You may have heard the phrase, ‘Content is King’. Trite, cute marketing nonsense, right?
Big, Fat NO.
Undoubtedly this is for retail and service industries, not the heavy construction industry, right?
Double, BIG, FAT NO.
To begin with, we know the construction industry runs on word of mouth. “Who’s doing what” “What happened on ‘x’ project” “Project ‘y’ just started and who’s on it.” Consequently, in heavy construction, the breadth and scope and chatter of the work of your latest few projects is your brand. It’s who you are and your value to those that would do business with you. Bad projects stick with you like tar. On the contrary, what about good projects? It’s weird – they’re not as sticky. Seems unfair.
Indeed, the positive chatter about the project you just brought in ahead of schedule could do some good. What about the money-saving VE work on the last couple of jobs? People are aware of that – they must be. Everyone knows about the new rig, right? Production is at new levels!
Tell your stories
Why does Construct Marketing keep repeating that?
Because if you do, you’re not being passive about the construction industry’s word-of-mouth engine. You’re actively feeding it. The Case History that describes your ahead-of-schedule finish looks great on your website but also got picked up by PileBuck, and they wrote a job story about it. Got your client a little press, too, and you got a backlink. That Value Engineering post your PM did for the project that saved your client 100K is the basis for a paper you’re thinking of submitting to the next DFI conference. The blog piece you wrote about the new equipment acquisition and its effect on your productivity got a link on the equipment vendor’s website (a backlink). That helps your own website SEO.
The common thread here? Content. None of this happens without Telling Your Story.
And this is why – Content is King.