How to write a marketing plan for a construction business

Build up the word about your construction business by creating a marketing plan. It will help ensure you have the right tools prepared for the job. For your plan to direct your campaigns in the right direction, make sure you cover all the key bases.

This guide to producing a marketing plan for a construction business will cover:

• Your current situation
• Your market
• Your goals
• Your strategy
• Your budget and management

First, be aware of what your business needs to achieve through its marketing by looking at its current situation. Then, to highlight every company area, you can conduct a SWOT analysis to consider strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

By looking at the business’s current strengths, you can use them for your marketing. For example, if your company produces good quality work and you often get good reviews from customers, consider using those to get new ones.

If you can find some weaknesses in your current situation, your business can work on these areas through marketing. For example, suppose you struggle to get people to recognise your name. In that case, you can put out a radio ad with a catchy jingle to make it memorable.

Finding opportunities to improve your business’ potential reach is crucial for your marketing plan. For example, if a trade show is coming up in a few months, that could be a great place to launch your campaign.

If you identify any current threats, use your marketing plan to prepare your business for them. For example, suppose your last campaign went over budget. In that case, say you will avoid this by using an accounting tool like Countingup to record costs with its expense categorisation feature.

A pivotal section to include in your marketing plan is talking about your market and the people you would like to target. Carry out some market research to find out information for both of these things. Search for as many insights as possible, look at your competitors, speak directly to your customers, and ask for their opinions.

Other construction businesses may offer similar services to yours. By looking at how your competitors market themselves, you can find ways to make yours appear different. 

Some businesses even decide to use their competition to source ideas for their campaigns. For example, if your competitors claim that they have the best tools ready to go, you could promote your experience and skill.

You may identify similarities between the people your business would like to target through your research. By summarising these and grouping them, you can outline your target audience. They will be the centre point of your marketing to inform the goals in the plan.

Your research may have identified ages, locations, interests or other things that many of your customers have in common. To put those together in a way that’s easier to think about, write a customer profile (sometimes called customer avatar). This approach is a summary of the lifestyle of a hypothetical ideal customer. 

Using your target audience and knowledge of the market, combine these with your current situation to choose some goals. Your business goals should represent what you are looking to achieve through your marketing. Having goals laid out will help you make decisions on the types of channels you will use.

It is helpful to make aims measurable, to make sure that you can look back and see if you achieved them. For example, your goal for the campaign could be to increase your number of clients from three a week to six. After the campaign starts, check whether you have reached the goal after a month and see whether you need to come back to the plan if it has not.

To lay out how you intend to achieve the goals you have set out for yourself, create a section that includes the overall message of the campaign and what channels you will use.

Choosing an overall message for the campaign is essential to reaching your goals. In addition, it can help to make sure that all of the drives are coherent and each activity encourages the right action for customers to take. 

For example, if your core message is that you want customers to add your business’ number to their phones, it’s ready when they need it. Then, make sure that you have the information with your number accessible on every channel.

Part of your section on strategy should detail some of the marketing channels you intend to use. These should follow your target audience and how you think it is best to communicate with them. Of course, you could have multiple channels to use for the campaign, but putting them into your plan means you can make sure they all follow the same message.

After you decide on the channels to use for your campaign, it is crucial to include a section that provides your budget. Using your research, you should find out the costs of each activity and put them into the plan. 

Have an idea for the amount of money you are willing to spend on your marketing. Include a minimum and maximum amount. Having a set budget will help you look back and consider if the campaign has been successful.

To help you stick to your budget, setting up a separate business account means that you can track precisely how much you spend. Countingup is the current business account with built-in accounting software.

Using the Countingup app, you can receive cash flow insights that allow you to compare the campaign’s progress with your expectations in your budget. It also has a receipt capture tool that enables you to scan receipts into the app using your phone camera. This feature means that any services you use for the campaign can easily be organised and recorded.

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