Want to attract more customers?  Consider enriching your content and marketing materials with less bells and whistles and more authenticity.

Although glossy brochures and high-quality images are appealing to the eye, when it comes to turning your HBW lead to a customer, your offerings must go beyond perfect lighting and photoshopped dreamscapes.  To gain the trust of a client, you should start with providing real stories of your projects and successes.  From your website to tri-folds, real content about your value proposition should be what really makes your pages “shine”.

So, how does one begin to integrate “being real” into their marketing strategy?  While building trust doesn’t happen overnight or through a few eye-catching images and videos, there are areas that you can review and revise to speak to your target audience’s needs rather than at them.

1. Image – If you are working from a “mom and pop” or small business shop, embrace your small size rather than advertise as a power house in a penthouse office. Not all customers are looking for the exotic import, and those who are will be disappointed and lose trust when they see that the company does not match its image.  Many small design and build firms will refer to themselves as “boutique” or as offering a unique and personal touch that can’t be matched by larger firms.  Focus on how your company stands out and what makes you unique rather than how you may fit an ideal.
2. Niche – You may be able to offer a myriad of services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be everything to everyone. By focusing on what you and your team do best, you strengthen your value, and by tailoring those specific strengths to your audience, you strengthen your competitive advantage.  One of the first and most important steps of this process is clearly identifying and defining a segment of the population on which you are focused; you will want to identify the needs, interests and requirements that your company is positioned to address and that may be neglected by your competition.
3. Value Proposition – What makes your business unique and valuable? If you can’t answer this question, then it may be a good time to develop a value proposition.  A value proposition will make your business more attractive to your audience, as well as define why your services will benefit and add value to your prospect’s residential or commercial space.  To begin, ask yourself these questions:
   1. How does my product or service solve a problem, improve a living space or situation?
   2. What are the direct benefits of my products/services?
   3. How are my products/services unique from the competition? (This doesn’t just refer to cost.)

Once you have boiled down the answers to the above listed questions, they should be tightened to create your value proposition, a statement that reflects the strength of services and tells a customer why they should choose your company.

By being real in your marketing efforts and approach, you begin to build a foundation of trust.   Authenticity doesn’t mean selling yourself short on high-quality images, websites and materials; rather, it means not overselling based on ideals and expectations that don’t accurately reflect or fit your business.  By embracing the qualities and aspects of your business that make you unique, you can reach your prospects in a way that resonates with them, presenting real deliverables and real results.

For more information on construction business and marketing tips, stay connected with the HBW Blog.  To get ahead of construction activity and gain access to the latest permitting data in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma, contact HBW for more information on construction data reports and industry leads.