Top 7 Ways General Contractors Can Find Work



How do general contractors get work?

1. Social Media Platforms
2. Referrals
3. Search Engine Optimized Content
4. Joint Ventures with industry partners
5. Pay Per Click Google ads
6. Press Releases
7. Reputable construction leads service

You might be asking yourself, “How do I find work for my construction company?”

General contractors face serious challenges when looking for commercial construction leads.

Here are 7 tips that you can use today to find more work and generate more business.

Factors to Consider When Generating Leads

Goals and Objectives

Without setting goals and objectives, you can’t achieve the results that you are after. Make sure your goals are realistic ones and start small at first.

Small wins will help you gain confidence, momentum and a bigger appetite for more results.

Budget and Investment

To begin, ask yourself how much a customer is worth to you to determine how much money you can spend to acquire a customer.

Once you know the lifetime value of a customer, build your budget from there.

Competitor Analysis

Be sure to monitor the competitive businesses in your target market.

What are they missing in their service offerings?

By analyzing their campaigns and strategies, you can adapt yours to better satisfy your target market and get an edge.

How to Generate Commercial Construction Leads

Commercial construction lead generation on your own can be a hard task.

However, you can succeed in marketing your business if you know the right methods to follow.

Here are some tips for finding work and new construction leads as a general contractor:

1.Using Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms have become necessary tools for marketing businesses in any industry. In the construction business, you can use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other platforms to connect with relevant prospects.

These platforms play a vital role in generating free construction leads and brand awareness.

A contractor should have at the very least a Facebook page to communicate with its consumers. With over a billion people on the Facebook platform, you can be sure that your target customer is on it.

LinkedIn is also a good resource if you are looking for corporate clients. You can announce new projects, share your expertise and engage with potential customers.

In the time of COVID-19, there are more prospects at home on social media than ever. Use this to your advantage. Make more digital connections when personal visits and handshakes are out of the question.

2.Taking Advantage of Referral Programs

Once your job is done and your customers are satisfied, you can ask these customers to recommend your business to others.

For this, you need to approach your customer and ask for the favor. If you’ve done a good job, they should be more than happy to do so.

But, you need to choose the right time to ask for referrals. The best time is right after when you have impressed the customer with your work.

Make it a habit. Produce a short post-job survey and ask for a grade. Those who give you highest marks are the first ones to ask.

The biggest key is to be consistent.

3. Optimizing Your Search Engine Visibility

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, will boost your website and its posts to the top of the search results.

If your business is not showing in the top search results, you might be losing a lot of leads to your competitors.

Try using content to build awareness, trust and search traffic.

  • You can write educational articles on your website that answer common questions your audience is likely searching for.
  • Create valuable tools like checklists, guides, and insider tips on your blog.
  • Use images to make your content attractive. Included images should be optimized with proper alt tags.
  • Keep updating your website content. Google likes sites that add content frequently. A good strategy for doing that is by providing details and pictures of your completed and upcoming projects on your website. This keeps the content fresh, relevant and Google-friendly.

4.Starting a Joint Venture with a Similar Team

Starting a joint venture is one of the fastest and easiest methods to generate leads and grow your business.

The best thing is, it won’t cost you a dime if you do it right.

In a joint venture, two or more non-competing businesses form a partnership and share the market.

For example, if you specialize in industrial construction, you could partner with a cleaning business that also works in industrial construction.

Since you don’t compete, you can share those leads and boost revenues together.

5.Using Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)

Pay per click ads can show immediate results. Those that click these ads are typically in “buyer mode”

However, you have to be vigilant with PPC marketing. You pay Google everytime someone clicks on your result, even if the customer does not convert.

Predicting and monitoring the costs of your PPC marketing campaign needs to be dialed in correctly.

Research the keywords properly in Google Search Console to find the keywords driving traffic and conversions right now.

Pay special attention to long tail keywords. They are often cheaper.

Over time, the traffic from numerous long tail keywords will add up, and for a decent price, will send more customers your way.

Be sure to focus on your local keywords. Customers will often consider your location when making their final decision.

6.Press Releases

Press releases are a relatively inexpensive way to tell the world about what you offer and anything unique you have to share.

New services, products or partnerships are perfect topics for a press release.

Firms like PRWeb and PRNewswire can help you distribute your message.

If you’re lucky, the press will pick it up and share your press release to their audience.

Increase the chances of this happening by including hard-to-find information, stats or services in you press releases that make your press release newsworthy and worth sharing.

7.Choose a Reputable Construction Lead Service

When you have no idea where to start, or don’t have the time or staff to do it in-house, consider a construction lead service.

BuildCentral’s ConstructionWire™ project database has timely, accurate commercial construction leads and thousands of decision maker contacts.

With ConstructionWire, you can view all the latest construction projects, their construction stages and facility types, competitive data, market forecasts and more.

Now reporting on COVID-19 Response construction, BuildCentral’s data products provide nimble, real-time construction project research and analysis.

Find hotel, medical, multifamily and commercial construction lead research for all U.S. regions.

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that today’s competitive business environment makes finding work difficult for general contractors, especially in the age of COVID-19.

However, you have technology at your disposal that provides you with more than a few avenues to generate your own leads and convert the existing ones.

In the end, be consistent with your efforts, continue to monitor the market and you’ll see the the fruits of your labor in no time.