Construction Marketing: A B2B Guide For Industrial Leaders

Many factors can influence stakeholder touchpoints, such as brand loyalty, customer behaviour and segmentation, product positioning, and customer targeting. All of these factors can directly impact gaining specifications to win large commercial contracts and tenders.

As an I.M.A B2B Partner and Marketing Consultant, I’ve led construction marketing B2B strategies for some of Australia’s largest companies and organisations like Kennards Hire, the NSW Government’s retail precinct, and BlueScope Steel.

I’ve helped many other brands, like Siniat, a global construction materials company, successfully rebrand into the Australian market. I also played a critical role in developing a go-to-market strategy for Mirvac backed construction tech start-up, BuildAi, helping them drive awareness and sell their tech solutions to key stakeholders in the construction and building industry.

Let’s explore what construction marketing is, how the marketing process works, marketing challenges construction companies face, and look at some interesting case studies from I.M.A.

What is construction marketing?

Construction marketing is about applying powerful strategic marketing fundamentals to allow large construction businesses and leading industrial enterprises to market their products efficiently and effectively to key stakeholders. 

In the context of B2B marketing, marketing for construction also entails conducting extensive market research to use qualitative and quantitive data to determine things like:

• Who are the key stakeholders?
• What impacts their decision-making process?
• What key attitudes and beliefs do they hold?
• What type of customer segment do stakeholders fall under?
• What are the best marketing channels to reach and target key opinion leaders?
• How can product positioning be improved to influence brand loyalty?
• Are there any business operational processes that could be providing friction for sales?
• How can customer sentiment be positively shifted to increase sales?

This can also be quite complex in the sphere of B2B2C marketing. Marketing activities like influencer marketing, PR, or traditional media channels like TV, radio, and print media can also shape consumer sentiments. Let me explain in more detail.

Image credit: The Block via YouTube

Let’s say a building product was recently featured in the Channel 9 Australian TV hit series “The Block.” Then this can directly influence key business stakeholders, channel partners, and consumers.
That’s because it:

• Keeps key stakeholders and consumers more informed and more educated.
• Has the potential to impact key opinion leaders’ decision-making process.
• For example, if an architect who produced a project brief for design and construction recommended a business’s product (e.g., a specific roofing product or glass) in the specifications to be selected for a construction project.
• However, a construction company or local builder may switch from a product initially recommended by an architect for something cheaper to save on costs. Outcomes like this may result in sales losses for construction and industrial companies. This can be avoided and minimised.
• That’s why branding and marketing can play critical roles in shaping customer sentiment. They can positively influence the outcome of a product not being cut by a stakeholder, which could be on the B2B side, B2C, or both.

Why is construction marketing important?

According to research by Global Data, Australia’s combined B2B construction and industrial industry is worth approximately $167.2B, employing 1.32M local Australians.

Image credit: Global Data

The total addressable market presents a massive opportunity for industrial leaders looking to tap into or expand their product offerings to expand and grow sales.

Construction marketing is important as it allows businesses to increase sales, expand their product offerings both locally and globally, and tap into an Australian $167.2B TAM construction industry segment.

How does the construction marketing process work?

At I.M.A, our marketing process involves three stages: Diagnosis, strategy, and tactics. These three stages can also be further broken down into subcategories. Let’s explore this in more detail.

Step 1: Diagnosis

The diagnosis stage involves getting to know as much as possible about a company’s previous year’s performance.

This includes also analysing a business’s product segmentation, internal processes, key stakeholders, and target market. During this stage, we also conduct extensive market research.

Image credit: I.M.A

Step 2: Strategy

In the strategy stage, we’ll look at a brand’s targeting, develop customer personas and segment portraits and create SMART objectives.

This phase also involves using our proprietary tactics that involve the following:

• Immerse: Getting to know your brand.
• Imagine: Creating your brand story.
• Impact: Bringing your brand to life.
• Implement: Activating your brand.
• Improve: Review and learn.

Step 3: Tactics

Tactics is the implementation phase, whereby our team will implement and execute our marketing strategies. Here we’ll create a Gannt chart that clearly maps out a timeline and a marketing budget.

Note: For more detailed information on how the marketing process works at I.M.A, check out our in-depth guide on industrial marketing. This guide walks through each of these 3 stages in greater detail, and it is jammed-pack with a ton of helpful information. Plus, there are a lot of interesting examples and construction marketing ideas in the guide too.

