relevant to your company.
Leads from other countries or from regions you don't serve are a waste of time.
A key way to ensure your lead generation efforts are only working to pull in the right leads is to put effort into your local SEO.
That means, tailoring your digital presence — your online listings and your website — to clearly state where you work.
Your Google My Business listing is a key place to start.
Anyone who searches "commercial construction company near me" is going to pull up a search engine results page that highlights companies with Google My Business Listings. For example, I searched digital marketing in our area, Grand Haven, and three marketing agencies popped up on top.
When you click on Evenbound, you pull up our Google My Business Listing.
This is a free listing that Google puts together to help users find the best business for whatever service they're searching for. It's got everything from our hours to our website to pictures of our team.
The more optimized your listing, the better.
At the very least, you should claim your construction company's Google My Business Listing and adjust your service area details.
The service area business details allow you to say what areas you serve customers in, where you business is located, and more.
This helps Google figure out where you are, which in turn helps you. When Google knows where you are and what areas you serve, they're more likely to show your business when someone searches for a commercial construction company in their area.
When that happens, you get more qualified, local leads.
Pro Tip: If you can, try to get some reviews going on your Google My Business Listing. As you can see from our results, our high rating put us at the top of local search results. Here's some more info about how customer reviews can drive quality local search results.
It's a good idea to optimize your website for local SEO too, especially if you want to rank ahead of the competition. This is another great way to make sure you're boosting your lead generation potential for the right, qualified leads. A few ways to optimize your construction company's website to draw in more local leads include:
Putting just a little effort into your construction company's local SEO can go a long way. The more optimized you are for local search, the more qualified traffic you'll get. And as we talked about earlier, more qualified traffic = more qualified leads.
Up until now, these lead generation tactics have been largely focused on organic efforts.
Paid advertising is also a great way to generate leads if you use it well.
Unlike organic search efforts, which take a bit of time to gain traction, PPC and social media advertising can generate those leads you want, right now. This makes paid advertising a great supplement to any inbound marketing strategy looking to boost lead generation quickly.
Paid search and social media advertising are both great options for construction companies.
PPC is a great lead generation tactic because you can pick and choose the keywords that you want to bid on.
For smaller PPC budgets, we recommend bidding on keywords that signal buyer intent, like "commercial contractor quote", or "commercial construction timeline".
Though you might not get as many leads from these long-tail keywords, the lead you do get are likely to be highly qualified, and more likely to convert to sales. Since you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, there's not much to lose by giving PPC a shot.
Social media advertising is great for construction companies because it's highly visual, and so are your projects.
You can highlight images of the beautiful buildings you've completed, while also using Facebook, Instagram (yes, Instagram can work for commercial construction companies), and LinkedIn's robust targeting features to send those ads out to just the leads you know are likely to be interested in your commercial construction services.
The best way to boost your construction company's lead generation is to take cues from your past efforts.
What lead generation tactics are working best for your construction company? Which tactics flopped?
It's important to keep track of your efforts and analyze what works and what doesn't, so you can continue to generate leads more efficiently in the future.
We always recommend a CRM to help you keep track of and analyze data associated with your marketing and lead generation efforts, but you can also use the people you talk with every day to figure out what's working to generate leads for your company.
Here's how:
The better you understand your current lead generation efforts, and their effectiveness, the more intuitively you'll be able to tailor your efforts in the future.
Take the lead generation tactics that are working the best, and allocate a bit more time and budget to them. If something isn't working, take a break from it, or come at it from a different angle.
Construction companies often struggle to generate qualified digital leads, either because they lack an online presence, or because they're not exactly sure what leads they want. If you can nail those two things, and implement even just a few of these lead generation tactics, you'll start to see a boost in the leads coming to your construction company.
Looking to boost your construction company's lead generation potential? The Evenbound team is here to help. We've worked with a number of construction companies to boost site traffic, align sales and marketing, and most importantly to generate and close leads.
