To further understand the use of inbound marketing in the construction industry, the Construction Marketing Association conducted a national survey of construction professionals. The following questions were asked:
1. Do you employ Inbound Marketing?
2. If yes, what types of inbound marketing activities do you employ?
3. What types of content do you develop?
4. What is your most effective Inbound Marketing activity?
5. What is your least effective Inbound Marketing activity?
6. How do you measure inbound marketing results?
7. How do you classify your company?
82% of construction professionals surveyed employed inbound marketing, while only 18% do not.
Respondents indicated that the top three inbound marketing activities employed were Facebook (65%), Search Engine Optimization (61%), and Twitter (61%). With 52% enewsletters were not far behind. Paid search and toll free call centers were the least used tactics, both with 3%.
The most popular type of inbound marketing content is PR or news announcements (68%). Blog posts (52%), videos (42%), case studies (39%), website landing pages (39%), white papers (33%), and webcasts/seminars/training programs (23%) are some other common types of content developed. On the other hand, books/ebooks and surveys/studies are used less frequently (3%).
Blogging is considered the most effective inbound marketing tactic by construction professionals surveyed with 23%. Overall, social media sites were not rated as effective as tactics like blogging, SEO, and enewsletters.
36% of respondents indicated that the least effective inbound marketing tactic used is Facebook.
77% of those surveyed use website analytics to measure their inbound marketing initiatives. 23% use social profile traffic/followers, 19% use registrations, and 10% use sales. Only 3% of those surveyed use keyword ranking, brand awareness, or inbound calls as metrics. 10% do not measure inbound marketing results.
Respondents came from a variety of companies within the construction industry including building products manufacturers (19%), media/marketing (19%), commercial construction (16%), construction services (13%), other (13%), distributor/supplier (10%), equipment/tools manufacturing (7%), homebuilder/remodeler (3%).
Other Survey Results
Construction Marketing Outlook 2013 – Survey Results
Social Media in Construction – Survey Results
Distributor Channel Marketing Survey Results
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Some of these results are a little surprising to me…but then again, it does justify some things I’ve been seeing within the industry “recently”. I’ve been building Contractor Websites for Construction Professionals for a while now, and it’s been a challenge to get some of them engaged in Social Media. They certainly have been more open to it lately over the past year or so. I can understand why many are hesitant, as it just not their thing…but lately, I’ve been getting all kinds of requests to enhance their website with a FaceBook page, and even Twitter. The blogging part is still relatively new, but with the buzz in the industry, the questions are starting to come up.
We do a lot of web stuff, but do not do a good job measuring it. I’m confident that anything related to the internet is the right direction to do, but would like to begin to put some metrics around our efforts in order to determine which is most effective.
It amazed me to see landing pages and conversion pages SO low on the list of effective inbound marketing strategies. Landing pages are a critical component to success with inbound marketing and we’ve seen our builder and remodelers clients generate almost all their web leads through landing pages other than a basic “contact us” form.
p.s. South Jersey Electrical – are you using Google Analytics on your website?
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Interesting to see blogging at the top for most effective. I would have though a consumer searching for a direct term but I guess if you have a following it works.