Most construction marketers spend their days writing proposals.
I get it. Your CEO wants proposals. Your CFO measures success by how many you submit. The work feels urgent and tangible.
But here’s what happens: you chase every opportunity, submit dozens of proposals, and win maybe 20% of them. You’re busy, but you’re not growing strategically.
The construction industry has a knowledge problem. Most companies focus on traditional methods while missing five targeting strategies that work better and cost less.
Why Construction Companies Miss These Strategies
Lack of knowledge drives this gap.
Construction sometimes has a problem doing things the way it’s always been done. Your competitors rely on relationships and referrals. Those still matter, but they’re not enough anymore.
The industry faces a huge worker shortage and longer sales cycles than ever. You need precision targeting to initiate new relationship and to stay visible during those 12-36 month buying cycles.
1. Geofencing: Target People Where They Already Are
Geofencing lets you set up a virtual perimeter around specific locations. When someone enters that area, they will start to see your ads in their mobile apps, games, and web pages for several weeks.
You can target conference venues where your ideal clients gather. You can target offices of your top 25 prospect accounts. You can even target competitor jobsites for recruiting campaigns.
The precision advantage is clear. You’re not wasting money on mass media when 99% of the audience doesn’t matter to you.
Some large contractors use billboards for recruiting. You’ll occasionally hear commercial contractors on the radio. But these strategies waste budget on people who will never work for you or hire you.
Geofencing works like shooting fish in a barrel. You know exactly where your targets are, and you reach them there.
The campaigns run for limited durations, so costs stay manageable. This makes geofencing the easiest strategy to pitch to your CFO.
2. Retargeting: Stay Visible During Long Sales Cycles
Construction sales cycles easily run 12-36 months. Someone visits your website today, but they won’t make a decision for another year.
Retargeting keeps you visible throughout that timeline.
When someone visits your site, you can show them ads across the web for months afterward. These people already know who you are and showed interest. They’re probably in a buying cycle or looking for a new job.
Retargeting is one of the most effective and cheapest digital advertising tactics available.
With the right tools, you can differentiate your audience based on pages they visited. Someone who visits your careers page sees recruiting messages. Someone who visits your industrial projects page sees project capability messages.
B2B retargeting delivers 147% higher conversion rates than B2C retargeting. The average click-through rate is 10X higher than standard display ads. For construction’s long decision cycles, this strategy is essential.
3. Email Mapping: Follow Your CRM Contacts Everywhere
Email mapping connects customer emails in your CRM to their social profiles and browsing behavior.
You can show ads to hundreds or thousands of contacts without picking up the phone. The ads appear in the same places as retargeting and geofencing ads.
This strategy works as a way to get in front of contacts in your CRM besides calling or emailing them.
Picking up the phone to contact hundreds of people takes time. Email mapping keeps you visible to your entire prospect list automatically.
4. Target Account Campaigns: Warm Up High-Value Prospects
Target account campaigns focus your resources on specific high-value prospects.
You can warm up target accounts before reaching out to them. They recognize your brand name when you call, which builds trust and familiarity. They might even reach out to you first if they have the need.
This approach works well for commercial construction companies pursuing large contracts. Multiple decision-makers get exposed to your brand across different channels.
At companies with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in buying decisions. Target account campaigns help you reach the entire buying committee before your sales team makes contact.
5. Lookalike Campaigns: Expand Your Reach Strategically
Lookalike campaigns target people similar to your best existing clients.
This strategy works well for contractors with broader, larger audiences when you can’t develop a list of 25-50 target companies.
The platforms analyze your customer data and find prospects with similar characteristics, behaviors, and demographics.
You’re not just matching demographics. The algorithms identify patterns in how your best clients behave online, what content they consume, and what signals indicate buying intent.
Start With Geofencing
If you’ve never used any of these strategies, start with geofencing.
Retargeting is cheaper and easier to set up. But geofencing delivers faster proof of concept. Your CFO will understand the precision targeting immediately.
The short duration keeps costs low. You can run a test campaign at a single conference or around a handful of target accounts.
Once you prove the concept works, you can layer in retargeting to stay visible during long sales cycles. Then add email mapping to reach your existing CRM contacts. Build target account campaigns for your highest-value prospects. Use lookalike campaigns to expand beyond your core targets.
Building stronger relationships with prospective clients that are a better fit will grow your company while reducing the number of proposals you need to submit.
Most construction companies still rely on the same marketing methods they’ve used for decades. The competitive advantage is available right now for companies willing to adopt these five strategies.