Written by Perryn Olson, President & COO of Brand Constructors

Content marketing is the new buzzword in the marketing industry, and it is important for the younger generations to understand because you can grow your career by becoming an expert. 

You commonly see content marketing as a way for companies that work business-to-business (B2B), especially professional service firms including in the build industry, but it is still uncommon in construction. 

What is content marketing anyway? It is educating your prospects and positioning your company as the go-to company because you are an expert and resource for your clients. When you are an expert, prospective clients seek you out and pay more for your services. This expertise will allow you to earn more negotiated work and require less low-bid proposals. Sometimes, you do not have to compete at all because that prospect wants to work with you only.


Content marketing is a philosophy, not a marketing strategy. You are teaching them to make an informed decision, which leads them to you and reduces your buying cycle as well. Having a niche focus allows you to become an expert faster because you can learn less material quicker than being a generalist, and you have more examples to showcase. For example, if you focus on remodeling hospitals, you are an asset to hospitals looking for a construction company to remodel their pediatric unit because of your expertise and experience working in hospitals. You probably work in other industries too, but your competitors can not compete with the experience you bring to the table, so that hospital seeks you out. This becomes a perpetuating cycle as you learn more about the industry and have more projects in your portfolio. Also, when you have a focused client base, they refer their colleagues that are also in your industry. 

ABC asked us to write for this blog because of our focus and expertise in construction marketing. No one else in the country has more experience working with large construction companies than my team therefore we are a resource to ABC’s members. Sharing our knowledge is fun for us, and it gives us exposure, thus allowing us not to sell anyone. Our prospective clients are referred to us by our clients or they find us because of our content marketing. 

What does content marketing include? It can be a lot of things, but you can not limit it just to the web. Your blog, webinars, and social media are part of content marketing, but you need to include offline resources such as presentations, articles, lunch and learns, whitepapers and books. You don’t need to do them all, and I wouldn’t recommend starting with all of them at once. Start small and write a blog about something you know about in your industry that your customer would want to know more about and then promote it through LinkedIn. Once comfortable writing blogs, combine a few of them into a whitepaper and promote it through LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’re in business development, a whitepaper can be a strong touchpoint for a prospective client that you haven’t heard from in awhile, and you don’t know what to tell them. When you educate them, you’re putting the attention on them, and they see you as an expert. 

For efficiency and maximum effectiveness, cover the same topic in multiple channels. For example, this topic of "content marketing for construction companies” is used here, our company’s blog, YouTube channel, and I will write a whitepaper on it soon and share it in our company’s email newsletter. Each is written differently to fit a particular audience, but the overall message is the same. 

Also, with content marketing you get more bang for your buck than advertising on TV or a billboard because your message is targeted to a specific audience and a blog post I wrote 5 years ago still brings visitors to my website. 

Keep in mind, content marketing is a philosophy and not a short-term solution. You’ll prospects find you because they desire expertise and when they find you it is a matter of affording you and if you want to work with them (yes, you have a choice here). We’ve found that people will save up to work with us because they want to work with only us. The same can be true for you because you’ve educated them that you’re worth it. 

Perryn Olson, president and COO of ABC member, Brand Constructors, holds the designation of Certified Construction Marketing Professional (CCMP) from the Construction Marketing Association and the Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) from the Society of Marketing Professional Services). He currently serves on the board of SMPS Southeast Louisiana and is the past president of Executive Connections, a business networking organization in New Orleans.