Before we dive into the importance of search engine marketing, it’s important to know what it does.
Search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is a digital marketing strategy aiming to raise a website’s visibility on search engine result pages. Therefore, all digital marketing strategies that cause your construction company’s website to appear higher than other websites in search results is the work of search engine marketing.
SEM is highly effective in raising your ranking on various search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google, causing higher traffic to be attracted to your website. Some of the core goals that SEM aids in are awareness and conversion. The more people access your construction company, the more aware they will be of your services and, therefore, the more chances they will invest in it.
Why SEM is Essential for Construction Companies
The emergence of email as a medium of communication began in 1971. This year kickstarted the digital era, and the art of digital marketing began following 1994. Its reach continued to expand, and its efficiency in marketing took the world by storm as it grew exponentially.
As time progressed, the year 2022 emerged, and now the situation is such that without a digital marketing strategy, a business signs up for its doom.
Long story short: if your construction business is not operating on a digital marketing strategy this year, you may dig a grave for your own business by missing out on the opportunity to generate leads and acquire sales.
Your construction company could immensely benefit from a search engine marketing boost because various search engines such as Google may be able to attract valuable leads and traffic for your business. Therefore, if your primary goal is to generate leads or attract traffic, search engine marketing is the best way to achieve it.
How Construction Companies Benefit From SEM
Research shows that up to 93% of online shopping experiences are kickstarted from a search engine, and up to 97% of consumers opt for local services through online mediums. This statistic is a major wake-up call because it reflects that construction businesses can benefit from ample leads if search engine marketing is done correctly.
Search engine marketing mainly refers to the process of marketing or promoting a website via paid advertisements on various search engines like Yahoo or Google. This form of marketing is highly significant for construction companies and, therefore, should be one of the core parts of any construction marketing strategy.
The construction industry is highly competitive and comprises tussles between various companies to attract the most sales or generate the most leads; SEM can give you an upper hand in this fight.
Searches comprise both paid and organic results. Inorganic results are generated from PPC, also known as pay per click, while organic results are generated through SEO efforts. But both are part of SEM. While numerous strategies can help enhance a website’s organic rankings, reaching the first page of search results can be difficult.
PPC advertising or management plays an integral role in gaining improved rankings. However, the PPC model allows most ads to operate on search engines. Pay per click implies that the advertiser of your construction company is only likely to pay when a potential customer clicks on the ad. This concept does not apply to views or impressions of the ad.
Aside from Pay Per Click, another pricing model is the cost per thousand impressions, i.e., CPM mode. This allows the advertiser to pay based on the total impressions rather than the total number of ad clicks.
In other words…
- Target customers who are actively looking for construction services online
- Improve website visibility and organic rankings over time
- Advertisers only pay when someone clicks on the ad, which helps reduce expenses. Unless you go the CPM route, in which case you pay for everyone that sees your ad
Types Of Search Engine Marketing
As a construction company, there are three main search engine marketing efforts you should be concerned about.
These include:
- Organic and local SEO
- Pay per click
- Organic SEO
These types of search engine marketing techniques aid in numerous factors beyond just search results, including targeting the correct audience, branding, generating more leads and conversions, and acquiring more business through adequate communication of the business’s products and services.
There are several reasons why this is beneficial.
Benefits Of Search Engine Marketing For Construction Companies
A construction company can make immense profits if they operate on a well-developed search engine marketing strategy. An adequate SEM strategy can address crucial goals such as brand equity and awareness.
Moreover, it helps increase web traffic and online visibility while appealing to the company’s target group through local ads. Some core benefits of search engine marketing for a construction firm include:
Relevant And Specific
One of the most popular aspects of search engine marketing is its ability to focus on a specific target group. A relevant advertisement that promotes interaction with the searcher will have more visibility than an ad promoted through large amounts of money but lacks relevance.
