Marketing Ideas for Builders to Balance the Slow Season

Business cycles in the building industry can be roller coaster rides. Your phone rings off the hook every spring but goes dead after Labor Day. You’re turning down jobs in July but by November you have to hustle to make payroll.

If you’re a contractor, fabricator or materials supplier who's been around for more than a couple years, you’ve had to suffer through them. It’s always stressful but you have always come out the other side relieved and a little stronger having lived to tell the tale.

We’ve helped a variety of regional builders and manufacturers through the cyclical ups and downs, so we are sharing a few strategies we have found to help builders like you weather the slow times and balance out your business volume all year long.

Self Promotion is Even More Important During “Trickle Times”

There’s a famous story about two soda brands that took different approaches to surviving the Great Depression.

Moxie, the top-selling soda during the roaring twenties, cut back drastically on their marketing and advertising to save money. Coca-Cola, their biggest competitor, kept their marketing steady. 

By the time the depression lifted, Moxie had shrunk from a national powerhouse to a niche regional product. Coke, meanwhile, had slurped up most of Moxie’s market share and was positioned to grow into the global juggernaut we know today. And Moxie? Its brand has long been gobbled up by the Coca-Cola company.

If you let yourself fall out of your prospects’ minds when times are tough, not only will they forget you when things pick up—but someone else will swoop in to take your place. Here’s where we recommend you focus your marketing efforts during the slow season to survive and thrive.

Define Your Audiences

In order to raise awareness about your company and attract leads from your business community, you first need to nail down who you are talking to. Instead of trying to entice everyone under the sun, define who your ideal customer is and build a list around their category. This helps narrow your messaging so that you are that much valuable in their eyes.

It sounds counterintuitive, but the more people you advertise to, the less effective your results will be. To effectively raise awareness about your company and attract leads from your business community, it's crucial to first identify your target audience.

Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, focus on defining your ideal customer and building a list around that specific group. This approach allows you to tailor your messaging, making it more relevant and valuable to those who matter most.
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Education is the Best Advertising

If you’re facing headwinds, chances are your prospects are as well. Trying to directly sell them at times like these can be like banging on a locked door. They won’t be interested in anything you have to say unless it helps solve their own dilemmas.

If you take the initiative to provide unsolicited information they may find interesting and helpful, it is a powerful way to warm up current, past and potential customers. It positions you as a trusted expert in your field instead of just another replaceable vendor begging for their business. 

Your Knowledge is Power

Content marketing is creating articles, videos, or infographics drawing from your industry experience. It may be obvious no-brainer information to you, but there are prospects out there who will appreciate drawing from your knowledge.

For example, if you remodel homes you might create a “Home Remodel Budgeting Guide” that walks your prospects through creating a realistic budget for their project. Then when they’re ready to pull the trigger, you’re their first thought.

Landing Page 

Before you share your educational content with your audiences, you need somewhere to direct them and compel them to take action. But if you just direct them to your general brochure-based website, there’s no incentive to kick start a business relationship or go forward on a project.

Have your marketing team develop a simple landing page within your site that houses your educational content along with a clear reason why your clients and prospects should (re) engage with your company. This could be an existing blog or news page if you already have it set up, just as long as it leads to a clear call-to-action like a contact form, email link or phone number.

Share your knowledge by writing short articles showcasing your niche industry expertise.

Provide your latest project case study and share what you learned from the experience. 

Include a testimonial from your satisfied client and show off any successful data you may have. 

Make a short video expertly answering questions around industry trends that may be affecting their business. This page should only communicate one point at a time, and speak to a specific target audience. It should be less than a 5 minute read with few distractions and a powerful path towards the call-to-action.

Email

Email is arguably the most cost-effective and powerful tool to drum up business. But there are right ways and wrong ways to send digital correspondence.

Industry colleagues may appreciate a “check in” from time to time but the second it becomes a solicitation we ritually flush it to the trash. 

In order to cling to your prospect’s inbox a little longer, put yourself in their shoes and think about their dilemmas that may be keeping them up at night. Address these concerns and provide suggestions from your expert point of view on how to solve them. 

You could include a link to your latest marketing piece or case study or a link to an interesting article from a trade publication. At this point it's better to think of it as an awareness-building strategy. Your email is more likely to get read and remembered if it's just a message from an industry peer extending empathy and goodwill.

Social Media

Although it's a builders’ kryptonite, social media is one of the most effective platforms to spread the word and bring in leads. Again, if you use it correctly.

As a builder, you have to approach social media first to build awareness, and then to generate leads. You can’t do one without the other.

To build awareness, demonstrate your expertise to your audiences over a long period of time with no expectations of immediate results. Post articles or graphics on LinkedIn and invite conversations around your content. Post images of your projects in process along with commentary and knowledgeable insights to help them learn.

At this point you shouldn’t expect, nor should you solicit business leads, or even responses, but know if you continue to be engaging on a regular basis, people will eventually take notice.

Once you have laid a good groundwork, then you can directly prospect for business opportunities. This is where an advertising budget comes in. When you set up a Meta Business account for Facebook and Instagram, or a boosting campaign for LinkedIn, you suddenly unlock the ability to target exact audiences who are the most likely to need your services. 

If you are a fabricator looking to get in front of project managers in regional GC firms or a roofing company wanting to attract regional homeowners with dated roofs, a well-crafted campaign with attractive messaging and compelling call to action.

Google AdWord Campaign

If someone is searching for what you offer, there’s a good chance there's a sale waiting to happen. Google Ads let you show up at the top of those searches so you’re the first option they see. The key is dialing in the keywords that work best for your business and pointing to a high-converting page.

Ask for Referrals

This is one of the most-overlooked—and most powerful—marketing strategies around. Nothing beats word of mouth for instilling trust in a potential client. 

Step one is just to ask your past clients who else they know who might be interested in what you have to offer. Step two is to build a system where every happy client is asked for referrals right when their project is nearing completion. 

Consider asking your clients to leave a review on Yelp or Google, and make it easy for them by sending a direct link to the pages. Reviews play a crucial role in decision-making, as more customers rely on word-of-mouth from others in similar situations.‍

Survive the Slow Times so You Thrive in the Good Ones

When business is slow your marketing is more important than ever.

It keeps your cash flow moving, and it puts you at the top of your prospects’ minds so when they’re ready to pull the trigger, you’re their first thought.

But we don’t recommend trying to implement every strategy in this article all at once. You’ll be more successful if you choose the one or two things that will be most effective for your business, and invest deeply in those.

If you’re curious which ones will work best for you, or if you’d like some help implementing a strategic marketing plan, get in touch today. We’d be happy to help you out.

Written by Rusty George, ironically with zero help from Artificial Intelligence.

Rusty George leads a branding, website design and marketing agency serving Seattle and Tacoma area construction companies, subcontractors, engineering and architecture firms, material fabricators and suppliers. His goal is to help the building industry become more attractive to the skilled workforce of the future.

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