LinkedIn Marketing for Construction Companies
Discover how LinkedIn marketing for construction companies supports brand awareness, strengthens industry relationships, and drives qualified traffic to your website.
LinkedIn marketing for construction companies can be an effective lead-generation tool. When most people hear “digital marketing,” social media is one of the first tactics that comes to mind, and social media management is a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy—but business-to-business, or B2B, social media requires a very different approach than typical social media tactics that target consumers, also called B2C. If you’re interested in digital marketing for construction companies, your social media plan should communicate your expertise to your audience through curated, relevant content.
In this article, we’ll address the best construction industry marketing tools for social media. At ZAG FIRST, we’ve worked with dozens of architects, owners, general contractors, and other construction industry businesses to create social media content that boosts their brand recognition, increases engagement, and drives web traffic.
Which Platform Should You Choose?
When it comes to the B2B construction industry, LinkedIn is the most impactful social media platform.
LinkedIn is by far the best social media platform to connect with construction industry professionals and decision-makers. This platform can help you keep your brand top-of-mind for the right audiences. LinkedIn marketing for construction offers organic posting, which is free to companies and individuals who are associated with your company. In addition to free organic posting, construction companies can choose to run paid/sponsored posts, which allow you to target your customers by location, title, industry, and more.
Posting On LinkedIn For Construction Companies
While getting started with your LinkedIn presence is important, it’s equally important to create a plan first. Don’t just jump on LinkedIn every other week and post something miscellaneous – the key to effective social media marketing is to craft a deliberate LinkedIn strategy that will maximize engagement, help increase brand visibility, drive prospects to your website, provide educational content, and generate leads.
Crafting Your Social Media Marketing Plan
When you’re getting started with your plan for LinkedIn marketing, creating a plan can seem daunting. Begin by asking yourself:
- What is my brand’s tone of voice?
- Make a list of adjectives you use to describe your company, and make sure your posts align with a tone that brings these adjectives to mind.
- How often will you post?
- Once a day can be great, but it is not often feasible. 1-3 times a week is a good choice with a consistent schedule. Using tools to determine the best times of day to post to reach the maximum audience will help you figure out your posting schedule.
- How often will you promote your services, and how often will you simply share valuable content or your insights?
- Being “too pushy” or “too salesy” on social media can hurt your brand. For every one post that you heavily promote your own brand, aim for three other posts that share a helpful article or insight. No one likes to be sold to all the time.
Once you’ve thought through these questions, you can create a workable LinkedIn marketing plan that includes your social media voice, which kind of content you’ll post, how often you’ll post, and how often you’ll promote your brand or provide helpful insights.
Where to Begin
Start by creating your LinkedIn business page. This process should be relatively quick and easy – simply follow the prompts on LinkedIn to provide information about your company and how to contact you. Once your base page is created, begin adding images of your work to show your audience what you’re capable of.
You might be surprised by the number of small- to mid-sized companies in the construction industry with little to no LinkedIn presence at all–so once you create your page, you’ll already be a step ahead of the competition. With your page set up, you can start sharing posts about your work, updates on jobs, and industry tips. Repost and curate content from other sources, and share insights from peers, clients, and industry experts. These steps will build out your page and help you position your company as a source of knowledge in your industry.
Building Your Audience
One downside to organic LinkedIn marketing for construction is that you’re often only reaching people who are already in your network or who are connected to your brand. To mitigate creating an “echo chamber” of content, it’s essential to attract new followers and connections. You can do this by making sure your company leadership and sales team (people who are associated with your company online) share your company’s LinkedIn content on their personal LinkedIn profiles by reposting it, sharing, and commenting. Additionally, follow people who have followed your competitors or accounts that are similar to yours. Comment on their content and, if they respond, engage them in a dialogue.
Paid LinkedIn Marketing For Construction Companies
If you need to increase the reach of your messages and target ideal prospects on LinkedIn, you may need to develop a paid ad strategy and campaign. This involves taking your best content and turning it into a sponsored post targeting prospects in your ideal geographic areas. This works best if you have organic content already on the platform–users will see the sponsored content, which serves as an entry point into your brand. Once they see your sponsored content, targeted audience members are more likely to click through and see the rest of your posts.
How Paid LinkedIn Works
LinkedIn marketing for construction lets businesses create a variety of ads, including sponsored content, message ads, text ads like pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-thousand (CPM), and dynamic ads. You can set the budget and start or stop your campaign at any time.
One of the biggest advantages of paid LinkedIn marketing for construction companies is the extensive targeting options. You can filter your audience by metrics like job title, industry, company name, and interests. Once your paid LinkedIn campaign for construction is up and running, you can quickly track progress, monitor KPIs, and make changes via the LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
What To Expect From LinkedIn Marketing
Remember: social media is not the best digital marketing tactic to find high-intent users.
When a prospect visits your website, it’s generally because they searched for a term that led them there, or they came directly to your site looking for your company. That means you know that they’re looking for some information that you can provide. The downside to LinkedIn compared to paid and organic search is that you have no information about the intent of your audience. They are not actively searching for your company or product–they’re often just browsing.
LinkedIn is an important tool for engaging your audience, but keep in mind that your social media audience may not be anywhere close to purchase-ready. Instead of directly generating leads, social media marketing for construction companies is about creating brand awareness — building your reputation as a leader in the industry, a source of expertise, and being a familiar, trustworthy name. With this brand awareness in place, prospects are more likely to visit your site when they’re ready to purchase because you’ve built a base level of trust through your online presence.
The Bottom Line
Will LinkedIn marketing for construction singlehandedly clinch your biggest contract to date? Maybe not, but customers use LinkedIn profiles the same way they use a website: they want to get a feel for your company, evaluate your work, make sure you seem trustworthy, and see what other people are saying about you.
LinkedIn is a critical component of the best digital marketing strategy for construction companies. To find out more about how digital marketing can transform your business by generating leads and driving revenue, check out our other blog posts about digital marketing for construction companies or contact us today.