Therefore, if a potential customer is searching through subcontractor services in Florida, he is likely to stumble upon an advertisement regarding a local agency that directly deals with subcontractors. On the contrary, it is unlikely that this user will come across an agency that provides all kinds of workforce services.
Instant Results
One of the biggest perks of search engine marketing is that it is one of the best ways to get quick results on search engines. Therefore, it removes the need to set your advertising budget on fire. You will likely benefit from profits while saving money if you have a consistent and well-developed search engine marketing plan for your construction company.
The main recommendation would be to remain mindful of the amount your construction company is spending on PPC. You can hire an effective agency for your construction company’s PPC and marketing services or handle the campaigns yourself. However, going for a marketing agency is foolproof because it provides a thorough competitive analysis and valuable insights.
Convenient Budgeting
One of the best parts of search engine marketing is that those who are professionals in the art can make adequate ad budgets according to your company’s requirements. Additionally, you will be able to turn the ads on and off with utmost convenience.
For instance, let’s pretend that you have a plumbing service and have recently decided to jump onto the SEM bandwagon. If you’ve come across a relatively big project, you can still opt to conceal your company’s ads for a specific period so that you’re not met with additional offers.
Provides An Edge For Competition
A thorough analysis of your competitors and the common keywords they use for their advertisements will likely give you a competitive edge. This valuable insight can easily translate into your construction company’s PPC and SEO strategy. Therefore, opting for search engine marketing provides you with an upper hand over your common competitors.
Enhanced Visibility And Lower Expense
It is fairly common for construction companies to spend large amounts of money on outbound or traditional marketing. However, the wonderful aspect of PPC advertising is that it comes with lower expenses, is result-driven, and is largely customer-focused.
Therefore, if the aim is for an interior decorator to communicate their business’s services, they don’t need to spend large amounts of money on hoarding or a print advertisement. On the contrary, launching a website and opting for a well-developed search engine marketing plan will attract more clients while gaining immense local visibility. Therefore, SEM is not only the more efficient form of marketing but also weights lighter on the pocket.
Higher Return On Investment
When we compare traditional mediums of publicity or advertising, it’s no mystery that paid search strategies are much more effective. This automatically translates into the return on investment for the particular construction company.
Therefore, the ROI remains higher and better for search engine marketing strategies. Therefore, as a construction company owner, you can relax knowing that your hard-earned money is being spent correctly.
In other words…
- Spend less money on irrelevant advertisements that will not generate leads or customers
- Target potential customers by location, keyword, demographics, and other factors, ensuring that your ads are reaching the right people
- An effective agency provides a thorough competitive analysis and valuable insights
How To Use SEM For A Construction Website
You will likely have a good understanding of SEM and its technicalities. Therefore, here’s how you can incorporate this wonderful form of marketing into your construction website and, in turn, your business.
First and foremost, knowing what a PPC ad consists of is integral. A PPC ad consists of four crucial elements, including:
- Display URL
- Headline
- Description lines 1 and 2
These elements combine to make up a wonderful Google Ads advertisement. Moving on, the next important element would be to identify other construction companies in the industry that pose as your competitors and let your potential customers know of your USPs, assets, and other strengths. Moreover, you may write up an ad copy with an intriguing call to action while incorporating relevant keywords. Conducting tests and adding extensions can also improve your marketing.
Factors That Relate To PPC Marketing Campaigns
If you wish to run a PPC campaign, you should keep track of the following factors:
- Budget per day
- Budget per month
- Keywords
- Scope of geo-targeting
Your ad copy should consist of the following structure:
- The ad heading should be 25 characters
- The description line 1 should be 35 characters
- The description line 2 should be 35 characters
- The display URL should be 35 characters
- The destination URL should be 1024 characters
- A landing page URL.
- An image (if possible)
Your construction company should follow the structure mentioned above to ensure that it abides by search engine marketing rules. One of the examples of a PPC campaign would be a business owner seeking out marketing services on a contract in their respective area using the following ad:
“The Most Reliable Contractor Services”
To follow SEM by the rulebook so that you’re able to gain maximum benefits for your construction business, you can follow the following steps:
Research
Before working on any project, research is integral. This ensures that you’re well-informed and fully capable of knowledge before deciding to make up a strategy. Therefore, the first step of search engine marketing is conducting thorough research.
