8 Construction Trends to Inform your 2022 Marketing Decisions

December 10, 2021

The best marketing is informed marketing. And I want to give you the best possible advice to succeed in 2022. 

But you know what is totally lame? I reviewed 10 digital marketing benchmarks reports. Well that’s not lame, that’s actually pretty awesome. 

The lameness stems from only finding ONE report dedicated to construction marketing.  The others don’t even list “construction” as its own industry. WHAT?!? A few grouped it with real estate. If anyone has worked in both construction AND real estate you know how far apart those two universes can be, and I have spent plenty of time marketing for both. I am keenly aware of the difference.

What I wanted to do is report specifically on construction marketing benchmarks but the only report I found only surveyed 128 professionals (not a huge pool of data there but better than nothing thank you Builder Funnel for taking this on!) Kinda makes me want to make one. That’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. I’ll put it on my to-do list, sounds like the perfect icebreaker for all those awkward trade show conversations 😁.

The Builder Funnel survey shares results from builders and contractors. Many of my clients, however, are commercial and transportation/heavy highway construction. And there certainly is a difference in marketing strategies and challenges between the two but I feel like there’s enough similarities to warrant explaining what I found and what we can learn from it.

Most of my clients mainly cite their challenge as being hiring (not for marketing but for their crews). And hiring is a B to C set up. Which is one of the reasons it’s so tricky to recruit for B to B companies, we’re focused on attracting businesses, not people as individuals. But consumers are pushing for and reacting best to human centered marketing, regardless of your product or service. Which makes me ask myself, how different are we all really?

OK so enough of the deep thoughts. Let’s get to business. 

I’m going to share the construction specific data I have with you for sure along with my big picture takeaways from digital marketing trends as a whole that the industry needs to pay attention to as they’re making their marketing strategies this year.

1. Most construction companies use social media.

By most I mean over 86% surveyed by Builder Funnel reported using social media as part of their marketing strategy.₄ Here’s the tough part though, I’m really not sure how much ROI social media has for construction companies (and they don’t either but more about that later). 

I do know if you’re trying to hire people or sell to the general public they are going to look for you on social media and make sure you exist and you’re not a jerk. 71.6% of global internet users aged 16 to 64 use social media to research brands.₃ 

Because of that, some kind of social media presence to tell your story about how you engage with your community and how you respect and support your employees is important for any construction company. But how much time and energy you dedicate to it really depends on your trade.

When asked how often construction companies post to social media the majority, over 69%, reported posting at least once a week or more and over 10% post daily.₄

But Sprout Social reported companies across all industries post an average of 11 posts a day. WHAT?!? Ok so that’s a lot. Ultimately your goal is post enough to tell your story and show people you’re awesome, not bore them with randomness. I think the surveyed construction companies are on a good track with their posting cadence of up to once per day and you should leave over posting to other folks with less important stuff to do.

2. Video is king but, if it isn’t your thing, you’re still OK.

Some reports are all about video on social. They say it’s the way to go. Which makes sense. We see the truth of it in our own client’s social media reports – video is often their best performing type of content. My nonprofit friends also report video is one of their best post types as well, so it’s not some strange anomaly. 

Despite the fact that we all know it’s a great post type 86% of posts on Facebook (and even less on the other networks) are videos…I’m going to be captain obvious here and point out the reason for that disparity: while video is super cool, it’s also super time consuming. I mean, who has time to produce all that video?

There’s a silver lining though.

As far as nonprofit social posts go, the benchmark reports argree video posts do outperform photos, BUT it’s not by much.₈ 

• On Instagram video posts actually get the lowest engagement rate (1.45%).₁₀ 
• The best average engagement rate on instagram is on carousel posts (1.94%) followed closely by photo posts(1.74%).₁₀ 
• Highest average engagement for posts on Facebook are on photo and status posts.₃
• And surprisingly, photo posts from Facebook pages are the most shared (55.6%) of all post types.₃

The moral of the story is, if video isn’t in your wheelhouse you can still get the job done BUT you can’t live without photos. Especially those with peoples faces…they do the best.

Remodelers and home builders are both pretty focused on adding Instagram to their mix. 55% said Instragram was a content distribution channel they plan to add to their marketing efforts in the next 12 months₄ and I think that is perfect for them because they are so flush with images. 

Right now the largest age group of users on instagram is 18-34 years old, with slightly more males than females in that age range.₃ So if you’re also trying to capture that age range of audience this could be a good spot to focus growth for your company as well. 

