Construction Marketing Ideas

Searching for construction marketing

At the Future of Online Advertising Conference, Jed Nahun, director of product development for Microsoft's adCenter advertising platform, introduced some interesting tools from Microsoft adCenter Labs. While Microsoft holds a distant third-place in the advertising search engine marketplace (lagging far behind first runner Google, and behind second-place Yahoo); it has the resources and tools to play at the highest level. And, if we allow for possible inconsistencies or invalid assumptions in the logarithms, it suggests that the construction industry is soon going to truly discover the importance of the Internet in marketing and advertising.

Take, for example, the keywords "construction marketing" -- the theme of this blog. The adCenter data reports a previous peak of 480 impressions for this search combination in May 2006, dropping to between 80 and 160 impressions over the winter months. AdCenter projects search impressions reaching close to 800 this month (June, 2007).

A search for "Construction Leads" provides equally interesting results. From last April through to Dec. 2006, search inquiries ranged from approximately 900 to 1,700 per month -- then skyrocketed, reaching 4,700 in March, 2007. The adCenter Labs predict the totals will decline from this peak -- but the prediction for approximately 3,200 inquiries in June, 2007 still is approximately three times the volume reported last year.

I realize it is dangerous to read too many assumptions into graphs and charts like the ones you can uncover yourself (there is no charge for this service) but the adCenter data suggests that Internet search engine marketing is about to become very important for the construction industry.

The evidence is growing that you should consider implementing a search engine marketing strategy right away. In fact, I will go out on a limb and suggest search engine marketing should be your number two strategy and priority. Number one, of course, (by a far margin in order of importance) is developing and maintaining your relationships and reputation with current clients.