It’s an exciting time as we are seeing the building industry experience significant growth, with more technology being introduced each and every day. Increased trends in social media and the use of smartphones have ignited industries to integrate social marketing tactics into their business platform swiftly.
This has brought on some confusion in the building industry about how to utilize social media effectively to gain new business. We’re here to help break down some social media marketing fundamentals, including the importance of an online presence, the best channels to utilize, and more.
Building and building product companies can use social media to generate leads and engage with customers. Utilizing its abilities can make consumers comfortable with you before they even visit your website or remember your name.
Social media marketing for the building industry can be a powerful tool to help you attract the right audiences, engage with them, and convert them into customers.
So how do you do it?
It would help if you planned out your goals and objectives to make a true impact in the industry. Let’s take a look at five things you can do to kickstart your social media strategy:
1. Define your audience.
Who are your ideal customers? What are their preferences? How do they talk about their jobs and the products they need?
Your company may have a diverse range of audiences, such as builders and contractors, architects and homeowners. Understanding the buyer persona for each group can help you curate social media content that can help solve their needs/pain points—that is the key to engaging your followers.
To create an authentic connection over social media, you need to understand who your audience is and what motivates them. Once you have identified that, then you’re ready to create an effective social media strategy.
2. Choose the right social media platform for your marketing strategy.
Different social media platforms bring different values to the building industry. What will work best for you? Is it Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Each platform has its own set of features that can be used to help you reach more people.
The good thing is you don’t need to be present on every social platform. By defining your audience, as we mentioned earlier, you’ll have a good sense of where your target market will turn to when researching a product or service.
Here’s a quick overview of the most popular social media platforms:
- Facebook: This is the largest social media platform and the most established, with 1.9 billion daily active users. Since its launch in 2004, it has become an invaluable tool for B2C businesses, offering advanced advertising tools and organic opportunities.
- TikTok: When you think of short-form videos, you probably think of TikTok. The platform rose in popularity in 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s one of the best community-building platforms, with marketers ranking it second behind YouTube.
- Instagram: When it comes to sharing visually compelling content, Instagram is where brands go. It uses both photo and video content to connect with followers. It’s also a great place to connect with industry influencers. And FYI, according to Hubspot, Instagram is the highest ROI platform and will see the most growth of any social app in 2023.
- Twitter: While Instagram focuses on visuals, Twitter focuses on words. This is a great platform to interact with followers and share industry trends.
- LinkedIn: This is the ultimate platform for sharing media and marketing collateral with other professionals. Professionals are looking to find content relevant to their industry, making it the ideal platform for B2B companies.
- Youtube: Since most audiences would rather watch a video than read the instructions or manual, your business can take advantage of this and create videos explaining your product or process. Youtube users tend to stay longer because it features mostly long-form content – making it an ideal platform for sharing educational content.
- Pinterest: Pinterest is a highly organized virtual scrapbook at your fingertips. People can search through billions of pins and use those pins to create inspiration for projects. This is a great platform for showing off your products and projects.
3. Create a posting strategy.
How often will you post on each platform? What kinds of content will you share? Finding the time to keep up with all the platforms can be hard. If you’re already busy managing your website and other marketing efforts, it can seem impossible to fit creating content into your schedule. But if you want your company to appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more, you must make time for it.
The key is to stay consistent. Create a schedule, so you know what content will go up, when, and on what platform. You don’t have to post every day — three times per week is often enough — but you do need to stay consistent, so your audience knows what to expect from you.
4. Post engaging content
Social media users tend to value quality over quantity. Instead of flooding their feeds with promotional posts or random jokes — both likely to get ignored — try posting useful or interesting content to them. It might take longer than just pushing out a few ads daily, but your efforts will pay off in more engaged followers who trust your brand more because they know it offers quality information.
You will want to post content that speaks directly to your target audience’s interests, needs, and wants. Make sure that whatever you post is relevant to your audience, so they feel like it’s an experience worth engaging with every time they visit your profile or feed. We suggest prioritizing video when it comes to content because of its higher engagement and impressions over a standard post.
Does your audience tag you in posts? That’s free content you can use. (Just make sure you ask their permission first!) Or you can get creative and make a video/Reel with trending audio, the Instagram algorithm is sure to favor original content.
Once you post, stay on top of interacting with your followers. The best time to do that is when they ask questions or make comments. Responding quickly shows that you care about their questions and keeps them returning for more help.
5. Track KPIs
In an age where data is at the forefront of everything you do, it can be difficult to tell what information is necessary to track and what can be ignored. Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure your efforts and ensure you are reaching your target market. These can be related to clicks/shares/engagement rate etc.
You can measure various things to gauge how well your business is doing on social media. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you can tailor your strategy accordingly and maximize your performance.
Here are a few KPIs Hootsuite recommends to track:
- Reach KPIs such as Impressions, Follower Count, and Audience Growth Rate.
- Social Media Engagement KPIs such as Likes, Comments, and Shares.
- Conversion KPIs such as Conversion Rate, Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Cost per click (CPC).
- Customer Satisfaction KPIs such as Customer Testimonials, Customer satisfaction score (CSat), and Net Promoter Score (NPS).
It’s important to also set SMART goals at the beginning of your research so that you can measure your progress and work towards achieving a specific goal. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Defining these parameters as they pertain to your goal helps ensure that it is attainable within a certain time frame.
Social media is one of the most effective tools for marketing your building materials business. But if you don’t know how to use it effectively or simply don’t have the time, let us help you get started. We don’t want you to miss any opportunity to grow your company and get results from your efforts. Contact us today!