3. If you’re not sure what to post about on social media – watch retail.

Retail social media is by far the most engaged with social media in the networks according to Gartner.₂  Which in short means – people like it. Take note of the post styles and what makes people interact. 

I know you’re thinking, “that seems pretty far-fetched Monica!” But hear me out. If you’re struggling to meet and reach younger audiences then retail is a great study buddy because they have it down to a science. Retail leads social interactions per post on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and is second on Facebook compared to other industries.₂

Find a few retail companies who also serve your target audience, maybe Carhart (2.9M Facebook followers), or Bass Pro (3.34 M Facebook followers) to start. See what works in their social line up. Try emulating posts that mirrors the reasons people follow brands in social media.

Remember your social media isn’t an ad. It’s the start of a conversation. Most people report using social media to stay in touch with friends and family 48.6%.₃ So focus more on being a friend and sharing a story than being a salesman.

What’s cool about construction is…

While what you do everyday might seem really normal to you, it’s not to everybody else.   You can take pictures and videos of the simplest things and they are way cooler than what most of the rest of us get to see on a day to day basis. 

• Take a video of the view from the bucket truck 
• Show concrete pouring from the mixer 
• Catch a paver rolling over new asphalt 
• Showcase truck tires crunching on gravel
• Speed up or slow down pallets of construction materials being unloaded 

Keep your eyes peeled for all those moments and make your world come to live for others who aren’t in it.

4. Video marketing is trending.

Over 38% of surveyed construction companies reported using video marketing. Which is pretty stellar because people are consuming more video online now than ever 93.4% of people watch some kind of video online each week.₃

The next big thing on social media already exists.

You may have heard of it…YouTube. The only major growth in network usage reported in 2021 was YouTube and Reddit.9 (I heard about Reddit on a podcast and thought I’ll try this! And I honestly have no idea how to use it so I’m not qualified to advise you on how to weave that into your social strategy!)  So if you’re doing videos – put ‘em out there!  Even your Facebook lives can be broadcast on YouTube simultaneously using a streaming service like StreamYard. Plus the network reaches a wide age range. It’s used by a vast majority of adults under the age of 65.9  30% of YouTubes advertising audience are males 18-44 years old so your target audience is definitely out there.4

Uploading your videos to YouTube is a double win.
While YouTube is considered a social platform it’s also the second largest search engine. And YouTube videos are showcased in search results on the biggest search engine, maybe you’ve heard of it as well…Google.

5. Print is dying out.

And there’s actually remarkably less print than I would have expected. 30% or less use print marketing tactics.₄

The majority of surveyed participants agree that paid advertising is the most overrated marketing tactic.₄

I do wonder if this includes printed banners for tradeshows, billboards and those types of big print items. Because I still see many construction companies, including my clients, investing in both of those types of print marketing annually.

6. Inbound marketing is being adopted quickly.

Between 70 and 75% of construction companies surveyed by Builder Funnel primarily conduct inbound marketing.₄ Which means they’re not placing ads. They are using marketing like social media, blogging, YouTube and podcasting to drive traffic back to their site.

Over 48% said that they felt like inbound marketing works better for their companies than outbound marketing.₄ They report inbound leads as the most successful highest quality leads₄ (probably why they feel like it’s most successful).

50% of the surveyed companies are blogging, which is great, because their number one goal is to generate traffic and leads to their website.₄ And blogging, if well planned, will absolutely do that.

Over 49% reported blogging at least one time per month.₄ Some report blogging over five times per month. Hats off to them. Because it takes some serious time to create all that content.

Blogging is a numbers game, the more quality information you publish the more traffic you will get to your site. So while you can certainly Increase traffic overtime publishing as little as one blog post per month, the more you publish, the faster you’ll get the traffic. So if you are considering starting a blog I’d suggest starting with a goal of 2 per month to start and if that’s not attainable you can always back off.

Now, before I stop talking about blogging I want to remind you of all the opportunities that you have to add regular content to your website. Think about content you can add your site on a regular basis to share your story with potential customers and potential hires. All this content counts as “blog posts”. They might just not live in your blog but they all generate traffic to your site.    

• Talk to your sales people and ask them about commonly asked questions during the sales cycle and the most common reasons people give them for not wanting to buy,  this is a cornucopia of great blog topics.  
• Think about the questions that your customers ask on a regular basis, what are you explaining time and time again.   
• Highlight an employee of the month
• Share a story about a problem you overcame at a job site.   
• Publish recently completed projects.  
• Write an article about your company’s community service.

