Three Types of Website Content to Generate Better Construction Leads

How to put together the educational articles, white papers and case studies that will separate you from your competitors, offering your prospects something the others do not

Instead of wasting valuable time and energy (yours and your prospect's) talking all about you on your construction company's website, focus on helping your prospects get the information they need.
Instead of wasting valuable time and energy (yours and your prospect's) talking all about you on your construction company's website, focus on helping your prospects get the information they need.

In a long sales-cycle industry like construction, lots of information gathering happens throughout the buying process. Whether you realize it or not, your prospects are learning about you before they ever pick up the phone. And that learning process will most likely begin on your company website.

Early on, prospects are trying to qualify you. They’re learning about your services and areas of expertise, as well as your client experience. This is the no-brainer website content that you absolutely need — descriptions of your capabilities and summaries of projects you’ve completed.

Assuming you’ve already put those “must haves” in place, let's focus on three types of content that will separate you from your competitors as the buying processes of your construction leads progress.

Educational articles

Most of your competitors are all talk. “We’ve built all across the country”. “We listen to your needs”. “No one else could possibly service you the way we can”. Blah. Blah. Blah.

The problem with this approach is that your audience is smart. They smell the B.S. from miles away. And every contractor they find says the same thing as the last. So don’t be like them.

Instead of wasting your energy talking all about you, focus on helping your construction leads. Put yourself in their shoes. What problems are they trying to solve? What questions do they need answered on a regular basis? What do they want to learn that will help them make a purchasing decision?

Five-paragraph educational articles (or blog posts) are the perfect solve. Educate and inform rather than blabbering about how awesome you are at delivering your services.

In-depth white papers

Condensing your answer to a common FAQ into a few paragraphs can sometimes be difficult. Your solutions to customer problems are often complex. And some of your construction leads might want to dig deeper, seeking more detailed and technical information. So give it to them.

White papers are like educational blog posts — just more detailed. Dive into the common topics that lead to long sales conversations and flesh out those topics with two- to three-page (or longer) educational papers.

Gather the technical details that your prospects seek from the experts at your company, and turn them into content that will engage your audience and prompt sales conversations.

Oh, and a bonus comes along with writing white papers — they’re great lead generation tools. While you should post your educational articles/blog posts on your website for anyone to read, you should use your downloadable white papers as lead generation tools.

Case studies, but written in a smarter way…

I recently read a fantastic book called Same Side Selling: A Radical Approach to Break Through Sales Barriers. The authors spent a few pages talking specifically about case studies and argued that an effective case study should be broken down this way:

  • 10% client background
  • 50% client issue, impact and importance
  • 40% outcome of solution

Most traditional case studies allocate a majority of their real estate to describing a solution. But those solutions are customer-specific and therefore not relatable to many prospective customers.

The breakdown outlined above instead emphasizes the client’s problem (or issue), how fixing it would impact them, the importance of fixing that problem and the outcome that was actually produced.

In short, this case study structure demonstrates problem-solving capabilities and the ability to understand the issue at hand for the customer. And it focuses on success, which is just the thing you need to sell.

Generating construction leads is obviously no easy task, but these three types of content will help qualify and separate your business. 

Joe Sullivan is a partner at Gorilla 76 – a B2B marketing agency specializing in inbound marketing for the industrial sector. Gorilla 76 helps manufacturers, industrial service providers, distributors, builders and their subcontractors grow their businesses online.

Latest