Researching Keywords
A crucial step for search engine marketing is extensively researching keywords commonly used when potential customers search for relevant services. Therefore, if you’re the owner of a construction company, you may thoroughly research keywords relevant to the industry.
Create Pay-Per-Click Ads
Identifying your target audience to create a pay-per-click ad clearly is integral. Moving forward, aligning your goals with your target audience is important to gain maximum awareness and generate the most leads.
Your ads should be relevant to your services so that anyone who comes across them is immediately able to use them as a means to acquire your services to fulfill their personal needs. Therefore, your ad should reflect a relevant and specific message regarding what services you offer and how they differ from competitors.
Optimize Your Landing Page
Once you’ve created a creative, attention-grabbing, relevant, and specific PPC ad, it is important to consider optimizing your landing page. In digital marketing, a landing page is typically a web page that individually exists and is created for the sole purpose of an advertising or marketing campaign.
The landing page is the page a user opens when they click on a particular ad or a link in an email. Various sites that may include ads could be Bing, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, and other similar websites.
However, landing pages differ from normal web pages in one major way. Web pages have numerous goals and are usually created to encourage the user to explore the website further.
On the contrary, a landing page has one goal or focus, also known as a call to action or CTA. Therefore, an optimized landing page allows the business’s owner to benefit from high conversion rates and lower costs.
Track, Measure, And Report
Pay-per-click tracking is a method to assess your search engine marketing campaign’s performance. Whenever you implement a strategy, it is incredibly important to track its performance and effectiveness to alter your strategy accordingly.
If your marketing campaign is effective, your construction company can benefit from higher conversions and more engagement, and your website may be able to attract a large amount of traffic. The central goal of creating a PPC campaign is to enhance the number of sales. However, conversions are difficult to achieve if you’re unaware of the number of impressions or visits to your website.
Therefore, tracking, measuring, or reporting your ad copy is crucial to ensuring that your PPC campaign is successful. There are various types of ads that you could create, including graphic ads, text ads, video ads, and mobile ads.
The reporting bit of this step involves adapting your strategy according to the tracked performance figures. This makes your strategy more effective and focused, leading to better results in the form of higher conversions.
Optimize Your Advertisements
Knowing how your business can help your potential customers fulfill their needs is integral for a construction company. For example, if a user is looking to construct a house or a building, your advertisement should communicate your role in helping them with their search.
There are various hacks for optimizing your ad campaigns. These include:
- Make multi-channel ad campaigns to increase reach.
- Keep track of your campaign and extensively check for insights and active adaptations.
- Make an ad concept that directly corresponds to your buyer’s journey.
- Create a multi-media plan for your construction ad campaign.
- Add extensive service catalogs within your ad for instant use.
Aside from these five core hacks, creating an ad strategy for awareness, consideration, and decision-making ensures that your buyer’s journey is fully incorporated into your construction company’s marketing strategy. This ensures that your ad attracts maximum traffic to your website and, in turn, results in maximum conversions.
Conclusion
The basic guide to search engine marketing for a construction company is to create a holistic digital marketing strategy. As the world continues to grow and move towards digitization, the best way to generate leads and increase sales is to carry out search engine marketing. Since this form of marketing strategy is directly based on statistics, facts, and measurable means of tracking, the efficiency of the results is likely to be immense.
Moreover, SEM marketing ensures that your marketing strategy aligns with your target audience; therefore, the results are based on customer-centric marketing. Keyword searches ensure that your construction company is among the top-listed ones when a user searches up construction companies in your area.
For a budget-friendly yet highly effective mode of marketing, the ideal approach is to hire an experienced agency that thoroughly creates and implements a well-developed search engine marketing plan.