2011 Construction Marketing Outlook – Survey Results!

The results are in from our September Survey of construction marketers to determine marketing budget outlook, top marketing priorities, and tactical emphasis for the upcoming fiscal year!

The anonymous survey, conducted via online tool SurveyMonkey posed four (4) questions:

1) For the coming fiscal year, do you intend to increase or decrease marketing activities and budgets?

2) What is your most important marketing priority for 2011?

3) Which marketing tactics will increase or decrease in 2011?

4) What type of (construction) company are you?

Survey Says

The answers to the first question regarding plans to increase or decrease marketing activities and budgets identified a resounding 65% majority of respondents planning to increase, with a minority 22.5% planning to decrease marketing activities or budgets, and 12.5% maintaining marketing activities and budgets.

Regarding top marketing priorities for 2011, Measuring Results topped all at 21% of respondents, followed by Internet Marketing at 17%, which included websites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. Implementing Marketing ranked third at 14%, followed by Sales Lead Generation at 11%. Marketing Budgets and Talent Recruitment round out top priorities at 8% and 6%. While Product Development, Advertising and Publicity/PR ranked relatively low at 3% each.

Regarding marketing tactic  increases/decreases, not surprisingly almost all respondents plan to increase internet, social media and PR activities, with planned increases/decreases split for promotions and advertising.

Reinforcing personal experience, a majority 59% of respondents plan to decrease Trade Show activities/budgets.

The company classification question somewhat mirrors the overall industry make-up with 28% of respondents from architectural, engineering or construction firms (AEC), followed by 25% building materials, and 17% home builders or remodelers, which likely has some overlap with AEC. Equipment/Tools represented 14%, followed by services at 9%.

A Benchmark for Your 2011 Planning

A survey of this sort can certainly help you understand marketing trends. Or where you might plan marketing initiatives for the coming year. This is a benchmark, that can help you communicate with management why you need marketing budgets, or why you need to dive into social media. We’ll do this construction Marketing Plan and Outlook annually, so please participate!

As always, please Retweet, Facebook Like, Bookmark and share this post!

4 Comments

  1. john sonnhalter

    What kind of response rate( number of returned surveys) was this based on?

  2. Kirsten Petersen Stroud

    Yes, how many respondents is this based on?

    1. Brian Reuhl

      There were 100 respondents to the survey. Thank you for your questions!

  3. Clark Ashton

    What was the average marketing budget as a % of company sales for an engineering or construction related business?

Comments are closed.