Contractor Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing is a mindset about finding new customers and leads without spending a lot of money. It’s about coming up with creative ways of finding leads for your construction company with resourcefulness instead of your checkbook. What you will spend is time, and creativity to generate new friends, networks, and leads for your business.
Guerrilla Marketing is a mindset that will get you to look at generating work for your company in a different light. If you replace windows and the neighborhood is filled with aluminum-clad windows that are 30+ years old, then you hit the jackpot! But you need to be aware to find these opportunities that are literally around the next corner.
When you are measuring up a job and are giving an estimate, make the best of your time and stop, look around at the neighborhood and make an assessment. If you are a roofer and a storm just ravished a neighborhood/community go look for damaged roofs, and distribute door hangers. Record the mailing addresses of the roofs with the most damage and follow up with a personalized mailing campaign.
These are just a couple of examples of Guerrilla Marketing strategies your construction company can employ. In this article, we will cover the top seven guerrilla marketing strategies and when we are done with them you should have a few new ways to find an endless supply of leads for your construction company if you put in the time and effort.
Top Seven Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Contractors in 2023 *Revised
1. Engage Your Employees in customer outreach through social media marketing efforts. Give them recognition posts like employee of the month, customer service award winner, or even photos of them being safe on the job site. Tag your employees and make it easy for them to share the post for maximum visibility and engagement. Showcasing your employees in your social marketing efforts is an effective way to get them involved and share your posts with their networks.
2. Ask customers for leads and you will be surprised by the leads they will give you. But there is a catch, you have to ASK. Make sure you have a way to record the information so you can follow up when you sell the lead and thank your current customer with a gift card or something nice. Implementing a referral reward as an incentive can really get the leads flowing.
*Bonus – offer your employees a referral bonus for any leads they bring in.
3. Join and engage in local organizations with the intent to help and be a contributing member of the group. The more involved you are with the organization donating time and/or money the more you will get out of the membership, including new customers. Some examples of groups you can join are Lions Club, Eagles Club, Chamber of Commerce, a local chapter of BNI, Toastmasters, and so many more depending on your location. Here again, you get out what you put in, help, and volunteer, when needed, will go a long way for building relationships which leads to further business.
4. Business Cards are a small but powerful guerrilla marketing tool if used correctly. You have two sides and on average 14 square inches to get your message across. The business card is not the Guerrilla part sorry to say, but what you do with them is. Never give out just one card, when you meet with a potential customer give them a few(so they can give to their friends), and when you finish the job give them a few more.
I have a friend that when he first became a Real estate agent and was going through new agent training he learned the two-foot rule, give your card to anyone within two feet. I watched him do this regularly while in social situations and listing after listing his business grew. So hand them out, post them on gas station bulletin boards, give a handful to your friends and family, and leave a trail of them where ever you go. Do anything but leave them in the box at the office, this is where they don’t work.
5. Sponsor Local Sports Teams is a great guerrilla marketing strategy for construction companies as you are getting your name out there to a lot of potential customers. There are a lot of benefits besides the obvious brand awareness campaign, this is a great way to build relationships with the community. People do business with people they know, like, and trust and this is a great way to build on all three. Depending on your community will determine the variety of teams you will have opportunities to sponsor from tee-ball teams to a local amateur race car driver you will find a team for your construction company to sponsor.
6. Charity work in your community goes a long way to strengthen your community and lets your company give back in immeasurable ways. Now don’t get me wrong, you should not do charity work with the intent of getting customers, but you should do it because you are able and someone else is not. What helping your community will do is let you engage with others and build relationships and before long the community knows, likes, and trusts you. People do business with companies they know, like, and trust so it’s a win-win. Again you should be giving back to your community as an outstanding business member and this will spread your roots and make any other marketing you do more effective.
7. Be a guest on Podcasts to expand and grow your audience. There are many advantages of being a guest on podcasts including being seen as an expert in your industry. Highlight your episode and share it to your social media channels, and if you have the copyrights you can chop up your episode into many short clips and turn one episode into multiple social posts. You can even have your episode transcribed and used for blog posts. Podcast guesting is one of my favorite ways to promote my company, and the only cost was around $60 for a Q2U USB microphone so I would sound good when promoting my business. Another benefit from promoting your construction company on a podcast is for SEO, with a relevant backlink to your website. The more podcasts you are a guest on, the more backlinks you can get to your website, which will bring more traffic and help your construction company rank higher in the search engines.
These are not a marketing strategy in itself, but more of a supplement or addition to your current marketing strategy. Use these guerrilla marketing tactics with your current marketing and you will be able to grow and sustain a stable flow of leads and projects, that grow and allow your construction business to thrive.
If you are looking for help implementing any of these Guerrilla Marketing strategies for your construction company, reach out for a free consultation and see if we can help you accomplish your goals.
