1. Identify your target audience

Whether you are targeting Business to Business (B2B) sales or Business to Consumer (B2C) sales, it is still important to identify and research your target audience before launching into a full-blown advertising campaign. The effectiveness of a mis-targeted advertising campaign will prove to be an expensive exercise if not done correctly.

2. Establish a clear message

Advertising is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to selling a product. Yes, it is the aspect that potential clients get to see but it is the work that goes on prior to that which will sell the product or service. Your messaging objectives need to be identified – what is the goal of the advert:

- Informational – aim to make clients/consumers knowledgeable about a product and how to use it.

- Persuasive – you want customers to like the brand or to prefer your brand over the competition.

- Reminding – aim is to keep the brand name in front of the consumer.

3. Design the advert

Designers, copywriters, marketers or whoever you have enlisted to be responsible for the design of your ads should have one thing in mind – presenting a series of messages and repeat it to a sufficient degree until you reach the desired outcome. This may come in the form of print adverts, social media adverts, paid search adverts and so on. There are so many ways to advertise, it is what is right for your business. However, the overarching goal should be to promote the ‘big idea’ – a concept that expresses every aspect of the product, service or organisation in a tangible, eye-catching and memorable manner.

4. Choose the media type and media schedule

For a construction business, a digital marketing strategy is one of the most effective advertising strategies. Utilisation of internet advertising gives marketers the ability to reach more clients as well as targeting the correct businesses. Some key internet advertising strategies are listed below:

- Paid Search – a business can pay to be bumped up the catalogue of search engine keyword results. For example, a business can pay to be the top hit on Google for Bulldozers.

- Email – target audiences with specifically tailored email campaigns to boost business promotion or target direct sales.

- Social Media – like Paid Search advertising, many social media platforms now offer the chance to businesses to pay to boost their posts to reach audiences that do not follow their pages. It is a simple but effective way to drive ‘reminder’ advertising or a great way to promote a product. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all offer this opportunity.

Construction firms may often consider their services to be unmarketable as very often they are services that benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. To some extent this is true, reputation is key. But more and more often, especially as demand for digital marketing increases in all industries whereby the users keep increasing dramatically, businesses, in particular construction firms, need to adapt business strategies to ensure their growth.