You have a great story to tell, use your blog to share it…and then by all means post about it on social media too!! Aaaand send an email telling people about it.

7. Email marketing is about half and half.

If you have a regular email cadence – keep up the good work. Between 52% and 55% of the builders surveyed by Builder Funnel use email marketing.₄ Between 6-11% think it’s overrated.₄

Here’s what I know about email marketing – you can’t expect to build a relationship when you’re only talking to a person because you absolutely have to.  Most companies fail at email marketing because they only email their list every once in a while and they aren’t continually building and nurturing their audience.

Why even do all the work to drive traffic to your site if you don’t get an opportunity to talk to those people again?  If you’re making social posts and adding to your blog already you have everything you need to create a monthly or weekly newsletter. And sending emails is CHEAP. That’s why the reported ROI is always so high. 

Campaign Monitor reports construction, real estate and Design (no, I don’t know why they group real estate with you but whatever) companies have an average of 19.70% open rate which is right in the middle of most industries, and a 3.5% click through rate which is among the highest.₆  So people do want to hear from you and are interested in what you have to say. They like you more than me for sure, just a lowly web design agency. 

My advice – shoot for one email a week.

If you’re sending one long email newsletter currently, break it into smaller chunks and send with a unique descriptive subject line.

I just finished an email experiment (I ran the same experiment a few years back and got the same results but I just wanted to see if things had changed, I’m crazy, I know). I sent a series of “newsletter” style emails to my audience with general newsletter style subject lines. They had more than one topic per email and they had cutsie curiosity inspiring subject lines. 

Here’s what I have found each time I conduct this experiment:

• When I use the cutsie general subject lines people are most likely to open the emails. BUT they are not as likely to click on the content.
• When I send single topic emails people are less likely to open the email (because they can tell what’s inside of it before they open it) and they are more likely to click.
• Number of clicks across the two types of emails is the same.

So here’s my thought.

It takes me less time to make a single subject email (like waaaaaay less time because I automate it so it takes me no time at all once it’s all set up). 

I get in front of my audience more often because I’m sending more emails. So they see my name in their inbox more often, just like an ad but way cheaper.

And the number of people who actually click is the same, so why would I put all that extra time into making newsletter style emails? Ask yourself the same question. And try not to let those lower open rates freak you out! 

8. Calculating ROI is a pain in the butt.

Of the builders surveyed by Builder Funnel over 35% said that one of their biggest challenges for marketing was proving the ROI of their marketing activities.₄ So it’s not surprising that over 40% of the people who surveyed couldn’t calculate their best type of marketing or they just straight up didn’t know.₄ 

Knowing your return on investment for your marketing is a struggle for everyone. It’s even a struggle for me and I am a marketer. You should see the maze of tracking I have set up between Airtable and Zapeir and WordPress and MailerLite.

There are so many different ways to track. And it’s really an ever evolving process as your systems change and data regulation adjust. You have to be continually experimenting and working on it. 

Over 45% of the people surveyed do review their marketing data, at least one to two times a month.₄

My advice is to start with a system that allows you to analyze the data at a big picture level easily. If you’re always trying to dig through multiple tracking systems to figure it all out you won’t ever do it. Cyfe, Google Data Studio and Airtable can be really good systems to create a dashboard for you to review on a monthly basis to get familiar with your numbers and decide where to dig further to investigate a cause for deviations.

Good news is that most remodelers and home builders feel like they have an effective marketing strategy. Somewhere between 70-75% said their marketing strategy is effective. ₄

So there you have it friends. Those are my takeaways for you from 10 different benchmarking reports. Here are links to the reports I referenced throughout the article just in case you want to read them all yourself! And please if you know of any other good ones, send ‘em my way!

1. 2021 Digital Experience Benchmarks by Industry by Content Square
2. Digital IQ: Social Marketing Benchmarks by Gartner
3. HootSuite DIGITAL 2021 July GLOBAL STATSHOT REPORT
4. 2021 State of Construction Marketing Report
5. MailChimp Email Marketing Benchmarks
6. Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2021: By Industry and Day by Campaign Monitor
7. The 2021 Content Benchmarks Report by Sprout Social
8. Acoustic Marketing Benchmark Report
9. Social Media Use in 2021 by Pew Research Center
10. 367 Social Media Statistics You Must Know In 2021