If you are like most businesses right now, you are in a holding pattern of some sort, surviving through and waiting for this pandemic to pass.  This is most likely opening space in your schedule to focus on some of the items you have not had time to get to in the past.  Much like spring cleaning in a home, down time (or springtime) in a business can provide an opportunity to “clean up” and tighten some action items that have made their way to the lower priority bin.

More specifically, marketing efforts may need a little “tidying up” and focus.  For this reason, here are few areas to review in order to tighten your game so that you can be ready to hit the ground running when business begins picking back up again:

1. Competition – Have you checked on your competition lately? Assess their market share, branding, as well as their positioning and approach to the market.  This is a great time to gather intelligence and see if your competitive advantages remain intact.
2. Sales – While weekly, monthly and quarterly sales reports have most likely been defining your efforts up to this point, it can be beneficial to use this down time to review your lead sources to ensure that you are receiving new reports and refreshing leads regularly; services like HBW provide the latest data and reports for construction permits, so make sure you have accessed the cloud and/or downloaded the latest to your CRM platform.
3. Website – Have you reviewed your traffic statistics (Google Analytics, host stats) lately? While closer monitoring of such data is important during your campaigns, it is also important to review stats over time to get an overall picture of the ebb and flow of traffic patterns.
4. Product & Service Review – Have your services or primary products been evolving/changing over time? The answer is most likely “yes” but there is a chance that your promotions and customer initiatives could be outdated and not inclusive of the products and services that are in highest demand.  Take the time to review and place new products and services front and center of existing and perhaps new markets.
5. Branding – Between brochures and flyers to websites and social media profiles, you have probably had a few different hands touching the face of your brand. For this reason, it is important to review your brand and online presence to ensure that all of your marketing materials and representation are in sync and reflecting the same image and voice of your company.
6. Online Review – The online world is far from a perfect world, so it is worth cutting away some extra time to ensure that your websites, landing pages, social media profiles, links and videos are up-to-date and functioning. Few things are as frustrating as clicking on a link and receiving an error message or being directed to the wrong website or page.
7. Advertising – Which advertising efforts are providing significant ROI, and which ones are on their way out? By reviewing your media, print, online (banners, directories, pay-per-click) and broadcast (TV, radio) advertising initiatives, you can identify what should stay, and what should go.

Although this down time can be challenging for businesses that are ready to get back to their usual operations, you can still be productive by using it to review and improve the marketing efforts you have in place so that you can be stronger than ever when your doors open again.

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.