Challenges to finding the right B2B marketing partner

Finding the right marketing partner is one of the biggest challenges a large construction company or industrial leader may face.

One of the main reasons why it is so challenging is that different marketing agencies have different sets of skills, expertise, and experience, making it more complicated and time-consuming to find the right partner.

That’s because there are so many service providers; only a small handful of these might be a perfect fit.

Marketing advisory firms fall under three main categories:

1. Generalist

A digital marketing agency that serves clients in various industries like B2B, SaaS, SMBs, fintech, hospitality, medical services, and local businesses.

Generally, they’ll provide a wide range of services like:

• Paid advertising: Things like Google Ads and setting up an ad campaign on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO): Optimising and improving a website to rank better on search engines like Google to increase website traffic and generate leads.
• Content marketing: Creating engaging content and using creative ways to promote the content. For example, this could be a blog post about key customer pain points containing interesting and unique data.
• Video marketing: Designing and producing video content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok to generate leads and brand awareness.
• Conversion rate optimisation: Using AB testing to improve conversion rates. For example, designing compelling landing pages and optimising pages by changing subtle things like website copy or call-to-action button locations (or colours).

An important thing to point out here is that they’ll be able to provide a wide range of services and may have had some experience in the construction industry. Their knowledge, depth, and expertise will be general and not specialised.

2. Multi-service specialised

A B2B marketing agency that specialises only in B2B marketing. This type of agency can perform a wide range of marketing services like:

• Digital marketing: General services that most digital marketing agencies provide, such as Google Ads, social media marketing, digital PR, SEO, video production, content creation, copywriting, CRO, website development, graphic design, and brand design.
• Market research: Conduct qualitative and quantitative market research, customer journey mapping, NPS and brand tracking, and identifying trends that shape customer experiences.
• Growth consultancy and strategy: Using market research to create growth strategies to increase sales. This could range from rebranding and brand positioning to other things like creating new lead generation strategies, optimising a business’s sales funnel, and creating a go-to-market strategy for new products.

3. Single-service specialised

A marketing agency that only offers and specialises in one core marketing area, for example, B2B SEO.

Single-service agencies that specialise in one core marketing element can be very beneficial if you only require a specific marketing area that they specialise in to improve.

But they may not be the best fit if you’re looking for a multichannel marketing partner, I.e., someone who can handle everything.

That said, it may not always be so clear if an agency is single-service specialised or a generalist. The easiest way to tell is simply by looking at their website and reviewing things like:

• The homepage: Does the language on their homepage seem generalist or specialised? Often, with a quick glance at the hero area of the homepage, you should be able to see it immediately.
• Services: What services do they provide? This can usually be found by reviewing the navigation bar on a website or checking out the services area on the footer.
• Case studies: What clients and industries have they worked in or with?

I.M.A construction marketing case studies

Our expert team of B2B industry specialists has guided many construction and industrial brands to increase their sales and profit margins.

Client	What did I.M.A do?	View Case Study
BlueScope Steel and Fielders	Refined brand positioning gave a brand identity refresh.	Fielders full case study.
Kennards Hire	A qualitative research study to improve marketing efforts and increase future sales.	Kennards Hire full case study.
Coates Hire	Improved the sales team’s sales approach.	Coming soon.
Scentre Group (Owner of Westfield)	Developed a B2B brand value proposition for the property developer.	Coming soon.
N.S.W Government	Developed a value proposition to promote “The Rocks as Sydney’s most loved social village.”	NSW Government full case study.
CASE Construction	Created lead generation strategies for their capital equipment brand that generated more sales.	Coming soon.

Are you keen to learn more? Check out more of our work, including how we’ve helped build material companies, integrated facilities management, and helped launch an insurance company into the construction market.

Summing up

The ultimate goal for many construction and industrial companies is to increase sales by gaining specifications to win commercial contracts and tenders — and construction marketing helps achieve this.

Need help with a construction marketing strategy? Our team of B2B marketing consultants can help you increase brand awareness and improve your construction business by generating qualified leads and sales.

Looking to talk to me personally? Feel free to contact me by email or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you might have. 

Learn more about I.M.A. Check out our case studies, learn more about our team, view our testimonials on Google Business Profile, or read more of our expert marketing commentary on our blog.